Chapter 24

Motels don't have cellars. Nor, for some reason, do any number of houses in Texas and Oklahoma – and, I suppose in Kansas and Nebraska, though I'm not certain that Tornado Alley goes as far north as Nebraska. I didn't know about tornadoes when I moved to Oklahoma in 1986, and so the house I got didn't have a cellar. During the time that Tina and I lived there we both regretted the choice, but never got around to moving. We'd planned to do it after the wedding...

The thunder bashed and battered the windows all night. The rain lashed the building hard, sometimes sounding like hail as the wind drove it with maniacal force. Sometimes it was hail, pounding down from the clouds like frozen grapeshot. According to the TV station in Woodward, there were lines of storms coming; we counted four on the screen together, at one point, one over us, one to the east having just passed over, and two more on the way.

We didn't get much sleep. Cecelia, Darlia, and I huddled together on the bed, with just the bedside lamp and the TV screen for light. Every time it would calm down a bit, and we'd drift off into a doze, a new siege would begin. I've never been in combat, but I imagine that being the target of thunderstorm after thunderstorm is something akin to incoming shellfire – noisy, impersonal, without a source at which to vent anger and with a seeming determination to destroy everything. I don't want to be in combat, but that night with the storms stomping all over Red Hawk I felt like I was. No doubt a combat vet would know 43 ways in which the storms were much less dangerous and stressful – but they were dangerous and stressful enough for us, and I don't particularly care to try combat for myself.

We finally did get some restless sleep, the TV still going, and I woke up around 8:30 to find a reporter talking about trees down and houses damaged, though it was all straight line winds; there hadn't been any tornadoes in our part of the world. I was groggily coming out of the bathroom when the phone rang. I grabbed it before it could wake up Cecelia and Darlia, who seemed to be finally sound asleep.

"Yeah?"

"Darvin, it's Harry. You know where Stryker lived?"

"'Lived'? Past tense?"

"Darvin, do you know where?" His voice was impatient.

"No."

"I'll give you the address." He did. "Get out here, code 2."

"I guess you'll tell me what this is about when I get there."

"Yeah." And he hung up. It wasn't like Harry to be so abrupt.

I got myself dressed, and wrote a note for Cecelia and Darlia. I let myself out, and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob; I wanted them to sleep as long as they could. I got into my police car, and headed for the address Harry had given me, in the northwestern part of town. He'd said code 2, so I hurried, but didn't turn on the lights or siren.

When I got there I found I couldn't get close. Clearly there was a crime scene there – cop cars were parked higgledy-piggledy in the street, and across the street at both ends of the block. There was crime scene tape around the whole yard, front and back as far as I could tell, and cops everywhere. An ambulance was there, lights off; most of the cruisers had their lights going, since officers almost never turn them off until they leave a scene, even when there's no real reason to keep 'em going. With doors open on most of the cars, I could hear police radios blaring everywhere.

I had a bad feeling. I climbed out of the car, flashed my badge at the officer guarding the perimeter of the scene, and headed up to the front walk. An officer there took my name and shield number for his log; every person who entered or left the "frozen zone" went into the log, and if he took anything away that went in too, in order to preserve evidence and accountability. Red Hawk's department wasn't large and didn't have a lot of major crime to deal with, but enough big city cops had come here over the years that it had procedures in advance of many small town departments.

I asked the cop with the log where Harry was, and he pointed inside. I went up the steps and in the open front door. Harry was in the door to what appeared to be a bedroom, from what I could see by looking around him. He was speaking to someone inside the room; I couldn't hear what he was saying, just his voice. He must have heard my boots on the floor, even with the rug, because he turned as I approached. He didn't say anything, just stepped out of my way and let me look.

Paul Stryker lay on the fully made bed, propped up with his back against the headboard. His eyes were half open, and a dark streak ran down the right side of his face. I followed the streak upward ... there was a dark hole in his temple. His right hand lay on the bedspread, the fingers loosely curling around the grip of what appeared to be a short-barreled .38 revolver – a cop's typical off-duty gun.

I looked at Harry. He jerked his head at me in a follow-me gesture. I followed him to the kitchen. He reported in clipped cop fashion. "At approximately 1 AM this morning, a neighbor, up because of the storm, heard what sounded to her like—" he consulted a notebook "—a motorcycle backfiring. She thought it was odd that someone would be out on a motorcycle in such weather, and wondered why she didn't hear the engine, but thought nothing more of it, for the storm returned. She doesn't know why she thought of a motorcycle, but that's what came to her mind. At 7 AM this morning the neighbor was out in her yard cleaning up small branches which had fallen during the storm, and happened to look up and into the bedroom there. As you noted, the curtains are open and the shade is up, though the lights are off. There is no fence between the yards, and she saw him sitting on the bed. Something, she said—" he checked the notebook again "—didn't look right, so she called 911. The dispatcher, recognizing this as Officer Paul Stryker's address, dispatched a patrol car to ascertain the situation. The patrol officer, after knocking several times and receiving no response, went to the window and observed that Investigator Stryker appeared ill. You'll have noted that Stryker's left side is toward the window, and therefore the officer didn't see the gun or the wound.

The patrol officer obtained entry through the back door, which he slipped with a piece of thin plastic, and upon entering the bedroom observed the evident signs of suicide. He thereupon called the dispatcher and requested a full response forthwith for an officer-involved shooting." When I'd been with the PD, "full response" had meant an investigator, the chief, a scene team, and an ambulance. "That's what we know. What do you know?"

"Less than you, Harry. I just got back into town day before yesterday – late at night, in fact. Yesterday I spent confirming some information I got in Dallas."

"What information?" Harry was being a thorough cop; he wasn't my friend just now – though he was my friend – but the chief of police investigating the apparent suicide of one of his officers. The fact that the officer was suspended, and under suspicion of corruption, didn't alter the fact that he was one of Harry's officers. That came first just now.

"I checked with a couple of guys I still know on the Dallas PD. It seems that Stryker left there under a cloud too – suspicion of corruption, and out of town ahead of IAD."

Harry's face grew red, and he removed his old eight-pointed hat and rubbed his head. "It would have been helpful, Darvin, if you'd reported this to us when you returned, before you began charging around town."

I turned and looked back toward the bedroom. "Yeah, it might have been. But I had no idea this was going to happen, and for all I know right now it might have happened even if I'd never been to Dallas or talked to anyone there. I was going to report to you today, and let you know what I've got." I rubbed my nose. "Was there a note?"

"There isn't always, but yeah, there was." He raised his voice and hollered toward the front of the house. "Harris, bring me the note."

A uniformed officer brought in a piece of notebook paper in a plastic baggie. Harry nodded at me, and the uniform gave me the note. It's all over. I can't hide it and I'm not going to face it. That, with the signature, was all there was. I handed it back.

"Is that Stryker's writing?" I asked.

"Yeah – no question that he wrote it. What's the 'it' he's talking about?"

I took a breath. "That's the report I was going to make." I told him what I'd learned in Dallas, and what I'd found out the day before. "Stryker was a wrong guy, Harry, and I had the proof at last. I bet if you shake the tree hard enough, you'll find that one of the people I talked to yesterday was a rotten apple, and told Stryker what I'd learned. And Stryker looked at it, and in the dark of night, with the storm, when everything looked worst, he smoked it."