Think of a Number

“The screech owl.”

“I have no idea, because they had no idea. Middle of the night was as close as they could get.”

“Lodging facilities?”

“What?”

“Did someone check the lodging facilities in the area?”

“There’s one motel just outside the village-run-down place that caters to hunters. Empty that night. Only other places within a three-mile radius are two bed-and-breakfasts. One is closed for the winter. The other one, if I’m remembering right, had one room booked the night of the murder-some bird-watcher guy and his mother.”

“Bird-watching in November?”

“Seemed odd to me, too, so I checked some bird-watching websites. Turns out the serious ones love the winter-foliage off the trees, better visibility, lots of pheasants, owls, grouse, chickadees, blah-blah-blah.”

“You talked to the people?”

“Blatt spoke to one of the owners-pair of fags, silly names, no useful information.”

“Silly names?”

“Yeah, one of them was Peachpit, something like that.”

“Peachpit?”

“Something like that. No, Plumstone, that was it. Paul Plumstone. You believe that?”

“Anyone speak to the bird-watchers?”

“I think they’d left before Blatt stopped by, but don’t quote me on that.”

“No one followed up?”

“Jesus Christ! What the hell would they know about anything? You want to visit the Peachpits, be my guest. Name of the place is The Laurels, mile and a half down the mountain from the institute. I have a certain amount of manpower assigned to this case, and I can’t goddamn waste it chasing after every warm body that ever passed through Peony.”

“Right.”

The meaning of Gurney’s reply was vague at best, but it seemed to somehow appease Hardwick, who said in a tone that was almost cordial, “Speaking of manpower, I need to get back to work. What did you say you were doing here?”

“I thought if I walked around the grounds again, something might occur to me.”

“That’s the methodology of the NYPD’s ace crime solver? That’s pathetic!”

“I know, Jack, I know. But right now it’s the best I can do.”

Hardwick went back into the house shaking his head in exaggerated disbelief.

Gurney inhaled the moist smell of the snow, and, as always, it displaced for a moment all rational thoughts, stirring a powerful childhood emotion for which he had no words. He set out across the white lawn toward the woods, the snow smell flooding him with memories-memories of stories his father had read to him when he was five or six years old, stories that were more vivid to him than anything in his actual life-stories about pioneers, cabins in the wilderness, trails in the forest, good Indians, bad Indians, snapped twigs, moccasin impressions in the grass, the broken stem of a fern offering crucial evidence of the enemy’s passage, and the cries of the forest birds, some real, some mimicked by the Indians as coded communications-images so concrete, so richly detailed. It was ironic, he thought, how the memories of the stories his father had told him in early childhood had replaced most of his memories of the man himself. Of course, other than telling him those stories, his father had never had much to do with him. Mainly his father worked. Worked and kept to himself.

Worked and kept to himself. This life-summarizing phrase, it struck Gurney, described his own behavior as accurately as it did his father’s. The barriers he’d once erected against recognizing such similarities seemed lately to be developing large leaks. He suspected not just that he was becoming his father but that he had done so long ago. Worked and kept to himself. What a small and chilly sense of his life it conveyed. How humiliating it was to see how much of one’s time on earth could be captured in so short a sentence. What sort of husband was he if his energies were so circumscribed? And what sort of father? What sort of father is so absorbed in his professional priorities that… No, enough of that.

Gurney walked into the woods, following what he recalled to be the route of the footprints, now obscured by the new snow. When he came to the evergreen thicket where the trail had, implausibly, ended, he inhaled the piney fragrance, listened to the deep silence of the place, and waited for inspiration. None came. Chagrined at expecting otherwise, he forced himself to review for the twentieth time what he actually knew about the events of the night of the murder. That the killer had entered the property on foot from the public road? That he was carrying a.38 Police Special, a broken Four Roses bottle, a lawn chair, an extra pair of boots, and a mini tape player with the animal screeches that got Mellery out of bed? That he was wearing Tyvek coveralls, gloves, and a thick goose-down jacket he could use to muffle the gunshot? That he sat behind the barn smoking cigarettes? That he got Mellery to come out onto the patio, shot him dead, then stabbed the body at least fourteen times? That he then walked calmly across the open lawn and half a mile into the woods, hung an extra pair of boots from a tree branch, and disappeared without a trace?

Gurney’s face had worked itself into a grimace-partly because of the damp, darkening chill of the day and partly because now, more clearly than ever, he realized that what he “knew” about the crime didn’t make a damn bit of sense.

Chapter 29

Backwards

November was his least favorite month, a month of waning light, an uncertain month shambling between autumn and winter.

This sense of the season seemed to exacerbate the feeling that he was stumbling around in a fog on the Mellery case, blind to something right in front of him.

When he arrived home from Peony that day, he decided, uncharacteristically, to share his confusion with Madeleine, who was sitting at the pine table over the remains of tea and cranberry cake.

“I’d love to get your input on something,” he said, immediately regretting his word choice. Madeleine was not fond of terms like input.

She tilted her head curiously, which he took as an invitation.

“The Mellery Institute sits on a hundred acres between Filchers Brook Road and Thornbush Lane in the hills above the village. There are about ninety acres of woods, maybe ten acres of lawns, flower beds, a parking area, and three buildings-the main lecture center, which also includes the offices and guest rooms, the private Mellery residence, and a barn for maintenance equipment.”

Madeleine raised her eyes to the clock on the kitchen wall, and he hurried on. “The responding officers found a set of footprints that entered the property from Filchers Brook Road and led to a chair behind the barn. From the chair they led to the spot where Mellery was killed and from there to a location half a mile away in the woods, where they stopped. No more footprints. No hint of how the individual who left the prints up to that point could have gotten away without leaving any further prints.”

“Is this a joke?”

“I’m describing the actual evidence at the scene.”

“What about the other road you mentioned?”

“Thornbush Lane is over a hundred feet from the last footprint.”

“The bear came back,” said Madeleine after a short silence.

“What?” Gurney stared at her, uncomprehending.

“The bear.” She nodded toward the side window.

Between the window and their dormant, rime-encrusted garden beds, a steel shepherd’s-crook support for a finch feeder had been bent to the ground, and the feeder itself had been broken in half.

“I’ll take care of it later,” said Gurney, annoyed at the irrelevant comment. “Do you have any reaction to the footprint problem?”