by Archer Mayor
Joe made a face. “Good thought. All right, so who’s this nutcase mad at? Bob Raiselis? From what I heard, the man might’ve been a saint. Not even a speeding ticket. And if he was the target, then why burn the warehouse? And if Mr. Mystery or J.R. or whoever the hell he is wanted to burn down the warehouse, then why did he do such a surgical job of only scorching it? And then why kill Raiselis? I just keep going in circles on this damned case. It’s not giving me anything.”
“I’d say the truck driver was collateral damage,” Martens volunteered from his perch.
“I think so, too,” Jonathon said, “chosen more for where he parked than who he was.”
“All the worse for poor Bob’s family, then,” Joe concluded. “Blown to pieces because of a camera angle.”
“I’m not saying I’m right,” Jonathon argued, switching gears perhaps out of sympathy. “Maybe Raiselis was in witness protection for being a triggerman for the Mob.”
“I’d quit while I was behind,” Martens counseled him.
Joe had begun walking alongside the stacked trucks, his footsteps echoing in the large space. “The common link’s GreenField,” he said. “I think you are right about Raiselis. Wrong place, wrong time. We’ll check him out, of course, but…” He didn’t finish the thought.
“GreenField’s a middleman operation, isn’t it?” Jonathon asked. “Suppliers on one side, retailers on the other? What if one of them is out to ruin it?”
“What’s that do to your insider argument?” Joe wanted to know.
“Maybe nothing,” Jonathon said. “Wouldn’t be the first time allies were created out of mutual convenience. Your doer could be somebody else’s cat’s-paw. Maybe a payoff’s in the mix, making your saboteur a mercenary.”
Joe was still going back and forth, his chin tucked. “Too many loose ends,” he muttered. “We need a couple of them to interconnect.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Have you done the dirty deed?” Joe asked. “You said you were ninety percent there.”
Beverly gave him an amused look. “Do you mean, Joseph, have I concluded the purchase of this fine property?”
He laughed. “Yeah. That, too.”
She looped her arm through his. “I have. Actually.”
Once more, she, Joe, and Rachel were in Windsor, revisiting the house on the water. Like the previous time, it was quiet, pleasant, and soothing on the senses.
“Yay,” Rachel said, giving her mother a thumbs-up.
“I take it,” Joe suggested as Rachel wandered off toward the lake, “this also means the Dartmouth teaching job is a sure thing?”
“It is,” Beverly said, her mood tellingly contented.
Joe was equally pleased. Old bachelor that he’d become—and since his initial elation—he’d been considering how he felt about her moving near Brattleboro. He’d been slightly fearful that it might change their personal dynamics, but the more he’d pondered the question, the more he liked how it felt. “Looking forward to that, are you?” he asked, his inquiry more loaded as a result.
She rolled her eyes. “Am I ever. And if I ever needed confirmation, this week was it.”
“That infectious case you were talking about? Anything new?”
“Tomorrow,” she replied. “At least, I think so. That’s when the first of my answers will arrive.”
“Who from?”
“It’s less a person than an object. I’m referring to the histology slides I ordered. Studying them should give me a heads-up on the poor man’s cause of death. I’m hoping the state epidemiologist will follow up twenty-four hours afterwards, to confirm whatever I find.”
“This sounds like a bigger deal than I thought,” Joe commented. They started walking toward the house to take a more proprietary tour, now admiring it in a different light. This was promising to become where he would spend a good deal of time. Unconsciously, he slipped his hand into hers, taking in the skylights, many windows, and especially the small, silolike turret that formed one corner of the house—all very appealing.
“It might be,” she said carefully. “Which certainly means the absence of any similar cases so far is heartening. Of course, I have to consider the possibility that their discovery has merely been delayed. But if we are dealing with something infectious, it could be cause for alarm. That’s in part why I’ve been both distracted and unavailable. I’m grateful now that I started buying this place so long ago.”
Joe smiled. “You probably would’ve been safe. I don’t think Windsor’s under threat of a land rush quite yet.”
She jabbed him in the ribs. “You are so harsh sometimes. I love this town. It’s a little rough around the edges. You can be, too. But I love you.”
He slipped his arm around her waist as they entered the foyer. “I love you, too, Dr. Hillstrom.”
He looked around and gestured with his free hand. “It look different, now that it’s all yours?”
She broke away enough to face him. “Let me ask you that. I’m hoping it’s about to be ours, in a way.”
This, of course, was the topic they’d avoided openly discussing, being at once respectful of each other’s privacy and perhaps a little shy. “Keep going,” he encouraged her, realizing they’d been privately thinking along similar lines.
Her manner was characteristically precise. “Do you see this as somewhere you might want to spend more than a night now and then?”
“I have been thinking about that,” he replied.
“And?” she urged him.
He considered simply blurting out what she wanted to hear—and what he’d been feeling earlier. But his connection to this woman, the foundation of trust on which it was built, demanded a more nuanced and thoughtful response. “It’s very attractive,” he admitted.
“But?” she seemed to enjoy escorting him through this process, like an usher taking a patron to his chair.
“Well,” he resumed, having hoped for such a reaction, “you’ve created a very seductive scenario for a self-protective loner and workaholic like me. From what I understand, you’ll be here half of every week, and maybe weekends?”
“Two days a week, yes,” she confirmed. “And some weekends. Not every one.”
“Which’ll give me three days a week on my own, down in Brattleboro. If I’m correctly reading what we’re dancing around, you wouldn’t be averse to our sharing this place while you’re here.”
Her half smile broadened. “You’re dancing well, Special Agent Gunther. And I did just mention how not all my weekends would be here. I should add that the Geisel School will no doubt have me committed to an evening class or two, further opening up that timetable. And none of that takes into account your own often insane and spontaneous schedule. We could go for weeks without seeing each other.”
She leaned forward and rested her hand against his chest, putting her face close to his. “Joe, I value you the way you are. I love your company and want to see more of you, but you’re not the only one to have become comfortably single in your way. I don’t wish to threaten that, for either of us. I’m suggesting a gentle experiment, to see what we enjoy and what we may find too claustrophobic.”
He kissed her and stroked her cheek. “I’m in,” he said. “I have never been so sure of anything.”
* * *
Joe left Beverly to take room-by-room measurements of the house’s interior, and went to find Rachel outside. She was shooting close-up photographs of a nascent blue flower. His agreement to share a roof with Beverly had in the same breath stimulated an unstated contradiction they both instinctively understood. New Englanders—born or transplanted like Beverly—were famous for guarding their privacy and feelings. He therefore honored that her invitation had not included his playing a role in how the place was to look. This was her house, hers to furnish and decorate. Not only that, but he wanted to give them both a moment to savor the decision they’d just reached.
“I hope you’re getting its good side,” he commented to Rachel.
&nb
sp; She straightened at his approach. “I’m not actually into this kind of shot, but I’ve been told to keep an eye out for filler material. What better than an early summer bloom?”
“True enough,” he said, taking a seat on a weathered wooden bench facing the water.
Rachel joined him, her camera in her lap. “Mom casing the joint?”
“Oh, yeah. My guess is she’ll have everything but blueprints ready in an hour. How’s the job going, by the way? You did great work on that truck crash.”
She turned to him, her expression eager. “Wasn’t that amazing? I know I’ve been spoiled rotten so far, what with the warehouse and the crash coming right on top of each other, but it’s so much better than I expected. People told me to be resigned to garden-club lunches and ribbon cuttings, and I haven’t had either yet. Even the sports stories have been neat, and I barely know one sport from another.”
“How’s your boss?”
“He’s fine. He says hi, by the way. Told me to make a crude comment to you when we next met, so you’d know it came from him.”
“Consider it done,” Joe said, reminiscing about how he and Stan Katz used to tangle back in the day, when Joe worked for the local police and was therefore of particular interest to Katz.
Rachel was still speaking. “He talks a lot about how things used to be, when the building was packed with people, and they were transitioning from typewriters to computers. It does sound like it was a lot of fun.”
Joe nodded, gazing ahead at a bird gliding low, in search of fish. “It was a different world,” he said quietly. “More one-on-one, less pessimistic and angry than it seems now.”
“That’s what Katz says.”
He glanced at her. “What’s it like now? Just the two of you? You must be like two BBs rolling around inside a boxcar.”
“Kind of,” she conceded. “There’re one or two reporters who come and go. I actually don’t see Katz much. He doesn’t come in till the afternoon, and I’m more in my car than at the office.”
“How’s the average day play out?” Joe asked, genuinely interested. “In the old days, photographers were at the beck and call of their editors.” He laughed, adding, “Almost like dogs fetching sticks.”
She joined him. “Hardly. I’m guessing I come up with about half my own assignments, and just hand them in. There’s a ton of independence.”
He was surprised. “Really? How do you do that? You’re new to the area. I’m impressed.”
She held up her large iPhone. “Don’t get carried away. I have a regional scanner feed. Dozens of people wandering around, posting what they’re seeing. It’s not like it used to be. In school, they told us you had cherished sources you cared for and nurtured—probably like you do in police work. But with this, I just keep my eyes peeled and go after what looks interesting.”
She tilted the screen toward him so he could see an endless crawl of one-liners scrolling by in real time. He tried to decipher what was being said.
“Wow. Some of that looks moronic.”
Rachel gave him a rueful look. “Yeah. Well, knowing how to interpret it helps. You should’ve seen this when the truck crashed. That’s when you just turn it off and go yourself. Gets too crazy otherwise. Speaking of that,” she said slowly, “was there anything suspicious there? I was going to call you about that.”
Joe turned to her, diplomatically wide eyed. “Suspicious? How do you mean?”
“I heard rumors.”
“Yeah,” Joe said slowly. “Well, you will. Something like that will get people talking.”
“Funny that it was the same company as the warehouse fire. You think someone has it in for them?”
“It bears looking into,” he said lightly, at once wary and impressed by her persistence.
“Implying the truck was fooled with.”
He stared at her in surprise. “Look at you. You have been hanging out with Katz. How in God’s name do you get that from what I said?”
She kept her eyes fixed on his, her expression studiously neutral. “I’ve been hearing more than just that.”
He chuckled, thinking of all the men who’d populated the crash scene, and been involved—including as eavesdroppers—in the discussions about which truck part to preserve and transport to the state garage, and why. Rachel was attractive and knew how to handle herself, as she was making clear now. It was no stretch to imagine that she’d gotten a source to give her more than he might have intended.
Assuming it hadn’t all been lifted from her ever-handy phone.
Either way, it was a pretty old game. Young Rachel was proving a fast learner.
“You better tell me what you got,” he therefore said. “So we’re both on the same page. I don’t want to miss a good tip.”
That shifted the burden. He saw her play for time by lifting her camera and scrolling through its archive. She showed him a shot of the trailer’s undercarriage. “That’s what was attracting all the attention, as I bet you’re not telling me.”
He loved the end of the sentence, with its invitation to confirm or deny.
“I’m surprised you’re interested,” he commented, steering for safer waters. “You did your job, didn’t you? Photographing the scene? Don’t you move on to the next assignment now?”
She didn’t take offense, which he’d worried she might. “It used to be that specialized,” she said instead, in a lightly indulgent tone. “Like what you were saying about editors making photographers fetch. It’s a new model now, with so few of us on staff. Katz told me that if I find something interesting, like this crash, I should chase it down like a reporter, as well as take the shots. I think he’s actually angling to make me more a reporter than a shooter in the long run. More and more editors aren’t even hiring photographers.”
Joe wasn’t as thrilled by this as he knew he should be. Her response positioned her even more in potential opposition to him. Suppressing a sigh, he steadied the camera with one hand and took a closer look at the image filling its small screen. “Hard to see anything. I wasn’t there, of course. I did wonder how you were able to get that close.”
Endearingly, she blushed, which he figured would be a short-lived reaction if she continued in this profession. “I got lucky,” she confessed. “And nobody threw me out.” She gestured with the camera again. “So, was there something funny with this part of the truck?”
He pretended to squint again, hiding his reaction, and even pressed the control that enlarged parts of the picture, before finally pulling back and apologizing. “I’m sorry, Rachel, I can’t make anything out. The state police are handling the crash reconstruction. They’d really be your best source.”
She didn’t hide her disappointment, adding to his discomfort. While the cop in him was happy to thwart the press creatively, the mentor in him wished he could impart what he knew. He liked this young woman, outside of her being Beverly’s daughter. He’d known her for several years, had employed her once as a videographer at a crime scene, and had even dealt with her in the context of a couple of criminal cases. She’d always come off as thoughtful, smart, considerate, and resilient—character traits he highly esteemed.
It was frustrating to now play avoidance games with her, bordering on lying, when her curiosity was merely imitating his own.
But of course, it was where the fruits of their separate curiosities would end up that defined the barrier between them. Not just legally, but also philosophically, Joe questioned the press’s judgment when it came to the famous “public’s right to know,” thinking that often enough, the reporter’s ambition was more at stake than any citizen’s ignorance.
That obviously wasn’t the case here, but, unlike when he’d helped smuggle Rachel into the warehouse, Joe was going to leave her in the dark on this particular issue. He knew her boss, after all, and things were complicated enough to make the extra aggravation of a hyped-up media an unpleasant distraction.
Joe’s phone went off in his pocket, and—as if illustrating the d
ivide between them—he stood to pull it out and moved away from the bench for privacy. The screen told him that his caller was Walter Easton, the corrections officer from Rutland.
“Hey, Walter.”
“I’m on the run,” Easton said, “but I wanted to give you the heads-up. Mick Durocher just died in the infirmary. That’s a mandatory autopsy, per statute, but there’s not much doubt it was cancer. Just thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks, Walter. Appreciate the courtesy.”
He hung up as Rachel looked at him inquiringly. “Everything okay?”
He nodded and checked his watch. “Yeah—a bit of news I was waiting for. Speaking of which, I guess I better start heading back. Never a dull moment, as they say. I’ll go see how your mom’s doing.”
Rachel stayed behind, camera in her lap, once more studying the flat water before her. She was really happy her mother and Joe had hooked up. She found him kind and decent and in many ways superior to her own father, whom she did truly love, despite his flaws.
But she’d just discovered her first stumbling block with Joe.
She’d always known him to be a man who happened to be a cop. In this last conversation, for the first time, she’d encountered the cop holding sway over the man.
She understood it. She represented the opposing side, even the enemy. Intellectually, she knew the divide between a free press and the law to be a chasm of necessity. But finding herself on the wrong side of it right now, frustrated and empty-handed, hurt her feelings and made her a bit angry.
She accepted it was childish, a reflection of her immaturity as a journalist. Stan Katz had already described this challenge as a battle of wits—something to relish.
But she wasn’t there yet. Nevertheless, she was learning. She knew Joe had been holding back, for example. She, too, hadn’t volunteered that she’d sniffed out a lead during her visit to the crash site—that she’d seen both unhappiness and something less definable stamped on the GreenField representative who’d found her studying the truck’s undercarriage. More important, she remembered that his colleague had referred to him by name.