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

pond.
    “What is it?” she asked, turning in her chair.
    “Maybe a loose dog. Sorry for the distraction. What I want to know is, why me? If the money supply is as unlimited as you say, you could hire a small army. Or you could hire people who would be, shall we say, less careful about the fugitive’s availability for trial. So why me?”
    “Jack Hardwick recommended you. He said you were the best. The very best. He said if anyone could get to the bottom of it—resolve it, end it—you could.”
    “And you believed him?”
    “Shouldn’t I have?”
    “Why did you?”
    She considered this for a while, as though a great deal depended on the answer. “He was the initial officer on the case. The chief investigator. I found him rude, obscene, cynical, jabbing people with the sharp end of a stick whenever he could. Horrible. But almost always right. This may not make much sense to you, but I understand dreadful people like Jack Hardwick. I even trust them. So here we are, Detective Gurney.”
    He stared at the asparagus ferns, calculating, for no reason he was aware of, the compass point to which they were leaning en masse. Presumably, it would be 180 degrees away from the prevailing winds on the mountain, into the lee of the storms. Val Perry seemed content with his silence. He could still hear the modulated buzzing of the hummingbirds’ wings as they continued their ritual combat—if that’s what it was. It sometimes went on for an hour or more. It was hard to understand how such a prolonged confrontation, or seduction, could be an efficient use of energy.
    “You mentioned a few minutes ago that Jillian had an unhealthy interest in unhealthy men. Were you including Scott Ashton in that description?”
    “God, no, of course not. Scott was the best thing that ever happened to Jillian.”
    “You approved of their marriage decision?”
    “
Approved?
How quaint!”
    “I’ll put it another way. Were you pleased?”
    Her mouth smiled while her eyes regarded him coolly. “Jillian had certain significant
 … deficits
, shall we say? Deficits that demanded professional intervention for the foreseeable future. Being married to a psychiatrist, one of the best in the field, could certainly be an advantage. I know that sounds … wrong, somehow. Exploitative, perhaps? But Jillian was unique in many ways. And uniquely in need of help.”
    Gurney raised a quizzical eyebrow.
    She sighed. “Are you aware that Dr. Ashton is the director of the special high school Jillian attended?”
    “Wouldn’t that create a conflict of—”
    “No,” she interrupted, sounding like she was accustomed to arguing the point. “He’s a psychiatrist, but when she was enrolled at the school, he was never
her
psychiatrist. So there was no ethical issue, no doctor-patient thing. Naturally, people talked. Gossip-gossip-gossip. ‘He’s a doctor, she was a patient, blah, blah, blah.’ But the legal, ethical reality was more like a former student marrying the president of her college. She left that place when she was seventeen. She and Scott didn’t become personally involved for another year and a half. End of story. Of course, it wasn’t the end of the gossip.” Defiance flashed in her eyes.
    “Seems like skating close to the edge,” commented Gurney, as much to himself as to Val Perry.
    Again she burst into her shocking laugh. “If Jillian thought they were skating close to the edge, for her that would have been the best thing about it. The edge was where she always wanted to be.”
    Interesting, thought Gurney. Interesting, too, was the glitter in Val Perry’s eyes. Maybe Jillian wasn’t the only one in love with life on the edge.
    “And Dr. Ashton?” he asked mildly.
    “Scott doesn’t care what anyone thinks about anything.” It was a trait she clearly admired.
    “So when Jillian was eighteen, maybe nineteen, he proposed marriage?”
    “Nineteen. She did the proposing, he accepted.”
    As he considered this, he watched the