A second later, the world exploded.
60
It took Gurney a moment to grasp the nature of the event.
A deafening blast, a physical shock wave slamming the side of his body facing the house, the stinging impact of what felt like birdshot to the side of his face and neck, the air full of flying dirt and dust and the caustic odor of dynamite—all this at once—followed by a sharp ringing in his ears that made the cries around him sound far away.
As the dust began to settle, the horror gradually came into focus.
Across the lawn on the smoldering, flattened grass lay Dwayne Shucker, Goodson Cloutz, and Joe Beltz—recognizable mainly by the intact pieces of clothing that clung to their shattered bodies. Even from some distance away Gurney could see with a surge of nausea that Shucker’s nose and jaw were gone. Beltz’s entire head was missing. Cloutz’s intestines were exposed. His right hand still gripped his white cane, but the hand was at least a yard from the bleeding stump of a wrist. Marvin Gelter, spread-eagled on his back, was covered with so much blood it was impossible to tell where it was coming from.
Torres was still on his feet, but barely so. He moved slowly toward the carnage, checking, it seemed, for signs of life like a medic on a devastated battlefield.
Haley Beckert was on her hands and knees about fifteen feet from Gurney. Her back, covered with dirt, was heaving with her rapid gasps. Her driver arrived at a run from the Range Rover and knelt beside her. He said something and she nodded. She looked around, coughing.
As more of Gurney’s hearing returned, he became aware of half-stifled yelps of pain behind him. He turned and saw that the four SWAT cops who’d been leaning against their van had all suffered some damage to their vision. They’d apparently all been looking toward the group in front of the house at the moment of the explosion, and all were hit in the face and eyes by the propelled dirt and debris.
One had dropped his assault rifle, and, as Gurney watched, he tripped over it and fell to the ground, cursing. Another with no rifle in sight was bent over, grimacing, trying to clear his vision. Another was walking in circles, holding his rifle in one hand, the fingertips of the other hand against his closed eyes, alternately groaning through clenched teeth and calling out, “What the fuck happened?” The fourth was standing with his back to the van, blinking hard, wincing, stumbling, trying to hold his rifle in a ready position, shouting repeatedly, “Answer me! Someone answer me!”
Cory Payne was on his knees in front of his car, bent over, patting the ground, apparently feeling for something he’d dropped.
Gurney ran over to him. “You all right?”
He looked up, dirt on his face, eyes tearing and half closed. “What the hell happened?”
“Explosion!”
“What? Was anyone hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Can’t tell.”
Cory was breathing fast, sounding panicked. “Can you see my phone?”
Gurney glanced around. “No.”
“I have to find it.”
Torres, in the midst of the human wreckage, called to Gurney in a shaky voice, “This one has a pulse! I can feel it. He’s breathing, too. Shallow breaths, but breathing. Jesus!”
He was crouching next to Gelter’s blood-soaked body, his fingertips on the side of the man’s neck. “I can’t tell where he’s bleeding from. What should I do?”
“Call headquarters,” cried Gurney. “Tell them to notify the local EMTs, state police, sheriff’s department. Message is: major crime scene, use of high explosives, multiple homicides. Sheriff, mayor, and a police captain all down.”
Torres straightened up, breathing hard, and took out his phone. Gurney could have made the call himself, of course, but he knew that following simple orders could steady a man, and it looked like Torres needed some steadying.
At that point Gurney noted that the front windows of the house had been blown in. He also realized that something was missing. The hanging baskets of petunias were gone. Obliterated. And most of the shepherd’s crooks on which they’d been hung had been flattened to the ground. So now he knew where the explosives had been positioned. And why the request for the “trustworthy witnesses” had specified that they be brought to the front of the house.
After Torres completed his task, Gurney asked him to do one more thing—call the department’s contact at the phone company and arrange for an immediate ping—a three-tower triangulation—to determine the precise current location of Beckert’s phone.
Torres looked puzzled. “Wouldn’t it have to be with him in the house?”
Gurney had no time to explain. “Just make that ping happen now.”
While Torres complied with the request, Gurney continued his rapid survey of the scene. Two members of the TV crew were holding on to the front door of the RAM van. Kilbrick’s camera operator, however, was still operating his camera. He was prowling around the lawn with a war-zone reporter’s intensity, panning here, panning there, zooming in on bodies and body parts, capturing it all. Kilbrick herself appeared to be rooted in one spot. The only movements Gurney could discern were small and tremor-like. She appeared to be looking wide-eyed at something in front of her feet.
That’s when he heard the howling. It was somewhere out in the woods. Distance and direction were hard to pin down. Coyotes, most likely, disturbed by the blast. Or it might be the Gorts’ pack of pit bulls, a more disconcerting possibility. He checked the Beretta in his jacket pocket. For one hallucinatory moment as he was scanning the edges of the clearing he thought he saw the Gort twins themselves in the dark shadows of the hemlocks—one tall, one short, both gaunt and bearded. But when he looked again there was no one there.
He returned his attention to what was in the clearing itself. In addition to the house windows, the explosion had blown in the door of the adjacent shed, revealing the Durango with its distinctive CBIIWRPD vanity plate. An acute moment of déjà vu intruded into Gurney’s already overloaded consciousness. He was sure it had nothing to do with having seen the plate number displayed during Kline’s recent RAM-TV interview. Whatever the connection was, it wasn’t that direct. But there was no time now to figure it out. Figuring out the who and the why behind what had just happened was a hell of a lot more urgent.
He saw Kline coming toward him. Perhaps the explosion and resulting slaughter had finally opened the man’s mind. There was a bewildered look in his eyes. “Have you called it in?”
“Torres did.”
“Good. We’ll get . . . get reinforcements, right?”
Gurney took a long look at him and realized he was in some kind of shock, and not entirely present. Maybe a sense of personal responsibility for what had happened had begun to dawn on him and something in his brain shut down. There seemed to be little use in engaging Kline in a discussion at this point.
When the EMTs arrived they could deal with Kline. In the meantime he suggested that Kline stay by his Navigator, so people could find him easily when they needed him. Kline seemed to think this was a good idea. In the meantime, Gurney had the feeling that lives were still at stake. He looked around, deciding on the next move.
A high-pitched whine drew his attention to Stacey Kilbrick, and he headed over to her. She was still transfixed by something on the ground—an object the size of a honeydew melon but uneven in shape. It was a mottled red with white patches. When he realized what he was looking at he stopped so suddenly he almost tripped.
It was Joe Beltz’s head, looking up at Kilbrick. His uniform hat was still on, although it had been knocked sideways at a jaunty angle. One of the eyes was wide open. The other was closed, as though the head were winking at her.