Cloutz, in his blind man’s glasses, was running the tips of his fingers slowly along the length of his white cane, which was lying crosswise on the table, as though he were stroking a pet snake. His well-tended nails had a higher-than-usual gloss.
Torres was absorbed in some work on his laptop.
At precisely nine o’clock Beckert entered the room and took his central seat opposite Kline, his back to the broad window. The jail was a dim presence in the fog. He laid a file folder down, casually aligning its edge to the edge of the table.
He cleared his throat. “Good morning, gentlemen.”
There was a general murmuring of similar greetings around the table.
“I’m pleased to report,” Beckert began in an emotionless tone, “that our investigations into the shootings of our officers and the murder of the BDA members are on the verge of completion. Detective Torres will review where we stand on the Steele and Loomis cases, but first I want to pass along some good news from Deputy Chief Turlock. Lab analysis has confirmed an exact match between the rope we recovered from the Gort twins’ compound and the ropes used to tie up Jordan and Tooker. A warrant has been issued for their arrest. We have reason to believe they may be hiding up in one of the old quarries above the reservoir. A K9 tracking dog and handler, plus an assault team, have been dispatched to that area.”
“The reason being what?” said Gurney.
“Excuse me?”
“The reason you think they’re hiding in the quarries—what is it?”
Beckert’s expression showed nothing. “Reliable informants.”
“Whose identities you can’t share with us?”
“Correct.” He held Gurney’s gaze for a moment before continuing. “The K9 team has an impressive record of success. We hope to bring the Gorts in quickly and have Sheridan launch an aggressive prosecution—to minimize the racial leverage available to the riot inciters.”
Shucker pointed an enthusiastic forefinger at Beckert. “To what you just said about bringing them lunatics in, I would personally add dead or alive. In fact, dead, in my humble opinion, would be a damn sight preferable.”
Again Beckert showed no reaction. He simply moved on to the Steele-Loomis shootings. “Mark, your turn now. My impression is that the evidence you’ve amassed against the BDA ‘third man’ is pretty conclusive. Take us through it.”
Torres reopened his computer.
Gurney cast a glance at Kline, whose anxious frown might reflect some concern with the political impact on himself of an ‘aggressive’ prosecution of the popular Gorts.
Torres began in his typically earnest manner. “These are the key discoveries we’ve made since our last meeting. First of all, the rush ballistics report on the bullet used in the Loomis shooting indicates that it was fired from the same rifle used in the Steele shooting. In addition, prints on the cartridge casing recovered at the site used for the Loomis shooting match prints on the one recovered at the Steele site. And the extractor marks indicate both cartridges came from the same rifle.”
“Were there any other fingerprints at the Poulter Street house matching the ones on the casing?” asked Gurney.
“There was a matching print on the knob of the side door.”
“Not on the back door? The door to the room? The window sash?”
“No, sir. Just on the cartridge casing and the side door.”
“Were there any other fresh fingerprints anywhere in the house?”
“None that Garrett found. There was a partial print on a pen, which I believe you discovered in the backyard. And there were footprints. Boot prints, actually. Several in the backyard, some by the side door of the house, partials on the stairs, and a couple in the room where the shot was fired.”
Torres then summarized the accounts given by Gloria Fenwick and Hollis Vitter, the neighbors on opposite sides of the Poulter Street house.
“This would be a good time to show the mapping graphic you described to me earlier,” said Beckert.
“Yes, sir.” A few mouse clicks later the monitor over the sheriff’s head came to life, displaying a street map of White River and the adjacent section of Willard Park. Two colored lines, a blue one and a red one, beginning at the same point on Poulter Street, diverged into separate routes through the city streets. Torres explained that the blue line represented the route taken by the Corolla from the sniper house after the shooting and the red line the route taken by the motorcycle.
The blue line proceeded directly along one of White River’s main avenues to a point where the city’s business section abutted the fire-damaged Grinton neighborhood. The red line, however, zigzagged here and there through the side streets of Bluestone and Grinton to the edge of Willard Park, where it ended.
Shucker removed a powdery doughnut from the bag in front of him and took a thoughtful bite, which turned his lips white. “Looks to me like the Corolla driver knew where he was going, and the motorcycle rider didn’t have a clue.”
“There’s a termination point shown for each route,” said Kline. “Were the vehicles found at those locations?”
“Correct, sir, in the case of the Corolla. It was discovered at the corner of Sliwak Avenue and North Street by WRPD patrol officers at approximately six ten this morning. Garrett Felder and Shelby Towns are going over it now for latents and trace evidence.”
“You said ‘in the case of the Corolla’—meaning the motorcycle wasn’t found?”
“Correct, sir. I should explain that the two lines we’re showing on the map were constructed differently. Once it left Poulter Street, the Corolla followed a thoroughfare that’s covered by traffic department cameras—which gave us a video record of the car’s route. But the motorcycle’s route had to be reconstructed with the help of witnesses along the way. Starting with Hollis Vitter, we found a sequence of individuals who heard or saw a motocross bike at the time in question. Lucky for us, it was a nice afternoon and a lot of people were outside.”
“You got a description of the bike?”
“Red motocross with a loud engine.”
“Plate number?”
“Nobody noticed.”
“Any description of the rider?”
“Full leather riding suit, full-coverage helmet and visor, no identifying elements.”
“And you say the bike wasn’t found at the end of the route?”
“The end point shown on the map is just the last place where we have witness observation. It may have cut into the park at that point and taken one of the wilderness trails to just about anywhere.”
“Okay,” said Kline, with prosecutor-like intensity. “If I’ve got this right, we have a load of video on the Corolla and no video at all on the motorcycle, even though its roundabout route covered a lot more ground?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
Shucker took another huge bite out of his doughnut. As he spoke, specks of sugar flew onto the table. “Any of them Corolla videos give us a picture of the driver?”
“I was coming to that, sir. We have partials that were captured under different angle, shadow, and glare conditions. No single video frame provides a usable likeness, but the Albany lab has a composite process that may give us what we need. They can combine the best parts of multiple shots and resolve them into one high-definition image. At least that’s the theory.”
“When?” asked Kline.
“We emailed them the digital files last night, and I spoke to them this morning. If we’re lucky, we may get something back by the end of this meeting.”
Kline looked skeptical. “That’s amazingly fast for Albany.”