John Verdon - Think of a Number

“Yes.” The flat simplicity of Holdenfield’s response created a silence in the room. After a while the captain spoke with his predictable antagonism.

“So what are we supposed to do? Issue an APB for a polite thirty-year-old with a vibrating drive shaft and a machete in his hand?”

Hardwick reacted to this with a twisted smile and Blatt with an explosive laugh.

Stimmel said, “Sometimes a grand finale is part of the plan.” He got the attention of everyone except Blatt, who kept laughing. When Blatt quieted down, Stimmel continued, “Anybody remember the Duane Merkly case?”

No one did.

“Vietnam vet,” said Stimmel. “Had problems with the VA. Problems with authority. Had a nasty Akita guard dog that ate one of his neighbor’s ducks. Neighbor called the cops. Duane hated cops. Next month the Akita ate the neighbor’s beagle. Neighbor shot the Akita. Conflict escalates, and more shit happens. One day the Vietnam vet takes the neighbor hostage. Says he wants five thousand dollars for the Akita or he’s going to kill the guy. Local cops arrive, SWAT team arrives. They take up positions around the perimeter of the property. Thing is, nobody looked into Duane’s service record. So nobody knew he was a demolitions specialist. Duane specialized in rigging remote-detonation land mines.” Stimmel fell silent, letting his audience imagine the outcome.

“You mean the fucker blew everybody up?” asked Blatt, impressed.

“Not everybody. Six dead, six permanently disabled.”

Rodriguez looked frustrated. “What’s the point of this?”

“Point is, he’d purchased the components for the mines two years earlier. The grand finale was always the plan.”

Rodriguez shook his head. “I don’t get the relevance.”

Gurney did, and it made him uneasy.

Kline looked at Holdenfield. “What do you think, Becca?”

“Do I think our man has big plans? It’s possible. I do know one thing…”

She was interrupted by a perfunctory knock at the door. The door opened, and a uniformed sergeant stepped halfway into the room and addressed Rodriguez.

“Sir? Sorry to interrupt. You’ve got a call from a Lieutenant Nardo in Connecticut. I told him you were in a meeting. He says it’s an emergency, has to talk to you now.”

Rodriguez sighed the sigh of a man unfairly burdened. “I’ll take it on the one here,” he said, tilting his head toward the phone on the low filing cabinet against the wall behind him.

The sergeant retreated. Two minutes later the phone rang.

“Captain Rodriguez here.” For another two minutes, he held the phone to his ear in tense concentration. “That’s bizarre,” he said finally. “In fact, it’s so bizarre, Lieutenant, I’d like you to repeat it word for word to our case team here. I’m putting you on speakerphone now. Please go ahead-tell them exactly what you told me.”

The voice that came from the phone a moment later was tense and hard. “This is John Nardo, Wycherly PD. Can you hear me?” Rodriguez said yes, and Nardo continued, “As you know, one of our officers was killed on duty this morning at the home of Gregory Dermott. We are presently on site with a crime-scene team. Twenty minutes ago a phone call was received for Mr. Dermott. He was told by the caller, quote, ‘You’re next in line, and after you it’s Gurney’s turn.’”

What? Gurney wondered if he could possibly have heard right.

Kline asked Nardo to repeat the phone message, and he did.

“Have you gotten anything yet from the phone company on the source?” asked Hardwick.

“Cell phone within this general area. No GPS data, just the location of the transmitting tower. Obviously, no caller ID.”

“Who took the call?” asked Gurney. Surprisingly, the direct threat was having a calming effect on him. Perhaps because anything specific, anything with names attached to it, was more limited and therefore more manageable than an infinite range of possibilities. And perhaps because neither of the names was Madeleine.

“What do you mean, who took the call?” asked Nardo.

“You said a call was received for Mr. Dermott, not by Mr. Dermott.”

“Oh, yes, I see. Well, Dermott happened to be lying down with a migraine when the phone rang. He’s been kind of incapacitated since finding the body. One of the techs answered the phone in the kitchen. The caller asked for Dermott, said he was a close friend.”

“What name did he give?”

“Odd name. Carbis… Cabberdis… No, wait a second, here, the tech wrote it down-Charybdis.”

“Anything odd about the voice?”

“Funny you should ask. They were just trying to describe it. After Dermott came to the phone, he said he thought it sounded like some foreign accent, but our guy thought it was fake-someone trying to disguise his voice. Or maybe her voice-neither one of them was sure about that. Look, guys, sorry, but I have to get back to our situation here. Just wanted to give you the basic facts. We’ll be back in touch when we have something new.”

After the sound of the call disconnecting, there was a restless silence around the table. Then Hardwick cleared his throat so loudly that Holdenfield flinched.

“So, Davey boy,” he growled, “once again you’re the center of attention. ‘It’s Gurney’s turn.’ What are you, a magnet for serial murderers? All we got to do is dangle you on a string and wait for them to bite.”

Was Madeleine dangling on a string as well? Perhaps not yet. Hopefully not yet. After all, he and Dermott were at the head of the line. Assuming the lunatic was telling the truth. If so, it would give him some time-maybe time to get lucky. Time to make up for his oversights. How could he have been so stupid? So unaware of her safety? Idiot!

Kline looked troubled. “How did you get to be a target?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Gurney with a false lightness. His guilt gave him the impression that both Kline and Rodriguez were eyeing him with unfriendly curiosity. From the beginning he’d had misgivings about writing and mailing that poem, but he’d buried them without defining or articulating them. He was appalled at his ability to ignore danger, including danger to others. What had he felt at the time? Had the risk to Madeleine come anywhere close to his consciousness? Had he had an inkling and dismissed it? Could he have been that callous? Please, God, no!

In all this angst, he was sure of at least one thing. Sitting there in that conference room discussing the situation any further was not a tolerable option. If Dermott was next on the killer’s list, then that’s where Gurney had the best chance of finding the man they were looking for and ending the risk before it crept any closer. And if he himself was next after Dermott, then that was a battle he wanted to fight as far from Walnut Crossing as possible. He slid his chair back from the table and stood.

“If you’ll excuse me, there’s somewhere I need to be.”

At first this generated only blank looks around the table. Then the meaning registered with Kline.

“Jesus!” he cried. “You’re not thinking of going to Connecticut?”

“I have an invitation, and I’m accepting it.”

“That’s crazy. You don’t know what you’re walking into.”

“Actually,” said Rodriguez with a dismissive glance in Gurney’s direction, “a crime scene crawling with cops is a pretty safe place.”

“That would normally be true,” said Holdenfield. “Unless…” She let the thought dangle, as though she were walking around it to view it from different angles.

“Unless what?” snapped Rodriguez.

“Unless the killer is a cop.”