John Verdon - Shut Your Eyes Tight

Minor and short-lived as these moments were, they shook him, interrupted his fantasy of her infinite resilience, left him temporarily without that secure point of reference, the night-light that warded off gloom and monsters. Absurdly, this tiny nervous gesture had the power to arouse the feeling of sickness and constriction he’d had as a child when his mother started smoking. His mother puffing anxiously on her cigarette, sucking the mouthfuls of smoke into her lungs. Get hold of yourself, Gurney. Grow up, for Godsake .

“But I’m sure you know all that already, right?”

He stared at her for a moment, searching for the conversational thread he’d lost.

She shook her head in mock despair. “I’ll be in my sewing room for a while. Then I have to run up to the stores in Oneonta. If there’s anything you want, add it to the list on the sideboard.”

Hardwick arrived with a gust of wind and a growling muffler. He parked his vintage gas guzzler-a red GTO half restored, with epoxy patches yet to be primed-next to Gurney’s green Subaru Outback. The wind channeled an eddy of fallen leaves around the cars. The first thing Hardwick did when he got out was to cough violently, hack up phlegm, and spit it on the ground.

“Never could stand the stink of dead leaves! Always reminded me of horse manure.”

“Nicely put, Jack,” said Gurney as they shook hands. “You have a delicate way with words.”

They faced each other like badly matched bookends. Hardwick’s messy crew cut, florid skin, spider-veined nose, and watery blue malamute eyes gave him the appearance of a badly aging man with a perennial hangover. By contrast, Gurney’s salt-and-pepper hair was neatly combed-too neatly, Madeleine often told him-and at forty-eight he was still trim, kept his stomach firm with a regimen of sit-ups before his morning shower, and looked barely forty.

As Gurney ushered him into the house, Hardwick grinned. “She got to you, eh?”

“Not sure what you mean, Jack.”

“What was it got your attention? Love of truth and justice? Chance to kick Rodriguez in the balls? Or was it her fantastic ass?”

“Hard to say, Jack.” He found himself articulating the man’s name with a peculiar emphasis, as though it were a quick left jab. “Right now I’m just curious about the video.”

“That so? Not bored to death yet by retirement? Not desperate to get back in the game? Not hot to help the hot lady?”

“Just like to see the video. You bring it?”

“The murder movie? You’ve never seen anything like it, Davey boy. High-def DVD taken at the crime scene with the crime in progress.”

Hardwick was standing in the middle of the big room that served as kitchen, dining room, and sitting room, with an old country stove at one end and a fieldstone fireplace forty feet away at the other end. His gaze covered it all in a few seconds. “Shit, it’s a fucking feature spread in Mother Earth News. ”

“The DVD player is in the den,” said Gurney, leading the way.

The video began arrestingly with an aerial shot of the countryside, the camera’s position slowly moving down at a steep angle until it was sweeping over green treetops, the bright green of springtime, following the course of a narrow road and a rushing stream-parallel ribbons of black asphalt and glittering water that linked a series of well-kept homes amid sprawling lawns and picturesque outbuildings.

An estate somewhat larger and grander than any of the others came into view, and the progress of the airborne camera slowed. When it reached a position directly above a vast emerald lawn with daffodil borders, its forward movement ceased entirely, and it descended smoothly to ground level.

“Jesus,” said Gurney. “They rented a helicopter to shoot their wedding video?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” rasped Hardwick. “Actually, the helicopter was just for the intro. From this point on, the video was recorded by four fixed cameras that were set up on the lawn in a way that covered the whole property. So there’s a complete sound-and-image file of everything that happened outdoors.”

The cream-colored stone house with its surrounding stone patios and free-form flower beds looked like a transplant from the Cotswolds-springtime in the bucolic English countryside.

“Where is this place?” asked Gurney as he and Hardwick settled down on the den couch in front of the DVD monitor.

Hardwick feigned surprise. “You don’t recognize the exclusive little hamlet of Tambury?”

“Why should I?”

“Tambury is a hotbed of important people, and you’re an important guy. Anyone who’s anybody knows somebody who lives in Tambury.”

“Guess I haven’t made the grade. You going to tell me where it is?”

“Hour northeast of here, halfway to Albany. I’ll give you directions.”

“I won’t be needing-” Gurney began, then stopped with a quizzical frown. “Wait a second. That wouldn’t by any chance be within Sheridan Kline’s-”

Hardwick cut him off. “Kline’s county? You bet it would. So you’ll have a chance to work with your old friends. The DA has a soft spot in his heart for you.”

“Jesus,” muttered Gurney.

“Man thinks you’re a fucking genius. Course, he did take the credit for your Mellery triumph, being the suck-ass politician he is, but deep down inside he knows he owes you.”

Gurney shook his head, looking back at the screen as he spoke. “Deep down inside Sheridan Kline there is nothing but a black hole.”

“Davey, Davey, Davey, you have such cruel opinions of God’s children.” Then, without waiting for a response, he turned to the screen and began narrating the video.

“Caterers,” he said as a team of spikily coiffed young men and women in black pants and crisp white tunics set up a serving bar and half a dozen hot tables.

“The host,” he said, pointing at the screen as a smiling man in a midnight blue suit with a red flower on the lapel emerged from an arched doorway in the back of the house and walked out onto the lawn. “Fiancé, groom, husband, widower-all true on the same day, so call him whatever you want.”

“Scott Ashton?”

“The man himself.”

The man made his way purposefully along the edge of a flower bed toward the right side of the screen, but just before he disappeared, the angle of the scene switched, showing him walking toward what appeared to be a small guest cottage situated at the edge of the lawn where it abutted the woods, perhaps a hundred feet from the main house.

“How many cameras did you say this was shot with?” asked Gurney.

“Four on tripods-plus the one in the helicopter.”

“Who did the editing?”

“Video department at the bureau.”

Gurney watched Scott Ashton knocking on the cottage door-watched and heard, although the sound was not as sharp as the picture. The front of the door and Ashton’s back were about forty-five degrees to the camera. Ashton knocked again, calling out, “Hector.”

Gurney then heard what sounded to him like a Spanish-accented voice, too faint for the words to be recognizable. He glanced questioningly at Hardwick.

“We did an audio enhancement in the lab. ‘Está abierta.’ Translation: ‘It’s open.’ Confirms what Ashton thought he remembered Hector saying.”

Ashton opened the door, went inside, closed it behind him.

Hardwick picked up the remote, pressed the “fast-forward” button, explaining, “He’s in there five or six minutes. Then he opens the door, and you can hear Ashton saying, ‘If you change your mind…’ Then he comes out, closes the door behind him, walks away.” Hardwick let go of the “fast-forward” button as Ashton was emerging from the cottage, looking less happy than when he went in.