“I’m impressed.”
“There’s more good news. Our information on the Gort twins was right. The K9 team and an assault team are closing in on them up by the quarry ridge. Backup is on the way, and it should all be over within the hour.”
“Good to know.”
Gurney’s tone seemed to finally get through.
“Look,” said Kline, “I know we’ve had some unfortunate events. No one’s denying that. Those things can’t be undone. But the right steps have been taken. The right results are being achieved. That’s the message. And Dell’s the perfect messenger.”
Gurney paused. “Do you plan to call Rick Loomis’s wife?”
“Of course. At the appropriate time. Oh, one more thing. Housekeeping issue. We need you to turn in your credentials—along with an hourly tally of your time on the case.”
“I’ll do that.”
They ended the call. They had ended their earlier conversation in the parking lot without shaking hands. They ended this one without saying good-bye.
Before putting his phone away, Gurney called Hardwick and left an additional message on his voicemail, suggesting that he watch Carlton Flynn’s show that evening. Then he deleted the earlier message from Kline on his own phone. He had no appetite for listening to the man twice.
His own plan was to drive home, review Paul Aziz’s photos, eat dinner, and then settle down for what promised to be a Dell Beckert master class in message control.
Getting Aziz’s photos from the file-sharing service Torres had used to transmit them was easy enough. Sitting at the desk in his den, he began opening them, one after another, on his laptop.
Once he was past the harrowing views of the bodies, there was little that caught Gurney’s attention until he was surprised to find closeups of the same two shiny spots he’d noted on the jungle gym crossbar.
Even more interesting were the next photos—close-ups of two separate sections of rope, showing a small, round depression in each. The sequence of the photos suggested a connection between the shiny spots and the depressions in the ropes.
He put an immediate call in to Torres and left a message describing the photos and asking for Aziz’s contact information—hoping that word hadn’t already gotten from Kline to Torres that he was off the official roster.
He was surprised to get a response less than ten minutes later—and equally surprised that the call came from Aziz himself.
“Mark gave me your number. He told me you had questions about some of the crime-scene shots.” The voice on the phone was young and earnest, not unlike Torres’s, and with no trace of the Middle East.
“Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I’m curious about the two shiny spots on the jungle gym crossbar and the flat spots on the ropes—obviously photographed after the bodies were taken down. Do you recall how they were originally positioned in relation to each other?”
“The flat spots on the ropes were located where they went over top of the crossbar. The shiny spots were aligned below them, on the bottom of the bar. If Mark just showed you closeup photos of the bodies in situ, you wouldn’t have noticed what I’m talking about, because those ropes were behind the victims’ heads, tying their necks to the structure.”
“Did any scenario occur to you that would explain the apparent connection between the shiny spots and the flat spots?”
“Not at the time. I just automatically photograph anything that seems odd.” He hesitated. “But . . . maybe some kind of clamp?”
Gurney tried to picture it. “You mean . . . as if someone had pulled a rope over the bar to hoist each victim into a standing position . . . then clamped the rope against the bar to hold him in place while they tied ropes around his stomach and legs?”
“I guess it could have been done that way. The way you describe it would be consistent with the markings.”
“Very interesting. Thank you, Paul. Thank you for your time. And thank you for your close observation of details.”
“I hope it helps.”
After ending the call, Gurney sat back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully out the den window, trying to reconstruct the scene in his mind—to imagine circumstances that would necessitate the use of clamps. When he soon found himself thinking in circles, and even beginning to wonder if clamps were really the cause of the marks, he decided to take a shower—in the hope that it might clear his mind and help him relax.
In a way, it ended up doing both—although the “clearing” seemed to bring about more emptying than clarifying. Still, a clean mental slate was not a bad thing. And a reduction in tension was always good.
As he was finishing dressing in clean jeans and a comfortable polo shirt, his sense of peace was interrupted by the sound of a door opening and closing. Curious, he went out to the kitchen and met Madeleine coming in from the mudroom.
She said nothing, just walked to the far end of the long open area that served as their kitchen, dining room, and sitting room. She sat down on the couch by the fireplace. He followed and sat in an armchair facing her.
Not since the death of their four-year-old son more than twenty years ago had he seen her look so drained, so hopeless. She closed her eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asked, the question immediately striking him as absurd.
She opened her eyes. “Remember Carrie Lopez?”
“Of course.”
It was the kind of situation a cop never wants to think about, but can never forget. Carrie was the wife, then widow, of Henry Lopez, an idealistic young narcotics detective who was pushed off the roof of a Harlem crack house one winter night shortly after Gurney had been assigned to the same precinct. The next night three local gang members were killed in a shootout with two members of the narcotics squad and subsequently blamed for the Lopez homicide. But Carrie never believed the story. She was sure her husband’s murder was an inside job, that the guys in narcotics were on the take and Henry’s honesty was becoming a problem for them. But she got nowhere with her requests for an internal affairs investigation. She gradually fell apart. A year to the day after Henry’s death she committed suicide—by jumping from the roof of the same building.
Gurney moved next to Madeleine. “Do you think that’s the state of mind Heather is in?”
“I think it could go that way.”
“What about Kim?”
“Right now her anger is holding her together. But . . . I don’t know.” She shook her head.
28
At eight o’clock that evening, as they both sat in front of his desk in the den, Gurney went to the “Live Stream” section of the RAM-TV website and clicked on the icon for A Matter of Concern with Carlton Flynn.
In a modest departure from the flashing colors and exploding graphics that introduced most RAM-TV programs, the Carlton Flynn show began with a staccato drumbeat under a barrage of black-and-white photos of Flynn. In rapid sequence they showed the man in various moods, all of them intense: Pensive. Amused. Outraged. Appraising. Alarmed. Tough. Skeptical. Disgusted. Delighted.
With a final sharp drumbeat, the scene transitioned to the live face of the man himself looking directly into the camera.
“Good evening. I’m Carlton Flynn. With a matter of concern.” He showed his teeth in a way that was not quite a smile.
The camera pulled back to reveal him sitting beside a small round table. Dell Beckert was on the other side of the table. Beckert was wearing a dark suit with an American flag lapel pin. Flynn was wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled up to the elbow.