Keeping the Peace

by Linda Cunningham

  “Yes.”

  “Joe.” John motioned for the state trooper to take the lead.

  They entered the dark hallway, flashlights blazing. The chief followed Joe until he could see an open door.

  “In there, sir,” said the trooper, pointing with his flashlight.

  He stood aside, and John entered the room. Pale light from the moon revealed the body, lying face down on the floor: a male, fully dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a hooded sweatshirt with “Vermont” across the back. One arm was stretched out over the man’s head. The other was curled under his body. The victim had been shot once in the back of the head. A pool of congealed blood spread out across the floor, shining blackly in the moonlight. John turned his flashlight on the doorjambs and the door itself. Both were splattered with blood. He approached the body. Joe Bernard walked in behind him, but Gabriel stood silently in the doorway, staring at the body.

  John knelt down beside the dead man. Without looking up, he addressed the musician. “Is this your friend?”

  Gabriel’s voice shook as he answered, “That’s Bruce Blake. He wasn’t really my friend. I really didn’t know him all that well. He’s a promoter in this part of the country. He’s out of New York.”

  “Do you know why he was in your room?”

  “Well, I did leave the key with him. He wanted some of the business cards I had in my guitar case. He’d said he was going to make some calls. I told him to help himself. I thought he was just going with that girl. They were drinking pretty heavily.”

  John was silent. He looked back at Gabriel. Suddenly, a tiny gleam of reflected light caught his eye. A shiny object lay on the floor right at the toe of the musician’s boot.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Strand,” said John, and he heaved himself to his feet.

  The singer’s eyes widened a little, but he stood still.

  John knelt down. Taking a pen from his pocket, he poked it into the object and lifted it into the glow from Joe’s flashlight. “Twenty-two caliber casing,” he said.

  “Good job, Chief.” Bernard focused the beam of his flashlight to illuminate the shell.

  “For all the good it’ll do,” John said with a sigh.

  “Might have some fingerprints on it,” Bernard said, persisting with his support.

  John stood up. “Let’s leave things as they are here,” he said, “until the Waterbury lab crew gets here. They can get samples. Joe, go check on Cully and see what he’s been up to. See that he’s contacted everyone. We’ve got to clean up here. I wish that power’d come back on.”

  “Are you going to talk to the girl, sir?” asked Bernard.

  “Yeah. Poor thing.” He started back down the hall, followed closely by the other two men.

  “What should I do?” asked the musician.

  “Go with Joe. Joe, leave him with Steve Bruno. They know each other.” Then, more compassionately, the chief said, “Don’t worry, Strand. You stick with Steve, and we’ll go back to the station together. I’ll have to question you after I talk to the girl.”

  “Question me? Somebody should just tell me what the fuck is going on.” Strand was beginning to sound hysterical.

  John let out a long breath. “A man was found shot to death in your hotel room. You knew him. More than that, you were doing business with him. He wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you. You’re a key figure in this whole mess.”

  “I’m not, though.”

  “You are. You could be a suspect. What if you shot him before you came to my house?”

  “What? I didn’t shoot him!”

  “Just go with Joe. I’ll be out after I talk to the girl.”

  From the landing, John watched the young man—pale and slouched over—follow the state trooper down the stairs. Then he continued down the stairs himself, but turned into a short hallway at the bottom that led to the office and the kitchen and knocked at the office door.

  “Come in,” said a woman’s voice.

  John entered the small room lit by a kerosene lamp on the desk. Susan Noyes sat behind the desk, a cup of coffee in her hand. Sitting in a straight chair in the corner was a young woman. Her thin brown hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and her mascara was badly smudged. She looked up at John with wide, frightened eyes, gripping a coffee mug so hard that he noticed her fingernails were white.

  The innkeeper’s wife said, “This is Tiffany Carroll, one of our waitresses. I’ll leave you two alone now.”

  John waved his hand towards his cousin. “No, please, Susan, stay. I just have to ask a few questions.” He pulled up another straight chair and sat down.

  “Well, all right, if you like,” said Susan. “Shall I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “You’ve got hot coffee?”

  “Gas stove.”

  “Yes, please. That’d be great. Sugar and milk, please.”

  She nodded and disappeared through a door at the back of the office.

  John turned to the young woman. “I’m John Giamo, police chief here,” he said. “Your name is Tiffany Carroll?”

  The girl nodded.

  “And you work here at the inn?”

  Another nod.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  The girl answered in a whisper, “A little over a year, I guess.”

  “Full time?”

  “Mm-hmm, nights.”

  “Where are you from, Tiffany?”

  “Springfield,” she said.

  At this point, Susan Noyes came back into the room and handed John a steaming mug of coffee. He reached for it gratefully and sipped. It was hot and it burned, but it felt good as the heat traveled slowly down his gullet, warming him from the inside out. Suddenly, the lights popped on.

  “Well!” exclaimed Susan, looking around as though she had never seen the room before.

  John could hear murmurs from the people in the lobby, and then that murmur rose into a sort of cheer. He heard the furnace kick, and the old radiator under the window shuddered. The chief sighed. He took another sip of the coffee and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past four in the morning. He was glad the power was back on. The warmth and light might make the girl feel more comfortable.

  He said to her, “I could ask you a lot of questions, most of the answers I’d know already, but I want the truth here. A straight story. You’re an essential part of this investigation. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did Bruce Blake try to hurt you, Tiffany? Did you shoot Bruce Blake?”

  John put the hard question out first and watched the girl closely as her bloodshot eyes grew wide and dark with fear. Her mouth opened, and she gave a short gasp, sucking air down her trachea. Then, she gasped again, and again. She was hyperventilating.

  Susan was on her feet. “Put your head down between your knees, Tiffany. Right now,” she said, and Tiffany obeyed.

  John waited.

  After a couple of minutes, she raised her head slowly.

  “Are you all right now?” John asked.

  Tiffany nodded, took a deep breath, and as far as she was able, tried to compose herself. “You can go ahead and ask me questions, sir,” she said in her small voice. “I’m okay.”

  Susan sat down slowly in her chair, but continued to eye the girl warily.

  “Why don’t I just let you do the talking?” said John. “You tell me what happened this evening. Start with when Gabriel Strand and Bruce Blake came into the tavern.”

  The girl took another deep breath, but her voice was steady. She stared at the floor, as if she could recall things better by concentrating on the grain of the old wood. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Well, I was the cocktail waitress. That means I was the waitress in the tavern, not working in the dining room. There’s usually only one of us that works in there. I serve the drinks. Sometimes I make them, too, if Bill is busy doing something else. I also get the tavern food for anyone who wants it. There’s a tavern menu, you see. Not like the dinner menu; simple
r food, like hamburgers and stuff. And some Tex-Mex stuff, too. And calamari. Fried.”

  John picked at his cuff to hide his impatience, but he decided to let the girl ramble a little. It might settle her down.

  “Well, I had heard that Gabriel Strand was in town,” she continued. “We heard from some fans who were gossiping in the lobby. They’d been talking to that policeman of yours, Tim Cully, I think, and he had said that Gabriel Strand was staying at the inn. A lot of people came into the tavern at first, and they were asking me questions, but I hadn’t seen anybody, so I just said, ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him,’ and it was true. Then, later in the afternoon, I think it might have been about six o’clock or so, in they come.”

  “Who?”

  “Gabriel Strand. And…and Bruce Baker. I thought the rest of Ragged Rainbow would be in, too, but it was only them. They’re the only ones here, I guess. That’s what I heard. Anyway, I was excited, but I tried to be cool, you know, and not be such a fangirl. So I was just doing my job. My shift was supposed to be over at six thirty, when Annette would be coming in. I went over and said, ‘Can I get you guys something?’ And Bruce Baker, he says, ‘Do you know who this is?’ And I said, ‘Yes, you’re Gabriel Strand, but I don’t know who you are,’ meaning Bruce Baker. At the time, too, they were the only ones in the room. I brought them two beers—I mean, one each. Then Annette came in, and she said, ‘I’m on now. Did you cash out?’ I said no, I hadn’t. She told me the weather was bad and to just go along, that she’d do it, so I said thanks.

  “That’s when Bruce Baker says to me, ‘Hey, sit down here with us for a minute.’ Well, to be perfectly honest, me and my boyfriend haven’t been getting along at all, and I didn’t want to go home right then because I never know what mood he’s going to be in, you know? And then, how often do you get to sit down with Gabriel Strand? So, of course I said yes. Then Bruce Baker switched his drink to margaritas, and he orders me one, too. Gabriel was still nursing his beer, but me and Bruce kept drinking the margaritas. He just kept ordering them. Then, Gabriel said he had to go see somebody, and I said, ‘You can’t go anywhere tonight.’ He said he had to go see the police chief’s wife, so I thought it was important, and anyway, I was having a good time, so I said I’d give him a ride. But Bruce said, ‘You’re too drunk to drive,’ so I said for Gabriel to just take my car. I gave him the keys and told him how to get to your house.” Here, the girl stopped and fidgeted with her fingers.

  John and Susan exchanged looks, but the girl remained calm.

  “Then what?” Giamo finally prodded her.

  The waitress rubbed her eyes. “Well, I was pretty drunk, and then I was getting mad at my boyfriend.” She stopped talking.

  John prompted, “Tiffany?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so tired.”

  “Just finish the story, then you can get some sleep.”

  “I’m afraid to go home.”

  John rubbed his face in quiet exasperation, but Susan said, “You can sleep here in the downstairs room, Tiffany.”

  The girl seemed relieved. She went on with her story. “Well, I was pretty drunk, like I said. Then Bruce started getting pretty friendly. Finally, he said would I like to see Gabriel Strand’s room and maybe get a band T-shirt. There was a box in there, I guess. I said, sure I would. He took me by the hand and led me up to the room. It was right across the hall from Bruce’s room. Then Bruce said, ‘That’s weird.’ I asked what he was talking about, and he said the door was open. I said he musta forgot to close it tight. Sometimes the doors stick. Then, oh, wow. Then, it was bad, Mr. Giamo.” Now big tears rolled down her face.

  John cleared his throat and urged her sympathetically. “Go on, Tiffany,” he said softly. “You have to tell just what you saw.”

  Tiffany gulped and wiped her eyes. “I didn’t see much, I can tell you that. Bruce opened the door. The room was all dark, of course. He went in, and there was a kind of pop or something. Like just a pop. And then I heard a crash. I—I guess that was Bruce falling.”

  “Don’t think about that, Tiffany,” instructed the chief. “Just say what you saw.”

  “Okay, well, I heard a crash, and just as I was going to, oh, wow, I was going to walk right in there. Just as I was going to walk in there to see what had happened, I heard a voice. I think it said, ‘Now you’ve got what you deserve, Strand.’ Then someone ran out. I was just standing there. It was, like, pitch black. Whoever it was pushed me back into the wall. Hard. Then they ran down the hall.” Tiffany sighed again. Her hands were shaking. “I—I went in to ask Bruce what happened. I saw him lying on the floor. I ran out. I didn’t even know he’d been shot. I just thought there was a fight or something. I ran to get Bill.”

  John looked up at Susan. “That’s right,” she corroborated the girl’s story. “She came to get Bill.”

  “Well,” said John, “this has been very important to the investigation, Tiffany. Thank you. When you heard the person speak, are you sure they used Strand’s name?”

  “Oh, yes.” Tiffany nodded emphatically.

  “Could you identify the person?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It was so dark. I didn’t even see a face. I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman. The voice was kind of a high-pitched whisper. I can’t explain it. Everything happened so fast. I’m sorry. I can’t be sure of anything. The emergency red exit lights were on, that’s all. I know that.”

  “Do you know what the person was wearing?”

  Tiffany shook her head. “Can I go, please? I don’t feel very good.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll probably have to speak to you again in the next couple of days.”

  He waited as the girl murmured a hasty “okay” and hurried from the room.

  The chief pulled at his nose. “Sounds like someone meant to kill Strand.”

  Susan said, “Sounds like it was over a girl.”

  John looked absently out the window where the first light of morning revealed snow up to the window sills. “Or it was a girl,” he mused.

  Bill Noyes came into the room just then. He looked like a giant scrawny heron, bundled in a snow machine suit with his long pointy nose sticking out from under a knit ski hat. He said, “There’s almost three feet of snow out there. This would be good for business if this thing hadn’t happened last night. Is there any way to keep this quiet, John?”

  The chief was beginning to feel tired. He shrugged. “You certainly don’t have to tell everybody there was a murder. Apparently most of the people were downstairs in front of the fire anyway and the gunshot wasn’t loud, but don’t forget the Waterbury team is on the way. They’ll have to do their investigation and get the body out.”

  “I’ll make them use the fire escape,” said Noyes. “That way, they won’t disturb breakfast.”

  Susan stood. “Speaking of which, I’ve got to get into the kitchen. Bill, you’d better arrange for clean-up after Waterbury leaves. Call if you need anything more, John.”

  John smiled in acknowledgment. Bill was still pacing, wringing his hands. John gave thanks for Susan’s level head. He heaved himself to his feet. “I’ve got to get back to the station,” he said to Noyes. “I’m sure Joe and Steve are still there with Strand. I’ve got to put together some sort of plan and make sure Strand’s out of danger. See you later, Bill.”

  “Yeah, okay, Chief.”

  Chapter Ten

  JOHN WALKED OUT OF THE OFFICE and stepped onto the front porch. The world was completely silent and white. Despite a body lying upstairs in a pool of blood and everything else that had happened over the last twenty-four hours, despite his being bone tired and not yet finished with the business at hand, John could not help but be lifted by the beauty that surrounded him. He slogged his way to the Suburban. Bits of drifting, floating ice crystals hit him in the face. The cold sting was fresh and pleasant. It was these times that he, not a religious man, was assured once again that higher powers did exist and the follies of men were just that.

&
nbsp; Still, he lived in this particular plane and had responsibilities. One person had purposely caused the death of another, and folly or no folly, it was his duty to see justice done and to restore the order demanded by the society in which he lived. He gave his characteristic short, sharp sigh and started up the Suburban. The plows had been down the main streets not two hours before so the road was clear to the police station. He glanced at his watch. It was six fifteen. Cully’s cruiser, Bernard’s state car, and Becky’s little SUV were all parked there. Then John noticed his son Michael’s car was there, too.

  Puzzled, he entered the building. When he opened the door to the police offices, Becky was standing there, steaming coffee cup extended. He took it gratefully.

  The telephone on Becky’s desk rang, and she answered it. When she hung up, she said, “Waterbury’s there. Are you going back?”

  John shook his head and sipped his coffee. “No. She’ll call me later. I’ll write the preliminary report, and then I’m going home for a hot shower. I’ll be back around noon.”

  He turned around to go into his office. Steve Bruno, Joe Bernard, and Tim Cully stood in the doorway. Beyond them, inside his office, he could see Gabriel Strand sitting slouched in the hard wooden chair. And beside him, sitting in John’s own chair and holding the musician’s hand, was his wife. His surprise must have been obvious because he noticed the three uniformed men shift on their feet uncomfortably.

  He cleared his throat and addressed the men. “We can’t do anything more about this situation until Waterbury gets done. I have to review evidence and proceed with the investigation. I’ll start that this afternoon. In the meantime, Cully, you run the roads. Everybody’s still digging out, and there’s no school, so people will still be trying to run into each other with vehicles. Joe, you go back and just make sure everything’s copacetic at the inn. Stay with the Waterbury team until they get what they need. Then come back here to do your report. Steve, you stay here with Becky. You’ve had a long couple of days. Call Jason and tell him to come in to relieve you at noon. Then you go home. I don’t want to see you for twenty-four hours.”