John Verdon - Think of a Number

Nardo squinted at the non sequitur.

“Crows are incredibly stupid,” said Dermott. “When you shoot one, another one comes. When you shoot that one, another comes, and then another, and another. You keep shooting them, and they keep coming.”

It was something Gurney had heard before-that crows would not let one of their own die alone. If a crow was dying, others would come and stand next to him, so he wouldn’t be alone. When he’d first heard that story, from his grandmother when he was ten or eleven years old, he had to leave the room because he knew he was going to cry. He went into the bathroom, and his heart ached.

“I saw a picture once of a crow shoot on a farm in Nebraska,” said Dermott with a mixture of amazement and contempt. “A farmer with a shotgun was standing next to a pile of dead crows that came up to his shoulder.” He paused, as if to allow Nardo time to appreciate the suicidal absurdity of crows and the relevance of their fate to the current situation.

Nardo shook his head. “You really think you can sit in here and shoot one cop after another as they come through the door without getting your head blown off? It’s not going to happen that way.”

“Of course it isn’t. Didn’t anyone ever tell you a literal mind is a small mind? I like the crow story, Lieutenant, but there are more efficient ways to exterminate vermin than shooting them one at a time. Gassing, for example. Gassing is very efficient, if you have the right sort of delivery system. Perhaps you’ve noticed that every room in this house is equipped with sprinklers. Every one except this one.” He paused again, his livelier eye sparkling with self-congratulation. “So if I shoot you and all the crows come flying in, I open two little valves on two little pipes, and twenty seconds later…” His smile became cherubic. “Do you have any idea what concentrated chlorine gas does to a human lung? And how rapidly it does it?”

Gurney watched Nardo struggling to assess this frighteningly contained man and his gassing threat. For an unnerving moment, he thought the cop’s pride and rage were about to propel him into a fatal leap forward, but instead Nardo took a few quiet breaths, which seemed to let some of the tension out of the spring, and spoke in a voice that sounded earnest and anxious.

“Chlorine compounds can be tricky. I worked with them in an antiterrorism unit. One guy accidentally produced some nitrogen trichloride as a by-product of another experiment. Didn’t even realize it. Blew his thumb off. Might not be as easy as you think to run your chemicals through a sprinkler system. I’m not sure you could do that.”

“Don’t waste your time trying to trick me, Lieutenant. You sound like you’re trying a technique from the police manual. What does it say-‘Express skepticism regarding the criminal’s plan, question his credibility, provoke him into providing additional details’? If you want to know more, there’s no need to trick me, just ask me. I have no secrets. What I do have, just so you know, are two fifty-gallon high-pressure tanks, filled with chlorine and ammonia, driven by an industrial compressor, linked directly to the main sprinkler pipe that feeds the system throughout the house. There are two valves concealed in this room that will join the combined one hundred gallons, releasing an enormous amount of gas in a highly concentrated form. As for the unlikely peripheral formation of nitrogen trichloride and the resultant explosion, I would regard that as a delightful plus, but I will be content with the simple asphyxiation of the Wycherly PD. It would be great fun to see you all blasted to pieces, but one must be content. The best must not be made the enemy of the good.”

“Mr. Dermott, what on earth is this all about?”

Dermott wrinkled his brow in a parody of someone who might be considering the question seriously.

“I received a note in the mail this morning. ‘Beware the snow, beware the sun, / the night, the day, nowhere to run.’” He quoted the words from Gurney’s poem with sarcastic histrionics, shooting him an inquisitive glance as he did so. “Empty threats, but I must thank whoever sent it. It reminded me how short life can be, that I should never put off till tomorrow what I can do today.”

“I don’t really get what you mean,” said Nardo, still in his earnest mode.

“Just do what I say, and you’ll end up understanding perfectly.”

“Fine, no problem. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt unnecessarily.”

“No, of course not.” The stretchy, wormlike smile came and went. “Nobody wants that. In fact, to avoid unnecessary hurt, I really do need you to lie down on the floor right now.”

They had come full circle. The question was, what now? Gurney was watching Nardo’s face for readable signs. How much had the man put together? Had it dawned on him yet who the woman in the chair might be, or the smiley psychopath with the whiskey bottle and the gun?

At least he must have finally realized, if nothing else, that Dermott was the murderer of Officer Sissek. That would account for the hatred he couldn’t quite conceal in his eyes. Suddenly the tension was back in the spring. Nardo looked wild with adrenaline, with a primitive, consequences-be-damned emotion far more powerful than reason. Dermott saw it, too, but far from cowing him, it seemed to elate him, to energize him. His hand tightened just a little on the handle of the revolver, and for the first time the slithery smile revealed a lively glimmer of teeth.

Less than a second before a.38 slug would surely have ended Nardo’s life, and less than two seconds before a second slug would have ended his own, Gurney broke the circuit with a furious, guttural shout.

“Do what the man said! Get down on the fucking floor! Get down on the fucking floor NOW!”

The effect was stunning. The antagonists were frozen in place, the insidious momentum of the confrontation shattered by Gurney’s raw outburst.

The fact that no one was dead persuaded him that he was on the right track, but he wasn’t sure exactly what that track was. To the extent that he could read Nardo, the man looked betrayed. Beneath his more opaque exterior, Dermott seemed disconcerted but was striving, Gurney suspected, not to let the interruption undermine his control.

“Very wise advice from your friend,” Dermott said to Nardo. “I’d follow it at once if I were you. Detective Gurney has such a good mind. Such an interesting man. A famous man. You can learn so much about a person from a simple Internet search. You’d be amazed at what sort of information pops up with a name and a zip code. So little privacy anymore.” Dermott’s sly tone sent a wave of nausea through Gurney’s chest. He tried to remind himself that Dermott’s specialty was persuading people that he knew more about them than he really did. But the idea that his own failure to think ahead regarding the postmark problem could in any way have put Madeleine in jeopardy was intrusive and nearly unbearable.

Nardo reluctantly lowered himself to the floor, eventually lying on his stomach in the position of a man about to do a push-up. Dermott directed him to clasp his hands behind his head, “if it’s not too much to ask.” For a terrible moment, Gurney thought it might be the setup for an immediate execution. Instead, after gazing down with satisfaction at the prone lieutenant, Dermott carefully put the whiskey bottle he’d been carrying on the cedar hope chest next to the big stuffed bird-or, as Gurney now realized, the big stuffed goose . With a sickening chill, he recalled a detail from the lab reports. Goose down . Then Dermott reached down to Nardo’s right ankle, pulled a small automatic pistol out of a holster strapped there, and placed it in his own pocket. Again the humorless grin waxed and waned.