The Viper

Still, Lanka and Vesco were the only links he had between the Lerman murders and whoever orchestrated them. And he was acutely aware that his time was limited. Powerful forces on both sides of the legal line were eager to stop him; their efforts, already disconcerting, were bound to become more intense. His only hope was to uncover the truth before Stryker’s cops caught up with him or he became the third victim. So, confrontation it would have to be. Realizing that any further thought on this subject would be a waste of time, he headed for bed.

He was awakened shortly after dawn by an urgent series of beeps on the security app on his phone. He stumbled out of bed and half ran to the kitchen. Peering out the window, he saw one of the watchers’ unmarked sedans. After it came to a stop, he could see the exhaust still billowing up into the frigid air. They were settling in for another long stakeout and letting the engine run to keep the heater working.

He took a fast shower, got dressed, strapped on his Glock, and returned to the kitchen. Keeping an eye on the watchers’ car, he made himself a generous breakfast—half a dozen slices of bacon, three eggs, two slices of toast, and a coffee.

After finishing it all, he went into the den, now brightened by the morning sunlight, opened his laptop, and found his list of the key events in the last thirteen weeks of Lenny’s life. Then he placed a call to Adrienne.

As usual, she answered quickly, sounding anxious and curious.

He gave her the date of Lenny’s visit to the Clearview Office Suites in Gorse and the dates his three subsequent visits to the Capital District Office Park in Ploverton. “Do you know of any reason why your father would have made these trips on these dates?”

“None of those dates mean anything to me,” she said, her anxiety and curiosity rising. “Do you know who he went to see?”

“I don’t. The tenants are a pretty varied lot. The thing is, his depression began around the time of those visits, so they may be significant.”

“What kind of tenants do those places have?”

Gurney checked his laptop. “Lawyers, doctors, engineers, a sleep-disorder clinic, financial adviser, stock broker, and some real estate people.”

“A sleep-disorder clinic?”

“Yes.”

“That might be it. He used to complain about waking up from nightmares. For most people sleep is a natural escape, among other good things. But not for him.”

She made a little sound like a stifled sob.

“Are you alright, Adrienne?”

“It’s just . . . sometimes I see the sadness of my father’s life so vividly it makes me cry.”

There was a long silence, broken by Gurney.

“Another trip your father made got my attention. One day in the middle of October he spent two hours at the Franciscan Sanctuary. Was that something he did from time to time?”

“If it was, I wasn’t aware of it.”

“Do you have any idea why he would have gone there?”

“Maybe for the same reason I go back there. To put myself in a happier place.”

61

THE FACTUAL TAKEAWAY FROM HIS CONVERSATION WITH Adrienne hadn’t amounted to much, but its emotional impact on him was another matter.

Throughout his career, he’d tried to stay focused on the mechanics of a case. The objective facts. Rarely did he succeed entirely. He was unaffected by hysterical displays of grief, but his defenses were often pierced by the welling of a tear, the catch in a voice, the sharing of a memory.

Rather than dwelling on Adrienne’s pain, he searched his mind for the next right thing he could do, and the needs of the chickens occurred to him. He stood up quickly from his desk, winced at the sharp twinge in his back, and went to the mudroom for his jacket and gloves. Getting from the house to the coop without being seen by the watchers involved exiting through a bedroom window. Once he was outside, the coop and shed blocked the line of sight from the barn. He got a shovel from the shed and scraped the snow out of the fenced run. After replacing the shovel, he hauled a sack of feed into the coop and refilled the feeders. Then he used a broad-bladed spackling knife to scrape the week’s accumulation of chicken droppings off the roosting rods. Finally, he opened the low door between the coop and the run, and the hens proceeded cautiously down the connecting ramp—the Rhode Island Red in the lead, squawking.

He had a moment of concern that Stryker’s men might hear the sound and come up to investigate, then realized that with their windows closed, engine running, and heater whirring, they weren’t likely to hear anything short of a gunshot. He returned the makeshift scraper to the shed and secured the big yellow door with its wrought-iron latch.

Back in the house, he was thinking about the experience of assembling and painting the shed door with Madeleine. Working on it together had created a feeling of closeness that was miles away from the way he felt now. He asked himself which feeling best represented the reality of their marriage. He had no answer.