Peter Pan Must Die Read Free Page B

prosecution’s case was rotten start to finish. If the chief investigating officer doesn’t end up in Attica at the end of this, I’ll … I’ll become a fucking vegan. I absolutely guarantee you that the underlying facts and narratives will be full of disconnects. Even the trial transcript is full of them. And, Davey boy, whether you admit it or not, you know damn well that no cop ever had a sharper eye and ear for disconnects than you do. So that’s the story. I want you on the team. Will you do this for me?”
    Will you do this for me?
The plea echoed in Gurney’s head. He didn’t feel capable of saying no. Not right at that moment, anyway. He took a deep breath. “You have the trial transcript?”
    “I do.”
    “With you?”
    “In my car.”
    “I’ll … take look at it. We’ll have to see where we go from there.”
    Hardwick stood up from the table, his nervousness now looking more like excitement. “I’ll leave you a copy of the official case file, too. Lots of interesting shit. Could be helpful.”
    “How’d you get the file?”
    “I still have a few friends.”
    Gurney smiled uncomfortably. “I’m not promising anything, Jack.”
    “Fine. No problem. I’ll get the stuff from the car. You take your time with it. See what you think.” On the way out, he stopped and turned back. “You won’t be sorry, Davey. The Spalter case has everything—horror, gangsters, politics, big money, big lies, and maybe even a little bit of incest. You’re gonna fuckin’ love it!”

Chapter 3
Something in the Woods
    Madeleine cooked a simple dinner and they ate with little conversation. Gurney kept expecting her to engage him in an exhaustive discussion of his meeting with Hardwick, but she asked only one question.
    “What does he want from you?”
    Gurney described the nature of the Kay Spalter case, Hardwick’s new PI status, his evidently huge emotional investment in getting Kay’s conviction overturned, his request for assistance.
    Madeleine’s only reaction consisted of a small nod and a barely audible “Hmm.” She stood up, cleared the dishes and silverware from the table, and took them to the sink island, where she proceeded to wash them, rinse them, and stack them in the drainer. Then she got a pitcher from the cupboard and watered the plants that stood on the sideboard below the kitchen windows. Each minute that she failed to pursue the subject exerted a stronger tug on Gurney to add a few additional words of explanation, reassurance, justification. Just as he was about to do so, she suggested they take a stroll down to the pond.
    “It’s too nice an evening to stay inside,” she said.
    Nice
was not a word he would have used to describe the uncertain sky with its scuttling clouds, but he resisted the urge to debate the point. He followed her to the mudroom off the kitchen, where she put on one of her tropically bright nylon jackets. He slipped into an olive-drab cardigan he’d had for nearly twenty years.
    She squinted at it doubtfully. “Are you trying to look like someone’s grandfather?”
    “You mean stable, trustworthy, and lovable?”
    She raised an ironic eyebrow.
    Nothing else was said until they’d made their way down through the low pasture and were seated on the weathered wooden bench beside the pond. She appeared, as she often did, in a static position, not quite relaxed. It was as if her slim, naturally athletic body craved movement in the way that some bodies crave sugar.
    Except for a grassy opening between the bench and the water, the pond was ringed by tall bulrushes, where redwing blackbirds built nests and fended off intruders with aggressive swoops and screeches through late spring and into the summer.
    “We have to start pulling out some of those giant reeds,” said Madeleine, “or they’ll take over completely.”
    Each year the encircling band of bulrushes had grown thicker, inching farther out into the water. Pulling them out, Gurney had discovered the one