“What perfect job?” asked Blatt.
“A job that neatly combines the family business with his personal hatred of women.”
Kline’s initial expression of puzzlement gave way to amazement. “The job of a recruiter!”
“Exactly,” said Gurney. “Suppose Skard-aka Flores-came to Mapleshade specifically to identify and recruit young women who might be persuaded to satisfy the sexual needs of wealthy men. Of course, he’d describe the arrangement in a way that would appeal to their own needs and fantasies. They’d never know, until it was too late, that they were being delivered into the hands of sexual sadists who intended to kill them-men like Jordan Ballston.”
Blatt’s eyes widened. “That is some extremely sick shit.”
“Profit and pathology, hand in hand,” said Gurney. “I knew more than one hit man who thought of himself as a businessman who just happened to be in a business most people didn’t have the stomach for. Like embalming. He talked about it as though it were primarily a source of income and only secondarily about killing people. Of course, the truth is the opposite. Killing is about killing. It’s about an icy kind of hatred-which the hit man converts into a business. Maybe that’s what we’re seeing here.”
Anderson crumpled his napkin into a ball. “We’re getting kind of theoretical, aren’t we?”
“I think Dave is right on point,” said Holdenfield. “Pathology and practicality. Leonardo Skard, in the guise of Hector Flores, may be making his living by arranging for the torture and beheading of women who remind him of his mother.”
Rodriguez rose slowly from his chair. “I think this might be a good time to take a break here. Okay? Ten minutes. Restrooms. Coffee. Et cetera.”
“Just one final point,” said Holdenfield. “With all the talk about Jillian Perry being killed on her wedding day, has it occurred to anyone that it was also Mother’s Day?”
Chapter 68
Kline, Rodriguez, Anderson, Blatt, Hardwick, and Wigg left the room. Gurney was about to follow when he saw Holdenfield, still in her chair, removing a set of photocopies from her briefcase-photocopies of several Karnala ads. She spread them out in front of her. He walked around to her side of the table and gazed down at them. They had a different impact on him now-presenting a harsher image of disorder and deception-since Ballston had revealed their purpose.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Mapleshade supposedly provides some sort of remediation for unhealthy sexual fixations. Christ, if what I’m seeing in the faces of these young women reflects the benefit of therapy, what the hell were they like before?”
“Worse.”
“Jesus.”
“I’ve read some of Ashton’s journal articles. His goals are modest. Minimal, really. His critics say his approach borders on the immoral. The faith-based therapists can’t stand him. He believes in aiming not for major reorientations but for the smallest possible changes. One comment he made at a professional seminar became famous, or infamous. Ashton enjoys shocking his peers. He said if he could persuade a ten-year-old girl to perform fellatio on her twelve-year-old boyfriend instead of her eight-year-old cousin, he would consider the therapy a complete success. In some circles that approach is a tad controversial.”
“Progress, not perfection, eh?”
“Right.”
“Still, when I look at these expressions…”
“One thing you have to remember-the success rate in the field is not high. I’m sure that even Ashton fails more often than he succeeds. That’s just a fact of life. When you’re dealing with sex offenders…”
But Gurney had stopped listening to her.
Holdenfield was staring at him. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer immediately. There were implications to be considered, decisions to be made regarding how much to say. Crucial decisions. But making any decision at that moment was beyond his ability. He was nearly paralyzed by the realization that
“What is it?” Holdenfield repeated.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said, which was largely true. His voice was strained. He couldn’t take his eyes off the ad closest to him. The girl was crouched on a rumpled bed, appearing both exhausted and inexhaustible-inviting, threatening, daring. He was jarred by a flashback from a religious retreat in his freshman year at St. Genesius: a wild-eyed priest ranting about hellfire.
Hardwick was the first to return to the conference room. He glanced at Gurney, the ad photo, and Holdenfield, and he seemed to sense immediately the tension in the air. Wigg returned next and took up her station in front of her laptop, followed by a glum Anderson and an antsy Blatt. Kline came in speaking on his cell, trailed by Rodriguez. Hardwick sat across from Gurney, watching him curiously.
“All right,” said Kline, again with the air of a man accomplishing a great deal. “Back on track. Following up on the question of the true identity of Hector Flores: Rod, I believe there was a plan to conduct some reinterviews of Ashton’s neighbors to make sure no details about Flores had slipped through the cracks first time around. How’s that going?”
Rodriguez looked for a moment like he was going to excoriate the whole exercise as a waste of time. Instead he turned to Anderson. “Anything new on that?”
Anderson folded his arms across his chest. “Not a single significant new fact.”
Kline shot Gurney a challenging glance-since the reinterviewing idea had been his.
Gurney wrenched his mind back to the discussion and turned to Anderson. “Did you manage to sort out the actual eyewitness stuff, which is scarce, from the hearsay stuff, which is endless?”
“Yeah, we did that.”
“And?”
“There’s kind of a problem with the eyewitness data.”
“What’s that?” interjected Kline.
“The eyewitnesses are mostly dead.”
Kline blinked. “Say that again?”
“The eyewitnesses are mostly dead.”
“Christ, I heard you. Tell me what you mean.”
“I mean, who actually spoke to Hector Flores? Or to Leonardo Skard, or whatever the hell we’re calling him now? Who had face-to-face contact? Jillian Perry, and she’s dead. Kiki Muller, and she’s dead. The girls who Savannah Liston saw talking to him when he was working on Ashton’s flower bed at Mapleshade, and they’re all missing-possibly dead, if they ended up with guys like Ballston.”
Kline looked skeptical. “I thought people saw him in the car with Ashton, or in town.”
“What they saw was somebody in a cowboy hat and sunglasses,” said Anderson. “None of them can provide a physical description worth a shit, excuse my language. We got a boatload of colorful anecdotes, but that’s about it. Seems like everybody is telling us stories that somebody else told them.”
Kline nodded. “That dovetails perfectly with the Skard reputation.”
Anderson gave him a sideways look.
“The Skards are supposedly ruthless about eliminating real witnesses. Seems like anyone who could finger one
