For the rest of his trip to Lockenberry, Gurney entertained his growing suspicions that the shootings and BDA murders were directly linked but not in the way anyone had assumed; that Turlock and Beckert may have been central to both; and that the hospital that hosted the murder of Loomis may also have been the source of the drugs that facilitated the killing of Jordan and Tooker.
If those conjectures were facts, however, what did they add up to? What payoff was big enough to justify all that planning, effort, risk, and grisly violence? What goal required the deaths of those specific victims? Might there be other links to Mercy Hospital?
When his GPS announced that he had arrived at his destination—the iron gateway in the stone wall fronting the Gelter property—he’d made little progress on those questions.
Driving up through the wildflower meadow and on through the astonishing field of daffodils, he refocused himself on the nature of his visit and what he hoped to get from it. He parked in front of the looming cube of a house.
As he approached the huge front door, it slid open without a sound, just as it had on the first occasion. As then, Trish was standing in the doorway. As then, she was smiling, displaying the little Lauren Hutton gap between her front teeth. On that first occasion, however, she was dressed. This time she was wearing only a silky pink robe, and a rather short one at that. Her long shapely legs appeared to be the platonic ideal of female legs, although there was nothing platonic about the impact they made. Nor about the look in her eyes.
“You came quicker than I imagined. I just got out of the shower. Come in. I’ll get us something to drink. What would you like?”
Where she was standing forced him to pass very close to her. The cavernous room was bright, the afternoon sunlight slanting through the glass roof.
“Nothing for me,” he said.
“You don’t drink?”
“Not often.”
She moistened the corners of her mouth with the tip of her tongue. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, you being a detective and all, but I might be able to find a couple joints. If you’re interested.”
“Not right now.”
“Pure of body, pure of mind?”
“Never thought of it that way.”
“Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” She smiled. “Come. Let’s sit by the fire.” She touched his arm and led him through the room’s cubical furniture to the edge of a brown fur rug in front of the wide modernistic hearth. Green flames were rising from an arrangement of realistic-looking logs. The sight brought to mind what she’d said at the party.
To one side of the hearth there was a sort of couch made of low cubes and giant pillows. She picked up a small remote device from one of the pillows and pressed a button. The light level in the room dropped to something resembling dusk. Gurney looked up and saw that the glass roof had become less transparent. The color of the sky had changed from blue to deep purple.
“Marv explained it to me,” she said. “How it works. Some kind of electronic something or other. He seemed to find it fascinating. I told him he was putting me to sleep. But I like making it dark. It makes the fire greener. You like the rug?”
“It’s some kind of fur?”
“Beaver. It’s very soft.”
“I never heard of a beaver rug.”
“It was Marv’s idea. So typical of him. There were a bunch of beavers damning up his trout stream. He hired a local trapper to kill the beavers and skin them. Then he had someone make a rug out of them. So he could stand on it, drinking his six-hundred-dollar cognac. On
“Not now.”
“Can I see your hand?”
He turned up his right palm.
She took it in one of her hands, studied it, and slowly ran her forefinger along its longest line. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Yes.”
“With this hand?”
“With a gun.”
Her eyes widened. She turned his hand over and touched each of his fingers.
“You wear your wedding ring all the time?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t.”
He said nothing.
“Not that we have a bad marriage or anything. It just feels too
He said nothing.
She smiled. “I’m glad you could come.”
“You said you wanted to tell me something. About the case.”
“Maybe we should sit down.” She looked toward the rug.
He stepped back in the direction of the couch.
She slowly let go of his hand and shrugged.
He waited for her to sit at one end, then sat a few feet away from her.
“What did you want to tell me?”
“You should get to know Dell better. He’s going far. Very far.”
“How do you know?”
“Marv has a knack for picking winners.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“It would be nice if you were part of the team.”
Gurney said nothing.
“You just need to get to know Dell a little better.”
