“Of course I do. She’s my mother. Of course I know my mother’s name.”
“So what is it?”
“It doesn’t matter to you. You don’t care.”
“Still, I’d like to know what it is.”
“I don’t want her name in your filthy brain.”
“If I’m going to pretend to be her husband, I have to know her name.”
“You have to know what I want you to know.”
“I can’t do this if I don’t know who that woman is. I don’t care what you say-it makes absolutely no goddamn sense for me not to know my own wife’s name.”
It wasn’t clear to Gurney where Nardo was going with this.
Had he finally realized that he was being directed to reenact the drunken assault by Jimmy Spinks on Felicity Spinks that had occurred twenty-four years ago in this same house? Had it dawned on him that this Gregory Dermott who a year earlier had purchased this house might very well be Jimmy and Felicity’s child-the eight-year- old Spinks boy whom social services had taken into their care in the aftermath of that family disaster? Had it occurred to him that the old woman in the bed with the scar on her throat was almost certainly Felicity Spinks- reclaimed by her grown son from whatever long-term nursing facility the trauma had consigned her to?
Was Nardo hoping to change the homicidal dynamic of the little “play” in progress by revealing what it was all about? Was he trying to create a psychological distraction, in the hope of finding some way out? Or was he just fumbling around in the dark-trying to delay as long as he could, however he could, whatever Dermott had in mind?
Of course, there was another possibility. What Nardo was doing, and how Dermott was reacting to it, might not make any rational sense at all. It could be the sort of ridiculously trivial sidetrack issue over which small boys beat each other with plastic shovels in sandboxes and angry men beat each other to death in bar fights. With a sinking heart, Gurney suspected that this last guess was as good as any.
“Whether you think it makes sense is of no importance,” said Dermott, again adjusting by a quarter inch the angle of the goose, his gaze fixed on Nardo’s throat. “Nothing you think is of any importance. It’s time for you to take your clothes off.”
“First tell me her name.”
“It’s time for you to take your clothes off and smash the bottle and jump up on the bed like a naked ape. Like a stupid, drooling, hideous monster.”
“What’s her name?”
“It’s time.”
Gurney saw a slight movement in the muscle in Dermott’s forearm-meaning that his finger was tightening on the trigger.
“Just tell me her name.”
Any doubt Gurney had about what was happening was now gone. Nardo had drawn his line in the sand, and all his manhood-indeed his life-was invested in making his adversary answer his question. Dermott, likewise, was invested 100 percent in maintaining control. Gurney wondered whether Nardo had any idea how important this matter of control was to the man he was trying to face down. According to Rebecca Holdenfield-in fact, according to everyone who knew anything about serial killers-control was the goal worth any price, any risk. Absolute control-with the feeling of omniscience and omnipotence it engendered-was the ultimate euphoria. To threaten that goal head-on without a gun in your hand was suicidal.
It seemed that blindness to that fact had put Nardo once again an inch from death, and this time Gurney couldn’t save him by shouting him into submission. That tactic wouldn’t work a second time.
Murder was moving now like a racing storm cloud into Dermott’s eyes. Gurney had never felt so helpless. He couldn’t think of any way to stop that finger on the trigger.
It was then he heard the voice, clean and cool as pure silver. It was, without a doubt, Madeleine’s voice, saying something she’d said to him years ago on an occasion when he felt stymied by a seemingly hopeless case.
“There’s only one way out of a dead end.”
Of course, he thought. How absurdly obvious.
Stopping a man who has an overwhelming need to be in total control-who has an overwhelming need to kill to achieve that control-required that you do exactly the opposite of what all your instincts told you. And with Madeleine’s sentence clear as spring-water in his mind, he saw what he needed to do. It was outrageous, patently irresponsible, and legally indefensible if it didn’t work. But he knew it would.
“Now! Now, Gregory!” he hissed. “Shoot him!”
There was a shared moment of incomprehension as both men seemed to struggle to absorb what they had just heard, as they might struggle to understand a thunderclap on a cloudless day. Dermott’s deadly focus on Nardo wavered, and the direction of the gun-in-the-goose moved a little toward Gurney in the chair against the wall.
Dermott’s mouth stretched sideways in his morbid imitation of a grin. “I beg your pardon?” In the affected nonchalance, Gurney sensed a tremor of unease.
“You heard me, Gregory,” he said. “I told you to shoot him.”
“You…
Gurney sighed with elaborate impatience. “You’re wasting my time.”
“Wasting…? What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The gun-in-the-goose moved farther in Gurney’s direction. The nonchalance was gone.
Nardo’s eyes were widening. It was hard for Gurney to gauge the mix of emotions behind the amazement. As though it were Nardo who’d demanded to know what was going on, Gurney turned toward him and said, as offhandedly as he could manage, “Gregory likes to kill people who remind him of his father.” There was a stifled sound from Dermott’s throat, like the beginning of a word or cry that got stuck there. Gurney remained determinedly focused on Nardo and went on in the same bland tone. “Problem is, he needs a little nudge from time to time. Gets bogged down in the process. And, unfortunately, he makes mistakes. He’s not as smart as he thinks. Oh, my goodness!” He paused and smiled speculatively at Dermott, whose jaw muscles were now visible. “That has possibilities, doesn’t it?
Dermott stared at him with hatred, confusion, and something else. What Gurney hoped it was was a swirl of questions that a control freak would be compelled to pursue before killing the only man capable of answering them. Dermott’s next word, with its strained intonation, gave him hope.
“Mistakes?”
Gurney nodded ruefully. “Quite a few, I’m afraid.”
“You’re a liar, Detective. I don’t make mistakes.”
“No? What do you call them, then, if you don’t call them mistakes? Little Dickie Duck’s fuckups?”
Even as he said it, he wondered whether he had now taken that fatal step. If so, depending on where the bullet struck him, he might never know. In any event, there was no safe retreat route left. A wave of the tiniest vibrations unsettled the corners of Dermott’s mouth. Reclining incongruously on that bed, he seemed to be gazing at Gurney from a perch in hell.
Gurney actually knew of only one mistake Dermott had made-a mistake involving the Kartch check, which had finally gotten through to him only a quarter of an hour earlier when he’d looked at the framed copy of that check on the lamp table. But suppose he were to claim that he’d recognized the mistake and its significance from the beginning. What effect would that have on the man who was so desperate to believe he was in complete control?
Again Madeleine’s maxim came to mind, but in reverse.
“One of his silliest fuckups was when he gave me the names of the men who’d sent checks to him. One of the names was Richard Kartch. The thing is, Kartch sent the check in a plain envelope with no cover note. The only identification was the name printed on the check itself. The name on the check was R. Kartch, and that’s also the way it was signed. The
