Gurney was for the moment absorbed in the déjà vu experience not only of the seating arrangement but of Kline’s comments on punctuality and the dog-coffee cat-tea associations. The man had made exactly the same observations when they’d met during the Mellery case. Perhaps he was trying to reset their relationship to an earlier, more positive status. Or maybe these were things he said so often he had no idea to whom he’d said them before.
He leaned forward with what could be mistaken for companionable intensity. “That was really something yesterday.”
Gurney nodded.
“God-awful homicide.”
“Yes.”
“Plus evidence connected to all the murders. What a shock!”
“Yes.”
“Hope you didn’t mind my asking you to leave the scene after you got us oriented.”
Gurney had seen it as a sign of Kline’s annoyance at the fact that the people reporting to him were addressing their questions to Gurney and Hardwick.
“The thing was,” explained Kline awkwardly, “with Hardwick not having official LEO status, there could have been issues down the road about crime-scene protocol.”
“No problem.”
“Good. We’ve received some more information, amplifying what you’d already found. An overnight ballistics comparison connected the rifle in Beckert’s cellar to the Steele and Loomis shootings as well as to the incident in your backyard.” Kline paused. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, there’s more. Thrasher did a prelim autopsy on Turlock’s remains. Guess what he found.”
“A steel arrow buried in his back?”
“Thrasher told you?”
“No.”
“Then how—?”
“When I was still inside the cabin, I heard the dogs coming. Probably from a point in the woods near the edge of the clearing, about a hundred yards away. Turlock would have heard them, too. But he never fired a shot. In fact, his Glock was still holstered. That makes no sense, unless he was already incapacitated when the dogs started coming. And the Gort brothers seem to be awfully good with those crossbows.”
Kline stared at him. “There’s no doubt in your mind it was them?”
“I don’t know of any other homicidal crossbow experts around here with a large pack of attack dogs and a major murder motive.”
“The motive being revenge for Turlock’s raid on their compound?”
“That, and for publicly blaming them for the BDA murders.” Gurney paused. “That gives us means and motive. Opportunity isn’t quite so obvious. It would depend on the Gorts knowing that Turlock was going to show up at the cabin when he did. That’s a big issue. So you’re not quite to home base.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You have Beckert in custody yet?”
“We’re working on it. Currently he’s nowhere to be found. Which brings me to the main point of this conversation.” Kline paused, sat back in his chair, and steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “Your discoveries, for which you deserve tremendous credit, have turned the case around a hundred eighty degrees from the way we all saw it.”
Gurney calmly pointed out that from the beginning he’d been uneasy with the way everyone saw it, that he’d raised objections, and that Kline had essentially fired him for not embracing the official version.
Kline looked pained. “That seems a little oversimplified. But the last thing I want to do now is debate what’s behind us—especially considering the challenge in front of us. We’ve had more upheaval in the past twenty-four hours than I’ve ever seen in any case, anytime. So far we’ve managed to keep a lid on what’s going to be an explosive story, but that won’t last. The facts will come out. We’ll have to do our best to present them in a positive way. Keep control of the narrative. Maintain public trust in law enforcement. I assume you agree?”
“More or less.”
Kline blinked at Gurney’s less-than-enthusiastic response but continued along his path. “Handled correctly, this huge mess can be positioned as a law enforcement triumph. The message we have to convey is that nobody is above the law, that we follow without fear or favor wherever the truth leads us.”
“That was Beckert’s message, before he ended up on the wrong end of it.”
“That doesn’t mean it was the wrong message.”
Gurney smiled. “Just the wrong messenger?”
“In hindsight, obviously. But that’s not my point. The problem now is that everything’s upside down. Could be viewed by the media as chaos. We need to convey the opposite. We need to convey stability. The message is that law enforcement is still operating on an even keel. The public needs to see stability, continuity, competence.”
“I agree.”
“Stability, continuity, and competence are the three keys to keeping external conditions from sinking the ship. But here’s the thing. These qualities by themselves are just words. They need life. And you’re a big part of that life.”
