White River Burning. John Verdon

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,