Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon Read Free Book Online Page A

family with a lot of money.”
    She made a loud, grating sound—a sound he was surprised to hear coming from so delicate a mouth. He was even more surprised to realize that it was a burst of laughter.
    “Oh, yes!” she cried, the harshness of the laugh still in her voice. “We’re definitely a family with a lot of money. You might say we have a
shitload
of it.” She articulated the vulgarity with a contemptuous relish. “Does it shock you that I don’t sound the way a bereaved parent is supposed to sound?”
    The chilling specter of his own loss limited his response, making speech difficult. He finally said, “I’ve seen stranger reactions to death than yours, Mrs. Perry. I’m not sure how we’re … how someone in your circumstances … is supposed to sound.”
    She seemed to be considering this. “You say you’ve seen stranger
reactions
to death, but have you ever seen a stranger death? A stranger death than Jillian’s?”
    He didn’t answer. The question sounded histrionic. The more Gurney looked into those intense eyes, the harder it became to assemble what he saw into one personality. Had she always been so fragmented, or was there something about her daughter’s murder that broke her into these incompatible pieces?
    “Tell me more about Jillian,” he said.
    “Like what?”
    “Apart from the personal characteristics you mentioned, do you know anything about your daughter’s life that might have given this Flores a motive for killing her?”
    “You’re asking me why Hector Flores did what he did? I have no idea. Neither do the police. They’ve spent the past four months bouncing back and forth between two theories, both idiotic. One is that Hector was gay, secretly in love with Scott Ashton, resentful of Jillian’s relationship with him, and driven by jealousy to kill her. And the opportunity to kill her in her wedding dress would be irresistible to his drama-queen sensibility. Makes a nice story. Their other theory contradicts the first. A marine engineer and his wife lived next door to Scott. The engineer was away a lot on ships. The wife disappeared the same time Hector did. So the police geniuses conclude that they were having an affair, which Jillian found out about and threatened to reveal to get back at Hector, with whom she was also having an affair, and one thing led to another, and—”
    “And he cut off her head at the wedding reception to keep her quiet?” Gurney broke in, incredulous. Hearing himself, he immediately regretted the brutality of the comment and was about to apologize.
    But Val Perry showed no reaction to it. “I told you, they’re morons. According to them, Hector Flores was either a closeted homosexual pining madly for the love of his employer or a macho Latino screwing every woman in sight and using his machete on anyone who objected. Maybe they’ll flip a coin to decide which fairy tale they believe.”
    “How much contact did you personally have with Flores?”
    “None. I never had the pleasure of meeting him. Unfortunately, I have a very vivid picture of him in my mind. He lives there in my mind, with no other address. As you said, ‘current location unknown.’ I have a feeling he’ll live there until he’s captured or dead. With your help I look forward to solving that problem.”
    “Mrs. Perry, you used the word ‘dead’ a few times, so I need to make something clear, so there’s no misunderstanding. I’m not a hitman. If that’s part of the assignment, spoken or unspoken, you need to look elsewhere—starting now.”
    She studied his face. “The assignment is to find Hector Flores … and bring him to justice. That’s it. That’s the assignment.”
    “Then I need to ask you …” he began, then stopped as a grayish brown movement in the pasture caught his attention. A coyote—likely the one he’d seen the day before—was crossing the field. He followed its progress until it disappeared into the maple copse on the far side of the