He asked if she’d like him to put on the kettle for some tea.
She shook her head. “Are you really planning to get involved in . . . all of that?”
With some difficulty he held her gaze. “It’s like I told you earlier. I can’t make any decision without knowing more.”
“What kind of information is going to make—” The ringing of his cell phone cut her question short.
“Gurney here.” Though he’d been out of NYPD Homicide for four years, his way of answering the phone hadn’t changed.
The raspy, sarcastic voice on the other end needed no identification, nor did it offer any. “Got your message that you’re looking for insider shit on White River. Like what? Gimme a hint, so I can direct you to the type of shit you have in mind.”
Gurney was used to Jack Hardwick’s calls beginning with bursts of snide comments. He’d learned to ignore them. “Sheridan Kline paid me a visit.”
“The slimebag DA in person? Fuck did he want?”
“He wants me to sign on as a temporary staff investigator.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking into the cop shooting. At least, that’s what he says.”
“There some reason the regular White River PD detective bureau can’t handle that?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Why the hell’s he getting involved in the investigation? That’s not his turf. And why you?”
“That’s the question.”
“How’d he explain it?”
“City on the verge of chaos. Need to make solid arrests fast. Pull out all the stops. No time for turf niceties. Full assets into the breach. The best and the brightest. Et cetera.”
Hardwick was silent for a bit, then cleared his throat with disgusting thoroughness. “Odd pitch. Distinctive odor of horseshit. I’d be careful where I stepped, if I were you.”
“Before I step anywhere, I want to know more.”
“Always a good idea. So what do you want from me?”
“Whatever you can find out fast. Facts, rumors, anything at all. About the politics, the shot cop, the department, the city itself, the old incident with Laxton Jones, the Black Defense Alliance. Anything and everything.”
“You need all this yesterday?”
“Tomorrow will do.”
“You don’t ask for much, do you?”
“I try not to.”
“Very fucking kind of you.” Hardwick blew his nose about an inch from the phone. Gurney wasn’t sure whether the man had a perpetual sinus problem or just enjoyed producing unpleasant sound effects.
“Okay, I’ll make some calls. Pain in my ass, but I’m a generous soul. You free tomorrow morning?”
“I’ll make myself free.”
“Meet me in Dillweed. Abelard’s. Nine thirty.”
Ending the call, Gurney turned his attention back to Madeleine, recalling that she’d been in the middle of asking him something.
“What were you saying before the phone rang?”
“Nothing that won’t wait till tomorrow. It’s been a long day. I’m going to bed.”
He was tempted to join her, but the questions on his mind about the situation in White River were making him restless. After finishing his coffee, he got his laptop from the den and set it on the table in the breakfast nook. He pulled up a chair and typed “White River NY” into the browser. As he scrolled through the results, looking for articles he might have missed earlier in the day, a few items caught his eye:
An article in the Times, emphasizing the ongoing nature of the problem: “Police Officer’s Death Deepens Upstate Racial Divide.”
A shorter, punchier Post article: “Cop Gunned Down at BDA Rally.”
A muted approach in the White River Observer: “Mayor Shucker Calls for Calm.”
And then there was the all-out RAM promotional screamer: FIRST BLOOD DRAWN IN RACE WAR? COP SHOT DEAD AS ACTIVIST INCITES CROWD. SEE IT ALL ON BATTLEGROUND TONIGHT—STREAMING LIVE AT RAM-TV.ORG.
After skimming the articles attached to these headlines and finding nothing that he didn’t know already, he scrolled on. When he came to a link to the official White River municipal website, he clicked on it. It was a predictable presentation of city departments, budget data, upcoming events, area attractions, and local history. A section on “Career Opportunities” listed a job opening for a part-time waitress at the Happy Cow Ice Cream Shoppe. A section titled “Community Renewal” described the conversion of the defunct Willard Woolen Socks Factory into the Winter Goose Artisanal Brewery.
There were pictures of clean but deserted streets, redbrick buildings, and a tree-shaded park named after Colonel Ezra Willard, of the sock-manufacturing family. The first of the two Willard Park photos showed a statue of the eponymous colonel dressed in a Civil War uniform astride a fierce-looking horse. A biographical note below the photo described him as “a White River hero who gave his life in the great war to preserve the Union.”
The second park photo showed two smiling mothers, one white and one brown, pushing their giddy toddlers on adjacent swings. Nowhere on the website was there any reference to the fatal shooting or the hate-driven violence tearing the city apart. Nor was there any mention of the correctional facility that provided the area with its main source of employment.
The next item that attracted Gurney’s attention was a section devoted to White River on a site called Citizen Comments Unfiltered. The site seemed to be a magnet for racial attacks posted by individuals with IDs like Truth Teller, White Rights, American Defender, and End Black Lies. The posts went back several years, suggesting that the city’s overt racial animosities were nothing new. They brought to mind a wise man’s comment that few things on earth were worse than ignorance armed and eager for battle.
He returned for a moment to the section of the White River website that showed the park and the statue of Colonel Willard, wondering if that might be the statue that Madeleine had told him was one of the objects of the current protests. Finding nothing there that answered the question, he decided to do an internet search—trying various combinations of terms: “Ezra Willard,” “Civil War,” “statue,” “New York State,” “White River,” “racial controversy,” “Correctional Facility,” “Willard Park,” “Union,” “Confederacy.” Finally, when he added the term “slavery” to the mix, he was led to the answer in the journal of one of the Civil War historical societies.
The article was about the federal fugitive slave laws that legalized the capture in the North of slaves fleeing from slave owners in the South. Among the examples given of this practice was the “establishment in 1830 by the mercantile Willard family of upstate New York of a detention facility to house captured runaway slaves while payments were negotiated for their return to their Southern owners.”
A footnote indicated that this lucrative practice ended when the war began; that at least one family member, Ezra, ended up fighting and dying on the Union side; and that after the war the former detention site became the core of what was gradually rebuilt and expanded into a state prison, now the White River Correctional Facility.
Pondering the ugly nature of the seed from which the institution had grown, Gurney could understand the impulse to protest the memorialization of a Willard family member. He searched the internet for more information about Ezra but could find nothing beyond brief news references to BDA demands for the removal of his statue.