by Archer Mayor
She nodded. “Like you said, she always loved Archie. So did I. I’ll always feel in my bones that it was Newell who killed Archie.”
Joe was comfortable with the assumption that she wasn’t being literal—that the father’s harshness had merely driven the son to drink and an early grave. It was a startling one-liner, though, given what he suspected Newell had done to Michelle.
“Did Newell go out to see her after Archie’s death?” he asked, keeping on track.
He knew he shouldn’t have been so unreasonably hopeful, but he was still disappointed when she looked up at the white acoustic ceiling and gave a hapless shrug. “I’m here most of the time. I barely noticed when he went on a trip with his buddies a while ago.”
“How ’bout right after she died?” Joe persisted. “How did he react?”
She scowled. “That’s what really did it for me—made me decide. He was so happy, it almost made me sick. It was the first time I saw him as a cruel man. Before, I always thought he was just kind of useless.”
Joe reviewed what he’d learned—supportive of their theory, but frustratingly shy of hard evidence. He considered asking her outright if she thought Newell had killed Michelle, but he knew that it would merely upset her and result in nothing useful. Besides, she had enough in her bag of dark thoughts.
Instead, he extracted a mug shot of Mel Martin and slid it across the table. “Have you ever seen this man in the company of your husband?”
She looked quite startled at the harshness of the image before her. “Lord. I’ve met some of Newell’s friends. None of them look like this. Newell’s been with this man?”
“He sold him his truck.”
She made a face. “Oh, that old thing. I was happy to see that go. Always left oil on the driveway. Noisy and smelly, too.”
“So he never even described the man he’d sold it to? Or discussed him in any way?” Joe asked hopefully, knowing he was grasping at straws.
She settled the issue by smiling gently at him. “Newell and I don’t discuss.”
Lester Spinney wasn’t having much luck. He’d checked the few dirt roads that might reasonably house anyone who’d notice traffic going to and from Michelle’s, and hadn’t hit a single person yet who’d even known of her or Archie, much less seen Newell’s ex—and Mel’s current—truck. People lived isolated from each other out here by design, it turned out. Everyone he met was perfectly happy not to know the first thing about their neighbors.
It was therefore with no great optimism that he finally pulled up to his last planned stop—a complicated jigsaw puzzle of Swiss chalet, Norman keep, and modern glass—and swung out of the car to make his pitch.
But he never got to it. Before he’d traveled halfway up the front walk, a bright-faced, spindly couple capped in matching snow-white hairdos threw open the broad wooden door and stood beaming at him like something out of a B-level fairy tale.
“Don’t tell us,” the male half ordered, his hand in the air like a circus barker’s. “The car looks strictly standard issue.”
“And the clothes,” his companion chimed in, adding, “I hope you won’t be offended, but they’re practical and inexpensive, aimed toward respectability.”
“Yes,” agreed her mate. “Like an aspiring junior clerk out of Dickens.”
She laughed as Spinney stood there, smiling politely and waiting for the routine to wrap up, although as a cop, he had to appreciate the way they thought.
“So what do you say, George? The poor man’s on pins and needles.”
George looked thoughtful for a moment. “Hard to say with any certainty . . . State employee, for sure.”
She clapped her hands once and kept them clasped against her narrow chest. “Yes, just what I was thinking. But from what branch?”
Lester, far from pins or needles, nevertheless hoped all this would play to his advantage. “Police,” he confessed. “Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”
The couple burst into laughter, George saying, “Oh, I never would have gone there. Thank you so much. You don’t look like a policeman at all, young man. I was just about to embarrass myself—I won’t tell you how.”
Lester waved that away with his hand, displaying his badge with the other, for the record. “Not a problem. I have that effect on everybody. My name is Spinney, by the way.”
“Mr. and Mrs. George B. Heller the Third,” said the woman, extending her hand before abruptly withdrawing it with the words “Oh, my. Does one shake hands with the police? I don’t know the rules.”
“You do with this one,” Lester said, playing out the formalities with both of them.
George Heller asked, “To what do we owe the pleasure, Officer? Have we done something wrong?”
“No, no. Not at all. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the neighborhood.”
Mrs. Heller laughed. “You mean the neighbors, not the neighborhood.”
Lester conceded with a smile. “You got me.”
“Is it poor Michelle Fisher?” George asked. “We knew the police were looking into that. We even heard they’d been by when we were out of town for a couple of days. We were sorry to have missed out.”
Spinney felt an instant warmth for both of them, like a thirsty man might who’d finally reached water. “It is. Strictly routine—something we do with all unattended deaths. Do you mind talking about it?”
Mrs. Heller broke into a broad smile. “Goodness, no. George and I live to gossip. We love to watch the comings and goings around here—gives us something to do in our old age. But before we go on, wouldn’t you rather come in and have some tea or something?”
Lester accepted, and they all trooped into the eccentric house, eventually settling in a nicely appointed living room-kitchen combination with a huge picture window overlooking the road.
“This is where George and I do most of our busybody business,” his hostess explained as she went to work preparing the tea.
Her husband and Lester chose deep armchairs facing the view. In fact, Lester did feel a little as if he’d just bought a skybox seat at a ballpark. The house sat up high over the road, and the vegetation had been trimmed to afford the best advantage over quite a piece of real estate. The peaks of several houses could be seen nestled among the treetops.
“This is beautiful,” Lester murmured.
“We like it,” George stated. “We could have set it up to take in just the woods and fields, but we like people. We’re from the city originally, and we’ve always enjoyed watching our fellow human beings.”
His wife chimed in, “We used to walk in the park every weekend, trying to come up with little life stories for everyone who caught our eye.”
“And sometimes,” he added, “when we could get away with it, we’d even ask them about themselves, to see how much we got right. We ended up being pretty good.” He paused before admitting, “Of course, around here it’s a little harder. We only get to see cars go by—sometimes strollers walking their dogs or something. And people are a little more reserved here, too.”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “They think we’re very strange.”
Lester was taking this all in while he surveyed the room, inventorying the usual assortment of family pictures and decorative artifacts. At some point, quite clearly, someone in this family had done a lot more than simply look out the window. The whole house spoke of serious income.
“So,” he began, feeling that the niceties had been given enough free play, “what can you tell me about Michelle Fisher? Did you know her well?”
“Didn’t know her at all,” George said flatly.
“We never got to meet her or her boyfriend,” his wife agreed, still hard at work at the butcher block island separating the kitchen from the room’s observation platform. “We just watched their comings and goings—got a feeling for their life. They seemed very happy together. We always noticed that.”
“That’s true,” George concurred. “And you could tell that Archie especially had been
around a bit, which made us all the happier that he’d found her. It’s hard to believe they’re both gone . . .”
“How do you know so much about them?” Spinney asked.
“Oh,” she admitted, finally bringing over a tray laden with tea things, “you ask around; you eavesdrop a little. Once the postman even dropped off some of their mail here by mistake. That’s how we found out his name—Archie Morgan.”
Lester was fascinated by how guileless they both were about their snooping. “Did you notice if they had a lot of visitors?” he asked.
“There was Linda,” Mrs. Heller said immediately. “She was a regular. Very nice woman. She’s from the city, too. We met her a couple of times, out walking. She was a good friend of theirs.”
“Anyone else?” Lester persisted.
The couple exchanged searching looks. George finally shrugged and handed Lester his tea. “I guess not. Like I said, people tend to keep to themselves—part of the point of living here. We’re not so different, when you get down to it. We love being nosy, but we hardly get out of the house, we’re such hermits.”
“That’s true,” his wife said happily. “This is our cave.”
Lester reached into his inner pocket and pulled out two photographs, one of Mel Martin, the other of Newell Morgan. He laid them flat on the low table between them. “Do either of these men ring a bell?”
“That one does,” they both said, with George tapping Newell’s picture. “Nasty-looking fellow, at least from what we could see in passing. He was Archie’s father, Newell, according to Linda. We heard his personality matched his appearance.”
“What was he driving?”
“An old, beaten-up pickup truck.”
“You never saw him in anything else?”
Again they exchanged baffled looks. “Nope,” George said, speaking for them both.
“And when was the last time you saw him around here?” Lester asked, keeping the timetable of the truck’s sale from Newell to Mel in mind.
“What would you say, George?” she asked. “Two months ago, maybe three?”
He nodded. “That’s what I would say—closer to three.”
After the eviction notice and before the truck sale, Spinney thought. “Did you see him often?”
“Well,” George answered slowly, “over the years, we saw him now and then. You know he actually owned the house, right? That Archie and Michelle rented from him.”
“Yes.”
“We always figured he was just being a landlord, dropping by to make sure everything was okay. He never stayed long.”
“And after Archie died,” Lester asked, “how often did he come by then?”
George shrugged. “Half a dozen times, maybe.”
“Really?” Lester reacted, surprised. “Over a six-month period?”
Mrs. Heller nodded. “About that, yes.”
“Were the visits evenly spaced?”
Her brow furrowed. “That’s interesting,” she said. “They weren’t. Isn’t that right, George?”
“Yup,” he agreed. “There were about four visits that we saw over something like a week and a half, just before they stopped altogether.”
Lester suddenly thought of something else. “When you saw him driving by, was he always alone?”
They both hesitated. George finally said, “Can’t say for sure. From this angle, we could see through the driver’s window, but not to the other side of the cab. And sometimes, when he drove back, it was too dark to see anyone inside at all.”
The old man suddenly leaned forward in his chair, as if hoping to dispel any disappointment. “So, Detective, by your expression, I can tell you’re pleased overall. Have we given you something valuable?”
Spinney hesitated before answering. The question made him uncomfortable, and not just because he didn’t want to answer it. It also suggested the possibility that these two informants had been feeding him what they thought he wanted to hear. In fact—not that they would know this—they’d been the only ones to say that Newell had ever visited the area, at least to the degree they claimed. Cops, like responsible reporters, didn’t like hanging their narratives on the say-so of just one source.
“You’ve been very helpful,” he therefore said blandly.
Mrs. Heller pressed a little harder. “Do you always dig this deep for all deaths? You’ve made us think something bad might have happened to poor Michelle.”
Spinney had to struggle to remember that they’d never actually met poor Michelle.
“That’s exactly why we do it,” he explained. “To make sure nothing did happen.” He tried shifting the focus by picking up Mel Martin’s mug shot. “You’re sure you never saw this man around here?”
George Heller replied cautiously, as if reading Lester’s silent reservations about their enthusiasm. “We never did, but that doesn’t mean he never came by. We don’t actually spend all our time staring out the window. It’s just a hobby.”
“I understand,” Lester told them, “and I really do appreciate your being so helpful.”
Mel Martin was grateful, too, as he sat watching, yet again, in his truck. Banger had been good to him, not just with information but in the way he’d died. After being grabbed outside the Vista Motel, he’d been quiet at first, which had made for a peaceful departure out of town, and then he’d broken down in textbook fashion as soon as he realized what Mel had in store.
For Mel, it had amounted to a watershed. In his progression of killings, this had been the first he’d planned with care, and just as he’d anticipated it, so had he relished its execution. He’d always fantasized this level of violence—had even vaguely pushed at its boundaries during sex with Nancy—but for one reason or another, he’d never taken possession of it.
Until now.
He smiled at the memory of Banger, pleading and spent, totally confused by the violation of such an encounter’s implicit contract—you torture me, I give you all I have. Hey, his expression had told Mel, I gave it up. Why’re you still going?
Because information gathering had only been Mel’s surface ambition. Intelligence about the cousins—Paul and Bob Niemiec, he now knew—could have been collected any number of ways, including by just asking around. They were in retail, after all, and needed to get the word out. But Mel had wanted more. That extra piece—that emotional satisfaction—had been at the heart of his desire.
Not that the promise of big money hurt. Banger had confirmed what Mel had suspected even before he targeted High Top—that the newly arrived Niemiecs were aiming to be major players, exchanging the big city with its attendant overhead and risk factors for the easy pickings of a rural state. But where such operators in the past had used Vermont purely as a retail market, these boys were hoping to create a production base as well. Better still, they’d chosen to step up in style, taking advantage of the local airport to improve importation beyond precedent. Toward the end, Banger had told Mel of a plane delivery of drugs—and of such quantity as to set a man up for decades.
This was what Mel had been longing to hear, which explained why he was watching the Niemiec headquarters now, taking note of all the players, their habits, and their methods of operation.
When it came time to strike, he wanted to do it with military precision. If this was to be their last shot, the Three Musketeers were going to make it their very best.
Chapter 19
“Special Agent Gunther. Good to meet you.”
Wally Neelor was the head of hospital security—a large, open-faced man with a camp counselor’s friendliness. He greeted Joe with a two-handed shake. No doubt to quell the concerns of nervous patients, his uniform was low-key and looked only faintly official, lacking all but a couple of muted patches that identified his function here. He carried just a radio on his belt.
He preceded Joe down the broad hallway as he spoke, leading the way to his office. “You said on the phone you were checking out the disappearance of that low-level bag. Is there something I don’t know about
?”
“Not particularly,” Joe told him, sensitive of being in a public place. It wasn’t crowded, and they certainly weren’t attracting attention, but people were nevertheless milling about.
“I just wondered,” Neelor continued. “We did push all the required buttons here, but I didn’t really think it was that big a deal. Most of our bells and whistles with that stuff are just to keep the local paranoids happy, you know?”
“I do,” Joe told him, grateful to have finally reached the office. They filed past a dispatcher in the front office and ended up in a small, windowless room decorated with charts, maps, and a few pieces of memorabilia showing that Neelor had, in fact, a good deal of police experience in his background.
He waved Joe into a chair and offered him some coffee, which Joe turned down.
“So what’s the concern?” Neelor asked, settling into his seat and giving Joe a calculating look.
“I’m fishing,” Joe conceded. “Pure and simple. The Fusion Center told us the bag was one of several funny events in this area over the last few weeks, and we’re just trying to see if there’s a connection between any of them.”
Neelor’s eyebrows rose. “Other radiological vanishing acts?” he asked.
“No,” Joe admitted, almost embarrassed by the slimness of his motivation. “That’s part of the problem. We haven’t figured out a common thread. It’s a bunch of random stuff.”
Neelor laughed. “I get it—supersecret stuff. Need-to-know only. No sweat. What do you want from me?”
Joe allowed him his conspiratorial fantasy—it was easier than trying to explain their actual situation. “Run me through how you traced the disappearance.”
Neelor made a face. “Simple, really. Each bag has a tag. When the tag’s attached, its number is logged in. When the bag is disposed of once and for all, the tag gets matched to the log, and everybody’s happy. It’s kind of like handling luggage at an airport.”
“Does the tagging include the contents?” Joe asked. “I mean, can you match the contents to who it belonged to?”
“The actual patient?” Neelor came back. “No. It’s more the level of waste than who produced it. Chances are, the same patient’s stuff is in the same bag, but it could be mixed in with someone else’s who was treated in the same way at the same time. Why would that matter?”