by Archer Mayor
He held up a map of the warehouse floor plan, crisscrossed with red lines indicating the routes of the five explosive MHEs, each converging at the same spot that he now tapped with his finger. “The battery-changing station is where things were initiated, which is why, while most of you were digging through the debris at each ignition point, I focused my energies there.”
Only now did he gingerly lift an evidence bag onto the table and lay it before them. Through its transparent sheathing, they could see what appeared to be a short, pale sausage.
“A TNT hot dog?” Spinney asked.
Michael smiled. “Kind of, yeah. It’s made of two readily available dry materials—one of which is old-fashioned sugar—stuffed into the equivalent of a rubber balloon. These kinds of things used to be sold to kids in chemistry sets in the fifties and sixties. In simple form, you take the contents of this sausage, mix it with some sulfuric acid, and presto, you have an exothermic reaction.”
“Or something that goes boom, in our language,” said Willy.
“Exactly,” Michael agreed. “Everyone knows how potentially dangerous car batteries can be—sulfuric acid, electricity, a hot environment, and the constant risk of a spark.” He pointed to the evidence bag. “Well, add these missing ingredients, and you go from potential to guaranteed.
“The problem,” he went on, “is that if you just dropped the contents of this so-called hot dog into the battery, the reaction would be instantaneous, which would screw up your getaway and singe your eyebrows, if you didn’t die from the fumes. That’s where the rubber casing comes in to save the day. In each battery, there’s a thin platform below the filler caps which separates the opening from the inner cell plates and acid. This platform, like a flat sieve, has small holes in it to allow water and/or acid to be added, but prevents other objects from entering the cell chambers. All our arsonist had to do was drop one hot dog per battery onto that sieve, replace the filler cap, and let the subsequent vibrations and jostling of the MHE do the rest. A little acid inevitably splashes up through the sieve and eats through the rubber, the powder sprinkles onto the liquid below, and there you have it.”
He snapped his fingers and threw in jokingly, “As the French say, ‘Viola!’—assuming you don’t speak French.”
“Cute, Jonathon,” Willy muttered before pointing at the evidence envelope and adding, “Since everything went blooey as planned, where’d you get that?”
“There were six batteries rigged,” Jonathon said simply. “That one didn’t make it into an MHE. I found it ready to go, next in line.”
“How unstable is it?” Sammie asked warily.
“Without the acid to set it off? Totally safe.”
“Any prints?” Joe inquired.
“The lab’ll check it for that and DNA,” Jonathon told them. “But a cursory exam showed nothing. Sounds reasonable that if you were putting all this together, you’d wear gloves.”
“And you’re saying,” Lester summarized, “that whatever’s in the hot dog could be had pretty much anywhere? Like the sugar?”
“Better than that,” Michael said. “It’s all available inside that warehouse. Our firebug didn’t even have to go shopping.”
“Did anyone check where those ingredients are kept?” Sammie asked.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “Nothing to see.”
“And,” Willy threw in, “I spent several hours looking at the video files for suspicious activity. Nothing there, either.”
“Meaning he either did go shopping,” Joe suggested, “or he collected what he needed off the shelves much earlier.”
“If the second is true,” Lester said, “that implies our arsonist had or has free access.”
“And knows how everything works,” Sam added. “Including the recharging routine of the MHEs.”
“That’s an interesting point,” Jonathon said. “Of the hundreds of people who work here, I would guess only a handful know enough to have pulled off this particular approach.”
“Or had access to the internet,” Willy said sourly. “I looked it up during a break from watching the surveillance footage. There’re a dozen videos showing how to turn a battery into a bomb.”
“Do we have an estimate yet on how much damage was done?” Joe asked.
“I spoke to the floor manager,” Sammie said. “They won’t know for a while, but it has to be a couple hundred thousand, with everything included. Maybe more, depending on lost revenue due to repairs. Anyhow, a shitload. They have another warehouse, in upper New York State, but this is their mother ship.”
“Did he say he’d received a warning this might happen?” Jonathon asked. “Or mention any pissed-off employees or ex-employees?”
“No, but he referred us to his head of security, since he wasn’t sure he’d have the latest on something like that.” Sam referred to her notepad. “That would be Pat Smith.”
“I know her,” said Willy, who carried in his head an unimaginable number of contacts, from all walks of life. “Used to be VSP. Solid people.”
“Never met her, but heard good things,” Lester chimed in.
“What sticks with me,” Sammie said, “is what Jonathon said about the nature of the attack. Why do all this if you don’t want to burn the place down? Might help to remember that during any interviews.”
“Good point,” Joe said before stretching and placing his palms flat against the trailer’s ceiling. “Okay. Why don’t one of you get with Pat Smith and see what she knows. Sam, speaking of interviews, contact all our other squads, round up everybody not knee-deep in casework, and organize them into interview teams. We’ll need to talk with everybody and anybody who works here or once did, and might have some insight into what happened. If that’s not enough people at our end, ask the state police if they can spare anyone. We don’t know who did this, or why, or if this was their only target. If it turns out to be the first of a string of arsons, I want to be able to say we already got a full team and then some working on it. Nobody died here, but that might’ve been dumb luck. Who knows what’s next?”
He looked at Michael. “Jonathon, try to get anything you can out of that remaining hot dog—including any details about the casing. Did we get that whole battery-charging station fingerprinted?”
“The relevant parts, yup,” one of the crime lab people said from near the door, “and we collected reference prints from the station operator, Angie Hogencamp, along with a sworn statement.”
“Last but not least,” Joe wrapped up, “and sadly, before we can hit the rack for some shut-eye, we need to have a word with local law enforcement to see if anyone saw anything suspicious or unusual over the previous twenty-four hours—loiterers near the warehouse, strange vehicular activity, whatever. I think we need to do that sooner rather than later, before memories fade.”
Most often, Willy would have been the one to grab such an assignment. He was rarely known to sleep and always enjoyed catching up with his array of informants. But this time, Joe noticed that he seemed barely aware, staring instead at the floor, both arms gathered before him, his good hand slowly massaging his left shoulder.
“You okay, Willy?” Joe asked as Lester spoke simultaneously with, “I’ll do that.”
Willy looked up sharply and froze, while Sammie cautiously laid her hand on his leg. “Fine. Why?”
Joe hesitated, taking in their body language. “Nothing. Just wondered. Long night.”
Lester quickly repeated, “I’ll talk to the locals. I have the shortest distance to get home, anyhow.”
“Thanks,” Joe said before addressing the entire group. “It’s been a long haul. We’re all cross-eyed. Thanks for your help, everybody, and please pass that along to anyone you see who pitched in.”
“Boss?” Lester asked, almost raising his hand for permission to speak. “Where do we put Teri Parker in the pecking order?”
Joe nodded and signaled to the lab folks and Jonathon. “You’re good to go, guys. Many thanks. Catch some sleep.”
&
nbsp; He waited until only his squad members remained before saying, “Good call, Les. I’ll take the lead on Parker, at least till the dust settles on this mess. Right now, there’s no obvious suspect wandering around threatening the public, as there may be here, so my first order of business’ll be to update the AG concerning our doubts about Mick Durocher’s confession. After that, I’ll go looking for his elusive daughter.”
He pulled out his cell phone. “Much as I dislike these things, I think they’ll be the best way to keep in touch for the next couple of days, since it looks like we’ll all be out of the office. I won’t be expecting your daily reports to be masterpieces of literature, but do enter the bare minimum, okay? It’s crucial, now that we’re running two major cases side by side, that everybody knows who’s doing what.”
* * *
“You sure about this?” Sam asked Willy. “We could sleep on it first.”
“You called Sue, didn’t you?” he pressed her.
Sammie rubbed her eyes. Her head hummed with sleep deprivation, and the last thing she wanted right now was to greet the rising sun on yet another mission. Home and bed and thoughts of Emma pulled at her like a raging thirst.
But that also gave her insight into Willy’s present condition. She knew he was exhausted, too, yet he was more driven by his pain to choose this drive over the solace of a few hours’ rest. Sam couldn’t even imagine the level of his suffering.
More to the point, she also couldn’t gauge—and didn’t want to risk—how close he might be to completely yielding to old bad habits to remedy what was hounding him.
She started the car and headed for Sue Spinney’s new place of employment.
Upper Valley Surgical Specialists was an experiment. Neither a full-fledged hospital nor an outpatient surgi-center, it was a consortium of independent surgeons, created partially to see if the almost-square wheel of modern American health care might benefit from what Sue had laughingly called a “boutique hospital.”
That it was located in rural Vermont spoke indirectly of its unconventional birth. Its well-heeled founders had wanted an off-the-radar, minimally populated locale, benignly supported by a mostly progressive state government, which also had access to enough doctors willing to try something new amidst a little peace and quiet.
Neither Sam nor Willy cared about this, or how it was hoping to open a niche in the country’s hidebound health-care system. Sue Spinney had simply recommended that they meet with her boss, Victoria Garlanda. Had she pointed them toward Mass General or the Mayo Clinic, Sam would have driven them there, instead.
As it was, they pulled into UVSS’s parking lot within twenty minutes of leaving GreenField—a good thing, given how tired they were.
In contrast to their energy level, the morning was by then bright, cheerful, getting warmer, and accented with birdsong.
Willy groaned as he stepped out of the car. “Great. Ninety-degree weather on the way.”
Sammie shook her head, expecting no less, but her worrying had undermined her usual tolerance for his grousing. “Maybe two months from now, if we’re lucky,” she shot back testily.
Having been called from the road, Sue met them outside the building’s front doors, hugging Sam and giving Willy a critical and professional look. “Jesus, you’re a mess.”
“Nice manners,” he told her.
“You should know,” she replied, appraising them as a twosome. “Seriously, you both look like hell. You come straight from the fire Lester went to?”
“You got it.”
She was impressed. “What’s that? Twenty-four hours at full speed? You were working that homicide, otherwise, right?”
“You got it,” Willy said.
Sue smiled. “But you wanted to see me so badly, you just couldn’t stay away. That’s really sweet.”
“Believe what you want,” he countered brusquely, his own impatience showing. “Where’s your miracle worker?”
Sue’s demeanor completely changed. Suddenly serious, she stepped up to him and studied his face. “You’re in such pain, the standard ten-scale doesn’t even apply. Is that close?”
“Let’s say that if I headed home to quote-unquote sleep right now, it wouldn’t be a success.”
Without further delay, she ushered them inside.
CHAPTER NINE
Joe’s meeting with the assistant attorney general occurred late on the same day that he and his squad had huddled in the command trailer after the GreenField fire. With what little stamina he had left, he’d driven to Beverly’s house south of Burlington, crawled into the bed they usually appreciated for more amorous pursuits, and passed out.
How he awoke in time to make it to the AG’s office in downtown Montpelier was beyond him. Certainly, as he entered her office and sat across from her, he didn’t feel much more lively than a patient emerging from anesthesia.
Natausha “Tausha” Greenblott was “their” prosecutor, assigned especially to the VBI, much as the AG had made another of his Trial and Investigative Unit deputies responsible for the Vermont Drug Task Force. Back in Joe’s Brattleboro Police days, he had reported to the county state’s attorney. That was an elective office, however, responsible for every case brought to it from within Windham County. It was predictably underfunded and -staffed. Having Tausha Greenblott for their very own was another perk of being a specialized statewide agency.
Greenblott gave him a maternal appraisal, despite being an easy twenty years his junior. “Good Lord, Joe. You might want to consider scaling it back a notch. Have you had any sleep lately?”
“Thanks, Tausha. I just got up. Glad it shows.”
She laughed. “I’m well known for my diplomacy. You here to update me about Michael Durocher, the GreenField fire, or something new? You folks are on a roll right now.”
“Mick Durocher, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like it much.”
“Not the slam dunk we thought it was?” she anticipated without rancor. “Fire away.”
“That’s more your call than mine,” he told her. “We’ve got the Bromley video of him transporting what appears to be the body to the right place at the right time; the four-wheeler found outside his home, complete with his prints on the handlebars; his boot prints next to the body, and the same boots in his closet; a confirmation from his pal Seth Villeneuve that on the night of the murder, he gave Mick a ride to near where the four-wheeler was stored at Bud Thurley’s work site; Thurley’s statement that Mick once worked for him, and that he suspected Mick of having stolen the vehicle; and—the kicker—Mick’s sworn confession that he did the dirty deed. He denied knowing the girl was pregnant during the interview, but as a motive right now, that’s also looking like a good fit.”
Greenblott settled back, sensing that he’d just warmed up. It was a comfortable office, decorated with children’s drawings, plants, and knickknacks—a place in which she spent a lot of time, and liked reminders of her home life to keep her company. “I understand why you’re nervous, Joe. Sounds very wobbly. I don’t see how I could fly that in front of a jury in under three seconds.”
Joe could only agree. “I know, I know. Bear with me.” He paused to glance at the floor and rub his temples, hoping to clear his head a little. “I’ll put it in chronological order. Then you can see how my doubts built up.
“Mick said he was hired under the table to do a job in White River Junction, cleaning up after a big building demolition over there, by a man he called Ted, whom he met at a bar in Manchester.
“We asked the barkeep there about the mysterious Ted. He said he’s never seen Mick with anyone, man or woman; he’s never heard of someone named Ted; and that Mick’s a well-known loner. The bar, incidentally, is over an hour’s drive from White River, making it an unlikely spot for someone hiring people for a White River job. And when we asked around about Mick having worked on the cleanup crew there, everyone denied knowing him. Mick said they would claim ignorance, since they don’t want to be caught hiring illegally, but that doesn
’t explain why nobody remembers a man named Ted in a hiring position.
“Just for the hell of it, though,” Joe continued uninterrupted, “let’s say Mick was in White River. He told me that it was while working there that he met Teri Parker at another bar, this one in Windsor, named Manny’s. Once again, nobody there has seen either one of them. Not only that, but Teri lived in Barre, and while we haven’t dug into her past yet, there’s nothing to indicate what she was doing halfway across the state in a bar, despite the implication that at least one of her occupations was as a hooker.”
“Better and better,” Tausha said. “Does the age of her fetus correspond with the time period Mick said they were dating?”
“It does. Point for you. So, moving right along, we now have Mick and Teri as totally unwitnessed lovebirds—making out in pickups and anywhere else that leaves no receipts or evidence—until Mick claims he finally took her to his trailer in Manchester on the same night he killed her. There again, we interviewed the neighbors, which was like hearing that first barkeep all over again—Mick kept to himself, was a nice and quiet loner, and, most tellingly, never had a girlfriend that anyone saw or heard about.
“Still, that’s where he claims he had a knock-down-drag-out with her, including pushing her around, after which she stormed out, marched down to the parking lot at the end of the street, where he followed her and whacked her with a two-by-four.”
“Don’t tell me,” Tausha suggested. “Which two-by-four you also didn’t find? And I’m guessing he had no memory about what prompted the fight.”
“Right on both counts. No bruises on the body suggesting a domestic, no neighbors reporting a fight or any shouting, no abandoned two-by-four, and no evidence of anybody having been stashed at the edge of the lot while Mick wandered the neighborhood, rounding up the four-wheeler.
“Last but not least,” Joe concluded, “we have the video—the part juries love the most. That,” he emphasized, “is where my objections to this cock-and-bull story get a little more psychological, and maybe in your eyes a lot less reliable.”