On Harrow Hill

“Not officially. Not yet. But I’m envisioning a whole new storyline for the case, and I wanted to get your opinion.”

“I can’t bear the fucking suspense.”

Gurney took a sip of his espresso and gathered his thoughts.

“Okay, here goes. It’s the same as the official version up to the point where Billy Tate walks out of the mortuary—but instead of taking his proposal for killing Angus to Chandler Aspern, he takes it to Lorinda Russell. She loves the idea, but she has an even better one. She calls in a hit man to kill Tate, and then kill Angus—using Tate’s fingerprints and the scalpels he stole from the mortuary to create crime-scene confusion and all the ‘walking dead’ nonsense. The hit man, wearing Tate’s clothes and driving his Jeep, also kills Mary Kane and Linda Mason, for the reasons we assumed they were killed. Then, with his help, Lorinda adds the brilliant twist of setting up Aspern for what would appear to be a self-defense killing—in order to end the police investigation of the other three murders and get rid of an aggressive legal antagonist at the same time.”

Hardwick’s acid-reflux expression was intense.

“You have a problem with this scenario?” asked Gurney.

“Too fucking clever, too fucking complicated, too many fucking spots where the train could’ve gone off the tracks.”

“You want to explain that?”

“First, tell me how you think they set up that self-defense ruse at the end.”

“Lorinda told us she called Aspern to discuss their dispute over his lease, and that the discussion ended badly. We know from the carrier’s records that she did make the call, but we have no way of verifying her version of the conversation. In fact, it may have been a lot friendlier than she claimed. She may have extended an offer he couldn’t refuse. Now that Angus is out of the picture, I’m sure we can work this out in an amicable way, et cetera. I suspect she might have emphasized the amicability angle by inviting him to have dinner with her. Aspern may have recorded the call, but his phone seems to have evaporated. Interestingly, he bought a very special bottle of wine later that afternoon, and I’m thinking it was to bring to Lorinda’s. You with this so far?”

“So far, it’s the fucking definition of hypothetical. But keep going.”

“Aspern arrives for dinner around seven o’clock. He and Lorinda have a few drinks. Maybe they open his fancy wine. At some point when he’s nice and relaxed, her hit-man accomplice—same one who killed Tate—comes into the room behind Aspern and renders him unconscious, probably with a blow to the base of the skull. Then—wearing Tate’s hoodie, jeans, and sneakers—he drives the vehicle Aspern arrived in back to Aspern’s house, gets Tate’s Jeep from its place in the woods, and drives to the point where the trail opens into the lawn by the conservatory. You following this so far?”

“What happens if Aspern wakes up while the accomplice is gone?”

“A forceful enough blow to the base of the skull would have kept him immobile for quite a while, if not paralyzed him. And he might have been tied up.”

“Okay, so the accomplice is in the Jeep at the trail opening. What now?”

“Now is where the security camera video takes over. We see a hooded figure emerge from the Jeep and walk across the lawn toward the house, holding a mallet. He passes out of the camera’s range, breaks the glass panel in the conservatory door, and enters the house. While he’s taking off his hoodie, jeans, and sneakers, Lorinda is stripping Aspern. Then they put Tate’s clothes on him and drag him into the conservatory.”

“But he must have been shot standing up, for the bullet trajectories to turn out the way they did. How’d they manage that?”

“That had me stumped. Then I remembered seeing a device in the conservatory for moving heavy tropical plants—a hoist with ratcheted pulleys.”

“You figure they used that to stand him up and shoot him?”

“It’s a possibility. It’s also interesting that the shooter placed one of the shots through Aspern’s lower jaw—creating a rear exit wound that would destroy any evidence of an earlier blow to the base of the skull.”

Hardwick’s acid reflux expression had shifted to his more common skeptical frown. “So, after he was shot twice, they dumped him on the floor, facedown, like he’d been coming at Lorinda when she shot him and his momentum carried him forward?”

“That’s the way it looks. The accomplice leaves. Lorinda gets rid of evidence of Aspern’s earlier presence in the house—for example, the wine bottle that disappeared along with his phone. She calls Mike Morgan and announces that she just shot Billy Tate. And everyone later swallows that as an understandable misidentification as a result of Aspern being in Tate’s clothes, limited moonlight visibility, and the body ending up facedown on the floor.”