The Viper

The only contemporary intrusions were security cameras mounted high on the walls at the ends of the aisles. At the rear of the store there was an old-fashioned butcher case of white enameled steel and heavy glass panels. It was empty. On the wall above it was a print showing two burly men in butcher aprons, one with gray hair, one with black hair. The resemblance between them and their age difference suggested a father and son.

A door opened in the wall beneath the photograph, and a lean, dark-haired man in a black silk shirt stepped out into the space behind the butcher case.

“You want something?”

“Just admiring that picture up there.”

The man said nothing.

“Would that be Bruno Lanka and his father?”

“Who are you?”

“David Gurney.”

“You want something?”

“I’d like to speak to Bruno.”

“He’s not here.” The man’s voice was as expressionless as his eyes.

“Do you know when he will be?”

“Maybe later, maybe tomorrow. Why?”

“I’d like to speak to him.”

“About what?”

“A private matter.”

“What should I tell him?”

“Tell him the Lenny Lerman murder case is being reinvestigated.”

The man said nothing.

“Tell him it’s being reinvestigated in connection with the Sonny Lerman case.”

The man remained perfectly motionless, as if on the verge of a sudden tactical decision. His attention shifted to the far end of the aisle.

Gurney glanced back and saw Hardwick standing there, his fingers just inside the open front of his windbreaker, a dangerous glint in those ice-blue eyes.

NEITHER GURNEY NOR Hardwick said anything until they left the parking lot and turned onto the road that led out of Garville in the direction of Walnut Crossing.

“That place is obviously a fucking front for something,” said Hardwick.

Gurney nodded. “Meaning Lanka’s political connections are strong enough that he doesn’t have to worry about how obvious it is. And the guy behind the butcher case was not your average grocery store employee. The second I saw him I recognized him.”

“You know that little creep?”

“He’s the guy in the sketch Tess Larson gave me. Or his twin brother.”

44

AFTER DROPPING HARDWICK OFF AT THE HOME DEPOT parking lot, Gurney drove home.

He stopped at the barn before going up to the house. Wielding a sharp-tined rake as a potential weapon, he checked the interior. Satisfied that there was nothing amiss and the lights were off, he continued up to the house.

Madeleine was by the coop, carrying an armful of loose straw from an open bale into the attached shed. As he headed over to her, he noticed their shotgun leaning against the side of the coop a few feet from the straw bale.

Emerging from the shed, she followed his gaze to the gun.

“I wanted it within reach,” she said.

“You sure you know how to use it?”

“You went through all that with me years ago. And I got a refresher course this morning. Amazing what you can find on YouTube. So, yes, I know how to use it. And I will, if I have to.”

She gathered another armful of straw and strode back into the shed.

He followed her as far as the doorway. “What’s the objective here?”

“Coziness.”

“For the alpacas?”

“Who else?

“Can I help?”

She looked surprised. “If you want, you can carry the straw in, and I’ll smooth it out.”

“Okay. I just have to go into the house for a minute, and I’ll be right back.”

She nodded, her surprise fading.

After using the bathroom, he decided to take a quick look at his email.

The one that grabbed his attention was from Cam Stryker. It seemed to be a word-for-word reiteration of the message he’d gotten from her earlier. He read it again, convinced that it was driven by fear and anger, powerlessness masquerading as power. But being in a legally dubious position didn’t mean she couldn’t create serious trouble for him.

He’d need to marshal every available fact for his meeting with her. He sat down at his desk and began putting his discoveries in order, starting with the recollections of Nora Rumsten.

IT WASN’T UNTIL he and Madeleine were in bed that night that he remembered his promise to help with the straw. She hadn’t mentioned his forgetfulness—not even at dinner, when problems and irritations were often aired. But her silence was troubling.

For their first couple of years in Walnut Crossing, their conflicting expectations of what life there would be like had led to an undercurrent of tension, centering on his involvement in murder investigations. She’d been hoping for a clean break from the fraught experience of being the wife of a homicide cop. Instead, she’d watched him being drawn into a series of cases as dangerous as any in his city career.

What followed was a kind of quiet accommodation—which felt like a welcome development. But now, lying awake in the middle of a moonless night, a bleaker interpretation crept into his mind—the specter of his parents’ marriage. There were no pitched battles between them. In fact, there was hardly anything at all between them. Perhaps the lack of explosive disagreements between him and Madeleine was a warning sign that his marriage was moving in that same empty direction.