“That’s not a simple question at all. But I have a simple one for you—about that cabin where you helped him with those cartridges.”
“What about it?”
“Is it locked?”
“Yes. But you can get in if you know where the spare key is.” Curiosity seemed to be diluting the acid. “You think something there will tell you what you want to know?”
“Possibly. Where’s that key?”
“You’ll need to use the compass app on your phone. Stand at the northeast corner of his cabin. Walk due east, maybe thirty or forty feet, until you come to a small square piece of bluestone in the grass. The key is under it. Or at least it was the day he took me out there.”
“Do you know if any other club members use the property this time of year?”
“It’s only used in the hunting season. Do you know what you’re looking for?”
“I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Watch your back. If he thinks you’re a danger to him, he’ll have Turlock kill you. Then he’ll frame someone for it. Probably me.”
After ending the call, Gurney remained in his chair by the fireplace, musing over Payne’s comments and the intensity with which he’d embraced Maynard Biggs’s analysis of the problem.
As for the actual interview, Gurney couldn’t help feeling a visceral revulsion to Carlton Flynn—as it occurred to him once again that a sure sign of a man’s dishonesty was his characterization of himself as a truth teller. Self-described “straight talk” usually amounted to nothing but mean-spirited self-righteousness.
Gurney turned his attention back to his computer and the satellite map Torres had emailed him showing the trail route from Clapp Hollow to the gun club. The two-mile route he’d highlighted passed through a succession of three forks, taking right turns at the first and second and a left at the third before arriving at a series of linked clearings next to a long, narrow lake. The image of the cabin in the first of those clearings had been labeled with GPS coordinates.
Gurney memorized the coordinates as well as the approximate distances from Clapp Hollow to each of the trail forks. It seemed simple enough, assuming the trails were passable.
His thoughts were interrupted by the shrill beep of the house smoke alarms, indicating a power outage. The only light he’d turned on in the room, the lamp next to his armchair, went out.
At first he did nothing. Momentary electrical interruptions had become common as the local utility company cut back on routine maintenance operations. After several minutes had passed with no restoration of power, however, he called the company’s emergency number. The automated answering system informed him that there was no known outage in his area but his report would be forwarded to the service division and that a representative would be responding shortly. Rather than wait in the dark for the power to come back on, or to discover what “shortly” might mean, he decided to get his generator going—a gas-powered unit that sat out on the tiny back porch and was wired into the circuit panel in the basement.
He went out the side door and around to the back of the house. It was a couple of minutes past nine. Dusk had become night, but a full moon made a flashlight unnecessary.
The generator had a pull-cord starter. He grasped the handle and gave it a few energetic yanks. When the engine didn’t start, he bent over to be sure that the choke and gas-line levers were in their proper positions. Then he took hold again of the cord handle.
As he was adjusting his stance for the best leverage, he caught just at the edge of his vision a moving speck of light. He glanced up and spotted it on the corner post of the porch, just above his head. It was tiny, round, and bright red. He dived off the porch step into a patch of unmowed grass. He heard, almost simultaneously, the thwack of the bullet hitting the post and the sharper crack of the gunshot from somewhere at the top of the high pasture.
As he scrambled through the thick, damp grass toward the nearest corner of the house, he heard an engine suddenly rev up. He rolled over and pulled the Beretta from his ankle holster. But the high-pitched engine sound seemed to be receding. He realized the shooter wasn’t coming down the hill toward him. He was heading in the opposite direction—up through the pines toward the north ridge.
As he listened, the whine of the motorcycle faded away completely into the night.
Torres arrived at the Gurney farmhouse an hour after the attack. He was followed a few minutes later by Garrett Felder and Shelby Towns in the crime-scene van. Gurney could have dug the bullet out of the post himself, but doing it by the book with an official chain of custody from crime scene to ballistics was always best.
