by Archer Mayor
Open season
( Joe Gunther - 1 )
Archer Mayor
Archer Mayor
Open season
1
“So what did she use?”
“A shotgun.”
The snow lay before our headlights like a freshly placed sheet, draped from curb to curb without a wrinkle and pinned in place by white-capped parking meters. The snowstorm had passed quickly, leaving a star-packed sky and a freezing clarity that made me feel we were driving into a black-and-white photograph.
We were on Main Street, inching our way downhill to where Main becomes Canal before climbing the opposite slope.
“Slippery?”
The patrolman driving the car gave an embarrassed smile. “Well, I think so. You wouldn’t. I haven’t really gotten used to this stuff yet.”
This was his first New England winter-he’d only been here for six months or so. Marshall Smith had been a deputy sheriff in Florida before coming here and he was getting a lot of ribbing for his fumbling in the snow. During the first light dusting of the season, he’d rear-ended a truck
“Floor it a little at the foot of the hill-it’ll give you more traction.”
Flooring it brought us up to twenty. It didn’t matter. The car had snow tires and we were in no rush. From what I’d heard, everyone was dead who was going to die, at least for tonight.
You don’t get many killings in a town the size of Brattleboro. In ten years, we’d had four, and for some reason they’d all been clumped together. The last of them had been about three years ago.
I placed both hands against the roof behind my head and arched my back in a stretch. The car’s heater was making me drowsy. I rolled the window down a crack and watched the run-down buildings slide by. In the reflection off the glass, I noticed Smith turn his head to glance at me. Lit only by the car’s green panel lights, his face had a ghostly, dreamlike translucence, as if he, like the pajamas I wore under my clothes, had been part of my sleep only ten minutes earlier.
“Did you have a nice Christmas, Lieutenant?”
“Not bad.”
“Me too. I went back home. Expensive, but the wife and I thought it would feel strange having Christmas here.”
I couldn’t think of anything stranger than Christmas in Florida.
We drove beyond the hospital and turned left onto Clark Avenue. Ahead, halfway down the block, two cruisers and an ambulance blocked the road, their sparkling colored lights imitating some cockeyed Christmas scene. I noticed discreet lights on in several neighboring houses. It was 3:48 A.M.
I slid out of the car’s warm cocoon and stood in the snow for a moment, watching Smith return to Canal Street. His rear lights glowed fiercely just before he got to the corner and cautiously swung right. The day, despite the darkness, had begun.
I looked over to the house. By New England standards, it was not old-maybe built in the forties-but it looked ancient. Its skin was peeling and blotched with rot. The roof line, mercifully covered with snow, sagged in the middle like a swayback horse. Where boards had once met squarely with precision, time and neglect had instilled a blurry vagueness. I doubted the entire building contained a single intended ninety-degree angle.
A shadow detached itself from a tree near the street. “Hi, Joe.”
“Stan, Stan, the newspaper man. Hot on the trail?”
“I heard about it on the band. What happened?”
“You tell me. I just woke up.”
“Can I tag along?”
“Nope.” I walked across the sidewalk and up the uneven porch steps, nodding to the patrolman guarding the door. Once inside, I was standing in a hallway running the length of the house. At the far end were the shattered remains of the back door, its top half looking like an artillery target. In the middle of the floor halfway down the hall, lays, he hall a toppled hardback chair. Next to it was a shotgun.
A bull-shaped patrol sergeant stepped out from one of the side doors. “Hi, Joe. Sorry to get you out of bed.”
“That’s okay. What happened?”
“Old lady got a bunch of obscene phone calls over the last few days. The guy finally said he’d visit tonight and do to her what he did to the cat. She waited for him in that chair and blew him away when he opened the back door.”
“What he did to the cat?”
The sergeant, George Capullo, approached the fallen chair and motioned at a doorway. I stepped over the chair and looked around the corner. It was a bedroom, cluttered but neat, lit from a single bare bulb on the wall.
“On the bed,” said George. He stayed where he was.
I approached the bed, a ramshackle iron spider’s web held together with crisscrossed wires. Covering it was an old quilt, not especially pretty but carefully made, and under the quilt was a small lump. I flipped back the corner.
The cat lay on its back, spread-eagled, its dry eyes wide in arrested agony. It had been slit open from neck to crotch and its innards pulled out for display: lumpish, red, and still slightly wet. I swallowed hard and dropped the quilt back.
“Christ, George. You could have told me.”
“Gross, huh?”
“More like weird. Did somebody call the State’s Attorney?”
“Do unto him like I did unto you?”
“Spare me. And spare him too. He doesn’t have my sense of humor. Is J.P. here?”
“Yeah, and I already called the SA. He should have been here by now. J.P.’s out back taking pictures.”
I returned to the hallway. “Did you respond first?”
“About two-thirty. She called it in herself. The neighbors claim they didn’t hear a thing. That’s bullshit, of course. She let loose with both barrels at once. Must have made the whole block jump.”
“Who’s the body?”
“Don’t know. We haven’t searched him yet.” George hesitated. “To be honest, I didn’t get too close. He makes the cat look good.”
I glanced at the shattered door. “Where’s the woman?”
He jerked his head down the hall. “In the kitchen. A Rescue guy’s with her.”
“She all right?”
“Yeah. A little shaky.”
“Okay. I’ll see her last.”
George nodded and led the way to the back. He pulled open the splintered remains of the door and ushered me through.
J.P. Tyler, the departt=", the dment’s only detective with any forensic training, was standing in the yard with his back to us. He was taking a photograph. “Look at the shoe,” he said without turning around.
On the top step, lying on its side, was a loafer. I leaned down and picked it up. It was expensive-glove leather, designer label, more of a moccasin really. Real terrorist apparel.
About six feet from the foot of the steps, surrounded by a dazzling white circle of flood lamps, lay the body. Like the cat, it was flat on its back, arms and legs outstretched. For a second I thought of when I used to lie like that in the snow, as a kid, making snow angels. But here the gentle arc formed by the arms was uninterrupted by a head. A tall man in a pea jacket rose from his crouch by the body-Alfred Gould, the regional medical examiner.
Gould walked over to us. “Morning, Joe.”
I nodded to him. “Hi, Al. Anything to add to the obvious?”
Gould half smiled and shook his head. “I would like to talk to the old lady, if that’s all right.”
“Sure, be my guest.” I stepped out of the way and let him pass.
The snow all around the body had been trampled by a small army.
“Were there any prints before all this happened?”
“Nope, just his. I got shots of it all.” J.P. put his camera down, a pleased look on his face-a man in love with his work. “I’m wrapping up out here. I still
have to check out the gun. Hit the lights when you’re through, okay?”
I nodded and he squeezed between us, heading inside.
“The head’s over here.” George pointed to a dark hole in the snow not three feet from where I was standing. I instinctively looked down and saw a half-shadowed face staring at me, its eyes enormously wide. My stomach turned over.
“You’re getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?”
George smiled and shrugged. “You’re a tough guy.”
I took the flashlight he had hanging from his belt and shone it on the head. The shock over, it looked like a plastic fake.
“Al said the blast ‘atomized’ the guy’s neck-his word, not mine. He said it was kind of like pulling a tablecloth out from under a bunch of plates-it just sort of fell off when the body went sailing into the wild blue yonder.”
I handed the flashlight back and went down the steps to check out the body.
There wasn’t much blood visible. The ragged chunk between the man’s shoulders lay at the edge of a small black hole of melted snow. The whole thing had an almost tidy air about it. I realized then I was probably standing over an aquifer of blood spread out between the snow and the earth below. I dropped a nearby blanket over the stump and hole. Then I crouched by the body’s side and began to search.
Whoever this had been, he was no pauper. The blood-spattered scarf was cashmere, the long coat camel hair, the pants fineigne pants wool. Layer by layer, his clothes never dropped below $50 per item, including the tailored pale blue shirt with the monogram “J.P.” Inside his jacket, I found a leather wallet with, among the usual documents, ten new $100 notes.
A shadow fell across the body and I looked up to see State’s Attorney James-never Jim-Dunn. Vermont state’s attorneys, elsewhere called district attorneys, have to be at the scene of any “unattended death.” James Dunn had two assistants with whom he rotated being on call, but he hardly missed showing up personally at the dramatic ones, regardless of time or weather. He wasn’t married, which must have helped, and he was good at his job, so we didn’t complain. He never said much, certainly never touched anything, and generally stayed out of the way. In a few instances, he had even been a help, pointing out the occasional legal pothole. Still, I didn’t like him. He was a cold and snotty man.
I nodded to him, he returned the silent greeting, and I read aloud from the dead man’s driver’s license. “James Phillips-Orchard Heights. Ring any bells with anybody?”
“From the address, I’d say we didn’t travel in the same circles,” George answered from the steps.
Another pocket yielded a long, thin metal chain. “Interesting tool for a break-in.”
George’s curiosity wore him down. He walked over and crouched next to me. “What is it?”
“A dog leash. Here’s something else.” It was a miniature leather photo album, about the size of a checkbook. Inside were ten pictures-seven of a prissy toy poodle standing alone; two of the poodle and a smiling man, who was on all fours next to the dog; and one of the man, the poodle, and a woman standing in front of a house. In the last shot, the woman was holding the dog. She looked like she’d rather have been elsewhere.
George tilted his hat back on his head. “Weird. You ever have a picture book of your pet?”
I pushed myself up off my knees and grunted to a standing position. Dunn was still standing there, silently watching. I continued to ignore him, as he once had asked me to. “I wonder what our Mr. Phillips was up to? What’s the old lady’s name?”
“Thelma Reitz.”
She was sitting in the kitchen, thin, frail, and beaten, her white head bowed and shimmering under the harsh fluorescent glare. The attendant from Rescue, Inc. was making notes at the table. I took a chair like the one lying in the hallway and sat facing her, elbows on knees, my legs slightly apart to allow for my gut. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Dunn enter the room and lean against the wall.
She stared at her lap, where her hands were slowly destroying a damp and wadded Kleenex. I noticed the thin gold band on her left ring finger had almost vanished into the flesh around it, as over the years something nailed to a tree becomes absorbed by the bark.
“Mrs. Reitz?” I let the fingertips of my hand brush hers. She looked up. Her face was so pale it blended imperceptibly with her hair.
“My name is Gunther. I’m another policeman. I know you’ve explained what happened, and I know you must be tired, but I was wondering if you could go ouyou cou over it again-just for me.” I paused a moment. “Do you have somewhere you can stay, by the way? A son or daughter, maybe?”
She shook her head. “My daughter doesn’t like me.” Her voice was high and thin-a piano string stretched as tight as it could go.
I called George in from the hallway. “Call Susan Henderson at the Retreat and ask her if Mrs. Reitz can spend a few days there until she gets her feet back on the ground.” I glanced at the Rescue guy. “Okay with you?”
He shrugged.
George nodded and left. Thelma Reitz watched him leave and gave me a wan smile. “Thank you.”
“No problem. I’m sorry about your daughter.”
She shook her head. “I lost her a long time ago. I don’t know why. I called her when all this started-I was so frightened-but she told me phone calls like that happen all the time. She said I should be flattered.”
“What were the calls like?”
That brought some color to her face. “I couldn’t repeat them. They were dirty. Very dirty.” She opened her mouth to say more but changed her mind. She was obviously deciding something and finally rose painfully to her feet and crossed the room. She handed me some index cards from a drawer. “He left these too. On my pillow, in my bathroom, in here-he came into my house any time he wanted. I found them every time I got home.”
The notes were short, brutal, and graphic ditties; a rhyming hodgepodge of sexual threats offensive enough to embarrass an Elks meeting. I wrapped them in my handkerchief and put them in my pocket. “Why didn’t you call us?”
I held her elbow as she sat back down. She smiled again and sighed. “I did.”
It was my turn to be embarrassed. “Did you tell them the notes were found in the house?”
“They weren’t. They were phone calls.” She closed her eyes and put her hand to her forehead. “I’m not making sense.”
I took her hand in mine. “My fault. You mean the notes didn’t start until after you called us?”
She nodded.
“And when you told us about the calls, you were told there was nothing much we could do about them.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry about that.” I let a few seconds go by. “So then he attacked your cat?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes. Poor Albert… What had he done? What had I done? Poor kitty. He was all I had.”
“When did you find him?”
“Tonight. I’d stayed out all day. I knew the notes would be there… I couldn’t stay inside-I was so scared. I went to the library, I went to the movies, to the store. I tried to stay out as long as I could, but it was cold, and places kept closing and then it snowed. I had to come home. I had nowhere else to go. That’s whenIhat’s I found Albert. And that’s when he called-right at the same time-as if he were standing there seeing everything I did. He said I wasn’t home when he’d visited, and that’s why Albert died. And then he said he’d come back later-tonight-to do the same thing to me. And when I didn’t say anything, he said, ‘What’s wrong, Thelma-the cat got your tongue?’”
She stared hard at me suddenly, the tears finally pouring down her face in earnest. The piano wire was broken, and her voice was ragged and full of pain. “It made me mad-so mad. I told him, ‘You come. I’ll be here,’ and I got my husband’s shotgun out of its box and I waited-a long, long time. And then I killed him-that… bastard.”
Her hand flew to her mouth and she folded in on herself, sobbing. The ambulance attendant glared at me. A little self-
consciously, I reached over and patted her back. After she’d calmed down a bit, I placed one of the pictures we’d found of Phillips and his dog in her lap. “Do you recognize this man?”
She didn’t touch the photographs. She became utterly motionless. My hand on her back could feel the distant thump of her heartbeat-her only sign of life.
Still without moving, she asked, “Is this the man outside?”
“We think so.”
“Mr. Phillips.”
I sat opposite her again. She wouldn’t look at me. “You knew him?”
“Yes.”
“From where?”
“Jury duty. We served together. He used to pass that very picture around. He loved that dog like I loved Albert… I don’t understand… He was nice. He was the last one to vote guilty. He said he couldn’t condemn another man, no matter how horrible what he did.”
“It’s not your fault; you know that, don’t you?”
She thought a while before answering. “No.”
She wasn’ t the only one.
2
Orchard Heights is an exclusive developer’s dream come true. Once a farmer’s rolling field off Orchard Street west of downtown, it sits high enough to both “afford” a view and to overlook but not actually see Interstate 91, which separates it from Brattleboro. The field consists of five low hills, each crowned with a $200,000 ranch-style house that looks down on a narrow, winding street, fed like a stream by one slim driveway per house. Token trees have been planted tastefully here and there, hitting a medium between privacy and the view. In all, the effect is so carefully manicured that even the mountains, the snow, and the distant woods look totally artificial, as if some low-key, expensive Hollywood set were awaiting the arrival of the camera crew.
The sun’s first predawn pallor was just staining the far horizon as I turned off Orchard Street into the Heights in George’s borrowed squad car. I didn’t need to check for the house number-I recognized it from the photo in Phillips’s puppy album. It would have been hard to misughs in any event. Of the several homes I could see, it was the only one lit up like a bonfire, complete with strings of Christmas lights. It was a tan brick, one-story affair with columns in front and a carport on the side-as unique to Vermont as to Pasadena, California.