Hardwick uttered a derisive little laugh. “You think Beckert took that shot at you?”
“I’d like to find out.”
“You figure he left a signed confession in his cabin?”
Gurney ignored the comment. “You know, the motive may not be as big a mystery as you think. Maybe there’s more at stake in the upcoming election than we know about. Maybe the victims posed bigger threats than we’ve imagined.”
“Christ, Gurney, if every politician with hopes for a big future started exterminating everyone who might get in the way, Washington would be dick-deep in dead bodies.” Hardwick lifted his Grolsch bottle and took a long, thoughtful swallow. “You by any chance catch the Carlton Flynn show before you got shot at?”
“I did.”
“What’d you think of Biggs?”
“Decent. Caring. Authentic.”
“All the qualities that guarantee defeat. He wants to take an honest, nuanced approach to interracial problems. Beckert just wants to lock the troublemaking bastards up and throw away the key. No fucking contest. Beckert wins by a landslide.”
“Unless—”
“Unless you manage to come up with a video of him deep-frying live kittens.”
Gurney had set the alarm on his phone for 3:45 AM, but he was awake before that. He used the tiny upstairs bathroom next to the spartan bedroom where Hardwick put him up for the night. He dressed by the light of the bedside lamp, strapped on his ankle-holstered Beretta, and quietly descended the stairs.
The light in the kitchen was on. Hardwick was sitting at a small breakfast table, loading a Sig Sauer’s fifteen-round magazine. A box of cartridges was open next to his cup of coffee.
Gurney stopped in the doorway, his questioning gaze on the Sig.
Hardwick flashed one of his glittery grins as he inserted a final round in the magazine. “Figured I’d ride shotgun on your trip to the cabin.”
“I thought you considered it a bad idea.”
“Bad? It’s one of the worst fucking ideas I’ve ever heard. Could easily produce a hostile confrontation with an armed adversary.”
“So?”
“I haven’t shot anybody in a long time, and the opportunity appeals to me.” The glittery grin came and went. “You want some coffee?”
43
With the full moon lower in the sky now and a thin fog creating a reflective headlight glare, the trip from Dillweed to the Clapp Hollow trailheads took nearly an hour. Gurney drove the Outback. Hardwick followed in the GTO so they’d have a backup vehicle, just in case. In case of what, exactly, hadn’t been discussed.
When they arrived at the trailheads, Hardwick backed his GTO into the one that led to the quarries, far enough to be out of sight from the road, then joined Gurney in the Outback.
Gurney checked his odometer, dropped the transmission into low, and drove slowly into the gun club trail.
It was half an hour before dawn. There was no hint of moonlight in the thick pine forest. The tree trunks cast eerily shifting shadows in the foggy headlight beams as the car crept along the rutted surface. Gurney lowered the front windows, listening, but heard nothing beyond the sounds made by his own vehicle and the occasional scrape of a low-hanging bough against the roof. The air flowing in was cool and damp. He was glad he’d accepted the offer of one of Hardwick’s light windbreakers.
They arrived at the first two forks at the odometer readings predicted by Torres’s map. At the third fork, he purposely turned onto the wrong branch of the trail and kept going until he was sure the car could no longer be seen from the branch leading to the gun club.
“We’ll leave it here and walk in,” said Gurney, donning a ski mask and gloves. Hardwick pulled a wool hat down over his head, added sunglasses, and wrapped a scarf around the exposed portion of his face. Activating the flashlights on their phones, they got out the car, walked back to the trail intersection, and proceeded along the correct side of the fork. They soon came to a large printed sign nailed to the trunk of a trailside tree.
STOP!
WHITE RIVER GUN CLUB
TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED
A quarter mile farther the trail ended at a broad, grassy clearing. Here, in the misty overcast, Gurney could see the first hint of dawn. On the far side of the clearing he could just make out the flat gray surface of a lake.
To the left of the clearing’s edge, his flashlight revealed the dark bulk of a log cabin. He knew from Torres’s map that this was the one Beckert and Turlock shared. He remembered that there were a dozen similar clearings and cabins along the edge of the lake, connected by a trail which, going in the opposite direction, led eventually to the playground at Willard Park.
“I’ll check out the inside,” said Gurney. “You take a look around the outside.”
Hardwick nodded, unsnapped the safety strap on his holster, and headed for the far side of the cabin. Gurney moved the Beretta from his ankle holster to the pocket of his windbreaker and approached the log structure. The moist air here carried the distinctive scents of pine and lake water. As he got closer he noted that the cabin was resting on a traditional concrete-block foundation, suggesting the existence of at least a crawl space beneath it.
He switched his phone from its flashlight to its compass app and proceeded per Payne’s instructions to the northeast corner of the building and from there due east to a foot-square piece of bluestone. Lifting it, he found a small plastic bag. Switching back to his flashlight, he saw that the bag contained two keys rather than just the one Payne had referred to.
He returned to the cabin. The first key he tried unlocked the door. As he was about to push it open Hardwick reappeared from the opposite side of the building.
“Find anything?” asked Gurney.
“Outhouse with a composting toilet. Small generator. Big shed with a big padlock.”
Gurney handed him the second key. “Try this.”
“Better not be full of spiders,” said Hardwick, taking the key and heading back the way he came. “I fucking hate spiders.”
Gurney pushed the cabin door open. Sweeping his flashlight back and forth, he entered cautiously and advanced slowly toward the center of a good-sized, pine-paneled room. At one end there was a stove, a sink, and a small refrigerator, no doubt run by the generator when the cabin was in use. At the other end there was a propane heater, a spartan couch, and two hard-looking armchairs set at right angles to the couch. Directly in front of him, there was a rectangular table on a rectangular rug with a rectangular pattern. Behind the table a ladder ascended to a loft.
Curious about the possibility of a crawl space, he began looking for access. He worked his way around the room, examining the floorboards. Coming back to where he started, he moved the table, folded back the rug, and ran his light over the area.
Had it not been for the gleaming brass finger hole, he might have missed it, so precisely aligned was the trapdoor with the surrounding boards. Bending over and placing his finger in the hole, he found that the door pivoted up easily on silent hinges. Shining his light down into the dark space below, he was surprised to see it was nearly as deep as a regular cellar.
He descended the plain wooden stairs. When his feet reached the concrete floor he discovered that his head just cleared the exposed floor joists above him. Everything in the beam of his flashlight appeared remarkably clean—no dust, no cobwebs, no mold. The air was dry and odorless. Against one wall there was a long worktable, and on a pegboard above it were rows of tools—saws, screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, chisels, drill bits, rulers, clamps—each group arranged in size order from left to right.