John Verdon - Shut Your Eyes Tight

“And he cut off her head at the wedding reception to keep her quiet?” Gurney broke in, incredulous. Hearing himself, he immediately regretted the brutality of the comment and was about to apologize.

But Val Perry showed no reaction to it. “I told you, they’re morons. According to them, Hector Flores was either a closeted homosexual pining madly for the love of his employer or a macho Latino screwing every woman in sight and using his machete on anyone who objected. Maybe they’ll flip a coin to decide which fairy tale they believe.”

“How much contact did you personally have with Flores?”

“None. I never had the pleasure of meeting him. Unfortunately, I have a very vivid picture of him in my mind. He lives there in my mind, with no other address. As you said, ‘current location unknown.’ I have a feeling he’ll live there until he’s captured or dead. With your help I look forward to solving that problem.”

“Mrs. Perry, you used the word ‘dead’ a few times, so I need to make something clear, so there’s no misunderstanding. I’m not a hit man. If that’s part of the assignment, spoken or unspoken, you need to look elsewhere-starting now.”

She studied his face. “The assignment is to find Hector Flores… and bring him to justice. That’s it. That’s the assignment.”

“Then I need to ask you…” he began, then stopped as a grayish brown movement in the pasture caught his attention. A coyote-likely the one he’d seen the day before-was crossing the field. He followed its progress until it disappeared into the maple copse on the far side of the pond.

“What is it?” she asked, turning in her chair.

“Maybe a loose dog. Sorry for the distraction. What I want to know is, why me? If the money supply is as unlimited as you say, you could hire a small army. Or you could hire people who would be, shall we say, less careful about the fugitive’s availability for trial. So why me?”

“Jack Hardwick recommended you. He said you were the best. The very best. He said if anyone could get to the bottom of it-resolve it, end it-you could.”

“And you believed him?”

“Shouldn’t I have?”

“Why did you?”

She considered this for a while, as though a great deal depended on the answer. “He was the initial officer on the case. The chief investigator. I found him rude, obscene, cynical, jabbing people with the sharp end of a stick whenever he could. Horrible. But almost always right. This may not make much sense to you, but I understand dreadful people like Jack Hardwick. I even trust them. So here we are, Detective Gurney.”

He stared at the asparagus ferns, calculating, for no reason he was aware of, the compass point to which they were leaning en masse. Presumably, it would be 180 degrees away from the prevailing winds on the mountain, into the lee of the storms. Val Perry seemed content with his silence. He could still hear the modulated buzzing of the hummingbirds’ wings as they continued their ritual combat-if that’s what it was. It sometimes went on for an hour or more. It was hard to understand how such a prolonged confrontation, or seduction, could be an efficient use of energy.

“You mentioned a few minutes ago that Jillian had an unhealthy interest in unhealthy men. Were you including Scott Ashton in that description?”

“God, no, of course not. Scott was the best thing that ever happened to Jillian.”

“You approved of their marriage decision?”

“ Approved? How quaint!”

“I’ll put it another way. Were you pleased?”

Her mouth smiled while her eyes regarded him coolly. “Jillian had certain significant … deficits , shall we say? Deficits that demanded professional intervention for the foreseeable future. Being married to a psychiatrist, one of the best in the field, could certainly be an advantage. I know that sounds… wrong, somehow. Exploitative, perhaps? But Jillian was unique in many ways. And uniquely in need of help.”

Gurney raised a quizzical eyebrow.

She sighed. “Are you aware that Dr. Ashton is the director of the special high school Jillian attended?”

“Wouldn’t that create a conflict of-”

“No,” she interrupted, sounding like she was accustomed to arguing the point. “He’s a psychiatrist, but when she was enrolled at the school, he was never her psychiatrist. So there was no ethical issue, no doctor-patient thing. Naturally, people talked. Gossip-gossip-gossip. ‘He’s a doctor, she was a patient, blah, blah, blah.’ But the legal, ethical reality was more like a former student marrying the president of her college. She left that place when she was seventeen. She and Scott didn’t become personally involved for another year and a half. End of story. Of course, it wasn’t the end of the gossip.” Defiance flashed in her eyes.

“Seems like skating close to the edge,” commented Gurney, as much to himself as to Val Perry.

Again she burst into her shocking laugh. “If Jillian thought they were skating close to the edge, for her that would have been the best thing about it. The edge was where she always wanted to be.”

Interesting, thought Gurney. Interesting, too, was the glitter in Val Perry’s eyes. Maybe Jillian wasn’t the only one in love with life on the edge.

“And Dr. Ashton?” he asked mildly.

“Scott doesn’t care what anyone thinks about anything.” It was a trait she clearly admired.

“So when Jillian was eighteen, maybe nineteen, he proposed marriage?”

“Nineteen. She did the proposing, he accepted.”

As he considered this, he watched the strange excitement in her subsiding.

“So he accepted her proposal. How did you feel about that?”

At first he thought she hadn’t heard him. Then, in a small hoarse voice, looking away, she said, “Relieved.” She stared at Gurney’s asparagus ferns as though somewhere among them she might locate an appropriate explanation for her rapidly shifting feelings. A mild breeze had materialized while they’d been speaking, and the tops of the ferns were waving gently.

He waited, saying nothing.

She blinked, her jaw muscles clenching and relaxing. When she spoke, it was with apparent effort, forcing the individual words out as though each were as heavy as something in a dream. “I was relieved to have the responsibility taken off my hands.” She opened her mouth as though she were about to say more, then closed it with only a slight shake of her head. A gesture of disapproval, thought Gurney. Disapproval of herself. Was that the root of her desire to see Hector Flores dead? To pay her guilty debt to her daughter?

Whoa. Slow down. Stay in touch with the facts .

“I didn’t intend…” She let her voice trail off, leaving it unclear what was unintended.

“What do you think of Scott Ashton?” Gurney asked in a brisk tone, as far from her dark and complex mood as he could get.

She responded instantly, as though the question were a lifesaving escape hatch. “Scott Ashton is brilliant, ambitious, decisive…” She paused.

“And?”

“And cool to the touch.”

“Why do you think he would want to marry a-”

“A woman as crazy as Jillian?” She shrugged unconvincingly. “Possibly because she was breathtakingly beautiful?”

He nodded, unconvinced.

“I know this sounds incredibly trite, but Jillian was special, really special. ” She gave the word an almost lurid depth and color. “Did you know her IQ was 168?”

“That’s remarkable.”

“Yes. It was the highest score the testing service had ever measured. They tested her three times, just to make sure.”

“So in addition to everything else, Jillian was a genius?”

“Oh, yes, a genius,” she agreed, a brittle animation returning to her voice. “And, of course, a nymphomaniac. Did I forget to mention that?”