The Viper

“And her endless series of abusive boyfriends. I hated them all.”

She fell silent, lost in the past.

“What was Lenny like back then?” asked Gurney.

“As I think about it now, just a younger version of what he turned out to be in later years. There was always a gap, an emotional separation, between him and Sonny. Dad was always trying to impress Sonny. A grown man, trying to get the approval of an eight-year-old. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”

It was a statement, not a question. Gurney waited for her to go on.

“But Dad was always just a kid himself, an insecure kid trying to be accepted, trying to find a place in the world. Or maybe not so much a place in the world as a place in other people’s hearts.” She sighed. “He just never figured out how to make it happen.”

“You think the blackmail money he hoped to end up with was part of that?”

“It’s the only way it makes sense. And I’m pretty sure that’s what all his gangster talk was all about. Lenny confused impressing people with making them like him. He had it in his head that if he sounded important, if he had the cars, the money . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Are you suggesting he made up that talk about having a mob connection?”

“Apparently that was true enough, according to Great-Aunt Angelica. She was close to Lenny’s father, my grandfather. One night after he drank too much he told her about a distant cousin of theirs, someone she’d never heard of before, who killed people for money. Money he then ‘invested’ in high-ranking cops and politicians, so he was never arrested for anything, or even investigated.”

“Did your grandfather tell your great-aunt his name?”

“Only that he used so many false names, no one knew the real one. My grandfather called him the Viper.”

“Can you get in touch with your grandfather?”

She shook her head. “He passed away years ago.”

“And you never heard Lenny or Sonny refer to him by any actual name?”

“No.”

“So,” said Gurney, summing up the situation. “An anonymous professional killer with corrupt enablers in high places. Known as the Viper.”

Adrienne nodded nervously. “That’s the part that gives me gooseflesh.”

“That nickname?”

“The reason for it. It’s the creepiest thing Great-Aunt Angelica remembers my grandfather telling her. The man collected dangerous snakes. And used them to kill people.”

55

AFTER ADRIENNE DEPARTED IN HER FORESTER, GURNEY settled down on a bench on the sunny side of the big house to review what she’d told him.

Great-Aunt Angelica’s report of a Lerman connection to a hit man with a snake fetish felt substantive. It struck Gurney as far more than a coincidence that he’d received two warnings involving snakes—the decapitated rabbit on which Barstow found snake DNA and the fanged surprise in the jam basket. If Angelica’s story was to be believed, the individual who was trying to stop the reexamination of Lenny Lerman’s murder was a professional killer with a blood link to the victim.

What still remained in darkness was what actually happened at Slade’s lodge—specifically, who killed Lenny and what it had to do with Ziko Slade. Was it possible that the shadowy Lerman relative had enlisted Lenny as a cat’s-paw in a blackmail scheme that went off the tracks?

The only thing Gurney knew for sure was that he needed to know more. More about Lenny, more about the hit man with the snake fetish, more about Ziko Slade, and more about what connected them all—and whether that connection led to the shooting death of Lenny’s son on Blackmore Mountain.

He relaxed as best he could on the hard bench, closing his eyes and raising his face to the sun, on the off chance that emptying his mind would make room for a touch of inspiration.

“Nice spot, isn’t it?”

Gurney opened his eyes and saw a tall, colorfully dressed woman standing on the lawn in front of the bench. She was holding a leash in each hand with a tall, shaggy dog at the end of each one, their curious eyes fixed on him.

“Very nice,” he answered.

“First time? I haven’t seen you here before.”

“Yes. First time.”

She gave him an appraising look. “Are you a dog person or a cat person?”

“I’m not sure I’m either.” Then he added, he wasn’t sure why, “My wife has an interest in alpacas.”

“But you don’t?”

“I’m usually too busy to take care of animals, or even think about them.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

“It was a convenient place to meet someone,” he said, not entirely honestly, and changed the subject. “The big house here, with all the surrounding property—how did it come to be an animal shelter?”

“Sanctuary,” she said pointedly. “Shelters are prisons. This place is about freedom. A miracle, really.”

“Oh?”

“A deathbed conversion. Well, close to that. Do you know about Halliman Brook?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“He was a horrible lumber baron. Responsible for deforestation, erosion, pollution. Treated his workers like dirt. Paid them starvation wages and fired them the minute they got injured. His personal life was just as ugly. He nearly beat his first wife to death.”