The Disposable Man

by Archer Mayor

  “It’s the tree,” I told him. “Specifically, one of the seeds.”

  “And one of the small lower branches has been freshly broken,” J.P. added, touching his hair. “About head high.”

  To give Tyler his due, it was a nice bit of timing. Rarig pushed out his lips and expelled a small sigh, staring straight ahead. “I see,” he finally said.

  “So?” I prompted.

  He looked uncomfortable. “We’ve got a very good reputation here. You saw the article. Word gets out I handed you my guest list, I could lose my shirt—maybe even end up in court. I don’t suppose you have a warrant?”

  I in turn ducked that. “We’re not exactly Keystone Kops, Mr. Rarig. We could check them out without their even knowing it, at least initially. If we found something suspicious, the person involved would probably have more to worry about than smearing your reputation.”

  Rarig shook his head. “I better call my lawyer and get some advice. I don’t want to be unfriendly, but I’m way out of my depths here, and I don’t want to lose everything I’ve put into this place.”

  I was impressed by the sincerity in his voice, which I also knew meant nothing whatsoever.

  “What about your employees?” Tyler asked. “How many are there?”

  His answer surprised me. “Twenty-five, not counting me, although only five of them are full-time salaried.”

  “Could we have their names, at least?” I asked.

  Again, he didn’t answer immediately.

  “There are Labor and Industry files we could consult,” I prompted, being somewhat less than truthful. “Tax records, Department of Health, disability insurance. It would take time, but—”

  He waved his hand and stood up. “All right. I don’t see the harm there. I will warn them about what I’ve done, though.”

  J.P. and I joined him. “Fair enough,” I said. “When can we expect them?”

  “Would tomorrow be too late? That’ll give me time to call my lawyer, too.”

  I shook his hand. “That’ll be fine.”

  He led us back to the front door, where I removed the retouched photo of the man in Hillstrom’s cooler from my pocket. “You ever see him?”

  He looked at it carefully. “He’s the one in the paper, who was found in the quarry.”

  “That’s right.”

  He returned the picture. “No. I’m afraid not.”

  He looked me hard in the eye as I put the photo away. “Look, I do want to cooperate. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do,” I told him. But I hadn’t the slightest idea.

  · · ·

  We’d been driving for five minutes in silence before I asked Tyler, “Tell me more about the broken branch.”

  “It was around the back of the tree, near the trunk, out of sight of where we parked.”

  “You think it could have caused Malik’s head injury?”

  “It was the right height. And the stump had been trimmed with a knife—clumsily—and the broken piece removed. I checked the whole area. That could be innocent enough—we can ask whoever it is who takes care of the grounds if he found it and threw it away after trimming the stump. But it might mean the killer did it to hide any trace evidence on the wood. A tidy guest might’ve done it, too, I suppose,” he added after a pause. “So much time’s gone by.”

  “What could you see from there?”

  “A pretty good view of the inn. At night with the interior lights on, I’d guess you’d have a clear shot of the whole first floor, at least toward the front. And that’s where most of the activity takes place, what with the dining room taking up ninety percent of the back side. I checked how the night lighting’s rigged. From what I could see, a floodlight mounted across the walkway on the wall is aimed directly at the other side of the trunk, throwing a shadow where I was standing.”

  “So—a nice, discreet observation spot.”

  “I’d say so. I’d have to go back at night to make sure. There is something else,” he added after a pause. “If Malik was standing there, it would give us another explanation why his shoes were missing.”

  “Maybe. What about Rarig?” I asked.

  J.P. frowned thoughtfully. “He plays straight enough. I hope we don’t get any shit about the guest list.”

  “We will. We also might be able to find out who some of them were through the employees. That list I think he’ll give us, to buy us off.”

  “Meaning he does have something to hide?”

  “Not necessarily. His concern’s legitimate—reputation’s a word of mouth thing. What sticks in my craw is that magazine article. Not only did Rarig appear in it just once, by accident, but he keeps the article tucked away.”

  Tyler gave me a skeptical look. “It’s in a room where all the guests get together before dinner every night.”

  I shook my head. “No, no. That’s not what I mean. A few million people’ve already read the thing, after all. It’s the body language. If you ran that place and got that kind of attention, wouldn’t you frame the article and put it where people could see it?”

  “Maybe. I suppose so.”

  “It’s the fact that he didn’t, and that he stayed out of the photos in the first place, that bugs me.”

  Tyler slowly began to smile. “And that he originally came from DC.”

  Chapter 7

  JOHN RARIG LOOKED AROUND MY OFFICE early the next morning, no doubt struck by its small size and state of disarray. Brattleboro was once described as a champagne town with a beer income—a reference to its population’s affinity for catering to all causes while being hard-pressed to pay for them. The police department, along with all the other municipal services, was allowed no fat in its budget, as my office decor amply testified.

  I gestured to a plastic guest chair. “Please, have a seat.”

  He stayed standing in the doorway. “No, thanks.” He reached into his back pocket and extracted a folded sheet of paper, which he handed to me. “That’s a list of my employees. My lawyer wanted me to tell you to pound sand, but I disagreed. If someone who works for me has broken the law, I want to find out about it. The guests are another matter, at least until you can get a warrant, but this one’s on me. I did put out a memo, though, that I was cooperating with the police, so they know you’ll be coming. I thought that was only fair.”

  I glanced over the sheet. “That’s fine, and I appreciate the cooperation. It’s not like we’re loaded for bear, anyhow. We’re just hoping to solve a puzzle. It could be your place had nothing to do with any of this.” I smiled and added, “That we’re barking up the wrong ginkgo tree.”

  He smiled weakly. Turning to go, he paused. “Try to respect their privacy, okay? These are good people—at least I think they are. They’ve helped me enormously—kept a dream alive. I don’t want anyone to think I’ve abused their trust.”

  I rose from my desk and escorted him down our small hallway to the building’s central corridor. “Mr. Rarig, we do this a lot. For every thirty or forty people we interview, only one ends up holding the bag. We’re not out to abuse people.”

  He nodded and shook my hand. “Will you let me know how things are going?”

  “I’ll keep you informed,” I said, solely to pacify him.

  I stood in the doorway, watching him walk toward the exit where the parking lot’s located. His shoulders were slumped and his gait hesitant. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked his seventy-odd years.

  Despite the circumstances that had led me to him, and the deep suspicions I had concerning him, I’d also been touched by his asking me to watch out for his employees. The reference to their helping him achieve his goal had struck a chord—at once poignant and lonely—the comment of a single man who’d made the best he could of the end of his life, to the point of calling it a dream come true.

  · · ·

  We were in the conference room, just the three of us, making the table look larger than it was. My office would’ve worked also, but I’d
wanted space enough for all of us to take notes comfortably.

  I passed out copies of Rarig’s employee list, noting with amused satisfaction how it was received. Sammie picked it up in both hands and stared at it, as if willing it to confess. Ron aligned it squarely before him on the tabletop with his fingertips—a document worthy of preservation and respect.

  “Twenty-six names,” I said, “including John Rarig’s, to be split between the three of us. The chief won’t give us any more manpower, since it doesn’t look like we’ve got a tiger by the tail. But chances are we can whittle the numbers down pretty fast. Start with the usual criminal record checks—NCIC, Vermont CIC, and the in-house criminal files of VSP and all bordering state police agencies. Check our own archives, and as soon as you peg a home address for each name, call any contacts you might have in other municipal departments to see what they have—you never know who might be on a snitch or suspect list. And don’t forget the sheriff’s office.”

  Both of them were writing this down, so I paused briefly to let them catch up. “If we don’t get lucky with any of that,” I continued, “we can check out public records. Start with Motor Vehicles. They’ll give you a lot to go on—description, address, date of birth, what’s been registered, and so on. From there, you can go to the appropriate town clerks for more. Push comes to shove, and they don’t own a car, use the phone book to at least get an address. All we’re after at this point are the basics—name, rank, and serial number. As individuals begin standing out, we can dig a little deeper, just so we know more than they think we do when we talk to them. Right now, though, nobody gets the third degree,” I added, remembering Rarig’s plea. “If there’s a bad guy in the bunch, chances are he’ll pop up before the others even know we’ve been snooping around.”

  “What’re we going to do about the guest list?” Ron asked.

  I sat back in my chair. “Not much. When we get to talking with the employees, we should ask for any names, hometowns, and anything else they might remember. Maybe they’ll be a little less discreet than Rarig.”

  “They’re going to know that’s against the rules,” Sammie cautioned.

  “True,” I said, standing up. “But there’re all kinds of ways to extract information. They don’t have to see you coming.”

  · · ·

  Around one that afternoon, by now immersed in the details of chasing down my nine allotted names—to little effect—I got a telephone call from Stan Katz, the editor of the Brattleboro Reformer. Katz and I went back many years, from when I was just a detective, and he was the paper’s distrustful cops-’n’-courts reporter. It had never been a friendship—far from it, on occasion—but we’d grown toward a mutual respect. When the paper had almost hit bottom a few years back, briefly becoming a sensationalist tabloid under the misguided management of an out-of-state owner, Katz had led the charge in an employee buyout. Now laden with a financial burden as well as his editorial responsibilities, he was a far more thoughtful and forgiving human being, which, given his start, made him just bearable—some of the time.

  “Joe,” he said, “long time, no harassment.”

  “Which makes me very happy. How’s life?”

  “Lousy. Don’t let anyone tell you that when the nuts take over the nuthouse, things run any smoother. No wonder the Communists went belly-up. I was calling about the dead guy in the quarry. Anything new?”

  “What happened to Alice?” I asked. Alice Sims was the current police beat reporter.

  “I gotta take a break from this management crap once in a while. Alice’ll write it. I’m just helping her out.”

  “I don’t know what she’ll write,” I said. “We still don’t have a name, a motive, a weapon, or anything else. The last press release still says it all, including the Boris Malik pseudonym.”

  “Does that mean the guy was Russian?”

  Through the sheriff’s initial inquiry, the rental car’s existence had finally leaked, along with its connection to Logan Airport, but we’d still managed to keep the tattooed toes and the buckle knife under wraps. “Could be. But we got nowhere checking flight manifests into Boston, and the car rental people were a dead end.”

  I paused a moment, reflecting on my present efforts, and considered how this conversation might be turned to my advantage. “To be honest,” I added, “there’s a growing feeling the body was just dumped here. We haven’t found any neighborhood ties—no reports of strange sightings or sounds or missing persons that might fit. And the fact that the car was abandoned on one of the busiest roads in southern Vermont supports the theory. We’ve shared everything we got with the appropriate agencies, including the Canadians, and nothing’s come back.”

  I was hoping he wouldn’t conjure up Kunkle’s logical question about the knowledgeable choice of the quarry as a dumping spot. He didn’t, opting instead to pounce on my purposefully bored tone of voice. “Meaning you’re doing nothing?” he asked incredulously. “It’s a murder, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Of course we are, Stan,” I said wearily. “We’re conducting interviews and digging up what we can, but let’s face it, we don’t have a hell of a lot to go on, and off the record, the troops aren’t all that enthusiastic. There’s nothing to charge them up.”

  “I can sympathize,” he conceded after a moment, sounding disappointed. “I thought when you found him we had something hot.”

  “Not so far, and I don’t see anything on the horizon.”

  We hung up after a few closing comments, and I leaned back in my chair, thoughtfully staring at the phone. With any luck, tomorrow’s article would reflect my lack of enthusiasm. It wouldn’t make us look like the FBI, but it would take the edge off the interviews we’d be conducting over the next few days. If the people we were talking to thought we were just going through the motions, the chances of one of them letting something slip increased.

  · · ·

  It was a long, tedious two days before Sammie, Ron, and I reconvened at the same conference table. Instead of three copies of a single sheet of paper, we each now had folders bulging with information about John Rarig and his employees, most of which, I knew, would eventually prove useless. But our business was like the orchid breeder’s in one sense—founded on the knowledge that success only comes after endless disappointment.

  Which certainly described my results. I’d uncovered no “hits” whatsoever, a fact I thought it politic to keep private until later. “Okay,” I said, “what’ve you got?”

  They’d apparently exchanged notes earlier. Ron spoke up first, “One for me, two for Sam. I’ve got a woman with a small string of offenses—shoplifting, check bouncing, operating an illegal day care. Name’s Marianne Baker. She’s been clean for five years, employed by the inn for three of them as a housekeeper. Lives in Jamaica.” He placed the piece of paper he’d been reading from flat on the table. “Hardly on the Most Wanted list. Worst thing about her is the company she keeps. She’s living with a guy with a history of violence, including some he did down here. Ever hear of Marty Sopper?”

  I had. “Petty theft, assault, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, “among others. He did a couple of years for a drug deal—beat up the kid he was selling to. Like Marianne, not a headliner, but he likes to use force.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at Sammie.

  “Bob Manship and Doug DeFalque,” she said. “Bob was nailed for assault four years ago and given probation. Apparently nobody liked the guy he totaled, so the SA just went by the numbers, but the cop I talked to said Bob could’ve earned himself a murder rap if someone hadn’t stopped him. It was over a woman—the victim’s wife. He used a hammer.”

  “Jesus,” I murmured.

  “Been clean since,” Sammie resumed, “and was a good boy up till then. Might’ve been just a flash in the pan, but the weapon impressed me, too. He works as the inn’s dishwasher. The same cop admitted he was a nice guy—normally very quiet. I talked to his probation officer, too
. Same basic report—steady, quiet, dependable, and remorseful about what he did. The woman in the case moved away, by the way. Manship lives alone.”

  She picked up another document. “Douglas DeFalque. No criminal record, but multiple mentions as a fellow traveler. Born in Quebec, he’s lived on one side of the border or the other all his life, and from what I could find out, makes a tidy sum on the side as a smuggler. Both the Quebec Provincial Police and the U.S. Border Patrol have him on their hot sheets, but nobody’s ever caught him red-handed.”

  “What does he smuggle?” I asked.

  “Cigarettes and booze going north, aliens, drugs, and bear gallbladders going south—gallbladders are a hot item in Taiwan and China. They use the bile for medicine. It’s pricey and it’s regulated, so the black market demand is pretty high. I asked the Mounties to check him out, see who his associates are. They’re still looking into it, comparing notes with other agencies, but it looks like he’s a free agent, probably working with the biker gangs, and increasingly with the Russian mob.”

  There was a brief silence in the room as Ron and I digested that. Sammie smiled. “I thought you might find the last bit interesting.”

  “What does he do at the inn?” I asked.

  “A waiter. The people I talked to say he’s very smooth—good-looking, nice French accent, well liked by the ladies. He’s seasonal, though. Only works during the crunches. That’s what gives him time with his other pursuits.”

  “Is he working there now?”

  “No, but he was two weeks ago. He left four days after we think Boris got whacked. He’s around, though. Lives in Jamaica. I got the address.”

  I propped my chin in my hand, looking at them both. “Top of our list?” Ron shrugged. “Looks that way. He’s got everything except a known propensity for violence.”

  “Unless he contracts it out,” Sammie suggested. “Didn’t J.P. say Boris was probably spying on the inn from under that tree, hiding in the shadows? If DeFalque knew about that, he might’ve set him up.”

  I shook my head. “Whoa. That’s a long way from finding a seed in Boris’s hair. You may be right, Sam, but we need to sniff around more first. Do we have anything at all on the other names?”