“How did he get along with the other two BDA leaders?”
“Virgil Tooker and Blaze Jackson?”
Gurney nodded.
“Well . . . I’d have to say that Virgil wasn’t really what you’d call a leader. He was just a good man and happened to be close to Marcel, and Marcel pretty much pulled him into that position because he trusted him. The man had no huge talent, no huge fault. He just wanted to do the right thing. That’s all Virgil wanted. To be helpful.”
Gurney was struck by the echo of Mark Torres’s goal as a police officer.
“And Blaze Jackson?”
The first sign of emotion appeared on Tania’s face, something hard and bitter. When she spoke, her voice was almost frighteningly calm. “Blaze Lovely Jackson is the Devil incarnate. Ain’t nothing that bitch wouldn’t do to get what she wants. Blaze is all about Blaze. Fiery talker, loves to be onstage, loves the attention, people looking up at her. Loves to lay it down hard on the corrupt police and stir up the crowd. But all the time she’s got her evil eye on what’s in it for her—what she can take from someone else.”
“Was she the reason for your separation from your husband?”
“My husband was a fool. That was the reason for our separation.”
A brief silence fell between them.
Gurney asked if she’d seen Marcel or Virgil at any time in the forty-eight hours before they were killed. She shook her head. He asked if she’d seen or heard anything before or after their murders that might relate to them in any way.
“Nothing. Only the fact that Blaze is now the sole leader of the Black Defense Alliance, a position which the bitch surely loves.”
“She likes being in charge?”
“Power is what she likes. Likes it way too much.”
Gurney sensed the beginning of restlessness in Tania’s body language. He wanted to keep the door open for possible future conversations, so he decided to end this one now. “I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me, Tania. You’ve been very open. And what you’ve told me is quite helpful. Thank you.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not here to do you a favor. You said police could be involved in the shit that went down, and I’d love to see that get proven and them get put in the penitentiary with the brothers waiting for them. That would be a sweetness to my heart. So don’t go thinking the wrong way. I live in a divided world, and not on your side of the line.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Do you know why this spot right here is my favorite place in all of White River?”
He glanced around the old graveyard. “Tell me.”
“It’s full of dead white people.”
46
Gurney’s route from Saint Thomas the Apostle back toward the interstate put him on the road that bordered Willard Park. As he approached the main entrance, Paul Aziz’s photos came to mind, and he decided to take another look at the playground area.
The parking lot was nearly full, unsurprising on a balmy spring afternoon. He found a spot, then took the pedestrian path along the edge of the mowed field where the BDA demonstration had taken place. The statue of the colonel had been cordoned off with Police Line Do Not Cross yellow tape, an apparent effort to keep it from being toppled or defaced before an official decision could be made regarding its fate. Although the rest of the park appeared well populated with sunbathers, Frisbee tossers, dog walkers, and young mothers with toddlers, the playground was deserted. Gurney wondered how long it would take for its forbidding aura to fade. A hand-printed sign on the kayak rental shed said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
The blackbirds, however, continued to occupy the dense reeds along the edge of the lake. As Gurney approached the swing set, they rose up and began shrieking and swooping over his head. But when he stopped there they soon lost interest and settled back into the reeds.
The UTV tire tracks documented in Aziz’s photos were no longer visible, but Gurney remembered where they’d been. He looked once more at the jungle gym crossbar with the two shiny spots that his conversation with Aziz had persuaded him were indeed clamp marks.
He began running scenarios through his head, picturing the likely steps that would have been taken in bringing the two victims to that point and binding them to the bars.
He imagined Jordan and Tooker being persuaded to attend a meeting at some site where they were rendered controllable with a combination of alcohol and midazolam. They were then brought to the cabin, or more likely to the shed behind it. There they would have been heavily sedated with propofol, preparatory to being beaten, stripped, and branded—creating the illusion of a violent racist attack. They would then have been strapped into Beckert’s UTV and transported from the cabin via the connecting trail system to the playground.
He pictured the UTV emerging from the woods in the predawn darkness, proceeding toward the jungle gym, stopping in front of it—a chill mist drifting through the headlight beams. Beckert and Turlock were in the front seat. Jordan and Tooker—naked, anesthetized, close to death—were in the back seat. Behind them in the utility box were coils of rope and a sturdy clamp.
He pictured Beckert and Turlock getting out with flashlights, quickly deciding which man would be bound up first . . . and then what?
One option would be for Beckert and Turlock together to lift one of the victims out of the UTV and stand him upright with his back against the bars. While one of them held the man in place the other could get the clamp and one of the ropes, tie an end of the rope around the man’s neck, loop the rest of it over the bar in back of his head, and hold it in place with the clamp until it could be knotted securely. They could then tie the man’s torso and legs to the lower bars to ensure that he remained in a standing position. Meanwhile a slow, fatal strangulation would likely be occurring.
As Gurney thought about it, the process seemed revolting but feasible. Then it dawned on him that there was an easier way—a way that would have required virtually no physical effort. Each victim in turn could have been pulled out of the back of the UTV and dumped on the ground in front of the jungle gym. After one of the ropes had been tied around the victim’s chest, the free end could be passed over a bar and tied to the back of the UTV. The UTV could then be driven forward, causing the rope to lift the victim up toward the bar. The clamp could then be employed to hold the rope in place while the end was detached from the UTV, wrapped around the bar, and knotted. Finally, the victim could be secured in his grotesque standing position by pulling the rest of the rope tightly around his legs, torso, and, with fatal effect, his neck.
That way would definitely be easier. In fact, it would be so easy it obviated the need for two men—meaning that the double murder could have been carried out by either Beckert or Turlock. It was even possible one had acted without the other’s knowledge. If so, Gurney wondered if that might have had something to do with Turlock’s murder.
After a final look around the playground, as he turned to head back to the parking lot, he noticed he was being watched by one of the dog walkers—a short, muscular man with a gray buzz cut and two large Dobermans. He was standing in the middle of the path about fifty yards away. As Gurney got closer he could see anger in the man’s eyes. With little appetite for confrontation, Gurney stayed toward the edge of the path. “Good-looking dogs,” he said pleasantly as he was passing.
The man ignored the compliment and gestured toward the playground. “You one of the cops looking into this thing?”