“Can you come?”
“Kim, my being there won’t help. You have to call 911. You have to do it right now. That’s the most important thing. Do you understand?”
“Yes. But I wish you were here. Please.”
“I know. But I’m going to hang up now, so you can make that 911 call. After you describe the situation to the dispatcher, call me back. You understand?”
“Yes.”
When Gurney broke the connection, Kyle and Madeleine were staring at him. Five minutes later, as he was still recounting the call to them in as much detail as he could, Kim called back.
“The dispatcher said the police are on their way.” Her voice sounded more controlled.
“Are you okay?”
“I guess. I don’t know. There’s a suicide note.”
“Say that again.”
“A suicide note. From Robby. On my computer.”
“You checked your computer?”
“I just saw it. It’s right here on the screen. In front of me. It was turned on.”
“You’re sure it’s a suicide note?”
“Of course I’m sure. What else could it be?”
“What does it say?”
“It’s awful.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t want to read it out loud. I can’t.” She sounded like she was taking deep breaths.
“Please, Kim, try to read it to me. It’s important.”
“Do I really have to read it? It’s really awful.”
“Try. Please.”
“Okay. I’ll try. Okay.” She read in a trembling voice, “ ‘The human race disgusts me. You disgust me. You and Gurney together disgust me. Life is disgusting. I hope someday you see the truth and it kills you. This is the last will of Robert Montague.’ That’s it. That’s all it says. When the police come, what should I tell them?”
“Just answer their questions.”
“Should I tell them about last night?”
“Answer their questions concisely and truthfully.” He paused, searching for the right words. “I wouldn’t volunteer a lot of stuff that would just muddy the picture.”
“Is it all right to say you were here?”
“Yes. They’ll want to know if you were in the apartment, when you came, when you left, and whether anyone was there with you. You can tell them we were there, that we were discussing your RAM project. I don’t think it would be helpful to distract them with extraneous details about Max Clinter or his house. The thing is, you need to tell the truth, you can’t lie-but you’re not required to spew out unasked-for details. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so. Should I tell them I spent last night at a hotel?”
“Definitely. They’ll want to know where you were, and you need to be truthful. If I were you, and my apartment had been entered mysteriously on a number of occasions, and the local police hadn’t responded adequately, I wouldn’t want to be sleeping there. I’d feel safer in a hotel, or in Walnut Crossing, or in a friend’s apartment in Manhattan. By the way, did you leave the hotel at all during the night?”
“No, of course not. But suppose-” There was a loud knocking sound in the background. “The police are here. I’d better go. Call you later.”
After the call ended, Gurney stood where he was, in the middle of the room, trying to get a firm hold on the facts, the implications, the immediate imperatives. He felt like a man juggling half a dozen oranges who’d just been tossed a watermelon.
A watermelon loaded with nitroglycerin.
Chapter 46
“Suicide?” said Kyle.
“I doubt it,” said Gurney. “He wasn’t the type. And even if he was, homicide would still make more sense.”
“You think the Syracuse cops are good enough to figure out what really happened?”
“Maybe with a little help.” He spent a few seconds weighing his options, then took out his phone and entered Hardwick’s number.
The call was picked up on the first ring. “Seren-fucking-dipity!” said the rough voice.
“Beg pardon?”
“I was in the act of reaching for the phone to call you, and here you are. Don’t tell me that ain’t fucking- dipity.”
“Whatever you say, Jack. The reason I’m calling is that I know something that could be of value to BCI, and you may be the only BCI person willing to talk to me.”
“Yeah, well, after I give you a certain piece of news, you may not give a fuck about-”
“Listen to me. Robby Meese is dead.”
“Dead? Dead, meaning whacked?”
“I’d say so, although it’s been set up as a suicide.”
“BCI is not yet aware of this corpse?”
“The Syracuse city police know about it. So you guys will find out soon enough. But that’s not the issue. Whoever ends up being responsible for the forensics, I want to make sure they take a close look at the computer keyboard that was used to type the purported suicide note. The smudges on the keys are likely to be very similar to those found on Ruth Blum’s computer.”
Hardwick paused as though he were trying to understand this. “Where is this corpse?”
“In Kim Corazon’s apartment.”
A longer pause. “The latex-glove smudges on Blum’s keyboard were caused by someone trying to type something in a way that would preserve her fingerprints on the keys, to make it look like she typed it. Right?”
“Right.”
“How does that work here? The preserved fingerprints on Corazon’s keyboard would be hers, not Meese’s. How would that make it look like he typed the note?”
“The killer could have asked Meese to type something else-an e-mail, who knows what-before he killed him. Then, with Meese’s prints on the keys, the killer put on gloves and typed the suicide note.”
“So what do you want me to do with this big insight?”
“When you see the CJIS homicide report on Meese, which with any luck will mention the computer note, it might suddenly occur to you-because of the Kim Corazon connection to Ruth Blum-that the computer keyboard imprints ought to be compared. You might want to mention it to Bullard over in Auburn. And to a Detective James Schiff in Syracuse.”
“You don’t want to do this yourself?”
“My name is not magic at the moment. Any suggestion from me will end up at the bottom of the pile, if it makes it into the pile at all.”
Hardwick exploded in a hacking cough. Or it might have been a laugh. “Man, you don’t know how fucking true that is, which is why I was about to call you. The arson unit has decided to bring you in for questioning. As a suspect.”
“When?”
“Most likely tomorrow morning. Conceivably as early as this afternoon. Thought I’d mention it, in case you’d
