“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 Thrasher 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.”