The Viper

Angry and depressed, he felt that he was seeing the reality of his marriage for the first time, seeing that it had always been on the edge of an abyss. No, not an abyss—that was too romantic, too dramatic a notion, a fall from too great a height. On the edge of what, then?

On the edge of dissolving. That was more like it. Dissolving into the cold air of reality. Its solidity and permanence, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, was an illusion, had always been an illusion. Not even a shared illusion. His own illusion. He could see now that for Madeleine there had always been a condition. It was tolerable for him to be a detective, as long as he wasn’t too much of a detective, as long as there were limits, as long as she could believe that someday he’d walk away from his natural profession and turn into something else.

He saw with a sickening shock that what had been holding them together for over twenty-five years were their interlocked fantasies—hers, that he would someday change into the person she wanted him to be; his, that there was something unbreakable at the core of their relationship, something more powerful than their differences, something sweet and good—and permanent. But now he saw that this imagined core had been composed of wishful thinking.

These bleak thoughts looped repetitively through his mind as the night wore on, nurtured by the moaning of the wind and by a headache that grew worse as the hours passed.

Sometime between dawn and sunrise, in an exhausted, semiconscious state, he began to dream. He was on Blackmore Mountain in his Outback. Snow swirling past the windshield. The red tow truck looming up beside him. Forcing him sideways off the road. The crash. The truck coming to a stop on the road. Sonny Lerman opening the passenger door, stepping halfway out, laughing at him. Now Gurney was standing apart from himself, watching himself raise a pistol. The pistol firing once, twice. Lerman is thrown back into the truck. Gurney watches himself get out of the car, watches himself approach the truck and look inside. Blood is trickling from the corner of Lerman’s mouth, from his eyes, from his ears. But it’s not Lerman. Gurney leans closer. It’s Jack Hardwick.

Gurney came to with a start. He looked around the den, trying to anchor himself in the reality of the place, the reality of the moment. He pushed himself painfully up off the couch, got his phone from the desk, and called the hospital.

There was no change in Hardwick’s condition.

Gurney paced back and forth, flexing his arms, stretching his legs, working the stiffness out of his back, rubbing his cold fingers on his face, trying to put distance between himself and his dream. A shower might help.

To avoid contact with Madeleine, he used the shower in the small upstairs bathroom. As he was drying himself, he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the basin—a haggard face with anxious eyes, the face of a stranger. He hung up the towel and returned to the den.

Later that morning, Madeleine left for the clinic without a word, as though he didn’t exist.

As the hours passed, his decision to leave took shape.

Staying with Madeleine at this point made no emotional sense. Besides, Stryker’s RAM escalation of his “wanted” status was bound to result in more aggressive police scrutiny of the house and surrounding property, perhaps extending to discovery of his campsite.

He would need a place to go.

He thought of an ideal location.

He called Emma Martin and asked if he could stay for a while at Ziko Slade’s lodge.

After the briefest hesitation, she said yes.

PART V THE VIPER

65

MAKING HIS DECISION AND SECURING A RELATIVELY SAFE destination had oddly taken some of the emotional urgency out of actually making the physical move. In fact, by the time he finally set out for the lodge three days later, a large part of his motivation was the anticipated comfort and security of the place, compared to the inconveniences and vulnerabilities of his hilltop campsite.

That, and the fact that being around Madeleine in these strange new circumstances was disorienting. She had, at least in his mind, become a different person—a stranger who only looked like the woman he once knew. This made the house itself seem strange—as though he were seeing it through glasses that subtly distorted the position of everything.

One of the last things he did before leaving was install the app that communicated with the security cameras on the property on Madeleine’s phone. When he explained how the system worked and how the pattern of beeps identified which camera had been activated, she listened with no more emotion than if he were a disembodied voice on an instruction video.