Shut Your Eyes Tight

“I’ll clear any major expenses with you beforehand: air travel, anything that-”

She interrupted. “What do you need to start? A retainer? You want me to sign something?”

“I’ll draft an agreement and e-mail it. Just print it out, sign it, scan it, and e-mail it back. I don’t have a PI license, so officially you’ll be retaining me not as a detective but as a consultant to review the evidence and evaluate the status of the investigation. No need for money up front. I’ll send you an invoice a week from today.”

“Fine. What else?”

“A question-out of left field, maybe, but it’s been on my mind since I watched the video.”

“What?” There was a touch of alarm in her voice.

“Why weren’t there any friends of Jillian’s at the wedding?”

She emitted a sharp little laugh. “Jillian had no friends at the wedding because Jillian had no friends.”

“None at all?”

“I described my daughter to you yesterday. Are you shocked that she would have no friends? Let me make something perfectly clear. My daughter, Jillian Perry, was a sociopath. A sociopath.” She repeated the term as though she were teaching it to an ESL student. “The concept of friendship did not fit in her brain.”

Gurney hesitated before going on. “Mrs. Perry, I’m having trouble-”

“Val.”

“All right. Val, I’m having trouble putting a couple of things together here. I’m wondering-”

She cut him off again. “You’re wondering why the hell I’m so determined to… to bring to justice… the killer of a daughter I obviously couldn’t stand?”

“Close enough.”

“Two answers. That’s the way I am. And it’s none of your fucking business!” She paused. “And maybe there’s a third answer. I was a lousy mother, really lousy, when Jilli was a kid. And now… Shit… never mind. Let’s go back to it being none of your fucking business.”

Chapter 17

In the shadow of the bitch

In the past four months, he’d hardly thought of the other one at all-the one just before the Perry bitch, the one of little importance by comparison, the overshadowed one, the one no one had discovered yet, the one whose fame was yet to come-the one whose elimination was, in part, a matter of convenience. Some might say entirely a matter of convenience, but they would be wrong. Her end was well deserved, for all the reasons that damned her kind:

the stain of Eve,

rotten heart,

rutting heart,

heart of a slut,

a slut at heart,

sweat on the upper lip,

grunts of a pig,

horrid gasps,

lips parting,

lascivious lips, devouring lips,

wet tongue,

slithering serpent,

enveloping legs,

slippery skin,

vile fluids,

slime of a snail.

Wiped clean by death,

evaporated by death,

damp limbs dried by death,

purification by desiccation,

dry as dust.

Harmless as a mummy.

Vaya con Dios!

He smiled. He must remember to think of her more often-to keep her death alive.

Chapter 18

Ashton’s neighbors

By 10:00 A.M., Gurney had e-mailed Val Perry a memo of agreement and called three numbers she’d given him for Scott Ashton-his home number, personal cell number, and the Mapleshade Residential Academy number-in an effort to arrange a meeting. He’d left voice-mail messages at the first two and a live message at the third, with an assistant who identified herself only as Ms. Liston.

At 10:30 Ashton called him back, said he’d gotten all three messages, plus one from Val Perry explaining Gurney’s role. “She said you’d want to speak to me.”

Ashton’s voice was familiar from the video, but richer and softer on the phone, impersonally warm, like an advertising voice for an expensive product-quite suitable for a top-shelf psychiatrist, thought Gurney.

“That’s right, sir,” he said. “As soon as it’s convenient for you.”

“Today?”

“Today would be ideal.”

“The academy at noon or my home at two. Your choice.”

Gurney chose the latter. If he started out for Tambury immediately, he’d have time to drive around, get a sense of the area, Ashton’s road in particular, maybe talk to a neighbor or two. He went to the table, got the BCI interview list that Hardwick had provided, and made a pencil dot next to each name with a Badger Lane address. From the same pile, he chose the folder marked “Interview Summaries” and headed for his car.

* * *

The village of Tambury owed its sleepy, secluded quality in part to having grown up around an intersection of two nineteenth-century roads that had been bypassed by newer routes, a circumstance that usually produces an economic decline. However, Tambury’s location in a high open valley on the northern edge of the mountains with postcard views in every direction saved it. The combination of out-of-the-way peace and great beauty made it an attractive location for wealthy retirees and second-home owners.

But not all the population fit that description. Calvin Harlen’s weed-choked shambles of a former dairy farm sat at the corner of Higgles Road and Badger Lane. It was just past noon when the crisp librarian’s voice of Gurney’s GPS delivered him to this final segment of his hour-and-a-quarter drive from Walnut Crossing. He pulled over onto the northbound shoulder of Higgles Road and eyed the dilapidated property, whose most striking feature was a ten- foot-high mountain of manure, overgrown with monstrous weeds, next to a barn that was leaning precipitously toward it. On the far side of the barn, sinking into a field of waist-high scrub, a haphazard line of rusting cars was