White River Burning

by John Verdon

  “Not that I’m aware of. But that doesn’t mean anything. My father is an iceberg. Most everything about him is below the surface. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s a place he might be. Somewhere to stay out of sight. How about rentals? Leases? A place he might have used on hunting or fishing trips?”

  “I don’t think he liked fishing.”

  “Okay, Cory. Thanks for your help. If you think of anyone else who might have had access to his cabin, let me know.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Gurney ended the call.

  Hardwick raised his Grolsch and took a long swallow. “That little fucker any help?”

  “Yes and no. Apart from a growing list of unpleasant individuals—any one of whom could have seen where Beckert kept his cabin key—I’m not sure I know much more than I did before. I should get back to Mark Torres, see if he knows anything about Beckert’s associates.”

  “Goddamn waste of time.” Hardwick punctuated his comment by putting his bottle down on the table with noticeable firmness. “Focusing on people with access to the cabin isn’t relevant to anything other than your double-framing idea—which is definitely on the batshit end of the hypothesis spectrum.”

  “You may be right. But there’s no harm in asking the question.” He took a sip of his Grolsch and placed the call to Torres.

  “Mark, I’m trying to get a sense of the people Beckert was close to. I was given the names of three members of the WRPD command staff—Beltz, Stacker, and Luckman. What can you tell me about them?”

  Torres’s initial response was an uneasy hesitation. “Wait a second. Just making sure . . . there are no open ears nearby. Okay. I can’t really tell you much, beyond the fact that they spent a lot of time in Beckert’s office—more than most of the guys who report to him. Maybe it’s my imagination, but they’ve been looking pretty nervous since he disappeared.”

  “They need to be questioned. Do you know if Kline’s gotten to them yet?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not telling us much.”

  “How many people does he have working on Beckert’s disappearance?”

  “Actively searching for him? None, as far as I know. His priority is totally on the physical evidence side. You think that’s a mistake?”

  “Frankly, yes. Beckert’s connected to everything that’s happened. And his role in the case may not be what it seems to be. Locating him could resolve some questions.”

  “What do you think we should be doing?”

  “Everything possible to find him. I’d like to know whether he owns any other property in this part of the state. Someplace he might go if he didn’t want to be found.”

  “We could have our county clerk check for his name in the property tax rolls.”

  “If you can free up a couple of uniforms, you could have them check the adjoining counties, too. They should also check the names Beauville, Turlock, and Blaze Jackson. She seems to have been involved from the beginning.”

  “Okay. I’ll get someone on it.”

  “Before you go, a question about the silent alarm system at the cabin. You told me there was some password protection on the list of numbers it was programmed to call.”

  “Right—and computer forensics did get back to us on that. There were three cell numbers. Beckert’s, Turlock’s, and an anonymous prepaid. No way to track down that one.”

  “Not to its owner, but to its nearest cell tower when it received the alarm call. That could be helpful. In fact, you ought to get the receiving locations of the other two as well. Be interesting to know if Beckert was still in the area that morning when Turlock was killed.”

  “No problem. I’ll get in touch with the phone company right now.”

  After Gurney ended the call, Hardwick asked, “Where do you think he is?”

  “I have no idea, just a hope that he’s still in the area.”

  “Kline’s got an APB out on him?”

  “Yes, but that’s about it.” Gurney paused. “I’ve been thinking about something you told me last week. About Beckert’s family problems. You mentioned that the boot-camp school he sent Cory to was down South. Do you know where in the South? Or what the name of the school was?”

  “I could find out. I know the state police guy who recommended it to Beckert.”

  “I was wondering if it might be in Virginia. Like Beckert’s own prep school. And his wife’s family. It’s a state he might know well and head for if he wanted to disappear for a while.”

  Hardwick eyed Gurney over the top of his Grolsch bottle. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Just thinking out loud.”

  “Horseshit. You’re asking me to explore this Virginia possibility, start checking out all the places Beckert could be. Which would be an enormous pain in the ass.”

  Gurney shrugged. “Just a thought. While Torres is checking tax rolls in the towns around here, I’ll be looking into rentals. There are no public records arranged by tenants’ names, but Acme Realty might have a searchable database of renters in the White River area. I’ll drop in on Laura Conway tomorrow morning.”

  “What’s the matter with the phone?”

  “Face-to-face is always better.”

  56

  Gurney was the first one up the following day. He’d had his initial cup of coffee and put out the bird feeders before Madeleine appeared for breakfast. She had her cello with her, which reminded him that her string group was booked for a morning concert at a local nursing home.

  While she was preparing a bowl of her homemade granola, he scrambled three eggs for himself. They sat down together at the breakfast table.

  “Have you spoken to Thrasher?” she asked.

  “No. I wasn’t sure what to say. I guess we need to discuss it.”

  She laid down her spoon. “Discuss it?”

  “Discuss whether or not to let him go ahead with his exploration of the site.”

  “You really think that needs to be discussed?”

  He sighed, laying down his fork. “Okay. I’ll tell him the answer is no.”

  She gave him a long look. “We live here, David. This is our home.”

  He waited for her to go on. But that’s all she said.

  The interstate portion of the drive was, as usual, relatively traffic-free. He pulled over just before the White River exit and entered Acme Realty’s address in his GPS. Six minutes later it delivered him to a storefront on Bridge Street, less than a block from the first sniper location.

  He found that fact interesting, then dismissed it as one of those coincidences that usually end up meaning nothing. He’d learned over the years that one of the few investigatorial mistakes worse than failing to connect crucial dots was connecting irrelevant ones.

  He got out in front of the office and began to examine the listings that filled the windows. Most of them were properties for sale, but there were rentals as well—both single-family homes and apartments. The area covered by the listings extended beyond White River into neighboring townships.

  The front door opened. A rotund man with a chocolate-brown toupee and a salesman’s smile stepped out. “Beautiful day!”

  Gurney nodded pleasantly.

  The man raised a chubby hand toward the listings. “You have something in mind?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place. We can make it easy. That’s what we’re here for. You interested primarily in buying or renting?”

  “Actually, I’ve already spoken to Ms. Conway. Is she in?”

  “She is. If you’re already dealing with her, I’ll leave you to it. She’s one of our finest agents.” He opened the door. “After you, sir.”

  Gurney walked into a carpeted area with an empty reception desk, a water cooler, a bulletin board with notes tacked to it, and two big tropical plants. Along the back of this area was a row of four glass-fronted cubicles with a name on each.

  He’d been imagining som
eone young and blond. Laura Conway was middle-aged and dark-haired. She was wearing colorful rings on all ten fingers. A bright-green necklace drew attention to her already eye-catching cleavage. When she looked up from her desk, her earrings, gold disks the size of silver dollars, were set swinging. She greeted him with appraising eyes and a lipsticked smile.

  “What can I do for you on this gorgeous day?”

  “Hello, Laura. I’m Dave Gurney.”

  It took a moment for the name to register. The wattage of the smile dropped noticeably. “Oh. Yes. The detective. Is there a problem?”

  “May I?” He gestured toward one of the two spare chairs in the cubicle.

  “Sure.” She placed her hands in front of her on the desk, interlocking her fingers.

  He smiled. “I love the rings.”

  “What?” She glanced down at them. “Oh. Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry to be bothering you again, Laura. As you may have seen in the news, this crazy White River case just keeps getting crazier.”

  She nodded.

  “Have you heard that we’re trying to locate Dell Beckert, the former police chief?”

  “It’s all over the news shows.”

  “Right. So here’s the thing. We suspect he might still be in the White River area. We’re checking to see if he owns any local property. That’s easy for us to do. But he might be renting a place, and there are no public records of renters for us to check. Then I recalled someone telling me that you folks manage most of the rentals around here. So I figured if anyone could help us out, it would be you.”

  She looked puzzled. “What kind of help do you want?”

  “A simple tenant database search. Beckert may have leased a place himself, or he could be staying in a house or apartment leased by someone close to him. I’ll give you a few names, you run them against your master file of tenants, and we’ll see if you get any hits. Pretty straightforward. I already know about the apartment on Bridge Street and the house on Poulter, so I just need to know about any others beyond those.” He added, “By the way, that necklace you’re wearing is gorgeous. It’s jade, right?”

  She touched it gently with the tips of her fingers. “The highest quality jade.”

  “That’s obvious. And it goes beautifully with those rings.”

  She looked pleased. “I believe appearances matter. Not everyone today agrees with that.”

  “Their loss,” he said.

  She smiled. “Do you have those names with you?”

  He gave her a piece of paper listing Beckert, Beauville, Turlock, Jackson, and Jordan, plus the three ranking WRPD officers whose names Payne had provided. She placed the paper in front of her keyboard, frowned thoughtfully, and got to work. A quarter of an hour later, the printer came to life. A single page slid out, and she handed it to Gurney. “Beyond the two you mentioned, these are the only three rentals that come up in connection with those names.”

  The first property was a one-bedroom apartment on Bacon Street in the Grinton section of White River. It was on the top floor of a building owned by Carbo Holdings LLC. A one-year lease in the name of Marcel Jordan had begun four months earlier. The agent’s name was Lily Flack. Her notes indicated that the full $4,800 annual rental had been paid in advance in cash by the tenant’s representative, Blaze L. Jackson.

  The second property was a single-family house in a place called Rapture Hill. It had also been leased four months earlier for one year—from the foreclosed properties division of a White River bank. The name of the lease-signing tenant was Blaze L. Jackson. The agent, Lily Flack, noted that Ms. Jackson had paid the full amount of the lease—$18,000—in cash.

  The third property was an apartment in Grinton, leased to Marcel and Tania Jordan six years earlier and renewed annually every year since. That one didn’t strike Gurney as having any relevance to Beckert’s possible whereabouts. The other two locations, however, seemed worth looking into. He folded the sheet and put it in his jacket pocket.

  Laura Conway was watching him carefully. “Is that what you wanted?”

  “Yes,” he said. He made no move to get up from his chair.

  “Is there something else?”

  “Keys. To the first apartment and to the house.”

  Her expression clouded. “I don’t think we can give out keys.”

  “You want to ask your boss about that?”

  She picked up her phone. Then she put it down and left the cubicle.

  A couple of minutes later, the man who had greeted Gurney on the street appeared in the doorway, lips pursed. “I’m Chuck Brambledale, the manager here. You asked Laura for keys to two of our rentals?”

  “We may need to enter them and we’d rather do it without causing excessive damage.”

  His eyes widened. “You have . . . warrants?”

  “Not exactly. But I understand we have a cooperative agreement.”

  Brambledale stared into the middle distance for a few seconds. “Wait here.”

  While he was alone in the cubicle, Gurney got up and examined a framed award on the wall. It was a Tri-County Association of Real Estate Professionals certificate recognizing Laura Conway as Salesperson of the Year—ten years earlier.

  Brambledale reappeared with two keys. “The silver one is for the apartment—top floor, 4B. The brass one is for the house up in Rapture Hill. You know where that is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s an unincorporated locality north of White River. You know where the gun club is? Well, it’s just two or three miles farther up.”

  “Past Clapp Hollow?”

  “Between Clapp Hollow and Bass River. Middle of nowhere.” He handed the keys with obvious reluctance to Gurney. “Weird place.”

  “How so?”

  “The property was once owned by one of those end-times cults, which is how it got named Rapture Hill. Then the cult disappeared. Right off the face of the earth. Got raptured up to heaven, some folks said. Other folks said the cult somehow ran afoul of the Gort twins, and they’re all buried somewhere up there in the quarries. Only thing anyone knows for sure is that there was nobody to pay the mortgage, so now the bank’s got it. Hard to sell with the isolation and the peculiar history, so they decided to rent it.”

  “The flowers are amazing!” Laura Conway appeared beside Brambledale. “The house itself is kind of plain, but wait till you see the flowers!”

  “Flowers?” said Gurney.

  “As part of our management service, we check on our rental properties at least once a month, and when we were up there two months ago we discovered that the tenant had Snook’s Nursery put in these beautiful beds of petunias. And lots of hanging baskets in front of the house.”

  “Blaze Jackson hired Snook’s Nursery to plant petunias?”

  Conway nodded. “I guess to cheer the place up. After that disappearing cult business, it always felt kind of spooky up there.”

  Blaze Jackson? Petunias?

  Mystified, Gurney thanked them both for their cooperation and returned to his car.

  Although the Rapture Hill property was certainly more intriguing, it made logistical sense for him to visit the Bacon Street apartment first. He checked the printout Conway had given him and entered the address in his GPS.

  He arrived there in less than three minutes.

  Bacon Street had that universal quality of run-down areas—the brighter the day, the worse it looked. But at least it had escaped the arson outbreaks that had made some Grinton streets uninhabitable. The building number he was looking for was in the middle of the block. He parked in a no-parking zone by a hydrant and got out. It was a convenience when one was on police business, with the downside that it announced that one was on police business.

  A man with tattooed arms and a red bandanna on his head was working on one of the ground-floor windows. He commented as Gurney approached, “Nice goddamn surprise.” His voice was rough but not hostile.

  “What’s the
surprise?”

  “You’re a cop, right?”

  “Right. And who are you?”

  “I’m superintendent for all the buildings on this block. Paul Parkman’s the name.”

  “What surprised you, Paul?”

  “In my memory, this is the first time they sent anyone the same morning we called.”

  “You called the police? What for?”

  He pointed to a pried-apart security grating on the window. “Bastards broke in during the night. Vacant apartment, nothing to steal. So they shit on the floor. Two of them. Two separate piles of shit. Maybe you can get some DNA?”

  “Interesting idea, Paul. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “No?” He uttered a sharp bark of a laugh. “Then what are you here for?”

  “I need to check one of the apartments. Top floor, 4B. You know if it’s occupied?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Yes, there’s officially a tenant. No, they’re never here.”

  “Never?”

  “Not to my knowledge. What is it you want to check? You think someone’s dead in there?”

  “I doubt it. Any obstructions on the stairs?”

  “Not to my knowledge. You want me to come up with you?”

  “No need for that. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  Gurney entered the building. The tiled foyer was reasonably clean, the staircase adequately lighted, and the all-too-common tenement odors of cabbage, urine, and vomit blessedly faint. The top-floor landing had been mopped in the not-too-distant past, and the two apartment doors on it were legibly marked—4A at one end, 4B at the other.

  He pulled his Beretta out of its ankle holster, chambered a round, and clicked off the safety. He stood to the side of the 4B door and knocked on it. There was no response, no sound at all. He knocked harder, this time shouting, “Police! Open the door!”

  Still nothing.

  He inserted the key, turned the lock, and pushed the door open. He was struck immediately by the musty odor of a space whose windows hadn’t been opened for a very long time. He clicked the safety back on and slipped the Beretta into his jacket pocket. He switched on the ceiling light in the small entry hall and began making his way around the rather cramped apartment.