by John Verdon
He peered at the bars to which the ropes had been tied. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he looked anyway, examining the structure as best he could.
The only minor peculiarities that caught his eye were two shiny spots, each about a half inch in diameter, about four feet apart on the bottom of a horizontal bar that according to the photos at the CSMT meeting would have been somewhere just above or behind the victims’ heads. He had no idea what those spots might mean, if anything at all; but he remembered that among his saved emails was one Torres had sent with a link to all the photos Paul Aziz had taken. He made a mental note to access and review them as soon as he got home.
He still had some time before the two o’clock meeting at police headquarters, so he decided to take a closer look at the statue.
As he crossed the field, he noticed he wasn’t the only one taking an interest in the statue. An African American woman in camo fatigues was approaching it on the opposite side. She appeared to be photographing it with her phone.
She ignored Gurney until they came within speaking distance of each other, and he asked with a smile if she knew anything about the man on the horse.
She stopped and gave him an assessing look. “They send you out here to make sure we don’t tear that evil thing down?”
Gurney shook his head. “Nobody sent me.”
“Honey, I know a cop when I see one, and the cops I know go where they are sent.”
He suddenly recognized her—the voice first, then the face—from her appearance with the white supremacist on RAM-TV. “You may know Dell Beckert’s cops, Ms. Jackson, but you don’t know me.”
Her dark eyes were fixed on his. There was something formidable in her calmness and in the evenness of her tone. “Why are you talking to me?”
Gurney shrugged. “As I said, I was wondering if you could tell me anything about the man on the horse.”
She looked up at the mounted colonel, as if evaluating his pose for the first time. “He’s the Devil,” she said matter-of-factly.
“The Devil?”
“You want me to say it again?”
“Why do you call him that?”
“Man who does the Devil’s work is the Devil in the flesh.”
“Hmm. What about Dell Beckert? What can you tell me about him?”
There was a sharpness now in the gaze she fixed on Gurney—an almost glittery intelligence. “Isn’t that a fascinating fact of life—how people always know the truth without knowing they know it.”
“Meaning?”
“Think about it. Here we are, talking about the Devil. And look whose name came into your mind.”
Gurney smiled. “Interesting observation.”
She started to leave, then stopped. “You want to live, be careful. However well you think you know that law-and-order man, you don’t know him any more than you know Ezra Willard.”
She turned and walked quickly away toward the park exit.
After Gurney had returned to his car and spent some time contemplating the words of Blaze Lovely Jackson, it occurred to him that he should let Madeleine know his meeting at police headquarters had been extended into the afternoon. He’d be heading home later than expected.
As he was about to place the call, his phone rang.
Seeing Madeleine’s name on the screen, he began to explain his situation, but she cut in immediately.
“They took Rick off life support.”
“Oh, Jesus. Is Heather . . . okay?”
“Not really. They took her down to the emergency room. They’re afraid she may be starting premature contractions.” After a pause during which he could hear his wife breathing shakily, she sniffled and cleared her throat. “The doctor said Rick had lost all brain function. There was no chance . . . no chance of any . . . anything.”
“Yes.” He could think of nothing more to say. Nothing that would be both comforting and honest.
“Rick’s brother is flying in from somewhere. And Heather’s sister, too. I’ll let you know what I’m doing when things are clearer.”
As soon as he ended the call, his phone rang again.
When he saw Kline’s name on the screen, he assumed the man was calling with the same bad news and decided to let the call go to voicemail. He hardly noticed that the temperature was dropping and it had begun again to drizzle.
He sat in the Outback for a while, losing track of time. He took out the index card and studied the cryptic message. Again, he got nowhere. He put it back in his pocket.
Feeling the need to do something—anything—he took out his phone and called Jack Hardwick. He got the man’s terse recording: “Leave a message. Be brief.”
“We need to talk. The White River mess is getting stranger and uglier. The second cop who was shot—a young detective by the name of Loomis—just died. Kline wants me out of it. He insists that everything’s coming together, conclusive evidence, done deal. I don’t agree. If you can, meet me tomorrow morning at eight at Abelard’s. Call me if you can’t. Otherwise, I’ll see you there.”
Before putting his phone away, he checked his list of messages. There were only two he hadn’t listened to—the one from Kline and the older one from Thrasher. He had no interest in listening to either.
The phone was halfway into his pocket when it rang. Kline again. His stubborn streak urged him to ignore it again, but something else—perhaps simple logic—told him to talk to the man and get it over with.
“Gurney here.”
“I just wanted to let you know the two o’clock meeting’s been canceled.”
“Problems?”
“Just the opposite. A major coup. Dell’s been invited to appear tonight on A Matter of Concern with Carlton Flynn.”
“The pompous blowhard on RAM-TV?”
“He happens to be the most widely recognized news personality in the world, with one of the highest rated interview shows in America. He is a very big deal.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You should be. It’s the perfect opportunity for Dell to set things straight—the demonstrations, the riots, the shootings—put it all in the right perspective, emphasizing the restoration of law and order. That’s what people need to hear.”
Gurney said nothing.
“You there?”
“I thought you might have been calling to let me know that Rick Loomis died.”
“I assumed you’d have heard that from someone else.”
Again Gurney said nothing.
“Not unexpected, given his condition. But now we know who did it, and the arrest is just a matter of time. You might be interested to know that the prints inside the Corolla and at the sniper sites match the prints in Cory Payne’s apartment. Torres’s guys even found a box of thirty-aught-six cartridges hidden in the back of one of his closets.”
“I’m impressed.”
“There’s more good news. Our information on the Gort twins was right. The K9 team and an assault team are closing in on them up by the quarry ridge. Backup is on the way, and it should all be over within the hour.”
“Good to know.”
Gurney’s tone seemed to finally get through.
“Look,” said Kline, “I know we’ve had some unfortunate events. No one’s denying that. Those things can’t be undone. But the right steps have been taken. The right results are being achieved. That’s the message. And Dell’s the perfect messenger.”
Gurney paused. “Do you plan to call Rick Loomis’s wife?”
“Of course. At the appropriate time. Oh, one more thing. Housekeeping issue. We need you to turn in your credentials—along with an hourly tally of your time on the case.”
“I’ll do that.”
They ended the call. They had ended their earlier conversation in the parking lot without shaking hands. They ended this one without saying good-bye.
Before putting his phone away, Gurney called Hardwick and left an additional message on his voice
mail, suggesting that he watch Carlton Flynn’s show that evening. Then he deleted the earlier message from Kline on his own phone. He had no appetite for listening to the man twice.
His own plan was to drive home, review Paul Aziz’s photos, eat dinner, and then settle down for what promised to be a Dell Beckert master class in message control.
Getting Aziz’s photos from the file-sharing service Torres had used to transmit them was easy enough. Sitting at the desk in his den, he began opening them, one after another, on his laptop.
Once he was past the harrowing views of the bodies, there was little that caught Gurney’s attention until he was surprised to find closeups of the same two shiny spots he’d noted on the jungle gym crossbar.
Even more interesting were the next photos—close-ups of two separate sections of rope, showing a small, round depression in each. The sequence of the photos suggested a connection between the shiny spots and the depressions in the ropes.
He put an immediate call in to Torres and left a message describing the photos and asking for Aziz’s contact information—hoping that word hadn’t already gotten from Kline to Torres that he was off the official roster.
He was surprised to get a response less than ten minutes later—and equally surprised that the call came from Aziz himself.
“Mark gave me your number. He told me you had questions about some of the crime-scene shots.” The voice on the phone was young and earnest, not unlike Torres’s, and with no trace of the Middle East.
“Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I’m curious about the two shiny spots on the jungle gym crossbar and the flat spots on the ropes—obviously photographed after the bodies were taken down. Do you recall how they were originally positioned in relation to each other?”
“The flat spots on the ropes were located where they went over top of the crossbar. The shiny spots were aligned below them, on the bottom of the bar. If Mark just showed you closeup photos of the bodies in situ, you wouldn’t have noticed what I’m talking about, because those ropes were behind the victims’ heads, tying their necks to the structure.”
“Did any scenario occur to you that would explain the apparent connection between the shiny spots and the flat spots?”
“Not at the time. I just automatically photograph anything that seems odd.” He hesitated. “But . . . maybe some kind of clamp?”
Gurney tried to picture it. “You mean . . . as if someone had pulled a rope over the bar to hoist each victim into a standing position . . . then clamped the rope against the bar to hold him in place while they tied ropes around his stomach and legs?”
“I guess it could have been done that way. The way you describe it would be consistent with the markings.”
“Very interesting. Thank you, Paul. Thank you for your time. And thank you for your close observation of details.”
“I hope it helps.”
After ending the call, Gurney sat back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully out the den window, trying to reconstruct the scene in his mind—to imagine circumstances that would necessitate the use of clamps. When he soon found himself thinking in circles, and even beginning to wonder if clamps were really the cause of the marks, he decided to take a shower—in the hope that it might clear his mind and help him relax.
In a way, it ended up doing both—although the “clearing” seemed to bring about more emptying than clarifying. Still, a clean mental slate was not a bad thing. And a reduction in tension was always good.
As he was finishing dressing in clean jeans and a comfortable polo shirt, his sense of peace was interrupted by the sound of a door opening and closing. Curious, he went out to the kitchen and met Madeleine coming in from the mudroom.
She said nothing, just walked to the far end of the long open area that served as their kitchen, dining room, and sitting room. She sat down on the couch by the fireplace. He followed and sat in an armchair facing her.
Not since the death of their four-year-old son more than twenty years ago had he seen her look so drained, so hopeless. She closed her eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asked, the question immediately striking him as absurd.
She opened her eyes. “Remember Carrie Lopez?”
“Of course.”
It was the kind of situation a cop never wants to think about, but can never forget. Carrie was the wife, then widow, of Henry Lopez, an idealistic young narcotics detective who was pushed off the roof of a Harlem crack house one winter night shortly after Gurney had been assigned to the same precinct. The next night three local gang members were killed in a shootout with two members of the narcotics squad and subsequently blamed for the Lopez homicide. But Carrie never believed the story. She was sure her husband’s murder was an inside job, that the guys in narcotics were on the take and Henry’s honesty was becoming a problem for them. But she got nowhere with her requests for an internal affairs investigation. She gradually fell apart. A year to the day after Henry’s death she committed suicide—by jumping from the roof of the same building.
Gurney moved next to Madeleine. “Do you think that’s the state of mind Heather is in?”
“I think it could go that way.”
“What about Kim?”
“Right now her anger is holding her together. But . . . I don’t know.” She shook her head.
28
At eight o’clock that evening, as they both sat in front of his desk in the den, Gurney went to the “Live Stream” section of the RAM-TV website and clicked on the icon for A Matter of Concern with Carlton Flynn.
In a modest departure from the flashing colors and exploding graphics that introduced most RAM-TV programs, the Carlton Flynn show began with a staccato drumbeat under a barrage of black-and-white photos of Flynn. In rapid sequence they showed the man in various moods, all of them intense: Pensive. Amused. Outraged. Appraising. Alarmed. Tough. Skeptical. Disgusted. Delighted.
With a final sharp drumbeat, the scene transitioned to the live face of the man himself looking directly into the camera.
“Good evening. I’m Carlton Flynn. With a matter of concern.” He showed his teeth in a way that was not quite a smile.
The camera pulled back to reveal him sitting beside a small round table. Dell Beckert was on the other side of the table. Beckert was wearing a dark suit with an American flag lapel pin. Flynn was wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
“My friends,” said Flynn, “tonight’s show will be one for the history books. Earlier today I was given some news that absolutely amazed me. It made me do something I’ve never done before. I canceled my scheduled guest—to make room for the man sitting here with me. His name is Dell Beckert. He’s chief of police in White River, New York—a city where two white police officers have been murdered in just the past few days. With his city on the verge of a race war—with lawlessness in the streets—this man’s toughness is turning back the tide of chaos. His pursuit of justice and order is prevailing. He is doing this at a staggering personal cost—a fact we’ll return to in a moment. But first, Chief Beckert, can you bring us up to date on your investigation of those fatal police shootings?”
Beckert nodded grimly. “Since the cowardly sniper attacks on our brave officers, our department has made rapid progress. The sniper has been identified as Cory Payne, a twenty-two-year-old white supporter of radical black causes. Late this morning I received conclusive evidence linking him to both shootings. At one fifteen this afternoon I issued a formal order for his arrest. At one thirty I submitted my resignation.”
Flynn leaned toward him. “You submitted your resignation?”
“Yes.” Beckert’s voice was hard and clear.
“Why did you do that?”
“To ensure the integrity of the system and the impartial application of the law.”
Madeleine looked at Gurney. “What’s he talking about?”
“I think I know, but let’s wait and see.”
Flynn, who obviously knew all about it—it was why Beckert was there—affected a puzzled look. “Why would that require your resignation?”
“Cory Payne is my son.” The bombshell was dropped with jarring calmness.
“Cory Payne . . . is your son?” Flynn’s question seemed designed to extend the dramatic impact of the revelation.
“Yes.”
Madeleine stared at the screen in disbelief. “Cory Payne killed John Steele and Rick Loomis? And Cory Payne is the police chief’s son? Can that be true?”
“Maybe half true.”
Flynn placed his hands flat on the table. “Let me ask you the obvious question.”
Before he could ask it, Beckert put it in his own words. “How could I have been so deceived? How could a trained police officer have missed the signs that must have been there? Is that what you want to know?”
“I think that’s what we all want to know.”
“I’ll give you the best answer I can. Cory Payne is my son, but we’ve been estranged for many years. When he was barely a teenager, he began acting out. He broke the law more than once. As an alternative to the juvenile detention system, I arranged for him to be sent to a strict boarding school. When he graduated at eighteen I had hopes for him. When he changed his name to Payne, his mother’s maiden name, I hoped it was just another example of the rebellion he’d eventually grow out of. When he came to live in White River last year, I thought we might be able to forge a relationship after all. In retrospect, that hope was foolish. The desperate delusion of a parent. It temporarily blinded me to the depth of his hostility to anything connected with law, order, discipline.”
Flynn nodded understandingly. “Did anyone in White River know that Cory Payne’s real name was Beckert?”
“He told me he didn’t want anyone to know we were related, and I respected that. If he revealed it to anyone for reasons of his own, I was never aware of it.”
“How much contact did you have with him?”
“I left that up to him. He’d visit me from time to time. We had an occasional lunch together, usually someplace where neither of us would be recognized.”
