by John Verdon
“You look like an extremely worried man.”
Kline said nothing.
That in itself said something.
Gurney decided to push further. “The obvious interpretation of the message on Steele’s phone is that someone in the department might take advantage of the chaos in the streets to get rid of him. If that someone turned out to be Turlock, or even Beckert—”
“Jesus!” Kline raised his hand. “You have any evidence for what you’re saying?”
“None. But I don’t have any evidence that points to a third man from the BDA either.”
“What about these two new homicides? You have any thoughts?”
“Only that they may not be what they seem to be.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Thrasher’s comments about the damage to the bodies.”
Kline was looking increasingly miserable. “If they aren’t what they seem to be, what the hell are they?”
“I need time to think about that.”
“While you’re thinking about Steele?”
“I guess.”
“So which case is your priority?”
“The Steele shooting.”
“Why?”
“Because it came first, and something in it may explain the odd aspects of the other.”
Kline frowned, evidently trying to digest this. Then he pointed to the manila envelope in Gurney’s hand. “Let me know if anything in the case file pops out at you. You have my personal cell number. Call me anytime. Day or night.”
Away from the depressing environs of White River, the countryside had a bucolic timelessness, displaying the glories of early May. Black Angus cows dotted the hillsides. Apple trees were in blossom. The black earth of freshly tilled cornfields alternated with fields of emerald grass and buttercups. Only dimly aware of the beauty around him, Gurney spent the drive home pondering the strange facts of both cases. Despite his decision to focus on the sniper attack, he found it difficult to keep Thrasher’s comments about the beatings and brandings from intruding into his thoughts.
As he arrived at the narrow road that led to his hilltop property, his attention switched to a more pressing issue. Having told Madeleine that he’d sleep on the question of whether to continue his involvement with Kline, he felt the need to make a decision. On the one hand, there was the growing challenge of the situation itself and the accelerating pressure to avert an escalation of violence. Daunting as that sounded, it was the kind of challenge he was built for. On the other hand, there was his discomfort with the district attorney himself.
He felt as if he were locked in a loop of indecision. Each time he was about to conclude that the importance of the case might outweigh the risk of trusting Kline, the memory of Madeleine’s question intervened. My God, David, on what planet would that be considered a good idea?
As he was parking by the side door of the old farmhouse, still wrestling with his dilemma, his phone rang.
“Gurney here.”
“Thanks for picking up. It’s Mark Torres. Do you have a minute?”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m calling about the photos Paul Aziz took at Willard Park. I was wondering if you might want to see them.”
“The photos you showed at the meeting today?”
“I just showed the ones I thought were most important. Paul took over two hundred shots. Before I turned the camera chips over to Chief Beckert, I downloaded everything to my laptop.”
“And you want me to have all that?”
“As you know, I’ve been taken off the Jordan-Tooker case to concentrate on the Steele shooting. But I figured you’d still have an interest in both cases and the photos might be helpful to you.”
“You don’t think Beckert will share them with me?”
Torres hesitated. “I couldn’t say.”
Gurney wondered if Torres was suffering from the same distrust of the WRPD brass that seemed to have infected Kline. In any event, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at Aziz’s photos. “How do you want to get them to me?”
“Through a file-sharing service. As soon as I get it set up, I’ll email you.”
Viewing this minor involvement with the photos as a separate matter from any decision about his overall commitment, Gurney thanked Torres and said he’d watch for the email. He ended the call, got out of the car, and went into the house.
According to the old regulator clock on the kitchen wall, it was a minute past five. He called Madeleine’s name. There was no response. He knew it wasn’t one of her workdays at the clinic; and if she’d been called in, she’d have left a note for him on the door.
He went back outside and checked the areas where she enjoyed busying herself—the garden beds, the asparagus patch, and the prefab greenhouse they’d erected earlier that spring to get a head start on the short upstate growing season.
He called her name again. He went around to the rear of the house, looking across the high pasture to the edge of the encircling forest. The only living creatures he saw were the distant vultures riding the updrafts over the ridge.
He decided to go back inside and call her cell phone. But just then he caught sight of her, making her way up through the low pasture from the direction of the pond. He noted something different about the way she was walking, something less spirited than usual in her step. When she came closer he could see that her expression was almost grim. And when she was closer still, he could see in her eyes the signs of recent tears.
“What is it?” he asked.
She looked around uncertainly until her eyes came to rest on the pair of Adirondack chairs facing each other in the middle of the stone patio. “Can we sit out here for a while?”
“Sure. Is something wrong?”
When they were both seated, their knees almost touching, she closed her eyes for a long moment, as though trying to arrange her thoughts.
“Maddie? Did something happen?”
“Kim Steele was here.”
“What did she want?”
“She brought her husband’s cell phone.”
“She left it with you?”
“Yes.”
He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “Her visit was . . . upsetting?”
“Yes.”
“Because of what happened to her husband?”
“Because of the kind of person he was.” She swallowed. “He was like you.”
“And you’re thinking . . . what happened to him could have happened to me?”
“Yes.” After a few moments she continued. “The way she described him . . . was exactly how I would describe you. Believing that being a cop was a good way of life, a way of being useful. Believing that doing what’s right was the most important thing.”
They sat there for a long while in silence.
“There’s something else,” she said, wiping away a tear. “They lost a child.”
He felt a chill rising into his chest.
“An infant. A car accident.”
“Jesus.”
“They’re us, David, twenty years ago. The only difference is that you’re alive, and her husband isn’t.”
Looking into her eyes, he could see that the power of her identification with another woman’s pain had upended yesterday’s reality.
“I didn’t want you getting into this thing, getting tangled up with Sheridan Kline. But now, I can’t help thinking that if this had happened to you . . .”
“You would have wanted someone to do something about it.”
“Yes. Someone good and honest and determined enough to get to the bottom of it.” She paused, then added emphatically, “Yes. I would have wanted that.”
18
The shift in Madeleine’s view had a profound effect on Gurney. Her change of heart felt to him like a kind of liberation. What was clear to her was now clear to him. His job was simply to solve the murder of Kim Steele’s husband.
&
nbsp; The rest—Kline’s shadowy motives for pulling him in, the putative political connections and ambitions of Dell Beckert, White River’s potential race war—were important but secondary issues. They would become relevant only if they helped explain the death of John Steele.
After dinner, Gurney retreated to the den with the case file Kline had given him in the parking lot and the cell phone Kim had left with Madeleine. The first thing he did—after checking for the phone’s call records and text chains and discovering they’d all been deleted except for the final warning—was to call the district attorney’s personal number.
Kline picked up immediately, his voice anxious. “Yes?”
“I have Steele’s cell phone.”
“His wife gave it to you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you . . . find anything in it? Anything relevant?”
“Nothing but the last message.”
“How quickly can you get the phone to me?”
Gurney was struck by the wording of Kline’s question, the me in particular. He wondered if the intention was as exclusive as it sounded. “I could bring it to tomorrow’s team meeting. Beckert seemed eager for it.”
When Kline responded with silence, he went on. “Or, since time is a critical factor, you might want to send one of your people to my house for it, and they could drive it directly to computer forensics in Albany. And in the meantime you could get a warrant for the service provider’s call records.”
“Hmm . . . so . . . you’re suggesting that in the interest of saving time we bypass White River PD and go directly to the state lab?”
Gurney almost laughed out loud. Instinctive ass-coverer that he was, Kline was making it clear that this route, which he obviously preferred, was Gurney’s suggestion.
“It would be a reasonable way to proceed,” said Gurney.
“You’re probably right. Considering the importance of the time factor. Okay. I’ll have a car at your house tomorrow morning at seven sharp.”
The conversation confirmed for Gurney that the man was uneasy enough with Beckert, or someone else in the department, to keep the phone out of their hands until there was an objective record of whatever information could be extracted from it.
He turned his attention to the manila envelope, pulled out the case file, and spread out its contents on the den desk. He saw the standard items—the incident report, witness statements, site photos and sketches, early progress reports, various updates and addenda—none of which at first glance were especially helpful or surprising. There was also a DVD. It was labeled RAM-CAM VIDEO, WILLARD PARK, STEELE HOMICIDE. He pushed aside the other items and inserted it in his laptop’s external drive.
The video was as he remembered it from the big-screen TV at the Gelters’ party and again at the first CSMT meeting. Presumably excerpted from a longer recording, the segment began about three minutes prior to the shot and continued for about two minutes after it. During this viewing, Gurney timed the appearance of the red laser dot on the back of Steele’s head, confirming his initial estimate that it preceded the fatal shot by just over two minutes. The precision with which the dot followed Steele’s movements confirmed his impression that the rifle that fired the shot was mounted on a tripod, possibly one with a motion-dampening mechanism of the kind used in filmmaking.
He watched the video three times. On the third viewing he noted an oddity that hadn’t struck him before. When Steele was shot he was moving to a new position on the sidewalk. But for nearly twenty seconds leading up to that he’d been standing still. Why had the shooter bypassed that easy opportunity in favor of a riskier moving target?
He continued going through the file until he came to a computer printout labeled “Potential Shooter Sites Defined by Bullet Trajectory Parameters.” The printout displayed a narrow, triangular outline overlaid on a map of White River. The tip of the triangle touched the spot at the edge of the park where Steele was shot. The outline extended out from that point approximately a quarter of a mile across the center of the city—enclosing the likely area from which the shot had come, based on the calculated trajectory.
Although there was no indication in the file what was being done with this diagram, it was obvious to Gurney that the next step would be to narrow the possibilities by going to the spot where Steele was standing at the moment of impact and with binoculars survey the area contained within the triangle to find the clear lines of sight to windows, rooftops, and open areas not obscured by other structures. Since the target had to be visible to the sniper, the sniper’s location would have to be visible from the target’s location. Taking this simple step would dramatically limit the areas that needed to be searched.
He was tempted to call Mark Torres and make sure this was happening. But something told him not to interfere. The sniper’s location would soon be identified and turned over to the crime-scene team with their cameras, vacuums, evidence bags, and fingerprint kits. In the interim there was plenty for him to do that didn’t involve stepping on other people’s toes.
Another face-to-face conversation with Kim Steele, for example, might be a more productive use of his time. During her visit earlier that day Kim had given Madeleine her address, email, and phone number.
He picked up his phone and entered Kim’s number.
“Yes?” Her voice was leaden.
“Kim, this is Dave Gurney.”
“Yes?”
“I have a meeting in White River tomorrow. I was wondering if I could stop by on my way and talk to you.”
“Tomorrow?”
“It would be sometime in the morning. Is that all right?”
“It’s all right. I’m here.”
He wondered whether her monotone responses were coming from the exhaustion of grief or an emotion-deadening medication. “Thank you, Kim. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
That night, for the first time in more than a year, he had the dream—a dreadful, disjointed replaying of the accident, long ago, that killed his four-year-old son.
On their way to the playground on a sunny day.
Danny walking in front of him.
Following a pigeon on the sidewalk.
He himself only partly present.
Pondering a twist in a murder case he was working on.
Distracted by a bright idea, a possible solution.
The pigeon stepping off the curb into the street.
Danny following the pigeon.
The sickening, heart-stopping thump.
Danny’s body tossed through the air, hitting the pavement, rolling.
Rolling.
The red BMW racing away.
Screeching around a corner.
Gone.
Gurney awoke in an agony of grief. In the gray light of dawn. Madeleine holding his hand. She knew about the dream. He’d been having it, on and off, for nearly twenty years.
When the lingering images had subsided and the worst of the feeling had passed, he got up, took a shower, and dressed.
At 7:00 AM Kline’s man arrived as promised, accepted Steele’s cell phone, and departed with hardly a word.
At 7:45 AM Geraldine Mirkle arrived to pick up Madeleine for one of their same-schedule days at the clinic.
At 8:30 AM Gurney left for his meeting with Kim Steele.
His GPS directed him off the interstate at the Larvaton-Badminton exit onto Fishers Road heading north toward Angina. A few miles later it directed him onto Dry Brook Lane, a gravelly road that rose in a series of S curves through an old hardwood forest. At a driveway marked by a brightly painted mailbox, his GPS announced he had reached his destination. The driveway brought him into a clearing, at the center of which stood a small farmhouse surrounded by flower beds and lush spring grass. A red barn with a metal roof stood at the edge of the clearing. Kim Steele’s small white car was parked by the house, and he parked next to it.
He knocked on the side door and waited. He knocked again. After a third
attempt he went around to the back door, with the same result. While he was puzzling over the situation, he looked out over the back field toward the barn and noticed a riding mower next to the barn door.
As he headed across the field, Kim Steele emerged from the barn toting a large red gas can. She carried it to the mower and was in the process of opening the gas tank when she saw him. She watched him approaching, then returned to her task, hefting the can into position and wrestling its stiff spout into the tank opening. She spoke without looking up.
“Things have to get done.”
“Can I help?”
She seemed not to hear him. Appearing marginally more organized than the last time he’d seen her, she was wearing the same shirt, but the buttons were now aligned. Her hair seemed neater, shinier.
“They called him in on his day off,” she said, trying to balance the big can over the tank. “He wanted to mow this field. He said it was important to mow it at least once a week. Or the grass would clog the mower. Once it gets clogged . . .”
“Let me help you with that.” He reached for the can.
“No! This is my job.”
“Okay.” He paused. “You were saying they called him in?”
She nodded.
“Because of the demonstration?”
“They were calling everyone in.”
“Did he say who in the department called him?”
She shook her head.
“Do you remember if there were any other calls for him that day?”
“The day he was killed?” It wasn’t a question so much as a burst of anger.
He paused again. “I know it’s horrible to think about this—”
She cut him off. “It’s all I think about. There’s nothing else I can think about. So ask whatever you want.”
He nodded. “I’m just wondering if John got any other calls that day, other than the message you found on his phone.”
“Shit!”
The mower’s gas tank was overflowing. She yanked the can away and dropped it on the ground. She appeared close to tears.