John Verdon - Think of a Number

“I’m not sure,” said Gurney in a low voice, motioning Nardo to follow him back into the room they’d been sitting in earlier. “Maybe you can help me figure it out.”

Gurney sat in the chair facing the doorway. Nardo stood behind the chair on the opposite side of the square table. His expression was a combination of curiosity and something Gurney couldn’t decipher.

“Are you aware that someone was once stabbed in this house?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Shortly after Dermott bought the place, he was told by a neighbor that a woman who’d lived here years ago had been attacked by her husband.”

“How many years ago?”

Gurney was sure he saw a flicker of recognition in Nardo’s eyes.

“Maybe twenty, maybe twenty-five. Somewhere in there.”

It seemed to be the answer Nardo expected. He sighed and shook his head. “I hadn’t thought about that for a long time. Yeah, there was a domestic assault-about twenty-four years ago. Not too long after I joined the force. What about it?”

“Do you remember any of the details?”

“Before we go down memory lane, you mind addressing the relevance issue?”

“The woman who was attacked was stabbed in the throat.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?” There was a twitch at the corner of Nardo’s mouth.

“Two people have been attacked in this house. Of all the ways that someone could be attacked, it strikes me as a notable coincidence that both of those people were stabbed in the throat.”

“You’re making these things sound the same by the way you say it, but they got zip in common. What the hell does a police officer murdered on a protection assignment today have to do with a domestic disturbance twenty-four freaking years ago?”

Gurney shrugged. “If I knew more about the ‘disturbance,’ maybe I could tell you.”

“Fine. Okay. I’ll tell you what I can tell you, but it’s not much.” Nardo paused, staring down at the table, or more likely into the past. “I wasn’t on duty that night.”

An obvious disclaimer , thought Gurney. Why does the story demand a disclaimer?

“So this is pretty much secondhand,” Nardo went on. “As in most domestics, the husband was drunk out of his mind, got into an altercation with his wife, apparently picked up a bottle, whacked her with it, I guess it broke, she got cut, that’s about it.”

Gurney knew damn well that wasn’t it . The only question was how to jar the rest of the story loose. One of the unwritten rules of the job was to say as little as possible, and Nardo was carefully obeying the rule. Feeling that there was no time for a subtle approach, Gurney decided to plunge head-on into the barrier.

“Lieutenant, that’s a crock of shit!” he said, looking away with disgust.

“Crock of shit?” Nardo’s voice was pitched menacingly just above a whisper.

“I’m sure what you told me is true. The problem is what’s missing.”

“Maybe what’s missing is none of your freaking business.” Nardo was still sounding tough, but some of the confidence had gone out of the belligerence.

“Look, I’m not just some nosy asshole from another jurisdiction. Gregory Dermott got a phone call this morning threatening my life. My life. If there’s any possible way what’s going on here could be connected to your so-called domestic disturbance, I goddamn well have a right to know about it.”

Nardo cleared his throat and gazed up at the ceiling as if the right words-or an emergency exit-might suddenly appear there.

Gurney added in a softer tone, “You could start by telling me the names of the people involved.”

Nardo gave a little nod, pulled out the chair he’d been standing behind, and sat down. “Jimmy and Felicity Spinks.” He sounded resigned to an unpleasant truth.

“You say the names like you knew them pretty well.”

“Yeah. Well. Anyway…” Somewhere in the house, a phone rang once. Nardo seemed not to hear it. “Anyway, Jimmy used to drink a bit. More than a bit, I guess. Came home drunk one night, got into a fight with Felicity. Like I said, he ended up cutting her pretty bad with a broken bottle. She lost a lot of blood. I didn’t see it, I was off that night, but the guys who were on the call talked about the blood for a week.” Nardo was staring at the table again.

“She survived?”

“What? Yeah, yeah, she survived, but just barely. Brain damage.”

“What happened to her?”

“Happened? I think she was put in some kind of nursing home.”

“What about the husband?”

Nardo hesitated. Gurney couldn’t tell whether he was having a hard time remembering or just didn’t want to talk about it. “Claimed self-defense,” he said with evident distaste. “Ended up getting a plea deal. Sentence reduced to time served. Lost his job. Left town. Social services took their kid. End of story.”

Gurney’s antenna, sensitized by a thousand interrogations, told him there was still something missing. He waited, observing Nardo’s discomfort. In the background he could hear an intermittent voice-probably the voice of whoever had answered the phone-but couldn’t make out the words.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s the big deal about that story, that you didn’t just tell me the whole thing to begin with?”

Nardo looked squarely at Gurney. “Jimmy Spinks was a cop.”

The frisson that swept through Gurney’s body brought with it half a dozen urgent questions, but before he could ask any, a square-jawed woman with a sandy crew cut appeared suddenly at the doorway. She wore jeans and a dark polo shirt. A Glock in a quick-draw holster was strapped under her left arm.

“Sir, we just got a call you need to know about.” An unspoken immediately flashed in her eyes.

Looking relieved at the distraction, he gave the newcomer his full attention and waited for her to go on. Instead she glanced uncertainly toward Gurney.

“He’s with us,” said Nardo without pleasure. “Go ahead.”

She gave Gurney a second glance, no friendlier than the first, then advanced to the table and laid a miniature digital phone recorder down in front of Nardo. It was about the size of an iPod.

“It’s all on there, sir.”

He hesitated for a moment, squinting at the device, then pushed a button. The playback began immediately. The quality was excellent.

Gurney recognized the first voice as that of the woman standing in front of him.

“GD Security Systems.” Apparently she’d been instructed to answer Dermott’s phone as though she were an employee.

The second voice was bizarre-and thoroughly familiar to Gurney from the call he’d listened in on at Mark Mellery’s request. It seemed so long ago. Four deaths had intervened between that call and this one-deaths that had shaken his sense of time. Mark in Peony, Albert Rudden in the Bronx, Richard Kartch in Sotherton (Richard Kartch -why did that name always bring with it an uneasy feeling, a feeling of discrepancy?), and Officer Gary Sissek in Wycherly.

There was no mistaking that weirdly shifting pitch and accent.

“If I could hear God, what would He tell me?” the voice asked with the menacing lilt of a horror-movie villain.

“Excuse me?” The female cop on the recording sounded as taken aback as any real receptionist might have been.

The voice repeated, more insistently, “If I could hear God, what would He tell me?”

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I think we may have a bad connection. Are you using a cell phone?”

Speaking quickly to Nardo, she interjected some live commentary. “I was just trying to prolong the call, like you said, to keep him talking as long as possible.”