“You mean the back of John Steele’s head?” said Gurney.
“Yes. That’s correct.”
Torres proceeded to the next photo—a small bathroom containing a shower stall, a dirty washbasin, and a toilet. That was followed by two close-ups—the chrome handle on the toilet tank, then the inside of the toilet bowl. A crumpled ball of colored paper and a discolored Band-Aid were submerged in the water.
“We got lucky here,” said Torres. “We got a good thumbprint on the flush handle, and the items in the bowl not only have prints on them but even some DNA material. The paper is a fast-food wrapper with an oily surface that preserved three good prints. The Band-Aid has a trace amount of blood.”
Kline was energized. “You’ve run the prints? Any hits?”
“Nothing at the local or state level. We’re waiting on IAFIS. Washington has over a hundred million print records, so we’re hopeful. Worst case is that the shooter has never been arrested, never been printed for any reason. But even then, once we zero in on the right guy, we’ve got overwhelming evidence tying him to the apartment, the casing, the tripod. And there’s one more piece I haven’t mentioned—a security camera out on Bridge Street recorded a side view of the shooter’s vehicle, with a dark image of the driver visible through the side window. It’s unreadable in its current condition, but the computer lab in Albany has some powerful enhancement software. So we’re hopeful.”
His statement was punctuated by the muted bing of a text arriving on Beckert’s phone.
“A facial ID would be damn near game-over,” said Kline.
Torres looked around the table. “Any questions?”
Beckert appeared preoccupied with the message on his phone.
The sheriff was smiling unpleasantly. “If our other inquiries ID the user of Devalon’s vehicle, Albany’s enhancement abracadabra could nail the boy to the wall. A photo is a beautiful thing. Very convincing to a jury.”
“Mr. Kline?” said Torres.
“No questions at the moment.”
“Detective Gurney?”
“Just wondering . . . how deep was the water?”
Torres looked puzzled. “In the toilet?”
“In the river.”
“Where we found the tripod? Roughly three feet.”
“Any prints on the window sash or sill?”
“Some very old and faded ones, nothing new.”
“Apartment door?”
“Same.”
“Bathroom door and basin faucets?”
“Same.”
“Were you able to find anyone in the building who heard the shot?”
“We spoke to a couple of tenants who thought they might have heard something like a shot. They were pretty vague about it. It’s not the kind of neighborhood where people talk to the police or want to admit being witnesses to anything.” He turned up his palms in a gesture of resignation. “Any other questions?”
“Not from me. Thank you, Mark. Good work.”
The young detective allowed himself a small look of satisfaction. He reminded Gurney of Kyle, his twenty-seven-year-old son from his first marriage. Which in turn reminded him that he owed him a call. Kyle had inherited his own tendency toward isolation, so their communications, though enjoyable when they occurred, were sporadic. He promised himself he’d make the call that day. Perhaps after dinner.
Beckert’s voice brought him back to the present.
“This would be a good time to transition to our progress on the Jordan and Tooker homicides. We had a breakthrough this morning in that investigation, and we expect another development within the next half hour. So this would be a reasonable time to take a short break.” He glanced at his phone. “We’ll reconvene at twelve forty-five. In the meantime, please remain in the building. Goodson, do you need any assistance?”
“I do not.” He ran the polished nail of his forefinger along the length of the white cane that lay across the table in front of him.
20
The meeting was reconvened at precisely 12:45. It made Gurney wonder if Beckert ever deviated from his strict notions of order and procedure—and what his reaction might be if someone disrupted his plans.
Beckert had brought a laptop with him, which he placed on the conference table. He chose as usual the chair in which he was framed by the room’s window and the landscape of prison architecture beyond it.
After syncing his computer with the wall monitor, he indicated that all was ready.
“We’ll begin with this morning’s discovery—the website of a white-supremacist group that claims to engage in vigilante activities. They maintain that blacks are planning to start a war with whites in America, a war that neither the police nor the military will be capable of stopping, since both have been infiltrated by blacks and their liberal supporters. The group believes it’s their God-given duty to eliminate what they call ‘the creeping black menace’ in order to save white America.”
“Eliminate?” said Kline.
“Eliminate,” repeated Beckert. “They included on the same web page an old photograph of a lynching with the caption, ‘The Solution.’ But that’s not the main reason our discovery of their website is important. Look at the screen. And listen carefully. This is their anthem.”
The screen turned bright red. A window opened in the center, and the video began. A four-man heavy-metal band was producing a cacophony of stomping feet, tortured musical notes, and barely intelligible lyrics. A few words, however, came through loud and clear.
“Fire” . . . “burning” . . . “blade” . . . “gun” . . . “noose.”
The video was grainy and the sound quality dreadful. The faces of the leather-clad, metal-studded band members were too ill-lit to be recognizable.
Kline shook his head. “If those lyrics are supposed to be telling me something, I’ll need a translator.”
“Fortunately,” said Beckert, “the words appear on their site.” He clicked on an icon and the rectangle that had framed the video now framed a photo of a typewritten page.
“Read the lyrics carefully. They answer an important question. Detective Torres, for the benefit of Sheriff Cloutz, you might want to read them aloud.”
Torres did as he was told.
We are the fire, we are the flood.
We are the storm cleansing the land,
the burning light of the rising sun.
We are the wind, the burning rain,
the shining blade, the blazing gun.
We are the flame of the rising sun.
Death to the rats creeping at night,
death to the vermin, one by one,
death by the fire of the rising sun.
We are the whip, we are the noose,
the battering club, the blazing gun.
We are the knights of the rising sun.
We are the storm, the raging flood,
the rain of fire whose time has come.
We are the knights of the rising sun.
“Jesus,” Torres muttered as he finished reading. “These people are goddamn off-the-scale crazy!”
“Clearly. But what else do the words tell us?” Beckert was addressing everyone at the table—in the tone of a man who likes asking questions he knows the answers to. A man who likes to feel in charge.