White River Burning полностью

“Years ago in the academy I attended a class on investigatory techniques. One morning the instructor asked us, ‘Why do those deer always run out in front of cars at night?’ He got a bunch of answers. Panic, disorientation caused by the headlights, evolutionary dysfunction. Then he pointed out that there was a flawed assumption in the wording of the question itself. How did we know deer always did that at night? Maybe most of them didn’t run out in the road, but we didn’t realize it, because we could only see the ones that did. And he pointed out that there was a subtle misdirection lurking in the phrase run out in front of cars—making it sound as though the activity were something clearly dysfunctional. Suppose the question were reworded this way: ‘Why do some deer attempt to cross the road when a car is approaching?’ That way of asking points toward a different set of possible explanations. Since deer are very territorial, perhaps their first instinct in a moment of danger is to head for the part of their territory in which they feel most secure. Perhaps they’re just moving instinctively toward a place of safety. Other deer in the immediate area may be running in the opposite direction—away from the road—to get to their places of safety, but those deer are less likely to be seen, especially at night. Anyway, his point was simple. Ask the wrong question, and you never get to the truth.”

Madeleine’s impatience was showing. “So what question about the case do you think you’re getting wrong?”

“I wish I knew.”

She stared up at him for a long moment. “What’s your next step?”

“Review the files, look for things that should be done, and do them.”

“And report back to Kline?”

“Eventually. He’d be quite content to have me do nothing—so long as I don’t rock the boat or make him look bad.”

“Because he has political ambitions of his own?”

“Probably. Until yesterday that meant hitching a ride with Beckert. I assume now he’s seeing his future more as a solo act.”

Rising to her feet and brushing the soil off her hands, she produced a less-than-happy smile. “I’m going inside. Do you want some lunch?”

A short while later, as they were silently finishing their meal, it occurred to Gurney that if he didn’t tell her now about the severing of the power line and the subsequent gunshot, he probably never would. So he did, describing the event as unthreateningly as he could—as Beckert or Turlock simply taking a shot at the back of the house when he went out to get the generator started.

She gave him a look. “You don’t think he was aiming at you?”

“If he wanted to hit me, he would have kept shooting.”

“How do you know it was Beckert or Turlock?”

“I found the rifle that fired the shot in their cabin the next morning.”

“And now Turlock is dead.”

“Yes.”

“And Beckert is on the run?”

“So it seems.”

She nodded, frowning. “This shooting incident was . . . the night before last?”

“Yes.”

“What took you so long to tell me?”

He hesitated. “I think I was afraid of bringing up memories of the Jillian Perry case.”

Her expression darkened at the mention of the invasion of their home during that particularly disturbing series of murders.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you right away.”

She gave him one of those long looks that made him feel transparent. Then she picked up their plates and carried them to the sink.

He suppressed an urge to make more excuses for himself. He went into the den and took out the case materials. With the branding iron and propofol needles now linking Beckert and Turlock directly to the BDA deaths, he opened the consolidated file on Jordan and Tooker.

It contained surprisingly little beyond the incident report, notes on the interview with the dog walker who found the bodies, printouts of some of Paul Aziz’s photos, the two autopsy reports, an investigatory progress form with little progress recorded beyond a description of Turlock’s raid on the Gort brothers’ compound and the evidence he supposedly “found” there. There was also some bare-bones data on the victims. Tooker, according to the file, was a loner with no known family connections nor any personal associations outside the BDA. Jordan was married, but there was no record of any interview being conducted with his wife, beyond a note indicating that she had been informed of his death.

It was clear to Gurney that the decision to target the Gorts for the murders of Jordan and Tooker had dramatically narrowed the scope of the investigation, eliminating virtually all activities not directly supportive of that view of the case. The decision had created a yawning information gap that he felt an itch to rectify.

Remembering that the Reverend Coolidge had provided an alibi for Jordan and Tooker after the Steele shooting and had later spoken highly of them, Gurney thought the pastor might have a phone number for Jordan’s wife.