Dell Beckert, for the first time in his adult life, persistently refused all contact with the media. He appeared to have aged years in the days of his captivity—and the stress promised to continue as investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice and the New York State Attorney General’s office launched an extensive review of his personal involvement in alleged civil rights violations, evidence tampering, and obstructions of justice.
Within a month of replacing the late Goodson Cloutz, acting sheriff Fred Kittiny was arrested and charged with seven counts of suborning perjury.
A specialist in turning out instant books on sensational crimes, disasters, and celebrities created one titled Lovely that focused on Blaze Lovely Jackson’s fatal alliance with Cory Payne. The cover depicted a helmeted leather-clad figure on a red motorcycle—just like the one belonging to Judd Turlock that Jackson rode away from the Poulter Street sniper site as part of Payne’s elaborate framing scheme.
The statue of Colonel Ezra Willard was quietly transported from the public park to the private estate of a self-described Civil War buff. The man made no secret of his sympathies for the Confederate cause, which left a lingering discomfort in the minds of many about the solution to the controversy. There were those who would have been far happier had the thing been pulverized and dumped in the county landfill. But the majority of the city council was content to approve the less dramatic transfer and be rid of at least one racial flash point.
Maynard Biggs was appointed by the governor to serve as acting attorney general until the upcoming special election, which he was now favored to win.
The Reverend Whittaker Coolidge delivered a series of well-received public lectures on the destructive power of hatred. He described hatred with a phrase that Maynard Biggs had used to describe racism: a razor with no handle that cuts the wielder as deeply as the victim. His other description of it: a suicidal weapon of mass destruction. And he always managed to work into his lectures an eight-word summary of Cory Payne’s life and death: His hatred drove him. His hatred killed him.
For some time after the bloody culmination on Rapture Hill, followed by Gurney’s extensive debriefing by the state and federal investigators who descended on White River, he and Madeleine seemed to have little appetite for discussing the case.
There was often a preoccupied look on her face; but he knew from long experience it was best not to ask about it, that she’d share what was on her mind in her own time.
It happened one evening in early June. They’d just finished a quiet dinner. The French doors were open, and the warm summer air carried the scent of the season’s fading lilacs. After a period of silence, she spoke.
“Do you think anything will change?”
“You mean the racial situation in White River?”
She nodded.
“Well . . . things are happening that weren’t happening before. The rotten apples are being removed from the police department. Old cases are being scrutinized, particularly the Laxton Jones incident. A more transparent citizen complaint process is being installed. The statue is gone. Discussions are under way to create an interracial commission that would—”
She stopped him. “I know all that. The announcements. The press conferences. I mean . . . doesn’t it sound like just another example of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?”
Gurney shrugged. “That’s what deckhands do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t that what most of the people we elect to solve our problems really do? They don’t solve anything; they just rearrange the details to relieve the political pressure and make it look like something significant is being done. Real change doesn’t happen that way. It’s less manageable, less predictable. It only happens when people see something they never saw before—when the truth, for whatever reason, hits them hard enough, shockingly enough, to open their eyes.”
Madeleine nodded, seemingly more to herself than to him. After a while she got up from the table and stood in the open doorway, looking down over the low pasture toward the barn and the pond. “Do you think that’s what Walter Thrasher wants to do?”
The question surprised him.
He thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I think so. He has a natural fondness for bringing things to light, for discovering the truth, even when it’s ugly—maybe especially when it’s ugly.”
She took a deep breath. “If we let him do what he wants to do . . . he might not find anything at all.”
“That’s true.”
“Or he might find dreadful things.”
“Yes.”
“And then he would write about those dreadful things.”
“Yes.”
“And people would read what he wrote . . . and some of them would be horrified.”
“I would think so.”
She gazed down toward the area of the excavation for a long minute or two before saying, almost inaudibly, “Maybe we should let him go ahead with it.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As the Dave Gurney series of mystery-thrillers grows, so does my gratitude to the people responsible for its success.
My thanks first to my wonderful agent, Molly Friedrich, and her superb associates, Lucy Carson and Kent Wolf. Their keen insights, close reading of my manuscripts, creative suggestions, and wholehearted support have been invaluable.
My thanks also to my remarkable editor, Dan Smetanka, whose fine instincts for dramatic structure, character, and pacing—along with a talent for deft pruning—have made my stories better, leaner, stronger. And my thanks to my copy editor, Megan Gendell, whose eye for the crucial details of language, tone, and consistency resulted in countless improvements.
My thanks to my wife, Naomi, who makes everything possible.
And finally, my thanks to all the readers of the Dave Gurney novels. Your enthusiasm for these books is one of the brightest elements in my life as a writer.
JOHN VERDON is the author of the Dave Gurney series of thrillers, international bestsellers published in more than two dozen languages: Think of a Number, Shut Your Eyes Tight, Let the Devil Sleep, Peter Pan Must Die, and Wolf Lake. Before becoming a crime fiction writer, Verdon had two previous careers: as an advertising creative director and as a custom furniture maker. He currently lives with his wife, Naomi, in the rural mountains of upstate New York—raising chickens, tending the garden, mowing the fields, and devising the intricate plots of the Gurney novels. Find more at johnverdon.net.