He took a folded sheaf of papers from his shirt pocket, and after giving the crowd another brief pointed look, he began to read. It was long and involved. Terry was aware that there was going to be a lot of pressure to explain why the authorities had attempted to cover up the fact that the infamous and infinitely dangerous Cape May Killer had been running amok in Pine Deep and that one of his associates was apparently on a murder spree even now. Terry had decided not to try and weasel out of it, but to come right out and admit it, telling the straight truth: that they did not want to attract the attention of a lot of rubberneckers who might seriously compromise the effectiveness of the investigation. It was a crucial issue for Terry because his personal credibility as the mayor of the town was at stake, and elections were not all that far off.
Watching, Ferro had been curious to see how the mayor would handle it, and he found himself changing his opinion of Terry with each sentence. The mayor not only turned it around, but also made it seem that the cover-up actually aided in the early resolution of the Karl Ruger manhunt, more or less suggesting that it was part of a carefully crafted snare that had brought Ruger out of hiding so that he could be taken down.
Terry didn’t actually lie, but he played fast and loose with the truth, sometimes using rather vague (though seemingly detailed) accounts of actions taken, plans drawn, and manpower employed to sell his version of it. He sold it beautifully. So beautifully, in fact, that Ferro could see just when it was that the gathered reporters took the bait and when Terry jerked the line to set the hook. By the time Terry was well into the third page of the statement, everyone watching was convinced that, working together in a high-security cabal of law enforcement teams, the Philadelphia narcotics task force and the Pine Deep Police Department had laid a cunning trap for the Cape May Killer, and had closed the trap around him with great courage and professional efficiency. Even the attack at the hospital was made to seem like a trap that had been set using Crow—and here the press was reminded that he had been reinstated as a police officer—as bait. Ferro felt himself believing what Terry was saying, and he couldn’t help but smile as Terry worked the room like a top-grade grifter getting ready to sell five thousand acres of swampland as prime beachfront property.
LaMastra nudged him and leaned over to say, “Next time we’re up for a pay raise, I want this guy as the point man for the union.”
“Amen to that,” agreed Ferro.
The statement was a long one, and that was also part of Terry’s plan. He wanted to so thoroughly overwhelm the press with all the minutiae of detail that the very thought that there was some shifty reason for the previous cover-up would be dismissed as obviously foolish. Of course, there still was a minor cover-up underway in that some of the details from the autopsy of Tony Macchio were being withheld, as were some of the decisions made by the group of cops clustered behind him that, in hindsight, might not present the whole bunch of them (Terry included) in the best light. Leaving only two relatively inexperienced men alone at the Guthrie farm when it was clear that Boyd (and for a while, Ruger) was still on the loose, casually deputizing a shopkeeper and sending him off to the Haunted Hayride when a patrol car would have been more official and safer for the kids at the attraction, not being able to find Ruger after he’d been shot by Crow and possibly by Officer Jerry Head—things like that which could make all of the men involved look a little asinine, possibly criminally so in this litigious society. So, rather than present the whole truth, Terry presented a more acceptable edited version of it in such exhausting detail that the reporters began to fidget, which was good. Terry knew that a fidgety reporter is less likely to want to ask a thousand additional questions.
He concluded with a moving statement about the officer who had been gunned down in Philadelphia, and the two officers killed the previous day, urging that the reporters ask their readers and viewers to pray for the families and loved ones left grieving by this senseless tragedy. It was great theater and the reporters ate up every morsel he fed them.
When he finished, he gave the crowd another long silence, forcing the eye contact again. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, questions?” A lot of hands went up, but not as many as would have stabbed the air had the prepared statement been shorter or less packed with ad nauseum detail. The first hand that rose belonged to Willard Fowler Newton. “Mr. Newton, isn’t it?” murmured Terry, recognizing him from other press events and flashing him a warm and sober smile. “I believe it was you who first broke the story. An excellent piece of journalism, you’re to be commended.”
