The Viper

“Not a lot. His father was a champion fencer and a lifelong womanizer who eventually died of a coke-induced heart attack. Ziko was too busy fucking a Grammy-nominated teenager to attend the funeral.”

Like father like son, thought Gurney.

The waitress arrived with his pancakes, sausages, and a bottle of maple syrup. She told Hardwick that his BLT “and other stuff” would be ready soon and headed back to the kitchen.

“Did you find out anything about the period of Slade’s life after his wife stabbed him?”

“He disappeared into some weird rehab, grew a halo, pretended to be a saint—until the blackmail threat brought the old Ziko back to life and he chopped off Lenny Lerman’s head.” He paused, eyeing Gurney with obvious skepticism. “You don’t actually think this shitbag’s conversion was for real, do you?”

Gurney cut his sausages neatly into quarters and ate a piece. “I met Slade, and I’m not honestly sure about him one way or the other. Also, some details of the murder don’t make sense. And now someone is trying to scare me off the case.”

Gurney told him about the rabbit.

Hardwick’s face screwed up in disbelief. “You think a dead rabbit in your car makes Slade innocent?”

Gurney shrugged. “It does put some weight on that side of the scale.”

“Not a hell of a lot, in my opinion. What details of the murder are bothering you?”

“Mainly the missing head and fingers. Plus, Slade’s property is more than a hundred acres. Why would he bury the body so close to the lodge? And why wouldn’t he get rid of the axe—and the clipper that cut off the fingers? Keeping them seems incredibly stupid.”

Hardwick shook his head dismissively. “Crazy shit happens in murders. Distraction. Panic. If killers thought things through, we wouldn’t catch so many of them.”

“I get that, but Slade struck me as not only intelligent but super-calm.”

“Okay, let’s say that the former scumbag is now a Zen master who wouldn’t hurt a fly. What’s your hypothesis for the crime? You must have an idea or two. This is the kind of shit you live for.”

The waitress arrived with Hardwick’s order. Gurney waited until she was gone.

“Here’s the first thought that came to mind. Someone who was aware of Lerman’s plan to blackmail Slade saw it as an opportunity to kill Lerman and let Slade take the blame.”

“Like who? With what motive?”

“Possibly Lerman’s son. He despised his father and knew about his life insurance policy.”

“You’re saying Lerman’s son could have gotten into Slade’s lodge on a day when he wasn’t there, swiped the camo outfit, got the axe and pruning clipper out of the shed, then followed Lenny the night he went to see Slade, chopped off his head, and buried him there without Slade knowing?”

“Something like that.”

“So, how come Slade’s attorney didn’t dangle this evil son in front of the jury?”

“He did, in a way, in his closing argument; but he couldn’t do more with it, because there was no physical evidence to put him at the site, and he supposedly had a solid alibi.”

“Any other options?”

“Suppose someone who hated Slade gave Lerman sensitive information about Slade and suggested the extortion plan. Maybe the idea was for Lerman to do the work, and they’d split the money. But then he decides to kill Lerman on Slade’s property rather than going through with the blackmail plan. Maybe the idea of framing Slade for murder appealed to him more than extorting money from him.”

Hardwick stared skeptically at his coleslaw. “Any idea who this criminal mastermind might be?”

“None. And there’s a problem with this scenario. It doesn’t track with the excerpts from Lerman’s diary that were presented at the trial.”

“So, basically, you have no fucking idea what’s going on.”

Gurney poured syrup on his pancakes. “I’d like to know what damaging information Lerman had on Slade. The only mention of it in Lerman’s diary was something that went down between Ziko and someone by the name of Sally Bones. That mean anything to you?”

Hardwick took a large bite of his BLT. He shook his head.

“I did a search on it,” said Gurney, “but it led nowhere.”

Hardwick swallowed, then sucked at his teeth. “That wouldn’t by any chance be another of your subtle requests?”

Gurney shrugged. “Sally Bones. Interesting name. Could belong to a low-level mobster who never got enough media attention to pop up on the internet. But he may have come to the attention of law enforcement at some point in his career. If you get an itch to check it out with your old state police contacts, there’s another name you might want to mention. Ian Valdez.”

“Who the hell is Ian Valdez?”

“Good question.”

22

GURNEY’S DRIVE HOME FROM THUMBURG WAS NOT A happy one. The information Hardwick had dug up on Slade, apart from a few unpleasant facts about the man’s fencing-champion father, added nothing of substance to what he already knew.