On Harrow Hill

Gurney smiled. “I’d ask someone with a PI license who knows his way around the block to find out if Bullock ever had a big bearded motorcycle-riding cousin.”

“Basic footwork like that too boring for a genius like you?”

“My credentials are from Larchfield PD. Someone could call to check me out. I don’t want Morgan to know I’m still poking at the edges of a closed case.”

Hardwick gave him a major you’re-going-to-owe-me look before asking, “Did the Flaccos get the doctor’s name?”

“They couldn’t remember.”

“Or the name of the guy who said he was Bullock’s cousin?”

“Bullock’s ex-wife might be a good place to start.”

“Naturally, you’ll give me her name and contact information?”

“That would take the fun out of it.”

Hardwick stared down into his coffee mug. “I’m missing something here. What’s Bullock’s demise got to do with Angus getting his throat cut ten years later?”

“Maybe nothing. But the likely involvement of Gant in the Bullock thing is just one of the oddities troubling my sleep.”

“How many fucking oddities you talking about?”

“Aspern’s phone hasn’t been found. And Morgan’s case-closed fixation means no one is allowed to look for it.”

“That’s the kind of shit keeping you awake at night?”

“Not just that. Aspern drives a 530e BMW. A few nights ago a message was painted on my barn in the blood of one of the victims. A guy at the end of my road saw someone coming down from my property in a BMW. He was pretty sure it was a 530e. And there were tread marks in the soil by my barn that have been ID’d as belonging to a 5 Series BMW.”

“So you’re thinking this was Aspern?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The risk-reward ratio. Aspern was no fool. So why expose himself like that, carrying the blood of one of the victims in his car, leaving his tire tracks on my property? For what? To make me think Billy Tate did it? I don’t get the point of that. That’s not enough of a payoff to take the chance of being caught.”

“Maybe Aspern was crazier than you think.”

Gurney sighed, unconvinced. “Madeleine said I might not be seeing what his goal really was. Maybe it was something that was worth the big risk after all.”

“And Morgan—”

“Morgan doesn’t want to hear a word about it.”

Hardwick’s expression turned sour. “You think the fucker is bent?”

“I never thought so before. I still don’t want to. But his determination to shut things down is so damn rigid . . . it’s becoming another sleep disturber.”

After a silence during which they both paid attention to their coffees, Hardwick developed a puzzled look. “This Bullock thing—what sent you off looking for him to begin with?”

“Curiosity about Lorinda. Apart from a few obvious characteristics, she baffles me. I wanted to find someone who might know her better than the people I’ve talked to so far.”

By the time Gurney got back to Walnut Crossing, the weather had changed again. The sky was clear, the grass was drying in the midday sun, and the chickens were pecking energetically at the cracked corn that Madeleine had tossed into the fenced run before she left for work. Swallows were swerving through the air over the low pasture.

He brought his laptop out to the little table on the patio and began yet another review of the security camera videos and homicide scene photos—searching for anything odd, anything unexpected, anything inconsistent.

He spent an hour going through all the visual files in chronological order. He then went back and replayed the video of Tate emerging from the cadaver-storage cabinet and making his way around the embalming room. Next he examined the video of Aspern in Tate’s clothes approaching the conservatory.

He was struck by Aspern’s attention to the details of the deception, even to the extent of mimicking Tate’s halting stride and the forward hunch of his shoulders—which he’d probably observed in the leaked video on the RAM-TV website. His attention was also drawn to the floppy white laces on Tate’s sneakers—worn by Tate himself in the first video and by Aspern disguised as Tate in the second. The bow loops appeared noticeably smaller in the second, but that was perhaps too small a point for even the detail-focused Aspern to have bothered to get right.

Next he viewed the still photos of Aspern’s body on the conservatory floor in Tate’s now blood-soaked clothes—twelve in its facedown position and another twelve taken after the body had been turned over by the ME for an in situ exam and pronouncement of death.

He noticed that the bow loops visible in these photos were larger than they had seemed in at least one of the two preceding videos. He replayed the videos to be sure, and what he found puzzled him. The bows in the still photos of Aspern’s body on the floor were larger than the ones in the video of his approach to the house.