Think of a Number

additional relevant information came to light. Any questions?”

Gurney spent the next forty-five minutes following these directions, with Nardo mostly out of the room, filling four lined pages with small, precise handwriting. There was a copying machine on the table against the far wall of the room, and Gurney used it to make two copies of the signed and dated statement for himself before submitting the original to Nardo.

All the man said was, “We’ll be in touch.” His voice was professionally neutral. He didn’t offer a handshake.

Chapter 53

Ending, beginning

By the time Gurney had crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge and begun the long Route 17 leg of his journey, the snow was falling more heavily, effectively shrinking the visible world. Every few minutes he’d open his side window for a blast of cold air to keep his mind in the moment.

A few miles from Goshen, he nearly drove off the road. It was his tires vibrating loudly against the ribbed surface of the shoulder that kept him from heading over an embankment.

He tried to think of nothing but the car, the steering wheel, and the road, but it was impossible. He began instead to imagine the potential media coverage to come, beginning with a press conference at which Sheridan Kline would surely congratulate himself for the role of his investigatory staff in making America safer by ending the bloody career of a devilish criminal. The media, in general, got on Gurney’s nerves. Their moronic coverage of crime was a crime in itself. They made a game of it. Of course, in his own way, so did he. He generally viewed a homicide as a puzzle to be solved, a murderer as an opponent to be outmaneuvered. He studied the facts, figured the angles, tripped the snare, and delivered his quarry into the maw of the justice machine. Then on to the next death from unnatural causes that demanded a clever mind to sort out. But sometimes he saw things in quite a different way- when he was overcome by the weariness of the chase, when darkness made all the puzzle pieces look alike or not like puzzle pieces at all, when his harried brain wandered from its geometric grid and followed more primitive paths, giving him glimpses of the true horror of the subject matter in which he’d chosen to immerse himself.

On the one hand, there was the logic of the law, the science of criminology, the processes of adjudication. On the other, there was Jason Strunk, Peter Possum Piggert, Gregory Dermott, pain, murderous rage, death. And between these two worlds there was the sharp, unsettling question-what had one to do with the other?

He opened the side window again and let the hard-blown snow sting the side of his face.

Profound and pointless questions, inner dialogues leading nowhere, were as familiar in his inner landscape as estimating the chances of a Red Sox win might be in another man’s. It was a bad habit, this sort of thinking, and it brought him nothing good. On the occasions when he’d insist on exposing it to Madeleine, it would be met with boredom or impatience.

“What’s really on your mind?” she’d sometimes ask, putting down her knitting and looking him in the eye.

“What do you mean?” he’d ask in reply, dishonestly, knowing exactly what she meant.

“You can’t possibly care about that nonsense. Figure out what’s actually bothering you.”

Figure out what’s actually bothering you.

Easier said than done.

What was bothering him? The vast inadequacies of reason in the face of feral passions? The fact that the justice system is a cage that can no more keep the devil contained than a weather vane can stop the wind? All he knew was that something was there, in the back of his mind, chewing at his other thoughts and feelings like a rat.

When he tried to identify the most corrosive problem amid the day’s chaos, he found himself lost in a sea of unmoored images.

When he tried to clear his mind-to relax and think of nothing-two images would not disappear.

One was the cruel delight in Dermott’s eyes when he recited his hideous rhyme about Danny’s death. The other was the echo of the accusatory fury with which he himself had slandered his own father in the fictional account of the attack on his mother. That was no mere acting. Rising up from somewhere beneath it, saturating it, was a terrible anger. Did its authenticity mean he actually hated his father? Was the rage that exploded in the telling of that ugly tale the suppressed rage of abandonment-the fierce resentment of a child toward a father who did nothing but work and sleep and drink, a father who was forever receding into the distance, forever unreachable? Gurney was startled at how much, and how little, he had in common with Dermott.

Or was it the reverse-a smoke screen covering the guilt he felt for abandoning that chilly, insular man in his old age, for having as little to do with him as possible?

Or was it a displaced self-hatred arising out of his own double failure as a father-his fatal lack of attention toward one son and his active avoidance of the other?

Madeleine would probably say that the answer could be any of the above, all of the above, or none of the above; but whatever it was wasn’t important. What was important was to do what one believed in one’s heart to be the right thing to do, right here and now. And lest he find that concept daunting, she might suggest that he begin by returning Kyle’s phone call. Not that she was particularly fond of Kyle-in fact, she didn’t seem to like him at all, found his Porsche silly, his wife pretentious-but for Madeleine personal chemistry was always secondary to doing the right thing. Gurney marveled at how a person so spontaneous could also lead such a principled life. It was what made her who she was. It was what made her a beacon in the murkiness of his own existence.

The right thing, right now.

Inspired, he pulled over at the broad, scruffy entrance area of an old farm and took out his wallet to get Kyle’s number. (He’d never bothered to enter Kyle’s name in his phone’s voice-recognition system, an omission that gave his conscience a twinge.) Calling him at 3:00 A.M.-midnight in Seattle-seemed a little crazy, but the alternative was worse: He would put it off, and put it off again, and then rationalize not calling at all.

“Dad?”

“Did I wake you?”

“Actually, no. I was up. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I, uh… I just wanted to talk to you, return your call. I wasn’t being very good about that, seemed like you’d been trying to reach me for a long time.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I know it’s an odd time to call, but don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“Good.”

“I did have a difficult day, but it turned out okay. The reason I didn’t return your calls sooner… I’ve been in the middle of a complicated mess. But that’s no excuse. Was there anything you needed?”

“What kind of mess?”

“What? Oh-usual kind, homicide investigation.”

“I thought you were retired.”

“I was. I mean, I am. But I got involved because I knew one of the victims. Long story. Next time I see you, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Wow. You did it again!”

“Did what?”

“You caught another mass murderer, right?”

“How’d you know that?”

“Victims. You said victims, plural. How many were there?”

“Five that we know of, plans for twenty more.”

“And you got him. Damn! Mass murderers don’t have a chance against you. You’re like Batman.”

Gurney laughed. He hadn’t done much of that lately. And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so in a conversation with Kyle. Come to think of it, this was an unusual conversation in other ways as well-considering that they’d been talking for at least two minutes without Kyle’s mentioning something he’d just bought or was about to