Читать книгу White River Burning - John Verdon - Страница 19

There were two paths from the barn up to the house. The more direct one that they used as a driveway went up through the pasture. The roundabout one meandered through the woods below the pasture, then curved up around it to the far side of the henhouse and the bluestone patio.

Gurney chose the second route. He paid attention to the forest sights, sounds, scents—the rustlings and chirpings, the sweetness in the air, the tiny blue flowers among the lush ferns—trying to dispel a vague sense of uneasiness created by Thrasher’s parting comment.

As he was heading for the house by this alternate route, he heard a vehicle approaching on the town road. Soon he saw a small white car coming around the barn. It slowed and began to make its way haltingly up through the pasture.

It came to a stop forty or fifty feet shy of the side door, where Gurney’s Outback was parked. A woman emerged from the car and stood for a moment by its open door. Assuming it must be Kim Steele, Gurney started across the pasture toward her. He was about to call out when she got back in the car and tried to turn it around—an attempt that ended when a rear wheel sank into one of the pasture’s groundhog burrows.

He found her sobbing, hands gripping the steering wheel. Her dark curly hair was disarranged. Her face was drawn.

Gurney blinked, confused for a second or two by the fact that the woman in the car was part African American, which didn’t jibe with the mental image he’d constructed from the fact of her being married to an upstate white cop. Feeling some chagrin at the narrowness of his expectation—and the not-so-subtle prejudice lurking under it—he cleared his throat.

“Mrs. Steele?”

Her eyes had the exhausted red puffiness that comes from hours of crying.

“Mrs. Steele?”

She sniffled, her gaze fastened on the steering wheel. “Damn . . . stupid . . . car.”

“I can pull your car out of that hole with my tractor. Come up to the house. I’ll take care of your car for you. Okay?”

He was about to repeat his suggestion when she suddenly opened the door and stepped out. He noticed that her shirt was unevenly buttoned. She pulled a loose khaki jacket tightly around her despite the warmth of the day.

He led the way to the patio and gestured toward one of the chairs at a small metal cafe table. “Would you like something to drink? Water or coffee?”

She sat at the table and shook her head.

He sat in the chair opposite her. He saw grief, exhaustion, indecision, anxiety.

He spoke softly. “It’s hard to know who to trust, isn’t it?”

She blinked, looking at him now in a more focused way. “You’re a retired police officer?”

“I was a homicide detective with the NYPD. I took my pension after twenty-five years. My wife and I have been up here in Walnut Crossing for three years now.” He paused. “Do you want to tell me why you wanted to see me?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything.”

He smiled. “That may be a good thing.”

“Why?”

“I think doubt is a realistic approach to situations where there’s a lot at stake.”

He was thinking of the times he had felt baffled and how only by talking something out with Madeleine had he been able to decide what to do. He wondered if that was the kind of relationship Kim Steele had enjoyed with her husband. Maybe she’d always relied on their conversations to help resolve her doubts.

Tears began to make their way down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t be wasting your time.”

“You’re not wasting my time.”

She stared at him.

He could see in her eyes the battle in her mind—and its sudden resolution.

She reached into the pocket of her big khaki jacket—which he realized was probably her husband’s, adding a poignant note to the way she wrapped herself in it. She pulled out a smartphone. After tapping a few icons, she extended it across the table so he could see the screen. When he reached for it, she pulled back.

“I’ll hold it,” she said. “Just read what it says.”

It was a text message. “Watch ur back. EZ nite for mfs to ice ur ass n blame the BDA.”

Gurney read it three times. He noted the date and time—the evening John Steele was killed, about an hour prior to the shooting.

“What is this?”

“John’s phone. I found that message on it.”

“How come you still have it? Didn’t the crime-scene team want it?”

“It wasn’t at the crime scene. On duty they use BlackBerrys. This is John’s personal phone. It was at home.”

“When did you find the message?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Have you shown it to the police?”

She shook her head.

“Because . . .”

“The message. What it says.”

“What does it mean to you?”

Although she was sitting in the direct sunlight, she wrapped herself more tightly in the jacket. “He was being warned to watch his back. Doesn’t that suggest someone who was supposed to be on his side really wasn’t?”

“You’re thinking someone in the department?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“Your husband wouldn’t be the first cop to have enemies. Sometimes the best cops have the worst enemies.”

She met his gaze, nodding with conviction. “That’s who John was. The best. The best person on earth. Totally honest.”

“Do you know if he was doing anything that less honest people in the department might have found threatening?”

She took a deep breath. “John didn’t like to talk about work at home. Once in a while I’d overhear something when he was on the phone. Comments about past cases with questionable evidence, deaths in custody, throwdowns. You know what they are, right?”

He nodded. Some cops wouldn’t go anywhere without one—an easily concealed, unregistered, untraceable pistol that could be dropped next to the body of someone the cop had shot, as “evidence” that the victim had been armed.

“How did he know which cases to look into?”

She hesitated, appeared uncomfortable. “Maybe he had some contacts?”

“People who pointed him in the direction of specific cases?”

“Maybe.”

“People in the Black Defense Alliance?”

“I don’t really know.”

She was a lousy liar. That was okay. It was the good liars he worried about.

“Did he ever tell you how high up in the department the problems might go?”

She said nothing. Her deer-in-the-headlights expression was answer enough.

“What made you come to me?”

“I read about that Peter Pan murder case you solved last year, how you exposed the police corruption behind it.”

The explanation sounded real, as far as it went.

“How did you know where to find me?”

The deer-in-the-headlights look was back. It told him that she couldn’t tell the truth but wouldn’t tell a lie. It was, he thought, the reaction of an honest person in a difficult spot.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll let that go for now. What would you like me to do for you?”

She answered without hesitation. “I want you to find out who killed my husband.”