by John Verdon
“What did you think of his racial politics, his criticisms of the police?”
“I told myself it was just a lot of words. Adolescent playacting. A warped search for attention. The feeling of power that comes from criticizing powerful people. I imagined he’d eventually come to his senses. Obviously, he went in the opposite direction.”
Flynn sat back in his chair and gave Beckert a long, sympathetic look.
“This must be incredibly painful for you.”
Beckert produced a brief, thin-lipped smile. “Pain is part of life. The main thing is not to run from it. Or let it motivate you to do the wrong thing.”
“The wrong thing?” Flynn produced his pensive expression. “In this case, what would that be?”
“Bury evidence. Call in favors. Twist arms. Influence the outcome. Conceal the fact that we’re father and son. All those actions would be wrong. They’d undermine the law—the ideal of justice that I’ve devoted my life to preserving.”
“Is that why you’re resigning—why you’re voluntarily ending one of the most distinguished law-enforcement careers in America?”
“Respect for the law is built on public trust. The case against Cory Payne must be pursued vigorously and transparently without the slightest suspicion of interference. If giving up my position supports that goal, it’s well worth whatever sacrifice it entails.”
“Wow.” Flynn nodded appreciatively. “Well said. Now that you’ve submitted your resignation, what’s the path forward?”
“With the approval of the White River city council, Mayor Dwayne Shucker will appoint a new chief of police. Life will go on.”
“Any final words of wisdom?”
“May justice be served. May the families of the victims find peace. And may the sanctity of the law always rise above every other consideration—however powerful, however personal, however painful. God bless White River. God bless America.”
The camera slowly moved in on Flynn, looking tough-but-touched. “Well, my friends, didn’t I tell you this would be one for the history books? In my not-so-humble opinion, we just witnessed one of the most principled and heartfelt resignation speeches ever made. Godspeed, Dell Beckert!”
Concluding with a combination wave and salute in Beckert’s direction, Flynn turned back to the camera and addressed with his trademark intensity his millions of loyal fans. “I’m Carlton Flynn, and that’s how I see it. I’ll be back after these important messages.”
Gurney left the RAM-TV website and closed his laptop.
Madeleine shook her head in bewilderment. “What did you mean when you said it might only be half true that Payne was Beckert’s son and that he was the sniper?”
“I have no doubt about the son part. But I think the sniper part is less certain.”
“The slimy Mr. Flynn sure did love that resignation speech.”
“Did seem that way. Of course, it wasn’t really a resignation speech.”
“You don’t think he’s resigning?”
“Oh, he’s resigning all right. He’s resigning from the White River Police Department to run for New York State Attorney General. If I’m not mistaken, what we just witnessed was his kickoff campaign speech.”
“Are you serious? On the same day that Rick—”
The ringing of Gurney’s phone interrupted her.
He glanced at the screen. “It’s Hardwick. I suggested he listen to the Flynn show.”
He pressed Talk. “So, Jack, what do you think?”
“The fucking manipulative bastard is doing it again.”
He figured he knew what Hardwick meant, but he asked anyway. “Doing what again?”
“Riding a disaster to victory. First it was his son’s juvenile delinquency. Then his wife’s drug OD. Now a goddamn double murder by the same crazy son. Somehow in Dell’s magic hands all this crap ends up illustrating what a prince he is. Selfless defender of high ideals. This guy manages to turn every new family horror into a platform for promoting his high-minded horseshit. Give me a fucking break!”
After ending the call Gurney sat for a long moment in troubled silence. Dusk had turned to darkness beyond the den window.
“Well, what did Hardwick have to say?” Madeleine asked.
“About Beckert? That he’s a self-serving, manipulative, deceptive bastard.”
“Do you agree?”
“Oh, he’s at least all of that.”
“At least?”
Gurney nodded slowly. “I have a sick feeling that under those fairly common vices, there may be something much worse.”
III
TRUST NO ONE
29
Gurney arrived at Abelard’s a few minutes before 8:00 AM. He sat at one of the rickety little hand-painted cafe tables. Marika, looking hungover and sleepy, brought him a double espresso without asking. Her ever-changing hair color was a mix of deep violet and metallic green.
As he was savoring his first sip, his phone rang. Expecting it to be Hardwick giving some reason he couldn’t be there, he was surprised to see Mark Torres’s name on the screen.
“Gurney here.”
“I hope I’m not calling too early.”
“Not at all.”
“I heard that you were off the case.”
“Officially, yes.”
“But not completely?”
“That’s one way of putting it. What can I do for you?”
“The thing is, I got the impression you have some doubts about the way things are going.”
“And?”
“And . . . I guess I do, too. I mean, I get it that there’s a ton of evidence—videos, fingerprints, statements from informants—linking Cory Payne to the shootings and to the Corolla and to people in the Black Defense Alliance. So I have no real doubt he’s the shooter. Probably acting on behalf of the BDA.”
“But?”
“What I don’t get is the choice of victims.”
“What do you mean?
“John Steele and Rick Loomis were both loners. As far as I could see, they hung out only with each other. And unlike most guys in the department, they didn’t regard the BDA as the enemy. I got the impression they wanted to establish some kind of dialogue, to look into the accusations of brutality and evidence-planting. You see what I’m getting at?”
“Spell it out.”
“Of all the cops in the White River department—and there are more than a hundred, some of them obviously racist—it seems odd that the BDA would target Steele and Loomis. Why kill the two people who were the most sympathetic to their cause?”
“Maybe the shootings were random—and it’s just a coincidence that the victims felt that way about the BDA.”
“If just one of them was shot, I could buy that. But both?”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I remember something you said in your investigation seminar in Albany a couple of years ago—that it’s important to examine the little discrepancies. You made the point that when something doesn’t seem to fit, it’s often the key to the case. So I’m thinking maybe the odd choice of victims could be the key here.”
“It’s an interesting idea. You have a next step in mind?”
“Not really. For now, maybe I could just sort of keep you in the loop? Let you know what’s happening?”
“No problem. Actually, you’d be doing me a favor. The more I know, the better.”
“Great. Thank you. I’ll be in touch.”
As Gurney ended the call, the old wooden floor creaked behind him.
A raspy voice said, “The boy gets his ass kicked out of the DA’s office and stays on the job. Nose to the grindstone. Hand on the phone. Goddamn impressive.”
“Good morning, Jack.”
Hardwick came around to the other side of the table and sat down on a chair that squeaked ominously under him. “Good fucking morning yourself.”
He called to Marika, “Coffee, strong and blac
k.”
He fixed his pale malamute eyes on Gurney. “All right, tell Uncle Jack what’s troubling your sleep.”
“The Carlton Flynn thing last night . . .”
“Flynn the Fuckwit meets Beckert the Bullshitter. You have a question about that?”
It was part of Hardwick’s nature to believe nothing, ridicule everything, and be generally snarly. But Gurney was willing to put up with it because underneath the cynical needling there was a good intellect and a decent soul.
“According to some articles,” said Gurney, “Flynn built his success on being the hard-nosed questioner—the no-nonsense tough guy who pulls no punches. That about right?”
“Yep. Just a regular fella who happens to get paid thirty million a year. Hugely popular with angry white guys.”
“But last night he was a fawning promoter of Dell Beckert, lobbing him softball questions, looking awestruck. How do you figure that?”
Hardwick shrugged. “Follow the money. Follow the power.”
“You think there’s enough of both behind Beckert to turn Flynn into a pussycat?”
“Flynn’s a survivor. Like Beckert. Or like a giant rat. Always has an eye out for the next advantage. Onward and upward, no matter how much wreckage piles up behind him—dead wife, crazy son, whatever.”
He stopped speaking as Marika placed his coffee in front of him. He picked it up and consumed about a third of it. “So Kline gave you the boot after, what, like two days?”
“Three.”
“How the fuck did you manage that?”
“I had questions about the case he didn’t want to hear.”
“Sniper case or playground case?”
“I have a feeling it may be one case.”
Hardwick showed a flash of real curiosity. “How so?”
“It seems to me that the playground murders were too smoothly executed to have been a spontaneous retaliation for the Steele shooting.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning they must have been in the planning stage before Steele was shot.”
“You’re suggesting there’s no connection?”
“I think there’s a connection, just not the one Beckert’s promoting.”
“You’re not imagining the same people are behind the shootings and the beating deaths, are you?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“For what? To start a fucking race war?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“It’s goddamn doubtful.”
“Okay. Then maybe for some other purpose.” He paused. “I was on the phone with Mark Torres, CIO on the shootings. He’s bothered by the fact that two supposedly BDA-executed attacks targeted the two White River cops who were the most sympathetic to the BDA. Which presumably would have put them at odds with their chief.”
Hardwick blinked, the curiosity back in full force.
Gurney went on. “Combine that with the text message on John Steele’s phone . . . telling him to watch his back.”
“Wait a fucking minute. You’re not suggesting that Beckert, patron saint of law enforcement, put a hit on two of his own men just because he didn’t like their politics?”
“Nothing quite that ridiculous. But there are definite signs that the link between the attacks on Steele and Loomis and the attacks on Jordan and Tooker is more complicated than the way it’s officially being described.”
“What signs?”
Gurney ran through his litany of strange combinations of care and carelessness in the behavior of the killers. His last example was the perplexing difference in the routes of the two vehicles leaving the Poulter Street house. “The driver of the Corolla, Cory Payne, took a direct route through the city on a main avenue full of obvious security and traffic cameras. But the motorcycle rider took a jagged route, turning at least a dozen times and managing to avoid being caught on a single camera. Taking precautions to avoid cameras is understandable. The puzzling question is why Payne didn’t bother to do the same thing.”
Hardwick made his acid-reflux face. “These oddities don’t trouble Sheridan?”
“He claims they’re insignificant in the big picture.”
“What big picture?”
“The one in which the sniper attacks are blamed on black radicals and a demented white boy; and the playground murders are blamed on a pair of backwoods white supremacists; and all the evildoers are captured or killed, order is restored, and Beckert ascends into the political stratosphere—bringing with him his key supporters.”
“If the plan is that clear, why the hell did Kline want you involved in the first place?”
“I think the text message Kim Steele showed him shook him up—with its suggestion of police involvement in her husband’s death. He wanted to get on board the Beckert rocket ship, but he wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to blow up on the launch pad. I was supposed to observe discreetly and warn him of any imminent disasters. But apparently the so-called progress being made on the case has settled his nerves to the point where he’s more concerned about me weakening his relationship with Beckert than about any weakness in the case.”
Hardwick flashed his chilly grin. “Kline the Slime. So what now?”
“Something’s screwy, and I intend to find out what it is.”
“Even though you’ve been fired?”
“Right.”
“One last question. What the fuck am I doing here at the crack of dawn?”
“I was hoping you might be willing to do me a favor.”
“Doing favors for you is the icing on the cake of my perfect life. What is it this time?”
“I thought maybe you could use your old NYSP contacts to dig a little deeper into Beckert’s past.”
“Digging for what?”
“Anything we don’t already know about his relationship with Turlock, his first wife, his son. If a cop’s son starts killing cops, it doesn’t take a genius to suspect there’s something ugly in their past. I’d like to know what it is.”
Hardwick produced another grin.
“What’s funny?”
“Your obvious effort to concoct a theory that blames Beckert for everything.”
“I’m not trying to concoct anything. I just want to know more about these people.”
“Horseshit. You don’t like the tight-ass son of a bitch any more than I do, and you’re searching for a way to slam him.”
The fact that Hardwick was saying essentially what Kline had said gave the notion some extra weight, but he still wasn’t about to agree with it.
Hardwick took a thoughtful sip of his coffee before going on. “What if Beckert is right?”
“About what?”
“About Steele and Loomis. About Jordan and Tooker. About rotten-apple Cory and the crazy Gorts. What if the prick is right about everything?”
“What Beckert’s right about seems to have a way of shifting in the wind. Three days ago he was blaming the Steele shooting on Jordan and Tooker. When it turned out they were with a prominent pastor, he did a little rhetorical dance and said that while they might not have pulled the trigger, they certainly aided and abetted.”
“Which may be true. And by the way, how much do you know about that pastor?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re assuming he’s telling the truth. Maybe you just want to believe him because those alibis he provided embarrassed Dell Beckert.”
Gurney didn’t want to believe his thinking was that twisted, but the suggestion made him uneasy. Up to that point the pastor hadn’t been very high on his mental list of people to interview. Now he was at the top.
30
The Reverend Whittaker Coolidge, rector of Saint Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church, agreed to a meeting that morning as long as it could be concluded prior to a scheduled ten thirty baptism. By breaking the speed limit all the way to White River, Gurney arrived at the church at nine forty-five.
It
was located on a broad avenue that separated Bluestone from Grinton. An old redbrick building with a steeply angled slate roof, stained-glass windows, and a square bell tower, it was set back from the avenue—surrounded on three sides by an ancient churchyard with moss-covered mausoleums, statues of angels, and weathered gravestones, and on the fourth side by a parking lot.
Gurney parked at the back of the empty lot. From there a path led through the churchyard to a rear door, which Reverend Coolidge had told him to use to get to the office.
A little way along the path, he stopped to pay closer attention to the inscriptions on the gravestones. A few of the birth dates went back as far as the late eighteenth century. Most of the death dates were in the eighteen thirties and forties. Typical of old cemeteries, a number of the stones recorded sadly short lifespans.
“Dave?”
A large sandy-haired man in a short-sleeved shirt, Bermuda shorts, and Birkenstock sandals was standing under the outstretched wing of a stone angel that adorned one of the more elaborate graves. Taking a final drag on a cigarette, he extinguished it on the tip of the angel’s wing and dropped it in a graveside watering can. Then he strode toward Gurney with a toothy smile. “I’m Whit Coolidge. I see you’re intrigued by our slice of history. Some of the folks buried here were contemporaries of the controversial Colonel Ezra Willard. Are you familiar with him?”
“I’m familiar with his statue in the park.”
“A statue some of our citizens would like to see removed. Not without reason.”
Gurney said nothing.
“Well,” said Coolidge after an awkward silence, “why don’t we go into my office, where we can have some privacy.”
Gurney wondered how much more private than a yard full of dead people the office could be, but he nodded and followed the man through the church’s back door into a hallway that smelled of dust and dry wood. Light was spilling from a doorway on the right, and that’s where Coolidge led him.
The room was about twice the size of Gurney’s den. There was a desk at one end with a leather desk chair. At the other end was a small fireplace with a low fire in its final stages. There were two leather armchairs on either side of the hearth. On one wall a window looked out on the part of the churchyard that wrapped around that side of the building. On the opposite wall were two enormous photographic prints—one of Mother Teresa and one of Martin Luther King.