“From who?”
“I have a terrible memory for names. I heard you don’t like him. Is that true?”
“True enough.”
“But you and Dell are so much alike.”
“How?”
“You’re both strong . . . determined . . . attractive.”
Gurney cleared his throat. “What do you think of his son?”
“Cory the Monster? Too bad he didn’t shoot himself instead of those cops.”
“What if he didn’t shoot those cops?”
“What are you talking about? Of course he did.”
“Why?”
“Why? To attack Dell any way he could? To show him how much he hated him? To act out his little power fantasies? Why does any maniac kill anyone?”
Gurney remained silent for a while before asking, “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
She turned halfway toward him on the couch, letting her robe ride up higher on her legs. “I wanted to tell you that you could be on the winning side of this. The farther Dell goes, the farther we all go.” She smiled slowly, holding his gaze. “It could be a fun ride.”
He stood up from the couch. “I’m not really a fun guy.”
“Oh, I’m sure you could be. I can tell a lot from a man’s hands. You just need the right encouragement.”
Halfway between Lockenberry and Walnut Crossing, Gurney stopped at Snook’s Green World Nursery. He knew Madeleine liked the place for its unusual selection of plants and the horticultural tips she got from Tandy Snook. He was thinking he’d pick up something special for one of her flower beds. He was also hoping that the task would dislodge the remarkably vivid thoughts he was having about Trish Gelter.
Those thoughts, of course, were divorced from reality in more ways than one. There was the simple fact that he would never want to destroy the closeness of his relationship with Madeleine with the secrets and lies required by any affair, however brief. And then there was the matter of Trish herself. Although the woman was quite open about her availability, her motives might not be. It would be no surprise to discover that everything in that peculiar house was being recorded. And a video of certain activities could be employed later to influence one’s actions, even the course of an investigation. Despite Trish’s pointed mention on the phone that her husband was away in the Hamptons, he may have been aware of her intentions—may even have encouraged them. Or he may not have been away at all.
They did not seem to be, in any normal sense of the word, nice people.
As Gurney stepped out of his car in front of the nursery’s greenhouses, he spotted Rob Snook striding in his direction, sporting that golly-gee smile of a particularly annoying sort of churchgoer. He was a short, well-fed man whose eyes sparkled with shallowness.
“Dan Gurney, if I recall, husband of Marlene! A pleasure to see you on this beautiful day the Lord has given us! How can I serve you today? Florals or edibles?”
“Flowers.”
“Annuals or perennials?”
“Perennials.”
“Small, medium, or large?”
“Large.”
Snook squinted thoughtfully for a moment, then thrust a victorious forefinger in the air. “Giant delphiniums! Purple and blue! Absolutely glorious! The perfect thing!”
Once the delphiniums were stowed securely in the back seat of the Outback, Gurney decided to call Mark Torres for an update before resuming his drive home.
The young detective picked up immediately. He sounded agitated.
“Dave? I was just going to call you. I’ve been doing what you suggested, going through the street videos from the night Steele was killed.”
“You found something.”
“I did. I’m about a third of the way through the digital files, and Judd Turlock’s Explorer has popped up twice. Fairly close to the apartment location, and the timing factor is right.”
“What do you mean by ‘fairly close’?”
“The video the Explorer appears on comes from a security camera mounted over the door of a jewelry store two blocks away.”
A beep alerted Gurney that another call was coming in, but he let it go to his voicemail.
“Tell me about the timing.”
“The Explorer passes the camera going in the direction of Bridge Street about forty minutes before the shooting. Then passes in the opposite direction eight minutes after it.”
“Did the camera get a shot of the driver?”
“No. Wrong angle.”
“If I remember correctly, there’s no video available of the apartment building front entrance, just the street shot showing the way into the back alley. Is that right?”
“Right. But if the timing of the Explorer’s coming and going isn’t related to the shooting, that would be a pretty big coincidence.”
“I agree.”
“I’ll go through the rest of the video material we have, and I’ll let you know what I find.”
“Thanks, Mark. You’re doing a great job.”
“One other thing, in case you weren’t aware of it—Carlton Flynn is going to be interviewing Maynard Biggs tonight.”
Gurney almost asked who Maynard Biggs was, then recalled Whittaker Coolidge mentioning him as the man Dell Beckert would be contending with for the state AG position.
That, he realized, could make it a very interesting interview.
41
As Gurney resumed his trip home to Walnut Crossing, it seemed to him there was no end to the odd twists in the entangled White River cases—all reinforcing Cory Payne’s stated suspicion that it was really one case with multiple victims.
Torres’s video discovery of Turlock’s SUV in the vicinity of Bridge Street provided some support for the framing theory, although it fell far short of proving that Turlock was the actual shooter. The lack of video evidence that Turlock himself was in the vehicle that night didn’t help. It could have been Beckert. But Gurney was in no position to demand alibis from the people running the investigation.
Still, there were steps that could be taken. The relationship between Turlock and Beckert suggested their shared hunting cabin might be a place worth visiting.
He had a general idea where the gun club preserve was located. He decided to get in touch with Torres for directions to the cabin. He parked in his usual spot by the mudroom door. The call went to voicemail, and he left a message explaining what he needed.
He got out of the car and was stopped for a moment by the sweetness of the spring air. He took a few slow, deep breaths, stretched his back, and looked around at all the shades of green in the high pasture. The scene seemed to drain the tension out of his muscles. It also reminded him of the delphiniums in the Outback. He got them out of the back seat and placed them, still in their plastic pots, alongside Madeleine’s main flower bed.
He went into the house, took a quick shower, fixed himself a plate of scrambled eggs and ham, and washed it down with a large glass of orange juice.
By the time he’d washed his dishes it was a quarter past seven, the sun was just setting behind the western ridge, and the air coming in through the open French doors had become noticeably cooler.
He retrieved his laptop from the den, along with the USB drive containing the Mercy Hospital personnel list, and settled into an armchair by the fireplace.
Before getting into the list he decided to check his email. The server had been troublesome lately, and the items were downloading with painful slowness. He put his head back, closed his eyes, and waited.
He opened them with a start nearly an hour later. His phone was ringing. The time was 8:03 PM. The caller was Cory Payne.
“Maynard Biggs is on RAM-TV. Being interviewed by that scumbag Flynn. You have to watch.”