“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
“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?”
“Lunch?”
“With your father, the day he took you to his cabin.”
“A place by the strip mall. I think it’s a McDonald’s. Or a Burger King. Why?”
“The more facts I have, the better.”
After Gurney ended the call he went into the convenience store. The place had a sour smell of old pizza and burned coffee. The register clerk was a tall, gaunt, vacant-eyed twentysomething male covered with a lacework of arcane tattoos. He had the rotten teeth that came with the use of methamphetamine, rural drug of choice prior to the tidal wave of heroin.
Gurney bought a bottle of water, took it out to the car, and sat there for a while pondering what Payne had told him. It was actually quite a lot. But perhaps most important was the possible explanation of how his fingerprints might have gotten on the brass casings found at both shooting sites as well as on the fast-food wrapper in the Bridge Street apartment. And if the casings and wrapper did in fact come from Payne’s day with his father, then Dell Beckert must have been involved in the framing scheme. It was a scenario that seemed to increase in ugliness the more likely it became.
As Gurney drove southwest through a progression of black-cherry copses and open pastures, he was haunted by the empty stare of the convenience store clerk and what it suggested about the rotting underside of rural life in America.
The problems, of course, weren’t just rural. Urban areas were often dirtier and more dangerous to live in. But here the contrast between the verdant beauty of the landscape and the gray hopelessness of so many of the inhabitants was jarring. Worst of all, in an age of vicious polarization, there seemed to be no acceptable way of addressing the problem. Add a few layers of racial animosity, cultural resentment, and political grandstanding, and solutions seemed far out of reach.
As he was sinking into the edgy depression these thoughts generated, his phone rang. “Private Caller” was all the ID screen revealed.
“Gurney here.”
“Dave! So glad I got you. This is Trish Gelter.”
“Trish. Hello.” The first image of her that came to mind was the last glimpse he had caught of her—a memorable rear view of her progress across the room in her slinky dress at the fund-raising party for the animal shelter. “This is a surprise. How are you?”
“That depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On how soon I can see you.”
“See me?”
“I heard a rumor you were working on that terrible shooting case.”
“Who did you hear that from?”
“I was afraid you’d ask that. I’m terrible with names. Is it true?”
“More or less. Why?”
“I thought the police had it all wrapped up.”
Gurney said nothing.
“But you don’t think so?”
“I’m not sure yet what to think.” He paused. “Is there something you wanted to tell me?”
“Yes. But not on the phone.”
“How, then?”
“Face-to-face.” She made it sound like her favorite sex position.
He hesitated. “It’s not something you can tell me now?”
“It’s too complicated.” She sounded pouty. “And I’d really like to see you.”
Again he hesitated. “Where would you like to meet?”
