John Verdon - Think of a Number

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An extraordinary fiction debut, Think of a Number is an exquisitely plotted novel of suspense that grows relentlessly darker and more frightening as its pace accelerates, forcing its deeply troubled characters to moments of startling self-revelation.
Arriving in the mail over a period of weeks are taunting letters that end with a simple declaration, 'Think of any number.picture it.now see how well I know your secrets.' Amazingly, those who comply find that the letter writer has predicted their random choice exactly. For Dave Gurney, just retired as the NYPD's top homicide investigator and forging a new life with his wife, Madeleine, in upstate New York, the letters are oddities that begin as a diverting puzzle but quickly ignite a massive serial murder investigation.
What police are confronted with is a completely baffling killer, one who is fond of rhymes filled with threats and warnings, whose attention to detail is unprecedented, and who has an uncanny knack for disappearing into thin air. Even more disturbing, the scale of his ambition seems to widen as events unfold.
Brought in as an investigative consultant, Dave Gurney soon accomplishes deductive breakthroughs that leave local police in awe. Yet, even as he matches wits with his seemingly clairvoyant opponent, Gurney's tragedy-marred past rises up to haunt him, his marriage approaches a dangerous precipice, and finally, a dark, cold fear builds that he's met an adversary who can't be stopped.
In the end, fighting to keep his bearings amid a whirlwind of menace and destruction, Gurney sees the truth of what he's become – what we all become when guilty memories fester – and how his wife Madeleine's clear-eyed advice may be the only answer that makes sense.
A work that defies easy labels – at once a propulsive masterpiece of suspense and an absorbing immersion in the lives of characters so real we seem to hear their heartbeats – Think of a Number is a novel you'll not soon forget.

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John Verdon Think of a Number The first book in the Dave Gurney series 2010 - фото 1

John Verdon

Think of a Number

The first book in the Dave Gurney series, 2010

For Naomi

Prologue

“Where were you?” said the old woman in the bed. “I had to pee, and no one came.”

Unruffled by her nasty tone, the young man stood at the foot of the bed, beaming .

“I had to pee,” she repeated, more vaguely, as if she were now unsure what the words meant .

“I have good news, Mother,” said the man. “Soon everything will be all right. Everything will be taken care of.”

“Where do you go when you leave me?” Her voice again was sharp, querulous .

“Not far, Mother. You know very well I never go far.”

“I don’t like to be alone.”

His smile broadened, was almost beatific. “Very soon everything will be all right. Everything will be the way it was supposed to be. You can trust me, Mother. I found a way to fix everything. What he took he will give, when he gets what he gave.”

“You write such beautiful poetry.”

There were no windows in the room. The sideways light from the bedside lamp-the sole source of illumination-emphasized the thick scar on the woman’s throat and the shadows in her son’s eyes .

“Will we go dancing?” she asked, staring past him and past the dark wall behind him to a brighter vision .

“Of course, Mother. Everything will be perfect.”

“Where’s my little Dickie Duck?”

“Right here, Mother.”

“Will Dickie Duck come to bed?”

“To beddy-bye, to beddy-bye, to beddy-bye.”

“I have to pee,” she said, almost coquettishly .

Part One

Fatal Memories

Chapter 1

Cop art

Jason Strunk was by all accounts an inconsequential fellow, a bland thirty-something, nearly invisible to his neighbors-and apparently inaudible as well, since none could recall a single specific thing he’d ever said. They couldn’t even be certain that he’d ever spoken. Perhaps he’d nodded, perhaps said hello, perhaps muttered a word or two. It was hard to say.

All expressed a conventional initial amazement, even a temporary disbelief, at the revelation of Mr. Strunk’s obsessive devotion to killing middle-aged men with mustaches and his uniquely disturbing way of disposing of the bodies: cutting them into manageable segments, wrapping them colorfully, and mailing them to local police officers as Christmas presents.

Dave Gurney gazed intently at the colorless, placid face of Jason Strunk-actually, the original Central Booking mug shot of Jason Strunk-that stared back at him from his computer screen. The mug shot had been enlarged to make the face life-size, and it was surrounded at the borders of the screen by the tool icons of a creative photo-retouching program that Gurney was just starting to get the hang of.

He moved one of the brightness-control tools on the screen to the iris of Strunk’s right eye, clicked his mouse, and then examined the small highlight he’d created.

Better, but still not right.

The eyes were always the hardest-the eyes and the mouth-but they were the key. Sometimes he had to experiment with the position and intensity of one tiny highlight for hours, and even then he’d end up with something not quite what it should be, not good enough to show to Sonya, and definitely not Madeleine.

The thing about the eyes was that they, more than anything else, captured the tension, the contradiction-the uncommunicative blandness spiked with a hint of cruelty that Gurney had often discerned in the faces of murderers with whom he’d had the opportunity to spend quality time.

He’d gotten the look right with his patient manipulation of the mug shot of Jorge Kunzman (the Walmart stock clerk who always kept the head of his last date in his refrigerator until he could replace it with one more recent). He’d been pleased with the result, which conveyed with disturbing immediacy the deep black emptiness lurking in Mr. Kunzman’s bored expression, and Sonya’s excited reaction, her gush of praise, had solidified his opinion. It was that reception, plus the unexpected sale of the piece to one of Sonya’s collector friends, that motivated him to produce the series of creatively doctored photographs now being featured in a show headlined Portraits of Murderers by the Man Who Caught Them, in Sonya’s small but pricey gallery in Ithaca.

How a recently retired NYPD homicide detective with a yawning uninterest in art in general and trendy art in particular, and a deep distaste for personal notoriety, could have ended up as the focus of a chic university-town art show described by local critics as “a cutting-edge blend of brutally raw photographs, unflinching psychological insights, and masterful graphic manipulations” was a question with two very different answers: his own and his wife’s.

As far as he was concerned, it all began with Madeleine’s cajoling him into taking an art-appreciation course with her at the museum in Cooperstown. She was forever trying to get him out-out of his den, out of the house, out of himself, just out . He’d learned that the best way to stay in control of his own time was through the strategy of periodic capitulations. The art-appreciation course was one of these strategic moves, and although he dreaded the prospect of sitting through it, he expected it to immunize him against further pressures for at least a month or two. It wasn’t that he was a couch potato-far from it. At the age of forty-seven, he could still do fifty push-ups, fifty chin-ups, and fifty sit-ups. He just wasn’t very fond of going places.

The course, however, turned out to be a surprise-in fact, three surprises. First, despite his pre-course assumption that his greatest challenge would be staying awake, he found the instructor, Sonya Reynolds, a gallery owner and artist of regional renown, riveting. She was not conventionally beautiful, not in the archetypal Northern European Catherine Deneuve mode. Her mouth was too pouty, her cheekbones overly prominent, her nose too strong. But somehow the imperfect parts were unified into a uniquely striking whole by large eyes of a deep smoky green and by a manner that was completely relaxed and naturally sensual. There were not many men in the class, just six of the twenty-six attendees, but she had the absolute attention of all six.

The second surprise was his positive reaction to the subject matter. Because it was a special interest of hers, Sonya devoted considerable time to art derived from photography-photography that had been manipulated to create images that were more powerful or communicative than the originals.

The third surprise came three weeks into the twelve-week course, on the night that she was commenting enthusiastically on a contemporary artist’s silk-screen prints derived from solarized photographic portraits. As Gurney gazed at the prints, the idea came to him that he could take advantage of an unusual resource to which he had special access and to which he could bring a special perspective. The notion was strangely exciting. The last thing he’d expected from an art-appreciation course was excitement.

Once this occurred to him- the concept of enhancing, clarifying, intensifying criminal mug shots , particularly the mug shots of murderers, in ways that would capture and convey the nature of the beast he had spent his career studying, pursuing, and outwitting-it took hold, and he thought about it more often than he would have been comfortable admitting. He was, after all, a cautious man who could see both sides of every question, the flaw in every conviction, the naïveté in every enthusiasm.

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