White River Burning. John Verdon

shot up from one of them. On the main boulevard he noted a procession of police cars, a fire engine, and an ambulance. The aerial camera was picking up the sounds of sirens and bullhorns.

      Gurney eased his chair back from the table, as if to distance himself from what he was seeing on his computer screen. The cynical conversion of misery, anger, and destruction into a kind of reality TV show sickened him. And it wasn’t just RAM. Media enterprises everywhere were engaged in the continual promotion and exaggeration of conflict, a business model based on a poisonous insight: dissension sells. Especially dissension along the fault line of race. It was an insight with an equally poisonous corollary: nothing builds loyalty like shared hatreds. It was clear RAM and its host of vile imitators had no qualms about nurturing those hatreds to build loyal audiences.

      He realized, however, that it was time to put aside grievances about which he could do nothing and focus on questions that might have answers. For example, might Blaze Lovely Jackson’s rage at the police have been sufficient to involve her in actions beyond staging protests? Actions such as planning, abetting, or executing the sniper attack? And why hadn’t Kline gotten back to him? Had the query he’d left on the man’s voicemail concerning the missing ingredient in their conversation scared him off? Or was the potential answer sensitive enough to demand long consideration or perhaps even discussion with another player in the game?

      That thought led by a crooked route to another question that had been in the back of his mind ever since Marv Gelter had abandoned his party to take a call from Dell Beckert. What sort of relationship did the racist billionaire have with the White River police chief?

      “Do you know if the upstairs windows are closed?”

      Madeleine’s voice startled him. He turned and saw her standing in her pajamas in the hallway that led to the bedroom.

      “The windows?”

      “It’s raining.”

      “I’ll take a look.”

      As he was about to shut down his computer, an announcement appeared on the screen in bold type:

      CRISIS UPDATE

      LIVE-STREAMING PRESS CONFERENCE—9:00 AM TOMORROW

      WITH CHIEF BECKERT, MAYOR SHUCKER, DISTRICT ATTORNEY KLINE

      He made a mental note of the time, hoping the event would be concluded before he had to leave for his meeting with Hardwick.

      Upstairs he found only one window open, but it was enough to fill the room with the flowery aroma of the spring night. He stood there for a while breathing in the soft, sweet air.

      His racing thoughts were replaced by a primitive sense of peace. A phrase came to mind, something he’d once read—just the phrase, emerging from an unrecalled context and attaching itself to the moment: a healing tranquility.

      Once again, as so often in the past, a pleasant and totally unanticipated consequence had followed from his doing a simple thing Madeleine had asked him to do. He was sufficiently logic-driven to avoid attributing any mystical significance to these experiences. But their occurrence was a fact he couldn’t ignore.

      When the wind shifted and the rain began to spatter lightly on the sill, he closed the window and went downstairs to bed.

      8

      Tranquility, unfortunately, was not his natural state of mind. During several hours of fitful sleep his innate brain chemistry reasserted itself, bringing with it the low-level anxiety and uneasy dreams to which he was accustomed.

      At some point during those hours he awoke briefly, discovering that the rain had stopped, a full moon had appeared behind the thinning clouds, and the coyotes had begun to howl. He went back to sleep.

      Another round of howling, closer to the house, woke him once more—from a dream in which Trish Gelter was ambling around a white cube in a field of daffodils. Each time she circled the cube she announced, “I’m the fun one.” A blood-covered man was following her.

      Gurney tried to clear the image from his mind and doze off again, but the persistent howling and the need to go to the bathroom finally got him out of bed. He showered, shaved, put on his jeans and an old NYPD tee shirt, and went to the kitchen to make himself some breakfast.

      By the time he’d finished his eggs, toast, and two cups of coffee, the sun was rising above the pine-topped eastern ridge. When he opened the French doors to let in the morning air, he could hear the chickens making their morning clucking noises out in the coop by the apple tree. He stepped onto the patio and for a while watched the goldfinches and chickadees visiting the feeders that Madeleine had set up next to the asparagus patch. His gaze moved across the low pasture to the barn, the pond, and the site of his exploratory dig.

      When he’d discovered the buried foundation—accidentally, while clearing large rocks from the trail above the pond—and had exposed enough of it to get a sense of its antiquity, it had occurred to him that he might invite Dr. Walter Thrasher to have a look. In addition to being county medical examiner, Thrasher was an avid historian and collector of Colonial artifacts. At the time, Gurney had wavered on whether to involve him, but now he was inclined to do so. The man’s insights into the remains of the old house could be interesting, and having a personal avenue of access to him might prove useful if Gurney decided to accept Kline’s invitation to step into the White River investigation.

      He went back into the house, got his phone, and returned to the patio. He scrolled through his list of numbers, found Thrasher’s, and tapped on it. The call went to voicemail. The recorded announcement was nearly as short as Hardwick’s. Rather than gruff, though, the tone was refined. It invited the caller to simply leave a name and number, but Gurney decided to include some details.

      “Dr. Thrasher, this is Dave Gurney. We met when you were the medical examiner on the Mellery homicide. Someone mentioned then that you were an expert on the Colonial history and archaeology of upstate New York. I’m calling because I’ve uncovered a site on my property that may date back to the eighteenth century. There are a variety of artifacts—a flesher tool, ebony-handled knife, iron chain links. Plus possible human remains—a child’s teeth, if I’m not mistaken. If you’d like to know more about this, you can reach me on my cell anytime.” Gurney added his number and ended the call.

      “Are you talking to someone out there?”

      He turned and saw Madeleine at the French doors. Her slacks-and-blazer outfit reminded him it was one of her workdays at the mental health clinic.

      “I was on the phone.”

      “I thought maybe Gerry had arrived. She’s picking me up today.”

      She stepped out onto the patio, raising her face into the slanting morning sunlight. “I hate the idea of being cooped up in an office on a day like this.”

      “You don’t have to be cooped up anywhere. We have enough money to—”

      She cut him off. “I don’t mean it that way. I just wish we could see our clients outdoors in weather like this. It would be better for them, too. Fresh air. Green grass. Blue sky. Good for the soul.” She cocked her head. “I think I hear Gerry coming up the hill.”

      A few moments later, as a yellow VW Beetle made its way up the weedy lane through the low pasture, she added, “You’re going to let the chickens out, right?”

      “I’ll get to it.”

      She ignored the edge in his voice, kissed him, and headed out past the asparagus patch just as her exuberant fellow therapist, Geraldine Mirkle, lowered her car window and cried, “Andiamo! The maniacs await us!” She winked at Gurney. “I’m referring to the staff!”

      He watched as they drove, bumpily, through the pasture, around the barn, and out of sight onto the town road.

      He sighed. That resistance in his response to Madeleine’s chicken reminder was childish. A silly way of trying to be in control when there was no reason for delay. His first wife had complained that he was a control freak. In