White River Burning. John Verdon

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and bring in the FBI.”

      He shook his head quickly. “No, no, no. Once the FBI comes in, we lose control. They talk a cooperative game, but they don’t play one. They’ve got their own agenda. Christ, you ought to know how the feds operate. Last thing we want to do is lose our ability to manage the process.”

      “Okay, forget the FBI. Between your staff and Beckert’s, you’ve still got plenty of manpower.”

      “Might seem like we do, but the fact is my staff is at an all-time low. My right-hand guy, Fred Stimmel, hit his magic pension number six months ago and headed for Florida. My two female investigators are both on maternity leave. And the rest of the crew are locked into assignments I can’t pull them away from—not without a major prosecution going down the tubes. You may think I’ve got ample staff. Fact is I’ve got zip. I know what you’re thinking. That the investigation belongs to the White River PD in any event, not the county DA. The ball is in Beckert’s court, so let him handle it through his own famously effective detective bureau. Right? But I’m telling you there’s way too much at stake to play this game with anything other than a full-court press. That means with all I can muster on my side as well as Beckert’s—period!” A small vein in Kline’s temple was becoming more prominent as he spoke.

      “You’d like me to join your staff as some sort of adjunct investigator?”

      “Something like that. We’ll work out the details. I have the authority and contingency funds. We’ve worked together before, David. You made huge contributions to the Mellery and Perry cases. And the stakes in this case are sky-high. We need to get to the bottom of this police killing fast—and we need to get it right, so nothing comes back later to bite us in the ass. Get it wrong and it’s chaos time. What do you say? Can I rely on you?”

      Gurney leaned back in his chair, watching the vultures soaring lazily above the north ridge.

      Kline’s smile tightened into a grimace. “Do you have any concerns?”

      “I need to sleep on this, discuss it with my wife.”

      Kline chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “Okay. Just let me repeat that there’s a hell of a lot at stake here. More than you might think. The right outcome could be enormously beneficial for all concerned.”

      He got up from his chair, straightened his tie, and put on his jacket. He pulled out a business card and handed it to Gurney. The politician’s smile reappeared in full force. “My personal cell number is on the card. Call me tomorrow. Or tonight if you can. I know you’ll do the right thing—for all of us.”

      Two minutes later the big black Navigator passed between the pond and the barn, heading down onto the town road. The crunch of the tires on the gravel surface soon faded into silence.

      The soaring vultures had disappeared. The sky was a piercing blue, the hillside a painter’s palette of greens. Next to the patio, in the raised planting bed, the day’s growth of asparagus was awaiting harvest. Above the tender new shoots the airy asparagus ferns were swaying in an almost imperceptible breeze.

      The overall picture of spring perfection was tainted only by the slightest hint of something acrid in the air.

      4

      Gurney spent the next hour visiting various internet sites, trying to get a broader view of the White River crisis than the perspective Kline had presented. He had the feeling that he was being manipulated with a carefully arranged account of the situation.

      Countering an impulse to go to the most recent news of the shooting, he decided to search first for coverage of the original incident—to refresh his recollection of the fatal shooting that occurred the previous May and that the Black Defense Alliance demonstrations were commemorating.

      He located an early newspaper report in the online archive of the Quad-County Star. The front-page headline was one that had become disturbingly common: “Minor Traffic Stop Turns Deadly.” A brief description of the incident followed:

      At approximately 11:30 PM on Tuesday White River Police Officer Kieran Goddard stopped a car with two occupants near the intersection of Second Street and Sliwak Avenue in the Grinton section of White River for failing to signal prior to changing lanes. According to a police spokesman, the driver of the vehicle, Laxton Jones, disputed the officer’s observation and refused several requests to present his license and registration. Officer Goddard then directed Jones to switch off the ignition and step out of the vehicle. Jones responded with a series of obscenities, put the vehicle in reverse, and began backing away in an erratic fashion. Officer Goddard ordered him to stop. Jones then placed the vehicle in drive and accelerated toward the officer, who drew his service weapon and fired through the windshield of the approaching vehicle. He subsequently called for an ambulance as well as appropriate supervisory and support personnel. Jones was declared dead on arrival at Mercy Hospital. The second occupant of the vehicle, a twenty-six-year-old female identified as Blaze Lovely Jackson, was detained in connection with an outstanding warrant and the discovery of a controlled substance in the vehicle.

      The next relevant article in the Star appeared two days later on page five. It quoted a statement issued by Marcel Jordan, a community activist, in which he claimed that the police version of the shooting was “a fabrication designed to justify the execution of a man who had embarrassed them—a man dedicated to uncovering and publicizing the false arrests, perjury, and brutality rampant in the White River Police Department. The officer’s claim that Laxton was attempting to run him down is an outright lie. He posed no threat whatever to that officer. Laxton Jones was murdered in cold blood.”

      The Star’s next mention of the event appeared a week later. It described a tense scene at Laxton Jones’s funeral, an angry confrontation between mourners and police. The funeral was followed immediately by a press conference at which the activist Marcel Jordan—flanked by Blaze Lovely Jackson, out on bail, and Devalon Jones, brother of the deceased—announced the formation of the Black Defense Alliance, an organization whose mission would be “the protection of our brothers and sisters from the routine abuse, mayhem, and murder carried out by the racist law-enforcement establishment.”

      The article concluded with a response from White River Police Chief Dell Beckert. “The negative statement issued by the group calling themselves the ‘Black Defense Alliance’ is unfortunate, unhelpful, and untrue. It demeans honest men and women who have dedicated themselves to the safety and welfare of their fellow citizens. This cynical grandstanding deepens the misconceptions that are destroying our society.”

      Gurney found little in other upstate papers and virtually nothing in the national press regarding the shooting of Laxton Jones or the activities of the Black Defense Alliance for the next eleven months—until the BDA’s announcement of demonstrations to mark the one-year anniversary of the shooting and to “raise awareness of racist police practices.”

      According to the ensuing media coverage, an initial peaceful demonstration was followed by sporadic instances of violence throughout the Grinton section of White River. The unrest had been going on for a week, becoming more confrontational and destructive with each passing day and generating increasingly dramatic media coverage.

      The fact that he’d been only partially aware of this was the result of his and Madeleine’s decision to leave their TV behind when they moved from the city to Walnut Crossing and to avoid internet news sites. They felt that “news” was too often a term for manufactured controversy, superficial half-truths, and events about which they could do nothing. This meant he had some catching up to do.

      There was no shortage of current coverage of what one media СКАЧАТЬ