by John Verdon
Gurney opened the door and walked into the reception room. Kline’s alluring assistant, who had clearly maintained her fondness for formfitting cashmere sweaters, eyed him with a subtle smile.
“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said in her memorably soft voice.
As she was about to pick up her phone, a door in the back wall of the reception room opened and Sheridan Kline came striding over to Gurney, hand outstretched with that same semblance of warmth Gurney remembered from their first meeting years earlier.
“David. Right on time. I’m always impressed by punctuality.” He led the way into his office. “Coffee or tea?”
“Coffee.”
He clicked his tongue approvingly. “You a dog man or a cat man?”
“Dog.”
“I thought so. Dog people prefer coffee. Cat people like tea. Herbal tea. Ever notice that?” It wasn’t a question. He turned to the door and called out, “Two coffees, Ellen.”
He pointed Gurney toward the familiar leather sofa, while he sat in the leather armchair across from it, a glass coffee table between them.
Gurney was for the moment absorbed in the déjà vu experience not only of the seating arrangement but of Kline’s comments on punctuality and the dog-coffee cat-tea associations. The man had made exactly the same observations when they’d met during the Mellery case. Perhaps he was trying to reset their relationship to an earlier, more positive status. Or maybe these were things he said so often he had no idea to whom he’d said them before.
He leaned forward with what could be mistaken for companionable intensity. “That was really something yesterday.”
Gurney nodded.
“God-awful homicide.”
“Yes.”
“Plus evidence connected to all the murders. What a shock!”
“Yes.”
“Hope you didn’t mind my asking you to leave the scene after you got us oriented.”
Gurney had seen it as a sign of Kline’s annoyance at the fact that the people reporting to him were addressing their questions to Gurney and Hardwick.
“The thing was,” explained Kline awkwardly, “with Hardwick not having official LEO status, there could have been issues down the road about crime-scene protocol.”
“No problem.”
“Good. We’ve received some more information, amplifying what you’d already found. An overnight ballistics comparison connected the rifle in Beckert’s cellar to the Steele and Loomis shootings as well as to the incident in your backyard.” Kline paused. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, there’s more. Thrasher did a prelim autopsy on Turlock’s remains. Guess what he found.”
“A steel arrow buried in his back?”
“Thrasher told you?”
“No.”
“Then how—?”
“When I was still inside the cabin, I heard the dogs coming. Probably from a point in the woods near the edge of the clearing, about a hundred yards away. Turlock would have heard them, too. But he never fired a shot. In fact, his Glock was still holstered. That makes no sense, unless he was already incapacitated when the dogs started coming. And the Gort brothers seem to be awfully good with those crossbows.”
Kline stared at him. “There’s no doubt in your mind it was them?”
“I don’t know of any other homicidal crossbow experts around here with a large pack of attack dogs and a major murder motive.”
“The motive being revenge for Turlock’s raid on their compound?”
“That, and for publicly blaming them for the BDA murders.” Gurney paused. “That gives us means and motive. Opportunity isn’t quite so obvious. It would depend on the Gorts knowing that Turlock was going to show up at the cabin when he did. That’s a big issue. So you’re not quite to home base.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You have Beckert in custody yet?”
“We’re working on it. Currently he’s nowhere to be found. Which brings me to the main point of this conversation.” Kline paused, sat back in his chair, and steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “Your discoveries, for which you deserve tremendous credit, have turned the case around a hundred eighty degrees from the way we all saw it.”
Gurney calmly pointed out that from the beginning he’d been uneasy with the way everyone saw it, that he’d raised objections, and that Kline had essentially fired him for not embracing the official version.
Kline looked pained. “That seems a little oversimplified. But the last thing I want to do now is debate what’s behind us—especially considering the challenge in front of us. We’ve had more upheaval in the past twenty-four hours than I’ve ever seen in any case, anytime. So far we’ve managed to keep a lid on what’s going to be an explosive story, but that won’t last. The facts will come out. We’ll have to do our best to present them in a positive way. Keep control of the narrative. Maintain public trust in law enforcement. I assume you agree?”
“More or less.”
Kline blinked at Gurney’s less-than-enthusiastic response but continued along his path. “Handled correctly, this huge mess can be positioned as a law enforcement triumph. The message we have to convey is that nobody is above the law, that we follow without fear or favor wherever the truth leads us.”
“That was Beckert’s message, before he ended up on the wrong end of it.”
“That doesn’t mean it was the wrong message.”
Gurney smiled. “Just the wrong messenger?”
“In hindsight, obviously. But that’s not my point. The problem now is that everything’s upside down. Could be viewed by the media as chaos. We need to convey the opposite. We need to convey stability. The message is that law enforcement is still operating on an even keel. The public needs to see stability, continuity, competence.”
“I agree.”
“Stability, continuity, and competence are the three keys to keeping external conditions from sinking the ship. But here’s the thing. These qualities by themselves are just words. They need life. And you’re a big part of that life.”
Kline was leaning forward now. He seemed to be drawing energy and conviction from his own statements. “David, you’ve been pursuing the truth from the start like a heat-seeking missile. And, because of you, we’re practically there. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that this could be the single greatest triumph of your law-enforcement career. Best of all, it would be a triumph for law enforcement itself. For the rule of law. And that’s what it’s all about, right?”
The moment he fell silent, his attractive assistant entered the room carrying a black-lacquered tray with a silver coffeepot, two cups, and a china creamer and sugar bowl, and set it all down on the glass coffee table.
When she left, Gurney refocused. “What do you want from me, Sheridan?”
“I just want to know I can count on your continuing insights and advice to . . . to help bring this ship into port.”
Gurney pondered his apparent transformation from heat-seeking missile to harbor pilot, as well as Kline’s endless capacity for duplicity.
“You want me to stay involved in the investigation?”
“In wrapping up the loose ends. Pulling it all together. Continuity.” When Gurney didn’t respond, Kline added, “On your own terms.”
“Freedom to follow the loose ends wherever they lead, without interference?”
Kline bridled for a moment at that last word, but then emitted a sigh of resignation. “We need some clarity regarding the motivation for each of the four homicides. Plus Turlock’s. We need to know specifically who did what. And we need to find the Gorts. You can follow any of those trails however you want.”
“I’ll have full access to Torres, Felder, Thrasher, lab personnel, ballistics, et cetera?”
“No problem.” Kline eyed him anxiously. “So . . . you’ll do it?”
Gurney didn’t reply right away. He asked himse
lf yet again why he was doing what he was doing. The virtuous answers, of course, were simple. He was seeing the case through to its conclusion because of his commitment to the wives of the murdered officers. And because the deaths of Jordan and Tooker deserved every bit as much of his attention as those of Steele and Loomis. And because the solution of these murders, along with Turlock’s, might lead to the exposure of underlying patterns of corruption. And because bringing closure to so many open wounds might bring a modicum of peace to White River.
These motives were real and they were powerful. But he knew there was also something driving him forward that was less altruistic, something in the wiring of his brain—a relentless desire to know, to figure things out. It had been his driving force throughout his career, perhaps throughout his life. He really had no choice.
“Have Mark Torres call me.”
Gurney wasn’t even a third of the way back to Walnut Crossing when he got Torres’s call.
“The DA asked me to provide you with any information you want, especially the stuff that came to light after you left the site yesterday. Is this a good time?”
Gurney saw that he was approaching Snook’s Nursery and figured it would be a convenient place to stop. “Yes, this is a good time.” He pulled into the long narrow parking lot in front of the greenhouses. “How late were you there?”
“All day, all night. Garrett and Shelby set up their halogens and worked until dawn.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, first Paul Aziz photographed the whole site, then Turlock’s body, then each piece of evidence before it was bagged and labeled. Most of the items were found in and around the shed where your guy Hardwick found the branding iron. There were two sets of clothes, buried behind the shed, with bloodstains that match the positions of abrasions on Jordan’s and Tooker’s bodies. Inside the shed there was a coil of rope that matches the rope segment recovered from the Gorts’ compound—which seems to link Beckert and Turlock to the playground murders as well as an attempt to frame the Gorts for it. There were bloodstains on the back seat of the UTV. Thrasher did a quick field test on the blood types, and they match those of Jordan and Tooker.”
“Any fingerprints on the UTV steering wheel?”
“Old, smudged, not useful.”
“How about on the handgrips of the Yamaha bike?”
“Same. But Beckert’s prints appear in various other places on the UTV, and Turlock’s appear on the bike’s gas cap, which you’d expect, with the UTV being registered to Beckert and the bike to Turlock. And speaking of prints, this morning we finally got a reply from AFIS on that pen you found in the yard behind the Poulter Street house. The print on it is definitely Turlock’s.”
“That’s quite a pile of evidence.”
“There’s more. In a fire pit in the woods in back of the shed we found burned pieces of a baseball bat and nightstick—the likely weapons used on Jordan and Tooker—plus two hypodermic needles of the preloaded type.”
“Used?”
“Used and tossed in the fire with the bat and nightstick. But the labeling on one needle didn’t burn completely. Enough was left for Thrasher to tell it was propofol.”
“So the evidence pile keeps growing.”
“And there’s more. Remember at your house the other night Garrett said your power line had been severed by some sort of cable cutter? We found one under loose floorboards in the shed.”
“Quite a productive evening.”
“And I haven’t even mentioned the most interesting find—a pair of pliers that prove you were right.” Torres inserted a dramatic pause.
Gurney hated dramatic pauses. “What are you talking about?”
“There was a small tool kit under the sink in the cabin. Garrett thinks the pliers in the kit made the marks on the switched toilet handles. He’s having the lab do a comparison to be sure, but he tends to be right about stuff like that.”
Gurney felt the satisfaction of being on the right track. “Anything else?”
“Maybe, maybe not. That notebook computer and the phone you found in the cabin loft—they were password-protected, but we sent them to the forensic computer lab in Albany, and we hope to hear something back from them later this week.”
“This all sounds like a prosecutor’s dream. Do we know yet why Turlock showed up at the cabin when he did?”
“We think so. There were two battery-operated silent alarm systems—motion-activated—one in the cabin, one in the shed. They were programmed to contact certain phone numbers, presumably Turlock’s being one of them, which would explain why he showed up. Garrett was having trouble with a privacy code protecting the numbers, so we sent the devices to Albany along with the phone and computer.”
“Any leads on locating Beckert?”
“Not yet. His cell phone’s apparently been turned off. His wife claims she has no idea where he is. The DA’s getting a search warrant for their house in case she refuses access. Beckert doesn’t seem to have any personal friends, so that’s not a useful avenue. We’ve put a watch on his credit cards. So far no activity. He was seen leaving headquarters around five thirty the night before last. But we haven’t found anyone who saw him after that. His wife was at some three-day spa getaway with a couple of friends and claims she has no idea what time he got home that night or whether he came home at all.”
“He took his car?”
“Probably. All we know for sure is that it’s gone from the headquarters parking lot.”
A silence ensued as Gurney pondered the timing of the man’s disappearance the night before the incident at the gun club.
Torres spoke first. “It’s really pretty amazing.”
“What is?”
“How you’ve been right about everything. I remember in the very first meeting you came to—your uneasiness with the assumptions everyone was making about the case. It was like you knew instantly there was something wrong with the basic hypothesis. I could see how disturbed Beckert and Turlock were by the issues you were raising. Now we know why.”
“We still have a long way to go. A lot of open questions.”
“That reminds me of something you commented on in the video of the Steele shooting—the red laser dot on the back of Steele’s head as he was patrolling the edge of the crowd. You wondered why the dot followed him as long as it did. I think you said it was like two minutes?”
“That’s right.”
“Have you figured it out?”
“Not yet.”
“You still feel it’s significant?”
“Yes.”
“It seems like such a small thing.”
Gurney said nothing. But he was thinking it was the small things that often mattered the most, especially the ones that didn’t seem to make sense.
45
Gurney remained parked in front of the nursery greenhouses after ending his call with Torres. Hoping he wouldn’t be spotted by Rob Snook, he leaned back in his seat and tried to clear his mind and sort out his priorities for the rest of the day.
Clearing his mind, it turned out, wasn’t so easy. Something was bothering him, though he wasn’t sure what. Perhaps Madeleine’s prolonged absence? He always felt odd when she was away from home, and phone conversations didn’t really solve the problem.
He’d filled her in the previous evening on the gun club discoveries and the Turlock homicide, minus its more grotesque details. He’d cautioned her against saying anything yet to Kim or Heather, adding that he’d be meeting with the DA to review the situation. She’d told him she’d be staying at the inn on the Mercy medical campus for at least another twenty-four hours, at which point various Steele and Loomis relatives were expected to arrive. She’d reminded him to refill the feeders and let the chickens into their fenced run. He’d told her he loved her and missed her, and she’d said the same.
What he hadn’t mentioned was that someone had taken a shot at him. He told himself at first it was because he
didn’t want to alarm her with the specter of a possibly ongoing danger. A day later—with the rifle recovered, Turlock dead, and Beckert apparently on the run—he told himself it was because there was no longer any danger, and therefore no urgency in discussing the matter. But he had to admit now, sitting there in front of Snook’s greenhouses, that he always found it suspicious when someone offered shifting reasons for the same conclusion. A wise friend once commented that the more reasons someone gave you for their behavior, the less likely any of them was the real reason.
Perhaps that was what was bothering him—not so much Madeleine’s absence as his own evasiveness. He resolved to be more open with her in their next conversation. That simple resolution, as resolutions often do, lightened his mood. He pulled out of the parking lot—focused now on getting home, reviewing the case files, and trying to make sense of the inconsistent details.
Twenty-five minutes later, as he was driving up through the low pasture to the house, deciding which file to tackle first, he was surprised to catch a glimpse of Madeleine in her straw gardening hat by one of the flower beds.
When he got out of the car, he found her kneeling by the bed next to the asparagus patch. She was planting the delphiniums he’d brought home two days earlier. She looked pale and exhausted.
“Did something happen?” he asked. “I thought you were staying over at the hospital.”
“The relatives arrived sooner than expected. And I was more worn out than I realized.” She laid her trowel down by the flowers, shaking her head. “It’s awful. Kim is full of such a terrible anger. At first it was all inside. Now it’s coming out. Heather is worse. Completely shut down. Like she’s not there at all.” Madeleine paused. “Is there anything we can tell them about the progress you’re making? What you told me on the phone last night sounded huge. It might offer them some kind of relief. . . or distraction.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
