Salanter and Durango both gasped in alarm and looked at Eycks, who shook his head—this was the first he’d heard of it.
“I don’t know who hired Wuchnik,” I continued, “but I learned this evening that he was doing dirty work on a different project, and that he’d been hired for that by one of the attorneys at Crawford, Mead. So I’m assuming a Crawford, Mead client was trying to find out Mr. Salanter’s deeply held secrets, maybe as a way to derail your campaign, Dr. Durango. That means it could have been Helen Kendrick herself, or one of her Gleaners. Perhaps Sewall Ashford.”
I stopped. If that was the case, Ashford was how Salanter and Ruhetal and Leydon all hooked up. Could Sewall have murdered Wuchnik? He was strong enough physically, but was he strong enough mentally? If Wuchnik had found out some vile secret of Sewall’s and was holding him up for more money—
“Victoria!” It was Max who brought me back to the present. Chaim Salanter sat unmoving, as if we were discussing the weather in Kamchatka rather than attempts to dig up his carefully guarded past.
“Right,” I said. “After Wuchnik’s death, his apartment was stripped bare, but from what his ex-wife said, he used high-tech spy equipment to dig up dirt on people. Wuchnik approached Arielle and Nia. He spun them a line about wanting background on Mr. Salanter so that he could embarrass Wade Lawlor on national TV. This inspired Arielle to try to learn something of her grandfather’s history. She approached the Holocaust Museum, and went to genealogy websites, but she apparently came up empty.”
Salanter’s hands came up in an involuntary gesture, trying to push something away from himself.
“Yes, Nia said they talked to you, Mr. Salanter, but you shut them down in such a frightening way that they never approached you again. Wuchnik got hold of their cell-phone numbers, either directly from the girls or through one of the databases that provide people’s private information.”
Lotty was shocked. “That can’t be right, Victoria! If you pay to have an unlisted number, how can someone find it and sell it?”
I smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, Lotty, it’s not that hard and I have to confess I use those same databases. But Wuchnik took it a step further; at least, I’m guessing that he did. Once he had the girls’ cell-phone numbers, he used a program to install a remote transmitter into their phones. Any messages they sent or received would be bounced to his phone without their knowing it. This is just a guess, mind you, but I’m assuming it’s how he knew they were going to Mount Moriah that Saturday night he was murdered. It was how he tried to keep track of Arielle’s searches into her grandfather’s history, and how he realized she wasn’t making any progress. When Wuchnik died, I think whoever killed him knew what he’d been doing and picked up on the eavesdropping where Wuchnik had left off.”
“How do you know that?” Gabe Eycks demanded.
“It’s just an assumption, of course. But it’s a pretty good bet that Wuchnik was blackmailing someone who killed him for his pains. And that his killer would have figured out how Wuchnik got some of his information.”
I rolled my whisky glass between my hands, watching the liquid slosh—little ocean waves created in my living room. I was more than tired; I was depressed and anxious about confronting Chaim Salanter over his past. Swallow it, get it over with, one of my mother’s frequent admonitions. The poison builds the longer you hold it in your mouth.
“Jana Shatka,” I said. “She saw an ad that Wuchnik placed where Lithuanian immigrants might find it. He wanted information on—on a refugee from Vilna, and the name rang a bell with Shatka. Her great-uncle had known the man as a youth during the war. Shatka wrote her mother, who was still in Lithuania, for information, hoping to collect a big payout. Shatka lived with a guy named Xavier Jurgens.”
Gabe Eycks made a strangled sound and glanced at Salanter, who shook his head.
“Yes, Jurgens, the same man who was dead in the car where I found Arielle. Jurgens was an orderly at Ruhetal State Hospital. One of Wuchnik’s clients had sent him to Ruhetal, where he persuaded Jurgens to let him into the locked wing. So there is a connection between the two men, but I don’t know that it has anything to do with the Salanter family.”
I paused, looked invitingly at Salanter, but he only shrugged.
“A lawyer gave Jurgens fifteen grand a few weeks ago, a cash gift from a client. It wasn’t from Wuchnik, that’s all I know. Jurgens used the money to buy a new Camaro, and someone with access to and knowledge of pharmaceuticals used a powerful antipsychotic to kill him. The knowledge of his murder terrified Jana Shatka—she knew everything Jurgens had known and she realized his knowledge cost him his life. So last night she hopped on a plane to Kiev.”