Kline finished his coffee and headed for a refill, speaking to the room in general as he went. “If we take this revenge angle seriously, what investigatory actions would that require? Dave?”
What Gurney believed it would require-to start with-was a much more detailed disclosure of Jillian’s past problems and childhood contacts than her mother or Simon Kale had so far been willing to provide, and he needed to figure out how to make that happen. “I can give you a written recommendation on that within the next couple of days.”
Kline seemed satisfied with that and moved on. “So what else? Senior Investigator Hardwick gave you credit for what he called a ‘shitload’ of discoveries.”
“We may be a couple short of a shitload, but there’s one thing I’d put at the top of the list. A number of girls from Mapleshade seem to be missing.”
The three BCI detectives came to attention, more or less in unison, like men awakened by a loud noise.
Gurney continued. “Both Scott Ashton and another person connected with the school have tried to contact certain recent graduates and haven’t been able to.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean-” began Lieutenant Anderson.
But Gurney cut him off. “By itself it wouldn’t mean much, but there’s an odd similarity among the individual instances. All the girls in question started the same argument with their parents-demanding an expensive new car, then using their parents’ refusal as a pretext for leaving home.”
“How many girls are we talking about?” asked Blatt.
“A former student who was trying to reach some of her fellow graduates told me about two instances in which the parents had no idea where their daughter was. Then Scott Ashton told me about three more girls he was trying to reach, who he discovered had left home after an argument with their parents-the same kind of car argument in all three instances.”
Kline shook his head. “I don’t get it. What’s it all about? And what’s it got to do with finding Jillian Perry’s killer?”
“The missing girls had at least one thing in common, besides the argument they started with their parents. They all knew Flores.”
Anderson was looking more dyspeptic by the minute. “How?”
“Flores volunteered to do some work for Ashton at Mapleshade. Good-looking man, apparently. Attracted the attention of some Mapleshade girls. Turns out that the ones who showed interest, the ones who were seen speaking to him, are the ones who’ve gone missing.”
“Have they been put on the NCIC missing-persons list?” asked Anderson, in the hopeful tone of a man trying to shift a problem onto another lap.
“None of them,” said Gurney. “Problem is, they’re all over eighteen, free to come and go as they wish. Each one announced her plan to leave home, her intention to keep her whereabouts a secret, her desire to be left alone. All of which is contrary to the entry criteria for mis-pers databases.”
Kline was pacing back and forth. “This gives the case a new slant. What do you think, Rod?”
The captain looked grim. “I’d like to know what the hell Gurney is really telling us.”
Kline answered. “I think he’s telling us that there might be more to the Jillian Perry case than Jillian Perry.”
“And that Hector Flores might be more than a Mexican gardener,” added Hardwick, staring pointedly at Rodriguez. “A possibility I recall mentioning some time ago.”
This had the effect of raising Kline’s eyebrows. “When?”
“When I was still assigned to the case. The original Flores narrative felt wrong to me.”
If Rodriguez’s jaws were clenched any tighter, Gurney mused, his teeth would start disintegrating.
“Wrong how?” asked Kline.
“Wrong in the sense that it was all too fucking right.”
Gurney knew that Rodriguez would be feeling Hardwick’s delight like an ice pick in the ribs-never mind the touchy issue of airing an internal disagreement in front of the district attorney.
“Meaning?” asked Kline.
“I mean too fucking smooth. The illiterate laborer, too rapidly educated by the arrogant doctor, too much advancement too soon, affair with the rich neighbor’s wife, maybe an affair with Jillian Perry, feelings he couldn’t handle, cracking under the strain. It plays like a soap opera, like complete fucking bullshit.” He delivered this judgment with such a steady focus on Rodriguez that there could be no doubt about the source of the scenario he was attacking.
From what Gurney knew of Kline from the Mellery case, he was sure the man was loving the confrontation while he was hiding the feeling under a thoughtful frown.
“What was your own theory of the Flores business?” prompted Kline.
Hardwick settled back in his chair like a wind dying down. “It’s easier to say what isn’t logical here than what is. When you combine all the known facts, it’s hard to make any sense at all out of Flores’s behavior.”
Kline turned to Gurney. “That the way you see it, too?”
Gurney took a deep breath. “Some facts seem contradictory. But facts don’t contradict each other-which means there’s a big piece of the puzzle missing, the piece that’ll eventually make the others make sense. I don’t expect it to be a simple narrative. As Jack once said, there are definitely hidden layers in this case.” He was concerned for a moment that this comment might reveal Hardwick’s role in Val’s decision to hire him, but no one seemed to pick it up. Blatt looked like a rat trying to identify something by sniffing it, but Blatt always looked like that.
Kline sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “Which facts are bothering you, Dave?”
“To start with, the rapid Flores transition from leaf raker to household manager.”
“You think Ashton is lying about that?”
“Lying to himself, maybe. He explains it as a kind of wishful thinking, something that supported the concept of a book he was writing.”
“Becca, that make sense to you?”
She smiled noncommittally, more of a facial shrug than a real smile. “Never underestimate the power of self- deception, especially in a man trying to prove a point.”
Kline nodded sagely, turned back to Gurney. “So your basic idea is that Flores was working a con?”
“That he was playing a role for some reason, yes.”
“What else bothers you?”
“Motivation. If Flores came to Tambury for the purpose of killing Jillian, why did he wait so long to do it? But if he came for another purpose, what was it?”
“Interesting questions. Keep going.”
“The beheading itself seems to have been methodical and well planned, but also spontaneous and opportunistic.”
“I don’t follow that.”
“The arrangement-of the body-was precise. The cottage had very recently, perhaps that same morning, been scoured to eliminate any traces of the man who’d lived there. The escape route had been planned, and some way had been devised to create the scent-trail problem for the K-9 team. However it was that Flores managed to disappear, it had been carefully thought through. It has the feeling of a
Kline cocked his head curiously. “How so?”
“The video indicates that Jillian made her visit to the cottage on a kind of whim. A little bit before the scheduled wedding toast, she told Ashton she wanted to persuade Hector to join them. As I recall, Ashton told the Luntz couple-the police chief and his wife-about Jillian’s intentions. No one else seemed to be crazy about the idea, but I got the impression that Jillian pretty much did whatever she felt like doing. So on the one hand we have a meticulously premeditated murder that depended on perfect timing, and on the other hand, we have a set of circumstances completely beyond the murderer’s control. There’s something wrong with that picture.”
“Not necessarily,” said Blatt, his rat nose twitching. “Flores could have set up everything ahead of time, had everything ready, then waited for his opportunity like a snake in a hole. Waited for the victim to come by, and… bam!”
Gurney looked doubtful. “Problem is, Arlo, that would require Flores to get the cottage perfectly clean, almost
