On Harrow Hill

“Thank God you’re here!”

“What’s the matter?”

“You’ll see.”

Gurney stepped inside.

What he saw at first was consistent with what he’d been envisioning, based on Morgan’s phone call and the comments of the officer at the gate.

There was nothing initially surprising about the prone figure lying in the middle of the stone floor, or in the now-familiar Tate uniform of gray hoodie, black jeans, and sneakers. The body was resting on its back, legs extended toward Gurney.

Large, still tacky-looking bloodstains on the floor to the left side of the head and chest suggested that the body’s original orientation had been facedown over those areas of pooled blood and that it had been rolled over by the medical examiner in the course of his preliminary in situ examination. The matching positions of the stains on the chest and neck areas of Tate’s hoodie were consistent with this scenario.

When Gurney moved closer, he noted the catastrophic damage caused by the bullet that had shattered the chin and jaw before continuing on its path and ­apparently—according to the gate officer—blowing the rear section of the skull into the hood of the sweatshirt.

As he approached still closer and was able to get a better view of the upper part of the face, he was baffled by its transformation. It seemed to have aged in a weird way, looking nothing like the mug shot he’d seen of Tate. Certainly nothing like the photograph in Selena Cursen’s bedroom.

The change was especially evident in the still-open eyes. They were smaller, darker . . .

He stopped, stared, took another step closer.

Was it possible?

He looked back at Morgan, who nodded in what looked like an ongoing state of shock.

Gurney bent over, peering intently at those small, black, dead eyes. Now he was certain.

The bloody body on floor was Chandler Aspern’s.

He stepped back, his mind racing to make sense of this bizarre development.

Barstow’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “We found something interesting in his sweatshirt pocket.” She held up a plastic freezer bag.

Gurney leaned forward to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

The bag contained a severed right hand, probably male, judging from the size of it.

PART THREE INTO THE HEART OF EVIL

41

In the forty-eight hours following the shooting, a new case narrative, complete with ample evidence, had been constructed—with Chandler Aspern, mayor of Larchfield, as its central villain.

Gurney found the new hypothesis more or less satisfactory. On the downside, it left some significant questions unanswered. On the upside, it provided credible explanations for two elements that had been troubling him—the call Tate made to Aspern’s number from the mortuary and the disparity between the fates of Ruby-­June Hooper and Mary Kane.

On the morning of the third day after the shooting, the Aspern-centered theory of the Larchfield murders was scheduled to be presented to the county district attorney, with the objective of securing agreement that the new narrative could be released to the media and the case could be closed.

Gurney had agreed to be present at the meeting.

At Morgan’s request, he arrived at headquarters twenty minutes early for a run-through of how Morgan intended to present the evidence of Aspern’s guilt.

When Morgan asked for his comments at the end of the run-through, Gurney said that it all sounded fine. In fact, he did have some lingering concerns, but he knew raising them at this point would only make Morgan more nervous.

“Have you ever met our DA?” Morgan asked.

“No.”

“She’s a fast-talking hotshot being groomed for bigger things by the powers that be.”

“Have you had problems with her?”

“Nothing major, just the static created by the kind of person who wants everything perfect and wants it yesterday.”

“You expecting significant static in this meeting?”

Before Morgan could answer, there was a knock on his open door. It was the desk sergeant.

“Stryker is here,” he said, as if announcing the arrival of the IRS.

Brad Slovak and Kyra Barstow were already at the conference table. They were seated across from Martin Carmody, the PR man, and Greta Vickerz, the mechanical engineering professor who’d concluded that Tate’s casket had been broken open from the inside.

An athletic-looking woman with short brown hair was standing at the end of the table, talking on her phone. She appeared to be in her late twenties, which would make her the youngest of the state’s district attorneys, but there was nothing particularly youthful in her cool, hard expression.

Gurney chose a seat next to Vickerz. Morgan remained standing until Stryker ended her call and took her seat. She laid her phone in front of her, conspicuously checked the time, and said without any greeting or preamble, “Your show, Chief.”

Morgan cleared his throat. “I think you know everyone in the room, Cam, except Dave Gurney—”

“I know who he is. Let’s begin.”