CORY BURKETTE’S uncle’s cabin was a one-room place, set in a valley off State Route 909.
As I drove out there, I passed two hotels built around a turnpike heading into Mason Falls. Both had No Vacancy signs in the windows, and I wondered if the big media had already shown up.
As I turned off the main road, I saw six patrol cars parked around the edge of the property. The evening air was buzzing. Half of the protesters from the police station had heard the news from Fox and relocated here. Signs held up read Corrupt Cops Don’t Care and Diversity Now!
Law enforcement had come in force too. Around the property I saw a half-dozen SWAT guys and twenty patrolmen. I slowed my truck and moved through the gawkers.
As soon as I put the truck in park, Abe was outside my door. The air smelled like night-blooming jasmine and primrose, and a yellow moon was rising in the distance.
“Burkette’s inside,” Abe said.
Way up ahead of us was the uncle’s log cabin, set on a square of gravel. It wasn’t one of those modern cabins that looked rustic but in reality had satellite and a deep freeze. It was a tiny house built a hundred years ago. The area to the left and right of it were planted with large southern magnolias. The tips of the green branches had white saucer-sized blooms that were spread open and smelled like lemon.
“Is he by himself?” I asked.
Abe nodded. “And armed.”
I stopped walking. “Are you sure?”
Abe motioned to Burkette’s Suzuki, leaning against the right side of the cabin. “The patrolman who first cleared the folks from Fox outta here—he got a peek in the side window.” Abe pointed. “The drapes were originally open, and he saw a .45 on a table.”
“Shit,” I said.
Beyond the cabin, a forest of Georgia pine went on for miles, eventually becoming state land, a protected forest.
“How about a back door?” I asked. “Or another window?”
Abe shook his head. “One way in. One way out. And now he’s blocked that window with something wooden. We think it’s a cutting board.”
We’d gotten to within twenty yards of the place and stopped walking.
About eight cops were crouched behind two police Suburbans positioned in front of the cabin. SWAT members leaned against each SUV, their Remington pump-actions trained on the front door. Big spotlights had been set up and turned night into day.
“Is there a landline in there?” I asked.
“No,” Abe said. “We have Burkette’s cell, but the phone’s either off or dead. And we don’t know much about this guy, P.T.”
“Get Reverend Webster,” I said. “If he and the ex-con have some connection, let’s leverage it.”
Abe nodded and left. I grabbed the bullhorn and introduced myself to Burkette. Behind me I could hear the crowd way back on the highway, chanting something.
“Cory, if you got a cell phone, I’m gonna give you my number.” I waited a minute and then recited it to him.
“We’re in no rush,” I said. Establishing rapport. “At nine p.m. a lot of us get double time. We like double time, Cory.”
“I didn’t do nothing to Kendrick,” a voice hollered.
All right, you got him talking.
“Well, maybe you know something that can help,” I said into the bullhorn. I grabbed my notebook and flipped back to Kendrick’s mom’s name. “Cory, it’s important to Grace to know why this happened. How it happened.”
No response from Burkette. Grace wasn’t a trigger for him to talk.
I pointed a finger at each of the SWAT guys behind the cars and tapped at my chest, asking them if they were wearing Kevlar. Each nodded back.
I motioned at myself then, signaling for someone to grab me a vest.
Getting one on, I stood up. Hustled around the perimeter and met with each cop, telling them that if at all possible, I needed Burkette alive. Wounded was acceptable, but I needed him able to talk.
Abe hustled over and crouched beside me. “Preacher’s here.”
Patrol had placed an E-Z Up farther back, where I’d parked. I walked back there.
Reverend Webster paced under the tent, dressed in a purple V-neck and black slacks. He was late thirties, slight of build, and maybe five foot nine, with a short fade haircut. Another hundred feet up toward the highway, two CNN news vans had cameras on us.
“Reverend,” I said, turning my face away from the filming. “Mr. Burkette is armed, and honestly, I don’t know how long he’s gonna stay inside. With all that’s gone on with your son, are you willing to speak with him?”
“Well, I don’t believe Cory touched my son,” Webster said.
I’d seen the reverend’s wife on the news a couple times. In each instance, she seemed to blame everybody.
“You don’t?” I said.
“I know my wife’s been critical of Cory,” he continued. “And of the police. But I watched Cory around Kendrick. He’s got a good soul. I think it was someone else.”
“Did you know Cory was affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in prison?” I asked.
“Of course,” Webster said. “That’s how we met. He reached out to me because of my ministry in that area.”
Did you know the creep had a pair of your kid’s underwear in his shed? Purvis asked.
“So you gave him absolution?” I said.
“My faith doesn’t work that way, Detective. Only God can do that.”
I grabbed a Kevlar vest and slipped it around Webster’s sweater. “Let me get this on you, sir,” I said, helping his arm through each side.
“I’m sure you’re aware that I didn’t want you leading this case,” Webster said as I tightened the vest.
“I am.”
“Still, I’d like to know—are you a Christian?”
I didn’t answer, velcroing the straps in place.
“I’m not trying to convert you,” he said. “It’s my wife that asked.”
I stared at him. “Does she want to know if I can take someone’s life in exchange for her son’s?”
Webster’s eyes were on the dirt. The reverend and his wife were not on the same page. Not just about Burkette, but about justice. Or maybe it was about vengeance.
I led Webster over to one of the Suburbans and handed him the bullhorn. “If in your heart you believe Burkette isn’t guilty—then help me get him out of here alive.”
The reverend steeled himself. Said nothing for a moment. Then he held the bullhorn to his face. “Cory,” Webster said. “I’ve just told Detective Marsh that I don’t think you’re capable of hurting anyone, especially Kendrick.”
“Reverend?” Burkette’s voice rang out.
“It’s me, Cory,” Webster said.
A single tear streamed down the preacher’s cheek, and I thought about how impossible the situation was. Speaking with a man who most likely killed your son.
“Cory, it’s okay,” Webster said.
I reached over and flicked off the reverend’s bullhorn. “Ask him to come out so we can talk about it. Tell him we’ll hold our fire.”
Webster nodded, and I flicked the bullhorn back on. “The police are gonna hold their fire, Cory. Why don’t you take a step outside so we can talk.”
A minute later we heard an unlocking noise. “I’m just gonna stand at the door,” Burkette yelled. “We can talk from here. You come too close, and I’m back inside.”
I grabbed the bullhorn. “Cory, this is Detective Marsh again. We’re all going to lower our weapons except for me. This is our procedure. So you can focus on me. But you gotta come out real slow with your hands up.”
I saw a single hand come out from an ajar door. Then another. I moved in between the two Suburbans, my Glock trained on Burkette’s chest.
This was the first time I’d seen him in person, and he was a big guy. Pale skin and freckles. He had the body of a four-down running back. Compact and muscular. I imagined him lighting the match that killed Kendrick, and I wanted to rush him.
“I’m not coming out any farther, Marsh,” he said, standing at the open door. “You can come to me.”
Burkette was a foot outside, and his eyes scanned from side to side, taking in all the lights and vehicles.
I was thirty feet out. Then twenty-five.
A pile of freshly split firewood was parked by the door, and the smell of bark chips was strong in the air.
Twenty feet. Fifteen.
“There’s a lot of cops out here, Marsh,” Burkette said, his face ashen. He had an accent that elongated words. It reminded me of an old partner of mine, six or eight years ago. He could use three syllables to say the word “ours.”
“Just look at me,” I said. I lowered my gun so it was on the ground below him, ready to move up if needed.
“Okay, let’s talk,” he said.
I stopped moving any closer.
“I didn’t do this,” he said. “I know everyone says that, but I wouldn’t touch Kendrick.”
“Do you know a man named Virgil Rowe?”
Burkette squinted at me. He was covered in sweat. “Is he a member of the church?”
I shook my head.
“Do you like young boys, Cory?” I asked.
I wasn’t trying to rile him up. I just wanted to see his facial response. Would it be confusion? Denial?
But I never got it. Something else happened instead.
And it happened like it was in slow motion.
I heard a noise. Something overhead that I suspect was a drone.
The zipping sound spooked Burkette, and he turned back toward the door, which was ajar.
His .45 was tucked into the rear waistband of his Lee jeans. As he turned back toward the cabin, he stopped, almost as if realizing at the last minute that his gun was facing us.
“I see it,” I yelled, just as Burkette grabbed at the gun. He held it backward by the handle—trying to toss it into the cabin.
A single shot rang out. Then a second shot. Both from the same place behind me.
Burkette went down, and I raced over.
“Jesus,” I said. Blood was pouring from his neck. “Cory, talk to me.”
“Gigg. Kenttrack. Noss.” Cory Burkette blubbered nonsense.
With my fingers, I tried to block a hole in his neck that was impossible to cover. His voice was unintelligible for three seconds, and then nothing. He was gone.
I stood up, staring at the gun that was thrown into the cabin as Burkette fell.
There was one cop who could hit those two points in succession, and I turned to Abe.
“C’mon, man,” I said, a pleading look on my face. “I yelled that I saw it.”
“You saw it?” Abe scrunched up his face.
“Yeah,” I said. “Burkette must’ve realized we saw his piece, and he was trying to toss it into the cabin.”
Abe shook his head at me. “Are you kidding me, P.T.? He was an ex-con who killed a kid. He reached for a gun in his waistband. It was us or him.”
I kicked at the front wall of the cabin, frustrated. “I was talking to the guy, Abe. He’d just told me he didn’t know Rowe.”
“And every guy on death row is innocent,” Abe said.
He stormed off, and I turned to Reverend Webster. He was bent over vomiting, and he lifted his head to make eye contact with me. “You knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
Burkette was his friend, and we’d used the preacher to lure him to his death. Then gave the reverend a front row seat to the justice his wife wanted for their son.
“No,” I said to him. “I’m sorry.”
He pulled off the vest I’d strapped to him and turned, looking out at the crowd back near the highway. There were cheers as the news of Burkette’s death moved among them.
“You people just killed an innocent man,” Webster said. “A lamb to slaughter.”
A blue-suiter took Webster away, and the crowd slowly dissipated.
The truth was that Abe was right. Burkette was a killer and had left the place armed to confront two dozen cops. A boy had been murdered. Webster might’ve been unused to seeing this kind of violence, but we weren’t doing social work here.
I exhaled for the first time in a few days, a sense of relief coming over me. An act of horror had happened in Mason Falls. Now the two men linked to it were dead.
Abe sat on the back lip of an ambulance. A guy named Cornell Fuller talked to him. Fuller was the lead cop in Internal Affairs in Mason Falls, and he took Abe’s gun.
Patrolman Gattling walked up to me.
“Burkette inherited the cabin four weeks ago from his uncle,” the patrolman said. “The reporter from Fox must’ve found that out.”
I thought about this. Did it make sense—Burkette living in a dirt-floor shed at the church after he inherited this place? Or was it the same as here? No electricity or phone at either.
And then it hit me.
How this had ended was good for me.
No Burkette aboveground meant no conversations with him about Virgil Rowe. The case would die down. Burkette would be assumed to be Kendrick’s killer. Why else confront cops with a .45? And Virgil Rowe would be a known accomplice and neo-Nazi that nobody wanted to spend police time looking further into.
Which meant little chance for a conversation about me helping Corinne out by killing Virgil.
I thought about that first night at Rowe’s, and then waking up the next day.
I’d still not found the flannel I’d worn. Was it covered in blood in some trash can somewhere? Had I tossed it in the river?
My instinct for justice told me there could be more here, but my instinct for self-preservation told me to finish the paperwork fast. I grabbed my keys and headed back to the precinct.