Читать книгу White River Burning - John Verdon - Страница 21

The westbound drive to White River consisted of a gradual descent from modest mountains and sloping meadows through rolling hills and broad valleys into a region of shabby strip malls. The final symbol of the area’s economic depression was the abandoned White River stone quarry, made famous by the sensational news coverage of an explosion that killed six passing motorists, bankrupted the company, and led to the unnerving discovery that someone had made off with more than a hundred sticks of dynamite.

Gurney’s GPS led him into the center of the cheerless city on an avenue that bordered the partly burned and looted Grinton section. At the end of the avenue stood White River’s police headquarters. A world apart from the picturesquely dilapidated barns and tilting silos of Walnut Crossing, the building was constructed of gray-beige brick in the boxy style of the nineteen sixties. Its treeless, grassless setting was as sterile as its aluminum-framed windows and concrete parking lot, both the color of dust.

As he reached the entrance to the lot, a man sitting on what appeared to be a small furniture dolly rolled by, propelling himself along the sidewalk with his gloved hands. He was wearing a grimy army-surplus jacket and a baseball hat. Looking closer, Gurney could see that the man was legless below the knees, and the gloves were actually oven mitts. An American flag hung limply from the top of an old broomstick that was affixed to the back of the dolly. With each thrust of his hands the man cried out repetitively in a voice as abrasive as a rusty hinge, “Sunshine . . . sunshine . . . sunshine . . .”

When Gurney drove into the lot, the first vehicle to catch his eye was Kline’s gleaming black Navigator. In a row marked Reserved, it occupied the space nearest the building’s front door. He parked next to it, got out of his car, and was struck immediately by the odor of smoke, burned plastic, wet ashes.

The Navigator’s tinted rear window descended and Kline peered out at him, at first with a look of satisfaction, then concern. “Everything all right?”

“Bad smell.”

“Arson. Pointless stupidity. Get in. I have your contract.”

Gurney slid into the back seat across from Kline—a luxuriously isolated environment of plush leather and soft lighting.

“High-class vehicle,” said Gurney.

“No cost to the taxpayer.”

“Confiscation?”

“Forfeiture of property employed in the facilitation of drug trafficking.”

Perhaps interpreting Gurney’s silence as a criticism of the controversial practice of seizing an accused individual’s assets prior to trial, Kline added, “The bleeding hearts like to whine about the tiny number of cases where there’s some inconvenience to a guy who ends up beating the rap. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred we’re just transferring ill-gotten goods from scumbags to law enforcement. Perfectly legal and personally satisfying.”

He clicked open an attaché case on the seat between them, pulled out two copies of the contract, and handed them to Gurney with a pen. “I’ve signed these. You sign both, give me one, and keep one for yourself.”

Reading through the contract, he was surprised to find no surprises—no subtle changes from the provisions he’d demanded on the phone. Oddly, this straightforwardness aroused his suspicion. He was sure everything Kline did was some sort of stratagem. Honesty would always be a route to something more important. But he could hardly object to the contract on that basis.

“So, about this meeting, is there an agenda?”

“Just to share the known facts. Establish priorities. Application of resources. Media guidelines. Get everyone in sync.”

“Everyone being who?”

“Dell Beckert; Beckert’s right hand, Judd Turlock; chief investigating officer, Mark Torres; Mayor Dwayne Shucker; Sheriff Goodson Cloutz.” He paused. “Word of warning about Cloutz, so you’re not taken by surprise. He’s blind.”

“Blind?”

“As a bat, supposedly. Wily country boy who talks like a hillbilly. Runs the county jail. Always gets reelected, unopposed the last three times.”

“Any particular reason he’s part of this so-called team?”

“No idea.”

“They all expecting me?”

“I gave Beckert a heads-up. Left it up to him to fill in the others.”

“Any liaisons to outside agencies? FBI? State police? AG’s office?”

“We’re keeping the FBI out unless we’re forced to let them in. Beckert has his own back channels to the state police, to be used at his discretion. As for the AG’s office, they have more than they can handle with the new issues around the AG’s death.”

“What new issues?”

“Some embarrassing questions. The fact that he died in a Vegas hotel room creates speculation. Prurient suggestions.” He grimaced, glanced at his Rolex, then at the contract in Gurney’s lap. “It’s meeting time. You want to sign that so we can go in?”

“One more question.”

“What?”

“As I’m sure you know, I met with Kim Steele this morning. She gave me her perspective on her husband’s death, along with the evidence she found on his phone.” He paused, watching Kline’s face. “I wondered who sent her to me. Then I realized it had to be you.”

Kline’s eyes narrowed. “Why me?”

“Because what she told me was a direct answer to the question I’d raised with you—about what you were leaving out of your description of the situation. The text message on Steele’s phone and its possible implications. Kim was afraid to take it to the local police, who she didn’t trust, so she took it to you. But it was too touchy a matter for you to share with me as long as I was outside the tent. But if the victim’s wife told me about it on her own, you’d be clear of any blowback. Plus, a visit from a grieving widow would put pressure on me to accept your offer.”

Kline stared straight ahead, said nothing.

Gurney signed both copies of the contract, handed one to Kline, and slipped the other into his jacket pocket.

The inside of White River Police Headquarters was a predictably drab reflection of the outside—with buzzing fluorescent lights, stained acoustic ceiling tiles, and the smell of a disinfectant whose ersatz pine aroma was mixing with the sourness of whatever was being disinfected.

Kline ushered him quickly through a security checkpoint and led him down a long corridor with colorless cinder-block walls. At the end of the corridor they passed through an open door into an unlit conference room. Kline felt for a light switch and pressed it. Fluorescent tubes flickered on.

The wall opposite the door was devoted mainly to a wide window over which blinds had been lowered. A long conference table stood in the center of the room. On the wall to the left was a whiteboard on which CSMT 3:30 had been printed with a black marker. According to a circular clock above the board, it was now 3:27. Looking to his right, Gurney was surprised to see the chair at the end of the table was occupied by a thin man with dark glasses. A white cane lay on the table in front of him.

Kline turned with a start. “Goodson! I didn’t see you sitting there.”

“But now you do, Sheridan. Course I can’t see you. Bein’ kept in the dark’s my natural state. It’s the cross I bear, to be forever at the mercy of my sighted companions.”

“Nobody in this part of the world is less in the dark than you, Goodson.”

The thin man cackled. The exchange had the tone of a jokey ritual that had long since lost what humor it may once have contained.

Footsteps approached in the corridor, accompanied by the sound of someone blowing his nose. A short fat man stepped into the room, recognizable to Gurney from the press conference as Mayor Dwayne Shucker, holding a handkerchief to his face.

“Goddamnit, Shucks,” said the blind man, “sounds like you got yourself pollinated.”

The mayor stuffed his handkerchief in the pocket of his too-small sport jacket, took a seat at the opposite end of the table, and yawned. “Nice to see you, Sheriff.” He yawned again, looked at Kline. “Hey, there, Sheridan. Leaner and meaner than ever. Meant to ask you at that press affair—you still running them marathons?”

“Never did, Dwayne, just the occasional 5K.”

“Five Ks, fifty Ks, all the same to me.” Sniffling again, he gave Gurney a once-over. “You’re our DA’s new investigator?”

“Right.”

The thin man at the other end of the table raised his blind man’s cane in a kind of salute. “I knew there was another party in the room, just wondered when you’d make yourself known. Gurney, is it?”

“Right.”

“Man of action. I’ve heard about your exploits. I hope our modest level of mayhem up here in the backwoods don’t bore you.”

Gurney said nothing. Kline looked uncomfortable.

The man replaced his cane carefully on the table and produced a lizardy smile. “Seriously, Mr. Gurney, tell me—what’s your big-city impression of our little problem here?”

Gurney shrugged. “My impression is that ‘little’ might be the wrong word.”

“Tell me, what word would you—”

He was interrupted by the energetic entry into the room of two men. Gurney recognized the tall one in a crisply tailored dark suit as Dell Beckert. He was carrying a slim briefcase. The other man, presumably Judd Turlock, in a nondescript sport jacket and slacks, combined the body of a defensive lineman with the impassive face of a mobster in a mug shot.

Beckert nodded to Kline, then turned to Gurney. “I’m Dell Beckert. Welcome. You’ve met everyone?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued. “We’re missing Mark Torres, CIO on the homicide. He’s been delayed a few minutes. But let’s get started.” He strode around to the other side of the table, chose the center chair, placed his briefcase squarely in front of it, and sat down. “Can we get some more light in here?”

Judd Turlock stepped behind Beckert’s chair and raised the blinds, carefully and evenly. Gurney, in the seat across from Beckert, was struck by the stark composition of the view framed by the picture window.

A black macadam road, bordered by chain-link fences topped with razor wire, extended out from the police headquarters to another colorless brick building, several times larger but with narrower windows. A black-and-white sign identified it as the Haldon C. Eppert Detention Center, official name of the county lockup. Looming on a rise a few hundred yards beyond it were the massive concrete wall and guard towers of what Gurney recognized as the White River Correctional Facility, the state prison named after its city host. With this bleak tableau serving as a backdrop for the man at the center of the table, it occurred to Gurney that if someone in a fanciful moment should consider those incarceration facilities as a kind of hell, then Beckert had positioned himself as hell’s gatekeeper.

“To keep us on track we have an agenda.” Beckert reached into his briefcase and pulled out some papers. Turlock passed one to each man at the table. Beckert added, “Orderly process is important—especially when we’re confronting an insane level of disorder.”

Gurney scanned the terse list of topics. It was orderly, but revealed little.

“We’ll start with the RAM-CAM videos from the Willard Park homicide site,” said Beckert. “The digital files are being—”

He stopped at the sound of hurried footsteps in the corridor. A moment later a slim, young Hispanic man entered the room, nodded apologetically all around, and took a seat at the table between Gurney and the sheriff. Turlock slid a copy of the agenda across the table, which the young man examined with a thoughtful frown. Gurney extended his hand to him.

“I’m Dave Gurney, with the DA’s office.”

“I know.” He smiled, looking more like an earnest college kid than the chief investigating officer on a major homicide. “I’m Mark Torres. White River PD.”

With a flicker of irritation, Beckert continued, “The original digital files are being enhanced at the forensic computer lab. These will serve our purposes for now.”

He nodded at Turlock, who tapped a few icons on a small tablet computer. A large video monitor high on the wall behind the sheriff came to life.

The first segment of the video was a longer version of the clip Gurney had seen at Marv and Trish Gelter’s house. The extra length consisted of several minutes of additional footage prior to the actual shooting—the period during which Officer Steele was walking back and forth on the sidewalk at the edge of the park, his attention on the crowd. At the side of the crowd, as if preparing to charge into it on his great stone horse, was the larger-than-life statue of Colonel Ezra Willard.

Perhaps because there was less distraction here than at the Gelters’, or because this portion of the video was longer, Gurney noticed something he’d originally missed—a tiny red dot moving on the back of Steele’s head. The dot followed Steele for at least two minutes prior to the fatal shot, stopping when he stopped, moving with him when he moved, centering itself on the base of his skull just below the edge of his protective helmet. The fact that it was obviously the projected dot of a rifle’s laser sight gave Gurney a sick feeling.

Then the bullet struck, knocking Steele facedown onto the sidewalk. Even though Gurney knew it was coming, he flinched. The reassuring words of a wise man he’d once known came back to him: Flinching at another’s injury is the essence of empathy, and empathy is the essence of humanity.

At a gesture from Beckert, Turlock stopped the video and switched off the monitor.

The silence in the room was broken by Mayor Shucker. “The damage being done to the businesspeople of this city by that damn RAM-CAM video is just awful. They run the damn thing over and over. Makes our little city look like a war zone. A place to avoid. We have restaurants, B and Bs, the museum, kayak rentals—the tourist season about to start, and not a damn customer in sight. This media thing is killing us.”

Beckert showed no reaction. He looked toward the opposite end of the table. “Goodson? I know the video’s already been described to you in detail. Comments?”

Cloutz fingered his white cane with an unpleasant smile. “I do appreciate Shucks’s business concerns. Natural for a man invested in the economy of the city to feel that way. On the other hand, I do see some value in givin’ folks around the state a glimpse of the barbarian shit we’re facin’ here. Folks need to see it to appreciate the steps we need to take.”

Gurney thought he detected a nod of agreement from Beckert. “Other comments?”

Kline shook his head. “Not at the moment.”

“How about our new investigator?”

Gurney shrugged, his voice casual. “Why do you think it took the shooter so long?”

Beckert frowned. “Long?”

“The dot from the laser sight was on Steele’s head for quite a while.”

Beckert shrugged. “I doubt that it matters. Let’s move on to the next agenda item, the ME’s report. Copies of the full report will be available shortly, but Dr. Thrasher has provided me with the salient points.”

He removed a sheet of paper from his briefcase and read aloud: “‘In re John Steele, DOA, Mercy Hospital. Cause of death: catastrophic damage to medulla oblongata, cerebellum, and posterior cerebral artery, leading to immediate failure of heart and respiratory functions. Damage initiated by the passage of a bullet through the occipital bone at the base of the skull, through critical brain and brain-stem regions, emerging through the lacrimal bone structure.’”

He replaced the paper in his briefcase. “Dr. Thrasher further estimated, informally, that the bullet was probably a thirty-caliber high-energy FMJ. That estimate has now been confirmed by preliminary ballistic analysis of the bullet recovered at the Willard Park site. Any questions?”

Shucker sniffled. “What the hell’s an FMJ?”

“Full metal jacket. Keeps the bullet from expanding or fragmenting, so it passes through the target intact. Plus side is that it preserves the rifling marks for ballistics, so we can match the bullet to the weapon that fired it.”

“Assuming you recover the weapon?”

“Assuming we recover it. Any other questions?”

Kline steepled his fingers. “Any progress finding the shooter site?”

Beckert looked at Torres. “Ball’s in your court, Mark.”

The young CIO looked pleased at the handoff. “We’re narrowing the possibilities, sir. Aligning the position of the victim’s head in the video frame that captured the impact with the position of the recovered bullet gave us a general vector for the bullet’s path. We’ve laid that vector out on a map of the area to identify possible sites. Priority goes to those farthest from the victim, since the shot wasn’t heard at the site, and no audible traces were picked up by the RAM-CAMs. We have patrol officers out now doing door-to-doors.”

Cloutz was idly stroking his cane. “And you ain’t gettin’ diddly-shit cooperation from our minority citizens. Am I right?”

Gurney noted that the sheriff’s fingernails were nicely manicured.

Torres frowned, his jaw muscles tightening. “The level of cooperation so far has been uneven.”

Kline continued. “Apart from the door-to-doors, Mark, what else is under way?”

Torres leaned forward. “We’re collecting and reviewing video data from the security, traffic, and media cameras in the area. A careful examination of that data is likely to—”

Mayor Shucker broke in. “What I want to know is, do we have any real leads on them sons of bitches on the run? That’s gotta have priority. Catch ’em, incarcerate ’em, and put this goddamn nightmare to rest.”

There was a hard edge to Beckert’s voice. “Jordan and Tooker are at the top of our list. We’re going to get them. That’s a personal guarantee.”

Shucker seemed mollified.

Kline steepled his fingers again. “Can we tie them directly to the shooting?”

“We know from reliable informers that they were involved. And we just heard from a credible source that a third person may have been involved along with them—possibly a white male.”

Kline appeared startled. “I didn’t think the BDA had white members.”

“They don’t. Not technically. But they do have some white enablers, even financial supporters.”

“Leftie loonies, need to have their goddamn heads examined,” interjected the sheriff.

Kline looked pained.

Beckert exhibited no reaction at all. “We hope to identify that third person and have Jordan and Tooker in custody within the next forty-eight hours. And we expect that Mark and his people will have conclusive physical evidence very soon—from the shooter site, from BDA materials seized in the raid, and from cooperating BDA members.”

“Speakin’ of which,” said the sheriff, “I would hope that Sheridan here will be askin’ the judge to set bail high enough on our BDA detainees so they don’t go flyin’ out free as fuckin’ birds. More time we have them in custody, better our chances of gettin’ what we need.”

Gurney knew what the sheriff was talking about. He’d no doubt already separated the detainees from each other and put them in cells with jailhouse snitches who might be eager to trade incriminating information for sentence reductions. It was one of the rottenest parts of a rotten system.

Beckert glanced at his watch. “Any further questions?”

Gurney spoke with bland curiosity. “Do you think there’s any chance your hypothesis might not be correct?”

“What hypothesis?”

“That the Black Defense Alliance is responsible for the shooting.”

Beckert stared at him. “What makes you ask that?”

“I’ve made some mistakes myself by getting too sure too soon. I stopped asking questions because I thought I had all the answers.”

“Is this a general concern, or do you have a specific pebble in your shoe?”

“I had a visit this morning from Kim Steele, John Steele’s widow.”

“And?”

“She showed me an odd text that was sent to her husband’s personal phone the night he was shot. I made a note of it.” Gurney brought it up on his phone and slid it across the table.

Beckert read through the text, frowning. “You’ve seen this, Sheridan?”

“Dave discussed it with me before we came in.”

It struck Gurney that wielding the truth deceptively was one of Kline’s talents.

Beckert passed the phone on to Turlock, who gazed expressionlessly at the message and then passed it back.

The sheriff spoke up in an oily voice. “Could someone kindly enlighten me?”

Beckert read aloud from the screen with obvious contempt for the street-slanginess of the text. “ ‘Watch ur back. EZ nite for mfs to ice ur ass n blame the BDA.’ ”

“Hell’s that all about?”

Ignoring the question, Beckert gave Gurney a long look. “Did you take possession of Steele’s phone?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Mrs. Steele wasn’t ready to hand it over, and I had no standing to demand it.”

Beckert tilted his head speculatively. “Why would she bring this matter to you?”

“She referred to some work I’d done on another case.”

“What work?”

“I helped exonerate a woman who’d been framed for murder by a corrupt cop.”

“What relevance does that have here?”

“I have no idea.”

“Really? None at all?”

“I’m determined to keep an open mind.”

Beckert held Gurney’s gaze for a long moment. “We need that phone.”

“I know.”

“Will she surrender it willingly, or do we have to hit her with a warrant?”

“I’ll talk to her. If I can persuade her, that would be a better route.”

“You do that. In the meantime Judd will get a warrant. In case we need it.”

Turlock, who had been flexing his fingers and examining his knuckles, nodded.

“Okay,” said Beckert. “That wraps it up for now. Just a final word. Procedure is key. Lack of orderly procedure produces chaos, chaos produces failure, and failure is not an option. All communications will be routed through Judd here. He’ll be the hub of the wheel. Everything flows in to him, and everything flows out from him. Any questions?”

There were none.

It struck Gurney as a strange arrangement, since that central role normally would be filled by the CIO, in this case Mark Torres. And the tone of bureaucratic rigidity seemed like anything but a plus. But this need for control was obviously coming from a central point in Beckert’s personality, and Gurney didn’t want to strain his relationship with the man any further by probing the matter. At least not for the moment.