“Full disclosure? I’ll give you full fucking disclosure. Dickbrain Rodriguez took me off the Perry case because I told him that chasing down every fucking Mexican illegal in upstate New York was the biggest fucking waste of time I’d ever been assigned to. First of all, no one was going to admit working there illegally, evading taxes. And they sure as hell weren’t going to admit having any contact with someone wanted for murder. Two months later, on my day off, I get called into an emergency manhunt situation for a couple of idiots who shot a gas-station attendant on the thruway, and somebody at the scene tells Captain Marvel that I smelled of alcohol, so I get jammed up. The little fuck had been dreaming of ways to get me on the wrong foot. Now he’s got his opportunity. So what does he do? Little fuck sticks me in a fucking dump rehab full of crackhead scumbags. Twenty-eight miserable fucking days. With scumbags, Davey! Fucking nightmare! Scumbags! All I could think about for twenty-eight days was killing little Dickbrain Captain Fuckface, tearing his fucking head off! That enough full disclosure for you?”
“Plenty, Jack. Problem is, the investigation went off the rails, and it needs to start over from scratch. And it needs to have people assigned to it who are more interested in solving it than they are in messing each other up.”
“Is that a fucking fact? Well, good fucking luck, Mr. Voice of Fucking Reason.”
The connection was broken.
Gurney put the phone down on top of the case folder. He became aware of the clicking of Madeleine’s knitting needles and looked over at her.
She smiled without looking up. “Problems?”
He laughed humorlessly. “Only that the investigation needs to be completely reorganized and redirected, and I have no power to make that happen.”
“Think about it. You’ll find a way.”
He thought about it. “You mean through Kline?”
She shrugged. “You told me during the Mellery case that he had big ambitions.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he imagined himself president one day. Or at least governor.”
“Well, there you go.”
“There I go where?”
She concentrated for a minute on an alteration in her stitching technique. Then she looked up, seemingly bemused by his failure to grasp the obvious. “Help him see how this connects to his big ambitions.”
The more he pondered it, the more perceptive her comment seemed. As a political animal, Kline was super- sensitive to the media dimension of any investigation. It was the surest route to the center of his being.
Gurney picked up his phone and called the DA’s number. The recorded message offered three options: call again between 8:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. Monday through Friday, or leave a name and phone number to receive a return call during business hours, or call the emergency twenty-four-hour number for matters requiring immediate assistance.
Gurney entered the emergency number in his phone list, but before making the call he decided to devote a little more time to structuring what he was going to say-first to the screener, then to Kline if the call was passed through-because he realized it was crucial to lob exactly the right grenade over the wall.
The needles stopped clicking.
“Do you hear that?” Madeleine leaned her head slightly in the direction of the nearest window.
“What?”
“Listen.”
“What am I listening for?”
“Shhh…”
Just as he was about to insist that he could hear nothing, he heard it: the faint yipping of distant coyotes. Then, again, nothing. Only the lingering image in his mind of animals like small, lean wolves, running in a loosely spaced pack, running wild and heartless as the wind through a moonlit field beyond the north ridge.
The phone, still in his hand, rang. He checked the ID: REYNOLDS GALLERY. He glanced at Madeleine. Nothing in her expression suggested a clairvoyant insight into the identity of the caller.
“This is Dave.”
“I want to go to bed. Let’s talk.”
After an awkward silence, Gurney replied, “You first.”
She uttered a soft, intimate laugh-really more purring than laughing. “I mean I want to go to bed early, go to sleep, and in case you were going to call later to talk about tomorrow, it would be better to talk now.”
“Good idea.”
Again the velvety laugh. “So what I’m thinking is very simple. I can’t tell you what to say to Jykynstyl, because I don’t know what he’ll ask you. So you must be yourself. The wise homicide detective. The quiet man who has seen everything. The man on the side of the angels who wrestles with the devil and always wins.”
“Not always.”
“Well, you’re human, right? Being human is important. This makes you real, not some fake hero, you see? So all you need to do is be yourself. You are a more impressive man than you think, David Gurney.”
He hesitated. “Is that it?”
This time the laugh was more musical, more amused. “That’s it for you. Now for me. Did you ever read our contract, the one you signed for the show last year?”
“I suppose I did at the time. Not recently.”
“It says that the Reynolds Gallery is entitled to a forty percent commission on displayed works, thirty percent on cataloged works, and twenty percent on all future works created for customers introduced to the artist through the gallery. Does this sound familiar?”
“Vaguely.”
“Vaguely. Okay. But is it all right, or do you have any problem with it now, going forward?”
“It’s fine.”
“Good. Because we’ll have a very good time working together. I can feel it, can’t you?”
Madeleine, inscrutable, seemed fixated on the ornamental border of her slowly growing scarf. Stitch after stitch after stitch. Click. Click. Click.
Chapter 41
It was a glorious morning, a calendar picture of autumn. The sky was a thrilling blue without a hint of a cloud. Madeleine was already out on one of her bike rides through the winding river valley that extended for nearly twenty miles to both the east and west sides of Walnut Crossing.
“A perfect day,” she’d said before she left, managing to suggest by her tone that his decision to spend a day like this in the city talking about big money for ugly art made him as crazy as Jykynstyl. Or maybe he’d reached that conclusion himself and was blaming it on her.
He was sitting at the breakfast table by the French doors, gazing out over the pasture at the barn, a startling crimson in the limpid morning light. He took the first energizing sip of his coffee, then picked up his phone and called Sheridan Kline’s twenty-four-hour number.
It was answered by a dour, colorless voice-which brought to Gurney’s mind a vivid recollection of the man who owned it.
“Stimmel. District Attorney’s Office.”
“This is Dave Gurney.” He paused, knowing that Stimmel would remember him from the Mellery case and being not at all surprised when the man didn’t acknowledge it. Stimmel had the warmth and loquacity, as well as the thick physiognomy, of a frog.
“Yes?”
“I need to talk to Kline ASAP.”
“That so?”
“Matter of life or death.”
