of him, loved him and accepted him exactly the way he was, wished him all the love and light and happiness he was capable of accepting, wished him all the best of everything forever. But now it was time for her to go. And the film ended with the angel smiling, smiling with all the love in the world, as she disappeared into the sunlight.
Gurney lowered his head, biting his lip. Tears rolled down his cheeks. And he began to sob. At the imagined film. At the truth of his own life.
It was ridiculous, he thought, an hour later. It was absurd. Self-indulgent, over-the-top, hyperemotional nonsense. When he had time, he’d look at it more carefully, figure out what actually triggered his childish little breakdown. Obviously he’d been feeling vulnerable. The political dynamics of the case had isolated him, his imperfect recovery from his gunshot wounds had left him frustrated and touchy. And no doubt there were deeper issues, echoes of childhood insecurities, fears, and so forth. He would definitely have to take a closer look. But right now…
Right now he needed to make the best use of the time that was available to him. He needed to prepare himself for whatever confrontation might emerge from the process he and Kim had set in motion.
He began shuffling through the papers on the table, reading everything from summaries of the original incident reports to Kim’s status notes on her initial contacts with the families, from the Offender Profile generated by the FBI to the full text of the Good Shepherd’s Memorandum of Intent.
He read through all of it. Carefully, as though he were reading it for the first time. With frequent glances out the window at the causeway path and occasional trips around the room to check the other windows, the task consumed over two hours. And then he went through it all over again.
By the time he finished his second pass, the sun had gone down. He was fatigued from reading and stiff from sitting. He got up from the table, stretched, withdrew the Beretta from his ankle holster, and stepped out through the front door. The cloudless sky was in that stage of dusk in which the blue is fading to gray. Somewhere out in the beaver pond, there was a loud splash. And then another. And another. And then compete silence.
The quiet brought with it a feeling of tension. Gurney slowly circled the cabin. It all appeared unchanged from what he remembered from his earlier visit-except that the Humvee that had been parked out in back of the picnic table was gone. When he came around to the front, he went back inside, closing the door behind him but leaving it unlatched.
In just the three or four minutes he’d been outside, the light level had fallen noticeably. He returned to the table, laid the Beretta down within easy reach, and selected from the piles of papers his own list of questions about the case. The one that caught his attention was the same one Bullard had alluded to in Sasparilla and Hardwick had mentioned on the phone in connection with a hypothetical pair of motives Jimi Brewster might have had for killing not only his father but the other five victims.
Hardwick theorized that Jimi could have killed his father out of pure hatred for him and the materialistic priorities embodied in his choice of car, and killed the other five because they, with their similar cars, were just like his father. In that way there would have been one primary and five secondary victims.
However, although there was something tantalizing about the theory, it didn’t really jibe with Gurney’s knowledge of pathological killers. They tended to kill either the primary object of their hatred
Or did it?
Suppose…
Suppose the killer did have one primary target. One person he wanted to kill. And suppose he killed the five others not because they reminded him of the primary-
Suppose he killed those other five people simply to create the impression of a different kind of crime. At the very least, those extra victims would clutter the field so thoroughly that it would make it impossible for the police, or anyone else, to see clearly who among the six the primary really was. And, of course, the way the Good Shepherd murder scheme had been engineered, the police would never even get to the point of asking that question.
Why would it occur to them that the six were really the sum of one and five? Why would they even start down that road? Especially if they had, from the very beginning, a solid theory of the case that made all six targets equally important. Especially if they’d received a mission killer’s manifesto that made all the murders make equal sense. A manifesto that explained everything. A manifesto so cleverly constructed and so reflective of the details of the crimes that the best and the brightest swallowed it whole.
Gurney had the feeling that finally he might be seeing something clearly-a sense that the fog was starting to lift. It was his first vision of the case that seemed, at least at first glance, coherent.
As with most of the insights in his career, his immediate thought was that it should have occurred to him sooner. After all, this way of looking at the murders was only a small turn of the dial from Madeleine’s description of that pivotal scene in
On the other hand, not every idea that feels right is right. Gurney knew from experience how dangerously easy it is to overlook logical flaws in one’s thinking. When the product of one’s own mind is the subject, objectivity is an illusion. We all believe we have an open mind, but no one really does. A devil’s-advocate process is essential.
His first choice for devil’s advocacy was Hardwick. He took out his phone and placed the call. When it went to voice mail, he left a brief message. “Hey, Jack. I have a slant on the case that I’d like your reaction to. Call me.”
He checked to make sure his phone was still set on vibrate. He wasn’t sure what the night had in store for him, but in the scenarios he imagined, a ringing phone could be a problem.
His next devil’s-advocate choice was Lieutenant Bullard. He didn’t know where she stood at this point, but the need he felt for feedback outweighed his concern about the politics. Besides, if his insight into the case was correct, it could tilt the politics back in his favor. That call also went into voice mail, and he left essentially the same message for her that he’d left for Hardwick.
Not knowing when Hardwick or Bullard might get back to him and still wanting to expose his new perspective to a live listener, he decided, with mixed feelings, to call Clinter. After the third ring, the man himself answered.
“Hey, laddie, trouble on your big night? You calling for help?”
“No trouble. Just an idea I want to bounce off you. Might have holes in it, or it might be significant.”
“I’m all ears.”
It suddenly struck Gurney that there was a sizable psychic overlap between Clinter and Hardwick. Clinter was Hardwick gone over the edge. The thought, strangely, made him both more and less comfortable.
Gurney explained his idea. Twice.
There was no response. As he waited, he gazed out the window at the broad, marshy pond. The full moon had risen, giving the dead trees looming above the marsh grass an eerie presence. “You there, Max?”
“I’m absorbing, laddie, absorbing. I find no fatal fault with what you say. It does, of course, raise questions.”
“Of course.”
“To be sure I understand, you’re saying that only one of the murders mattered?”
“Correct.”
“And the other five were protective cover?”
“Correct.”
“And none of the murders had a damn thing to do with the ills of society?”
“Correct.”
“And the fancy cars were targeted… why?”
“Maybe because the one victim that mattered drove one. A big, black, expensive Mercedes. Maybe that’s where the whole concept came from.”
“And the other five people were shot essentially at random? Shot because they had the same kind of car? To make it look like there was a pattern.”
“Correct. I don’t think the killer knew or cared anything about the other victims.”
“Which would make him a rather chilly fucker, wouldn’t it?”
“Correct.”
