Gurney watched as it proceeded slowly up through the pasture to the house, where it stopped not far from his Outback, which by comparison seemed very small. Again the driver got out first and opened the rear door for the lady, who Gurney could now see was probably somewhere in her late forties. Her ash-blond hair was arranged in a short asymmetrical style that looked expensive and aggressive. After a final drag, she dropped her cigarette and crushed it into the ground with the tip of a boot that looked every bit as costly as her hairdo.
As she surveyed the property around her with a dour expression, her driver noticed Gurney standing on the patio. He said something to her, she glanced over, and then she nodded to him. She lit another cigarette.
He approached the patio. He had a hard, expressionless, ex-military look about him. For a heavy man his step was light and athletic.
“David Gurney?”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Haley Beckert would like to speak with you.”
“Dell Beckert’s wife?”
“That’s correct.”
“Would she like to come into the house?”
“Mrs. Beckert would prefer to remain outdoors.”
“Fine. We can talk right here.” He gestured toward the two Adirondack chairs.
The driver returned to the Range Rover and spoke briefly to the woman. She nodded, crushed the second cigarette as she had the first, then made her way around the asparagus patch and flower bed to the patio. When they came face-to-face she looked at him with the same distaste with which she’d regarded the surrounding landscape, but with an added element of curiosity.
Neither offered to shake hands. “Would you like to sit down?” he asked.
She didn’t reply.
He waited.
“Who’s paying you, Mr. Gurney?” She had the syrupy voice and hard eyes of many a Southern politician.
He replied blandly, “I work for the district attorney.”
“Who else?”
“Nobody else.”
“So this story you’ve sold to Kline, this fantasy about the most respected police chief in America being a serial murderer—running around shooting people, beating people, God knows what else—all of that bilious nonsense is the product of an honest investigation?” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm.
“It’s the product of evidence.”
She uttered a bark of a laugh. “Evidence no doubt discovered by you. I’ve been told that from day one you did everything you could to weaken the case against that little reptile Cory Payne—and you constantly tried to undermine my husband.”
“The evidence against Payne was questionable. The evidence that he was being framed was far more convincing.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Mr. Gurney. If anyone is being framed, it’s Dell Beckert. I’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you. And you’ll regret your part in it. Deeply and permanently regret it.”
He didn’t react, just held her gaze. “Do you know where your husband is?”
“If I did, you’d be the last person on earth I’d tell.”
“Doesn’t his running away strike you as peculiar?”
Her jaw muscles tightened. After regarding him venomously for a long moment she said, “I was told that a TV newsperson mentioned your name last night in connection with the election for attorney general. I don’t suppose your interest in that position would explain your attacks on my husband?”
“I have no interest in that position.”
“Because if that’s what this is all about, I will destroy you. There will nothing left of you or your so-called supercop reputation. Nothing!”
He saw no point in trying to explain his position to her.
She turned away and walked quickly to the big SUV. She got into the rear seat, and the driver closed the door. A few moments later the Range Rover was heading silently down the uneven path toward the barn and the town road beyond it.
Gurney stood for a while on the patio, replaying the scene in his mind—the strained expression, the rigid body language, the accusatory tone. Having conducted thousands of interviews over the years with the family members of fugitives and otherwise missing persons, he had gotten good at reading these situations. He was reasonably sure that the fury Haley Beckert expressed was the product of fear, and that her fear was the product of being blindsided by events she didn’t understand.
The cool, humid breezes, though still shifting direction, were growing stronger, creating the feeling of an impending thunderstorm. He went inside and closed the French doors.
Madeleine was sitting in one of the armchairs by the fireplace reading a book. She’d started a small fire, which was flickering weakly. He was tempted to rearrange the logs but he knew his interference would not be appreciated. He sat in the armchair that faced hers.
“I assume you overheard all that?” he said.
Her eyes remained on her book. “Hard not to.”
“Any reaction?”
“She’s used to getting her way.”
He stared at the fire for a while, repressing the urge to fix it. “So. What do you think I should do?”
She looked up. “I guess that depends on whether you see the case as open or closed.”
“Technically, the case remains open until Beckert is located, prosecuted, and—”
She cut him off. “I don’t mean technically, I mean in your own mind.”
“If you’re talking about a sense of completion, I’m not there yet.”
“What’s missing—other than Beckert himself?”
“I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like trying to scratch an itch that keeps moving.”
She closed her book. “You have doubts about Beckert’s guilt?”
He frowned. “The evidence against him is substantial.”
“The evidence against his son looked that way, too.”
“Not to me. I had concerns about all of it. From the beginning.”
“You have no similar concerns about the evidence against the father?”
“Not really. No.”
She cocked her head curiously.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Could that have anything to do with your ‘eureka’ theory?”
He didn’t reply. He knew not to answer too quickly when a question got under his skin.
54
On the occasions when he’d conducted seminars on criminal investigation, he’d always included a discussion of a subtle investigatorial trap he’d named “The Eureka Fallacy.” Simply stated, it was the tendency to give one’s own discoveries greater weight than discoveries made or reported by others, especially if the things one has discovered had been purposely concealed (hence the term eureka, Greek for “I have found it!”). A manifestation of the basic human tendency to trust one’s own perceptions as objective and accurate and competing points of view as subjective and prone to error, it could derail an investigation and was responsible for an unknown number of wrongful arrests and prosecutions.
Even being fully aware of the phenomenon, Gurney resisted seeing it in himself. The mind has strong defenses against self-doubt. However, since Madeleine raised the question, he forced himself to take a closer look at it. Was he, in fact, applying a double standard of credibility to the evidence against Payne and the evidence against Beckert? He didn’t think so, but that meant little. He would need to look at the evidence piece by piece to make sure he was subjecting all of it to the same level of scrutiny.
He got up from his chair by the fireplace, went to his desk in the den, took out the case files and his own notes, and began what he hoped would be a clear-eyed review.