He looked in the glove box but found nothing unusual. The car manual, a few old service receipts, a small flashlight, the plastic cap from a water bottle.
He patted his jacket pockets and found his cell phone. There were seven voice-mail messages and one text message waiting for him. Apparently he’d been in demand during the missing hours. Maybe among the messages would be the explanation he was looking for.
The first voice mail, received at 3:44 P.M., was from Sonya.
Voice mail number two, at 4:01, was from the DA.
Skard? A peculiar name, and there was something familiar about it, a feeling that he had come upon it before, perhaps seen it in print somewhere, not all that long ago.
Number three, at 4:32, was from Kyle.
Number four, at 5:05, was Sonya again.
Number five, the shortest, at 5:07, was from Hardwick.
Number six, at 5:50, was from Kline’s favorite forensic psychologist.
The seventh and final voice mail, received at 8:35, was from Sonya.
He checked his watch again: 8:58 P.M.
He listened again to the last message, and then again, searching for a serious meaning in Sonya’s question. There didn’t seem to be any, beyond the exasperation of someone whose calls weren’t being returned. He started to call her back, then remembered he also had a text message and decided to check that first.
It was short, anonymous, ambiguous: SUCH PASSIONS! SUCH SECRETS! SUCH WONDERFUL PHOTOGRAPHS!
He sat and stared at it. On second thought, although it left much to the imagination, it wasn’t ambiguous at all. In fact, what it left to the imagination was far too clear.
He could feel the imagined contents of those photos exploding in his life like a roadside bomb.
Chapter 44
Keeping his balance, staying focused, and subjecting the facts to a dispassionate analysis had been the pillars of Gurney’s success as a homicide cop.
At the moment he was having a hell of a time doing any of those things. His mind was churning with unknowns, with terrible possibilities.
Who the hell was this Jykynstyl character? Or was the proper question, who the hell was this character posing as Jykynstyl? What was the nature of the threat, the purpose of the threat? It was fairly certain that the scenario, whatever it was, was criminal. The hope that he’d gotten harmlessly drunk or that the text message had a harmless meaning seemed delusional. He needed to face the fact that he’d been drugged and that the worst-case scenario- involving a massive dose of Rohypnol in that first glass of white wine-was the most likely scenario.
Rohypnol plus alcohol. The disinhibiting amnesiac cocktail. The date-rape cocktail that dissolves clear judgment, fears, and second thoughts. That strips the mind of moral and practical inhibitions, that blocks the intervention of reason and conscience, that has the power to reduce you to the sum of your primal appetites. The drug combo with the potential to convert one’s impulses, however foolish, into actions, however damaging. The nasty elixir that prioritizes the wants of the primitive lizard brain, regardless of the expense to the whole person, then cloaks the experience-which might last anywhere from six to twelve hours-in an impenetrable amnesia. It was as though it had been invented to facilitate disasters. The kinds of disasters Gurney was imagining as he sat in his car, helpless and scattered, trying to get his head around facts that refused to cohere.
Madeleine had made him a believer in small, simple actions, in putting one foot in front of the other, but when nothing made sense and every direction held a shadowy threat, it wasn’t easy to decide where to put that first foot.
However, it did occur to him that remaining parked on that dark block was accomplishing nothing. If he drove away, even if he hadn’t decided where he was going, he might at least be able to tell if he was being watched or followed. Before he could get tangled up in reasons not to, he started the car, waited for the light at the end of the street to turn green, waited for three taxis in a row to race by, switched on his headlights, pulled out quickly, and made it through the Madison Avenue intersection just before the light turned red behind him. He drove on, turning randomly at a series of intersections until he was positive no one was tailing him, working his way down the east side of Manhattan from the Eighties to the Sixties.
Without having made a conscious decision to do so, Gurney arrived at the block where Jykynstyl’s residence was located. He drove through the block once, came around, and entered it again. There were no lights showing in the windows of the big brownstone. He parked in the same illegal space he’d occupied nine hours earlier.
He was jittery and unsure what he was going to do next, but taking even the action he had so far was calming him. He remembered he had a phone number for Jykynstyl in his wallet-a number Sonya had given him in case he got delayed in traffic. He called the number now without bothering to plan what he’d say. Maybe something like,
He had an urge to bang on the door until someone answered it. Then he remembered something Jykynstyl had said about always being in motion, never staying anywhere very long, and he was suddenly convinced that the brownstone was empty, the man was gone, and banging on the door would be utterly pointless.
He should call Madeleine, let her know how late he’d be. But how late was that going to be? Should he tell her about the amnesia? Waking up across the street from St. Genesius? The photo threat? Or would all that just worry her sick for no reason?
Maybe he should call Sonya first, see if she could throw any light on what was going on. How much did she really know about Jay Jykynstyl? Was there any reality at all to the hundred-thousand-dollar offer? Was all that just a ruse to get him to come to the city for a private lunch? So he could be drugged and… and what?
Maybe he ought to get to an ER and have them run a tox screen-find out before they were metabolized away exactly what chemicals he’d ingested, replace his suspicions with evidence. On the other hand, the record of a tox screen could create questions and complications. He found himself in the catch-22 of wanting to find out what had happened before taking any official steps to find out what had happened.
As he felt himself slipping into a pit of indecision, a large white van came to a stop less than thirty feet away, directly in front of the brownstone. The wash of headlights from a passing car made the green lettering on the side of the van legible: WHITE STAR COMMERCIAL CLEANING.
Gurney heard a sliding door open on the far side of the van, followed by a few comments in Spanish, then the
