not the really weird part. The really weird part comes later, when you follow the footprints.”
Chapter 18
Hardwick led Gurney from the back of the barn around the hedges, past the patio to where the tracks of the presumed assailant left the scene of the attack and proceeded across the snow-covered lawn that extended from the back of the house to the edge of the maple forest several hundred feet away.
Not far from the patio, as they were following the footprints in the direction of the woods, they came upon another evidence tech, dressed in the hermetic plastic jumpsuit, surgical cap, and face mask of his trade-designed to protect DNA or other trace evidence from contamination by the collector.
He was squatting about ten feet from the footprints, lifting what appeared to be a shard of brown glass out of the snow with stainless-steel tongs. He’d already bagged three other pieces of similar glass and one large-enough segment of a quart whiskey bottle to be recognizable as such.
“The murder weapon, most likely,” said Hardwick. “But you, ace detective, already knew that. Even knew it was Four Roses.”
“What’s it doing out on the lawn?” asked Gurney, ignoring Hardwick’s needling tone.
“Jeez, I figured you’d know that, too. If you already knew the fucking brand…”
Gurney waited wearily, like he was waiting for a slow computer program to open, and eventually Hardwick answered, “It looks like he carried it away from the body and dropped it over here on his way to the woods. Why did he do that? That’s an excellent question. Maybe he didn’t realize he still had it in his hand. I mean, he just stabbed the victim in the neck a dozen times. That could have absorbed his attention. Then, as he’s walking away across the lawn, he notices he still has it and tosses it aside. At least that makes some kind of sense.”
Gurney nodded, not wholly convinced but unable to offer a better explanation. “Is that the ‘really weird’ element you mentioned?”
“That?” said Hardwick with a laugh that was more of a bark. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Ten minutes and half a mile later, the two men arrived at a spot in the maple forest just short of a small copse of white pines. The sound of a passing car indicated they were close to a road, but any sight of it was blocked by the low pine branches.
At first he wasn’t sure why Hardwick had brought him there. Then he saw it-and began studying the ground in the vicinity with growing bewilderment. What he saw made no sense. The footprints they had been following simply stopped. The clear progression of prints in the snow, one after another, proceeding for half a mile or more, simply came to an end. There was no sign of what had happened to the individual who’d made the prints. The snow all around was pristine, untouched by a human foot or by anything else. The trail of footprints stopped a good ten feet from the nearest tree, and, if the sound of that passing vehicle was any indication, at least a hundred yards from the nearest road.
“Am I missing something?” asked Gurney.
“Same thing we’re all missing,” said Hardwick, sounding relieved that Gurney had not come up with a simple explanation that had eluded him and his team.
Gurney examined the ground around the final print more carefully. Just beyond this well-defined impression was a small area of multiple overlapping impressions, all appearing to have been made by the same pair of hiking boots that had created the clear tracks they’d been following. It was as if the killer had walked purposefully to this spot, stood about shifting from foot to foot for a few minutes, perhaps waiting for someone or something, and then… evaporated.
The lunatic possibility that Hardwick was playing a practical joke on him flashed through his mind, but he dismissed it. Tampering with a major murder scene for a laugh would be too far over the edge even for an outrageous character like Hardwick.
So what they were looking at was the way it was.
“The tabloids find out about this, they’ll turn it into an alien abduction,” said Hardwick, as though the words tasted like metal in his mouth. “Reporters will be on this like flies on a barrel of cow shit.”
“You have a more presentable theory?”
“My hopes are riding on the razor-sharp mind of the most revered homicide detective in the history of the NYPD.”
“Cut the crap,” said Gurney. “Has the processing team come up with anything?”
“Nothing that makes sense of this. But they took snow samples from that packed-down spot where it looks like he was standing. Didn’t seem to be any visible foreign matter there, but maybe the lab techs can find something. They also checked the trees and the road behind those pines. Tomorrow they’ll grid out everything within a hundred feet of this spot and take a closer look.”
“But so far they’ve come up with zero?”
“You got it.”
“So what are you left with-asking all the institute guests and neighbors if anyone saw a helicopter lowering a rope into the woods?”
“Nobody did.”
“You asked?”
“Felt like an idiot, but yes. The fact is, someone walked out here this morning-almost certainly the killer. He stopped right here. If a helicopter or the world’s largest crane didn’t lift him out, where the fuck is he?”
“So,” Gurney began, “no helicopters, no ropes, no secret tunnels…”
“Right,” said Hardwick, cutting him off. “And no evidence that he hopped away on a pogo stick.”
“Which leaves us with what?”
“Which leaves us with nothing. Zilch, zippo. Not one goddamn real possibility. And don’t tell me that once the killer walked all the way out here, he walked all the way back-stepping backwards, perfectly, into each footprint, without messing up a single one-just to drive us crazy.” Hardwick looked challengingly at Gurney, as though he might propose this very thing. “Even if that were possible, which it isn’t, the killer would have bumped into the two people who were on the scene by that time, Caddy the wife and Patty the gangster.”
“So it’s all impossible,” said Gurney lightly.
“What’s impossible?” said Hardwick, ready for a fight.
“Everything,” said Gurney.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Calm down, Jack. We need to find a starting point that makes sense. What seems to have happened can’t have happened. Therefore, what seems to have happened
“Are you telling me those aren’t footprints?”
“I’m telling you there’s something wrong with the way we’re looking at them.”
“Is that or is that not a footprint?” said Hardwick, exasperated.
“It looks very much like a footprint to me,” said Gurney agreeably.
“So what are you saying?”
Gurney sighed. “I don’t know, Jack. I just have a feeling we’re asking the wrong questions.”
Something in the softness of his tone took the edge off Hardwick’s attitude. Neither man looked at the other or said anything for several long seconds. Then Hardwick raised his head as though remembering something.
“I almost forgot to show you the icing on the cake.” He reached into the side pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out an evidence-collection envelope.
Through the clear plastic, on a plain sheet of white stationery, Gurney could see neat handwriting in red ink.
“Don’t remove it,” said Hardwick, “just read it.”
Gurney did as he was told. Then he read it again. And a third time, committing it to memory.
