came forward in his seat. “‘It sounded like someone got popped,’ he said. He said it very matter-of-factly, like it was a sound he was familiar with.”
Kline’s eyes were glittering again. “Are you telling me there was a mob guy present at the time of the murder?”
“Present on the property, not at the scene,” said Hardwick.
“How do you know that?”
“Because he woke Mellery’s assistant instructor, Justin Bale, a young man who has a room in the same building with the guest rooms. Cachese told him he’d heard a noise from the direction of Mellery’s house, thought it might be an intruder, suggested they take a look. By the time they got some clothes on and got across the gardens to the back of the Mellery house, Caddy Mellery had already discovered her husband’s body and gone back inside to call 911.”
“Cachese didn’t tell this Bale person that he’d heard a shot?” Kline was starting to sound like he was in a courtroom.
“No. He told us when we interviewed him the next day. By that time, though, we’d found the bloody bottle and all the obvious stab wounds but no noticeable bullet wounds and no other weapon, so we didn’t pursue the gunshot thing right away. We figured Patty was the kind of guy who might have guns on his mind-that it might be a conclusion he’d jump to.”
“Why didn’t he tell Bale he thought it was a shot?”
“He said he didn’t want to scare him.”
“Very considerate,” said Kline with a sneer. He glanced at the stoic Stimmel seated next to him. Stimmel mirrored the sneer. “If he’d-”
“But he told
Hardwick stifled a yawn.
“What the hell was a mob guy doing at a place that sells ‘spiritual renewal’?” asked Kline.
Hardwick shrugged. “Says he loves the place. Comes once a year to calm his nerves. Says it’s a little piece of heaven. Says Mellery was a saint.”
“He actually said that?”
“He actually said that.”
“This case is amazing! Any other interesting guests on the grounds?”
That ironic glint Gurney found so inexplicably distasteful came into Hardwick’s eyes. “If you mean arrogant, infantile, drug-addled nutcases, yeah, there are a fair number of ‘interesting guests’-plus the richer-than-God widow.”
As he pondered, perhaps, the media ramifications of so sensational a crime scene, Kline’s gaze settled on Gurney, who happened to be sitting diagonally across the table from him. At first his expression remained as disconnected as if he were regarding an empty chair. Then he cocked his head curiously.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Dave Gurney, NYPD. Rod told me who’d be attending this meeting, but the name just registered. Aren’t you the guy
Hardwick answered first. “That’s our boy. Headline was ‘Super Detective.’”
“I remember now,” exclaimed Kline. “You solved those big serial-killer cases-the Christmas lunatic with the body parts, and Porky Pig or whatever the hell his name was.”
“Peter Possum Piggert,” said Gurney mildly.
Kline stared at him with open awe. “So this Mellery guy who got murdered just happens to be the best friend of the NYPD’s serial-murder star?” The media ramifications were obviously getting richer by the minute.
“I was involved to some extent in both cases,” Gurney said in a voice as devoid of hype as Kline’s was full of it. “So were a lot of other people. As for Mellery being my best friend, that would be sad if it were true, considering we hadn’t spoken to each other in twenty-five years, and even back then-”
“But,” Kline interrupted, “when he found himself in trouble, you were the man he turned to.”
Gurney took in the faces at the table, displaying various shades of respect and envy, and marveled at the seductive power of an oversimplified narrative. BLOODY MURDER OF TOP COP’S BUDDY instantly appealed to that part of the brain that loves cartoons and hates complexity.
“I suspect he came to me because I was the only cop he knew.”
Kline looked like he was not ready to let the point go, might revisit it later, but for now was willing to move on. “Whatever your exact relationship was, your contact with the victim gives you a window on the affair no one else has.”
“That’s why I wanted him here today,” said Rodriguez in his I’m-in-charge-here style.
A short hack of a laugh came out of Hardwick’s throat, followed by a whisper that just reached Gurney’s ear: “He hated the idea until Kline liked it.”
Rodriguez went on, “I have him scheduled to give us his statement next and answer whatever questions it raises-which could be quite a few. To avoid interruptions, let’s take five minutes now for a restroom break.”
“Piss on you, Gurney,” said the disembodied whisper, lost amid the sounds of chairs being pushed back from the table.
Chapter 25
Gurney had a theory that men behaved in bathrooms as if they were either locker rooms or elevators-which is to say, with either rowdy familiarity or uneasy aloofness. This was an elevator crowd. It was not until they all returned to the conference room that anyone spoke.
“So how did such a modest guy get to be so famous?” asked Kline, grinning with a practiced charm that both concealed and revealed the ice behind it.
“I’m not that modest, and I’m sure as hell not that famous,” said Gurney.
“If everyone will have a seat,” said Rodriguez brusquely, “you’ll each find in front of you a set of the messages received by the victim. As our witness presents his account of his communications with the victim, you can refer to the messages they were discussing.” With a curt nod toward Gurney, he concluded, “Whenever you’re ready.”
Gurney was no longer surprised at the man’s officiousness, but it still rankled. He glanced around the table, achieving eye contact with all but his guide at the murder site, who was flipping noisily through his packet of papers, and Stimmel, the DA’s chief assistant, who sat gazing into space like a contemplative toad.
“As the captain indicated, there’s a lot to cover. It might be best to let me give you a summary of the events in the order in which they occurred, and to hold your questions until you have the whole story.” He saw Rodriguez’s head rising to object, then subsiding the instant Kline nodded approvingly at the proposed procedure.
In his clear, concise way (he’d been told more than once that he could have been a professor of logic) Gurney gave a twenty-minute summary of the affair-beginning with Mellery’s e-mail asking to see him, proceeding through the series of disconcerting communications and Mellery’s reactions, concluding with the phone call from the killer and the note in the mailbox (the one mentioning the number nineteen).
Kline was a rapt listener throughout and the first to speak when it ended. “It’s an epic revenge story! The killer was obsessed with getting even with Mellery for something horrible he did years ago when he was drunk.”
“Why wait so long?” asked Sergeant Wigg, whom Gurney was finding more interesting each time she spoke.
Kline’s eyes were bright with possibilities. “Maybe Mellery revealed something in one of his books. Maybe that’s how the killer discovered he was responsible for some tragic event he hadn’t connected with him before. Or maybe Mellery’s success was the last straw, the thing the killer couldn’t stand. Or maybe, like the first note said, the killer just happened to see him on the street one day. A smoldering resentment comes back to life. The enemy steps into the crosshairs and… bang!”
“Bang, my ass,” said Hardwick.
“You have a different opinion, Senior Investigator Hardwick?” inquired Kline with an edgy smile.
