The Price of Malice

by Archer Mayor

  Joe laughed. “Now I know why your folks didn’t name you Realtor.”

  He fished out the key he’d secured from the landlord, and stepped up to the door.

  “The crime lab ever get to the scene?” Nelson asked.

  Joe paused, impressed that the man even knew the lab had been called. “About fifteen minutes ago, from what I heard. Bet you wish you were there.”

  Nelson looked embarrassed. “I’m okay doing what I’m told.”

  “It’s all right,” Joe reassured him, unlocking the door. “You’re entitled to a little ambition. The PD should treat you well—it’s that kind of department.”

  He paused a moment before leaving the cop to the hallway’s pressing silence. “You hear or see anything or anyone since you got here?” he asked.

  Nelson shook his head. “It’s been quiet. Just the usual sounds through the walls.”

  “Why don’t you knock on the other doors up and down the hall, collect people’s names and DOBs, and ask them if they knew this guy, or anything about him?”

  Nelson’s face brightened. “Sure. Thanks.”

  Joe stepped inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. He had considered inviting Nelson, to show him the ropes, share the case a little, and feed the kid’s enthusiasm for the job. But at the last minute, he’d demurred, assigning him the mini-canvass instead, less because of Nelson than for his own reasons. On a straightforward murder case, he would have been more inclusive and tutorial, but a gut feeling about this one was already warning him to pay closer attention. Something offbeat was afoot here, and he wasn’t sure what.

  He stood with the closed door to his back, motionless, surveying the single room.

  It was an awful place—small, dark, foul, looking like the aftermath of a Kansas twister, minus the missing roof that would have only improved things. Instead, it felt like the den of some creature, custom-made from a child’s nightmares.

  Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, Joe reached out and switched on the overhead light. A bare bulb hanging at the end of a wire illuminated the room’s center, casting an angular glare into all four corners. The single window was closed and covered with cardboard, duct-taped in place. The heat and stench made Joe’s nose tingle. He carefully removed his jacket and hung it on the doorknob, already feeling the sweat trickling between his shoulder blades and down the backs of his legs.

  He mopped his forehead with his forearm and pulled out a small flashlight. Distracted as he was by the clutter and his own wandering thoughts, he would need the bright halo of light to focus his concentration. He had to survey the room methodically, like an archaeologist, scrutinizing one square of an imaginary grid after another.

  It was onerous work, time-consuming and mentally taxing. As he pawed through discarded, soiled clothing, rotting food, child pornography of all kinds, and unsettling discoveries like a stack of children’s underwear, still in its original packaging, he became aware of a man whose entire life had been given over to the exploitation of the very young in any number of perverse ways.

  Joe Gunther by now was at least aware of most human depravities. But this stuff got under his skin.

  There was a computer, of course. Nowadays, that was a given, like oxygen. He wondered, as he often did, if the people who’d first conjured up a fully computerized world had ever imagined that their machines would be so routinely used for such pursuits.

  It was a laptop, which he didn’t bother turning on. He knew what it contained, and only hoped that it might also provide insight on Castine’s recent movements and interactions. There, computers provided some redemption for the abuse they were put to: They remembered their instructions, and could often be used to thrust their erstwhile masters into the limelight, like unseen and unappreciated servants of old.

  But there were less exotic methods of tracking people, too. Everyone had to eat, for example, and few people of Castine’s habits bothered to cook. They bought fast food and junk; they were given receipts that ended up crumpled in plastic bags or stuck to damp bottles found thrown in the odd corner. And that’s where Joe located them and placed them into a careful pile, arranged by date and time stamp, including two from the day before.

  He found a phone—and noted to get a warrant for its records—two pistols and a hunting knife, a few bills addressed to a post-office box, and a pay stub from the lumber mill Ron had mentioned. He uncovered the quasi-obligatory stash of bagged marijuana, alongside a Band-Aid box full of Ecstasy pills. In the bathroom—moldy, stinking, and humid—he discovered tubes of K-Y Jelly that made him shudder, and a scattering of prescription pills without a bottle.

  Significantly, he hoped, he also discovered a receipt from an area psychologist named Eberhard Dziobek. He would certainly merit a conversation. Not only did folks of his calling generally keep records in some detail, but with a patient like Castine, he probably also had a list of people—family and others—who knew and interacted with him.

  Because that was the primary goal right now. In a vague imitation of the old TV show This Is Your Life, the strategy was to dredge up as many players who knew Wayne Castine as possible, and to grill them about every detail they could recall—not just about the star of the hour, but about each other, as well.

  He made one last find, mundane in itself but unusual in this context: he came across a large box of rubber bands balanced on top of the TV set, which—not surprisingly in his experience, especially in such surroundings—was a high-end plasma unit.

  He picked up the box and examined it carefully, wondering if it camouflaged some more telling contents. But it simply contained the rubber bands pictured on the lid. Nowhere else did he find any stationery supplies, apart from a few scraps of paper and a couple of pens. He made a mental note of the discovery and moved on. The garbage he left for someone else down the line. This was a preliminary search—not the end-all, be-all. Ron’s people would be following up.

  Over an hour later, soaked through with sweat, Joe retrieved his jacket from the doorknob and reemerged into the hallway. As before, Gary Nelson was standing alone, looking forlorn.

  He gave Joe an appraising glance as the latter locked the door. “Wow. You got trashed.”

  Joe stood holding his jacket away from him, sparing it from getting wet.

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “Find anything?”

  “I got a start on a few things. How ’bout you?”

  Nelson’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, right.” He quickly extracted a notebook from his rear pocket and consulted it as he spoke. “I found two people on this floor. There was no answer at the third apartment. You want their names?”

  “Just give me the Reader’s Digest version. I gotta get back to the scene.”

  “Right—neither one of them knew him personally, but they met him once or twice, in the corridor or on the stairs. They both said he made their skin crawl, and one of them added that she wouldn’t have wanted to be ‘that guy’s niece.’ When I asked her what that meant, she said she’d bumped into Castine in the stairwell about a month ago with a young girl—maybe twelve or so—who he introduced as his niece.”

  “Coming up or going down?” Joe asked.

  “Up,” Nelson answered, looking grim.

  “Any names?”

  “No. I mean, there was a name, but the woman couldn’t remember it.”

  Joe let out a sigh. “I guess I better talk to her.”

  Nelson shook his head. “I told her you’d want to, but she said she had to go grocery shopping before she went to work—that you could talk to her later.”

  He ripped out the page he’d been consulting and handed it over. Joe was impressed by the man’s careful handwriting.

  “That’s a copy of what I got on both of them,” he explained, adding, “The second witness didn’t have much to say.”

  “What was the body language of the twelve-year-old?” Joe asked.

  The young cop’s face was animated, apparently grateful to have an answ
er. “I asked,” he said. “The lady said the kid just stood there. The two of them were holding hands—or Castine was holding the girl’s, I guess—but there was no emotion, not a word, nothing. She stood there—period.”

  Joe waved the notepad sheet in the air. “Either one of them ever hear anything from the apartment? Crying, screaming, loud music to cover up noises?”

  Nelson shook his head again. “Nope. And Castine kept to himself. That’s what they meant by his making their skin crawl: he never said anything when he was greeted, never made eye contact, always seemed bummed out when anyone caught him in the open—like a rat in the sun.”

  Joe stared at him. “One of them said that?”

  Nelson flushed slightly. “Not exactly. That part’s mine. Sorry.”

  Joe kept after him. “He never said anything, and yet he introduced his so-called niece?”

  There, Nelson was prepared. “That was the point—he wasn’t asked. He just volunteered, like he was feeling guilty.”

  “He have any regular habits?”

  The other man finally had to admit defeat. “I didn’t ask. It sounded like he was a night owl.” He pointed at one of the names on the page. “That one said that he came and went at all hours of the day and night.”

  Joe wiped his forehead again with his sleeve. “I better head out. The lab guys’ll probably be wrapping things up. You got relief coming soon?”

  Nelson checked his watch. “Another hour or so.”

  Joe patted him on the shoulder. “I appreciate your help, Gary. I’ll make sure Klesczewski and your supervisor get told.”

  Nelson smiled. “Thanks.”

  Nelson waited until Joe was about halfway down the hall, heading for the top of the stairwell, before he asked, “Mr. Gunther, do we know who did it?”

  Joe stopped and looked back at him. “Not right now.” He then added, more hopefully, “Not yet.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Unbeknownst to Joe Gunther, Lester Spinney nosed his car down Brattleboro’s Main Street a few minutes before his boss left Castine’s apartment building, headed for the same destination.

  Spinney was a startlingly tall and lanky man, doomed to be nicknamed Stork by almost any group he joined. He was the odd man in Joe Gunther’s four-member squad—married and with children, and the only one to have come from the state police instead of the local cops. In that last way, paradoxically, he represented the VBI’s overall norm, since most Bureau cops had begun as troopers. It wasn’t high-level math. With some three hundred people in uniform—in a state numbering only a thousand full-time cops, total—it stood to reason that the state police would be the biggest talent pool available. The irony was, of course, that when the governor signed the VBI into existence, he’d slapped the face of the VSP in the process. Their own Bureau of Criminal Investigation had once been assigned Vermont’s major crimes, and now were restricted to pursuing whatever was deemed too time-costly for road troopers. A bitter pill only partially offset by making applications to the new VBI exclusive to the best investigators in the state—a clear advantage to old BCI members.

  It had been an arcane political childbirth, made murkier by strong opinions and hurt feelings. The likes of Lester Spinney, however, had only benefited. Once struggling inside a tradition-bound—he would have said hidebound—organization with a promotion bottleneck, Les was now free to run his own cases with a minimum of interference, under the guidance of an almost legendary mentor—all for the same pay, benefits, and retirement as before.

  This was not a man unhappy with how life could sometimes turn out. And the fact that he had to commute from Springfield to Brattleboro to do so, and work with the likes of Willy Kunkle, didn’t faze him at all. He and everyone else knew Kunkle was on board solely because of Gunther’s influence. In truth, that was exactly the point: Willy may have been a public-relations disaster. But he was an inspired cop, instinctive and canny and utterly committed. Given Lester’s own quirky sense of humor, and how he’d often felt bound and gagged as a trooper, he was delighted to work with an outfit that would have Willy Kunkle as a member.

  He reached the bottom of Main Street, and the double-sided chute of tall, weathered, traditional, red brick buildings, and veered slightly right through the complex intersection—Brattleboro’s own “malfunction junction”—to engage onto Canal Street, on his way to Manor Court.

  Springfield, his home forty miles north, looked a little like this, as did so many others. There was always a source of flowing water somewhere, for the energy and transport of yore; always the imposing, gargantuan architecture, speaking of nineteenth-century industrial might; and usually a fountain, gazebo, or commons with a war memorial, where patriots could gather annually in early November.

  It was largely a throwback to a long-lost era, with its share of built-in irony, given how the world had since passed it by.

  But to Lester, it was the culture that had shaped him, been the cradle of his thinking and his general world outlook. He was the result of New Englanders—hardy, inventive, independent; used to living in an environment where winter threatened to kill you for over half of every year, and where three of the region’s most plentiful attributes—ice, lumber, and granite—had been creatively turned into three of its earliest commercial assets.

  Such thoughts of cold and ice struck him as ironic now, as he drove through one of the hottest days of the year, knowing he’d soon have to abandon the car’s air-conditioning.

  Lester was less familiar with Manor Court than his colleagues, given his more recent exposure to Brattleboro, but just as with downtown, he wasn’t out of place. All New England cops knew these blocks, along with the stories of those calling them home.

  He traveled most of the dead end’s length, and pulled up to the curb amid an array of cruisers, unmarked cars, a converted ambulance—now a mobile command post—countless people in uniform, and a large truck labeled “Vermont Forensic Lab.” Sammie Martens was standing on the sidewalk, twenty feet away, staring up at one of the triple-deckers.

  “Lost?” he asked, emerging into the blast furnace heat. “Ask a cop for directions.”

  She turned to him, shoving her dark glasses up on her forehead for better eye contact. “I know better,” she said. “They have no clue, but they tell you anyway.”

  He slammed his door and approached her. “Looks like a doughnut truck accident out here. Getting anywhere?”

  “Who knows?” she answered. “Right now, it’s just a bunch of hen scratching. We may have what we need and not even know it yet. What did you find out?”

  Lester’s job had been to dig deeper into Castine’s background. “Not much more than what you already got. I have a family history, and a long list of contacts off the computer. We’ll have enough interviews to last us till next year, unless we get lucky.”

  Sam made a face. She wasn’t fond of working indoors. High-strung and energetic, she was restless by nature.

  “What’s the game plan right now?” Spinney asked, already beginning to sweat. By contrast, his colleague looked dry and comfortable, which only made him feel hotter.

  Sam pointed at the crime-lab truck with her chin. “They’re close to wrapping up. The boss’ll be here soon. Willy and I have been canvassing the neighbors. So, I guess, that’s the assignment for the time being, until we get together and compare notes. You want to help me work this one?” She gestured to the building beside them, two doors down from the crime scene.

  Spinney cast an eye along the street. There was now a fair crowd, being controlled by police tape and uniformed officers. He noticed several news crews, with and without TV cameras. Fortunately, in a state this size, even a crime this gory couldn’t generate much of a zoo—there was only one major TV station—from far-off Burlington—and a mere sprinkling of newspapers and radio stations.

  “Sure,” he said, turning to the tired three-story building at hand. “What’s your pleasure?”

  She shrugged. “There’re two apartments per floor, us
ually. If you want to take the top, I’ll take the second.”

  “Deal,” he said, heading for the porch steps.

  Lester hadn’t visited where Castine had been discovered, but he knew there wasn’t much difference between structures. Even 130 years ago, architects and builders—especially of workers’ quarters—had a fondness for the economies of duplication. The fact that today’s residents had evolved from factory drones to either working sporadically or not at all hadn’t altered how their housing had ended up smelling, looking, and falling apart.

  Les climbed the steps slowly, hoping to control his sweating. Behind the closed doors he passed, he heard children crying, TVs blaring, and inanimate objects being shifted, dropped, or thrown around. Arguments delivered with more or less effort formed a muted chorus overall, making him feel he was swimming within the circulatory system of a large, unhealthy, living entity.

  At the top landing, he was faced with two apartment doors, one muffling more of the same audible chaos, the other obstructing what appeared to be total silence.

  Hoping for a peaceful start to an onerous process, he pounded on the silent door.

  The effect was startling, immediate, and painful. With his hand still in the air, Lester saw the door fly back on its hinges and a small, round-shaped man barrel out at him like a two-legged cannonball, catching him in the solar plexus and sending him staggering back against the far wall, where he smacked the back of his head and collapsed.

  “Runner,” he shouted weakly as his attacker took the steps two at a time.

  On the second floor, Sammie heard the crash of the door, followed by Lester being sent flying. She had just had her own door opened before her, revealing an oversized woman with a baby bottle in her hand.

  She quickly said, “Please close the door, ma’am,” and braced herself for whatever was coming.

  Lester’s nemesis appeared at a dead run, bouncing off the wall at the bottom of the stairs so that he could better sprint the length of the landing.

  In the two seconds allowed her, Sam took in her surroundings tactically, assessed her opponent’s size and speed, and chose how to stop him.