Peter Pan Must Die by John Verdon Page B

have I seen that expression on anyone’s face.”
    She took a deep breath, let it out shakily.
    “You all right?” asked Gurney. He’d observed hundreds, maybe thousands, of examples of faked emotion in his career. But this looked real.
    She closed her eyes for a few seconds then opened them. “The prosecutor told the jury that Carl’s face reflected the despair of a man who’d been betrayed by someone he loved. Is that what you’re thinking? That it might be the look of a man whose wife wanted him dead?”
    “I think that’s a possibility. But not the only possibility.”
    She reacted with a small nod. “One last question. Your buddy here keeps telling me the success of my appeal has nothing to do with whether or not I shot Carl. It just depends on showing ‘a substantive defect in due process.’ So tell me something. Does it matter to
you personally
whether I’m guilty or innocent?”
    “To me, that’s the
only
thing that matters.”
    She held Gurney’s gaze for what seemed like a long time before clearing her throat, turning to Hardwick, and speaking in a changed voice: crisper, lighter. “Okay. We have a deal. Ask Bincher to send me the letter of agreement.”
    “Will do,” said Hardwick with a quick, serious nod that barely concealed his elation.
    She looked at Gurney suspiciously. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
    “I’m impressed with the way you make decisions.”
    “I make them as soon as my gut and brain agree. What’s the next item on our list?”
    “You said earlier that I didn’t know a damn thing about Carl. Educate me.”
    “Where shall I start?”
    “With whatever seems important. For example, was Carl involved in anything that might have led to his murder?”
    She flashed a quick, bitter smile. “It’s no surprise he was murdered.The only surprise was that it didn’t happen sooner. The cause of his death was his life. Carl was ambitious. Crazy with ambition. Sick with ambition. He inherited that gene from his father, a disgusting reptile who’d have swallowed the world whole if he could have.”
    “When you say Carl was ‘sick,’ what do you mean?”
    “His ambition was destroying him. More, bigger, better. More, more, more. And the
how
didn’t matter. To get what he wanted, he was dealing with people you wouldn’t want to be in the same room with. You play with rattlesnakes …” She paused, her eyes bright with anger. “It’s so damn absurd that I’m locked up in this zoo.
I’m
the one who warned him to back away from the predators.
I’m
the one who told him he was in over his head, that he was going to get himself murdered. Well, he paid no attention to me, and he got himself murdered. And
I’m
the one convicted for it.” She gave Gurney a look that seemed to say,
Is life a fucked-up joke or what?
    “You have any idea who shot him?”
    “Well, that’s another little irony. The guy without whose approval nothing happens in upstate New York—in other words, the snake who either ordered the hit on Carl or at least okayed it—that snake was in our house on three occasions. I could’ve popped him on any one of those occasions. In fact, I came very close to it the third time. You know what? If I’d done it then, when I had the urge, Carl wouldn’t be dead now, and I wouldn’t be sitting here. You get the picture? I was convicted for a murder I didn’t commit—because of a murder I should have committed but didn’t.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Who?”
    “The snake you should have killed.”
    “Donny Angel. Also known as the Greek. Also known as Adonis Angelidis. Three times I had a chance to take him out. Three times I let it go by.”
    This narrative direction, Gurney noted, had illuminated another piece of Kay Spalter. Inside the smart, striking, fine-boned creature, there was something very icy.
    “Back up for a minute,” said Gurney, wanting a clearer sense of the world the Spalters lived in. “Tell me more about Carl’s