White River Burning

by John Verdon

  “Those concerns you seemed to have about the depth of the water under the Grinton Bridge . . . the way you were asking about the USB drive—all that worries me. It worries me not knowing what you’re thinking. What you’re suspecting. If something’s wrong, I need to know what it is.”

  “The truth is, in both of these cases I’m having trouble getting my head around the thought processes of the killers.”

  Kline took another drag on his cigarette. “I don’t find that very enlightening.”

  “I find it helpful to put myself in the criminal’s position. To see the world from his point of view. I do that by studying what he’s done. I immerse myself in his preparations, his execution of his plan, his likely actions afterward. This usually gives me a sense of how the perp thinks, how he makes decisions. But this time it’s not happening.”

  “Why not?”

  “Half the actions in these cases contradict the other half. The perps are very careful and very careless. Take the sniper. He was careful not to get his fingerprints on the outer door, the window, the bathroom door. But he left a perfect print on the toilet’s flush handle. His marksmanship and location planning suggest he’s a real pro. But he drives an easily traceable car. He goes to the trouble of ditching the tripod. But he tosses it in water so shallow it’s easily visible.”

  “You’re expecting these crazy killers to be totally logical?”

  “No. I just think the possible significance of the discrepancies is being ignored. The same sort of peculiar questions arise in the Jordan-Tooker case. The cool and methodical nature of the beatings supposedly administered by crazy, hate-driven, white-supremacist vigilantes. The suspects’ prudently removing their computer, but foolishly leaving behind their USB drive with the incriminating website content.”

  “That USB drive wasn’t just left behind. It was hidden under a desk drawer.”

  “It was hidden in the first place any detective would look for it. Like the tripod, in a way. Hidden where it could easily be found.”

  Kline sighed in frustration, dropping what was left of his cigarette onto the pavement and staring down at it. “So what’s your bottom line? That everybody but you is wrong? That none of our progress is really progress at all?”

  “I don’t have a bottom line, Sheridan. I just have questions.”

  Kline sighed again, ground out his cigarette, got into his SUV, and drove away.

  The old Route Ten Bypass in Angina ran through a wide green valley dotted with weathered red barns. The sunny slopes of the south-facing hillsides were covered with alternating swaths of clover and buttercups. This idyllic landscape was pockmarked, however, by the detritus of a collapsed economy—abandoned homes, shuttered shops, closed schools.

  Half a mile from Gurney’s destination, at an unpopulated intersection, an old man was sitting on a low stool by the side of the road. Displayed on a shabby card table next to him were the mounted head of a deer and an old microwave oven. Propped against a leg of the table was a piece of brown cardboard with a scribbled offer: BOTH FOR $20.

  Coming to the Lucky Larvaton Diner, Gurney discovered that it shared a weedy parking lot with a small strip mall whose businesses were all defunct—Wally’s Wood Stoves, Furry Friends Pet Emporium, The Great Angina Pizzeria, and Tori’s Tints & Cuts. The final vacant storefront in the row promised in a curled and faded window poster that Champion Cheese would be “coming soon.”

  The diner was across the lot from these empty stores. Built in the railroad-car style of traditional diners, it appeared to be in need of a good power-washing. There were two cars parked beside it—a dusty old Honda Civic and a turquoise Chevy Impala from the sixties—and a nondescript pickup truck out in front. Gurney parked next to the truck.

  Inside, it looked not so much old-fashioned as just plain old. It had none of that ersatz “country charm” that exists in the minds of people who live in cities. There was a gritty reality to the scuffed brown linoleum, the smell of grease, the poor lighting. On the back wall a MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN poster was curling in at its corners.

  A thin, sharp-featured man with an oily black pompadour stood behind one end of the counter, peering down into the pages of a thick ledger. A middle-aged waitress with lifeless blond hair was perched on a stool at the opposite end of the counter examining her fingernails.

  Halfway between them a stocky customer in faded farm overalls was hunched forward with his elbows on the worn Formica surface, eyes fixed on an old television that sat behind the counter on a microwave oven. The talking heads on the screen were proclaiming their opinions.

  A row of booths ran along the diner’s window side. Gurney made his way to the booth farthest from the television. Despite his efforts to gather his thoughts for his meeting with Rick Loomis, snippets of the TV audio kept intruding:

  “. . . zero respect for the police . . .”

  “. . . throw away the key . . .”

  “. . . worst elements getting all the sympathy . . .”

  The blond waitress approached Gurney with a smile that was either sleepy or stoned. Possibly both. “Good afternoon, sir. How are you doing on this beautiful day?”

  “Fine. How are you doing?”

  The vague smile broadened. “I’m doing wonderful. Do you know what you want, or should I give you some time to think about it?”

  “Just coffee.”

  “No problem. Do you have a Lucky Larvaton gas card?”

  “No.”

  “You can earn free gas. Would you like one?”

  “Not now, thank you.”

  “Not a problem. Milk or cream?”

  “Cream, on the side.”

  “Just for one?”

  “I’m expecting someone.”

  “You’re the gentleman meeting Detective Rick, is that right?”

  “Rick Loomis?”

  “Detective Rick is what we call him. A very nice man.”

  “Yes. I’m meeting him. Did he call?”

  “He said he was trying to reach you, but he couldn’t get through. There are so many dead cell areas around here. You never know when you’re going to get cut off. At the village meetings they keep promising to do something about it. Promises, promises. My granddaddy used to say if promises was poop nobody’d have to buy fertilizer.”

  “Very wise. Do you recall the message Detective Rick left for me?”

  “That he’d be late.” She turned to the counter. “Lou, how late did he say he’d be?”

  The man scrutinizing the ledger answered without looking up. “Quarter of an hour.”

  He checked the time on his phone. It was 3:25. So now there was a total of twenty minutes to wait.

  “He comes in here a lot, does he?” asked Gurney.

  “Not really.”

  “But you know him?”

  “Of course.”

  “How?”

  “Because of the Pumpkin Murders.”

  “Damn!” Lou spoke without looking up from the ledger. “There you go again!”

  “Sorry, say that again?” said Gurney.

  “The Pumpkin Murders,” repeated the waitress.

  “Pumpkin? Is that someone’s name?”

  Lou looked up. “You can’t keep calling them ‘murders.’ The cops never proved a damn thing. Nobody got incarcerated. You keep saying ‘murders’ you’ll get us sued for defamation.”

  “Nobody’s suing nobody, Lou.”

  “Whatever you call it,” said Gurney, “what did it have to do with Rick Loomis?”

  The waitress answered, “He was the one on the case. The Pumpkin Murders.”

  “There wasn’t no murder,” insisted Lou, his voice rising.

  The waitress’s voice took on an edge of its own. “So what did the two of them do, Lou? Just crawl under that pile of pumpkins and lie there till they died of natural causes?”

  “I’m not saying the pumpkins didn’t get dumped on them. You know I’m not saying that. Wh
at I’m saying is, it could’ve been an accident. Farm accidents happen every day. Worse ones than that. Where’s your presumption of innocence?”

  The waitress shook her head at Gurney as though they both realized how silly Lou was being. “Here’s the real story. Evie Pringle and one of the harvesters out at the Pringle Squash Farm were having an affair.” She punctuated “affair” with a flash of knowing approval, as though it were something every woman aspired to.

  “Black boy,” interjected Lou.

  “Lou! You know darn well he was mostly white.”

  “Black’s black. Like being pregnant.”

  She shook her head and continued her story. “The way Detective Rick figured it, Evie and her boyfriend had gone into the underground entryway to the storm cellar in back of the barn. Earlier in the day Evie’s husband, Dick, had been out in the fields with his front loader gathering up all the leftover pumpkins, which folks don’t have much interest in after Halloween. He’d loaded all them unsalable pumpkins, three tons of them, in his big dump truck. Then, while Evie and her boyfriend were down in the storm cellar doing what they were doing, with the doors closed over them, Dick went and dumped three tons of pumpkins on top of those doors. And that’s the horrible way they met their maker, naked victims of Dick’s terrible revenge.”

  Lou produced another snort. “Dick had a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

  “A reasonable lie, you mean.”

  He slammed the ledger shut. “It wasn’t no revenge and it wasn’t no lie. He was piling them pumpkins there temporary like, until he could move them to the main compost heap.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know nothing about revenge, Lou.”

  That seemed to leave him at a loss.

  Gurney took the opportunity to ask her a question that had been puzzling him. “Why was Loomis discussing this with you?”

  “Because Lou here was in the same school class with Dick Pringle, and I was one year behind with Evie. I suspect he was wanting some character insights.”

  “What was his conclusion?”

  “He agreed with me,” said Lou in a loud voice. “There wasn’t no murder, because Dick wasn’t no idiot. He sold the farm with them bodies still locked in that old storm cellar. If he’d known they was there, he’d a known they’d be found. Stands to reason. Loomis saw that plain as the nose on your face. He figured if Dick had done it on purpose, he’d have done it a lot smarter.”

  “Like hell he agreed with you,” cried the waitress. “All he concluded was that there wasn’t enough proof to cook Dick’s goose. I believe he knew in his heart that murder had been done.”

  Gurney was getting restless. “How did Pringle explain the fact that his wife and the hired man weren’t around anymore? I assume someone must have noticed.”

  The waitress answered. “He told everyone they’d run off together. He was getting sympathy for being abandoned. What a shit!”

  Lou slapped his hand on the counter. “Your mind is bent! He said they ran off together because that’s what he thought they done. It’s what any man would think. You suspect your wife’s getting it on with the hired help, and then they disappear together, what the hell are you supposed to think? It stands to reason.”

  “Lou, sometimes I think you wouldn’t know reason if it bit you in the ass.”

  They stared at each other in quiet disdain. Phrases from the television’s talking heads intruded into the silence. The thickset man in farm clothes at the end of the counter remained transfixed by the drone of bad news.

  “. . . murder rate soaring . . .”

  “. . . criminals empowered . . .”

  Gurney’s phone rang. The ID told him it was Kline. He headed out into the parking lot, squinting into the bright, broad expanse of the valley, his eyes having just adjusted to the murkiness of the diner.

  “Gurney here.”

  “Where’s here?” Kline’s voice was rushed.

  “On the Route Ten Bypass between Angina and White River. Why?”

  “We have a situation. Another cop shooting. No details yet.”

  “Where?”

  “Bluestone. The high end of White River. Number Twelve Oak Street. Whatever you’re doing, drop it. Put that address in your GPS and go!”

  “Will do. But once I get there . . .”

  “Once you get there, you observe. No static, no turf wars. WRPD just got there. So you’re my eyes on the scene. I can’t leave the office right now. Keep me informed.”

  “You know anything at all about this?”

  “Sniper. That’s it. Nothing else.” As he began to repeat the address, the connection was broken.

  It occurred to Gurney that he should call Loomis right away, let him know about the emergency, and reschedule their meeting. As he searched his list of recent incoming calls for Loomis’s number, he remembered that it had been blocked, an automatic habit of many cops.

  “You never got your coffee.”

  The voice behind him in the parking lot belonged to the waitress. He turned and saw that she was holding out a Styrofoam cup. “I put cream in it. Sorry about all that in there. Lou can be such a dunce.”

  Gurney took the cup and reached into his pocket for his wallet.

  “Forget it. On the house. Least we can do.” She smiled her vague smile.

  “Thank you. May I ask for another small favor?”

  Her smile showed a spark of interest.

  “Detective Rick should be here soon. Could you let him know I had to leave on police business and ask him to call me? He has my number.”

  “No problem.” The spark faded.

  He got in his car, entered the address Kline had given him into his GPS, and headed for the interstate at twice the speed limit.

  Oak Street turned out to be located at the topographically lower side of the Bluestone section that Kline had described as the “high end” of White River. The street ran along the base of a gentle slope that rose from the grim Grinton section up to a plateau that marked the north edge of the city. As far as Gurney could see, the rest of Bluestone looked like Oak Street—a quiet neighborhood of older, well-maintained homes, neatly mowed lawns, and treelined pavements. The afternoon sun was bathing the area in a warm glow.

  When Gurney arrived at number twelve, he counted five WRPD cruisers parked at haphazard angles in front of the house, two with their front doors open, all with their light arrays flashing. A Mercy Hospital ambulance was parked in the driveway. Two uniformed officers were unfurling a roll of yellow crime-scene tape.

  Gurney parked next to one of the cruisers and walked up the driveway, holding his DA’s office credentials out in front of him.

  Several officers and EMTs were gathered on the front lawn around a collapsible rolling stretcher that had been lowered to the ground. A few yards away a woman in a sweatshirt and jeans was sitting on the grass, holding a kitchen spatula, making a sound like a wailing baby. A few feet away on the grass there was a yellow potholder. A female EMT was kneeling next to her, one arm around her. A sergeant was standing over them, his phone to his ear.

  The EMTs around the stretcher began to raise it. When it clicked into its upright position the woman on the lawn scrambled to her feet, dropping the spatula. As the EMTs were rolling the stretcher toward the open back doors of the ambulance, Gurney got a passing view of the man lying on it. His face, neck, and one shoulder were covered with blood; a bloody compress was covering the side of his head; the arm nearest Gurney was twitching.

  His educated guess, based on the quantity of blood and the position of the compress, was that the temporal artery had been severed. But there was no way of guessing how much damage had been done to the side of the skull and underlying areas of the brain or what the man’s chances were of reaching the hospital alive. Many victims of head wounds didn’t make it that far.

  The woman—auburn-haired, round-faced, and noticeably pregnant—was trying to get to the stretcher. She was bein
g held back by the frowning sergeant and the female EMT.

  As the stretcher was being lifted into the ambulance the woman’s efforts became wilder. She was screaming repeatedly, “I have to be with my husband!”

  The EMT looked distressed and uncertain. The sergeant was grimacing and trying to hold on to her, as she flailed her arms and screamed, “MY HUSBAND!”

  Her desperation seized Gurney’s heart.

  He went over and faced the sergeant. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  The sergeant was struggling to keep his balance. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Gurney held up his credentials. “Why are you holding her here?”

  “Deputy chief’s orders.” His voice was rising.

  “She needs to be with her husband!”

  “The deputy chief said—”

  “I don’t give a damn about the deputy chief!”

  The ambulance was easing out of the driveway onto Oak Street.

  The woman was shrieking, “Let me go . . .”

  “That’s it,” said Gurney. “We’re going to the hospital now! I’m taking responsibility. I’m Dave Gurney, DA’s office.”

  Without agreeing to anything, the sergeant loosened his grip enough to let Gurney free the woman and lead her to the Outback. The WRPD officers on the scene appeared agitated by the dispute but unsure what to do.

  Gurney helped the woman into the passenger seat. He was heading around to the driver’s side when a dark-blue Ford Explorer came to an abrupt stop in front of his car.

  The rear door opened, and Judd Turlock stepped out. He looked into Gurney’s car.

  “What’s she doing in there?” He sounded almost disinterested.

  “I’m taking her to the hospital. Her husband may be dying.”

  “You can do that right after I talk with her.”

  “You’ve got it backward. Get your car out of my way.”

  For a split second Turlock looked surprised. Then his expression settled back into a menacing lack of any expression at all. His voice was flat. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “Look around you.” Gurney gestured up and down the block, where several residents had come out into the street, holding up their smartphones and other devices. “They’re recording everything that’s happening. Right now they’re recording your car blocking my car. Image is everything, right?” Gurney flashed a humorless smile.