The Viper

“If you’re calling about the rabbit, David, I’m not finished with it yet.”

“No, another request, if you have a moment.”

“Barely.”

“In addition to examining the physical evidence at the Lerman murder site, did you do any other forensic work on the case?”

“Anything in particular you have in mind?”

“A possible security camera video at the gas station where Lerman stopped on his way to Slade’s lodge.”

“There wasn’t any. The station owner claimed his system was broken.”

“How about the strip mall across the road?”

“Nothing operational there either.”

“How about Lerman’s credit card statements?”

“Covering that same day?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on. I need to check our files.”

Five minutes later she was back. “We have his Visa statement for last November. Stryker had no interest in it.”

“How about his phone records for the same month?”

“Stryker used those as evidence of Lerman’s calls to Slade’s number.”

“Any chance I could get copies of them, along with the Visa statement?”

“I assume, if questioned, you’d have no idea how they came into your possession?”

“I’ve forgotten already.”

“By the way, regarding the rabbit? I was waiting until I had a final answer to call you, but as long as we’re speaking, I’ll tell you what I have so far. There’s considerable foreign DNA on the rabbit’s fur—from various sources, none human. Some from other rabbits. Some from other living organisms, species yet to be identified. I’m cross checking non-human databases. I hope to have a species match soon, assuming it’s not something totally weird.”

“Great, Kyra. Your help is beyond anything I could hope for.”

“Do I detect another request buried in that sweet talk?”

He laughed. “Now that you mention it, could you look at Lerman’s Visa statement for the day of his trip to the lodge and tell me what purchases he made and where he made them?”

She paused. “Two purchases that day. One at that gas station for fourteen dollars and fifty-seven cents. And one at Cory’s Auto Supply for sixteen dollars and nineteen cents. Is that helpful?”

“Could be,” he said, recalling that Cory’s was the name of the auto supply store across from the gas station. “At the very least, it’s interesting.”

And baffling, he thought, after ending the call with Barstow. What automotive need could a man have had on his way to such a monumental encounter—perhaps the most important of his life? The price of the purchase seemed too high for an urgent quart of oil. So, what could the need have been? Emergency windshield wipers? A gas can? The possibility reminded him that Lerman’s car had been torched, but the torching occurred after Lerman was killed—a situation that raised more questions than it answered. So, would a windshield-wiper purchase make more sense?

Gurney went to an archival weather site and entered the name of the county and the date of Lerman’s murder. He discovered it had been partly sunny that day with zero precipitation—making wipers an unlikely purchase. Additional speculation would have to wait for additional facts. With a sigh, he turned his attention back to the trial materials.

He reviewed the medical examiner’s initial comments on the body and the autopsy report. The cause of death was the severing of the victim’s head with two successive blows of a sharp axe-like implement. The mechanism of death was cardiorespiratory arrest, subsequent to catastrophic neural interruption and rapid blood loss.

As always, he was struck by the disparity between the cool medical description of a murder and the gruesome visual impact of the body. It made him wonder about the emotional state of the killer. Had he been as dispassionate as the pathologist or was he driven by a hatred as ugly as the deed itself?

Gazing at the autopsy photos of the headless torso and fingerless hands, Gurney again asked himself what motivated the amputations. The explanations put forward so far—preventing or delaying the identification of the corpse—seemed to make no sense. And precisely because of that, he suspected those mutilations might be the key to the case.

He felt a new urgency to discover new facts, new dots to connect. Glancing through the titles of the remaining folders on his desk, he stopped at one labeled Photographs of victim’s incinerated car. He opened it and pulled out a handful of color prints. He counted sixteen of them—twelve of the car, four of the location.

The latter showed an abandoned granite quarry in the process of slipping back into the wilderness. Saplings had taken root in the larger crevices, and weeds filled the narrower ones. The excavated area, no more than a couple of acres, was surrounded by a dense hemlock forest. There seemed to be just one access road entering the clearing from the woods. In the corner of one photo, he saw a discarded red plastic gasoline can, probably the same one used to transport the fire accelerant to the scene.