John Verdon - Shut Your Eyes Tight

“He did exactly that, and there it has remained stuck for nearly four months now in a dust storm of wheel spinning, without a centimeter of real progress. Hence the beautiful mother of the beautiful bride’s interest in exploring another avenue of resolution.”

An exploration likely to replace the dust storm of wheel spinning with a shit storm of territorial defense, thought Gurney.

Back away now, before it’s too late , the small voice of wisdom whispered.

Then another voice spoke with a carefree confidence. You should at least find out what they discovered in the cottage. More knowledge is always a good thing .

“So you arrived at the scene and someone directed you to the body?” asked Gurney.

A twitch in Hardwick’s mouth signaled the arrival of the memory. “Yes. I was directed to the body. I was conscious of how the fuckers were watching me as they brought me to the doorway. I remember thinking, ‘They’re expecting a major reaction, which means that there’s something awful in there.’ ” He paused. His lips drew back from his teeth for a second or two, and then he went on. “Well, I was right about that. One hundred percent right.” He seemed authentically disturbed.

“The body was visible from the doorway?” asked Gurney.

“Oh, yeah, it was visible all right.”

Hardwick heaved himself up from the couch, rubbed his face roughly with both hands like a man trying to get himself fully awake after a night of bad dreams.

“Any chance you might have a cold bottle of beer in the house?”

“Not at the moment,” said Gurney.

“Not at the moment? Fuck does that mean? Not at the moment, but maybe in a minute or two an icy Heineken might materialize in front of me?”

Gurney noted that whatever fleeting vulnerability the man had just experienced at his recollection of what he’d seen four months ago was now gone.

“So,” Gurney went on, ignoring the beer diversion, “the body was observable from the doorway?”

Hardwick walked over to the den window that looked out on the back pasture. The northern sky was dusky gray. As he spoke, he gazed out in the direction of the high ridge that led to the old bluestone quarry.

“The body was sitting in a chair at a small square table in the front room, six feet from the entry door.” He grimaced, as one might at the smell of a skunk. “As I said, the body was sitting at the table. But the head was not on the body. The head was on the table in a pool of blood. On the table, facing the body, still wearing the tiara you saw in the video.”

He paused, as if to ensure the accurate ordering of details. “The cottage had three rooms-the front room and, behind it, a small kitchen and a small bedroom-plus a tiny bathroom and a closet off the bedroom. Wood floors, no rugs, nothing on the walls. Apart from the substantial amount of blood on and around the body, there were a few drops of blood toward the back of the room near the bedroom doorway and a few more drops near the bedroom window, which was wide open.”

“Escape route?” asked Gurney.

“No doubt about that. Partial footprint in the soil outside the window.” Hardwick turned from the den window and gave Gurney one of his obnoxiously sly looks. “That’s where it gets interesting.”

“The facts, Jack, just the facts. Spare me the coy bullshit.”

“Luntz had called the sheriff’s department because they had the nearest K-9 team, and they got to Ashton’s estate about five minutes after I did. The dog picks up a scent from a pair of Flores’s boots and races straight out through the woods like the trail is red hot. But he stops all of a sudden a hundred and fifty yards from the cottage-sniffing, sniffing, sniffing around in a pretty tight circle, and he stops and barks right on top of the weapon, which turned out to be a razor-sharp machete. But here’s the thing-after he found the machete, he couldn’t pick up any scent leading away from it. Handler led him around in a small circle, then a wider circle-kept at it for half an hour-but it was no good. The only trail the dog could find led from the back window of the cottage to the machete, nowhere else.”

“This machete was just lying out there on the ground?” asked Gurney.

“It had some leaves and loose dirt kicked over the blade, like a half-assed attempt had been made to conceal it.”

Gurney pondered this for a few seconds. “No doubt about it being the murder weapon?”

Hardwick looked surprised by the question. “Zero doubt. Victim’s blood still on it. Perfect DNA match. Also supported by the ME’s report.” Hardwick’s tone switched to one of rote repetition of something he’d said many times before. “Death caused by the severing of both carotid arteries and the spinal column between the cervical vertebrae C1 and C2 as the result of a chopping blow by a sharp, heavy blade, delivered with great force. Damage to neck tissues and vertebrae consistent with the machete discovered in the wooded area adjacent to the crime scene. So,” said Hardwick, switching back to his normal tone, “zero doubt. DNA is DNA.”

Gurney nodded slowly, absorbing this.

Hardwick continued, adding a familiar touch of provocation. “The only open question about that particular spot in the woods is why the trail stopped there, kind of like the trail at the Mellery crime scene that just-”

“Hold on a second, Jack. There’s a big difference between the visible boot prints we found at Mellery’s place and an invisible scent trail.”

“Fact is, they both ended in the middle of nowhere with no explanation.”

“No, Jack,” Gurney snapped, “the fact is, there was a perfectly good explanation for the boot prints-just as there will be a perfectly good, but entirely different, explanation for your scent problem.”

“Ah, Davey boy, that’s what always impressed me about you: your omniscience.”

“You know, I always believed you were smarter than you pretended to be. Now I’m not so sure.”

Hardwick’s smirk conveyed a sense of satisfaction with Gurney’s irritation. He switched to a new tone, all innocence and earnest curiosity. “So what do you think happened? How could Flores’s scent trail just end like that?”

Gurney shrugged. “Changed his shoes? Put plastic bags over his feet?”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Maybe to create the problem the dog ended up having? Make it impossible to track him wherever he went next, wherever he went to hide out?”

“Like Kiki Muller’s house?”

“I heard that name on the tape. Isn’t she the one who-”

“Who Flores was supposedly screwing. Right. Lived next door to Ashton. Wife of Carl Muller, marine engineer who was away on a ship half the time. Kiki was never seen after the day Flores disappeared, presumably not a coincidence.”

Gurney leaned back on the couch, mulling this over, having trouble with a piece of it. “I can understand why Flores might take precautions to keep from being tracked to a neighbor’s house or wherever he was actually going, but why wouldn’t he do that before he left the cottage? Why in the woods? Why after he went out and hid the machete and not before?”

“Maybe he wanted to get out of the cottage ASAP?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he wanted us to find the machete?”

“Then why bury it?”

“You mean half bury it. Didn’t you say that only the blade was covered with dirt?”

Hardwick smiled. “Interesting questions. Definitely worth pursuing.”

“And one other thing,” said Gurney. “Has anyone verified where either of the Mullers was at the time of the murder?”

“We know that Carl was chief engineer on a commercial fishing boat about fifty miles off Montauk that whole week. But we couldn’t find anyone who’d seen Kiki the day of the murder, or the day before for that matter.”