by Justin Scott
I stood alone awhile, watching the activity below. Fox Trot resembled a parking lot at a Public Safety convention. Four Newbury fire engines had responded. So had the volunteer ambulance. And a big square truck that belonged to the Frenchtown Rescue Unit. Pinkerton Chevalley showed up next in the Peterbilt wrecker, reasoning that by the end of day someone would need pulling out of the mud.
A fourth helicopter thudded to a landing beside King’s bunkerized house. No markings. I decided to walk down to the dam for a closer look.
What I saw when I got there was that the senior agents of the various federal agencies that had descended from the sky had gathered up at Henry King’s house. The second string, younger agents, hung around Ollie’s crime scene tape at the edge of the dam site, noses to the window as it were. The ATF wore yellow, the FBI blue, the Secret Service jogging suits of many colors, and the CIA blue jeans and cowboy shirts.
Trooper Oliver Moody wore gray, and I must admit that for a sadistic, stupid local cop who ruled his turf by terror, Newbury’s resident state trooper did the town proud. The Federal officers were all trying to order him around. But Ollie had enjoyed a long career maintaining his independence from superior officers at the state police barracks, and his crisp “Yes sirs!” were rich with undertones of scorn for clueless bureaucrats.
He had help from old Dr. Greenan, who shuffled around in rubber riding boots and a rumpled seersucker jacket that had seen many summers. Steve reminded the agents pestering him that as a Plainfield County assistant medical examiner he was in charge of a death scene until he ordered the body moved and it would move a lot quicker if they could kindly get out of his way. To an agent dumb enough to claim jurisdiction over the dam by right of national security, Dr. Steve said, “‘National security’ lives up in that house. Down here’s Connecticut. And it’s going to stay Connecticut until we gather up the man who died here.”
I suddenly hungered for life and went looking for it in Vicky McLachlan. I had seen death, before. In prison. And once in the Service. But nothing like the scattering of Dicky’s body. My family were all buried in the churchyard. I had grown vaguely in favor of cremation. Now I understood the mummy’s hope of remaining intact.
I asked a pair of Frenchtown Rescue skin divers—the Meadows brothers, wet-suited, fin-footed, and be-tanked, with coils of orange safety line over their shoulders—if they’d seen Vicky and they told me that she was looking for me, too, and that I’d find her in the ambulance.
Ollie waylaid me halfway there and ordered me inside the perimeter he had taped. “I want a statement, Ben. You the first to find the body?”
“I was first to find his leg.”
He wrote that down. “How come you told me it was Dicky Butler?”
“I recognized his boot.”
“It’s covered in mud.”
“I could still see the tooling. They were neat boots.” I didn’t tell Ollie, but I remembered how Dicky wouldn’t wear them in the mud.
“All you saw was his boot?”
“And his hand.”
“How’d you know it was his hand?”
“I recognized his glove. It was deerskin.”
“I didn’t see any glove—You find a right or a left?”
I didn’t want to think about it, but memory erupted. “I found his right hand.”
“Yeah, well mine was a left and didn’t have a glove.”
“His right hand had a glove. Jesus—” I’d been so thrown, I’d forgotten: “You better warn Steve Greenan Dicky was HIV-positive.”
An emotion I had never seen before on Ollie’s face—fear—flickered briefly. He was probably trying to remember if Dicky had bled last time he had hit him. “Stay here!” He ran into the mud and spoke to Steve Greenan. Steve was way ahead of us. He waved thumbs up in surgical gloves.
When Ollie came back, I said, “It is Dicky, isn’t it?”
Ollie smiled. “Yeah, it’s him all right. Steve just found a tattoo.”
“Trooper Moody!” called an ATF agent.
“Yes, sir!”
“How much longer?”
“Soon as the assistant medical examiner says so. Sir!”
“We’re going to lose the light.”
“Plainfield’s sending lights. Sir!”
He turned back to me and, with a private sneer for the Feds, asked confidentially, one Connecticut Yankee to another, “You knew the whacked-out bastard. Any idea why he’d blow Mr. King’s dam?”
“No. Sir!”
As soon as Henry King reported the feud, many, many officers, including detectives from the state police major case squad, would be asking me that same question. I would answer, of course. But on general principles, and with no wish to advance Oliver Moody’s career, I was damned if I was going rat Dicky out to him.
“Thought you two were buddies.”
“Jailbirds flock together?”
Ollie’s jaw tightened like a cast iron drain trap. Before he could threaten me, movement caught his eye and he turned angrily on a man in green who was ducking under the crime tape. “Where the hell are you going?”
The man waved credentials. “Department of Environmental Protection.”
“So?”
“We got a dam collapse, here, Trooper. Falls under DEP jurisdiction.”
Ollie jerked a thumb in the direction of the ATF, FBI, CIA and Secret Service agents glowering at him and each other. “Get on line.”
“Trooper Moody!” called a clear, low melodious voice. Ollie spun smartly on his heel, saluting a handsome young woman with short dark hair and eyes as gray as Ollie’s prowl car.
“Crime scene secured, Ma’am,” he said in his coldest, most correct, most dripping-with-contempt-for-female-superior-officers voice.
Major Case Squad Detective-Sergeant Marian Boyce raked me with a dubious eye. “Then what’s he doing inside the perimeter?”
“He found the body.”
“What body? I thought this was an explosives thing.”
“The jerk forgot to let go of them. Name’s Dicky Butler. Just got out of Somers last March. Lived up the hill.”
Sergeant Marian turned to me. “Friend of yours?”
“I knew him.”
“Figures. What were you doing here?”
“I was a guest at Mr. King’s party.”
“What were you doing down here in the mud?”
“Carrying the Newbury first selectman.”
Marian shot me a don’t-screw-with-me look, and I added, “She cut her foot. I was carrying her when I noticed Dicky’s boot.”
Marian looked out at the mud, then down at her running shoes. Plain clothes, this Saturday afternoon, included pleasingly snug blue jeans and a soft polo shirt. She was carrying a baseball cap and I suspected the call had interrupted a day with her little boy.
“The mud’s not deep,” I said. “Except right below the dam.”
“Trooper, have you concluded your interview with Mr. Abbott?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Is that Dr. Greenan down there?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Would you please tell Dr. Greenan I’d like a word with him when it’s convenient.”
Ollie saluted and hurried down there. Marian said to me, “What’s this about?”
“Neighbor feud. King and Dicky’s father were going at it.”
“About what?”
“Ostensibly a land thing. A lease dispute. But I think it was really about Vietnam.”
“Vietnam?”
“King helped run the war. Mr. Butler got shot in the war. Three times. Also, it was a money thing—rich guy versus farmer. And a country-city thing—rich city guy versus farmer.”
“I assume we’re talking about the Dicky Butler.”
“The farmer’s son. Though, he was calming down a little.”
“Oh that’s quite obvious,” said Marian, with a nod at the devastation. “How do you happen to kno
w all this?”
“King asked me to mediate.”
“Hope you got your fee up front.” She slipped on her baseball cap and said, “Thanks for the help. Stay available please, and out of the way.”
She walked me to the tape and lifted it so I could step under. We had a lot of history, much of it pleasant. Right now I wanted to cling to something pleasant.
“Detective-Sergeant Boyce, may I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Did you like the flowers?”
“What flowers?”
“The roses? From my garden. Flowers I left with my note.”
“The note breaking our date.”
“Apologizing….I hope you liked them.”
Marian’s eyes roamed the bomb site as she answered me. “I figured the flowers were from a guy I’d been out with. That’s how I usually get flowers. From guys who keep a date. They send them after the date. I guess it’s their way of saying they had a good time. I mean, I wouldn’t know, I’m not a guy, but do you think maybe that’s why they send me flowers, because they kept a date with me and had a good time and maybe they’re hoping we’ll get it on again?”
“I had to go to New York.”
“Almost didn’t make it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The road cop who wrote the ticket on 84 thought you were drunk, weaving like that.”
There were only about a thousand troopers and detectives on the entire state police force. Marian, in the vanguard of women officers, had made her share of enemies, but as her star had risen on merit she’d slowly become accepted as one of the boys. So dating her was like dating a woman with a lot of big brothers.
She gave me a moment to wonder what else the road cop had told her. Then, “Did your passenger find that contact lens she dropped in your lap?”
“My passenger was my old friend Rita Long, unexpectedly and very briefly in town. In fact, I was driving her to the airport. She was flying back to Hong Kong.”
“I’ll bet the pilots couldn’t wait.”
Marian went to work down at the dam and I walked over to the Newbury Ambulance where Vicky was sitting on the tailgate dangling a bandaged foot and surrounded by federal agents going out of their way to cooperate with local government. She regarded me coolly. “Are the state police grateful for your input?”
“How’s your foot?”
“I need stitches.”
“Steve’s tied up. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
“No way. These guys are giving me a ride in a helicopter.”
The various “guys” showed their teeth. I left before they got into a gun fight over whose helicopter would perform the rescue mission, and wandered in a daze, up toward the house.
“Real life” games with Marian hadn’t helped at all. If anything, I felt worse, which surprised me. I had no claim to major grief for Dicky. We hardly knew each other. Maybe we had been drawn unexpectedly close, having re-connected at a turning point in his life. Maybe it was that we were mutual outsiders in our town—the “jailbirds” who flocked together in minds like Trooper Moody’s. Bad apples. Trouble.
“Halt!”
My way was blocked by a humorless Secret Service with a plastic earpiece in his ear and a hand on a bulge in his windbreaker. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was go home. I told him that, explained my car was around the front of the house in the motor court, explained that I was the local real estate agent and a guest at the party and gave him my card and guaranteed that if anyone wanted to talk to me they could find me in the white Georgian on Main Street a couple of doors from the flagpole.
He repeated all this into his lapel mike. I noticed a full magnum of Veuve Clicquot going to waste in an ice bucket, took a very deep slug, and slipped the still-bubbly bottle under my arm.
The guy gave me a look. I ignored him. I don’t generally loot parties, but the bottle was open, and I knew damned well I’d need help sleeping tonight.
Josh Wiggens, grim-faced and stone cold sober, came to escort me to the motor court. He didn’t bother to hide the gun in his waistband.
“Do you know this man, sir?” the Secret Service guy asked.
“He’s harmless.” The former CIA officer had the guest list on a clip board. “What kind of car, Mr. Abbott?”
“’85 Olds. Light green.”
“Mr. Abbott, there is no ’85 light green Olds parked in the parking lot.”
“Dark green Fiat, sorry.”
They looked at me like a Nazi spy claiming Babe Ruth played for the Dodgers.
“It’s my mom’s car. I forgot, I borrowed my mom’s car.”
Wiggens walked me to the Fiat, checked the registration, and radioed the gate to let me out. The bottle I propped in my lap drew a glance of patrician contempt. I gave him one back. If, as I suspected, his permanent houseguest rent included responsibility for Fox Trot security, Josh Wiggens had screwed up big time and we both knew it.
The Secret Service had taken over the gatehouse. The Chevalley boys were nowhere in sight. Nor was Julia Devlin.
I drove slowly down the mountain, wondering if I should call on Mr. Butler—grateful for his request not to—and marveling at how capricious was an explosion that blew one glove off a man’s hand and left the other.
Chapter 9
Round numbers: Ten billion pounds of explosives are detonated every year, ninety percent in mining, leaving a hearty billion for construction use. ANFOs—ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixes of Oklahoma City notoriety—are by far the most common, being inexpensive and safe. But they don’t do well in damp. So at Lake Vixen the honor had likely gone to a water gel: ammonium nitrate mixed with aluminum. Or TNT: sticks of good old-fashioned dynamite.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms chemists were determining which. If it was a “sold product,” then traces of the explosive might reveal “flags”: molecular bits added at the factory to track where the batch was sold and who bought it. That person could expect bad-tempered visitors in flak vests.
I learned all this shortly after I woke up Sunday morning to a ferocious champagne headache, the phone ringing and the doorbell chiming. The phone was closer. I located my watch before I picked it up. Business hours.
“Benjamin Abbott Realty.”
“Mr. Abbott.”
“Speaking.”
“Special Agent Cirillo, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Hold on, please. There’s someone at the door.”
I climbed into jeans and slipped on a shirt and padded barefoot downstairs buttoning it, to the front door where two cop-looking guys announced they were from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and wanted a word with me.
I invited them in, told them I was making coffee before anyone got a word from me, led them into the kitchen, started a pot and picked up the extension and told the FBI the ATF had arrived first; as I couldn’t let them roam the house unattended, I would talk to them first and call him back. Special Agent Cirillo said he would come by personally within the hour. And that pretty much set the pattern for the rest of Sunday.
Henry King had fingered me as the failed local peacemaker. So when the Feds got done at Fox Trot, they sent physical evidence to their bomb labs, ordered their first string agents back to Washington, and dispatched the junior agents down the mountain for confirmation of the feud and any additional light Benjamin Abbott III could throw on the subject of Dicky Butler.
Concerning the land feud, I told them what I had told Sergeant Marian, minus my speculations on the Vietnam source of anger. About Dicky Butler I had less to contribute. It didn’t matter. The life Dicky had wasted was very much part of the public record. Besides, all they really wanted was proof that the attack was personal, not political, so they could report back to Washington that the former head of the National Security Council had not been attacked by foreign religious fanatics, right wing militia, or left wing radicals. Who could blame them?
The Secret Service popped in as the FBI was leaving, a couple of little guys as trim and hyperactive as Jack Russell terriers. We went over the same ground.
Then the Connecticut State Police arrived in the persons of Sergeant Marian and her partner Arnie Bender, a short, tough city-bred detective. He and I had clashed on occasion, as I had with Marian, but without the boy-girl interest to ease our grievances. Arnie looked like he wanted to toss the house on general principles.
Marian demanded to know why I hadn’t stuck around Fox Trot yesterday as instructed. I apologized while reminding her that I had been extremely upset at the sight of Dicky Butler blown to smithereens. I got no sympathy. What could I add to what I had told her yesterday about the feud between diplomat King and farmer Butler?
I could honestly think of nothing.
“Tell you why I ask,” said Marian. “Arnie and I were looking over Dicky’s record. We didn’t find anything about him being a loving son. You know, Ben? This kid was trouble. From day one in the incubator.”
“So how come?” Arnie asked. “How come he’s suddenly blowing up dams to please his father?”
“I can only guess,” I answered, belatedly alert to an unpleasant shift in the wind.
“Guess,” said Marian.
“As I informed Trooper Moody yesterday, Dicky was HIV-positive. He was scared of AIDS, scared of dying. Probably scared for the first time in his life. Plus, he was getting a little older, mid-thirties. And also, and I think this is important, for the first time in years he was out of prison and with no sentence hanging over his head. No parole. Free to take stock.”
“What are you talking about?” said Bender.
“Ben is suggesting that Dicky was becoming contemplative,” said Marian. “Right Ben?”
“Right. I think he was trying to patch things up with his dad. And from the way he talked to me, he was re-thinking their entire relationship. He painted the barn. Was painting the house. I don’t know, it’s just possible he was finally going to straighten out.”
“Think the old man put him up to it?”
So that’s where they were going.
***
While the Feds were clearing the homeland security air, our local peace officers were looking to hang charges on poor Mr. Butler. Conspiracy, if “the old man put him up to it.” Accessory, if he helped. And, since Dicky was killed in the explosion, accessory meant accessory to murder.