White River Burning

29

Gurney arrived at Abelard’s a few minutes before 8:00 AM. He sat at one of the rickety little hand-painted cafe tables. Marika, looking hungover and sleepy, brought him a double espresso without asking. Her ever-changing hair color was a mix of deep violet and metallic green.

As he was savoring his first sip, his phone rang. Expecting it to be Hardwick giving some reason he couldn’t be there, he was surprised to see Mark Torres’s name on the screen.

“Gurney here.”

“I hope I’m not calling too early.”

“Not at all.”

“I heard that you were off the case.”

“Officially, yes.”

“But not completely?”

“That’s one way of putting it. What can I do for you?”

“The thing is, I got the impression you have some doubts about the way things are going.”

“And?”

“And . . . I guess I do, too. I mean, I get it that there’s a ton of evidence—videos, fingerprints, statements from informants—linking Cory Payne to the shootings and to the Corolla and to people in the Black Defense Alliance. So I have no real doubt he’s the shooter. Probably acting on behalf of the BDA.”

“But?”

“What I don’t get is the choice of victims.”

“What do you mean?

“John Steele and Rick Loomis were both loners. As far as I could see, they hung out only with each other. And unlike most guys in the department, they didn’t regard the BDA as the enemy. I got the impression they wanted to establish some kind of dialogue, to look into the accusations of brutality and evidence-planting. You see what I’m getting at?”

“Spell it out.”

“Of all the cops in the White River department—and there are more than a hundred, some of them obviously racist—it seems odd that the BDA would target Steele and Loomis. Why kill the two people who were the most sympathetic to their cause?”

“Maybe the shootings were random—and it’s just a coincidence that the victims felt that way about the BDA.”

“If just one of them was shot, I could buy that. But both?”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I remember something you said in your investigation seminar in Albany a couple of years ago—that it’s important to examine the little discrepancies. You made the point that when something doesn’t seem to fit, it’s often the key to the case. So I’m thinking maybe the odd choice of victims could be the key here.”

“It’s an interesting idea. You have a next step in mind?”

“Not really. For now, maybe I could just sort of keep you in the loop? Let you know what’s happening?”

“No problem. Actually, you’d be doing me a favor. The more I know, the better.”

“Great. Thank you. I’ll be in touch.”

As Gurney ended the call, the old wooden floor creaked behind him.

A raspy voice said, “The boy gets his ass kicked out of the DA’s office and stays on the job. Nose to the grindstone. Hand on the phone. Goddamn impressive.”

“Good morning, Jack.”

Hardwick came around to the other side of the table and sat down on a chair that squeaked ominously under him. “Good fucking morning yourself.”

He called to Marika, “Coffee, strong and black.”

He fixed his pale malamute eyes on Gurney. “All right, tell Uncle Jack what’s troubling your sleep.”

“The Carlton Flynn thing last night . . .”

“Flynn the Fuckwit meets Beckert the Bullshitter. You have a question about that?”

It was part of Hardwick’s nature to believe nothing, ridicule everything, and be generally snarly. But Gurney was willing to put up with it because underneath the cynical needling there was a good intellect and a decent soul.

“According to some articles,” said Gurney, “Flynn built his success on being the hard-nosed questioner—the no-nonsense tough guy who pulls no punches. That about right?”

“Yep. Just a regular fella who happens to get paid thirty million a year. Hugely popular with angry white guys.”

“But last night he was a fawning promoter of Dell Beckert, lobbing him softball questions, looking awestruck. How do you figure that?”

Hardwick shrugged. “Follow the money. Follow the power.”

“You think there’s enough of both behind Beckert to turn Flynn into a pussycat?”

“Flynn’s a survivor. Like Beckert. Or like a giant rat. Always has an eye out for the next advantage. Onward and upward, no matter how much wreckage piles up behind him—dead wife, crazy son, whatever.”

He stopped speaking as Marika placed his coffee in front of him. He picked it up and consumed about a third of it. “So Kline gave you the boot after, what, like two days?”

“Three.”

“How the fuck did you manage that?”

“I had questions about the case he didn’t want to hear.”

“Sniper case or playground case?”

“I have a feeling it may be one case.”

Hardwick showed a flash of real curiosity. “How so?”

“It seems to me that the playground murders were too smoothly executed to have been a spontaneous retaliation for the Steele shooting.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning they must have been in the planning stage before Steele was shot.”

“You’re suggesting there’s no connection?”

“I think there’s a connection, just not the one Beckert’s promoting.”

“You’re not imagining the same people are behind the shootings and the beating deaths, are you?”

“It’s not impossible.”

“For what? To start a fucking race war?”

“It’s not impossible.”

“It’s goddamn doubtful.”

“Okay. Then maybe for some other purpose.” He paused. “I was on the phone with Mark Torres, CIO on the shootings. He’s bothered by the fact that two supposedly BDA-executed attacks targeted the two White River cops who were the most sympathetic to the BDA. Which presumably would have put them at odds with their chief.”

Hardwick blinked, the curiosity back in full force.

Gurney went on. “Combine that with the text message on John Steele’s phone . . . telling him to watch his back.”

“Wait a fucking minute. You’re not suggesting that Beckert, patron saint of law enforcement, put a hit on two of his own men just because he didn’t like their politics?”

“Nothing quite that ridiculous. But there are definite signs that the link between the attacks on Steele and Loomis and the attacks on Jordan and Tooker is more complicated than the way it’s officially being described.”

“What signs?”

Gurney ran through his litany of strange combinations of care and carelessness in the behavior of the killers. His last example was the perplexing difference in the routes of the two vehicles leaving the Poulter Street house. “The driver of the Corolla, Cory Payne, took a direct route through the city on a main avenue full of obvious security and traffic cameras. But the motorcycle rider took a jagged route, turning at least a dozen times and managing to avoid being caught on a single camera. Taking precautions to avoid cameras is understandable. The puzzling question is why Payne didn’t bother to do the same thing.”

Hardwick made his acid-reflux face. “These oddities don’t trouble Sheridan?”

“He claims they’re insignificant in the big picture.”

“What big picture?”

“The one in which the sniper attacks are blamed on black radicals and a demented white boy; and the playground murders are blamed on a pair of backwoods white supremacists; and all the evildoers are captured or killed, order is restored, and Beckert ascends into the political stratosphere—bringing with him his key supporters.”

“If the plan is that clear, why the hell did Kline want you involved in the first place?”

“I think the text message Kim Steele showed him shook him up—with its suggestion of police involvement in her husband’s death. He wanted to get on board the Beckert rocket ship, but he wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to blow up on the launch pad. I was supposed to observe discreetly and warn him of any imminent disasters. But apparently the so-called progress being made on the case has settled his nerves to the point where he’s more concerned about me weakening his relationship with Beckert than about any weakness in the case.”

Hardwick flashed his chilly grin. “Kline the Slime. So what now?”

“Something’s screwy, and I intend to find out what it is.”

“Even though you’ve been fired?”

“Right.”

“One last question. What the fuck am I doing here at the crack of dawn?”

“I was hoping you might be willing to do me a favor.”

“Doing favors for you is the icing on the cake of my perfect life. What is it this time?”

“I thought maybe you could use your old NYSP contacts to dig a little deeper into Beckert’s past.”

“Digging for what?”

“Anything we don’t already know about his relationship with Turlock, his first wife, his son. If a cop’s son starts killing cops, it doesn’t take a genius to suspect there’s something ugly in their past. I’d like to know what it is.”

Hardwick produced another grin.

“What’s funny?”

“Your obvious effort to concoct a theory that blames Beckert for everything.”

“I’m not trying to concoct anything. I just want to know more about these people.”

“Horseshit. You don’t like the tight-ass son of a bitch any more than I do, and you’re searching for a way to slam him.”

The fact that Hardwick was saying essentially what Kline had said gave the notion some extra weight, but he still wasn’t about to agree with it.

Hardwick took a thoughtful sip of his coffee before going on. “What if Beckert is right?”

“About what?”

“About Steele and Loomis. About Jordan and Tooker. About rotten-apple Cory and the crazy Gorts. What if the prick is right about everything?”

“What Beckert’s right about seems to have a way of shifting in the wind. Three days ago he was blaming the Steele shooting on Jordan and Tooker. When it turned out they were with a prominent pastor, he did a little rhetorical dance and said that while they might not have pulled the trigger, they certainly aided and abetted.”

“Which may be true. And by the way, how much do you know about that pastor?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re assuming he’s telling the truth. Maybe you just want to believe him because those alibis he provided embarrassed Dell Beckert.”

Gurney didn’t want to believe his thinking was that twisted, but the suggestion made him uneasy. Up to that point the pastor hadn’t been very high on his mental list of people to interview. Now he was at the top.

30

The Reverend Whittaker Coolidge, rector of Saint Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church, agreed to a meeting that morning as long as it could be concluded prior to a scheduled ten thirty baptism. By breaking the speed limit all the way to White River, Gurney arrived at the church at nine forty-five.

It was located on a broad avenue that separated Bluestone from Grinton. An old redbrick building with a steeply angled slate roof, stained-glass windows, and a square bell tower, it was set back from the avenue—surrounded on three sides by an ancient churchyard with moss-covered mausoleums, statues of angels, and weathered gravestones, and on the fourth side by a parking lot.

Gurney parked at the back of the empty lot. From there a path led through the churchyard to a rear door, which Reverend Coolidge had told him to use to get to the office.

A little way along the path, he stopped to pay closer attention to the inscriptions on the gravestones. A few of the birth dates went back as far as the late eighteenth century. Most of the death dates were in the eighteen thirties and forties. Typical of old cemeteries, a number of the stones recorded sadly short lifespans.

“Dave?”

A large sandy-haired man in a short-sleeved shirt, Bermuda shorts, and Birkenstock sandals was standing under the outstretched wing of a stone angel that adorned one of the more elaborate graves. Taking a final drag on a cigarette, he extinguished it on the tip of the angel’s wing and dropped it in a graveside watering can. Then he strode toward Gurney with a toothy smile. “I’m Whit Coolidge. I see you’re intrigued by our slice of history. Some of the folks buried here were contemporaries of the controversial Colonel Ezra Willard. Are you familiar with him?”

“I’m familiar with his statue in the park.”

“A statue some of our citizens would like to see removed. Not without reason.”

Gurney said nothing.

“Well,” said Coolidge after an awkward silence, “why don’t we go into my office, where we can have some privacy.”

Gurney wondered how much more private than a yard full of dead people the office could be, but he nodded and followed the man through the church’s back door into a hallway that smelled of dust and dry wood. Light was spilling from a doorway on the right, and that’s where Coolidge led him.

The room was about twice the size of Gurney’s den. There was a desk at one end with a leather desk chair. At the other end was a small fireplace with a low fire in its final stages. There were two leather armchairs on either side of the hearth. On one wall a window looked out on the part of the churchyard that wrapped around that side of the building. On the opposite wall were two enormous photographic prints—one of Mother Teresa and one of Martin Luther King.

Seeing Gurney looking at them, Coolidge offered an explanation. “I prefer contemporary incarnations of goodness to the bizarre and dogmatic characters of the Middle Ages.” He gestured toward one of the armchairs. When Gurney was seated he took the one facing it. “You said on the phone you were involved in the investigation of this awful violence. May I ask in what capacity?”

Something in his tone suggested that he’d checked and discovered the severing of Gurney’s official ties to the case.

“The wives of the murdered officers have asked me to look into the circumstances of their deaths. They want to be sure they’re getting the truth, whatever it turns out to be.”

Coolidge cocked his head curiously. “I was under the impression that our police department had already arrived at the truth. Am I mistaken?”

“I’m not sure the confidence the police seem to have in their hypothesis is justified by the facts.”

Gurney’s answer appeared to have a positive effect. The tense creases at the corners of Coolidge’s eyes began to relax. His smile became more natural.

“Always a pleasure to meet a man with an open mind. What can I do for you?”

“I’m searching for information. With a wide net. Because I don’t know yet what will be important. Perhaps you could start by telling me what you know about Jordan and Tooker?”

“Marcel and Virgil.” He made the emendation sound like a mild reprimand. “They were slandered. Even now they continue to be slandered with the implication that they were somehow involved in Officer Steele’s murder. There is, to my knowledge, no evidence of that whatsoever.”

“I understand they were with you the night Officer Steele was shot.”

Coolidge paused for a moment before going on. “They were here in this very room. Marcel in the chair you now occupy. Virgil in the one next to it. I sat where I am now. It was our third meeting.”

“Third? Was there an agenda for these meetings?”

“Peace, progress, legal process.”

“Meaning?”

“The idea was to channel negative energy toward positive goals. They were angry young men, understandably so, but not bomb throwers. Certainly not killers. They were justice seekers. Truth seekers. Perhaps like you in that way.”

“What truth were they seeking?”

“They wanted to expose the numerous criminal actions and cover-ups in our police department. The pattern of abuse.”

“They knew of specific instances? With evidence to back up their charges?”

“They knew of instances in which African Americans had been framed, illegally detained, even killed. They were pursuing the necessary corroboration, case files, et cetera.”

“How?”

“They were being helped.”

“Helped?”

“Correct.”

“That doesn’t tell me much.”

Coolidge turned his gaze to the small blue flames flickering up from the coals in the fireplace. “I’ll just say that their desire for justice was shared, and they were optimistic.”

“Perhaps you could be just a bit more specific?”

Coolidge looked pained. “There’s nothing more I can say without discussing the implications with . . . those who might be affected.”

“I can understand that. In the meantime, can you tell me how Marcel and Virgil happened to come to you?”

Coolidge hesitated. “They were brought to me by an interested party.”

“Whose name you can’t reveal without further consultation?”

“That’s right.”

“Were you aware that John Steele and Rick Loomis wanted to establish some level of dialogue with the Black Defense Alliance?”

“I’d rather not get on the slippery slope of saying what I was or wasn’t aware of. We live in a dangerous world. Confidences must be respected.”

“True.” In Gurney’s experience, agreeing with someone he was interviewing often produced more information than questioning him. He sat back in his chair. “Very true.”

Coolidge sighed. “I’m a student of history. I realize that political divisions are nothing new in America. We’ve had angry disagreements over all sorts of things. But the current state of polarization is worse than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. It’s stunningly ironic that the explosion of available information on the internet has led to the irrelevance of actual facts. More communication has led to more isolation. Political discourse has become nothing but shouts and lies and threats. Political loyalties are about who you hate, not who you love. And all this ignorant bile is justified by making up nonsensical ‘facts.’ The crazier the belief, the more strongly it’s held. The political center, the rational center, has been driven to extinction. And the justice system . . .”

He shook his head, his hands opening and closing into fists. “The justice system! Sweet Jesus, what a misnomer!”

“In White River in particular?”

Coolidge was silent for a long moment, staring into the remnants of the fire. When he spoke again his voice was calmer, but a bitterness remained. “There used to be a car wash out in Larvaton. In cold weather, when there was salt on the roads and cars needed washing, the mechanism was either not operating at all or doing crazy things. Soaping when it should be rinsing. Rinsing when it should be soaping. Squirting wax on the tires. Freezing shut with the sprayers on full blast, turning the car into a block of ice. With the driver trapped inside. The blowers were so powerful they’d sometimes rip the trim off a car.”

He looked away from the fire and met Gurney’s puzzled gaze. “That’s our court system. Our justice system. An unpredictable farce in the best of times. A disaster in times of crisis. Seeing what happens to vulnerable people pushed into the maw of that insane machine can make you cry.”

“So . . . where does all this take you?”

Before Coolidge could respond, Gurney’s phone rang. He took it out, saw that it was Torres, silenced it, and put it back in his pocket. “Sorry about that.”

“Where does all this take me? It takes me in the direction of Maynard Biggs—in the upcoming election for state attorney general.”

“Why Biggs?”

Coolidge leaned forward in his chair, his hands on his knees. “He’s a reasonable man. A principled man. He listens. He begins with what is. He believes in the common good.” He sank back in his chair, turning up his palms in a gesture of frustration. “I realize, of course, that these qualities are severe disabilities in today’s political climate, but we must stand up for sanity and decency. Move from darkness toward the light. Maynard Biggs is a step in the right direction, and Dell Beckert is not!”

Gurney was surprised at the sudden venom in the rector’s voice.

“You don’t regard Beckert’s resignation speech as his withdrawal from public life?”

“Hah! The world should be so fortunate! Obviously you didn’t catch the latest news.”

“What news?”

“A flash-polling outfit connected to RAM-TV asked registered voters who they would be likely to vote for in a hypothetical election matchup between Beckert and Biggs. It was a statistical tie—a frightening fact, given that Beckert hasn’t officially entered the race.”

“You sound like you’ve had unpleasant encounters with him.”

“Not personally. But I’ve heard horror stories.”

“What kind?”

Coolidge appeared to be choosing his words carefully. “He has a double standard for judging criminal behavior. Crimes that arise from passion, weakness, addiction, deprivation, injustice—all those are dealt with severely, often violently. But crimes committed by the police in the name of maintaining order are ignored, even encouraged.”

“For instance?”

“It wouldn’t be unusual for a minority resident who dared to talk back to a cop to be arrested for harassment and jailed for weeks if he wasn’t able to make bail—or beaten within an inch of his life if he offered the slightest resistance. But a cop who gets into a confrontation and ends up killing some homeless drug addict suffers zero consequences. I mean zero. Exhibit a human failing Beckert doesn’t like and you’re crushed. But wear a badge and shoot someone at a traffic stop, and you’re barely questioned. That’s the vile—dare I say fascist—culture Beckert has installed in our police department, which he seems to consider his private army.”

Gurney nodded thoughtfully. Under other circumstances, he might have probed Coolidge’s generalizations, but right now he had other priorities.

“Do you know Cory Payne?”

Coolidge hesitated. “Yes. I do.”

“Did you know that he was Beckert’s son?”

“How could I?”

“You tell me.”

Coolidge’s expression hardened. “That sounds like an accusation.”

“Sorry. Just trying to find out as much as I can. What’s your opinion of Payne?”

“People in my line of work hear thousands of confessions. Confessions of every crime imaginable. People bare their souls. Their thoughts. Their motives. Over the years, all those revelations make one a good judge of character. And I’ll tell you this—the notion that Cory Payne murdered two police officers is nonsense. Cory is all talk. Angry, overheated, accusatory—I’ll grant you that—but it’s just talk.”

“The thing is,” said Gurney, “there’s extensive video and fingerprint evidence that he was in the right place at the right time for each shooting. And he fled the scene after each one.”

“If that’s true, there must be an explanation other than the one you’re assuming. The idea that Cory Payne killed anyone in cold blood is ridiculous.”

“You know him well enough to say that?”

“White political progressives in this part of the state are a rare breed. We get to know each other.” Coolidge looked at his watch, frowned, and stood up abruptly. “We’re out of time. I need to get ready for that baptism. Come.”

Gesturing for Gurney to follow him, he led the way out through the churchyard to the parking lot. “Pray for courage and caution,” he said as they reached the Outback.

“An unusual combination.”

“It’s an unusual situation.”

Gurney nodded but made no move to get into his car.

Coolidge looked again at his watch. “Is there something else?”

“I’d like to meet Payne. Is that something you could arrange?”

“So you could arrest him?”

“I have no authority to arrest anyone. I’m a free agent.”

Coolidge gave him a long look. “With no agenda other than gathering information for the wives of the dead officers?”

“That’s right.”

“And you think Cory should trust you?”

“He doesn’t have to trust me. We can talk on the phone. I just have one question for him. What was he doing at those sniper locations if he wasn’t involved?”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Gurney could easily think of a dozen other questions, but this was no time for complications.

Coolidge nodded uncertainly. “I’ll think about it.”

They shook hands. The man’s large, soft palm felt sweaty.

Gurney looked up at the redbrick edifice. “Saint Thomas the Apostle—wasn’t he the so-called doubting one?”

“He was. But in my humble opinion, he should have been called the sane one.”

31

If doubt was an indication of sanity, Gurney mused as he drove out of the church parking lot, he had an abundance of sanity, and it was a very uncomfortable attribute.

He was filled with questions. Were Coolidge’s statements fact-based conclusions or the reflex expression of his political views? Had Jordan and Tooker been well-meaning solution seekers or had they been running a con job on the rector to gain his approval and an aura of respectability? Was Beckert an evil control freak or a champion of law and order in a pitched battle with criminals and chaos? And then there was Judd Turlock. Was he the tough cop advertised by the set of his jaw, or was he the hit man dwelling behind emotionless eyes? And what about Mark Torres? Were the young detective’s efforts to stay in communication to be taken at face value? Or were they signs of something more manipulative—possibly even an assignment he’d been given?

Thinking of Torres reminded Gurney that he’d received a call from him during his meeting with the rector. He pulled over to the curb on a burned-out street at the edge of Grinton and listened to the message.

“This is Mark. Just wanted to let you know there’s been a setback up in the quarries. I’ll tell you more when we talk.”

Curious to discover if the setback would be throwing yet another aspect of the case into doubt, Gurney returned the call.

Torres sounded apologetic. “The situation is kind of sensitive. I didn’t want to spell it out in a message.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The K9 dog was killed.”

“The one tracking the Gorts?”

“Right. Just below the abandoned quarries.”

“Killed how?”

“A crossbow arrow through the head. Pretty weird. Kind of reminds me of their gate sign.”

Gurney remembered it vividly—the human skull hanging there from a crossbow arrow through an eye socket. As a Keep Out message, it was hard to beat.

“Anything happen to the dog’s handler?”

“No. Just the dog. Arrow came out of nowhere. Another dog is on the way. And a state helicopter with infrared spotting equipment. And a backup assault team.”

“Any official statement to the media?”

“Not a word. They want to keep the lid on—make sure it doesn’t look like things are getting out of control.”

“So the Gorts are still out there with their crossbows and pit bulls and dynamite?”

“Looks that way.”

Torres fell silent, but Gurney had the impression their conversation wasn’t over. “Anything else you want to talk about?”

Torres cleared his throat. “I’m not comfortable suggesting things I have no evidence for.”

“But . . .”

“Well, I guess it’s no secret that Chief Beckert hates the Gorts.”

“And . . .”

“This thing with the dog seems to have tripled it.”

“So?”

“If the Gorts are captured, I have a feeling something will happen. Judd Turlock is going out to the quarries to direct the operation personally.”

“You think the Gorts will be killed? Because of the way Beckert feels about them?”

“I could be wrong.”

“I thought Beckert left the department.”

“He did, technically. Turlock will be acting chief until there’s an official appointment. But the thing is, Turlock always does what Beckert wants. Nobody here believes that’s going to change.”

“That worries you?”

“It always worries me when the face of a situation is different from the truth. A resignation should mean that you’re actually gone. Not just pretending to be gone. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Perfectly.” Not only was an appearance-reality gap a worrisome thing, it was the basic challenge in every investigation—breaking through the shell of a situation to discover what was really there. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

“That’s it for now.”

As Gurney ended the call he noted that he still had one message he hadn’t listened to yet—from Dr. Walter Thrasher. Now, while he was still parked, was as good a time as any.

“David, this is Walt Thrasher. Based on what you’ve found so far, that excavation of yours may turn out to be of considerable historical interest. I’d like your permission to probe the area further. Please get back to me as soon as you can.”

Whatever it was that might be of interest to Thrasher was at that moment of little interest to Gurney. But a phone conversation with the ME could provide an opportunity to address other subjects.

He placed the call.

The man answered on the first ring. “Thrasher.”

“I got your message. About the dig.”

“Ah, yes. The dig. I’d like to scrape around a bit, see what’s there.”

“Are you looking for something in particular?”

“Yes. But I’d rather not say what—not yet, anyway.”

“Something of value?”

“Not in the normal sense. No buried treasure.”

“Why all the secrecy?”

“I hate speculation. I have a fondness for hard evidence.”

That was, Gurney thought, as good an opening as he was likely to get. “Speaking of evidence, when do you expect to get your tox screens on Jordan and Tooker back from the lab?”

“I emailed the report to Turlock yesterday afternoon.”

“To Turlock?”

“He’s still the CIO on that case, is he not?”

“Yes, he is,” said Gurney confidently, trying not to expose any out-of-the-loop uncertainty. “He’ll probably forward your report to the DA’s office, and I’ll get a copy from Sheridan. Is there anything I should pay special attention to?”

“I report facts. Prioritizing them is up to you.”

“And the facts in this instance are . . .”

“Alcohol, midazolam, propofol.”

“Propofol . . . as in the Michael Jackson OD?”

“Correct.”

“Propofol’s administered intravenously, right?”

“Right.”

“I didn’t think it was commonly available on the street.”

“It’s not. It would be a tricky substance for the average addict to deal with.”

“How so?”

“It’s a powerful sedative with a narrow therapeutic window.”

“Meaning?”

“The recommended dosage level is relatively close to the level of toxicity.”

“So it’s easy to OD on it?”

“Easier than with most street drugs. And there’s no antidote—no equivalent to Narcan for opiates—no way to bring you back once you go over the edge.”

“Could a propofol OD have been the cause of death?”

“Direct cause of death for both individuals was strangulation, leading to heart and respiratory failure. I’d say the propofol was administered earlier for its sedative rather than toxic effects.”

“To eliminate the pain of the branding? To keep the victims quiet and manageable?”

“The sedative effect would be consistent with those outcomes.”

“This case gets more interesting every day, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed. In fact, your call caught me on my way from the autopsy table back to my office.”

“Autopsy on who?”

“Officer Loomis.”

“I assume his death was the result of the complications you’d expect from a bullet to the temporal lobe?”

“The temporal lobe was creased but not perforated. He almost certainly would have recovered from that, possibly with some ongoing deficits. Of course, one can never be sure with brain injuries. His death was actually caused by complications arising from tissue destruction, sepsis, and hemorrhaging in critical brain-stem structures, primarily within the medulla oblongata.”

Gurney was puzzled. “What’s the connection between that area and the part of his head where he was shot?”

“No connection relevant to the outcome.”

“I’m confused. Are you saying that his death was not caused by the delayed effects of the gunshot to his temple?”

“His death was caused by the delayed effects of an ice pick driven into his brain stem.”

32

Gurney didn’t have time to ask Thrasher all the questions that came to mind. He settled for three big ones.

First question: How long before Loomis’s deteriorating condition was noted could the stabbing have occurred?

The answer was that it could have occurred anywhere from one to twenty-four hours prior to the onset of symptoms. There was no way of being more specific without a more extensive analysis of the affected area of the brain—which would be undertaken if requested by the WRPD or the office of the district attorney.

Second question: Why hadn’t one of the monitor alarms sounded at the moment of the stabbing itself?

The answer was that the deep sedation brought about by Loomis’s barbiturate coma would have substantially blunted any immediate physiological reaction. The monitors would register the ensuing symptoms of heart and respiratory failure only as they developed during the course of the gradual brain-stem hemorrhaging, deterioration, and sepsis.

Third question: Wouldn’t a crude instrument like an ice pick have produced a bleeding wound that the nursing staff would have noticed?

The answer was that bleeding could be avoided by angling the entry pathway to avoid the principal neck arteries and veins, which is exactly what the autopsy revealed had been done. With some medical knowledge and a good anatomical diagram, it would not be all that difficult. In addition, a small Band-Aid had been applied to the puncture site.

Gurney couldn’t help but be impressed by the simplicity of that last touch.

Thrasher went on to explain that his medical intern would soon be transcribing the audio recording of the detailed comments he’d made during the autopsy procedure. He would review the report, mark it “Preliminary, Subject to Revision,” and send an electronic copy to Mark Torres, the official CIO on the Loomis case.

Gurney knew that Torres would then share it up the chain of command to Turlock, who would in turn share it with Beckert. At some point in that process it would occur to someone to go to the hospital and request a list of all personnel and ICU visitors who could have had access to Loomis during the broad time period in which the stabbing could have occurred.

Gurney’s own goal was to get to the hospital, secure the same list, and get out of there before anyone knew he’d been deprived of his official standing.

The elegant lady with the white permanent and bright-blue eyes was again at the welcome desk, and she remembered him. She smiled, with a touch of sadness. “So sorry about your associate.”

“Thank you.”

She sighed. “I wish more people appreciated the sacrifices made by you people in law enforcement.”

He nodded.

She smiled. “What can we do for you today?”

He spoke in a confidential tone. “We’re going to need a list of hospital personnel and visitors who may have had contact with Rick Loomis.”

She looked alarmed. “My goodness, why . . .”

“Routine. In the event that he may have regained consciousness temporarily and said something in someone’s presence that could be helpful.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.” She looked relieved. “You’ll need to see Abby Marsh. Let me call to make sure she’s in. Do you have something with your exact title on it?”

He handed her his DA credentials.

She laid them in front of her as she entered an extension number on her desk phone.

“Hello, Marge? Is Abby in? I have a special senior investigator here from the district attorney’s office . . . That’s right . . . Yes, he’s one of the officers who was here before . . . A personnel list . . . He can explain it better than I can . . . All right . . . I’ll send him in.”

She handed back his credentials and gave him directions to the office of Mercy Hospital’s director of human resources.

He was greeted by Abby Marsh at her office door. Her handshake was firm and brief. She was as tall as Gurney, probably in her late forties, thin with brown hair cropped so short it suggested recent chemotherapy. Her harried expression suggested that the days were long gone when a personnel job was a stress-free sinecure. An expanding minefield of regulations, entitlements, resentments, and lawsuits had turned the position into a bureaucratic nightmare.

He explained what he needed. She asked to see his credentials and studied them in a distracted way. She told him she could provide a list of names with addresses, phone numbers, job titles, and dates of employment, but no other file information. As for indicating specific staff members with ICU access, that was impossible since staff access to that area was neither restricted nor monitored.

She looked hurriedly at her watch. Did he prefer a paper printout or a digital file?

Digital.

Did he want it emailed to the DA’s office, or did he want it now on a USB drive?

Now on a USB.

It was as simple as that.

He hoped his lack of candor in getting what he needed wouldn’t create problems for her. There could be repercussions arising from his having presented credentials that were arguably no longer valid, but he figured that any blowback from that would be directed at him, not her.

His plan was to head home and review the list she’d given him. Not that he thought it would produce any sudden insights, but it couldn’t hurt to gain a familiarity with the names in the event that one popped up later in a related context. And there was a fair chance that someone on that list had been sufficiently afraid of Loomis’s possible recovery, afraid of what he might reveal, to make sure it wouldn’t happen.

The sequence of letters and numbers on the index card flashed through Gurney’s mind. If those obscure characters did in fact represent the information that Loomis had been shot and then fatally stabbed with an ice pick to prevent him from divulging, it was now more vital than ever to decipher their meaning.

As he was passing the Larvaton exit on the interstate on his way back to Walnut Crossing, wondering if the digits in the message, 13111, might be a postal box number, his phone rang.

It was Whittaker Coolidge.

His voice was tight. Gurney couldn’t tell whether from excitement or fear.

“I was able to get in touch with the individual you were asking about. I think some communication can be arranged.”

“Good. Is there a next step?”

“Are you still here in town?”

“I can be back there in twenty minutes.”

“Come to my office. I’ll know then how to proceed.”

Gurney exited at the next cloverleaf and headed back to White River. He parked in the same space by the graveyard, and went into the church building by the back door.

Coolidge was in his office, seated at his desk. He was in his clerical uniform—black suit, dark-gray shirt, white collar. His sandy hair was combed and parted.

“Have a seat.” He pointed to a wooden chair by his desk.

Gurney remained standing. The room felt chillier than it had earlier. Perhaps because the fire in the grate had gone out. Coolidge interlaced his fingers. The gesture looked half prayerful, half anxious.

“I spoke to Cory Payne.”

“And . . .”

“I think he wants to talk to you as much as you want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Because of the murder charge. He sounds furious and frightened.”

“When do we meet?”

“There’s an intermediate step. I’m supposed to call a number he gave me and put the phone on speaker. He wants to ask some questions before you get together. Is that okay?”

Gurney nodded.

Coolidge picked up his landline handset, tapped in a number, and held it to his ear. A few seconds later he said, “Yes . . . all set . . . I’m putting you on speaker.” He pressed a button and returned the handset to its base. “Go ahead.”

A sharp, edgy voice from the speaker said, “This is Cory Payne. David Gurney? Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“I have questions for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you agree with what Dell Beckert has been saying about the shootings and the Black Defense Alliance?”

“I don’t have enough facts to agree or disagree.”

“Do you agree with his accusation against me?”

“Same answer.”

“Have you ever shot anyone?”

“Yes. A couple of psychotic murderers who were pointing guns at me.”

“How about shootings that weren’t so easily justifiable?”

“There were no others. And ‘justifiable’ has never meant much to me.”

“You don’t care if a killing is justifiable?”

“To kill or not to kill is a question of necessity, not justification.”

“Really? When is killing another human being necessary?”

“When it will save a life that there’s no other way of saving.”

“Including your own?”

“Including my own.”

“And you’re the sole judge of that necessity?”

“In most cases there’s no opportunity for a broader discussion.”

“Have you ever framed an innocent person?”

“No.”

“Have you ever framed a guilty person—someone you were sure was guilty but you didn’t have enough legitimate evidence to prove it in court?”

“No.”

“Have you ever wanted to?”

“Many times.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I hate liars, and I don’t want to hate myself.”

There was a silence, lasting long enough that Gurney thought the connection might have been broken.

Eventually Coolidge intervened. “Cory? You still there?”

“I’m thinking about Mr. Gurney’s answers.”

There was another silence, not quite so long.

“Okay,” said the voice on the speaker. “We can go ahead with this.”

“As planned?” asked Coolidge.

“As planned.”

Coolidge pressed a button on the handset to end the call. He looked relieved if not quite relaxed. “That went well.”

“Now what?”

“Now we talk.” The sharp, edgy voice came from behind Gurney.

33

Cory Payne’s lean body in the doorway appeared poised to spring—but whether toward or away from Gurney was unclear. There were traces of Dell Beckert in his athletic physique, chiseled face, and unblinking stare. But there was something else in his eyes as well, an acid in place of his father’s arrogance.

Payne and Gurney were facing each other. Coolidge was sitting behind his desk. He pushed his chair back, but remained seated—as if by some peculiar calculation he had decided that the available standing room was already occupied.

Gurney spoke first. “I appreciate your willingness to talk to me.”

“It’s not a favor. I need to know what the hell is going on.”

Coolidge eased his chair back a few more inches and gestured toward the armchairs by the fireplace. “Would you gentlemen like to sit down?”

Without taking his eyes off Gurney, Payne moved cautiously to the brown leather chair on the far side of the hearth. Gurney took the matching one facing it.

Gurney studied Payne’s face. “You resemble your father.”

His mouth twitched. “The man who’s calling me a murderer.”

Gurney paused, struck by the young man’s voice. The timbre was the same as his father’s, but the tone was tighter, angrier.

“When did you change your name from Beckert to Payne?”

“As soon as I could.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because that patriarchal thing is bullshit. I had a mother as well as a father. Her name was Payne. I preferred it. What difference does it make? I thought we were going to talk about these murders I’m being accused of.”

“We are.”

“Well?”

“Did you commit them?”

“No! That’s ridiculous! A stupid, disgusting idea.”

“Why is it ridiculous?”

“It just is. Steele and Loomis were good people. Not like the rest of that stinking department. What’s happening now scares the shit out of me.”

“Why?”

“Look at who’s dead. Look at who’s being blamed. Who do you think will be next?”

“I’m not following you.”

Payne counted the names off on his fingers with increasing agitation. “Steele . . . Loomis . . . Jordan . . . Tooker. All dead. And who’s being blamed? The Gort brothers. And me. You see the pattern?”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Seven people with one thing in common! We’ve all created problems for the sainted police chief. He’d be much happier if none of us existed. And now he’s got four of us out of the way.”

“Are you claiming that your father—?”

“Not with his own hands. That’s what he has Judd Turlock for. It’s amazing how many people have been killed or put in the hospital for ‘resisting arrest’ since Turlock and the great Dell Beckert came to White River. That’s all I can think about. The minute I heard my name on that Flynn thing last night, that was my thought—I’m next. It’s like living in some gangster dictatorship. Whatever the big man wants, somebody makes it happen. Whoever gets in his way ends up dead.”

“If you’re afraid of being tracked down and shot in a manufactured confrontation, why not get yourself a good lawyer and turn yourself in?”

Payne burst out in a harsh laugh. “Turn myself in and sit for God knows how long in Goodson Cloutz’s jail? That would just make it easier for them. In case you haven’t noticed, Cloutz is a slimy piece of shit. And there are people in that fucking jail who’d actually pay him for the chance to kill a police chief’s son!”

Gurney nodded thoughtfully. He sat back in his chair and let his gaze drift out the far window into the churchyard. In addition to giving himself a moment to consider the implications of what Payne was saying, he wanted to create an emotional break to let the young man’s level of agitation subside before moving on to another subject.

Coolidge’s voice interrupted the silence, asking if they’d like some coffee.

Gurney accepted. Payne declined.

Coolidge went to prepare it, and Gurney resumed his inquiry.

“We need to address some evidence issues. There’s video footage of you driving a black Corolla to and from both sniper locations.”

“The apartment building in Grinton and the private house up in Bluestone?”

“Yes.”

“When they showed those places on the news this morning, I almost threw up.”

“Why?”

“Because I recognized the buildings. I’d been there. To both of them.”

“Why?”

“To meet someone.”

“Who?”

He shook his head, looking both angry and scared. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know who you were meeting?”

“I have no idea. People contact me. It’s no secret where I stand politically. I founded White Men for Black Justice. I’ve been on TV. I ask for information. I publicize my phone number. Sometimes I get anonymous tips from people who want to help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“Expose the rot in our fascist police establishment.”

“That’s why you went to those places? To meet someone who promised to help you?”

“He said he had a video—the actual dashboard video from the police car at the Laxton Jones shooting. A video that would expose what really happened—and expose the police story as total bullshit.”

“It was a man’s voice?”

“It was a text. I guess I just assumed it was from a guy. There was no name on it.”

“So you got this anonymous text offering you the video?”

“Yes.”

“Telling you to go to that apartment building on Bridge Street to get it?”

“Yes.”

“This was the evening of the BDA demonstration in the park?”

“Yes. I was supposed to drive into the alley behind the building and wait.”

“And you did that.”

“I followed the directions. I’m there in the alley at the right time, waiting. I’m there maybe twenty minutes. Then I get a text changing the plan, telling me I should drive to the far side of the Grinton Bridge. So I do. And I wait. After a couple of minutes, I get a third text. This one expresses some concern about surveillance, says we need to postpone the meeting until it’s safer. I drive home to my apartment. I’m thinking, that’s the end of that. Until I get a new text a couple of days later. This time it’s a big rush. I have to drive immediately to a house up on Poulter Street in Bluestone. I’m supposed to drive straight into the garage and wait. I manage to get there on time; and I’m waiting, waiting, waiting. After a while I’m thinking maybe I misunderstood. Maybe whoever’s got the video is waiting in the house. I get out of the car and go to the side door. It’s unlocked. I open it. Then I hear a sound that could be a gunshot. From somewhere in the house. So I get the hell out. I jump in my car. Tear out of there. Drive home. End of story.”

“You drove directly to your own apartment?”

“To a parking spot near it. About a block away.”

“Any further messages from your supposed tipster?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you save the texts?”

“No. I wrote down the number they came from, but I deleted the actual texts.”

“Why?”

“A precaution. I’m always afraid of phone hackers or someone getting hold of private information. And this was a supersensitive thing, the dashboard video. If the wrong people found out I was going to be getting it . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Did you ever call the number the texts came from?”

“I tried maybe five, six times. No answer, just anonymous voicemail. I remember thinking maybe they had been in that house after all, and maybe they got shot. Then this morning RAM-TV runs this story on the places where the sniper shots were fired from. Up till then, all they’d talked about was where the cops were when they got shot, not where the bullets came from. But now they showed the apartment building on Bridge Street and the private house on Poulter Street, with some asshole reporter standing in the street pointing at it. I’m thinking, shit, that’s where I was, I was in both of those places. I’m thinking, what the fuck’s going on? I mean it was obvious that something weird was going on. Put that on top of the Flynn bullshit—with the great police chief pointing his goddamn finger at me—and I’m thinking, What the fuck? What the bloody fuck?”

Payne was sitting on the edge of his seat, rubbing his thighs with the palms of his hands as if he were trying to warm them, shaking his head and staring a little wildly at the floor.

“There are fingerprints,” Gurney said mildly, “in both locations.”

“My fingerprints?”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“That has to be a mistake.”

“Could be.” Gurney shrugged. “If it’s not, do you have any idea how they could have gotten there?”

“The only place my fingerprints could be would be in the car, which I never left, except to open the side door of the house. But I never went inside. And at the apartment building I stayed down in the alley. In the car. I never got out of it.”

“Do you own a gun?”

Payne shook his head, almost violently. “I hate guns.”

“Do you keep any kind of ammunition in your apartment?”

“Bullets? No. Of course not. What would I do with them?” He paused, looking suddenly dumbfounded. “Fuck! Are you saying someone found bullets in my apartment?”

Gurney said nothing.

“Because if someone’s saying they found bullets in my apartment, that’s total bullshit! What the fuck is going on?”

“What do you think is going on?”

Payne closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. He opened them and met Gurney’s inquisitive gaze with an unblinking Beckert stare. “It would appear that someone is trying to frame me, someone who’s covering up for whoever was actually involved in the shootings.”

“Do you believe your father is trying to frame you?”

He continued staring at Gurney, as if he hadn’t heard the question. Then the hard expression began to break down. There were little tremors around his eyes and mouth. He stood up abruptly, turned away, and walked to the window that looked out on the old graveyard.

Gurney waited.

A long minute passed.

Payne spoke, still facing the window. “I think so, I don’t think so. I’m sure, not sure. I think, sure, of course he’d frame me, why not, he has no feelings other than ambition. Ambition is sacred to him. Success. Sacred to him and his horrible second wife. Haley Beauville Beckert. You know where her money comes from? Tobacco. Her great-great-grandfather Maxwell Beauville owned a huge slave plantation in Virginia. One of the biggest tobacco growers in the state. Jesus. You know how many people tobacco kills every day? Fucking greedy murdering scumbags. And then I think, no. My father? Frame me for murder? That’s impossible, right? Yes, no, yes, no.” He let out a small gasping sound that might have been a stifled sob. “So,” he said finally, taking a deep breath, “I don’t know a single fucking thing.”

Gurney decided to change the subject. “How close are you to Blaze Jackson?”

Payne turned from the window, calmer now. “Blaze Lovely Jackson. She insists on the whole name. We had an affair. On and off. Why?”

“Is she the one who gave you Devalon Jones’s Corolla?”

“She lets me use it whenever I need it.”

“Are you staying with her now?”

“I’m moving around.”

“Probably not a bad idea.”

There was a silence.

Coolidge came back into the room with Gurney’s coffee. He laid the mug on a side table by the arm of Gurney’s chair, then, with a concerned glance in the direction of Payne, retreated behind his desk.

Payne looked at Gurney. “Can I hire you?”

“Hire me?”

“As a private investigator. To find out what the hell is going on.”

“I’m already trying to do that.”

“For the cops’ wives?”

“Yes.”

“Are they paying you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re bound to have expenses. Investigations can be expensive.”

“What’s your point?”

“I’d like to make sure you have the resources to do whatever you have to do.”

“You’re in a position to supply those resources?”

“My grandparents left their money to me, not to my mother. They locked it up in a trust fund that only I could access, and only after I turned twenty-one. Which was last year.”

“Why did they do that?”

Payne paused, gazing at the ashes in the fireplace. “My mom had a serious drug problem. Giving someone with a drug problem a pile of money is like a death sentence.” He paused again. “Besides, they hated my father and wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get his hands on it.”

“They hated him? Why?”

“Because he’s a horrible, heartless, controlling bastard.”

34

The meeting ended with Gurney declining to be “hired” but leaving open the possibility of billing Payne for any extraordinary expenses—if they happened to result in the discovery of facts that exonerated him. With Payne leery of providing Gurney with his cell number—a new one, anonymous and prepaid—for fear of the police getting hold of the number and tracking his location, Coolidge had nervously agreed to act as a middleman.

Now, thirty-five minutes later, Gurney was finishing a quick lunch in an empty coffee shop on one of White River’s main commercial avenues, playing back in his mind everything he remembered Payne saying, how he said it, his expressions, gestures, apparent emotions. The more he thought about it, the more inclined he was to accept the feasibility of Payne’s narrative. He wondered how Jack Hardwick, ultimate skeptic, would react to it. He was sure of one thing. If it was all just a performance by a clever murderer, it was one of the best—maybe the best—he’d ever witnessed.

He took a final bite of his ham-and-cheese sandwich and went to the cash register to pay. The apparent owner, a middle-aged man with a sad Slavic face, stood up from a nearby booth and came over to take his money.

“Nuts, huh?”

“Excuse me?”

The man gestured toward the street. “Lunatics. Wild. Smash. Burn.”

“Even in this part of town?”

“Every part. Maybe not burning yet. But could be. Just as bad, almost. How can you sleep, thinking how crazy? Burning, shooting, crazy shit.” He shook his head. “No waitresses today. Afraid, you know. Okay. I understand. No matter, maybe. No customers. They afraid, too, so everybody stay home. Hide in closet maybe. What good is this shit? They burn down their fucking house, right? For what? For what? What we supposed to do now? Buy guns, all of us, we shoot each other? Stupid. Stupid.”

Gurney nodded, took his change, and headed for his car on the nearly deserted street.

By the time he got to it his phone was ringing.

“Gurney here.”

“This is Whit Coolidge. After you left, Cory was thinking about something you said—about video footage of him driving to and from the places where the shots were fired?”

“Yes?”

“He says—and I agree—the traffic cameras along those routes are pretty obvious. Anyone who’d ever driven around White River would know they were there.”

“So?”

“If the killer knew they were there, wouldn’t he avoid them?”

“It’s a reasonable question.”

“So what we’re thinking is, maybe it would make more sense to be looking for someone who doesn’t appear on those videos.”

“That did occur to me.”

“Oh. Well. You said so little at the meeting it was hard to know what you were thinking.”

“I learn more from listening than from talking.”

“Absolutely true. A principle we should all live by. And one we so easily forget. Anyway, we just wanted to share that thought with you on the video issue.”

“I appreciate it.”

After he ended the call, Gurney sat for a while in his parked car, picturing the map Mark Torres had displayed, the one showing the route taken by the red motorcycle and its anonymous leather-clad rider—the route painstakingly reconstructed by interviewing people who’d glimpsed or heard the loud bike zipping by—a route that went all the way from Poulter Street to Willard Park, managing to avoid every traffic camera in the city, while Cory Payne in the black Corolla was being recorded by one after another.

Gurney was tempted to drive over to the park yet again—to the last reported location of the motorcycle, before it presumably disappeared into one of several wilderness trails. But he’d been there three times already, and there were two locations critical to the case that he hadn’t yet visited. It was time he did.

Keys would be required. He placed a call to Mark Torres.

While Gurney’s exiled status had not diminished Torres’s willingness to cooperate with him, it had made it inadvisable to do so openly.

They arrived at a plan that would allow Gurney to examine Cory Payne’s apartment and the apartment used for the Steele shooting without necessitating any direct contact. Torres would see to it that the doors of both apartments would be unlocked for one hour that afternoon—from two thirty to three thirty. It would be up to Gurney to conduct his examinations within that time frame, attracting as little attention as possible.

He arrived at the Steele sniper site at 2:31. The five-story building, like many in White River, had seen better days. He recalled from the video shown in one of the CSMT meetings that the apartment number was 5C. Apartment buildings of less than six stories were not legally required to have elevators, and this one didn’t. By the time he reached the fifth floor he was breathing a bit more heavily than he would have liked. It reminded him to add some aerobic exercise to his regimen of push-ups and chin-ups. He’d recently turned fifty, and staying in shape required more effort than it used to.

The apartment door looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years. The reinforced steel peephole was as clear a statement of urban decline as the stink of urine in the stairwell. As planned, the door was unlocked. If there had been crime-scene tape across it, it had been removed.

The interior layout—a small foyer leading into a large room with a kitchenette and bathroom on the right—was as he remembered it from the video, except that the large window was now closed. The faint tripod marks were still visible on the dusty floor.

Standing in the center of the triangle formed by the three marks and gazing out through the streaky windowpanes, he could see in the distance the spot at the edge of Willard Park where John Steele had been struck down. Looking around the empty room, his gaze fell on the ancient steam radiator under which the brass casing had been found. The bottom of the radiator was at least four inches from the floor, leaving the space beneath it easily visible.

He went into the small kitchen and saw nothing out of the ordinary beyond the residue of fingerprint powder left by the evidence tech on various handles, cabinets, and drawers.

Next he went into the bathroom, the room that most interested him—especially the toilet, and the flushing lever in particular. He inspected it carefully, then opened the water tank and examined the inner workings. His eyes widened. What he was looking at suggested an explanation for Payne’s prints being found on the flushing mechanism, on a greasy food wrapper in the toilet bowl, on the brass casing in the living room, and nowhere else in the apartment.

It had bothered him from the beginning that no fresh prints had been found on any of the doors or on the open window sash. Now he thought he knew why, but he wanted an additional piece of evidence to corroborate the explanation before he shared it with Torres.

He took several photos of the toilet tank with his phone, then took a quick look around the apartment to be sure he was leaving everything as he found it. He hurried down the four flights of stairs, breathing in as little as possible of the sour smell, went out through the lobby onto Bridge Street, and drove to the address Torres had given him for Payne’s apartment.

It was located on the far side of Willard Park. The neighborhood was run down but had not yet been visited by the sporadic fires and looting that had pockmarked the rest of the Grinton section. The air, however, had the ashy odor that seemed to have penetrated every corner of the city.

The building was a narrow three-story brick structure with a weedy vacant lot on either side. There were two apartment floors above a storefront. Steel security shades were pulled down over the store windows. A hand-printed sign on the door said Closed. A more professional sign over the barricaded window said Computer Repairs. The building had two front entrances, one to the store, the other to a stairwell providing access to the apartments.

Payne’s was on the second floor. The door, unlocked as promised, opened into a dark foyer that led to a living room with a partial view of the forested area of the park. There was a faint sewer-like smell in the room. The furniture was disarranged. The rug had been rolled back to one side of the room, the couch and chair pillows heaped on the floor. Chairs had been turned over, desk drawers removed, bookcase shelves emptied. A power strip and a tangle of wires on the floor indicated the former presence of a computer. Light fixtures had been opened, blinds taken down from the windows. The place had evidently been subjected to a thorough police search.

A doorway on the left side of the living room led to a bedroom, with what appeared to be the apartment’s only closet. The bureau drawers had been removed and emptied. The mattress had been removed from the box spring and the clothes from the closet. In the corners of the room there were random piles of underwear, socks, shirts, pants.

If Gurney had more time he would have gone through all of it, but he had a more urgent interest. He left the bedroom and crossed the living room to a pair of open doorways. One led to the kitchen, where he found fingerprint dust everywhere, ransacked cabinets and drawers, an open refrigerator. The sewer-like odor was stronger here than in the living room.

The doorway next to the kitchen led to a hallway at the end of which he could see the bathroom, the room he was most interested in—and the source of the foul odor. The drainage trap under the sink had been removed, opening the room to the effluvia of the building’s sewer lines. The medicine cabinet was empty. There were no towels. The toilet seat had been removed.

Gurney lifted the top off the toilet tank and peered down at the flushing mechanism and at the flushing lever on the outside of the tank. With a feeling of satisfaction, he took out his phone and photographed both.

He checked the time. There were still fifteen minutes remaining of the hour Torres had given him. His initial thought was to use every minute of it sifting through whatever the police had left behind. His second thought was to be satisfied with what he’d discovered and get the hell out of there.

That was the thought he acted on. He was out of the building, in his car, and heading for Walnut Crossing with thirteen minutes to spare. He didn’t stop until he reached the interstate rest area where he’d had his initial conversation with Torres. It seemed an appropriate place to pull over, thank him for his assistance, and fill him in on the progress it had made possible.

As he placed the call, he wrestled with the question of how much to reveal—not only about his new view of the fingerprint issue but about his shifting sense of the whole case.

He opted to be fairly open, omitting only his direct contact with Payne.

Torres answered on the first ring. “How’d it go?”

“Smoothly,” said Gurney. “I hope you didn’t run into any problems on your end.”

“None. I just finished relocking the apartment doors. Did you discover anything useful?”

“I think so. If I’m right, it raises some major questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like how sure are you that Payne is the shooter?”

“As sure as I could be without a confession.”

“Sell it to me.”

“Okay. Number one, we know he was in the right places at the right times. We have time-coded videos to prove it. Number two, we have his fingerprints on the side door at Poulter Street and on the toilet and a fast-food wrapper in the Bridge Street apartment. Number three, we have his fingerprints on the cartridge casings found at both shooting sites. We know the prints are his because they match almost all the prints found in his apartment. Number four, a box of thirty-aught-six cartridges—with two missing—was found hidden under some shirts in his bedroom closet. Number five, we just got a DNA report showing a match between the Band-Aid recovered from the toilet at the Bridge Street apartment and hair follicles recovered from the sink drain in Payne’s apartment. Number six, we have a confidential tip from a BDA informant naming him as the shooter. Number seven, his own public statements reveal an obsessive hatred for the police. So there it is. A hate-filled kid, aided and abetted by an organization with some hate-filled members. It’s a convincing case with a ton of incriminating evidence—a lot more than we usually have.”

“That’s part of the problem.”

The confident tone of Torres’s summation dissolved. “What do you mean?”

“There does seem to be a ton of evidence. Almost too much of it. But no single piece of it is solid.”

“What about the videos?”

“The videos tell us where he was at certain times. They don’t tell us why.”

“Wouldn’t it be a pretty extreme coincidence if he just happened to be in both those places for some other reason when those shots were fired?”

“Not if someone sent him there.”

“To set him up?”

“It’s possible. It would explain why he made no effort to avoid traffic cameras or to obscure his plate number.”

Gurney could imagine Torres’s earnest frown as he considered the implications.

“But how do you explain the fingerprints?”

“There’s an interesting fact about those prints. They’re all on portable objects, with one exception, the outside doorknob of the house on Poulter Street.”

“What do you mean by portable objects? Toilets aren’t that portable.”

“Right. But the print wasn’t on the toilet itself. It was on the flushing lever.”

“Okay, on the lever . . . so . . . where does that take you?”

“An hour ago it took me from the apartment on Bridge Street to Payne’s own apartment. I checked both toilets and took some photos that I’ll send you.”

“Photos that show what?”

“That the flushing levers may have been switched.”

“What?”

“It’s possible that the flushing lever on the Bridge Street toilet—the one with Payne’s prints on it—may have come from his own bathroom.”

“God, if that were true . . . that would turn everything upside down. Are you suggesting all the evidence was planted? The Band-Aid with Payne’s DNA? The cartridge casings with his prints on them? That everything implicating him is part of a giant frame job?” Torres’s tone was stunned and questioning rather than challenging.

“The facts are not inconsistent with that scenario.”

Torres paused. “It sounds like I need to get forensics involved again . . . to take a look at this switched-flusher business . . . but suppose . . . Jesus . . .”

Gurney finished the thought. “But suppose the switch was done by someone in the department?”

Torres said nothing.

“It’s a possibility. So if I were you, I’d keep the flusher issue to myself until we dig a little deeper and you can be sure you’re not discussing it with the wrong person. This case could be a lot nastier than anyone realizes.”

As he ended the call, the text message sent to John Steele the night he was killed came vividly to mind: Watch ur back. EZ nite for mfs to ice ur ass n blame the BDA.

For the next couple of minutes he sat there looking out over the field by the little brick building that housed the restrooms. The local vultures were circling idly on the updrafts from the sun-soaked ground.

He decided to call Hardwick and fill him in on the day’s events.

The man’s first words when he picked up were, for him, not unusual.

“The fuck do you want now?”

“Charm, warmth, and a welcoming voice.”

“You got the wrong number, bro.”

It was always best with Jack to cut to the chase, so Gurney did so. “The ME claims Loomis didn’t die from the aftereffects of the gunshot. Somebody got to him in the hospital with an ice pick.”

“No shit! Bit of a security fuckup. Any leads?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Inside job? Somebody on the hospital staff?”

“Could be. But before we get into that, the ground is shifting under the whole case. It looks like Payne is being . . .” Gurney stopped speaking at the sight in his rearview mirror of a blue Ford Explorer pulling into the rest stop. “Hold on a second, Jack. I may be about to have a little trouble with Judd Turlock.”

“Where are you?”

“Deserted rest stop near the Larvaton exit on the interstate. He just drove in behind me. I didn’t see him following me, so either he planted a tracker on my car or he’s been having my phone pinged for location. Do me a favor. I’m going to leave my phone on. Keep listening in case I need a witness later.”

“You have your weapon?”

“I do.” As he spoke he removed the Beretta from his ankle holster and tucked it under his right leg, flicking off the safety.

“If you feel your life is in danger, just shoot the fucker.”

“That’s what I rely on you for—nuanced advice.”

As Turlock came to the side of the car, Gurney slipped the live phone in his shirt pocket and rolled down his window.

Turlock’s voice was as expressionless as his eyes. “Busy day?”

“Busy enough.”

“You get too busy, you start making stupid mistakes.”

Gurney met his gaze and waited.

“Like with that lady back at the hospital. The credentials you showed her said you were from the DA’s office. But you’re not. Not anymore. I could arrest you for impersonating an officer. Maybe let you spend a little time in Sheriff Cloutz’s hotel. What do you think of that?”

“I think it could create a problem. Actually, two problems. First problem, there’s no expiration date on my credentials, and I have a contract that requires written notice of termination, which I never received. Which means the impersonation charge is groundless. So right off the bat you’d be facing a false arrest charge. Second problem, I heard a rumor that somebody got to Rick Loomis in the ICU.” Turlock’s eyes seemed to widen just a little.

Gurney went on. “The security you provided was inadequate, and I told your skirt-chasing officer in front of witnesses that Loomis was in serious danger. That warning was ignored. Now here’s the thing, Judd. I have no desire to publicize your major screw-up, but when people get threatened with arrest they often do destructive things.”

“Who the hell told you somebody got to Loomis?”

“I have informants. Just like you and Chief Beckert. Except my informants actually know what they’re talking about.”

Something new entered Turlock’s eyes, something like the strange calm before a violent storm. Then his gaze fell on the phone in Gurney’s shirt pocket and the strange look was replaced by something more controlled if no less hostile.

“You fuck up this murder investigation, Gurney, there’s going to be a price to pay. In White River we consider obstruction of justice a serious crime. Very serious.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.”

“I’m glad we understand each other,” said Turlock, staring at him for a long moment with an expression full of stone-cold hatred. He slowly raised his right hand in the shape of a gun, the forefinger pointing at Gurney’s face. He dropped the thumb like a hammer. Without another word, he returned to his big blue SUV and drove out of the rest area.

Gurney took his phone out of his pocket. “You hear all that, Jack?”

“Jesus, was that your idea of nuance? You’re lucky the crazy fucker didn’t kill you.”

“He’d love to. Maybe someday he’ll try to. But right now there are other things I need to talk to you about.” Gurney proceeded to bring Hardwick up to date on the events of the day, beginning with his conversations with Whittaker Coolidge and Cory Payne and ending with his discovery of the possible switching of the flush handles.

Hardwick grunted. “That toilet thing sounds like a stretch.”

“I agree.”

“But if it’s true, we’re dealing with a goddamn elaborate setup.”

“I agree.”

“Shitload of planning.”

“Yep.”

“Big risk would suggest a big payoff.”

“Right.”

“So the questions would be whodunit, and why.”

“There’s another interesting question. If Payne was framed, was that a tactic to divert blame, or was it the goal?”

“The hell does that mean?”

“Did the killer pick Payne as a convenient framing victim to misdirect the investigation into the cop killings, or were the cops killed for the explicit purpose of framing him?”

“Jesus, don’t you think that’s a little twisted? Why the hell would framing him be important enough to kill two cops?”

“I admit it’s pushing the possibilities a bit.”

“More than a fucking bit.”

“I’d still like to know for sure which end is the dog and which end is the tail. In the meantime, how’s your poking around in Beckert’s past going?”

“Couple of guys are supposed to be getting back to me. I should be able to tell you something later tonight. Or maybe not. Who knows how eager these cocksuckers are to return favors.”

35

At 5:00 PM Gurney was heading up the hillside road to his property, weary from his obsessive analysis of scenarios involving the framing of Cory Payne. From the moment he’d noticed the plier marks where the outside flush handle joined the flushing mechanism inside the tank, he’d been able to think of little else.

When he reached the end of the road, however, and came abreast of his barn, that subject was nudged aside by the presence of Walter Thrasher’s sleek black Audi.

Gurney remembered the phone call in which he’d agreed to let the man search for artifacts that might support whatever notion he’d gotten about the history of the place. He was tempted to go up to the excavation site to see if he’d found what he was looking for. But the prospect of trudging up the hill was discouraging, and he continued on to the house.

Madeleine, in her straw gardening hat, was kneeling at the edge of the asparagus bed, prying out weeds with a trowel. She looked up at him, tilting the brim of her hat to shield her eyes from the afternoon sun.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You look worn out.”

“I feel worn out.”

“Any progress?”

“Mostly uncovering new questions. We’ll see where they lead.”

She shrugged and went back to her weeding. “I assume you know about that man down by the pond?”

“Dr. Walter Thrasher. He asked me if he could poke around in our excavation.”

“You mean your excavation.”

“Apparently he’s an expert on the Colonial history of this area.” He paused. “He’s also the county medical examiner.”

“Is that so?” She stabbed her trowel down around a dandelion root.

He watched for a while in silence before asking, “How’s Heather doing?”

“Last I heard, the contractions stopped—or what they thought were contractions. They’re keeping her in the hospital for at least another twenty-four hours for evaluation.” She yanked a long root out of the ground and tossed it on a pile beside her. She gazed at the trowel for a moment, laid it on top of the weeds, and looked up at him again. “You really do look like you had a difficult day.”

“I did. But I have a recovery plan. A hot shower. I’ll see you in a little while.”

As usual, the shower worked at least some of its hoped-for magic. It struck him as an odd irony of the human animal that the most complex mental tangles could be relieved by the application of warm water.

By the time they sat down to dinner, he felt calm and refreshed. He was even able to appreciate the scent of apple blossoms in the soft spring air coming in through the French doors. They were well into their asparagus soup before Madeleine broke the silence. “Do you want to tell me about your day?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He began with his morning visit to Saint Thomas the Apostle. He told her about the Reverend Coolidge’s sympathy for the BDA and for Marcel Jordan’s and Virgil Tooker’s supposed efforts to expose police wrongdoing, about the man’s almost violent aversion to Dell Beckert, and about his insistence on the innocence of Cory Payne.

He told her about his subsequent meeting with Payne himself—about Payne’s explanation for his presence at the shooting sites, about his open contempt for his father, about his fear of being next in line for assassination.

He also told her about his phone conversation with Thrasher, about the appearance of propofol in Jordan’s and Tooker’s tox screens, and about the chilling discovery made during the Rick Loomis autopsy.

At Gurney’s mention of the ice pick Madeleine uttered a guttural cry of revulsion. “Are you saying that someone . . . just walked into the ICU . . . and did that?”

“It could have happened in the ICU. Or when he was being brought back from radiology.”

“My God! How? I don’t understand how someone could just . . .”

“It could have been a hospital employee, someone familiar to the nurses. Or someone in uniform. Maybe a security person. Or someone pretending to be a doctor.”

“Or a cop?”

“Or a cop. Someone who wanted to make sure Rick would never come out of that coma.”

“When will Heather be told?”

“Not right away, I’m sure.”

“Won’t she automatically be given a copy of that autopsy report?”

“She’ll have to request it, and the official version probably won’t be available for another thirty days. What Thrasher gave me on the phone was an oral heads-up on the preliminary report, which doesn’t go to anyone except to the police—as an aid to the investigation.”

She started to take a spoonful of her soup, then laid the spoon down as though she’d lost her appetite and pushed the bowl toward the center of the table.

After a while Gurney went on with the story of his day. He talked about his visits to the two apartments, his discovery of the suspicious tool marks on the toilet handles, his growing sense that everything Dell Beckert was saying about the case was either a mistake or a lie, and the unnerving possibility of police involvement in the shootings.

“That isn’t exactly news,” said Madeleine.

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t that what the text on John Steele’s phone said from the beginning?”

“The text didn’t provide any real information. It could have been an intentional misdirection. It still could be. This case is like a buried city. We’re only seeing pieces of it. I need more facts.”

“You need to do something. Two women lost their husbands. An unborn baby lost her father. Something has to be done!”

“What do you think I should be doing that I’m not doing already?”

“I don’t know. You’re good at assembling bits of information and seeing a pattern in them. But I think sometimes you enjoy the intellectual process so much you don’t like to rush it.”

He said nothing. His normal impulse to defend himself seemed to have gone missing.

The list of hospital employees he’d gotten from Abby Marsh was divided into six functional categories: Administration and Technical Support; Physicians and Surgeons; Nursing and Therapy; Laboratory and Pharmacy; Security, Maintenance, and Housekeeping; Kitchen, Cafeteria, and Gift Shop. A seventh cross-functional category was labeled Current Year Resignations and Terminations. It was apparently updated monthly, covering January through the end of April, making it useless for identifying staff members who might have been terminated during the current month.

Going through the six functional lists produced no instant revelations. He came upon several names familiar from his visits. He noted a predictable relationship between job description and home address. Most of the housekeeping staff lived in Grinton. The nursing, lab, and technical support people were more likely to live in Bluestone. Physicians and surgeons preferred Aston Lake and Killburnie Heights.

Although he was aware that the largest part of detective work involved slogging along unproductive paths, Madeleine’s comment had left him with a feeling of restlessness, an itch to accelerate the process. After considering some actionable next steps, he decided to pursue an answer to a question that intrigued him.

If there was a reasonable doubt about the involvement of Cory Payne, then any possible aid provided to him by the Black Defense Alliance was equally questionable. But if the BDA was not involved in the planning or execution of the shootings, why had Marcel Jordan leased the two shooting sites? Or had he, in fact, even done so? The fact that his name appeared on the leases fell short of proving his involvement. The leasing brokers might be able to shed some light on the matter. Gurney placed a call to Torres to get the brokers’ names.

Torres responded without hesitation. “Laura Conway at Acme Realty.”

“She’s the broker for both locations?”

“For most of the rental properties in White River. There are other brokers in town, but Acme manages almost all the rentals. We have a good relationship. Is there some way I can help?”

“I want to find out about the lease agreements on the Bridge Street apartment and the Poulter Street house—specifically, whether anyone at the realty company had direct contact with Marcel Jordan.”

“If you want, I can ask about that for you. Or if you’d rather, I can have Laura Conway call you directly.”

“The second option would be best. Depending on what she says about Jordan, I may have follow-up questions.”

“I’ll see if I can reach her now. Sometimes she works late. Let me get back to you.”

Five minutes later Torres called back.

“Conway is on vacation up in the Maine woods, no cell phone, no internet, no email, but she should be back in the office in three or four days.”

“Do you know if anyone else in the office was involved with those contracts?”

“I asked. The answer was no. Laura handled both of them personally.”

“Okay, I appreciate the effort. You’ll try again when she’s due back?”

“Absolutely.” He hesitated. “You think there’s something wrong with the contracts?”

“I’d like to know whether Jordan himself personally leased those places. By the way, you mentioned the department has a good relationship with Acme. What sort of good relationship?”

“Just . . . good.”

“Mark, you’re not a particularly good liar.”

Torres hesitated. “I have to testify at a trial in Albany tomorrow morning. I need to be there by ten. I could stop off in Walnut Crossing around eight. Could we meet someplace and talk?”

“There’s a place for coffee in Dillweed. It’s called Abelard’s. On the county road in the center of the village. I can be there at eight.”

“I’ll see you then.”

Gurney knew if he gave in to the inclination to speculate, he’d waste a lot of time trying to arrive at an answer that would likely be handed to him the following morning. Instead he placed a call to Jack Hardwick.

It went to voicemail, and he left a message.

“Gurney here. I’m getting some ugly ideas about this case, and I need you to tell me what’s wrong with them. I’m going to be at Abelard’s tomorrow morning to meet with a young detective. He has to get to Albany for a trial, and he’ll need to be on his way by eight thirty. If you can come then, that would be ideal.”

36

When Gurney pulled into the tiny parking area in front of Abelard’s at 7:55 AM, the Crown Vic was already there.

He found Torres at one of the rickety antique tables in the back. Every time he saw the young detective, he looked a little younger and a little more lost. His shoulders were hunched, and he was holding his coffee mug in both hands as if he were trying to give them something to do.

Gurney sat opposite him.

“I remember this place when I was a little kid,” said Torres. His voice conveyed the special tension produced by trying to sound relaxed. “Back then it was a dusty old general store. Used to sell live bait. For fishing. Before it got all fixed up.”

“You grew up in Dillweed?”

“No. Out in Binghamton. But I had an aunt and uncle here. They immigrated from Puerto Rico about ten years before my parents and I came up. They had a small dairy farm. Compared to Binghamton, this was real country. The area hasn’t changed much. Mostly got poorer, more run-down. But this place sure got fixed up.” He paused, lowering his voice. “Have you heard about the latest problem in the search for the Gorts?”

“What now?”

“That second K9 dog they brought in—it got a crossbow arrow through its head, just like the first. And the state police helicopter had to make an emergency landing in one of the old quarries—some kind of mechanical problem. Just the kind of a mess the media loves—and Beckert hates.”

Gurney said nothing. He was waiting for Torres to get to the real point of their meeting. He ordered a double espresso from Marika, whose spiked hair that morning was only one color, a relatively conservative silver blond.

Torres took a deep breath. “Sorry about dragging you out here like this. We probably could have talked on the phone, but . . .” He shook his head. “I guess I’m getting kind of paranoid.”

“I know the feeling.”

Torres’s eyes widened. “You? You seem . . . unshakable.”

“Sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not.”

Torres bit his lower lip. He seemed to be steeling himself for a dive off the high board. “You asked about Acme Realty.”

“About Acme’s relationship with the department.”

“The way I understand it, it’s kind of a reciprocal arrangement.”

“Meaning what?’

“Rental management can be a tough business in some neighborhoods. Not just trying to collect rent from deadbeats, but nastier stuff. Dealers turning the property into a crack house. Illegal activity that can void the owner’s insurance. Tenants threatening to kill landlords. Gangbangers scaring decent tenants away. Apartments getting trashed. You’re a landlord in a tough area like Grinton, you’re going to be dealing with some dangerously crazy tenants.”

“So what’s the reciprocal arrangement?”

“Acme gets the support it needs from the department. Gangbangers, drug dealers, and crazies are persuaded to move on. People who don’t pay their rent are persuaded to do so.”

“What does the department get in return?”

“Access.”

“Access to what?”

“To any rental unit Acme manages.”

“The Poulter Street house?”

“Yes.”

“The Bridge Street apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Cory Payne’s apartment?”

“Yes.”

Marika arrived with his espresso. “God,” she said. “You boys look super serious. Whatever you do for a living, I’m glad I don’t do it. You want sugar with that?”

Gurney shook his head. When she was gone he said, “So, we’re talking about warrantless searches?”

Torres said nothing, just nodded.

“So let’s say you have a vague suspicion there might be some illegal activity in a particular apartment, but nothing concrete. And you know that no one is home during the day. So what then? You call up that Conway woman and ask her for a key?”

Torres looked around nervously. “No, you go to Turlock.”

“And he calls Conway?”

“I don’t know. I just know he’s the one you’d go to, and he’d supply the key.”

“So you take the key, you check out the premises, you see the evidence you guessed might be there. Then what?”

“You leave everything like it was. You get a warrant from Judge Puckett, specifying what you expect to find, claiming it was based on reliable tips from two sources. Then you go back and find it. All neat and legal.”

“You’ve done this?”

“No. I’m not comfortable with it. But I know some guys have.”

“And they have no problem with it?”

“They don’t seem to. It’s blessed from the top. That means a lot.”

Gurney couldn’t disagree with that. “So the bad guys get put away or run out of town. Acme has fewer problems, and their business is more profitable. Meanwhile, Beckert gets credit for reducing the population of undesirables and cleaning up White River. He becomes a champion of law and order. Everybody wins.”

Torres nodded. “That’s pretty much the way it works.”

“Okay. Big question. Do you know of situations where evidence was planted by the same officer who later found it?”

Torres was staring down into the coffee mug he was still grasping with both hands. “I couldn’t say for sure. All I know is what I’m telling you.”

“But you’re uncomfortable with all that illegal access?”

“I guess so. Maybe I’m in the wrong line of work.”

“Law enforcement?”

“The reality of it. The version you learn in the academy is fine. But it’s a whole other thing out on the street. It’s like you have to break the law to uphold it.”

He was gripping his mug so tightly now his knuckles were white. “I mean, what’s ‘due process’ anyway? Is that supposed to be a real thing? Or do we just pretend it’s a real thing? Are we supposed to respect it even when it’s inconvenient, or only when it doesn’t get in the way of what we want to achieve?”

“Where do you think Dell Beckert stands on that question?”

“Beckert is all about the result. The final product. Period.”

“And how he gets there doesn’t matter?”

“It sure doesn’t seem to. It’s like there’s no standard other than what that man wants.” He sighed and met Gurney’s gaze. “You think maybe I should be in another profession?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I hate the conflicts that are part of the job.”

“Part of the job? Part of this peculiar case? Part of working in a racially divided city? Or just part of working for Beckert?”

“Maybe all of those. Plus . . . being a Latino in a very Anglo department can get a little tense. Sometimes more than a little.”

“Let me ask you something. Why did you become a cop to begin with?”

“To be helpful. Make a difference. Do the right thing.”

“And you don’t think that’s what you’re doing?”

“I’m trying. But I feel like I’m in a minefield. Take this situation with the toilet handle. I mean, if Payne is being set up by someone in the department . . .” His voice trailed off. He looked down at his watch. “Christ, I better get going.”

Gurney walked out with him to the parking area.

Torres opened his car door, but didn’t immediately get in. He uttered a small humorless laugh. “I just said in there that I wanted to be helpful. But I don’t have a clue how to do that. It seems that the longer this case goes on, the less I know.”

“That’s not the worst thing in the world. Realizing you have no idea what’s going on is a hell of a lot better than being totally sure about everything—and totally wrong.”

37

Three minutes later, as Torres’s Crown Victoria was pulling out onto the county road, Hardwick’s growling red GTO was pulling in.

Hardwick got out and swung the heavy door shut with the crashing thump that only vintage Detroit cars make. He cast a sideways glance at the departing sedan. “Who’s the dick in the Vic?”

“Mark Torres,” said Gurney. “CIO on the Steele and Loomis cases.”

“Just the shootings? Who caught the playground murders?”

“He did, for about ten minutes. Then Beckert took over and handed them off to Turlock.”

Hardwick shrugged. “Like it’s always been. Dell calls the shots, the Turd does the work.”

Gurney led the way back inside to the table he’d occupied with Torres. Marika came over and Gurney ordered another double espresso. Hardwick ordered a large mug of Abelard’s special dark roast.

“What did you learn about Beckert?” Gurney asked.

“Here’s what I was told—mostly secondhand stuff, rumors, bullshit. Some of it might be partly true. No telling which part.”

“You inspire confidence.”

“Confidence is my middle name. So here’s the story. ‘Dell’ is a shortened form of ‘Cordell.’ Specifically, Cordell Beckert the Second. Known to some of his associates as CB-Two. Meaning there was another Cordell Beckert somewhere in the family tree. Cory Payne was actually christened Cordell Beckert the Third.

“Dell was born in Utica forty-six years ago. His father was a cop, disabled in a shootout with a drug dealer. Quadriplegic. Died when Dell was ten. After grammar school—I already told you some of this—Dell got a scholarship to a military prep school in the redneck end of Virginia. Bayard-Whitson Academy. Where he met Judd Turlock. And where Judd had his juvie legal problem. I’ll come back to that in a minute. After Bayard-Whitson, he went to—”

Gurney interrupted. “It’s interesting that Beckert never used what happened to his father as a credential for his war on drugs, like he did with his wife’s death.”

Hardwick shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t give a shit about the old man.”

“Or the opposite. Some people never mention the things that affect them the most.”

Marika arrived at the table with Hardwick’s coffee, then left.

When she was out of earshot, he continued. “After Bayard-Whitson, Dell went to Choake Christian College, where he met and married his first wife, Melissa Payne. Cory was born right after he graduated from Choake’s ROTC program. He joined the Marines as a lieutenant, completed a four-year tour, came out as a captain, then joined the NYSP. With his Marine officer background he moved up quickly during the next seven or eight years. The job was first, family a distant second. Along the way Melissa fell in love with painkillers and Cory became a festering thorn in his side, which I told you about.”

“Culminating in the attempted torching of the recruiting office?”

“Right. But there’s something else I was just told by someone who knew the family back then. But it might be total bullshit. See, to do you a fucking favor, I’ve been making a giant pain in the ass of myself, calling people I haven’t spoken to in years, annoying them with one goddamn question after another. They may be making up crap to get rid of me.”

“You love making a giant pain in the ass of yourself. What did you find out?”

“Two, three months before Dad finally sent the little bastard away to the boot-camp boarding-school prison—whatever the fuck you want to call it—Cory supposedly had a druggie girlfriend. He was a large, aggressive twelve. She was maybe fourteen and dealing a little pot here and there. Dell had her picked up and tossed into juvie detention for possession and intent—to make a point to Cory about what happens when you hang out with people Dad doesn’t approve of. Problem is, she was raped in the detention center, supposedly by a couple of COs, and hanged herself. Or so the story goes. Anyway, it was after that that Cory went totally batshit and got sent away to the discipline farm.”

“No blowback on Beckert from the kid’s death?”

“Not even a breeze.”

Gurney nodded thoughtfully, sipping his espresso. “So he puts his son’s girlfriend in a place where she gets raped and ends up dead, and when the kid reacts, he sticks him in some behavior-mod hellhole. His desperate addict wife either accidentally or not-so-accidentally ODs on heroin, and he uses that to sanctify his image as a determined drug fighter. Fast-forward to the present. Two White River cops get killed, he’s handed some shaky evidence that his son may have been involved, and he appears on one of the most popular interview shows in the country to announce not only that he’s ordered his son’s arrest for murder but that he’s sacrificing his outstanding police career in the interest of justice. You know something, Jack? This guy makes me want to throw up.”

The challenging look that was never completely absent from Hardwick’s eyes sharpened. “You don’t like him because you think he’s accepting shaky evidence against his own son as gospel? Or is it the other way around—you’re seeing the evidence as shaky because you don’t like him?”

“I don’t think I’m being delusional. It’s a simple fact that all the so-called evidence is portable. None of it was found on the interior doors, walls, windows, or any other structural parts of those premises. Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?”

“Peculiar shit happens all the time. The world is a factory for peculiar shit.”

“One more point. Torres just told me that Turlock has a deal with the rental agent that would have given him easy access to the locations where the so-called evidence was found.”

“Wait a minute. If you’re suggesting that Turlock planted that evidence, you’re really suggesting it was Beckert, since the Turd does nothing without a nod from God.”

“The toilet-handle switch indicates that somebody planted it with the intention of incriminating Cory Payne. There’s no other reasonable interpretation of that. All I’m saying about Turlock and Beckert is that their involvement is possible.”

Hardwick made his acid-reflux face. “I’ll admit Beckert is a prick. But to frame his own son for murder? What kind of person does that?”

Gurney shrugged. “A blindly ambitious psychopath?”

“But why? Even psychopaths need motives. It makes no fucking sense. And it’s a hell of a shakier premise than Cory being the shooter. Take that weird flush-handle thing out of the equation, and your whole ‘framing’ theory collapses. Couldn’t you be mistaken about the significance of those tool scratches?”

“It’s too big a coincidence for both those handles to have been removed and replaced—with one of them providing a key fingerprint in a murder investigation.”

Hardwick shook his head. “Look at it from the motive angle. Look at what we know about Cory Payne. Radical, unstable, full of rage. Hates his father, hates cops. Has a long history of public rants against law enforcement. One of his favorite lines is the BDA motto: ‘The problem isn’t cop killers, it’s killer cops.’ I was listening to one of his speeches on YouTube. He was talking about the moral duty of the oppressed to take an eye for an eye—which is essentially invoking the Bible to advocate the murder of police officers. And that business about his girlfriend being raped by a couple of COs—can’t you see that festering in his mind? Shit, Gurney, he sounds to me like a prime suspect for exactly what he’s being accused of.”

“There’s just one problem with it. He might have all the motivation in the world, but he’s not an idiot. He wouldn’t leave brass casings with his prints on them at the shooting sites. He wouldn’t leave a Band-Aid floating in the toilet with his DNA on it. He wouldn’t drive an easily traceable car with visible plates past a series of traffic cameras and park it next to each shooting location, unless he were doing it for some other reason. It’s not like he wanted to be caught or to claim responsibility for the shootings—he’s adamantly denying any involvement. And there’s the problem of victim selection. Why would he pick the two cops in the department who were the least like the cops he supposedly hates? Logically and emotionally, none of it makes sense.”

Hardwick turned up his palms in exasperation. “You think Beckert framing his own son makes logical and emotional sense? Why the hell would he do that? And by the way, do what, exactly? I mean, are you suggesting Beckert framed his own son for two murders someone else committed? Or are you saying that Beckert also arranged the murders of two of his own cops? Plus the BDA murders? You seriously believe all that?”

“What I believe is that the people he’s blaming for it had nothing to do with it.”

“The Gorts? Why not?”

“The Gorts are violent, uneducated, redneck racists—men whose approach to life involves skulls, crossbows, pit bulls, and chopping up dead bears for dog food.”

“So what?”

“The playground murders were carefully planned and executed. They required knowledge of the victims’ movements, a flawless double kidnapping, and the sophisticated administration of propofol. And Thrasher told me the tox screens on the victims included not only propofol but alcohol and benzodiazepines. That suggests a scenario that began with a friendly meeting over a few drinks—something I can’t imagine occurring between the BDA leaders and the Gorts.”

“What about the evidence they keep talking about on TV—the rope they found in the Gorts’ compound, and the computer drive with the KRS website elements on it?”

“Both could have been as easily planted as the items they’re trying to hang Cory with.”

“Christ, if we had to exclude every piece of evidence that could have been planted, no one would ever be convicted of anything!”

Gurney said nothing.

Hardwick stared at him. “This fixation you have on Beckert—what’s that really based on, besides his crazy son blaming him for everything?”

“Just a feeling at this point. Which is why I want to find out everything I can about the man’s history. A few minutes ago you alluded to Turlock’s juvie legal problem when he was in school with Beckert. Were you able to find out anything more about that?”

Hardwick paused. When he finally spoke, his tone had become less argumentative. “Maybe something, maybe nothing. I called the Bayard-Whitson Academy and got the headmaster’s assistant. I told her I was interested in speaking with any staff members who’d been at the school thirty years ago. She wanted to know why. I said that one of their eminent graduates, Dell Beckert, who was a student at that time, could be the next New York State attorney general—and that I was writing an article about him for a journalism course I was taking, and I’d love to be able to include the perspective of any of his teachers who might be willing to share an anecdote or two.”

“She bought this?”

“She did. In fact, after a little more back-and-forth, she told me that she had been there herself, as assistant to the previous headmaster, when Beckert was a student.”

“She say anything about him?”

“Yep. Cold, calculating, clever, ambitious. Was awarded ‘Top Cadet’ distinction in every one of his four years there.”

“He must have made a big impression on her for it to last thirty years.”

“Judd Turlock apparently made a bigger one. When I mentioned his name, there was total silence. I thought the call was cut off. She finally said she had no desire to talk about Turlock, because in all her time at Bayard he was the only student who’d made her feel uneasy. I asked if she knew of any trouble he’d gotten into, and there was another dead silence. Then she told me to hang on a minute. When she came back to the phone she gave me an address in Pennsylvania. She said it belonged to a detective by the name of Merle Tabor. Said if anyone could tell me anything about the incident involving Turlock, it would be Merle.”

“The incident? She didn’t say anything specific about that?”

“No. My mention of Turlock pretty much shut her down. Seemed like after she gave me that address, she just wanted to get off the phone.”

“Quite a reaction after thirty years.”

Hardwick picked up his coffee mug and took a long swallow. “There’s something unnerving about the Turd. He tends to stick in the mind.”

“Interesting. You plan to follow up with Merle Tabor?”

“Hell, no. According to the school lady, Merle’s an off-the-grid kind of guy. No phone, no email, no computer, no electricity. You can pay him a visit and find out for yourself, if the spirit moves you. Probably no more than a four-hour trip, assuming you don’t get lost in the woods.”

Hardwick pulled a scrap of notepaper out of his pocket and slid it across the table. There was an address of sorts scrawled on it in his nearly indecipherable handwriting—BLACK MOUNTAIN HOLLOW, PARKSTON, PA. “Who knows? Couple of old retired farts like you might hit it off. Merle could end up handing you the key to the whole goddamn mess.”

It was clear from his tone that he considered such an outcome unlikely. Gurney saw no reason to disagree.

38

After Hardwick roared off in his eco-hostile muscle car, Gurney stayed at Abelard’s for a little while to finish his coffee and organize the rest of his day.

Merle Tabor had suddenly become the elephant in the room, and despite Gurney’s mixed feelings about the usefulness of a visit to Black Mountain Hollow, he found it impossible to dismiss. He took out his phone and went to a Google satellite view of Parkston, Pennsylvania. There wasn’t much to see. The place appeared to be a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. He typed in “Black Mountain Hollow” and discovered that it was a narrow dirt road proceeding from a county route three miles up into the hills. There was one house on it, at the very end.

He clicked on Directions, entered his Walnut Crossing address as the starting point, and found that the distance to Parkston was 142 miles. The estimated drive time was just under three hours, not Hardwick’s four. Even so, he was reluctant to make the trip without some indication that Merle Tabor would be there. He looked up the number for the Parkston Police Department.

His call was automatically transferred to the county sheriff’s office. He assumed he must have misheard the name given by the man who answered—Sergeant Gerbil—but he didn’t question it. He explained that he was a retired NYPD homicide detective, had been hired to look into an old case down in Butris County, Virginia, and had reason to believe that a Parkston resident by the name of Merle Tabor might be able to give him some useful information. But he didn’t know how to get in touch with the man. He was starting to explain that Tabor lived on Black Mountain Hollow and had no phone when the sergeant interrupted him with a nasal Appalachian accent.

“You plannin’ on payin’ him a visit?”

“Yes, but I’d like to know that he’s there before I drive for three—”

“He’s there.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s always there in the spring of the year. Most other times, too.”

“You know him?”

“Somewhat. But it don’t sound like you do.”

“I don’t. His name was given to me as someone familiar with the case I’m looking into. Is there any way of getting in touch with him?”

“You want to see him, you just have to go see him.”

“His house at the end of the Hollow road?”

“Only house up there.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Your name again?”

“Dave Gurney.”

“NYPD?”

“Homicide. Retired.”

“Good luck. By the way, make sure it’s daylight.”

“Daylight?”

“Merle don’t like people on his property after dark.”

After ending the call, Gurney checked the time. It was just five after nine. If he left immediately, allowing six hours for the total round-trip drive time, plus forty-five minutes with Merle Tabor, he could be home before four.

He had some phone calls to make, but he could make them en route. He paid Marika for the coffees, left a generous tip, and set out for Parkston.

As he was heading southwest through the long river valley toward Pennsylvania, he made the first call—to Madeleine. It went to her voicemail. He left a detailed message explaining where he was going and why. Then he checked his own voicemail and discovered that she’d left a message for him since he’d had his phone shut off all morning. He played it back.

“Hi. I just arrived at the clinic. I don’t know if that Thrasher person was there when you were leaving for Abelard’s this morning, but when I was leaving at eight forty I saw his fancy car down by our barn. I don’t like the idea of him coming up on our property whenever he feels like it. In fact, I don’t like him being there at all. We need to talk. Soon. See you later.”

Aside from feeling the automatic negative reaction he felt whenever Madeleine raised a problem, he had to admit he wasn’t especially pleased with Thrasher’s presence either. And he certainly wasn’t pleased with the man’s secretiveness about what he was looking for.

His next call was to Torres—to raise a point he’d meant to bring up at Abelard’s, before he was distracted by the young detective’s slide into self-doubt.

He got his voicemail.

“Mark, it’s Dave Gurney. I want to suggest something. If Cory Payne wasn’t the shooter at the Bridge Street apartment building, obviously someone else was. You need to take another look at the traffic and security videos. The shooter may have used that red motocross bike. Or another vehicle. Even a police car. If the pattern from Poulter Street is repeated, he may have tried to stick to side streets to avoid being caught on camera. He may even have walked most or all of the way. But there are a hell of a lot more cameras in that part of town than around Poulter Street, and I’d be willing to bet he ended up within range of at least one of them. Unless you actually recognize a vehicle you know, you’ll have to go by the timing—looking for vehicles that enter and then leave the area at times consistent with the shooting. It’ll be a time-consuming job, but it could break the case.”

His next call, as he crossed a modest bridge over the headwaters of the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, was to the Episcopal rector in White River.

The man’s greeting was so smoothly delivered that Gurney thought for a second he’d reached another voicemail recording. “Good morning! This is Whittaker Coolidge at Saint Thomas the Apostle. How can I help you?”

“This is Dave Gurney.”

“Dave. I was just thinking about you. Any encouraging news?”

“Some progress, but I’m calling with a question.”

“Fire away.”

“It’s for Cory, actually, unless you happen to know the answer. I need to know if he’s ever owned any thirty-aught-six rifle cartridges.”

“Didn’t you raise that point when you were here?”

“I said that the police found a box of cartridges in his closet and—”

Coolidge cut him off. “And he denied it. Vehemently.”

“I know. This is a different question. I want to know if he’s ever owned any—or maybe just had a few in his possession, maybe holding them for someone else. Maybe just for a day.”

“I seriously doubt it. He hates guns.”

“I understand, but I still need to know if he’s ever had any sort of contact with any thirty-aught-six cartridges. And if so, what the circumstances were. Would you pass the question along to him?”

“I will.” There was an edge of annoyance in Coolidge’s cultured voice. “I’m just giving you a preview of the likely answer.”

Gurney forced himself to smile. He’d read somewhere that speaking through a smiling mouth made one sound friendlier, and he wanted to maintain the rector’s goodwill. “I really appreciate your help with this, Whit. Cory’s answer could make a big difference in the case.” He was tempted to add that the time factor was crucial, but he didn’t want to push his luck.

In fact, adding that note of urgency turned out to be unnecessary. Less than five minutes later, he received a call from Payne.

His tone was brusque. “I’m not sure I understand your question. I thought I explained that I don’t have a gun. You’re still asking if I have bullets?”

“Or if you ever did. Thirty-aught-sixes.”

“I’ve never owned a gun. I’ve never owned bullets of any kind.”

“Have you ever had any in your possession? Perhaps storing them for someone else. Or buying them and passing them along. Possibly as a favor for someone?”

“I’ve never done anything like that. Why?”

“Two cartridge casings were found with your fingerprints on them.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I’ve been told the prints are of good quality.”

“I said it’s impossible! I don’t own a gun. I don’t own bullets. I’ve never bought bullets, kept bullets in my apartment, or held bullets for anyone else. Period! End of story!” The words came racing out, his voice brittle with anger.

“Then there must be another explanation.”

“Obviously!”

“Okay, Cory. You think about it, I’ll think about it, maybe we’ll figure it out.”

Payne said nothing.

Gurney ended the call.

A minute later his phone rang. It was Payne. “I thought of something—something that happened two, three months ago.” He was still speaking rapidly, but the anger was gone. “My father was having one of his brief human periods. We were—”

“Human periods?”

“Every once in a while he’d act like a normal person, actually talk to me. It would only last a day, if even that, then he’d go back to being God.”

“Okay. Sorry, I interrupted what you were starting to say.”

“So the time I’m talking about, we had lunch. We managed to get through our burgers without him telling me what a waste I was. Then we drove out to his cabin. You know what reloading is?”

“You’re referring to custom-making ammunition?”

“Exactly. He’s a gun fanatic. Him and Turlock. In fact, they share that cabin. For hunting.”

“Why did he take you there?”

“His idea of a father-son thing? He said he wanted me to help him do some reloading. Like it was a privilege. Allowing me into the world of guns and hunting—murdering animals. So he’s got this contraption that funnels gunpowder into the brass part, and a thing that pushes the bullet part in. He’s got this intense look, like he loves doing this. How crazy is that?”

“He wanted you to help him?”

“He had some little boxes to put the reloaded ones in. He had me doing that.”

“So you were handling those cartridges?”

“Putting them in boxes. I didn’t think of it at first, when you were asking about having bullets in my possession. I didn’t think of it that way.”

“Do you know if they were thirty-aught-sixes?”

“I have no idea.”

“You say this happened two or three months ago?”

“Something like that. And you know what? Now that I think of it, that was the last time I saw him—until I saw him calling me a murderer on TV.”

“Where were you living at the time?”

“The apartment I still have. I heard the asshole cops tore it apart.”

“How long have you lived there?”

“A little over three years.”

“How did you find it?”

“When I first came to White River, I stayed at my father’s house for a couple of months. I started taking computer science courses at the community college in Larvaton, and I got a job at that computer repair shop in town. There was an apartment for rent upstairs in that same building. Living with my father and his sickening bitch of a wife wasn’t working. So I took the apartment. How does any of this matter?”

Gurney ignored the question. “You’ve been there ever since?”

“Yes.”

“Ever try going back to your father’s house?”

“No. I stayed over a few times. I could never stay more than one night. I’d rather sleep in the street.”

As Payne was speaking, Gurney slowed down and pulled into a gas station. He parked by the seedy-looking convenience store in back of the pumps.

“I have another question for you. How did you meet Blaze?”

Payne hesitated. “I met her through her half brother. Darwin. He owns the computer business where I work. Why are we talking about Blaze?”

“She’s prominent in the Black Defense Alliance. The case against you involves your connection to that. And she lent you the car you drove to the shooting sites.”

“I told you the case against me is bullshit! And I explained why I went to those places!”

“What kind of a relationship do you have with her?”

“Sex. Fun. Kind of an on-and-off thing. Nothing serious. No commitments.”

He found it hard to imagine this tense, sharp-edged, angry young man having fun.

“How did she feel about Marcel Jordan and Virgil Tooker?”

“She didn’t talk about them.”

Gurney made a mental note to probe that further, then changed the subject.

“Do you know anything about the legal difficulty Judd Turlock got into when he and your father were teenagers in school together?”

There was a moment of silence. “What difficulty?”

“You have no idea what I’m talking about?”

Another moment of silence. “I’m not sure. I think there was something . . . something that happened. But I don’t know what it was. I haven’t thought about this for years.”

“Haven’t thought about what?”

“When I was a kid . . . when they were both still with the state police . . . they were talking one night in the den about some judge down in Virginia . . . some judge who’d taken care of something for Judd years earlier . . . something that could have been a huge problem. When they saw me at the door they stopped talking. I remember it felt weird, like I wasn’t supposed to have heard them. I guess whatever it was must have happened when they were in school, because I know the school was in Virginia. But I don’t know if that’s the same thing you’re talking about.”

“Neither do I. By the way, where did you have lunch?”

“Lunch?”

“With your father, the day he took you to his cabin.”

“A place by the strip mall. I think it’s a McDonald’s. Or a Burger King. Why?”

“The more facts I have, the better.”

After Gurney ended the call he went into the convenience store. The place had a sour smell of old pizza and burned coffee. The register clerk was a tall, gaunt, vacant-eyed twentysomething male covered with a lacework of arcane tattoos. He had the rotten teeth that came with the use of methamphetamine, rural drug of choice prior to the tidal wave of heroin.

Gurney bought a bottle of water, took it out to the car, and sat there for a while pondering what Payne had told him. It was actually quite a lot. But perhaps most important was the possible explanation of how his fingerprints might have gotten on the brass casings found at both shooting sites as well as on the fast-food wrapper in the Bridge Street apartment. And if the casings and wrapper did in fact come from Payne’s day with his father, then Dell Beckert must have been involved in the framing scheme. It was a scenario that seemed to increase in ugliness the more likely it became.

39

As Gurney drove southwest through a progression of black-cherry copses and open pastures, he was haunted by the empty stare of the convenience store clerk and what it suggested about the rotting underside of rural life in America.

The problems, of course, weren’t just rural. Urban areas were often dirtier and more dangerous to live in. But here the contrast between the verdant beauty of the landscape and the gray hopelessness of so many of the inhabitants was jarring. Worst of all, in an age of vicious polarization, there seemed to be no acceptable way of addressing the problem. Add a few layers of racial animosity, cultural resentment, and political grandstanding, and solutions seemed far out of reach.

As he was sinking into the edgy depression these thoughts generated, his phone rang. “Private Caller” was all the ID screen revealed.

“Gurney here.”

“Dave! So glad I got you. This is Trish Gelter.”

“Trish. Hello.” The first image of her that came to mind was the last glimpse he had caught of her—a memorable rear view of her progress across the room in her slinky dress at the fund-raising party for the animal shelter. “This is a surprise. How are you?”

“That depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On how soon I can see you.”

“See me?”

“I heard a rumor you were working on that terrible shooting case.”

“Who did you hear that from?”

“I was afraid you’d ask that. I’m terrible with names. Is it true?”

“More or less. Why?”

“I thought the police had it all wrapped up.”

Gurney said nothing.

“But you don’t think so?”

“I’m not sure yet what to think.” He paused. “Is there something you wanted to tell me?”

“Yes. But not on the phone.”

But not on the phone. He wondered for a moment who else had used that phrase, then remembered it was Rick Loomis, when he suggested they meet at the Larvaton Diner—the meeting he was heading to when he was shot.

“How, then?”

“Face-to-face.” She made it sound like her favorite sex position.

He hesitated. “It’s not something you can tell me now?”

“It’s too complicated.” She sounded pouty. “And I’d really like to see you.”

Again he hesitated. “Where would you like to meet?”

“It would have to be here. I’m marooned. My Porsche is in the shop. And Marv took the Ferrari out to the Hamptons for a couple of days.”

When he didn’t answer immediately, she added, “I know Lockenberry is out of your way, but I really feel it’s urgent.”

The combination of her missing husband and urgent was . . . distracting.

“How soon can you come?” she asked.

He thought about it—from multiple angles, some more distracting than others, which made him wonder if he was making the right decision for the right reason. “I’m down in Pennsylvania right now for a meeting. Maybe late this afternoon? Or early evening?”

“Either way is good. I’ll be here. It’ll be really nice to see you again.”

The call from Trish Gelter pushed aside Gurney’s musing over the social and economic desolation of the rural northeast and replaced it with a specific, vivid recollection from the Gelter fund-raiser: Trish coming over to Marv to let him know that Dell Beckert was on the phone, and Marv leaving the party immediately to take the call.

He had wondered then what sort of relationship might exist between Gelter and Beckert, and that same question returned now with additional force. As he considered the possibilities, his GPS guided him into an even remoter area in which the houses were increasingly far apart. Eventually it announced that he had arrived at his destination—the foot of the road that led to Merle Tabor’s house.

Black Mountain Hollow Road was, for all practical purposes, unmarked. Its identifying sign had been used for target practice. The letters that were partly legible among the rust-edged bullet holes could make sense only if you already knew the words they were part of.

The road was narrow, twisty, rutted, and full of rocks and deep puddles. Once it began climbing to higher ground there were no more puddles, but the rocks, ruts, and sharp turns persisted. At three miles in, according to Gurney’s odometer, this rough dirt track emerged from the scrubby forest that had hemmed it in most of the way and entered a grassy clearing, where it ended. On the right side there was a mud-spattered Toyota pickup truck and an old Suzuki motorcycle. Straight ahead there was a larger-than-average log cabin with a green metal roof, a long covered porch, and small windows. The clearing itself was bordered by raspberry brambles.

Gurney parked behind the motorcycle. When he got out of the car he heard a sound that was familiar from a gym he used to work out in—the rhythmic thumping of blows on a boxer’s heavy bag. The persistence and power of the impacts got his attention. He started walking toward the sound, which seemed to be coming from the left side of the house.

“Mr. Tabor?” he called out.

The thumping continued.

“Mr. Tabor?”

“Over here.”

He was startled by the closeness of the voice.

The man was standing on the far side of the pickup truck, eyeing Gurney with calm curiosity. A weathered, hardscrabble seventysomething, he was still in good shape, judging from the sinewy arms resting on the truck bed. A thatch of gray hair showed traces of once having been red.

Gurney smiled. “Glad to meet you, sir. My name is Dave Gurney.”

“I know who you are.”

“Oh?”

“News travels fast.”

“From the sheriff’s deputy I spoke to on the phone?”

Tabor said nothing.

“I thought you were unreachable up here.”

Tabor shrugged. “Man’s got a car, I’ve got an address.”

“I didn’t realize my visit would stir up that kind of interest.”

“Harlan looked you up on the internet. You being a big star from the big city. What he didn’t tell me is what the hell interest you have in the ancient history of Butris County.”

“You may be aware of a case up in White River, New York, where two police officers—”

Tabor cut him off. “Heard all about it.”

“Then you know that the case is being investigated by—”

“Dell Beckert. Man gets a lot of attention for a small-city chief.”

“Are you aware that he resigned?”

“I hear he made a show of it, made it sound like a grand gesture. Course he really had no choice, his son being the perp.”

“And are you aware that the acting chief is Judd Turlock?”

Tabor stared at Gurney for a long moment with the unreadable expression of a longtime cop. “I was not aware of that.”

Gurney stepped over to the near side of the pickup, directly across from him. “I’ve been told they go back a long way.”

“That what brings you down here?”

“I’ve been told you might be able to give me some information regarding an incident Turlock was involved in at Bayard-Whitson Academy.”

“Am I missing something here?”

“Sir?”

“Why are you investigating the background of the acting police chief? Is this an official or private matter?”

“I’m acting on behalf of the wives of the slain officers.”

“They have a problem with Turlock?”

“It may be a bigger issue than that. The evidence against Beckert’s son has more holes in it than your road sign.”

Tabor raised a hard-looking hand to his chin and massaged it thoughtfully. “Anybody but you think that?”

“The detective reporting to Turlock is on the fence.”

“You think somebody’s putting the kid in the frame?”

“I do.”

He gave Gurney another expressionless stare. “What’s any of this got to do with what happened in Butris County nearly thirty years ago?”

“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about Turlock. Maybe I’m looking for something to justify it. Maybe some insight into who he really is.” He paused. “There’s another aspect to this. Beckert is probably going to run for state attorney general. If he wins, Turlock is virtually certain to be deputy AG. Powerful position. Makes me uncomfortable.”

Tabor’s jaw muscles tightened. After a long silence, he seemed to reach a decision. “Let me see your phone.”

Gurney took it out of his pocket and held it up.

“Turn it off.”

He did.

“Lay it down where I can see it.”

Gurney placed it in the truck bed.

“This is not something I want recorded,” said Tabor. He paused, staring down at his hands. “I haven’t talked about this in years. Of course, it still comes to mind. Even came to me in a nightmare once.”

He paused again, longer this time, then met Gurney’s gaze. “Judd Turlock talked a retarded black man into hanging himself.”

“What?”

“There was a creek with a swimming hole off the back of the Bayard-Whitson campus. There was a high bank with a big elm tree. Branch went out over the swimming hole. Boys used to tie a rope to it, swing out over the water, let go. One day Turlock and Beckert were there. There was a third boy sitting a little ways down the bank. And there was George Montgomery, sitting in his underwear in a shallow part of the creek. George was twenty years old, mentally maybe five or six, son of one of the kitchen help. There’s two stories of what happened next. One story, told by the boy sitting on the bank, is that Turlock called to George to come up and join them. George came up, shy like, and Turlock showed him how he could take the rope and swing out over the water. Except he went on to show him it would be safer if he tied the loose end of the rope around his neck, so it wouldn’t get in the way. George did like he was told. Then he swung out over the creek.” Tabor paused before adding in a strained voice. “That was that. George hung there, out over the middle of the swimming hole, kicking, strangling. Until he was dead.”

“What was Turlock’s version?”

“That he never said a word to George, that George came up on the bank, wanting to use the rope like he’d seen other people do. He somehow got all tangled up in it, and once he swung himself out there, they had no way of reaching him.”

“And Beckert told the same story?”

“Of course.”

“Then what?”

“The kid on the bank took a lie detector test and passed. We considered him a highly credible witness. The prosecutor agreed we should charge Turlock with manslaughter and petition to have him tried as an adult.”

“So at trial it was Turlock’s and Beckert’s word against the word of the kid on the bank?”

“Never got that far. The kid changed his story. Said he didn’t actually hear what was being said. Maybe Turlock was saying to George not to put the rope around his neck. Or maybe he wasn’t saying anything at all.”

“Someone got to him?”

“The Turlock family. Lots of money. Long history of corrupt construction deals with the county board. Judge dismissed our case and sealed the file. And Judd Turlock walked away from a sadistic murder without a goddamn scratch. There were times . . . times I must admit I came damn close to ending his life the way he ended George’s. Used to think about him strangling on the end of a goddamn rope. Thinking about it right now makes me wish I’d done it.”

“Sounds like Beckert was as much a part of it as Turlock.”

“That’s a fact. While we were thinking we had a case, we went back and forth on how to deal with him, but it all fell apart before we decided anything.”

“Did it occur to you at the time that it might have been Beckert’s idea?”

“Lot of things occurred to us.”

A silence fell between them, broken by Gurney. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did you move up here?”

“Wasn’t so much about moving here as leaving there. The Montgomery case changed everything. I approached it pretty aggressively. I didn’t leave any doubt with the Turlocks how I felt about their piece-of-shit son. They got the local racists riled up, claiming I was favoring a retarded black man over a nice white boy. Meanwhile my daughter was seeing a black man, who she ended up marrying, and the local reaction was ugly. I was counting the days till I could get my pension. I knew I had to get out of there before I killed someone.”

In the ensuing silence the thumping of the heavy bag seemed to grow louder.

“My granddaughter,” said Tabor.

“It sounds like she knows what she’s doing.”

Tabor nodded, came around from behind the pickup bed and gestured for Gurney to follow him to the corner of the big cabin.

There, in a level shaded area scuffed free of any grass, a wiry young girl in gym shorts and a tee shirt was delivering a series of hard right and left hooks to a leather heavy bag suspended from the branch of an oak tree.

“Used to be where her swing was hung.”

Gurney watched the flurry of punches. “You teach her how to do that?”

There was pride in Tabor’s eyes. “I pointed out a few things.”

The girl, apparently in her early teens, clearly had a mixed racial background. Her natural Afro had in it a hint of Tabor’s red-hair gene. Her skin was a deep caramel, and her eyes were green. Except for a brief assessing glance at Gurney, her attention was centered on the bag.

“She has power,” said Gurney. “She get that from you?”

“She’s better now than I ever was. Straight-A student, too, which I never was.” He paused. “So maybe she’ll survive this world. What do you think her chances are?”

“With that kind of concentration and determination, better than most.”

“You mean better than most black girls?” There was a sudden combativeness in his voice.

“I mean better than most black, white, tan . . . girls, boys, you name it.”

Tabor shook his head. “Might be that way in the right kind of world. But we’re not there. Real world is still the kind of world that killed George Montgomery.”

40

Gurney’s conversation with Merle Tabor gave him a lot to think about during the long drive to the Gelter house in well-tended Lockenberry.

The hanged black man in Judd Turlock’s past set up a disturbing echo with the two men strangled by the ropes tying them to the jungle gym in the Willard Park playground. Gurney couldn’t help thinking that a man who thirty years earlier had been responsible for one such horror might well be capable of two more. This hypothetical link received some support from one fact—the web of trails that made the Willard Park site easily reachable from the hunting cabin Turlock shared with Beckert. If one or both of them had seized Jordan and Tooker, or tricked them into meeting on some pretext, the cabin would have been an ideal location for the administration of the benzos and propofol, the beatings, the branding.

His mind leapfrogged to the shootings—specifically to the fact that the red motocross bike racing away from Poulter Street was last seen at the edge of Willard Park, within a short distance of those same trails leading to the Beckert-Turlock cabin.

Might Turlock have been the second man at Poulter Street, the one who actually shot Loomis? Wasn’t it at least conceivable that Turlock had engineered and carried out, for reasons yet to be determined, both the police and the BDA murders? It had seemed to Gurney all along that the Jordan-Tooker executions were too smoothly organized to have been a spur-of-the-moment response to the first shooting. The planning required for the acquisition of the propofol alone would preclude that.

Thinking about the propofol angle gave Gurney a little jolt. He pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and used his phone to access the internet. He wanted to check on the shelf life of propofol. The first pharmaceutical database he came upon provided the answer: two years in an unopened vial, one year in a preloaded hypodermic.

He felt like a fool, realizing he’d been overlooking something obvious. He’d been focusing on Mercy Hospital for its connection to the ice-pick murder of Rick Loomis and ignoring its possible connection to the murders of Jordan and Tooker. And because of his focus on the ice-pick wielder as a possible member of the current staff, he hadn’t bothered looking through the personnel list section containing employees who’d resigned or been terminated prior to Loomis’s hospitalization. But given the likelihood that the Jordan-Tooker murders were planned well in advance of their execution—and given the long shelf life of propofol—the list of former employees could be as relevant as the current list.

In his eagerness to rectify his oversight, he was tempted to postpone his meeting with Trish Gelter. But his desire to find out what she wanted to tell him, and to learn something about her husband’s connection to Dell Beckert, won out. The list research would have to wait. He decided to call Madeleine and let her know about his detour to Lockenberry and that he’d be home later than planned.

As he was about to place the call to her, he discovered that a message from her had arrived while his phone was turned off at Merle Tabor’s request.

“Hi, hon. I may not see you this evening. I’m going to Mercy after work to be with Heather. Apparently Rick’s brother and Heather’s sister both got delayed somewhere by weather conditions, canceled flights, general confusion. Kim Steele plans to come to the hospital too. Comfort in numbers. If it gets late I might stay at that visitors’ inn overnight. I’ll call when I have a better idea what I’m doing. Hope your trip to Pennsylvania was useful. Love you.”

For the rest of his trip to Lockenberry, Gurney entertained his growing suspicions that the shootings and BDA murders were directly linked but not in the way anyone had assumed; that Turlock and Beckert may have been central to both; and that the hospital that hosted the murder of Loomis may also have been the source of the drugs that facilitated the killing of Jordan and Tooker.

If those conjectures were facts, however, what did they add up to? What payoff was big enough to justify all that planning, effort, risk, and grisly violence? What goal required the deaths of those specific victims? Might there be other links to Mercy Hospital?

When his GPS announced that he had arrived at his destination—the iron gateway in the stone wall fronting the Gelter property—he’d made little progress on those questions.

Driving up through the wildflower meadow and on through the astonishing field of daffodils, he refocused himself on the nature of his visit and what he hoped to get from it. He parked in front of the looming cube of a house.

As he approached the huge front door, it slid open without a sound, just as it had on the first occasion. As then, Trish was standing in the doorway. As then, she was smiling, displaying the little Lauren Hutton gap between her front teeth. On that first occasion, however, she was dressed. This time she was wearing only a silky pink robe, and a rather short one at that. Her long shapely legs appeared to be the platonic ideal of female legs, although there was nothing platonic about the impact they made. Nor about the look in her eyes.

“You came quicker than I imagined. I just got out of the shower. Come in. I’ll get us something to drink. What would you like?”

Where she was standing forced him to pass very close to her. The cavernous room was bright, the afternoon sunlight slanting through the glass roof.

“Nothing for me,” he said.

“You don’t drink?”

“Not often.”

She moistened the corners of her mouth with the tip of her tongue. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, you being a detective and all, but I might be able to find a couple joints. If you’re interested.”

“Not right now.”

“Pure of body, pure of mind?”

“Never thought of it that way.”

“Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” She smiled. “Come. Let’s sit by the fire.” She touched his arm and led him through the room’s cubical furniture to the edge of a brown fur rug in front of the wide modernistic hearth. Green flames were rising from an arrangement of realistic-looking logs. The sight brought to mind what she’d said at the party. I love a green fire. I’m like a witch with magic powers. A witch who always gets what she wants.

To one side of the hearth there was a sort of couch made of low cubes and giant pillows. She picked up a small remote device from one of the pillows and pressed a button. The light level in the room dropped to something resembling dusk. Gurney looked up and saw that the glass roof had become less transparent. The color of the sky had changed from blue to deep purple.

“Marv explained it to me,” she said. “How it works. Some kind of electronic something or other. He seemed to find it fascinating. I told him he was putting me to sleep. But I like making it dark. It makes the fire greener. You like the rug?”

“It’s some kind of fur?”

“Beaver. It’s very soft.”

“I never heard of a beaver rug.”

“It was Marv’s idea. So typical of him. There were a bunch of beavers damning up his trout stream. He hired a local trapper to kill the beavers and skin them. Then he had someone make a rug out of them. So he could stand on it, drinking his six-hundred-dollar cognac. On them, really—the beavers who had inconvenienced him. I think the idea is kinda sick, but I love the rug. You sure I can’t get you a drink?”

“Not now.”

“Can I see your hand?”

He turned up his right palm.

She took it in one of her hands, studied it, and slowly ran her forefinger along its longest line. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Yes.”

“With this hand?”

“With a gun.”

Her eyes widened. She turned his hand over and touched each of his fingers.

“You wear your wedding ring all the time?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t.”

He said nothing.

“Not that we have a bad marriage or anything. It just feels too wifey. You know, like being someone’s wife is the main thing. I think that’s very . . . limiting.”

He said nothing.

She smiled. “I’m glad you could come.”

“You said you wanted to tell me something. About the case.”

“Maybe we should sit down.” She looked toward the rug.

He stepped back in the direction of the couch.

She slowly let go of his hand and shrugged.

He waited for her to sit at one end, then sat a few feet away from her.

“What did you want to tell me?”

“You should get to know Dell better. He’s going far. Very far.”

“How do you know?”

“Marv has a knack for picking winners.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“It would be nice if you were part of the team.”

Gurney said nothing.

“You just need to get to know Dell a little better.”

“What makes you think I don’t know him well enough already?”

“I hear things.”

“From who?”

“I have a terrible memory for names. I heard you don’t like him. Is that true?”

“True enough.”

“But you and Dell are so much alike.”

“How?”

“You’re both strong . . . determined . . . attractive.”

Gurney cleared his throat. “What do you think of his son?”

“Cory the Monster? Too bad he didn’t shoot himself instead of those cops.”

“What if he didn’t shoot those cops?”

“What are you talking about? Of course he did.”

“Why?”

“Why? To attack Dell any way he could? To show him how much he hated him? To act out his little power fantasies? Why does any maniac kill anyone?”

Gurney remained silent for a while before asking, “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

She turned halfway toward him on the couch, letting her robe ride up higher on her legs. “I wanted to tell you that you could be on the winning side of this. The farther Dell goes, the farther we all go.” She smiled slowly, holding his gaze. “It could be a fun ride.”

He stood up from the couch. “I’m not really a fun guy.”

“Oh, I’m sure you could be. I can tell a lot from a man’s hands. You just need the right encouragement.”

Halfway between Lockenberry and Walnut Crossing, Gurney stopped at Snook’s Green World Nursery. He knew Madeleine liked the place for its unusual selection of plants and the horticultural tips she got from Tandy Snook. He was thinking he’d pick up something special for one of her flower beds. He was also hoping that the task would dislodge the remarkably vivid thoughts he was having about Trish Gelter.

Those thoughts, of course, were divorced from reality in more ways than one. There was the simple fact that he would never want to destroy the closeness of his relationship with Madeleine with the secrets and lies required by any affair, however brief. And then there was the matter of Trish herself. Although the woman was quite open about her availability, her motives might not be. It would be no surprise to discover that everything in that peculiar house was being recorded. And a video of certain activities could be employed later to influence one’s actions, even the course of an investigation. Despite Trish’s pointed mention on the phone that her husband was away in the Hamptons, he may have been aware of her intentions—may even have encouraged them. Or he may not have been away at all.

They did not seem to be, in any normal sense of the word, nice people.

As Gurney stepped out of his car in front of the nursery’s greenhouses, he spotted Rob Snook striding in his direction, sporting that golly-gee smile of a particularly annoying sort of churchgoer. He was a short, well-fed man whose eyes sparkled with shallowness.

“Dan Gurney, if I recall, husband of Marlene! A pleasure to see you on this beautiful day the Lord has given us! How can I serve you today? Florals or edibles?”

“Flowers.”

“Annuals or perennials?”

“Perennials.”

“Small, medium, or large?”

“Large.”

Snook squinted thoughtfully for a moment, then thrust a victorious forefinger in the air. “Giant delphiniums! Purple and blue! Absolutely glorious! The perfect thing!”

Once the delphiniums were stowed securely in the back seat of the Outback, Gurney decided to call Mark Torres for an update before resuming his drive home.

The young detective picked up immediately. He sounded agitated.

“Dave? I was just going to call you. I’ve been doing what you suggested, going through the street videos from the night Steele was killed.”

“You found something.”

“I did. I’m about a third of the way through the digital files, and Judd Turlock’s Explorer has popped up twice. Fairly close to the apartment location, and the timing factor is right.”

“What do you mean by ‘fairly close’?”

“The video the Explorer appears on comes from a security camera mounted over the door of a jewelry store two blocks away.”

A beep alerted Gurney that another call was coming in, but he let it go to his voicemail.

“Tell me about the timing.”

“The Explorer passes the camera going in the direction of Bridge Street about forty minutes before the shooting. Then passes in the opposite direction eight minutes after it.”

“Did the camera get a shot of the driver?”

“No. Wrong angle.”

“If I remember correctly, there’s no video available of the apartment building front entrance, just the street shot showing the way into the back alley. Is that right?”

“Right. But if the timing of the Explorer’s coming and going isn’t related to the shooting, that would be a pretty big coincidence.”

“I agree.”

“I’ll go through the rest of the video material we have, and I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Thanks, Mark. You’re doing a great job.”

“One other thing, in case you weren’t aware of it—Carlton Flynn is going to be interviewing Maynard Biggs tonight.”

Gurney almost asked who Maynard Biggs was, then recalled Whittaker Coolidge mentioning him as the man Dell Beckert would be contending with for the state AG position.

That, he realized, could make it a very interesting interview.

41

As Gurney resumed his trip home to Walnut Crossing, it seemed to him there was no end to the odd twists in the entangled White River cases—all reinforcing Cory Payne’s stated suspicion that it was really one case with multiple victims.

Torres’s video discovery of Turlock’s SUV in the vicinity of Bridge Street provided some support for the framing theory, although it fell far short of proving that Turlock was the actual shooter. The lack of video evidence that Turlock himself was in the vehicle that night didn’t help. It could have been Beckert. But Gurney was in no position to demand alibis from the people running the investigation.

Still, there were steps that could be taken. The relationship between Turlock and Beckert suggested their shared hunting cabin might be a place worth visiting.

He had a general idea where the gun club preserve was located. He decided to get in touch with Torres for directions to the cabin. He parked in his usual spot by the mudroom door. The call went to voicemail, and he left a message explaining what he needed.

He got out of the car and was stopped for a moment by the sweetness of the spring air. He took a few slow, deep breaths, stretched his back, and looked around at all the shades of green in the high pasture. The scene seemed to drain the tension out of his muscles. It also reminded him of the delphiniums in the Outback. He got them out of the back seat and placed them, still in their plastic pots, alongside Madeleine’s main flower bed.

He went into the house, took a quick shower, fixed himself a plate of scrambled eggs and ham, and washed it down with a large glass of orange juice.

By the time he’d washed his dishes it was a quarter past seven, the sun was just setting behind the western ridge, and the air coming in through the open French doors had become noticeably cooler.

He retrieved his laptop from the den, along with the USB drive containing the Mercy Hospital personnel list, and settled into an armchair by the fireplace.

Before getting into the list he decided to check his email. The server had been troublesome lately, and the items were downloading with painful slowness. He put his head back, closed his eyes, and waited.

He opened them with a start nearly an hour later. His phone was ringing. The time was 8:03 PM. The caller was Cory Payne.

“Maynard Biggs is on RAM-TV. Being interviewed by that scumbag Flynn. You have to watch.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“From a safe place in White River. Look, you need to listen to him now. He’s on. I’ll talk to you later.”

Gurney went to the “Live Stream” page of the RAM website, found A Matter of Concern with Carlton Flynn, and selected it.

A moment later the video box on the website page came to life. Flynn, in his signature white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, sat opposite an athletic-looking brown-skinned man with gray eyes wearing a tan crewneck sweater. In contrast with Flynn’s projection of aggressive energy, he radiated stillness.

Flynn was in the middle of a sentence. “. . . feel about the uphill battle you’ll be waging against a man who’s come to symbolize law and order in a time of chaos, a man whose poll numbers have now passed yours and keep going up.”

“I believe that waging this battle, if you wish to call it that, is the right thing to do.” The man’s voice was as calm as his demeanor.

“Right thing to do? To try to defeat one of today’s greatest champions of law and order? A man who puts the law above all other considerations?”

“Lawfulness and orderly public behavior are desirable characteristics of a civilized society. They are natural signs of health. But making orderliness our top priority makes its achievement impossible. Like many good things in life, good order is the byproduct of something else.”

Flynn raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re a professor, am I right?” He made the title sound like an indictment.

“That’s correct.”

“Of psychology?”

“Yes.”

“Neuroses. Complexes. Theories. I’m sure there’s a place for all that. But we’re in the middle of a crisis. Let me read you something. This is a statement by Dell Beckert that lays out in simple terms the nature of the crisis we’re in right now.” Flynn took a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. He picked up a sheet of paper from the table and read:

“‘Our nation is afflicted with a cancer. This cancer has infiltrated our society in many ways over many years. The burning of a flag. The abandonment of dress codes in our schools. Hollywood’s vilification of our military, our government, our corporations. The popularization of casual obscenity. The demeaning of religious leaders. The glorification of crime in rap music. The war on Christmas. The terrible erosion of authority. The infantile mindset of entitlement. These trends are the termites devouring the foundation of America. Our civilization is at a tipping point. Shall we encourage our society’s fatal descent into the jungle of violence? Or shall we opt for order, sanity, and survival?’”

Flynn waved the paper at Biggs. “That’s what your likely opponent in the race for attorney general has to say about the state of our nation. What’s your response?”

Biggs sighed. “Lack of order isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom. Suppressing a symptom doesn’t cure the disease. You don’t cure an infection by suppressing the fever.”

Flynn responded with a dismissive little snort. “In your public statements, you sound like a messiah. A savior. Is that how you see yourself?”

“I see myself as the most fortunate of men. All my life I have been surrounded by the fires of racism and hatred, crime and addiction, rage and despair. Yet by the grace of God I remain standing. I believe that those of us who know the fire, yet have not been consumed by it, owe a life of service to those the fire has crippled.”

Flynn grinned unpleasantly. “So your real goal as attorney general would be to serve the crippled black ghettos, rather than the broad population of our state and our nation?”

“No. That’s not my goal at all. When I say I owe service to those the fire has crippled, I mean all those crippled by racism. Black and white alike. Racism is a razor with no handle. It cuts the wielder as deeply as the victim. We must heal both or we are doomed to endless violence.”

“You want to talk about violence? Let’s talk about your supporters in the Black Defense Alliance, the violence they’ve stirred up, the fires, the looting—and this Blaze Lovely Jackson person who spews out hatred for the police every time she speaks! How can you justify accepting support from people like that?”

Biggs smiled sadly. “Should we reject someone because of their rage at injustice? Should we reject them for the damage that has been done to their heart, for their feelings of fear, for their marginalization, their frustration? Should we reject them because their rage frightens us? Do you tell your angry white listeners to stop listening to you? Do you tell every white man who condemns black men to go away and never turn on your program again? Of course you don’t.”

“So what’s your answer? To embrace the hate-spewing Blaze Lovely Jacksons of the world? To overlook the fact that she thinks killing police officers is no big deal?”

Biggs turned his sad eyes on Flynn. “Rodney King asked, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ It sounded like a naïve question. But if you take that question—”

Flynn interrupted, rolling his eyes. “Here we go with the Saint Rodney baloney!”

“If you take King’s question literally, it leads us into a morass of historical reasons why white America and black America do not get along as well as we might like. But I prefer to interpret his question in a different way—as a plaintive cry for a solution. The question I hear is this: What would it take for us to come together? And the answer to that can be summed up in one word. Respect.”

“Fine! No problem!” cried Flynn. “I’ll happily show my respect for anyone who shows their respect for our country, our values, our police!”

Biggs shook his head. “I’m talking about unconditional respect. The gift of respect. To withhold respect until we feel that it has been earned is the formula for an endless downward spiral—the spiral that has brought us to where we are today. Respect is not a bargaining chip. It’s the gift a good man gives to every other man. If it is given only after certain conditions have been met, it will achieve nothing. Respect is not a negotiating tactic. It is a form of goodness. May God grant us the humility to embrace what is good, simply because it is good. May God grant us the sanity to realize that respect is its own reward, that respect—”

Flynn, who’d been nodding condescendingly as Biggs was speaking, cut him off. “That’s a lovely speech, Maynard. A nice sermon. But the reality we’re facing won’t—”

Gurney’s attention was diverted abruptly by a sound he associated with a small-displacement motorcycle. As he listened, it seemed to grow louder. It brought to mind the elusive red motocross bike.

He put his computer down on the hassock in front of his chair and went quickly to the side of the house that provided a view of the high pasture where the sound seemed to be coming from. By the time he got to the den window it had stopped. In the less-than-ideal dusk light he saw nothing unusual. He opened the window quietly and listened.

He heard only the distant cawing of crows. Then nothing at all.

Even though he suspected he was overreacting, he went to the bedroom where he’d left his Beretta in its ankle holster. When he sat on the bed to strap it on, he saw something he’d missed earlier—a note under the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was from Madeleine.

“Hi, sweetheart. I decided to stay over at the hospital inn tonight. So I came home to get a few overnight things and fresh clothes for tomorrow. In the morning I’ll go straight from White River to work. Love you.”

He made a mental note to call her later that evening. Then he left the bedroom and made a circuit of the ground-floor windows, peering out into the adjacent fields and woods. He repeated the circuit. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he returned to his chair by the hearth, and picked up his computer.

Carlton Flynn was in the midst of giving his wrap-up statement directly to the camera and his millions of faithful viewers.

“. . . up to each of you to consider the sentiments expressed here tonight by Dr. Maynard Biggs and to compare them with the positions laid out by Dell Beckert. In my opinion, it boils down to one question: Do we keep extending, again and again, the respect that Biggs claims will solve all our problems, or do we draw the line and say, loud and clear, enough is enough! How many times are we supposed to turn the other cheek before we admit it isn’t working? My personal belief—and this is just me, folks—my belief is that peace is a two-way street. I’m Carlton Flynn, and that’s how I see it. I’ll be back after these important messages.”

As Gurney was closing the RAM-TV website, his phone was ringing. It was Torres.

“Gurney here.”

“You asked how to get to the gun club? And how to identify Beckert’s cabin?”

“Right.”

“The most direct access is from Clapp Hollow, which you get to off County Route Twenty, also called Tillis Road. About three miles into Clapp Hollow there’s a bridge over a stream, and right after that there are two trailheads across from each other. The one on the right leads up to the old quarries. The one on the left leads to the gun club preserve. I just emailed you a marked-up satellite map showing the route to the preserve, along with the GPS coordinates of the cabin.”

“You think my Outback can get through those trails?”

“It would depend on how much mud there is. And whether any trees are down.”

“You said one of the trails leads up to the old quarries—is that the area where the Gorts are holed up?”

“Yes. But it’s not just old stone quarries up there. There are interconnecting caves and abandoned mining tunnels that don’t appear on any maps. It’s a wild area. Dense forest and thorn bushes and no roads. The Gorts were born and raised in those hills. They could hide up there forever.”

“An interesting situation.”

As he was ending the call, Gurney heard the bing of an email arriving on his computer. It was the satellite trail map Torres had mentioned. As he adjusted the laptop screen for a closer look, his phone rang again.

It was Cory Payne, his voice sharp with excitement.

“Did you watch it?”

“I did.”

“What did you think?”

“Biggs seems to be a decent man. More decent than most politicians.”

“He understands the problem. He’s the only one who does.”

“The problem of disrespect?”

“Disrespect is another word for belittling. The literal belittling of the black man by the white man. The belittling of the powerless by the powerful. The belittling of the weak by the control freaks who want everything their own way. They beat their victims into the ground, into the dirt. Every so often those beatings—that endless belittling provokes rage. The control freaks call that rage the breakdown of civilization. You know what it really is?

“Tell me.”

“It’s the natural human reaction to unbearable disrespect. The assault on the heart, on the soul. Disrespect that makes me less than you. Before the Nazis killed the Jews, they made them less than equal, less than citizens, less than human. You see the horror in those words? The horror of making one man less than another?”

“Is that what your father does?”

Payne’s voice was pure acid. “You’ve been in the same room with him? You’ve watched him? You’ve listened to him? You’ve seen him on TV in a lovefest with that thug Flynn? You’ve heard him call his own son a murderer? What kind of man do you think he is?”

“That’s too big a question for me to answer.”

“I’ll make it simple. Do you think he’s a good man or a bad man?”

“That’s not a simple question at all. But I have a simple one for you—about that cabin where you helped him with those cartridges.”

“What about it?”

“Is it locked?”

“Yes. But you can get in if you know where the spare key is.” Curiosity seemed to be diluting the acid. “You think something there will tell you what you want to know?”

“Possibly. Where’s that key?”

“You’ll need to use the compass app on your phone. Stand at the northeast corner of his cabin. Walk due east, maybe thirty or forty feet, until you come to a small square piece of bluestone in the grass. The key is under it. Or at least it was the day he took me out there.”

“Do you know if any other club members use the property this time of year?”

“It’s only used in the hunting season. Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Watch your back. If he thinks you’re a danger to him, he’ll have Turlock kill you. Then he’ll frame someone for it. Probably me.”

42

After ending the call, Gurney remained in his chair by the fireplace, musing over Payne’s comments and the intensity with which he’d embraced Maynard Biggs’s analysis of the problem.

As for the actual interview, Gurney couldn’t help feeling a visceral revulsion to Carlton Flynn—as it occurred to him once again that a sure sign of a man’s dishonesty was his characterization of himself as a truth teller. Self-described “straight talk” usually amounted to nothing but mean-spirited self-righteousness.

Gurney turned his attention back to his computer and the satellite map Torres had emailed him showing the trail route from Clapp Hollow to the gun club. The two-mile route he’d highlighted passed through a succession of three forks, taking right turns at the first and second and a left at the third before arriving at a series of linked clearings next to a long, narrow lake. The image of the cabin in the first of those clearings had been labeled with GPS coordinates.

Gurney memorized the coordinates as well as the approximate distances from Clapp Hollow to each of the trail forks. It seemed simple enough, assuming the trails were passable.

His thoughts were interrupted by the shrill beep of the house smoke alarms, indicating a power outage. The only light he’d turned on in the room, the lamp next to his armchair, went out.

At first he did nothing. Momentary electrical interruptions had become common as the local utility company cut back on routine maintenance operations. After several minutes had passed with no restoration of power, however, he called the company’s emergency number. The automated answering system informed him that there was no known outage in his area but his report would be forwarded to the service division and that a representative would be responding shortly. Rather than wait in the dark for the power to come back on, or to discover what “shortly” might mean, he decided to get his generator going—a gas-powered unit that sat out on the tiny back porch and was wired into the circuit panel in the basement.

He went out the side door and around to the back of the house. It was a couple of minutes past nine. Dusk had become night, but a full moon made a flashlight unnecessary.

The generator had a pull-cord starter. He grasped the handle and gave it a few energetic yanks. When the engine didn’t start, he bent over to be sure that the choke and gas-line levers were in their proper positions. Then he took hold again of the cord handle.

As he was adjusting his stance for the best leverage, he caught just at the edge of his vision a moving speck of light. He glanced up and spotted it on the corner post of the porch, just above his head. It was tiny, round, and bright red. He dived off the porch step into a patch of unmowed grass. He heard, almost simultaneously, the thwack of the bullet hitting the post and the sharper crack of the gunshot from somewhere at the top of the high pasture.

As he scrambled through the thick, damp grass toward the nearest corner of the house, he heard an engine suddenly rev up. He rolled over and pulled the Beretta from his ankle holster. But the high-pitched engine sound seemed to be receding. He realized the shooter wasn’t coming down the hill toward him. He was heading in the opposite direction—up through the pines toward the north ridge.

As he listened, the whine of the motorcycle faded away completely into the night.

Torres arrived at the Gurney farmhouse an hour after the attack. He was followed a few minutes later by Garrett Felder and Shelby Towns in the crime-scene van. Gurney could have dug the bullet out of the post himself, but doing it by the book with an official chain of custody from crime scene to ballistics was always best.

He was already doing a minor end run around local law enforcement and didn’t want to add to the irregularities. He’d reported the incident to Torres, not to Walnut Crossing PD, and left it up to Torres to deal later with the turf issues. It would have been a waste of time to involve the locals in the initial response to an incident that could only make sense in the context of an investigation centered in White River.

While the evidence techs were doing their jobs outside, Torres was sitting inside by the fireplace with Gurney, asking questions and taking notes the old-fashioned way with a notepad and pen. The generator, which Gurney had gotten started once the shooter was gone, was humming along reassuringly.

After Torres had recorded the basic facts he closed his notepad and gave Gurney a worried look. “Any idea why you’d be a target?”

“Maybe somebody thinks I know more than I do.”

“You think it could have been Cory Payne?”

“I have no reason to think so.”

Torres paused. “Are you going to make use of that map information I sent you?”

Before he could answer there was a knock at the French doors. Gurney went over and opened them. Felder came in, obviously excited. “Two discoveries. First, the bullet is a thirty-aught-six, full metal jacket, just like the other two. Second, the power failure was caused by the electrical supply line to the house being severed.”

“Severed how?” asked Gurney.

“My guess would be some sort of heavily insulated cable cutter.”

“Where was the cut made?”

“Down by your barn. At the base of the utility company’s last pole on the town road, at the point where the line to your house goes underground.”

Shortly after Torres, Felder, and Towns departed, the utility repair crew arrived. Gurney pointed them to the damage, which he opined was the product of vandalism. This was met with some skepticism, but he saw no point in attempting a more truthful explanation.

Then he called Jack Hardwick, got in his Outback, and headed for the man’s rented farmhouse. He wanted to expose his ideas about the case once again to the man’s skepticism. In addition, he couldn’t imagine getting any sleep that night in his own far-from-secure house.

Hardwick’s place, a nineteenth-century white clapboard structure of no recognizable style, was at the end of a long dirt road high in the hills above the village of Dillweed. When Gurney arrived just before midnight, Hardwick was standing in his open front doorway, a nine-millimeter Sig Sauer in a shoulder holster strapped over his black tee shirt.

“Expecting trouble, Jack?”

“I figure whoever took a shot at you might want to follow you, take a few more. Full moon tonight. Makes crazy people do crazy shit.”

He moved out of the doorway, and Gurney stepped into the small entry foyer. A few jackets were hanging on hooks. Boots were lined up on the floor under them. The sitting room beyond the foyer had a bright, clean look about it, accented by a vase of spring wildflowers, suggesting that Esti Moreno, Hardwick’s state trooper girlfriend, was back in his life.

“You want a beer?”

Gurney shook his head. He sat at a spotless pine table in the corner of the room nearest the kitchen, while Hardwick fetched himself a Grolsch.

After settling himself across the table and taking his first sip from the bottle, he flashed the supercilious grin that always got under Gurney’s skin. “So how come he missed?”

“Possibly because of my fast reaction.”

“To what?”

“The laser dot projected by his scope.”

“Causing you to do what?”

“Hit the ground.”

“So how come he didn’t shoot you on the ground?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the miss was intentional?”

“Kind of a high-risk play just to scare you off, don’t you think?”

Gurney shrugged. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense either way. If he wanted me dead, why only one shot? And if he didn’t, what was the point? Did he really think I was going to drop the case because he put a bullet hole in my back porch?”

“Fucked if I know. So what’s the plan?”

“Did you know Beckert and Turlock share a hunting cabin?”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I want to have a look at it.”

“You trying to prove something?”

“Just gathering information.”

“Open mind, eh?”

“Right.”

“Bullshit.” Hardwick took another sip of his Grolsch.

Gurney paused. “I tracked down Merle Tabor.”

“So?”

“He told me a story.”

“About Turlock’s juvie problem?”

“That’s a mild way of describing it.” Gurney recounted in grim detail what Tabor had told him about the death of George Montgomery.

Hardwick was quiet for a long moment. “You believe Tabor?”

“I do. The event and how it was resolved with no real closure seem to have had a devastating effect on him.”

“So you’ve concluded that Beckert and Turlock are sociopaths?”

“Yes.”

“Sociopaths capable of shooting their own cops, beating and strangling a pair of black activists, and framing innocent people for all four murders?”

“Anyone who did what they did to that retarded man is capable of just about anything.”

“And because they’re capable of committing the White River murders, you think they actually did commit them?”

“I think it’s possible enough that I should take a closer look.”

“A look that involves breaking and entering?”

“There’s a key. At the most, that makes it trespassing.”

“No concerns about security cameras?”

“If they have a camera, they’ll get a picture of a guy in a ski mask.”

“Sounds like your decision’s been made.”

“Unless you can talk me out of it.”

“I said it all at Abelard’s. There’s a hole in your hypothesis the size of an elephant’s anus. It’s called ‘motive.’ You’re claiming that a major law-enforcement figure and his deputy are running around killing people for no goddamn reason. The thing is, they’d need one giant motherfucker of a reason to justify that murder spree. And that vague crap about all the victims being potential threats to Beckert’s political ambitions doesn’t cut it.”

“You’re forgetting the little bit of static that got us involved to begin with.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“The text on Steele’s phone. The warning that someone on his side of the fence might want to get rid of him and then blame the BDA. And that’s exactly what Beckert did—the blaming part, anyway.”

Hardwick uttered a derisive little laugh. “You think Beckert took that shot at you?”

“I’d like to find out.”

“You figure he left a signed confession in his cabin?”

Gurney ignored the comment. “You know, the motive may not be as big a mystery as you think. Maybe there’s more at stake in the upcoming election than we know about. Maybe the victims posed bigger threats than we’ve imagined.”

“Christ, Gurney, if every politician with hopes for a big future started exterminating everyone who might get in the way, Washington would be dick-deep in dead bodies.” Hardwick lifted his Grolsch bottle and took a long, thoughtful swallow. “You by any chance catch the Carlton Flynn show before you got shot at?”

“I did.”

“What’d you think of Biggs?”

“Decent. Caring. Authentic.”

“All the qualities that guarantee defeat. He wants to take an honest, nuanced approach to interracial problems. Beckert just wants to lock the troublemaking bastards up and throw away the key. No fucking contest. Beckert wins by a landslide.”

“Unless—”

“Unless you manage to come up with a video of him deep-frying live kittens.”

Gurney had set the alarm on his phone for 3:45 AM, but he was awake before that. He used the tiny upstairs bathroom next to the spartan bedroom where Hardwick put him up for the night. He dressed by the light of the bedside lamp, strapped on his ankle-holstered Beretta, and quietly descended the stairs.

The light in the kitchen was on. Hardwick was sitting at a small breakfast table, loading a Sig Sauer’s fifteen-round magazine. A box of cartridges was open next to his cup of coffee.

Gurney stopped in the doorway, his questioning gaze on the Sig.

Hardwick flashed one of his glittery grins as he inserted a final round in the magazine. “Figured I’d ride shotgun on your trip to the cabin.”

“I thought you considered it a bad idea.”

“Bad? It’s one of the worst fucking ideas I’ve ever heard. Could easily produce a hostile confrontation with an armed adversary.”

“So?”

“I haven’t shot anybody in a long time, and the opportunity appeals to me.” The glittery grin came and went. “You want some coffee?”

43

With the full moon lower in the sky now and a thin fog creating a reflective headlight glare, the trip from Dillweed to the Clapp Hollow trailheads took nearly an hour. Gurney drove the Outback. Hardwick followed in the GTO so they’d have a backup vehicle, just in case. In case of what, exactly, hadn’t been discussed.

When they arrived at the trailheads, Hardwick backed his GTO into the one that led to the quarries, far enough to be out of sight from the road, then joined Gurney in the Outback.

Gurney checked his odometer, dropped the transmission into low, and drove slowly into the gun club trail.

It was half an hour before dawn. There was no hint of moonlight in the thick pine forest. The tree trunks cast eerily shifting shadows in the foggy headlight beams as the car crept along the rutted surface. Gurney lowered the front windows, listening, but heard nothing beyond the sounds made by his own vehicle and the occasional scrape of a low-hanging bough against the roof. The air flowing in was cool and damp. He was glad he’d accepted the offer of one of Hardwick’s light windbreakers.

They arrived at the first two forks at the odometer readings predicted by Torres’s map. At the third fork, he purposely turned onto the wrong branch of the trail and kept going until he was sure the car could no longer be seen from the branch leading to the gun club.

“We’ll leave it here and walk in,” said Gurney, donning a ski mask and gloves. Hardwick pulled a wool hat down over his head, added sunglasses, and wrapped a scarf around the exposed portion of his face. Activating the flashlights on their phones, they got out the car, walked back to the trail intersection, and proceeded along the correct side of the fork. They soon came to a large printed sign nailed to the trunk of a trailside tree.

STOP!

WHITE RIVER GUN CLUB

TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED

A quarter mile farther the trail ended at a broad, grassy clearing. Here, in the misty overcast, Gurney could see the first hint of dawn. On the far side of the clearing he could just make out the flat gray surface of a lake.

To the left of the clearing’s edge, his flashlight revealed the dark bulk of a log cabin. He knew from Torres’s map that this was the one Beckert and Turlock shared. He remembered that there were a dozen similar clearings and cabins along the edge of the lake, connected by a trail which, going in the opposite direction, led eventually to the playground at Willard Park.

“I’ll check out the inside,” said Gurney. “You take a look around the outside.”

Hardwick nodded, unsnapped the safety strap on his holster, and headed for the far side of the cabin. Gurney moved the Beretta from his ankle holster to the pocket of his windbreaker and approached the log structure. The moist air here carried the distinctive scents of pine and lake water. As he got closer he noted that the cabin was resting on a traditional concrete-block foundation, suggesting the existence of at least a crawl space beneath it.

He switched his phone from its flashlight to its compass app and proceeded per Payne’s instructions to the northeast corner of the building and from there due east to a foot-square piece of bluestone. Lifting it, he found a small plastic bag. Switching back to his flashlight, he saw that the bag contained two keys rather than just the one Payne had referred to.

He returned to the cabin. The first key he tried unlocked the door. As he was about to push it open Hardwick reappeared from the opposite side of the building.

“Find anything?” asked Gurney.

“Outhouse with a composting toilet. Small generator. Big shed with a big padlock.”

Gurney handed him the second key. “Try this.”

“Better not be full of spiders,” said Hardwick, taking the key and heading back the way he came. “I fucking hate spiders.”

Gurney pushed the cabin door open. Sweeping his flashlight back and forth, he entered cautiously and advanced slowly toward the center of a good-sized, pine-paneled room. At one end there was a stove, a sink, and a small refrigerator, no doubt run by the generator when the cabin was in use. At the other end there was a propane heater, a spartan couch, and two hard-looking armchairs set at right angles to the couch. Directly in front of him, there was a rectangular table on a rectangular rug with a rectangular pattern. Behind the table a ladder ascended to a loft.

Curious about the possibility of a crawl space, he began looking for access. He worked his way around the room, examining the floorboards. Coming back to where he started, he moved the table, folded back the rug, and ran his light over the area.

Had it not been for the gleaming brass finger hole, he might have missed it, so precisely aligned was the trapdoor with the surrounding boards. Bending over and placing his finger in the hole, he found that the door pivoted up easily on silent hinges. Shining his light down into the dark space below, he was surprised to see it was nearly as deep as a regular cellar.

He descended the plain wooden stairs. When his feet reached the concrete floor he discovered that his head just cleared the exposed floor joists above him. Everything in the beam of his flashlight appeared remarkably clean—no dust, no cobwebs, no mold. The air was dry and odorless. Against one wall there was a long worktable, and on a pegboard above it were rows of tools—saws, screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, chisels, drill bits, rulers, clamps—each group arranged in size order from left to right.

It reminded him of the way the nuns at his grammar school used to line up the kids in the schoolyard after recess, in size order, from the shortest to the tallest, before marching them back into the building. He found the thought, like most of his childhood memories, unpleasant.

He turned his attention back to the matter at hand, noting that the only empty space on the pegboard occurred near the larger end of the row of clamps. The missing clamp triggered the memory of his conversation with Paul Aziz and the photos of the crime-scene ropes showing flattened spots consistent with the use of a clamp.

Against the opposite wall he saw a stack of two-by-four framing studs. He walked slowly around the cellar, making sure he wasn’t missing anything significant. He checked the floor, the concrete-block walls, the spaces between the joists above his head. He found nothing unusual, other than the remarkable orderliness of the place and the absence of dust.

When he came to one end of the stack of studs he noted that it was twelve studs high by twelve deep. The ends on that side were aligned perfectly with each other, no stud even a millimeter out of place. It occurred to him that such an obsessive concern for symmetry could be the basis of a clinical diagnosis.

As he was moving past the perfect eight-foot-long stack, however, his eye was caught by an irregular shadow at its opposite end. He stopped, aimed his beam of light across that end of the stack, and saw that one stud was sticking out about a quarter of an inch, noticeable only because of the faultless alignment of the others.

It seemed unlikely that a factory-cut stud could have emerged from the process a quarter inch longer than others in the same batch. He laid his phone-flashlight on a stair tread, the beam aimed at the stack. He began to disassemble the stack, one row at a time.

When he reached the level of the protruding stud, he felt, for the second time since he’d become involved in the case, an unmistakable frisson.

The center sections of four studs in the middle of the stack had been cut away, leaving only about two feet at each end. The result was a concealed compartment two studs wide, two studs deep, and four feet long. The ends of the cut studs had been lined up with the ends of the intact studs—with the exception of that one stud end that stuck out.

He saw the reason for it. The end was kept from being aligned with its neighbors by the contents of the hidden compartment: a classic Winchester Model 70 bolt-action rifle, emitting the distinctive odor of a recently fired weapon; a red-dot laser scope; a muzzle-blast suppressor; and a box of 30-06 full-metal-jacket cartridges.

Gurney gingerly made his way back up the stairs. As he stepped up through the open trapdoor into the main room of the cabin, Hardwick came in the front door. In the pale light Gurney could see that he’d removed the sunglasses, hat, and scarf that were supposed to be hiding his identity from possible security cameras.

“No need for that ski mask,” he said to Gurney. “We’ve got what we need to go public.”

“You found something?”

“A used branding iron.” He inserted a small dramatic pause. “How do I know it was used? Because there appears to be burned skin stuck to the letters on the end of it. The letters, by the way, are KRS.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s not all. There’s also a red motocross bike. Like the one that was seen zipping away from Poulter Street. You find anything in here?”

“A rifle. Probably the rifle. Hidden in a pile of lumber in the cellar.”

“Is it possible we’ve got these evil bastards by the balls?” Hardwick’s innate skepticism appeared to be battling with the satisfaction of a successful hunt. He looked around suspiciously, his flashlight beam stopping at the loft. “What’s up there?”

“Let’s find out.” Gurney led the way up the ladder and stepped into an open-ended room above the kitchen. The underside of the steeply pitched roof was paneled with pine boards, and their distinctive scent was strong. There were two beds, one on each side of the space, made up in crisp military style. There was a low bench at the foot of each and a rectangular rug on the floor between them. The loft reflected the obsessive orderliness apparent everywhere in the cabin—all straight lines, right angles, and not a speck of dirt.

Gurney began checking one of the beds and Hardwick the other. Feeling under the mattress, he soon came upon something cold, smooth, and metallic. He lifted the mattress out of the way, revealing a slim notebook-style computer. Almost simultaneously Hardwick pointed to a cell phone taped to the bottom of the footboard of the other bed.

“Leave everything where it is,” said Gurney. “We need to call this in, get an evidence team out here.”

“Who are you going to call it in to?”

“The DA. Kline can get Torres reassigned to him on a temporary basis, along with the evidence techs, but that’ll be his call. The key thing going forward will be for the investigation and the personnel working on it to be controlled by an agency outside the WRPD.”

“Another option would be the sheriff’s department.”

The thought of Goodson Cloutz gave Gurney a touch of nausea. “I’d vote for Kline.”

Hardwick’s icy grin appeared. “Sheridan will have a hard time with this—having been such a huge fan of Beckert. Going to be tough for him to see the big shit getting sucked down the drain. How you think he’s going to deal with that?”

“We’ll find out.”

Hardwick’s eyes narrowed. “You think the little creep’ll try to pull off an end run around the branding iron and rifle to keep from admitting he was wrong?”

“We’ll find out.” Gurney switched his phone from Flashlight to Call mode.

In the middle of entering Kline’s number, he was stopped cold by a burst of canine howling and snarling. It sounded like a crazed pack of—of what? Wolves? Coyotes? Whatever they were, there were a lot of them, they were in full attack mode, and they were coming closer.

In a matter of seconds the chilling sound had reached a wild intensity—and it seemed to be concentrated directly in front of the cabin.

The frenzy of the sound was raising gooseflesh on Gurney’s arms.

He and Hardwick reached for their weapons in unison, flicked off the safeties, and moved to the open edge of the loft where they had clear lines of sight down to the windows and door.

A high-pitched whistling sound pierced the din, and as suddenly as the savage uproar began, it stopped.

Cautiously they descended the ladder, Gurney first. He moved quietly to the front of the cabin and peered out through one of the windows. At first he saw nothing but the dark, drooping shapes of the hemlocks surrounding the clearing. The grass, which in the beam of his phone light had been a deep green, was in the dawn mist a featureless gray.

But not entirely featureless. He noted a patch of darker gray, perhaps thirty feet out from the window. He switched his phone back to Flashlight mode, but its beam only created a glare in the fog.

He gradually eased the front door open.

All he could hear was the slow dripping of water from the roof.

“The fuck are you doing?” whispered Hardwick.

“Cover me. And hold the door open in case I need to come back in a hurry.”

He stepped quietly out of the cabin, Beretta in a ready-to-fire two-handed grip, and advanced toward the dark shape on the ground.

As he drew nearer, he realized he was looking at a body . . . a body that was somehow contorted, twisted into an odd position, as if it had been thrown there by a violent gust of wind. After moving a few steps closer, he stopped, amazed by the amount of blood glistening in the wet grass. Still closer, he could see that much of the clothing on the body was shredded, exposing ripped and gouged flesh. The left hand was mangled, the fingers crushed together. The right hand was missing, the wrist a grisly red stump with splintered bones sticking out of it. The victim’s throat had been lacerated, the carotid arteries and windpipe literally torn to pieces. Less than half of the face was intact, giving it a hideous expression.

But there was something familiar about that face. And the muscular bulk of the body. Gurney realized with a start that he was looking at what was left of Judd Turlock.