“So, Davey boy, what’s the story?”
Gurney took a sip of his Grolsch, set the bottle on the table, and proceeded to review the range of his own doubts and speculations. When he was finished Hardwick stared at him for a long moment before speaking.
“Am I hearing this right? You’re suggesting that after someone framed Payne for the whack jobs on the cops, he also framed Beckert for the same shootings? What the hell for? As a backup if the first frame fell apart? That was his fucking plan B? And then he frames Beckert for the Jordan and Tooker murders as well? And for Jackson and Creel?”
“I realize it sounds a little off-the-wall.”
“A little? It makes no fucking sense at all. I mean, what the hell kind of a plan is that? And who on earth would benefit from it?”
“That’s my basic question. Maybe someone who hated them both and didn’t care which one went down? Or maybe someone trying to drive the ultimate wedge between them? Or maybe someone who just considered them convenient scapegoats?”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe.” Hardwick gazed long and hard at his Grolsch. “Look, I get the fact that somebody framed Payne. You can’t argue with the toilet handle. But what makes you so sure that Beckert was framed, too? The fact that there’s too much evidence against him? That’s got to be the most absurd reason I ever heard for assuming a suspect is innocent.”
“It’s not just too much evidence. It’s that it’s all so convenient. Even the full-metal-jacket rounds with perfect ballistic markings. And the ease of . . .” Gurney’s voice trailed off.
Hardwick looked up from his beer bottle. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m thinking about the ease of recovering them. We’ve been thinking of that as a lucky break. But what if that was the shooter’s intention?”
“His intention?”
“Remember the thing in the Steele video that bothered me? The laser dot?”
“What about it?”
“The delay. The two-minute delay between the sniper getting the scope dot on the back of Steele’s head and the fatal shot. Why did he wait so long?”
“Who the fuck knows?”
“Suppose he was waiting for Steele to pass in front of that pine at the edge of the field?”
“For what?”
“To ensure that the bullet would be recoverable.”
Hardwick’s default expression of disbelief was on full display.
Gurney went on. “The same logic could apply to the Loomis shot, except in that case it was more rushed, with him coming out of his house and heading for his car. That shot happened with the front door post just behind him. Another easily recoverable round. I was there when Garrett Felder dug it out. Same thing again with the shot at the back of my house. Another intact round, easily recoverable from the porch post.”
Hardwick made his acid-reflux face. “So you’ve got three situations with a common factor. But that’s no proof of anything. In fact, it sounds like the kind of shit lawyers focus on to mind-fuck a jury.”
“I know it’s not conclusive. But it seems very convenient to have recovered three perfectly intact rounds with clean ballistics linking them directly to a rifle in Beckert’s cabin.” Gurney paused before going on. “It’s like the plastic bag with the money. Why plastic? Well, unlike some paper, it just happens to hold a perfect print. Anyone with access to Beckert’s home or his office could have taken a plastic bag he’d used for something else—then later put the money in it, and left it in Jackson’s apartment.”
“The killer just pops into Beckert’s kitchen, takes a bag out of his refrigerator, makes sure there’s a good print on it, than heads for Jackson’s place and—?”
Gurney cut him off. “No. I’m thinking this whole White River thing was planned way ahead of time. There was nothing spontaneous or opportunistic about it. It was just made to look that way. Think about it. A white cop being shot at a racial demonstration. Followed by a pair of black men being beaten and strangled. Followed by another white cop being shot. The Black Defense Alliance being blamed for the shootings, along with Cory Payne. And the white-supremacist Gort twins, along with the so-called Knights of the Rising Sun, being blamed for Jordan and Tooker. Followed by our discoveries at the gun club—the rifle, the rope, the branding iron—suggesting that Beckert and Turlock carried out all four murders and framed Payne and the Gorts. But what if all that evidence at the gun club was planted there? The whole damn thing shows signs of having been meticulously constructed—layer upon layer of deception, all orchestrated in advance. We peel away one false layer, and we discover another false layer. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Hell of a summation,” said Hardwick sourly. “It’s just missing a couple of details. Like who the fuck did all that orchestrating—and what the fuck was the purpose of it all?”
“I can’t answer those questions. But I do know that if someone was trying to frame Beckert, he must have had access to Beckert’s cabin. Maybe we could start with that.”
“Oh, sure. Look into the least likely possibility first. That makes a shitload of sense.”
“Humor me.”
“Fine. Let’s get it over with. Call his wife. She’d probably know who he was close to.”
Gurney shook his head. “Haley Beauville Beckert sees everything that’s happened in White River as a giant conspiracy with her husband as the victim and the rest of us as the conspirators. I doubt at this point she’d give us the time of day. But Cory might know some names.”
Hardwick sighed impatiently. “Fine. Call the little fucker.”
Gurney took out his phone. As he was looking for Payne’s number he heard soft footsteps coming down the stairs from the second floor. A few seconds later Hardwick’s on-and-off girlfriend, Esti Moreno, entered the room.
She was a strikingly attractive young woman—all the more attractive at that moment in remarkably abbreviated shorts, a tight tee shirt, and glistening ebony hair still wet from the shower. She was also a tough undercover cop.
“David! How nice to see you!”
“Hello, Esti. Nice to see you, too.”
“Don’t let me interrupt you. I just came down for one of those.” Pointing at Gurney’s Grolsch, she passed through the sitting room and went into the kitchen.
Gurney made the call to Payne.
“I have an urgent question, Cory. Do you know if your father ever brought other people out to the gun club? Other than you. Other than Turlock.”
There was a short pause. “I’m pretty sure every hunting season he’d have his special people out there.”
“Special people?”
“The people who could be useful to him. That’s the only thing that ever made anyone special to him.”
“And those people were . . . who exactly?”
“DA Kline, Sheriff Cloutz, Mayor Shucker, Judge Puckett.”
“Anyone else?”
There was another short pause. “Yeah. Some rich guy. Marvin something. Obnoxious billionaire over in Lockenberry.”
“Gelter?”
“That’s it.”
“How about people in the department? Anyone ‘special’ there?”
“Obviously Turlock. Also a captain and a couple of lieutenants who did pretty much whatever he wanted them to do.”
“Like what?”
“Concocting phony cases against BDA members. Lying in court. Shit like that.”
“How do you know this?”
“Some BDA people told me. That’s the kind of stuff that Steele and Loomis were looking into . . . and Jordan and Tooker, too . . . which is obviously why they were all killed.”