by John Verdon
“What I believe is that the people he’s blaming for it had nothing to do with it.”
“The Gorts? Why not?”
“The Gorts are violent, uneducated, redneck racists—men whose approach to life involves skulls, crossbows, pit bulls, and chopping up dead bears for dog food.”
“So what?”
“The playground murders were carefully planned and executed. They required knowledge of the victims’ movements, a flawless double kidnapping, and the sophisticated administration of propofol. And Thrasher told me the tox screens on the victims included not only propofol but alcohol and benzodiazepines. That suggests a scenario that began with a friendly meeting over a few drinks—something I can’t imagine occurring between the BDA leaders and the Gorts.”
“What about the evidence they keep talking about on TV—the rope they found in the Gorts’ compound, and the computer drive with the KRS website elements on it?”
“Both could have been as easily planted as the items they’re trying to hang Cory with.”
“Christ, if we had to exclude every piece of evidence that could have been planted, no one would ever be convicted of anything!”
Gurney said nothing.
Hardwick stared at him. “This fixation you have on Beckert—what’s that really based on, besides his crazy son blaming him for everything?”
“Just a feeling at this point. Which is why I want to find out everything I can about the man’s history. A few minutes ago you alluded to Turlock’s juvie legal problem when he was in school with Beckert. Were you able to find out anything more about that?”
Hardwick paused. When he finally spoke, his tone had become less argumentative. “Maybe something, maybe nothing. I called the Bayard-Whitson Academy and got the headmaster’s assistant. I told her I was interested in speaking with any staff members who’d been at the school thirty years ago. She wanted to know why. I said that one of their eminent graduates, Dell Beckert, who was a student at that time, could be the next New York State attorney general—and that I was writing an article about him for a journalism course I was taking, and I’d love to be able to include the perspective of any of his teachers who might be willing to share an anecdote or two.”
“She bought this?”
“She did. In fact, after a little more back-and-forth, she told me that she had been there herself, as assistant to the previous headmaster, when Beckert was a student.”
“She say anything about him?”
“Yep. Cold, calculating, clever, ambitious. Was awarded ‘Top Cadet’ distinction in every one of his four years there.”
“He must have made a big impression on her for it to last thirty years.”
“Judd Turlock apparently made a bigger one. When I mentioned his name, there was total silence. I thought the call was cut off. She finally said she had no desire to talk about Turlock, because in all her time at Bayard he was the only student who’d made her feel uneasy. I asked if she knew of any trouble he’d gotten into, and there was another dead silence. Then she told me to hang on a minute. When she came back to the phone she gave me an address in Pennsylvania. She said it belonged to a detective by the name of Merle Tabor. Said if anyone could tell me anything about the incident involving Turlock, it would be Merle.”
“The incident? She didn’t say anything specific about that?”
“No. My mention of Turlock pretty much shut her down. Seemed like after she gave me that address, she just wanted to get off the phone.”
“Quite a reaction after thirty years.”
Hardwick picked up his coffee mug and took a long swallow. “There’s something unnerving about the Turd. He tends to stick in the mind.”
“Interesting. You plan to follow up with Merle Tabor?”
“Hell, no. According to the school lady, Merle’s an off-the-grid kind of guy. No phone, no email, no computer, no electricity. You can pay him a visit and find out for yourself, if the spirit moves you. Probably no more than a four-hour trip, assuming you don’t get lost in the woods.”
Hardwick pulled a scrap of notepaper out of his pocket and slid it across the table. There was an address of sorts scrawled on it in his nearly indecipherable handwriting—BLACK MOUNTAIN HOLLOW, PARKSTON, PA. “Who knows? Couple of old retired farts like you might hit it off. Merle could end up handing you the key to the whole goddamn mess.”
It was clear from his tone that he considered such an outcome unlikely. Gurney saw no reason to disagree.
38
After Hardwick roared off in his eco-hostile muscle car, Gurney stayed at Abelard’s for a little while to finish his coffee and organize the rest of his day.
Merle Tabor had suddenly become the elephant in the room, and despite Gurney’s mixed feelings about the usefulness of a visit to Black Mountain Hollow, he found it impossible to dismiss. He took out his phone and went to a Google satellite view of Parkston, Pennsylvania. There wasn’t much to see. The place appeared to be a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. He typed in “Black Mountain Hollow” and discovered that it was a narrow dirt road proceeding from a county route three miles up into the hills. There was one house on it, at the very end.
He clicked on Directions, entered his Walnut Crossing address as the starting point, and found that the distance to Parkston was 142 miles. The estimated drive time was just under three hours, not Hardwick’s four. Even so, he was reluctant to make the trip without some indication that Merle Tabor would be there. He looked up the number for the Parkston Police Department.
His call was automatically transferred to the county sheriff’s office. He assumed he must have misheard the name given by the man who answered—Sergeant Gerbil—but he didn’t question it. He explained that he was a retired NYPD homicide detective, had been hired to look into an old case down in Butris County, Virginia, and had reason to believe that a Parkston resident by the name of Merle Tabor might be able to give him some useful information. But he didn’t know how to get in touch with the man. He was starting to explain that Tabor lived on Black Mountain Hollow and had no phone when the sergeant interrupted him with a nasal Appalachian accent.
“You plannin’ on payin’ him a visit?”
“Yes, but I’d like to know that he’s there before I drive for three—”
“He’s there.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s always there in the spring of the year. Most other times, too.”
“You know him?”
“Somewhat. But it don’t sound like you do.”
“I don’t. His name was given to me as someone familiar with the case I’m looking into. Is there any way of getting in touch with him?”
“You want to see him, you just have to go see him.”
“His house at the end of the Hollow road?”
“Only house up there.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Your name again?”
“Dave Gurney.”
“NYPD?”
“Homicide. Retired.”
“Good luck. By the way, make sure it’s daylight.”
“Daylight?”
“Merle don’t like people on his property after dark.”
After ending the call, Gurney checked the time. It was just five after nine. If he left immediately, allowing six hours for the total round-trip drive time, plus forty-five minutes with Merle Tabor, he could be home before four.
He had some phone calls to make, but he could make them en route. He paid Marika for the coffees, left a generous tip, and set out for Parkston.
As he was heading southwest through the long river valley toward Pennsylvania, he made the first call—to Madeleine. It went to her voicemail. He left a detailed message explaining where he was going and why. Then he checked his own voicemail and discovered that she’d left a message for him since he’d had his phone shut off all morning. He played it back.
“Hi. I just arrived at the clinic. I don’t know if that Thrash
er person was there when you were leaving for Abelard’s this morning, but when I was leaving at eight forty I saw his fancy car down by our barn. I don’t like the idea of him coming up on our property whenever he feels like it. In fact, I don’t like him being there at all. We need to talk. Soon. See you later.”
Aside from feeling the automatic negative reaction he felt whenever Madeleine raised a problem, he had to admit he wasn’t especially pleased with Thrasher’s presence either. And he certainly wasn’t pleased with the man’s secretiveness about what he was looking for.
His next call was to Torres—to raise a point he’d meant to bring up at Abelard’s, before he was distracted by the young detective’s slide into self-doubt.
He got his voicemail.
“Mark, it’s Dave Gurney. I want to suggest something. If Cory Payne wasn’t the shooter at the Bridge Street apartment building, obviously someone else was. You need to take another look at the traffic and security videos. The shooter may have used that red motocross bike. Or another vehicle. Even a police car. If the pattern from Poulter Street is repeated, he may have tried to stick to side streets to avoid being caught on camera. He may even have walked most or all of the way. But there are a hell of a lot more cameras in that part of town than around Poulter Street, and I’d be willing to bet he ended up within range of at least one of them. Unless you actually recognize a vehicle you know, you’ll have to go by the timing—looking for vehicles that enter and then leave the area at times consistent with the shooting. It’ll be a time-consuming job, but it could break the case.”
His next call, as he crossed a modest bridge over the headwaters of the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, was to the Episcopal rector in White River.
The man’s greeting was so smoothly delivered that Gurney thought for a second he’d reached another voicemail recording. “Good morning! This is Whittaker Coolidge at Saint Thomas the Apostle. How can I help you?”
“This is Dave Gurney.”
“Dave. I was just thinking about you. Any encouraging news?”
“Some progress, but I’m calling with a question.”
“Fire away.”
“It’s for Cory, actually, unless you happen to know the answer. I need to know if he’s ever owned any thirty-aught-six rifle cartridges.”
“Didn’t you raise that point when you were here?”
“I said that the police found a box of cartridges in his closet and—”
Coolidge cut him off. “And he denied it. Vehemently.”
“I know. This is a different question. I want to know if he’s ever owned any—or maybe just had a few in his possession, maybe holding them for someone else. Maybe just for a day.”
“I seriously doubt it. He hates guns.”
“I understand, but I still need to know if he’s ever had any sort of contact with any thirty-aught-six cartridges. And if so, what the circumstances were. Would you pass the question along to him?”
“I will.” There was an edge of annoyance in Coolidge’s cultured voice. “I’m just giving you a preview of the likely answer.”
Gurney forced himself to smile. He’d read somewhere that speaking through a smiling mouth made one sound friendlier, and he wanted to maintain the rector’s goodwill. “I really appreciate your help with this, Whit. Cory’s answer could make a big difference in the case.” He was tempted to add that the time factor was crucial, but he didn’t want to push his luck.
In fact, adding that note of urgency turned out to be unnecessary. Less than five minutes later, he received a call from Payne.
His tone was brusque. “I’m not sure I understand your question. I thought I explained that I don’t have a gun. You’re still asking if I have bullets?”
“Or if you ever did. Thirty-aught-sixes.”
“I’ve never owned a gun. I’ve never owned bullets of any kind.”
“Have you ever had any in your possession? Perhaps storing them for someone else. Or buying them and passing them along. Possibly as a favor for someone?”
“I’ve never done anything like that. Why?”
“Two cartridge casings were found with your fingerprints on them.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’ve been told the prints are of good quality.”
“I said it’s impossible! I don’t own a gun. I don’t own bullets. I’ve never bought bullets, kept bullets in my apartment, or held bullets for anyone else. Period! End of story!” The words came racing out, his voice brittle with anger.
“Then there must be another explanation.”
“Obviously!”
“Okay, Cory. You think about it, I’ll think about it, maybe we’ll figure it out.”
Payne said nothing.
Gurney ended the call.
A minute later his phone rang. It was Payne. “I thought of something—something that happened two, three months ago.” He was still speaking rapidly, but the anger was gone. “My father was having one of his brief human periods. We were—”
“Human periods?”
“Every once in a while he’d act like a normal person, actually talk to me. It would only last a day, if even that, then he’d go back to being God.”
“Okay. Sorry, I interrupted what you were starting to say.”
“So the time I’m talking about, we had lunch. We managed to get through our burgers without him telling me what a waste I was. Then we drove out to his cabin. You know what reloading is?”
“You’re referring to custom-making ammunition?”
“Exactly. He’s a gun fanatic. Him and Turlock. In fact, they share that cabin. For hunting.”
“Why did he take you there?”
“His idea of a father-son thing? He said he wanted me to help him do some reloading. Like it was a privilege. Allowing me into the world of guns and hunting—murdering animals. So he’s got this contraption that funnels gunpowder into the brass part, and a thing that pushes the bullet part in. He’s got this intense look, like he loves doing this. How crazy is that?”
“He wanted you to help him?”
“He had some little boxes to put the reloaded ones in. He had me doing that.”
“So you were handling those cartridges?”
“Putting them in boxes. I didn’t think of it at first, when you were asking about having bullets in my possession. I didn’t think of it that way.”
“Do you know if they were thirty-aught-sixes?”
“I have no idea.”
“You say this happened two or three months ago?”
“Something like that. And you know what? Now that I think of it, that was the last time I saw him—until I saw him calling me a murderer on TV.”
“Where were you living at the time?”
“The apartment I still have. I heard the asshole cops tore it apart.”
“How long have you lived there?”
“A little over three years.”
“How did you find it?”
“When I first came to White River, I stayed at my father’s house for a couple of months. I started taking computer science courses at the community college in Larvaton, and I got a job at that computer repair shop in town. There was an apartment for rent upstairs in that same building. Living with my father and his sickening bitch of a wife wasn’t working. So I took the apartment. How does any of this matter?”
Gurney ignored the question. “You’ve been there ever since?”
“Yes.”
“Ever try going back to your father’s house?”
“No. I stayed over a few times. I could never stay more than one night. I’d rather sleep in the street.”
As Payne was speaking, Gurney slowed down and pulled into a gas station. He parked by the seedy-looking convenience store in back of the pumps.
“I have another question for you. How did you meet Blaze?”
Payne hesitated. “I met her through her half brother. Darwin. He owns the computer b
usiness where I work. Why are we talking about Blaze?”
“She’s prominent in the Black Defense Alliance. The case against you involves your connection to that. And she lent you the car you drove to the shooting sites.”
“I told you the case against me is bullshit! And I explained why I went to those places!”
“What kind of a relationship do you have with her?”
“Sex. Fun. Kind of an on-and-off thing. Nothing serious. No commitments.”
He found it hard to imagine this tense, sharp-edged, angry young man having fun.
“How did she feel about Marcel Jordan and Virgil Tooker?”
“She didn’t talk about them.”
Gurney made a mental note to probe that further, then changed the subject.
“Do you know anything about the legal difficulty Judd Turlock got into when he and your father were teenagers in school together?”
There was a moment of silence. “What difficulty?”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about?”
Another moment of silence. “I’m not sure. I think there was something . . . something that happened. But I don’t know what it was. I haven’t thought about this for years.”
“Haven’t thought about what?”
“When I was a kid . . . when they were both still with the state police . . . they were talking one night in the den about some judge down in Virginia . . . some judge who’d taken care of something for Judd years earlier . . . something that could have been a huge problem. When they saw me at the door they stopped talking. I remember it felt weird, like I wasn’t supposed to have heard them. I guess whatever it was must have happened when they were in school, because I know the school was in Virginia. But I don’t know if that’s the same thing you’re talking about.”
“Neither do I. By the way, where did you have lunch?”
