Mr. Turner (ターナー Tāna), first introduced as the 'whiskered pig', is the railroad company executive responsible for ruining the career of Rachel's father after blaming him for a railroad accident that Turner's own arrogance caused. He is one of the passengers caught up in the mayhem aboard the transcontinental express Flying Pussyfoot in 1931.
Appearance
Turner is a rotund, mustached man with black hair. He flaunts his wealth by carrying around obscene amounts of cash and wearing luxury-brand jewelry, though it looks less like he is wearing them and more like he is displaying them.
There is no existing drawing of him in the light novels.
Personality
Turner is a racist and xenophobic braggart who has no shame when it comes to flaunting his wealth and generally acting pompous and vulgar. In his selfishness, he shows no remorse when it comes to ruining the lives of others and acts in his best interests only. 'Piggish' aptly describes him in both appearance and personality.
Personality
Pre-1931
Around ten years prior to the departure of the Flying Pussyfoot - approximately in 1921 - Turner repeatedly ignored the warnings of multiple railroad technicians (led by Rachel's father) that one of their trains had a faulty component and needed a replacement from management. Turner's and the company's cheapness inevitably led to a large railroad accident, the blame for which Turner placed solely on the shoulders of Rachel's father. The move would ruin Rachel's father; Turner, meanwhile, kept his job and got away scot-free.
1931-1932
On the evening of December 30, Turner settles into a first-class compartment aboard the transcontinental luxury express Flying Pussyfoot, bound for New York from Chicago's Union Station. A few hours into the journey, Turner heads to the dining car for a luxurious dinner and spends the meal bragging about himself to anyone who will listen. He claims that he practically invented the opportunity for one to be able to ride a train in such luxury in the first place.
Turner's evening sours when the dining car is subjected to a three-way hijacking by the Black Suits, the White Suit Vicky, and Nick from Jacuzzi's Gang. Nick runs off, and Vicky is shot dead - but he manages to fell at least one Black Suit and wound another. The White Suit's leader Ladd Russo arrives and brutally assaults the third Black Suit while the wounded one makes his escape. After briefly speaking with Natalie Beriam, he exits the car with his comrades.
For a while afterwards, all the passengers except for Isaac & Miria are too nervous to do much more than sit and wait. The tense atmosphere eventually gives way to fear, and many of them begin pelting the kitchen staff with question after question. Turner is the most vocal of them all, directing his anger towards the Irish bartender Jon Panel and the Chinese assistant cook Fang Lin-Shan. Referring to them by slurs and epithets, he demands that they refund his ticket price and for them to emerge from their hiding place in the kitchen.
Isaac and Miria, fed up with Turner's rudeness, shove a wad of one hundred bills at him as a 'refund' and rant about how he is without a doubt an awful person. They throw another wad of bills at him and demand he 'disappear', since now that his ticket has been refunded he is no longer a passenger or a customer. The kitchen's head chef Gregoire uses this as an excuse to give Jon and Fang permission to throw Turner out, which they do with vicious pleasure. Threatening Turner with his icepick, Jon reminds Turner that the Irish and Chinese built the railroads that crisscross America before smacking him and turning to reenter the dining car. At Turner's pleas, they warn him that they will kill him should he try to return to the car.
Turner wanders the second-class carriages in hopeless fear, until all of a sudden one of the doors to the second class compartments opens and out steps a young man with bangs covering his eyes. The young man comments on all the frightening men that have been walking past his door and invites Turner inside his cabin and away from the dangerous halls. Turner does so, still unable to comprehend why such terrible things are happening to him despite all his money.
The young man wonders why 'he' was there, leading Turner to think he knows something about the terrorists hijacking the train. The young man clarifies that he saw a pair of children walking down the hallway before Turner arrived, and Turner faintly recalls that he might have seen Mary Beriam and Czeslaw Meyer exiting the car earlier. The young man reveals that according to a file at the Bureau Czes is actually a terrorist with multiple aliases, regularly injecting himself with chemicals that halt his physical growth.
Turner immediately latches onto the word 'Bureau', connecting the young man to the Bureau of Investigation. The young man admits that he used to be with the BOI, but was fired when he made trouble for a 'hopeless superior.' Turner demands that the young man do his duty and arrest the terrorists, even going so far as to shove money at the young man when he reminds Turner that he was fired and does not 'work for free.' Finally taking the money as 'down payment', the young man tells Turner to stay hidden in the compartment while he takes a look around.
Before the young man exits the room, he introduces himself as Victor Talbot. Turner has no way of knowing that the young man is actually Lebreau Fermet Viralesque.
Turner becomes more and more trepidant while waiting for 'Victor' - or rather, Fermet - to return, and Fermet returns right as he's considering that Fermet took his jewelry and ran for it. Fermet announces that he has found the perfect hiding place just ahead, prompting Turner to follow him out of the cabin. Fermet takes the lead, with Turner muttering that since Fermet took his money and jewelry he had better be prepared to act as Turner's shield.
The two continue down the corridor, eventually running into the fallen corpse of a White Suit, a bloody stab wound in its back. Fermet assures Turner that the White Suit's killer has moved on to another car, implicating Czes to be the culprit. Turner cannot believe that a 'little boy like that' could have killed a grown man, and Fermet reiterates that Czes is actually a twentysomething 'heinous criminal' who uses his appearance to trick his victims and stab them in the back. As Turner grows slowly more convinced, Fermet continues that he mustn't trust anyone on the train, not even women or children. Citing his credentials as a former investigator, he suggests that Turner 'not hesitate' if approached by a suspicious individual.
Fermet retrieves the rifle lying next to the White Suit and hands it to Turner as a 'self-defense' weapon. Armed and thus emboldened, Turner relaxes slightly and decides that he paid Fermet too much earlier in 'down payment' and wheedles that they could perhaps just call it his full pay instead. He turns around for Fermet's answer, only to find that he has disappeared. His upper hand lost, Turner cries out for 'Victor' to quit messing around. It slowly dawns on him that by 'hiding place' Fermet meant the tiny janitor's closet located only a few feet away from the corpse.
With hiding in the broom closet out of the question, Turner resumes wandering around in abject terror - this time clutching a weapon in hand. He grows obsessed with the idea that he has to kill someone - someone who is trying to kill him, whomever that may be. Resolute, Turner lurks around in second class for some time in search of a someone who looks easily killable. This means that he does absolutely nothing when Ladd Russo and Donny the giant pass him on separate occasions - and when a third White Suit called Lua Klein eventually run by, he calls out to her without success.
Eventually Turner comes across a wounded woman (Rachel) sitting on the connecting platform outside the third class carriage. Deeming her the killable 'sacrifice' he'd been searching for, he raises his rifle and aims it at her with the accusation that she is one of the White Suits - although her clothes make it very obvious that she is not, in fact, a White Suit. When he asserts that everything he's achieved in life has been built on the conviction that his ideas are never wrong, Rachel asks if he wasn't wrong about 'that accident.'
At Turner's obvious confusion, Rachel brings up the ten-year-old train accident, accusing Turner of ignoring the technicians' advice and them blaming them for the horrific consequences of his own actions. Turner's lunatic obsession fades and is replaced with a rational, clear intent to kill at his dark secret having been uncovered, and he demands to know who the woman is. Instead of answering, Rachel rambles about how this is 'payback' for her misdeeds and then shouts for a "red monster–no–Conductor" to kill her. Confused, Turner's trigger finger hesitates.
Someone behind Turner digs their fingers into his shoulders. Turner screams and drops his rifle at the terrible pain, tears streaming down his face. His shoulders are dislocated, and he passes out.
Turner spends the rest of the journey in the bathroom once he comes to, shaking with pain and terror. A squad of policemen discover him on December 31, and he bawls once they pop his shoulders back into place. All the dining car passengers laugh at him.
Either that day - or sometime in the ensuing days - Turner begins the process of taking legal action against Nebula, the corporation that owns the Flying Pussyfoot. His actions do not go unnoticed, and he eventually is received in Nebula's reception room by a middle-aged executive. Turner does not waste any time, blustering that he fully intends to take Nebula to court over the train's security as well as the incident with Jon and Fang (again referring to them with xenophobic and racial epithets).
The executive is unmoved, pointing out that not only has Nebula already paid sufficient reparations, a court case would cast a negative light on railroad travel and undermine Turner's business as well. As Turner feebly counters that this is more a matter of pride than money, the reception's telephone rings. The executive hands the receiver over to Turner, and Turner's initial aggressiveness is instantly tempered when he realizes who is speaking ('who' is implied to be Senator Manfred Beriam).
Turner puts down the receiver and mutters that Nebula is playing dirty by bringing in politicians. The executive replies that Beriam wants to keep the matter quiet, and at Turner's last attempt at retaliation quietly brings up Turner's dark secret and the technicians whom he is sure will be glad to testify should Nebula ask them to. Turner goes dead white, and wordlessly stands to leave. To his retreating back, the executive comments that since Beriam has his eye on Turner, Turner should work as hard as he can to ensure that his company does not become a sacrificial pawn.
On January 01, 1932, Turner barges into the Bureau of Investigation and claims that one 'Victor Talbot' defrauded him aboard the Flying Pussyfoot. Spittle flying, he faces down a BOI employee and demands that he hand over all the information the Bureau has on Victor - opining that it is the duty of civil servants to fulfill the needs of an 'exalted citizen' like himself. When the employee asks for clarification, Turner recounts his experience with 'Victor' aboard the train two days prior.
The employee asks if Turner remembers what 'Victor' looked like; Turner declares that all the employee will have to do is bring 'Victor' here and Turner will see for himself. With a heavy sigh, the BOI employee introduces himself as 'Victor Talbot' (this Victor is the real deal) and once more asks Turner to describe the imposter. In the end, Turner rants about how he doesn't remember what the imposter looked like, and Victor sees him off to the door.
Undisclosed Time
(The following scene is from 1933: (Last) The Slash ~Bloody to Fair~)
At some point post-Flying Pussyfoot incident, Turner approaches a Nebula employee - possibly Chairman Karl Muybridge himself - to discuss the possibility of Nebula loaning him some money. The employee espouses on Nebula's philosophy - that of eternal growth - and compares the Nebula corporation to a living organism, shedding assets instead of blood and inhaling their customers' laughter instead of oxygen. Through this philosophical vein, Turner is asking Nebula to lend him its own blood...which means that in accepting their loan, Turner will become a part of Nebula's 'body' as well - though the employee takes care to remind him that 'useless cells' will be cast away like worthless trash.
The employee observes that Turner has grown quite tense, and wonders what happened to the temper Turner displayed when he threatened to sue Nebula before. He suggests that Turner try sipping from the elixir of immortality if he is feeling unwell, but warns him that it is a 'tad expensive.'
1934
In December 1934, Turner travels by train from New York to Chicago on a first class ticket. He has no idea that Gustav St. Germain and Carol are occupying the first class compartment next to him, nor does he ever realize that Gustav informs Graham Specter of Turner's existence. Graham and his gang members promptly rob Turner.
Trivia
- According to Gustav St. Germain, Turner once wormed his way out of paying full price for information he bought from Gustav with the claim that he could not trust Gustav's information. He proceeded to use Gustav's information to make himself a considerable amount of money.