Read Online Peter Pan Must Die by John Verdon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Verdon
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when, truth be told, it wasn’t anything like that. His involvement was no more a matter of rational choice than the idea that he might choose to be, or not to be, affected by gravity.
The truth was that a complex murder case attracted his attention and curiosity like nothing else on earth. He could make up reasons for it. He could say it was all about justice. About rectifying an imbalance in the scheme of things. About standing up for those who had been struck down. About a quest for truth.
But there were other times when he considered it nothing but high-stakes puzzle-solving, an obsessive-compulsive drive to fit all the loose pieces together. An intellectual game, a contest of mind and will. A playing field on which he could excel.
And then there was Madeleine’s dark suggestion: the possibility that he was somehow attracted by the terrible
risk
itself, that some self-hating part of his psyche kept drawing him blindly into the orbit of death.
His mind rejected that possibility even as his heart was chilled by it.
But ultimately he had no faith in anything he thought or said about the
why
of his profession. They were just ideas he had about it, labels he was sometimes comfortable with.
Did any of the labels capture the essence of the gravitational pull?
He couldn’t say.
The bottom line was this:
Rationalize and temporize as he might, he could no more walk away from a challenge like the Spalter case than an alcoholic could walk away from a martini after the first sip.
Suddenly exhausted, he closed his eyes.
When he finally opened them, he caught a glimpse of the Pepacton Reservoir dead ahead. Meaning they’d passed through Cat Hollow and were back in Delaware County, less than twenty minutes from Walnut Crossing. The water in the reservoir was depressingly low, the result of a dry summer, the kind of summer likely to produce a drab autumn.
His mind returned to the meeting at Bedford Hills.
He looked over at Hardwick, who appeared to be lost in his own unpleasant thoughts.
“So tell me, Jack, what do you know about Carl Spalter’s ‘demented slut’ daughter?”
“You obviously skimmed past that page in the trial transcript—where she testified to hearing Kay on the phone with someone the day before Carl got hit, saying that everything was arranged and that in twenty-four hours her problems would be over. The lovely young lady’s name is Alyssa. Think positive thoughts about her. Her demented sluttiness could be the key that springs our client.”
Hardwick was doing sixty-five on a winding stretch of road where the posted limit was forty-five. Gurney checked his seat belt. “You want to tell me why?”
“Alyssa is nineteen, movie-star gorgeous, and pure poison. I’ve been told she has the words ‘No Limits’ tattooed in a special place.” Hardwick’s expression exploded into a manic grin that faded as quickly as it appeared. “She’s also a heroin addict.”
“How does this help Kay?”
“Be patient. Seems Carl was very generous with little Alyssa. He spoiled her rotten, maybe worse than rotten—as long as he was alive. But his will was another matter. Maybe he had a moment of insight into what his junkie daughter could do with a few million bucks at herdisposal. So his will provided that everything would go to Kay. And he hadn’t changed the will at the time of the shooting—maybe because he hadn’t made up his mind about the divorce, or just hadn’t gotten around to it—a point the prosecutor kept highlighting as Kay’s main motive for the murder.”
Gurney nodded. “And after the shooting, he wasn’t capable of changing it.”
“Right. But there’s another side to that. Once Kay was convicted, it meant she couldn’t inherit a cent—because the law prevents a beneficiary from receiving the assets of a deceased person whose death the beneficiary has facilitated. The assets that would have gone to the guilty party are distributed instead to the next of kin—in this
The truth was that a complex murder case attracted his attention and curiosity like nothing else on earth. He could make up reasons for it. He could say it was all about justice. About rectifying an imbalance in the scheme of things. About standing up for those who had been struck down. About a quest for truth.
But there were other times when he considered it nothing but high-stakes puzzle-solving, an obsessive-compulsive drive to fit all the loose pieces together. An intellectual game, a contest of mind and will. A playing field on which he could excel.
And then there was Madeleine’s dark suggestion: the possibility that he was somehow attracted by the terrible
risk
itself, that some self-hating part of his psyche kept drawing him blindly into the orbit of death.
His mind rejected that possibility even as his heart was chilled by it.
But ultimately he had no faith in anything he thought or said about the
why
of his profession. They were just ideas he had about it, labels he was sometimes comfortable with.
Did any of the labels capture the essence of the gravitational pull?
He couldn’t say.
The bottom line was this:
Rationalize and temporize as he might, he could no more walk away from a challenge like the Spalter case than an alcoholic could walk away from a martini after the first sip.
Suddenly exhausted, he closed his eyes.
When he finally opened them, he caught a glimpse of the Pepacton Reservoir dead ahead. Meaning they’d passed through Cat Hollow and were back in Delaware County, less than twenty minutes from Walnut Crossing. The water in the reservoir was depressingly low, the result of a dry summer, the kind of summer likely to produce a drab autumn.
His mind returned to the meeting at Bedford Hills.
He looked over at Hardwick, who appeared to be lost in his own unpleasant thoughts.
“So tell me, Jack, what do you know about Carl Spalter’s ‘demented slut’ daughter?”
“You obviously skimmed past that page in the trial transcript—where she testified to hearing Kay on the phone with someone the day before Carl got hit, saying that everything was arranged and that in twenty-four hours her problems would be over. The lovely young lady’s name is Alyssa. Think positive thoughts about her. Her demented sluttiness could be the key that springs our client.”
Hardwick was doing sixty-five on a winding stretch of road where the posted limit was forty-five. Gurney checked his seat belt. “You want to tell me why?”
“Alyssa is nineteen, movie-star gorgeous, and pure poison. I’ve been told she has the words ‘No Limits’ tattooed in a special place.” Hardwick’s expression exploded into a manic grin that faded as quickly as it appeared. “She’s also a heroin addict.”
“How does this help Kay?”
“Be patient. Seems Carl was very generous with little Alyssa. He spoiled her rotten, maybe worse than rotten—as long as he was alive. But his will was another matter. Maybe he had a moment of insight into what his junkie daughter could do with a few million bucks at herdisposal. So his will provided that everything would go to Kay. And he hadn’t changed the will at the time of the shooting—maybe because he hadn’t made up his mind about the divorce, or just hadn’t gotten around to it—a point the prosecutor kept highlighting as Kay’s main motive for the murder.”
Gurney nodded. “And after the shooting, he wasn’t capable of changing it.”
“Right. But there’s another side to that. Once Kay was convicted, it meant she couldn’t inherit a cent—because the law prevents a beneficiary from receiving the assets of a deceased person whose death the beneficiary has facilitated. The assets that would have gone to the guilty party are distributed instead to the next of kin—in this
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