“But suppose they did. Suppose they shot everybody, because that was the only way they could make sure they got the one they were after. And suppose the police arrived later and found all those bodies, all those people who’d been shot dead in the street. What would they think?”
“What would the police think? I have no idea. Maybe that some maniac wanted to kill churchgoers?”
Gurney nodded. “Exactly-especially if they got a letter the same day from someone claiming that religious people were the scum of the earth and he was planning to kill them all.”
“But… wait a minute.” Madeleine looked incredulous. “Are you suggesting that the Good Shepherd killed all those people because he couldn’t tell who his real target was? And that he just kept shooting people in a certain kind of car, until he was sure he got the person he was after?”
“I don’t know. But I intend to figure it out.”
Madeleine shook her head. “I just don’t see how-” She was interrupted by the ring of the landline phone on the countertop next to the refrigerator. “You’d better get that. It’s probably you-know-who.”
He did. And it was.
“You out of that fucking shower yet?”
“Good morning, Jack.”
“Got your e-mail-your investigatory premise, along with your list of questions.”
“And?”
“You’re making the point that there’s a style conflict between the manifesto’s words and the shooter’s deeds?”
“You could put it that way.”
“You’re saying that the shooter’s MO proves he’s way too practical, way too cool, calm, and collected to think the thoughts presented in the manifesto. My little brain got that right?”
“What I’m saying is, there’s a disconnect.”
“Okay. That’s interesting. But it creates a bigger problem than it solves.”
“How?”
“You’re saying the motive for the murders is something other than what’s spelled out in the manifesto.”
“Right.”
“Therefore the victims were chosen for another reason-not because they were conspicuous displayers of luxury goods, greedy bastards who deserved to die?”
“Right.”
“So this super-practical, super-cool genius had an undisclosed pragmatic reason for killing those people?”
“Right.”
“You see the problem?”
“Tell me.”
“If the shooter’s real motive for choosing each victim was something other than the fact that he-or she-was driving a hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes, then we have to believe that driving a hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes was irrelevant. A fucking coincidence. You ever run into anything like that, Davey boy? It would be like discovering that every victim of Bernie Madoff just happened to have a leprechaun tattooed on his ass. You get my point here?”
“I get it, Jack. Anything else in my e-mail bothering you?”
“Matter of fact, yes-another one of your questions. Actually, three questions that all kind of circle around the same issue: Were all the murders equally important? Was the sequence important? Were any of them necessitated by any of the others? You want to tell me, what is it about the case that brings up that issue?”
“Sometimes it’s what’s missing that gets my attention. And because of the nature of the reigning hypothesis in this particular case, there’s a hell of a lot missing-unexplored avenues, unasked questions. The basic assumption from the beginning was that these murders were identical components of a philosophical statement the killer was making. As soon as everyone accepted that, no one looked at them as individual events that could have different purposes. But it’s possible the murders were not all equally important, or even all done for the same reason. You with me, Jack?”
“Hard to say. You got any specifics?”
“You ever see a movie called
He’d never seen it, never even heard of it. So Gurney told him the story, ending with the “what if the snipers shot them all?” speculation he’d raised with Madeleine.
After a long silence, Hardwick asked a variant of one of Madeleine’s questions. “You’re saying that the first five attacks were
“Me, too. But you know what? I’m starting to get the feeling that I might be in the right ballpark, even though I’m not sure yet what the game is.”
“Not
“You need to think more positively.”
“You have any more words of wisdom, Sherlock, before I puke?”
“Just one thing. Special Agent Trout is fixated on the fact that I might have access to privileged information I’m not legally entitled to. Watch your back, Jack.”
“Fuck Trout. Is there any other secret shit you want me to shovel your way?”
“Long as you’re asking, do you have any tracer progress on Emilio Corazon?”
“Not yet. He’s managed to become a surprisingly invisible man.”
At eight forty-five, Madeleine left for her part-time job at the clinic. It was still raining. Gurney went to his computer, brought up a copy of his e-mail to Hardwick, and went over the list of questions he’d included-stopping at the one that read, “Why did the murders occur when they did, in the spring of the year 2000?” The more certain he was that the murders were essentially pragmatic, the more significant the timing element became.
Psycho-mission killings usually took one of two forms: There’s the Big Bang approach, where the shooter walks into the midst of multiple targets in the post office or the mosque and starts shooting, with no plan of escape. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, those guys (and they’re always guys) end up shooting themselves when there’s no one else left to shoot. Then there’s the other type-the guys who dribble out their bile for ten or twenty years. The guys who like to blow off somebody’s head or hand with a letter bomb every year or two but aren’t so eager to kill themselves.
The Good Shepherd murders didn’t seem to fit either category. There was a palpable coolness, a lack of emotion, in their crisp planning and execution. In any event that’s what Gurney was telling himself when the phone rang at nine-fifteen.
Once again it was Hardwick, but his tone was heavier than before.
“Whatever game is being played in whatever ballpark, it just got nastier. Ruthie Blum has turned up dead.”
Gurney’s first thought, one that made him instantly nauseous, was that she’d been shot in the head like her husband ten years earlier. The sickening image that leaped into his mind was of her perky Yorkshire-terrier hairdo blasted into a bloody, brainy mess.
“Oh, God, no. Where? How?”
“In her house. Ice pick to the heart.”
“What?”
“You expressing surprise or bad hearing?”
“An ice pick?”
“Single thrust, upward, under the sternum.”
“Jesus Christ. When?”
“Sometime after eleven last night.”
“How do they know that?”
“She posted a Facebook message at ten fifty-eight. Body was found at three-forty this morning.”
“This is the same house where she lived ten years ago when-”
