“You think somebody’s putting the kid in the frame?”
“I do.”
He gave Gurney another expressionless stare. “What’s any of this got to do with what happened in Butris County nearly thirty years ago?”
“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about Turlock. Maybe I’m looking for something to justify it. Maybe some insight into who he really is.” He paused. “There’s another aspect to this. Beckert is probably going to run for state attorney general. If he wins, Turlock is virtually certain to be deputy AG. Powerful position. Makes me uncomfortable.”
Tabor’s jaw muscles tightened. After a long silence, he seemed to reach a decision. “Let me see your phone.”
Gurney took it out of his pocket and held it up.
“Turn it off.”
He did.
“Lay it down where I can see it.”
Gurney placed it in the truck bed.
“This is not something I want recorded,” said Tabor. He paused, staring down at his hands. “I haven’t talked about this in years. Of course, it still comes to mind. Even came to me in a nightmare once.”
He paused again, longer this time, then met Gurney’s gaze. “Judd Turlock talked a retarded black man into hanging himself.”
“There was a creek with a swimming hole off the back of the Bayard-Whitson campus. There was a high bank with a big elm tree. Branch went out over the swimming hole. Boys used to tie a rope to it, swing out over the water, let go. One day Turlock and Beckert were there. There was a third boy sitting a little ways down the bank. And there was George Montgomery, sitting in his underwear in a shallow part of the creek. George was twenty years old, mentally maybe five or six, son of one of the kitchen help. There’s two stories of what happened next. One story, told by the boy sitting on the bank, is that Turlock called to George to come up and join them. George came up, shy like, and Turlock showed him how he could take the rope and swing out over the water. Except he went on to show him it would be safer if he tied the loose end of the rope around his neck, so it wouldn’t get in the way. George did like he was told. Then he swung out over the creek.” Tabor paused before adding in a strained voice. “That was that. George hung there, out over the middle of the swimming hole, kicking, strangling. Until he was dead.”
“What was Turlock’s version?”
“That he never said a word to George, that George came up on the bank, wanting to use the rope like he’d seen other people do. He somehow got all tangled up in it, and once he swung himself out there, they had no way of reaching him.”
“And Beckert told the same story?”
“Of course.”
“Then what?”
“The kid on the bank took a lie detector test and passed. We considered him a highly credible witness. The prosecutor agreed we should charge Turlock with manslaughter and petition to have him tried as an adult.”
“So at trial it was Turlock’s and Beckert’s word against the word of the kid on the bank?”
“Never got that far. The kid changed his story. Said he didn’t actually hear what was being said. Maybe Turlock was saying to George
“Someone got to him?”
“The Turlock family. Lots of money. Long history of corrupt construction deals with the county board. Judge dismissed our case and sealed the file. And Judd Turlock walked away from a sadistic murder without a goddamn scratch. There were times . . . times I must admit I came damn close to ending his life the way he ended George’s. Used to think about him strangling on the end of a goddamn rope. Thinking about it right now makes me wish I’d done it.”
“Sounds like Beckert was as much a part of it as Turlock.”
“That’s a fact. While we were thinking we had a case, we went back and forth on how to deal with him, but it all fell apart before we decided anything.”
“Did it occur to you at the time that it might have been Beckert’s idea?”
“Lot of things occurred to us.”
A silence fell between them, broken by Gurney. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did you move up here?”
“Wasn’t so much about moving here as leaving there. The Montgomery case changed everything. I approached it pretty aggressively. I didn’t leave any doubt with the Turlocks how I felt about their piece-of-shit son. They got the local racists riled up, claiming I was favoring a retarded black man over a nice white boy. Meanwhile my daughter was seeing a black man, who she ended up marrying, and the local reaction was ugly. I was counting the days till I could get my pension. I knew I had to get out of there before I killed someone.”
In the ensuing silence the thumping of the heavy bag seemed to grow louder.
“My granddaughter,” said Tabor.
“It sounds like she knows what she’s doing.”
Tabor nodded, came around from behind the pickup bed and gestured for Gurney to follow him to the corner of the big cabin.
