Death in the Pines

by Thom Hartmann

  “No, don’t know her,” Grinder said tightly. Lucy shook her head.

  “Let me borrow your phone book one more time,” I said. Montpelier had a good number of Smiths, including a fair number of J. Smiths. But Jerry had his own listing. I dialed his number on my cell phone and got an answering machine, but I didn’t leave a message. I took out a small pocket notebook and wrote down his number and address.

  On TV the smarmy young mock-psychic had just made a policeman look like a fool. Grinder and Lucy both laughed, he sounding as if he were drowning, she spraying a buckshot pattern of chewed popcorn. Neither of them seemed to mind my leaving.

  It seemed to me I owed Jerry Smith at least a visit and a talk, so I set off north on Route 12, a two-lane highway with a 50 MPH speed limit. It had been the main link between Montpelier and points south before the superhighway came through. I rode the tunnel of my high beams through the night. The road ahead was empty for the eleven miles of forests and fields to the state capital. I pushed the Jeep to sixty, but didn’t dare to go faster than that, not with snow drifting across the road, not with possible black ice in my path.

  It was past ten. Traffic in Montpelier was light, and I found the apartment house with no trouble. I pressed the buzzer under Jerry Smith’s name, but got no answer. A young couple came up just as I was about to go back to my car, and the woman said, “Are you looking for Jerry?”

  “I am,” I said.

  The man pointed toward the street. “You just missed him. Charlene and I saw him get into a car with some guys. They went tear-assing off south not a minute ago.”

  “He was drunk,” Charlene said. “Took two of them to hold him up straight and get him into the car.”

  Something cold turned over in my stomach. I was already running toward the Jeep.

  South took me directly back onto Route 12. I thought I might catch them if they hadn’t turned off. I should have asked about the car, the make and model. Getting rusty. I pushed the Jeep hard, the needle nudging seventy.

  And a few miles south of town, I had to find the brakes in a hurry. I thought I saw someone step out into my lane at the far reach of my headlights. The Jeep wanted to fishtail for a second, but I got it over onto the shoulder and came to a stop.

  Deer. Two does, one in each lane, both of them staring at me. They twitched and quivered as I braked the Jeep to a halt, as if every instinct was telling them to get the hell out of there, but something was locking them in place.

  And then I heard, as faint as a mosquito whine, a scream.

  I opened the door and got out, and that broke the spell. The deer took off in unison, leaping over the shoulder, into the woods off to the left. I heard another scream from the right. From the darkness. I checked my gun in my jacket pocket, and followed the shoulder of the road to the source of the sounds of pain.

  8

  I hadn’t seen it from the highway, but an abandoned road led downhill and into the dark forest. Twenty yards away from Route 12, I might have been dropped into the heart of pre-Columbian Vermont. The old road, probably a logging trail, bore the recent tracks of tires. Off to the right I caught a glint of metal. It was a dark Subaru four-wheel-drive station wagon, turned to face the highway, turned for a quick getaway. Vermont plates.

  Through the trees ahead I spied a gleam of light, and I could hear the mutter and growl of men’s voices. I missed the way somehow, and instead of coming out on a level with the three men in the clearing, I found myself peering over the edge of a steep drop. They were about six feet below me. A kerosene lantern dimly lit the scene. One man, a young one, stood with his back against a birch, his hands out of sight behind him. I guessed he was handcuffed around the trunk. The other two men were bulky shadows against the glare of the lantern.

  One was saying, “We could kill you. We could do it in ways no one would ever discover. A little plutonium, a little dioxin, and you’d die of cancer in a few months. Or we could scratch you with a resistant strain of strep and in a week it’ll eat the flesh off your bones. One of us could walk past you in the street, spray you with a mist carrying antibiotic-resistant pneumonia. We could make it look like stroke or a heart attack. You know that, don’t you, kid?” His voice sounded familiar.

  The young man cuffed or tied to the tree was leaning forward. He jerked his head, trying to throw his longish brown hair out of his eyes. He wore only blue jeans, standing barefoot in a few inches of snow. His stomach bore some angry pink welts, like insect bites that had become infected. The man talking to him was taller than the captive. I couldn’t see much of him against the light, but he wore a heavy jacket, and he carried something in his hand, a gun I thought at first. But then he moved a little and I saw that it looked more like a TV remote than a weapon.

  “You’re making a huge mistake,” the young man said.

  “No. You made the mistake,” the large man answered softly. He reached out and touched the device to his captive’s stomach, and the boy’s body convulsed, his eyes bulged, and a scream erupted from his stomach and came out his mouth.

  “Don’t kill him,” the third man in the tableau said, his voice frightened, whiny. “I ain’t here for any killing.”

  I began to edge to the left, where the land fell away, hunting for a spot where I could get into the clearing without causing a small avalanche of stone and snow. The man with the stun gun said in a bored voice, “I’m not going to kill him.”

  Maybe not. The kid had been hit with probably seventy-five thousand volts at a low amperage, so low that the shock doesn’t kill or even scar. But the jolt hits you with blinding pain, far worse than being bludgeoned with a brick. There are places in the world, and too many of them here in the United States, where the police or the army get a lot of enjoyment applying these devices to the genitals of men, women, and teenagers.

  I pulled back, losing sight of the clearing for half a minute, and worked my way around so I was on level ground. I stepped into the light to the left of the Taser-armed man. He was just about to apply it to the kid’s fluttering stomach again. I said, “Step back slowly, drop the Taser, and turn around, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  “Jesus,” the man said in a tired, irritated voice, like a plumber who had just discovered he had forgotten a wrench. “Who the hell are you?” He backed away, further into the shadow.

  “I ask the questions,” I said, suddenly and coldly aware that the man with the whiny voice was no longer in sight.

  “You got him in your sights?” the heavy man asked.

  “Got him.”

  Damn. Off in the trees somewhere. They must have heard me coming. I heard the distinctive ratchet of a pump-action rifle.

  “So who the hell are you?” the older man asked me again, his voice sounding like there was a little smile on his lips.

  “The guy who’s betting he can get off one shot even if he’s hit,” I said. “And believe me, I’m good with this gun. But since your friend has a rifle, maybe I should just shoot you right now and even up the odds a little.” I had dropped a flashlight into my side pocket; from the same pocket I produced my cell phone, flipped it open, and punched in 911. I stood with my thumb on the send button.

  “Who are you calling?” the man asked. I couldn’t quite place the accent. It was closest to the affected Boston accent that kids from other parts of the country pick up if they attend Harvard.

  “Guess,” I said. “They can figure out where cell calls are made from. If your friend doesn’t make a good shot, the police will know exactly where I was when I called. How long do you think it’ll take them to get here? How long do you think it’ll take you and your buddy to replace the two front tires that I flattened?”

  He didn’t like that. His face tightened. “I don’t much like guns,” he said conversationally. “They make a mess. Nevertheless, hunting accidents are common. My friend is holding a standard-issue thirty-aught-six on you. Some years ago, the head of the FBI died in a hunting accident—”

  “Bill Sulliva
n,” I said. “Died in 1977. But nobody’s going to buy that. Deer season is over.”

  His face became grave. “There are complications,” he said with a sigh. “We seem to be at a standoff. What do you suggest?”

  “Tell squeaky to come into the light, where I can see him. And you step forward, too.”

  I had been moving slowly back. Now I stood mostly in darkness. The man said, “We’re just having a little business meeting here.” It seemed an odd turn of phrase.

  “Tell your boss that you hit some hard luck,” I suggested. “This time, let’s call it a draw.”

  “This time?”

  “It might be different next time,” I told him.

  The guy off to the side whined, “I don’t like this!”

  “Shut up and do what I tell you,” the man yelled back. “Keep your rifle on him. If I tell you to shoot, kill him.”

  “That’s murder,” the whiner said.

  “He has a weapon. It would be self-defense. Just shut the fuck up and come on,” the older man said.

  The second man, the whiner, edged toward the light. He was holding his rifle at hip level. He hung just far enough back so I couldn’t make out his features, but the lantern caught the muzzle of the rifle, its unwinking deadly black eye. It was easy to imagine that I could see right down the barrel to the neat pointed tip of the bullet. I glanced at the kid tied to the tree and saw that he was following all this with eager eyes. He was shivering, and I’d bet his feet were close to frostbite, but the scene in the clearing was fascinating him.

  “We will back out of here,” the man told me. “But I have to ask: Who are you?”

  “Just a concerned citizen. I heard a scream from the road, called the cops, and came to see what was happening.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jim Thomas. Didn’t I hear your voice in the diner, talking with Caleb Benson?”

  “Never heard of him.” He jerked a thumb. “You know this kid?”

  “Never seen him before in my life.”

  “Come on, come on,” the whiner said.

  Then the tied-up kid surprised me. He jerked his head up. “Siren,” he said.

  We stood listening to silence, but it was easy to imagine that the wind in the trees was the distant wail of an approaching cruiser.

  “Back out of here,” I said. I edged around and side-kicked the kerosene lantern. It hit a tree, went out, leaving us in glimmering darkness, ruining the whiner’s aim. “Get on out.”

  They blundered away. A few seconds later I heard the Subaru fire up. “Who were they? What were they torturing you for?” I asked the kid as I pulled the flashlight out of my pocket.

  “I don’t know who or why.” He had been tied, not cuffed, with a good but quick-release knot. I got him loose. “My socks and shoes,” he said, rubbing his wrists. “My shirt and jacket.”

  I found them in a heap and he got them on. “Just the two of them?” I asked.

  He was shaking, hiccupping, probably from shock and relief. “Yeah.”

  “You’re Jerry Smith.”

  He paused in the act of pulling his jacket on.

  “Yeah.” In the halogen glare I saw him clearly for the first time: medium height and build, brown wavy hair worn long, heavy eyebrows, a slightly feminine mouth. “They said—they told me—Jeremiah was dead.”

  “He is.”

  Then he nodded and began to sniffle. “I’m freezing,” he said through clenched teeth. “I think I sprained my left wrist.” He spat, and I saw the spittle was bloody.

  “Bite your tongue when they shocked you?”

  “Yeah, more than once.”

  “Come on. You need help?”

  “I can walk. Did you really call the cops?”

  “No, I was bluffing. You want me to call them?”

  We were making our way back up the logging trail, slow going because I had switched off the flashlight. Jerry didn’t ask why. He could figure that we made an easy target with it on. He said, “No, don’t call the police. They didn’t do anything.”

  “Kidnapping. Assault.”

  “How did my grandfather die?”

  “It looks like a hit-and-run accident.”

  “You sure he’s dead?”

  “I just came from where it happened.”

  I heard him gulp back sobs in the darkness. When he spoke again, his voice was a half-octave higher, as though he had lost ten years: “You a cop?”

  “I used to be a private cop. Jeremiah came to me and wanted to hire me to protect you. I didn’t take him seriously. I should have.”

  We were getting close to where I’d left the Jeep on Route 12. Jerry said, “I don’t want any of this to get in the papers.”

  “All right.” When we reached the Jeep, no other cars were in sight. I pulled out my phone and hit the send button.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trust me.”

  The 911 operator answered on the second ring and asked, “What is your emergency?”

  “Listen,” I said, putting a little of Vermont into my voice, “there’s a bad drunk driver out on Route Twelve. I was just off the highway, between Montpelier and Northfield, when he came past me. I didn’t see which way he turned onto Route Twelve, but he was swerving all over. Dark-colored Subaru station wagon, newer model, Vermont plate, but I couldn’t make out the numbers.”

  “And he’s on Route Twelve?”

  “Has to be, he came off this road. I think you should notify the Northfield police in case he’s headed south.”

  I gave her the other information she asked for and hung up. “Slick,” Jerry said.

  “It probably won’t do any good, but if they get stopped we’ll have a record of who the car is registered to, who’s driving it. With the hit-and-run, they’ll probably make an effort.”

  It was one side or the other of midnight. I drove Jerry back to his apartment house. He invited me in, and we walked into what might have been a monk’s cell. I’d never seen a bachelor apartment as neat or as bare. I checked out Jerry’s left wrist. It was swollen and bruised, but he could make a fist, touch thumb tip to each finger in turn. “I don’t think anything’s broken,” I told him.

  He got us a couple of beers and we sat on the sofa. “God, what a day,” he said. He wanted to know about his grandfather. I told him what I knew.

  “Well,” Jerry said, finishing the last of his bottle of beer. “So. You’re supposed to protect me. Thanks but no thanks. They won’t catch me again.”

  “But they might.”

  He flashed me a wild-eyed look.

  I asked him, “What are you afraid of?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. I’m not afraid of anything.” He cradled his left wrist in his right hand, as though nursing a small, sick animal back to health.

  “I’d think you’d like to see the people who hurt you get punished.”

  He stared at the floor and didn’t reply.

  “I could help.”

  He laughed without mirth and looked at me with his nose wrinkled, as though he were judging an ugly-dog contest. “How much would I owe you?”

  I shook my head. “No charge. Jeremiah paid me already.”

  His gaze was wary, and I recognized the look of the righteous one. The monk’s-cell apartment fit him: a young man unseasoned by life, still believing the world is populated by good guys and bad, white and black hats, no room for gray. I could read it in his eyes. In his estimation, if you weren’t a crusader, you were for sale, you had a price, you had an ulterior motive. “You took money from my grandfather?” he asked in a harsh voice.

  “A little. But he bought me with his trust.”

  “Yeah. Well. He’s dead.”

  “And I owe him.”

  “So …” Jerry scratched his head. “You’d help me for free?”

  “As much as I can. I’m not independently wealthy.”

  “But you’re a PI. You charge for what you do.”

  “Listen to me,” I said. �
�If I do this, I do it because Jeremiah trusted me. But if this gets big, if I face a lot of travel expenses, if I have to bring in other people, I won’t have the cash to continue it.”

  “So I’d have to pay you.”

  I began to sympathize with the guy who’d hit him with the stun gun. “This isn’t about payment. Mostly, it’s about my wanting to know who killed your grandfather. Let’s cut out the bullshit about money, OK?”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “I did get you out of the clearing.”

  “But you could be one of them, it could be a setup to make me trust you.”

  “Then you’d be screwed. But I’m not one of them.”

  “Prove it.”

  I grinned at him. “You want to see my Eagle Scout badge?” I got up, and he automatically reached for my empty beer bottle. He put it inside a kitchen cabinet, alongside three or four others. Abstemious little monk. “Think about it overnight,” I advised him. “Are you safe here?”

  “They took me about half a block from here.”

  “Then go stay with someone.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Dead serious,” I said. “Hop a plane. Or at least go somewhere that’s not as easy to find as this place.”

  “I could,” he said slowly. “I have some friends who wouldn’t mind putting me up. But I don’t want my friends hurt, and these guys know where I work, anyway, so what good’s that?”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Nope.”

  I shook my head. “Guys are chasing you, zapping you with a stun gun, they probably killed your grandfather, and they’ll involve your friends if you stay with them. You’re telling me you can’t run away from these guys, you can’t avoid them, and you can’t fight them. So how are you going to stop them?”

  “I could do what they want.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s the problem,” he said. “I don’t know.” He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes unreadable.

  9

  It had been a long, late evening. I crunched up the old logging road toward my cabin, fighting off a mixture of frustration and anger. Jerry’s decision to stay alone in his apartment, expressed in polite words that translated to “I don’t trust you, and you can’t help me,” galled me. Damn him. I had managed to sell myself on the idea of finding the people who’d killed Jeremiah Smith. I was fairly certain that Jerry either knew who they were or knew the information I’d need.