by Archer Mayor
Chapter 10
Barrie McNeil looked as if Rob Barrows had just spoken in Chinese. “What?”
“This is a search warrant,” Rob repeated, shouldering him out of the way to enter the garage and allow access to Joe and four more deputies. “Look, it’s not really your problem. This is your copy. Call the boss or whatever lawyer you have on tap. They’ll know what it is. Meantime, we’ll get to work.” Barrows paused to add, “Unless you want to argue the point and be arrested.”
Barrie raised both dirty hands in surrender, one now filled with the slightly crumpled document. “No, no. Knock your socks off. I don’t give a shit. Dan will, though, and I will call him. Or my ass is grass.”
“Go for it, then,” Rob recommended before unleashing his team to find what they were all looking for.
The warrant covered any tools that might have been used to remove the now infamous tie rod nut, and any documentation, electronic and not, pertaining to the servicing of Leo’s car. That latter part sent Rob and Joe directly to the decrepit-looking computer nestled in the corner of a cluttered and paper-strewn office.
Barrie, seeking whatever privacy he could amid the invasion, went to a phone in the service bay wall to call Dan Griffis, a task his body language clearly indicated he didn’t relish.
Rob gingerly pulled out the lopsided, duct-taped office chair parked before the computer, and, after studying its seat for both springs and foreign matter, settled in to address the filthy keyboard.
“Jeez,” he said softly as Joe pulled over a folding metal chair to join him. “Good thing they’re building these things to resist wear and tear.”
He shuffled the mouse under his right hand to illuminate the screen. A desktop surfaced with a cluster of different icons, spread out like colorful confetti. He’d barely double-clicked the first one when the office door banged open and Barrie appeared on the threshold.
“He is really pissed,” he announced. “And he’s gonna be even more pissed when he sees you guys on that thing.”
“You talking about Dan?” Rob asked without looking over his shoulder at him.
“Well, yeah. Who else?”
“How long till he gets here?”
“Three seconds, the way he sounded.”
Rob sighed slightly, keeping at his task. “How long?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Okay. Send one of the deputies in here, okay? On your way out.”
Barrie hesitated a moment, translating both the content and the meaning of that last request. He then vanished, to be replaced by one of Rob’s team, an older officer with mostly gray hair.
“What’s up?”
This time Barrows turned to face the man. “We’re about to be visited by Dan Griffis, the owner.”
“I know him,” the deputy said in a near growl.
“Then you know what to expect. Keep him outside. Thanks.”
Rob and Joe returned to the screen. Under the former’s prompting, icon after icon began opening, revealing spreadsheets, correspondence files, financial records, inventory lists, and more, some of which was clearly recreational, such as games, and certainly one of which was password locked.
“What do you think?” Joe asked his guide when they hit that one.
Rob worked the keyboard harder, uncovering what he could about the file. “It’s accessed a lot. I can tell you that much,” he reported after a couple of minutes.
At that point they were disturbed by the sound of shouting from outside the building.
“That’d be Dan,” Rob murmured, his eyes still on the screen. “You want to do anything about it?”
Joe straightened, considering the proposal. Initially, he saw no point. The man was worked up, he was being controlled by the deputies—or would be arrested—and discovering that Joe Gunther was part of the investigation would only be inflammatory.
That last detail made Joe get up, his own irritation finally rising to the surface. “Maybe I’ll just say hi,” he said.
Rob glanced at him, waiting a beat before smiling and saying, “Yeah. Why not? I’ll just keep poking around.”
Joe left the office, crossed the waiting room, and opened the door onto the frozen front parking lot—and two deputies bracketing a red-faced, spittle-lipped barrel of a man who was bouncing on the balls of his feet in barely controlled fury.
“Hey, Dan,” Joe said from the door. “Long time.”
The man froze in mid-expletive and stared at him. “Gunther?” he finally asked, his tone incredulous.
“Yeah.”
“What the fuck’re you doing here?”
“Assisting the sheriff’s department.”
Dan Griffis took two steps in his direction and was immediately closed in on by the two deputies, one of whom rested a restraining hand on his shoulder.
It was a defining moment—a split second when the entire course of the next few minutes rested with Dan and whether he chose to take that hand as a challenge to fight, or as the pacifying gesture it was meant to be.
As far as Joe was concerned, it was a no-loser, with his personal preference being for an old-fashioned piling-on. His famous self-restraint notwithstanding, Joe Gunther was feeling a slow, boiling rage deep inside. The mere possibility that his family had been threatened by this man was enough for Joe to wish him ill beyond a simple threat of legal action. In his youth, Joe had never hesitated to join a fight—a fact only rarely recalled by others now. But in this moment, had Dan offered even the slightest excuse, Joe was ready to try his hand in a nostalgic and perhaps soul-cleansing violent blowout.
But it wasn’t to be. Right at the edge of letting loose, Dan took a deep breath and suddenly relaxed, giving Gunther a nasty smile. “You bastard. You know I’m still looking at the Bitch. One fuck-up and I get life.” He gently slid the deputy’s hand off his shoulder. “Well,” he added, “no such luck. I don’t know what you jerk-offs’re cooking up, but I’m gonna get a lawyer and shove it up your ass.”
“Asses,” Joe told him. “Proper grammar.”
Dan’s eyes narrowed before he smiled again. “Right. You would know. Mister Straight-and-Narrow. Guess your brother’s not so fancy, though. He have too much to drink before he tried killing your mom? Or did he do it for the inheritance? Must be driving him nuts waiting for her to kick the bucket.”
Joe could feel his face burning, despite the cold, but he remained silent, not trusting himself to use his voice. The older deputy, to his credit, spun Dan around and pushed him toward his pickup. “Go home, Dan,” he said. “Let them do their job. You wanna call a lawyer, do it from there.”
“You bet I will,” Dan snarled at him, yanking the truck’s door open. “And then I’ll sue every last cop in this fucking department.” He pointed a finger through his window at Joe, adding, “I’m also gonna make it my life mission to knock you off your pedestal, you preachy cock. You’re gonna wish you were in intensive care instead of your faggot brother. You wait. You won’t know what hit you.”
Again Joe didn’t react, although, by now, the initial onslaught of Dan’s venom had dulled through repetition.
Dan Griffis gunned his engine and shot out of the garage’s dooryard, his vehicle’s back end slithering back and forth on the icy ground.
The three men watched him hit the asphalt beyond and squeal away, tires burning. The older deputy turned toward Joe. “We could nail him for that, just for what-the-hell.”
Joe nodded, acknowledging the point, but answered, “I’d sooner save my ammo for when it counts.”
“Yeah,” the deputy agreed. “I see what you mean.”
Joe stepped back inside and closed the door. He paused before rejoining Rob, for a moment’s worth of privacy. Dan Griffis had always been a bully, a drunk, and a self-involved show-off, from the first time Joe met him, many years ago.
Unfortunately, despite the soothing adage that such people were forgettable, they were not, and their abusiveness mattered and cut deep. It was, in fact, their very careless
aggression that caught the public eye and put them higher on the food chain of notoriety. They became a force not only because of the violence of their demeanor but because of the paradoxical respect society granted them as a result. People may admire a good man, but they will more often rally around a brute.
This depressing truth had been Dan’s fuel his whole life, as it was for so many of his kind, and yet, whenever Joe encountered it, it rattled him still. He wasn’t cynical enough, even now, not to find the insult fresh and disappointing every time.
Pulling his earlobe and sighing slightly, he reentered the office.
“Noisy,” Rob commented. “He gone?”
“Gone,” Joe told him, thinking, but far from forgotten.
Barrows pushed his rickety chair away from the desk and gestured toward the screen. Hovering in its center was the earlier rectangular warning advising the need of a password.
“We need to get past that,” he said. “And I’m definitely seizing this computer and applying for a warrant. ’Cause from what I’ve been able to see, there’s a whole lot more here than garage business.”
Matthew: I have 3 brothers and 4 sisters
SweetAngl: sorry
Matthew: but 2 borthers n 1 sister dont live here
SweetAngl: thats good
Matthew: my twin sisters are 16 and my little sis is 12
SweetAngl: thats kool u have twins sisters
Matthew: its aiight
Matthew: 1 night i was drunk I went up into my sisters room to get a peak
SweetAngl: of what
Matthew: I was curious to what color her underwear was
Matthew: its a good thing she was sleeping in a skirt
SweetAngl: oh my
Matthew: she didn’t wake up or nothing
SweetAngl: thats weird
Matthew: yeah i know
Matthew: so do you wear mini skirts alot ?
SweetAngl: sometimes
Matthew: how short do you usually have ur skirts
SweetAngl: 2 me knees
Matthew: nice
Matthew: you ever catch ur step dad checking you out ?
SweetAngl: thats sick
Matthew: i just had to ask that
SweetAngl: why
Matthew: cuz step dads do check out there step daughters
Matthew: idk why they just do
Chapter 11
“These places really do all look the same,” Lester Spinney mused, pausing on the threshold and taking in the narrow view of the motel room before him—cheap dresser with TV, the foot of a large bed, nondescript drawn curtains, and two screwed-to-the-wall paintings.
Willy shouldered him roughly from behind. “We’ll get you a postcard. Move it.”
Spinney laughed and let his colleague push by. On paper, like oil and water, they actually worked together very smoothly, the one fleshing out the characteristics less obvious in the other. In practice, while Willy’s intensity homed in on details and people like a laser beam, Lester’s disarmingly gentle, hands-off style frequently supplied the more general view, along with access under a suspect’s defenses.
He turned back toward the door, where the motel’s manager was hovering nervously, still clutching his copy of the search warrant.
“Mr. Nelson,” Spinney asked affably, “did you get a chance to check the records for the night in question?”
The manager, a short, round man with thinning hair and glasses, nodded energetically, eager to please. As well he might have been. Before coming over here, Lester had inquired into the Brattleboro police’s knowledge of the place. His reward had been an outburst of laughter. This motel, especially, was a favorite stop-off for those wanting sex, drugs, suicide, or all three. As one of the detectives on the municipal building’s ground floor had said, “They should charge a hell of a lot more for all the services they provide.”
Mr. Nelson was apparently the doorkeeper of a true den of iniquity, although Spinney couldn’t help doubting that he benefited from any of it.
During this brief musing, the manager pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from the inner pocket of his jacket and adjusted his glasses.
“Let’s see . . . The gentleman checked in at eight forty-eight p.m., pretty late. No car, paid cash . . .”
Lester could see where this was going, and interrupted, “You don’t take a credit card imprint for security?”
Nelson chewed his lip once before admitting slowly, “No, sir. We found that sometimes made people nervous.”
“I bet,” Spinney said. “What name did he use?”
“N. Rockwell.”
Lester grimaced. “Okay, that’s weird. How did he get here if it wasn’t by car?”
There again, the manager paused before admitting carefully, “I’m not sure he didn’t have a car. He just said he didn’t.”
“And, of course, you never want to invade their privacy.”
The manager allowed a small smile. “No, sir. Not sure I’d want to go there.”
“How many key cards did he ask for?”
Nelson consulted his piece of paper. “Two,” he answered.
“We heard the night clerk was Benjamin Grosbeak?”
“Benny—that’s right.”
“And the maid who cleaned up the next day?”
“Angela Lundy.”
“Any chance we could get them here to interview?”
Nelson checked his watch. “It’s midmorning. That shouldn’t be too hard. They’re usually up by now.”
Spinney patted him on his bulky, soft shoulder. “That would be great, Mr. Nelson. If you could do that and report back to me, I’d appreciate it.”
Nodding again and walking backward, Nelson began fading down the hallway. “Yes, sir, I’ll get right on it.”
Spinney watched him finally turn on his heel and walk away before he reentered the room to join Willy.
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir, if you please, sir,” Willy growled from his position looking under the bed. “You know that little fuck is probably a pimp and a pusher both, right?”
“I’ll be sure to ask him when he comes back,” Lester agreed affably. “You find anything?”
Willy scowled. “What did he say the maid’s name was?”
“Angela.”
“Well, she sucks at her job. Looks like a toxic dump under here. If our boy did leave anything behind, it’s mixed in with shit from half a dozen other people.”
“I thought these beds were supposed to be built on platforms, so nothing got shoved underneath,” Spinney said, getting to his knees beside his colleague and taking a glance at the strewn collection of assorted, albeit tiny, trash that gleamed in Willy’s flashlight glare.
Willy cut him an incredulous look. “God, you live in a dream world. This is a dump. People’re lucky the sheets are changed between customers.”
Spinney got back up and crossed to what passed for the room’s desk—actually a table with a drawer supporting a lamp and a microwave, both bolted down. He opened the drawer.
“Like you said,” he announced, “not as fancy. No folder or postcards, but there’s an envelope and a few sheets of paper.”
Willy sat back on his heels. “Did I hear Nelson say the guy got two key cards?”
“Yup.”
Willy nodded, his thoughts paralleling Spinney’s. “Something else to ask Angela.” He got up. “Help me move this.”
The two of them shifted the bed away from its wall-attached headboard and slid it across the carpeting until it was jammed up against the dresser. The contrast between the open floor and what they’d just exposed was startling—gray with dust and whatever else had filtered down from the mattress, and pocked with the debris that Willy had discovered earlier.
“Gross,” Spinney murmured.
There was a gentle knock on the door. Spinney opened it to face Nelson, who looked apologetic. “Sorry to interrupt. You wanted to know about Benny and Angela?”
“Yeah,” Lester said. “They coming?”
Nelson did his usual disappearing act. Spinney closed the door again.
“I might as well take Benny,” Willy told him. “I made sure he was well treated last time.”
“Works for me,” Lester said vaguely, studying the ground again. “How do you want to process this?”
Willy shrugged. “Probably doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference. The room’s been used and abused Christ knows how many times since our guy was here. I think we’re just looking for anything interesting.”
Spinney got to his knees and pulled on a pair of latex gloves, as much for his sake as to preserve any evidence. “Okay,” he said simply, and set to work.
They went slowly, using flashlights, and even a magnifying glass that Willy carried despite the Sherlock Holmes cracks he routinely gathered. The edge of their search area, mirroring the footprint of the bed frame, was the richest in findings. People either dropping things or simply kicking them under the bed had resulted in a three-sided swath of items ranging from rubber bands, to candy wrappers, to condom packs. There were, in addition, a straw, a dirty napkin, several pills, a desiccated french fry, and, of course, a single sock.
In the midst of this treasure hunt, where a muttered conversation played background to each discovery, first Willy and then Les was pulled away by the arrival of the two interviewees. Benny Grosbeak, who was happy to see Willy again, told him little new, beyond that N. Rockwell had seemed nervous and evasive, somewhat new to the skid row life, and made no calls using the phone in the room. Benny had found him so bland, in fact, that he’d become memorable, making his reappearance in the newspaper all the more startling.
Angela Lundy, the maid, told Lester that when she’d entered the room the following morning to clean it, she barely found anything to do. The bed was still made and the trash empty. The toilet and shower stall hadn’t been touched. She conceded that, in general, she only cleaned or straightened what most obviously needed attention, and she stared at him blankly when he asked whether she ever went into the desk drawer to check on the stationery supplies. She did say that she found only one of the two issued key cards.