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Heather Loomis, on the other hand, seemed more deeply damaged. After learning of her husband’s death, her condition declined from a depressed state to a near-catatonic one. She was transferred to a major New England mental hospital for long-term treatment. She gave birth prematurely, and the baby was put in the care of her brother and sister-in-law. She showed no interest in the baby or the arrangements made for it.

Mark Torres confided to Gurney that he intended to resign from the WRPD to pursue a degree in social work. Gurney suggested he give the department another year. He believed it was cops like Torres who could brighten the future of policing.

Tania Jordan left White River without a word to anyone.

Dell Beckert, for the first time in his adult life, persistently refused all contact with the media. He appeared to have aged years in the days of his captivity—and the stress promised to continue as investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice and the New York State Attorney General’s office launched an extensive review of his personal involvement in alleged civil rights violations, evidence tampering, and obstructions of justice.

Within a month of replacing the late Goodson Cloutz, acting sheriff Fred Kittiny was arrested and charged with seven counts of suborning perjury.

A specialist in turning out instant books on sensational crimes, disasters, and celebrities created one titled Lovely that focused on Blaze Lovely Jackson’s fatal alliance with Cory Payne. The cover depicted a helmeted leather-clad figure on a red motorcycle—just like the one belonging to Judd Turlock that Jackson rode away from the Poulter Street sniper site as part of Payne’s elaborate framing scheme.

The statue of Colonel Ezra Willard was quietly transported from the public park to the private estate of a self-described Civil War buff. The man made no secret of his sympathies for the Confederate cause, which left a lingering discomfort in the minds of many about the solution to the controversy. There were those who would have been far happier had the thing been pulverized and dumped in the county landfill. But the majority of the city council was content to approve the less dramatic transfer and be rid of at least one racial flash point.

Maynard Biggs was appointed by the governor to serve as acting attorney general until the upcoming special election, which he was now favored to win.

The Reverend Whittaker Coolidge delivered a series of well-received public lectures on the destructive power of hatred. He described hatred with a phrase that Maynard Biggs had used to describe racism: a razor with no handle that cuts the wielder as deeply as the victim. His other description of it: a suicidal weapon of mass destruction. And he always managed to work into his lectures an eight-word summary of Cory Payne’s life and death: His hatred drove him. His hatred killed him.

• • •

For some time after the bloody culmination on Rapture Hill, followed by Gurney’s extensive debriefing by the state and federal investigators who descended on White River, he and Madeleine seemed to have little appetite for discussing the case.

There was often a preoccupied look on her face; but he knew from long experience it was best not to ask about it, that she’d share what was on her mind in her own time.

It happened one evening in early June. They’d just finished a quiet dinner. The French doors were open, and the warm summer air carried the scent of the season’s fading lilacs. After a period of silence, she spoke.

“Do you think anything will change?”

“You mean the racial situation in White River?”

She nodded.

“Well . . . things are happening that weren’t happening before. The rotten apples are being removed from the police department. Old cases are being scrutinized, particularly the Laxton Jones incident. A more transparent citizen complaint process is being installed. The statue is gone. Discussions are under way to create an interracial commission that would—”

She stopped him. “I know all that. The announcements. The press conferences. I mean . . . doesn’t it sound like just another example of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?”

Gurney shrugged. “That’s what deckhands do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t that what most of the people we elect to solve our problems really do? They don’t solve anything; they just rearrange the details to relieve the political pressure and make it look like something significant is being done. Real change doesn’t happen that way. It’s less manageable, less predictable. It only happens when people see something they never saw before—when the truth, for whatever reason, hits them hard enough, shockingly enough, to open their eyes.”