John Verdon - Think of a Number

“So you have an ego after all.”

“If you want to call it that. I know my limitations, and I know my strengths.”

He also knew from his years of interrogations how certain personalities would respond to certain attitudes, and he wasn’t wrong about Kline. The man’s gaze reflected a more comfortable understanding of that exotic flavor he’d been trying to label.

“We should discuss compensation,” said Kline. “What I have in mind is an hourly rate that we’ve established for certain consultant categories in the past. I can offer you seventy-five dollars an hour, plus expenses-expenses within reason-starting now.”

“That’s fine.”

Kline extended his politician’s hand. “I look forward to working with you. Ellen has put together a packet of forms, releases, affidavits, confidentiality agreements. It may take you some time if you want to read what you’re signing. She’ll give you an office you can use. There are details we’ll need to work out as we go along. I’ll personally bring you up to date on any new information I receive from BCI or from my own people, and I’ll include you in general briefings like the one yesterday. If you need to talk to investigative staff, arrange that through my office. To talk to witnesses, suspects, persons of interest-ditto, though my office. That okay with you?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t waste words. I don’t, either. Now that we’re working together, let me ask you something.” Kline sat back and steepled his fingers, lending his question added weight. “Why would you shoot someone first, then stab them fourteen times?”

“That large a number would normally suggest an act of rage or a cold-blooded effort to create an appearance of rage. The exact number may be meaningless.”

“But shooting him first…”

“It suggests that the purpose of the stabbing was something other than homicide.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Kline, cocking his head like a curious bird.

“Mellery was shot at very close range. The bullet severed the carotid artery. There was no sign in the snow that the gun was dropped or thrown to the ground. Therefore the killer must have taken the time to remove the material he’d wrapped around it to deaden the sound and then replace the gun in a pocket or holster before switching to the broken bottle and getting in position to stab the victim-now lying in the snow unconscious. The arterial wound would have been spurting blood dramatically at that point. So why bother with the stabbing? It wasn’t to kill the victim-who was, for all practical purposes, already dead. No, the perpetrator’s objective must have been either to obliterate the evidence of the gunshot-”

“Why?” asked Kline, moving forward in his chair.

“I don’t know why. It’s just a possibility. But it’s more likely, given the content of the notes preceding the attack and the trouble he took to bring the broken bottle, the stabbing has some ritual significance.”

“Satanic?” Kline’s expression of conventional horror poorly concealed his appetite for the media potential of such a motive.

“I doubt it. As crazy as the notes seem, they don’t strike me as being crazy in that particular way. No, I mean ‘ritual’ in the sense that doing the murder in a specific way was important to him.”

“A revenge fantasy?”

“Could be,” said Gurney. “He wouldn’t be the first killer to have spent months or years imagining how he was going to get even with someone.”

Kline looked troubled. “If the key part of the attack was the stabbing, why bother with the gun?”

“Instant incapacity. He wanted it to be a sure thing, and a gun is a surer way than a broken bottle to incapacitate a victim. After all the planning that went into this business, he didn’t want anything to go wrong.”

Kline nodded, then jumped to another piece of the puzzle.

“Rodriguez insists the murderer is one of the guests.”

Gurney smiled. “Which one?”

“He’s not ready to say, but that’s where he’s putting his money. You don’t agree?”

“The idea is not completely crazy. The guests are housed on the institute grounds, which puts them all, if not at the scene, at least conveniently close to the scene. They’re definitely an odd lot-druggy, emotionally erratic, at least one with major-league criminal connections.”

“But?”

“There are practical problems.”

“Like what?”

“Footprints and alibis, to begin with. Everyone agrees the snow began around dusk and continued until after midnight. The murderer’s footprints entered the property from the public road after the snow had stopped completely.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“The prints are in the snow, but there’s no new snow in the prints. For one of the guests to have made those prints, he would have to have left the main house before the snow fell, since there are no prints in the snow leading away from the house.”

“In other words…”

“In other words, someone would have to have been missing from dusk to midnight. But no one was.”

“How do you know that?”

“Officially, I don’t. Let’s just say I heard a rumor from Jack Hardwick. According to the interview summaries, every individual was seen by at least six other individuals at various times in the evening. So unless everyone is lying, everyone was present.”

Kline looked reluctant to brush aside the possibility that everyone might be lying.

“Maybe someone in the house had help,” he said.

“You mean maybe someone in the house hired a hit man?”

“Something like that.”

“Then why be there at all?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“The only reason the current guests are under any suspicion at all is their physical proximity to the murder. If you were hiring an outsider to come in and do the murder, why put yourself in that proximity to begin with?”

“Excitement?”

“I guess that’s conceivable,” said Gurney with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

“All right, let’s forget about the guests for the moment,” said Kline. “How about a mob hit set up by someone other than one of the guests?”

“Is that Rodriguez’s backup theory?”

“He thinks it’s a possibility. I gather from your expression that you don’t.”

“I don’t see the logic of it. I don’t think it would even come to mind if Patty Cakes didn’t happen to be one of the guests. First, there’s nothing currently known about Mark Mellery that could make him a mob target-”

“Wait a minute. Suppose the persuasive guru got one of his guests-someone like Patty Cakes-to confess something to him, you know, in the interest of inner harmony or spiritual peace or whatever bullshit Mellery was selling these people.”

“And?”

“And maybe later, when he’s home, the bad guy gets to thinking that he might have been a little rash with all that honesty and openness. Harmony with the universe might be a swell thing, but maybe not worth the risk of someone’s having information that could cause you serious problems. Maybe when he’s away from the charm of the guru, the bad guy reverts to thinking in more practical terms. Maybe he hires someone to eliminate the risk he’s concerned about.”

“Interesting hypothesis.”

“But?”

“But there isn’t a contract guy on earth who’d bother with the kind of mind games involved in this particular murder. Men who kill for money don’t hang their boots from tree limbs and leave poems on corpses.”

Kline looked like he might debate this but stopped when the door opened after a perfunctory knock. The sleek creature from the reception desk entered with a lacquered tray on which there were two china cups and saucers, an elegantly spouted pot, a delicate sugar bowl and creamer, and a Wedgwood plate bearing four biscotti. She set the tray on the coffee table.