Beckert stopped and turned with an impatiently questioning look.
“I thought I’d take a quick run over to that place on the edge of Willard Park where John Steele was shot,” said Gurney. “To get a feel for the geography. Any problem with that?”
“No. Why would that be a problem?” Clearly annoyed by the interruption, he turned and strode down the corridor without waiting for an answer.
Gurney brought the Outback to a stop at the same barricade of yellow sawhorses where he’d parked earlier. Again he ignored the several Police Line Do Not Cross warnings and proceeded to the sidewalk that ran along the border of the field.
He walked forward slowly, reenacting as best he could the movements of Steele as he remembered them from the RAM-TV videos.
He walked looking to his left—out over the flat, neatly mowed field where the crowd had gathered for the demonstration, their backs to the sidewalk. At the opposite end of the open expanse there was a raised platform, no doubt the one that had been used by the BDA speakers. At the edge of the field loomed the contested statue of Colonel Willard.
He walked on, stopping intermittently, as Steele had, as if to pay closer attention to some part of the crowd. The first four trees he passed as he proceeded along the field’s edge were tall but relatively narrow-trunked. The fifth was the massive pine in which the steel-jacketed bullet had lodged itself after passing through the lower part of Steele’s skull, brain, and facial bone.
Three more times he walked back and forth, retracing Steele’s path to his death, and picturing as he did so the red laser dot of the sniper’s scope that had followed the man every step of the way. Gurney found the mental re-creation of this so vivid he had for a moment the disturbing illusion of feeling that dot on the back of his own head. At the end of his third passage, he stopped at the big pine and aligned himself with Steele’s position at the moment of impact. In his peripheral vision he was aware of the bloodstain where the man had fallen, his life abruptly over. John Steele. Husband of Kim Steele. Someone’s son. Someone’s friend. Someone’s partner. Reduced in one dreadful moment to memories in the minds of some, to pain in the hearts of others, to a brown stain on a concrete sidewalk.
Gurney was seized by a sudden, powerful sense of grief that took him by surprise. His chest and throat felt constricted. His eyes filled with tears.
He wasn’t aware of the cop coming up behind him until he heard a familiar, unpleasant voice. “Okay, buddy, you had a perfectly clear warning this morning about crossing—”
The cop stopped in midsentence when Gurney turned and faced him.
For a few seconds no one said anything.
Gurney wiped his eyes roughly with the back of his hand. “Beckert knows I’m here.”
The cop blinked and stared at him, something about the situation finally dawning on him. “Did you . . . uh . . . know Officer Steele?”
“Yes,” said Gurney. He didn’t feel that the answer was entirely untrue.
Back in the headquarters conference room, Torres and Kline were already in their seats, both checking their phones. The sheriff’s seat was empty. The mayor, however, was in his usual seat at the end of the table, engrossed in eating a piece of apple pie out of a Styrofoam box. His rust-colored comb-over was in slight disarray.
Gurney sat next to Kline. “Have we lost the sheriff?”
“He’s at the jail. Evidently one of the BDA detainees wants to trade information on our so-called third man for a get-out-of-jail-free card. Goodson likes to handle those interviews personally.” It was clear from Kline’s tone it was an appetite he didn’t share.
Gurney turned to the mayor. “I heard you were tied up at a Rotary lunch.”
Shucker swallowed, wiping crumbs from the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “Roto-Rooter lunch would’ve been a better name for it.” His tone suggested he considered this comment clever and expected a request to elaborate.
Gurney said nothing.
“Sounds unpleasant,” said Kline.
The door opened and Beckert entered. He sat down, opened the laptop, and checked the time.
“It’s one fifty,” he announced. “Time to reconvene. Our current status is that Judd and his team are continuing their search of the Gorts’ compound. They’ve already found computer evidence that links them to the Knights of the Rising Sun, as well as some physical evidence that may tie them directly to Jordan and Tooker.”
Kline sat up a little straighter. “What’s the physical evidence?”
“We’ll get to that. I want you to see some photos first. They’ll give you some insight into the pair of lunatics we’re dealing with.” He tapped a key on his laptop, and the first photo appeared on the monitor.
