On Harrow Hill

“Were the lights on when you arrived?” asked Gurney.

“Not the regular lights. Just a small nightlight in a baseboard socket next to the bed. I asked the housekeeper if she’d touched anything when she found the body. She was positive she hadn’t. And the wife was in no condition to touch anything. She passed out in the doorway and was still in a state of shock when we got here.”

Gurney nodded. “So, if Russell had turned on the bathroom light when he went in there, which he must have done, then turned it off as he came out, his eyes probably wouldn’t have adjusted to the semidarkness in the bedroom. He probably never saw his assailant.”

“Right,” said Slovak, nodding. “He comes out of the bathroom. Assailant steps in front of him. One quick, deep slash. Assailant exits the way he entered.”

“But then, on the way out, the assailant dropped what you believe is the murder weapon. Then got attacked by the dog.”

“And killed it.”

“What kind of dog was it?”

“German shepherd. Big male. Even dead it looked scary.”

“They let it out at night?”

“So the housekeeper told us. They had one of those invisible electric dog fences, enclosing about six acres around the house.”

“Do you know where the dog was killed?”

“I assume where we found it. At the edge of the woods, not far from the conservatory.”

“Why do you assume that’s where it was killed?”

Slovak blinked in confusion and ran his hand back over his stubbly hair, as if to aerate a sweating scalp. “Why kill it and move it? That dog weighed over a hundred pounds. You think it matters?”

“It might.”

“I’ll see what we can do to pin it down.”

“Probably a good idea,” said Gurney. “But you’re the CIO on this. You run the case any way you want. It’s your turf, Brad. I’m just an observer, asking questions.”

Slovak gave him a knowing look. “You’re not just any observer.”

“Meaning?”

“When Chief Morgan told us you were coming, I did some research. I found an article in New York magazine from six years ago. Titled ‘Supercop.’”

“Jesus,” muttered Gurney.

“The article said you had the highest percentage of cleared homicide cases in the history of the NYPD, and that you’d worked hundreds of homicides. Hundreds. You know how many I’ve worked? Two—both when I was on loan to the Bastenburg department—and they were both domestics. I also found newspaper articles about cases you solved since you moved upstate—the White River murders and those killings up in Wolf Lake. So, any advice you have for me, I’m ready to listen.”

Gurney’s allergy to flattery led to an awkward silence.

He noted that Slovak was still holding his phone, which he’d taken out when he offered to show Gurney the photos he’d taken of the scene. It seemed like a good path back to the reality of the moment.

Gurney pointed to it. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Slovak tapped an icon, bringing up a series of photos that showed Russell’s body tilted down over the chair in the grotesque face-on-the-floor, legs-in-the-air position Morgan had described. But seeing the body on the phone screen, stripped of every iota of dignity, was different from just hearing about it.

“These are the ones I took,” said Slovak. “Our photographer took a lot more, different angles, plus a video. I can get those for you if you—” He was interrupted by the ringtone of the phone. He took the call. It lasted less than a minute.

“That was Chief Morgan. He wants me to interview the three gardeners, find out if they saw anything, et cetera. Freddy Martinez, our only Spanish-speaking officer, can translate. You can stay up here and get a closer look at things. Chief said he’d join you in a few minutes.”

When Slovak had departed, Gurney’s attention returned to the bloodstained area in front of the bathroom door, but now he was visualizing the revolting images he’d seen on Slovak’s phone.

Over the course of his career, he’d come to accept these disturbing experiences as a natural part of dealing with violent deaths. But being horrified, disgusted, or touched by the details of a brutal crime didn’t help in solving it. For some detectives, those emotions did seem to provide extra motivation, a willingness to go the extra mile. Gurney had never lacked motivation. But his personal motivation to get to the bottom of things—to expose the lies and find the truth—had little to do with empathy for the victim. It came from a colder place in his psyche. It arose from his desire to know.

He could picture himself trying to explain this to Madeleine. And he could imagine her asking, with a skeptical tilt of her head, what had compelled him that morning to get into his car and drive to Larchfield. “Didn’t it have something to do with your feelings about the way Mike Morgan was treated by his father? And your feelings about being alive because of what he did in that South Bronx hallway?”