White River Burning полностью

Gurney nodded thoughtfully, sipping his espresso. “So he puts his son’s girlfriend in a place where she gets raped and ends up dead, and when the kid reacts, he sticks him in some behavior-mod hellhole. His desperate addict wife either accidentally or not-so-accidentally ODs on heroin, and he uses that to sanctify his image as a determined drug fighter. Fast-forward to the present. Two White River cops get killed, he’s handed some shaky evidence that his son may have been involved, and he appears on one of the most popular interview shows in the country to announce not only that he’s ordered his son’s arrest for murder but that he’s sacrificing his outstanding police career in the interest of justice. You know something, Jack? This guy makes me want to throw up.”

The challenging look that was never completely absent from Hardwick’s eyes sharpened. “You don’t like him because you think he’s accepting shaky evidence against his own son as gospel? Or is it the other way around—you’re seeing the evidence as shaky because you don’t like him?”

“I don’t think I’m being delusional. It’s a simple fact that all the so-called evidence is portable. None of it was found on the interior doors, walls, windows, or any other structural parts of those premises. Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?”

“Peculiar shit happens all the time. The world is a factory for peculiar shit.”

“One more point. Torres just told me that Turlock has a deal with the rental agent that would have given him easy access to the locations where the so-called evidence was found.”

“Wait a minute. If you’re suggesting that Turlock planted that evidence, you’re really suggesting it was Beckert, since the Turd does nothing without a nod from God.”

“The toilet-handle switch indicates that somebody planted it with the intention of incriminating Cory Payne. There’s no other reasonable interpretation of that. All I’m saying about Turlock and Beckert is that their involvement is possible.”

Hardwick made his acid-reflux face. “I’ll admit Beckert is a prick. But to frame his own son for murder? What kind of person does that?”

Gurney shrugged. “A blindly ambitious psychopath?”

“But why? Even psychopaths need motives. It makes no fucking sense. And it’s a hell of a shakier premise than Cory being the shooter. Take that weird flush-handle thing out of the equation, and your whole ‘framing’ theory collapses. Couldn’t you be mistaken about the significance of those tool scratches?”

“It’s too big a coincidence for both those handles to have been removed and replaced—with one of them providing a key fingerprint in a murder investigation.”

Hardwick shook his head. “Look at it from the motive angle. Look at what we know about Cory Payne. Radical, unstable, full of rage. Hates his father, hates cops. Has a long history of public rants against law enforcement. One of his favorite lines is the BDA motto: ‘The problem isn’t cop killers, it’s killer cops.’ I was listening to one of his speeches on YouTube. He was talking about the moral duty of the oppressed to take an eye for an eye—which is essentially invoking the Bible to advocate the murder of police officers. And that business about his girlfriend being raped by a couple of COs—can’t you see that festering in his mind? Shit, Gurney, he sounds to me like a prime suspect for exactly what he’s being accused of.”

“There’s just one problem with it. He might have all the motivation in the world, but he’s not an idiot. He wouldn’t leave brass casings with his prints on them at the shooting sites. He wouldn’t leave a Band-Aid floating in the toilet with his DNA on it. He wouldn’t drive an easily traceable car with visible plates past a series of traffic cameras and park it next to each shooting location, unless he were doing it for some other reason. It’s not like he wanted to be caught or to claim responsibility for the shootings—he’s adamantly denying any involvement. And there’s the problem of victim selection. Why would he pick the two cops in the department who were the least like the cops he supposedly hates? Logically and emotionally, none of it makes sense.”

Hardwick turned up his palms in exasperation. “You think Beckert framing his own son makes logical and emotional sense? Why the hell would he do that? And by the way, do what, exactly? I mean, are you suggesting Beckert framed his own son for two murders someone else committed? Or are you saying that Beckert also arranged the murders of two of his own cops? Plus the BDA murders? You seriously believe all that?”

“What I believe is that the people he’s blaming for it had nothing to do with it.”

“The Gorts? Why not?”

“The Gorts are violent, uneducated, redneck racists—men whose approach to life involves skulls, crossbows, pit bulls, and chopping up dead bears for dog food.”

“So what?”