The Disposable Man

by Archer Mayor

  The wall phone buzzed, and she crossed over to pick it up. “Hillstrom.”

  She listened for several seconds, said, “Thank you, Betty,” and hung up, explaining, “I thought the wording might catch his attention. Tim’s on his way.”

  I hadn’t bothered forming a mental image of Hillstrom’s Russian-speaking friend, but when he was shown through the door by one of her staff, I was somewhat taken aback. Instead of a skinny, stooped academic, with maybe a goatee and thick glasses, a man in the casual dress of a businessman—sport jacket and slacks—balding, sharp-eyed, broad-chested, and thin-lipped, entered the room as if he were about to address a board meeting.

  “Beverly, what are you up to?” he demanded, taking the rest of us in with a glance and a curt nod.

  Hillstrom knew better than to bother with introductions. She took Cox’s arm and led him to the autopsy table. “We have a John Doe with a curious set of toes. What do you make of them?”

  Perching a pair of half-glasses on his nose, Timothy Cox bent at the waist and peered at the row of letters, keeping his hands by his sides. After no more than half a minute, he straightened back up, removed the glasses, jammed them into his breast pocket, and announced, “We’re tired.”

  “That’s what they say?” I asked, after a moment’s stunned silence.

  Cox allowed a small, pleased smile. “Right. In the old Soviet Army days, you’d mix an excess of vodka with boredom and a barracks artist, and this,” he pointed at the toes, “was often the result. It was considered a classic infantry badge, way back when.” He glanced up the table at the discolored face. “And judging from his looks, this guy’d be about the right age. My bet is you’ve got yourself an old-time Russkie here.”

  Chapter 3

  I REACHED BRATTLEBORO LATE that night. The trip home had been by the sepulchral gleam of a full moon, washing the tree-covered mountains and the undulating road with the colorless light of a hundred-year-old photograph. Vermont at night has always made me think of the eighteenth century, when its few inhabitants surrendered the darkened fields and forests to the mysterious elements that helped fuel Indian folklore on one side and settlers’ fears on the other. To this day, even in a car flying down the interstate, I see the vast spaces between the occasional lights as teeming with nocturnal life, most of which is watching me as I pass, a meaningless blur, no more than a shiver of wind.

  I took Exit Two, considered checking in at the office, but turned right instead, toward West Brattleboro, making another right up Orchard Street, where I shared a house with Gail Zigman. It was time to be home—to be one of those glimmering lights.

  Still, I paused on the street opposite our address, killing the engine to better savor the moment. The house was large—even enormous—with a garage, an attached barn, a back deck so big a huge maple looked comfortable sticking up through its middle. It was two and a half stories tall, Greek Revival in style, with white-painted wooden clapboards and a slate roof. It was surrounded by a lush, sloping lawn and sat in the moonlight like a display in some celestial shop window. Not long ago, it would have been as foreign to me as a mansion in Rhode Island. And now it was home.

  It was Gail’s doing, of course. An erstwhile hippie of the sixties, come to Vermont to exchange a wealthy urban lifestyle for a nearby commune, she’d eventually migrated to town, become a successful Realtor, earned a place on half the boards available, been elected a selectman, and fallen in love with me. Now she had a dependable bank account, worked endless hours as a brand-new assistant state’s attorney, and was as happy as I’d ever seen her. It had been a long road, almost destroyed by a violent rape a few short years ago, and this house was the visible reward.

  Which sometimes left me feeling a little odd. Briefly married, a widower for decades thereafter, I’d been a cop my whole adult life. I’d lived in this town since my mid-twenties, most of that time on the third floor of an ancient Victorian pile, in a cheap apartment remarkable only for the shabbiness of its furniture and its excessive assortment of books—my only recreation. The son of a farmer who’d fathered me late in life, I knew nothing of the financial achievements that had marked Gail’s past. The house opposite me was ours in name, and represented a move I’d made without regret, but I had yet to form an attachment to it. It remained the home a rich person would own, and within its embrace I always felt slightly like an intruder.

  I restarted the engine and pulled into the driveway, the night abruptly torn away by the blinding glare of two motion-detector spotlights. Walking from the car to the kitchen door, fumbling with the several keys I needed to gain entry, I squinted up in vain at the stars for a final farewell, defeated by the artificial brightness. Perhaps that was another cause for my uneasiness with this house: it had been purchased after the rape, which had occurred in Gail’s own home, where she’d been happily living alone. This substitute, while fancier by far, was like the memorial of an event that would never fade from memory.

  I found Gail in bed upstairs, surrounded by folders, legal briefs, and sheets of yellow notepaper. She didn’t usually work in bed, having an office down the hall, which prompted me to ask, “You okay?”

  She caught my meaning immediately, holding out her arms for an embrace. “Yeah. Just feeling lonely.”

  I kissed her and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Tough day? I noticed no one from your office showed up at the scene this morning.”

  She lay back against the pillows. “It was a zoo. Court appearances all day, one secretary out sick, Carol still on vacation. Once Jack heard it was probably a dumping, he didn’t see much value in sending anyone out for a drive in the countryside. What was it like?”

  I smiled appreciatively. Jack Derby was her boss, the Windham County State’s Attorney. A relative newcomer on our political landscape, he was a natural pragmatist. “He had it right—pretty day for it, though.”

  She began collecting her homework, dropping it on the floor. “Who was it?”

  I rose and removed my jacket and shoes. “Don’t know. That’s why I went up to Burlington. We don’t often come across bodies so totally stripped of identifiers—it was like he’d been dry-cleaned. Even his clothing labels were missing.”

  “Was Hillstrom any help?” Gail asked, settling back on a now-clean bed, killing the reading light beside her. She was wearing pajamas, and her hair was spread out on the pillows behind her. The only remaining light came from a small lamp on the dresser, which threw soft shadows on her face.

  “A friend of hers was. Pegged some tattoos the guy had on his toes as Russian.”

  “That’s pretty exotic.” I returned to her side, sat back down, and took her hand in mine.

  “That may be all it is. So far, none of it amounts to a nibble, and it might stay that way. Still, I asked them to keep the tattoos to themselves, just in case we need them later.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “Well, it’s good to have you back. I missed you all day for some reason. More than usual.”

  I let go of her hand, reached up and unbuttoned the top of her pajamas. A smile slowly spread across her face. Her leg pressed against mine and her hand slid onto my thigh. I went down to the next button, and the one below that, until I could peel back one-half of the top.

  “Welcome home,” she murmured.

  · · ·

  The shouted warning appeared from nowhere as soon as I touched the doorknob. “Don’t open that.”

  I froze in the police department’s short hall-like entranceway, and stared at the seated man signaling me from behind the bulletproof glass lining one wall. I leaned toward the speaking hole cut into its middle. “What’s going on?”

  Barry Givens, the graveyard-shift dispatcher, explained, “They put down a new floor last night. It’s still drying. You have to go around.”

  I waved and retreated to the public corridor splitting the Municipal Building in two—along with the police department’s offices—and walked farther up to an unmarked door generally used by the patrol divisi
on. We were undergoing yet another renovation, this one to accommodate an updated dispatch center to handle the town’s police, fire, and EMS simultaneously. A good idea in itself, it also conformed with the state’s ongoing effort to join the 911 emergency response system, something Vermont had avoided until it had become virtually the sole holdout in the entire country. One of the nation’s least populated states, Vermont was also chronically broke, two factors that had put 911 on the back burner for too long.

  I let myself in using a key, walked through the quiet Patrol Room, and crossed over to the chief’s corner office next door. It was before seven in the morning, my people were just beginning to show up, Patrol was closing out the shift, hunched over their keyboards, and Chief Tony Brandt was already at work, sitting at an enormous, rough-hewn, cubbyhole-equipped pine desk he’d built himself.

  All was as usual.

  Brandt was an unorthodox mixture of the old and the new. A lifelong cop, a New Englander born to small-town habits, he had nevertheless evolved into a modern administrator/politician. He ran the department from his oversized desk, from lunches with Brattleboro’s movers and shakers, from meetings in offices of people who saw government as children see playgrounds. He cajoled and threw hardballs when necessary and draped a protective mantle over the department and all its employees. The rank and file sold him short for this sometimes, saying he’d lost his touch for the street, but he got them new equipment when other town departments were left wanting, and he was receptive to suggestions when he thought they had merit. No longer a good ol’ boy, perhaps, he’d become a damn good boss instead.

  He had also once been an inveterate pipe smoker, something both his doctor and new town regs had finally curtailed. Still, I’d gotten used to forever seeing him through an aromatic haze, and—his health notwithstanding—I begrudged the new appearance of his office nowadays, with its crystal-clear atmosphere.

  He peered up at me as I entered, the early morning sun glinting off his gold-rimmed glasses. “How was Burlington?”

  I waggled my hand back and forth equivocally. “So-so. The guy might be a Russian, he might have been killed one to three days ago—or three years ago and then put in a deep freeze—and he probably had a meal the same day he died.”

  Tony stared at me for a moment. “That’s it?”

  “Basically. He might’ve had the clap once, too. The Russian part comes from some Cyrillic letters he’s got tattooed on his toes. That and he had bad dental work.”

  Tony stared thoughtfully at his desktop. I remained silent. “You having a briefing about this soon?” he finally asked.

  I checked my watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “If it’s all right, I’d like to sit in.”

  · · ·

  There were six of us around the table: Tony, Ron, J.P., myself, and the two remaining members of my crew—Sammie Martens, my second-in-command, and Willy Kunkle.

  I began by passing out a sheaf of papers. “These are copies of the ME’s preliminary report, which basically says what we saw yesterday is what we got. The addendum about the tattooed toes is mine. I asked Hillstrom to keep that part of the autopsy under wraps, just in case. One additional tidbit: the dead man was apparently once treated with tetracycline. Hillstrom’s Russian expert said that access to that stuff over there is pretty much a black-market deal, which implies this guy had those kinds of connections. Ron, you handled the inquiries from here. What’s the status so far?”

  Ron Klesczewski paused, fingering his notepad. Despite his years on the squad—even being my second for a couple of them—he remained a curiously tentative soul, much given to self-doubt. His strength, just as J.P.’s was forensics, had always been document searches and paper flow. And although I’d seen him stand unflinching in a firefight, he’d always struck me as being too nice a guy to be a cop.

  “It’s a little early yet,” he now answered. “But as soon as you called me with the Russian angle from the ME’s office, I faxed the FBI, INS, DEA, Border Patrol, ATF, all the area drug task forces, the state police of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York, as well as all in-state law enforcement agencies. When the crime lab produces his fingerprints and a decent photograph, I was thinking we could enhance and expand the bulletin nationwide and forward the prints to the FBI.”

  “Good,” I agreed. “But no feedback so far, right?”

  He shook his head.

  “Sammie,” I asked next, “what about the neighborhood canvass?”

  Sammie Martens—small, wiry, high-strung, and aggressive—had come to us from the Army. Still in her twenties, she’d replaced Ron as my number two through sheer willpower, working harder, smarter, and for longer hours than anyone else in the entire department. The cost had been the total sacrifice of a private life, something I’d vainly encouraged her to cultivate for sheer sanity’s sake. Had she not proven her intense loyalty to me time and again—and had I really cared about such things—I would’ve felt the hot breath of her ambition on my neck. As it was, I was happy to know that whatever happened to me, the squad would be in good hands.

  “Zilch,” she answered shortly. “There aren’t many people living up there to start with, and none of them admits to hearing or seeing a thing.”

  “You check with anyone regularly traveling those roads?” I asked. “Maybe a delivery truck driver saw something.”

  “Right,” Willy Kunkle said with a laugh. “UPS is up there all the time, delivering Brookstone nail clippers to their upper-class customers.”

  Ron took note of my suggestion in his pad. Sammie just gave Willy a withering look which he ignored. Kunkle was the office renegade—surly, impatient, opinionated, but with a talent for police work bordering on pure instinct. His left arm totally crippled by a bullet years earlier, Kunkle had a quality I alone seemed to value. As impossible to categorize as he was to control, he was my best weapon against those regular customers who treated us with arrogant dismissiveness. When the crunch was on, and I truly needed answers, Willy was the one I sent out, although I often worried that his tactics—whatever they were—would eventually land us in court. Unfortunately, such redeeming opportunities were all too rare. The rest of the time, he seemed content to simply be a pain in the ass.

  J.P. looked up from reading my addendum. “Are we assuming this John Doe was a Russian?”

  “Not necessarily,” I answered. “It’s a strong possibility only. I’d love to have Interpol fly it by the Russian police, but until we get more on him, it would probably be a waste of time.”

  Willy crumpled his Styrofoam coffee cup and tossed it into a nearby trash basket. “Waste of time anyhow. Those guys are too busy robbing banks.”

  “I think,” I continued, ignoring him, “we ought to release a cleaned-up photo of him to the local papers, play the ‘have-you-seen-this-man’ angle, and hope we get lucky. In the meantime, maybe we can brainstorm a few other ideas. Any suggestions?”

  “The killer lives in the area—we know that much,” Willy said.

  J.P. nodded in agreement. “At least the person who dumped him does. He knew the terrain and he knew how and when to approach it so no one would notice him. Fish and Wildlife is still working the site this morning, but as of last night their tracker was pretty impressed.”

  “So maybe an outdoorsman to boot,” I suggested.

  “That local knowledge combined with the body’s lividity pattern suggests he was killed in the area,” Sammie said. “Is there any way to identify the gastric contents? Maybe we can tie it to a nearby restaurant.”

  I shook my head. “I was told that’s a dead end.”

  “He was probably driven to near where we found him,” J.P. said. “And given what the garrote did to his neck and the lack of any blood at the scene, we’re talking about a car or some absorbent material that’s pretty bloody.”

  It was a statement of fact—something merely to remember, but it stimulated Willy to ask, “How did he get here in the first place?”

  “Go
od point,” I said. “Ron, put out inquiries to train, bus, taxi, and rental car companies as soon as we get his photos.” I looked around the table. “What else? How ’bout motive?”

  “Mob,” Sammie said immediately. “It looks like a hit—a strike from behind with no sign of a struggle—and we’ve all been reading bulletins about how the Russian Mafia’s on the move. Plus there’s that tetracycline/black market angle.”

  “Implying a drug war, maybe?” I asked.

  “I haven’t heard anything,” Willy stated flatly, which, given the circles he traveled in, meant something.

  Tony Brandt spoke quietly for the first time. “The Canadians have.” He looked at Ron Klesczewski. “You better add RCMP, Quebec Provincial Police, and the larger urban agencies up there to your list. It wouldn’t be the first time their troubles began leaking south.”

  There was a hesitation in the room as everyone groped for something to add. Getting to my feet, I finally let them off the hook. “All right. That’s probably enough for now. A couple of things, though: it’s early yet, so don’t let this take over your lives. Wait for our inquiries to generate something solid, and try to clear your desks of ongoing cases in preparation. Also, don’t let this Russian mob angle give you tunnel vision. For all we know, some benign foreign uncle was knocked off by his woodchuck nephew for the inheritance.”

  Typically, Willy had the last word. “Sure,” he said, “an uncle equipped with a buckle knife.”

  · · ·

  Two days later, we were stuck where we’d started. The papers had published the picture we’d supplied, which the state crime lab had made acceptably presentable, all our teletyped inquiries had been sitting on other people’s desks for well over twenty-four hours, and every officer in the department had talked to his or her snitches. Nothing had popped to the surface, including from the FBI, which had reported a “no match found” in record time.

  Homicide cases have a limited shelf life, and I was beginning to fear our mysterious John Doe might melt away with as many questions as he’d stimulated.