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As he began his drive home, Gurney had two things on his mind. The first was Kline’s obvious anxiety. It suggested that he mistrusted the handling of the case by the department or by Beckert himself. He wondered if the source of that mistrust ran deeper than the phone text. The second was the motorcycle that had been maintaining a consistent position about a hundred yards behind the Outback since he’d left White River.

He slowed from seventy to sixty and noted that the motorcycle did the same.

He increased his speed from sixty to seventy-five with a similar result.

A few minutes later, as he passed a sign indicating a rest stop one mile ahead, the motorcycle accelerated into the left lane, rapidly coming abreast of the Outback. The rider, unidentifiable in a helmet with a face shield, extended his hand—holding a gold detective’s shield—and gestured toward the upcoming exit ramp.

The rest area turned out to be nothing more than a row of parking spaces in front of a small brick building that housed a pair of restrooms. The area was isolated from the highway by a line of overgrown shrubbery. As the motorcycle pulled in and stopped a couple of spaces away, the loneliness of the place prompted Gurney to move his Beretta handgun from his glove compartment to his jacket pocket.

When the rider stepped off the machine and removed his helmet, Gurney was surprised to see that it was Mark Torres.

“Sorry if you thought I was following you. I live out this way, my wife and I, in Larvaton. The next exit.”

“And?”

“I wanted to talk to you. I’m not sure whether it’s okay to be speaking to you directly, I mean privately like this. I don’t like going outside channels—with everything supposed to be going through Deputy Chief Turlock—but then I decided it would be sort of okay, since we’ve met before.”

“We have?”

“You probably wouldn’t remember, but I attended a seminar you gave at the academy a couple of years ago on investigative procedures. It was really amazing.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it, but . . .”

“I should get to the point.” He looked like the idea was causing him physical pain. “The thing is . . . I kind of feel in this case like I’m in a little over my head.”

Gurney waited as a series of heavy trucks roared by on the far side of the bushes. “In what way?”

“I just got promoted from patrol to the detective bureau six months ago. To be put in this position on a case like this, with so much at stake . . .” He shook his head. “To be honest, I’m a little uncomfortable.” The hint of an accent was creeping into his voice.

“With the responsibility? Or something else?”

Torres hesitated. “Well, it’s sort of like I’m the case CIO and sort of not. Chief Beckert seems to be running it. Like this thing of staying focused on Jordan and Tooker, like he’s positive they’re guilty. But I don’t see enough evidence to be that positive about it myself. Is this a big mistake, talking to you directly about this?”

“That depends on what you want from me.”

“Maybe just your phone number? I’d love to be able to bounce things off you. Unless that’s a problem.”

Gurney saw no reason to refuse, regardless of how rigid Beckert might be about the flow of information. He shrugged and gave the young detective his cell number.

Torres thanked him, and then was gone—leaving Gurney to muse over the encounter. Like everything else in the case, it felt not quite right. He wondered if the secrecy surrounding the request was the product of Torres’s insecurity, the White River police culture, or something nastier altogether.

His musings were interrupted by the passing shadows of a pair of vultures circling over the weedy field adjacent to the restrooms. It was interesting, he thought, that vultures, nurturing themselves only from the bodies of dead animals, harming no living thing, had become in popular parlance predators devouring the defenseless. More evidence that the popular mind was rarely distracted by the truth.

These musings were interrupted in turn by the ringing of his phone.

It was Hardwick.

“Gurney here.”

“Damn! That text you sent me from Steele’s phone? Could be a legit warning. Or something pretending to be a legit warning. Or some other fucking thing entirely. You know where the call came from?”

“We can pursue that when we get possession of the phone from Steele’s wife. But I’m sure the pursuit will dead-end at an anonymous prepaid cell. You have anything on Beckert or Turlock?”

“A bit more than before. I called in a favor from a guy at NYSP headquarters with access to old recruitment archives—the original forms with the CV data provided by applicants. Beckert’s and Turlock’s applications reveal a very early connection. They both attended the same military prep school in Butris County, Virginia. Beckert was a year ahead of Turlock, but it was a small school, and they would have trained together.”

“Interesting.”