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 business 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?”
“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.