“Listen up, Jack. You keep secrets, and there’s no deal. I get to know everything you know. Every question answered. That’s the deal. Period.”

“Christ, Davey, you’re not making this easy.”

“Neither are you.”

Gurney glanced over at the speedometer and saw that it was creeping toward eighty. Hardwick’s jaw muscle was tight. So were his hands on the wheel. A good minute passed before he said simply, “Esti Moreno.” Another minute passed before he went on. “She worked under Mick the Dick from the time of his divorce right up through the end of the Spalter trial. Finally managed to get reassigned—same barracks, but a different reporting line. Had to accept an office job, all paperwork, which she hates. But she hates the paperwork less than she hates the Dick. Esti’s a good cop. Good brain. Good eyes and ears. And principles. Esti’s got principles. You know what she said about the Dick?”

“No, Jack, what did she say?”

“She said, ‘You do some kind of shit, some kind of karma is coming around to bite your ass.’ I love Esti. She’s a real pisser. Also, did I mention that she’s a Puerto Rican bombshell? But she can be subtle, too. A subtle bombshell. You should see her in one of those trooper hats.” Hardwick was smiling broadly, his fingers tapping out a Latin rhythm on the steering wheel.

Gurney was quiet for long while, trying to absorb what he was being told as objectively as possible. The goal was to take it all in and at the same time to keep it at arm’s length, much as one might absorb crime scene details that could have different interpretations.

He pondered the odd shape the case was beginning to take in his mind, including the ironic parallel between the conviction-at-any-cost pursued by Klemper and the reversal-at-any-cost pursued by Hardwick. Both efforts seemed to provide further evidence that man is not primarily a rational species, and that all our so-called logic is never more than a bright facade for murkier motives.

Thus occupied, Gurney was only half aware of the landscape of hills and valleys they were passing through—rolling fields of overgrown weeds and starved saplings, expanses of drought-faded greens and yellows, the sun coming and going through an intermittent pale haze, the unprofitable farms with their barns and silos unpainted for decades, the sadly weathered villages, old orange tractors, rusted plows and hay rakes, the quaint and quiet rural emptiness that was Delaware County’s pride and curse.

Chapter 8

Coldhearted Bitch

Far from the gritty-beautiful, economically battered, depopulated counties of central New York State, northern Westchester County had the casual charm of country money. In the midst of this postcard landscape, however, the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility seemed as out of place as a porcupine in a petting zoo.