but serious, too.” He pressed his fingertips against his temples. “He said that I was next, then you.” He seemed more exasperated than frightened.
“Were there any background sounds?”
“Any what?”
“Did you hear anything other than the caller’s voice-music, traffic, other voices?”
“No. Nothing.”
Gurney nodded, looking around the room. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
“What? No, go ahead.” Dermott gestured broadly to the room as though it were full of chairs.
Gurney sat on the edge of the bed. He had a strong feeling that Gregory Dermott held the key to the case. Now, if only he could think of the right question to ask. The right subject to raise. On the other hand, sometimes the right thing to say was nothing. Create a silence, an empty space, and see how the other guy would choose to fill it. He sat for a long while staring down at the carpet. It was an approach that took patience. It also took good judgment to know when any more empty silence would just be a waste of time. He was approaching that point when Dermott spoke.
“Why me?” The tone was edgy, annoyed-a complaint, not a question-and Gurney chose not to respond.
After a few seconds, Dermott went on, “I think it might have something to do with this house.” He paused. “Let me ask you something, Detective. Do you personally know anyone in the Wycherly police department?”
“No.” He was tempted to ask the reason for the question but assumed he’d soon enough discover it.
“No one at all, present or past?”
“No one.” Seeing something in Dermott’s eyes that seemed to demand further assurance, he added, “Before I saw the check-mailing instructions in the letter to Mark Mellery, I didn’t even know Wycherly existed.”
“And no one ever told you about anything happening in this house?”
“Happening?”
“In this house. A long time ago.”
“No,” said Gurney, intrigued.
Dermott’s discomfort seemed to exceed the effects of a headache.
“What was it that happened?”
“It’s all secondhand information,” said Dermott, “but right after I bought this place, one of the neighbors told me that twenty-some-odd years ago there was a horrible fight here-apparently a husband and wife, and the wife was stabbed.”
“And you see some connection…?”
“It may be a coincidence, but…”
“Yes?”
“I’d pretty much forgotten about it. Until today. This morning when I found-” His lips stretched in a kind of nauseous spasm.
“Take your time,” said Gurney.
Dermott placed both his hands to his temples. “Do you have a gun?”
“I own one.”
“I mean with you.”
“No. I haven’t carried a gun since I left the NYPD. If you’re worried about security, there are more than a dozen armed cops within a hundred yards of this house,” said Gurney.
He didn’t look particularly reassured.
“You were saying you remembered something.”
Dermott nodded. “I’d forgotten all about it, but it came back to me when I saw… all that blood.”
“What came back to you?”
“The woman who was stabbed in this house-she was stabbed in the throat.”
Chapter 49
Dermott’s recollection that the neighbor (now deceased) had placed the event “twenty- some-odd years ago” meant that the number could easily be less than twenty-five-and that, in turn, would mean that both John Nardo and Gary Sissek would have been on the force at the time of the attack. Although the picture was far from clear, Gurney could feel another piece of the puzzle starting to rotate into position. He had more questions for Dermott, but they could wait until he got some answers from the lieutenant.
He left Dermott sitting stiffly in his chair by the drawn blinds, looking stressed and uncomfortable. As he started down the staircase, a female officer in scene-of-crime coveralls and latex gloves in the hallway below was asking Nardo what to do next with the areas outside the house that had been examined for trace evidence.
“Keep it taped and off-limits, in case we have to go over it again. Transport the chair, bottle, anything else you’ve got to the station. Set up the back end of the file room as a dedicated area.”
“What about all the junk on the table?”
“Shove it in Colbert’s office for now.”
“He’s not going to like it.”
“I don’t give a flying-Look, just take care of it!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Before you leave, tell Big Tommy to stay in front of the house, tell Pat to stay by the phone. I want everyone else out knocking on doors. I want to know if anyone in the neighborhood saw or heard anything out of the ordinary the past couple of days, especially late last night or early this morning-strangers, cars parked where they aren’t normally parked, anyone hanging around, anyone in a hurry, anything at all.”
“How large a radius you want them to cover?”
Nardo looked at his watch. “Whatever they can cover in the next six hours. Then we’ll decide where to go from there. Anything of interest turns up, I want to be informed immediately.”
As she went off on her mission, Nardo turned to Gurney, who was standing at the foot of the stairs. “Find out anything useful?”
“I’m not sure,” said Gurney in a low voice, motioning Nardo to follow him back into the room they’d been sitting in earlier. “Maybe you can help me figure it out.”
Gurney sat in the chair facing the doorway. Nardo stood behind the chair on the opposite side of the square table. His expression was a combination of curiosity and something Gurney couldn’t decipher.
“Are you aware that someone was once stabbed in this house?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Shortly after Dermott bought the place, he was told by a neighbor that a woman who’d lived here years ago had been attacked by her husband.”
“How many years ago?”
Gurney was sure he saw a flicker of recognition in Nardo’s eyes.
“Maybe twenty, maybe twenty-five. Somewhere in there.”
It seemed to be the answer Nardo expected. He sighed and shook his head. “I hadn’t thought about that for a long time. Yeah, there was a domestic assault-about twenty-four years ago. Not too long after I joined the force. What about it?”
“Do you remember any of the details?”
“Before we go down memory lane, you mind addressing the relevance issue?”
“The woman who was attacked was stabbed in the throat.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?” There was a twitch at the corner of Nardo’s mouth.
“Two people have been attacked in this house. Of all the ways that someone could be attacked, it strikes me as a notable coincidence that both of those people were stabbed in the throat.”
“You’re making these things sound the same by the way you say it, but they got zip in common. What the hell does a police officer murdered on a protection assignment today have to do with a domestic disturbance twenty-
