Chat

by Archer Mayor

  To the general laughter following, he added, “I cannot tell you how happy I am with this outcome. You two scared the bejesus out of me.”

  They were all back home at last, Leo having been released earlier in the day, with home nursing and physical therapy visits scheduled for the next few weeks. By pure coincidence, Lyn had said that Coryn was visiting from Boston, so Joe had brought them north for the day’s major event, much to Coryn’s satisfaction—she had wanted to check him out in any case, and now had been handed serendipitous access to the entire diminutive clan.

  Joe couldn’t be sure, of course, since he’d only just met the girl, but she seemed to be liking what she saw. Certainly, that was true for him. He found her genuine and honest and funny—a natural offshoot of her mother, all the way down to the same almost lissome frame.

  Unfortunately, they weren’t going to have her for long, since she had to be back at work the next morning and was driving south in an hour, leaving Lyn behind to spend the night. This was, therefore, a celebratory dinner for more reasons than just Leo’s return to the fold.

  The meal was easy, relaxing, and filled with laughter. Joe kept glancing at his mother and seeing in her expression the pure joy of a return to normalcy. The proximity of her own mortality, which, he knew, had loomed large in her mind with Leo’s disability, seemed to have slipped back once more. She looked more relaxed and self-confident than he’d seen her in weeks.

  By the end, when all except Leo were gathered by the door to send Coryn off with hugs and best wishes, Joe was back to feeling that his out-of-kilter world might be resettling on a more even keel. Lyn and he seemed on the right track, with her daughter’s blessing; the double homicide investigation in Brattleboro was gaining credible steam; the source of Leo’s accident had been addressed with Dan Griffis’s flight from the area—even if for unrelated reasons; and Leo was on the mend.

  Life had been worse, and not that long ago.

  Later, in his old bedroom at the front of the house, with the walls glowing in candlelight and the two of them buried deep under old family quilts, he and Lyn made love quietly, with an ease and a familiarity that each found at once surprising and confirming.

  But this peacefulness proved short-lived. In the middle of the night, Joe heard the phone ringing in the living room—an unheard-of occurrence in most rural settings, and a nearly guaranteed harbinger of ill tidings.

  He slipped out of bed fast and focused, getting to the phone by its third ring.

  “Gunther?” said a familiar male voice.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s E. T. Griffis. My son Dan is headed your way right now. I told him you got Nugent and that you know why Andy went to jail. Do what you have to do. I’m done with him.”

  The phone went dead.

  “What’s happening, Joey?”

  He turned and saw his mother in the hallway door. Lyn had also appeared across the room.

  “Trouble,” he said, dialing the phone to no avail. “That was E. T. Dan Griffis is coming here to take a bite of me, or maybe all of us. Shit.”

  Joe gave up on the phone just as the warning system he’d set up—which Willy had triggered earlier—started pinging near the front door, where he’d put the receiver.

  He looked at both women. “He’s cut the phone line and is coming up the driveway now. Chances are, he doesn’t know we’re up, so no lights. Lyn, call 911 on a cell, use my name, and say that a home invasion’s about to start. Mom, go back to your room, close the door, grab Dad’s shotgun, park yourself in a corner, and blast whoever comes through without announcing themselves. Can you do that?”

  “What about Leo?” she typically asked.

  “I’ll take care of him. Will you do what I asked? I want to know where you’ll be.”

  “I will,” she said, and swung around in her chair and rolled out of sight.

  Lyn was already dialing her phone.

  He motioned to the staircase lining the living room wall. “You go upstairs. Can you shoot a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  He ran back to their bedroom, quickly grabbed his pistol, and thrust it at her, pushing her toward the stairs. “Go, go, go.”

  “What’ll you use?”

  “I’m set,” he told her. “Dad had more than one gun.”

  She ran for the stairs, now speaking quietly into the phone. Joe crossed to his father’s old office, now mostly used for storage, climbed onto the cluttered desk, and pulled a World War Two–era M1 carbine off the wall. On top of the bookshelf beside it, he found a fifteen-round magazine, fully loaded, which, he knew, Leo kept there for varmints or just for plinking when he was in the mood. He slapped the magazine into place, chambered a round, and returned to the dark living room.

  Time was running short. It had been awhile since the warning sensor went off.

  Joe, moving fast and by instinct, knowing to avoid furniture he couldn’t even see, ran in his bare feet to the guest bedroom they’d set up for Leo, off the kitchen.

  He’d barely entered the room when he heard his brother whisper, “What’s happening?”

  “Home invasion,” Joe said quietly, laying the rifle on the bed and rolling the whole unit toward the bathroom. “Dan Griffis is coming to get me. E. T. called to warn us. Stay put and stay quiet, Leo. You want the gun?”

  “What’ll you have?”

  “I don’t know. I gave mine to Lyn. Mom has the twelve-gauge. Maybe I’ll grab a knife.”

  “Don’t be a jerk. Keep the M1,” Leo said, “I probably couldn’t lift the goddamn thing anyhow.”

  Joe didn’t argue. He finished rolling the bed through the—luckily—unusually wide bathroom door, stepped outside, almost completely closed the door, and then reached inside to pull the bed against it, making entry as awkward as possible.

  “Go get ’em, Joey,” he heard his brother say.

  He knew he was out of time. He left the guest bedroom quietly, slipped into the hall, bypassed the kitchen, and froze, listening intently and thinking of all the things he should have done but hadn’t had time for, including putting on anything besides his blue jeans.

  The first sound came from the building’s south wall—a single sharp snap, as from a twig breaking. Joe jogged through the house, flattened against the south wall from the inside, and glanced through one of the windows in time to see the bulkhead door to the basement swing open, dumping its load of snow. A dark shadow disappeared into the cellar’s void.

  “Okay, you bastard,” he muttered, and much more stealthily made his way to the door leading down to the basement, off the hallway between the living room and the kitchen, painfully aware that any misstep or creaking floorboard would resonate below him.

  In the hallway, he positioned himself so that he was partially protected by the width of a waist-high bookcase, across the top of which he steadied the carbine, pointing toward the door.

  Then he waited.

  There had been times in combat like this, with an attack anticipated, when all bodies had been called to the perimeter. As now, every minute had stretched to absurdity, and every slight noise had cracked like a shot. By the time the cellar door began swinging back on its hinges, barely visible in the moonlight from the distant windows, Joe’s face was damp with sweat.

  He waited until the shadow emerging from below was fully in the hall before he said quietly, “Do not move. I have a rifle on you.”

  The man opposite him froze.

  “Lie facedown on the floor before you,” Joe ordered. “Arms and legs outstretched. Hands open.”

  The shadow did as it was told. Joe reached across the hallway, inside the nearby kitchen door, and switched on a light. Ahead of him, looking up with pure venom in his squinting eyes, was a man Joe had never before seen. He was wearing a checked shirt.

  Just as his heart sank with the realization that he’d been had, Joe heard Dan’s voice behind him, farther down the hall: “Nice try, Gunther. Real tricky. Leave the gun alone and put your hands up.”

/>   Joe followed instructions, aware of the man in the checked shirt getting up as Joe glanced over his own shoulder at Dan.

  He’d barely registered that Dan was standing right across from his mother’s bedroom door when one panel of the latter blew up with a shattering explosion that sent Griffis smashing against the far wall with a scream, his right knee torn apart.

  Purely on instinct, Joe didn’t even look back at the man who had emerged from the cellar. He simply dived through the nearby kitchen door, rolled into a forward somersault, and then pushed himself off and to the side of a cabinet front as a bullet smacked into the place he’d just been occupying.

  But he was now exposed in the light, sprawled on the floor, and knew he was out of luck.

  The man in the checked shirt stepped into the room, the gun dangling by his side, his face malevolent. In the hallway, Griffis was screaming, “Kill the prick, Mike. Blow his fucking head off.”

  Through the kitchen’s other door, leading to the dining room, one arm and half of Lyn’s face appeared, her eye sighting down the length of Joe’s pistol.

  “Don’t do it, asshole. Drop the gun or you die.”

  Before Mike could respond, Lyn fired, the sound enormous in such close quarters. The gun in Mike’s hand flew away from him with a spurt of red blood, and he spun and crouched simultaneously, doubling over his wounded hand. Joe leaped to his feet, ran back to the hallway, and snatched up his carbine. He brought it to bear just as Dan Griffis, lying on the floor and bleeding, reached for the pistol that he’d dropped moments before.

  “Don’t move!” Joe yelled.

  Simultaneously, the barrel of a shotgun appeared through the hole in his mother’s door, followed by her almost sweet advice. “Dan, I think you should stop this.”

  Griffis glanced up at the barrel and over to Joe, and slumped back against the wall, effectively putting his gun beyond reach.

  “Shit,” he moaned softly.

  In the meantime, Lyn had entered the kitchen and was aiming at Mike in a combat stance, as if on the range, looking incongruous only because of her nightgown.

  “Is that it?” Joe asked Dan. “Just the two of you?”

  Griffis sighed, both hands now wrapped around his shattered knee. “Yeah. The other guy wimped out.”

  Lyn glanced at Joe quickly, breaking her focus on Mike for only a fraction. “This something I should start getting used to?”

  He considered that for a moment. It had some painful relevance, given how things had worked out with Gail.

  “Maybe,” he answered as truthfully as he could.

  She tilted her head and smiled—the daughter and sister of men lost at sea. “Okay,” she said simply.

  In the distance, they heard sirens approaching.

  Chapter 25

  Willy Kunkle looked over the top of his magazine as Joe walked into the office the following morning.

  “Heard your mom and your girlfriend saved your butt last night.”

  Joe laughed. “Yeah—I heard yours does the same for you all the time.”

  “Bullshit. She say that?”

  Joe crossed the room and dropped his newspaper on his desk. “It’s her constant burden—lugging you through life with minimal damage. Where is she, by the way—and Les, for that matter?”

  “Doing one of your errands,” Willy told him. “It’s all about Leppman nowadays. Rumor also has it E. T. gave you a phone call before his Son Wonder showed up with the artillery.”

  Joe nodded as he poured himself some coffee. It never occurred to him to ask how Willy knew all he did so shortly after it happened. The man had his methods, after all, and his pride.

  Moreover, it was an interesting point—one that had made a crucial difference in the night’s outcome.

  “Yeah, he did. From the sound of his voice, I think it almost killed him, but it was clear he’d had enough. I talked to Dan after the state police got there, while EMS was wrapping him up.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He’d come back to E. T.’s house to get an extra gun before heading out for good—didn’t expect to see the old man. They had a blowout. E. T. told him we knew Andy had taken the fall for Dan. I guess Dan answered that he’d put things right by knocking me off. And that did the trick—E. T. finally saw him for what he is.”

  Willy tossed the magazine aside and stared into middle space. His tone surprised Joe with its gentleness. “Poor old bastard.”

  “You got to like him, didn’t you?”

  “You kidding? A ruthless, manipulative, unscrupulous alcoholic who drives what family members don’t commit suicide to acts of homicidal excess? Of course I like him.”

  Joe was laughing. “Well, since you put it that way . . .”

  But Willy was only half kidding. “Hey, the sins of the fathers . . . Maybe all of them were screwed before they drew their first breaths. God knows what E. T.’s old man was like.” His tone changed slightly as he asked, “Did you ever find out if Dan rigged Leo’s car?”

  Joe had settled behind his desk and interrupted taking a sip of coffee to answer, “Yeah, threw it right at my mother. Said he was sorry things hadn’t worked out as planned. She was great—shot right back that she was happy they had. He got her point. Later, he told me he regretted he hadn’t just planted a bomb. Guy’s such a winner.”

  The door opened, and both Les and Sam walked in, chatting.

  “Hey, boss,” the latter said, shucking off her coat and hanging it in the corner. “Everybody okay at home? I heard your mom’s quite the shot.”

  “Both of them are,” Joe conceded. “I asked Lyn afterward if she planned to shoot the gun out of the other guy’s hand. Her comeback was, ‘That’s where I aimed.’”

  “Ouch,” Lester said. “Watch out for that one, boss.”

  “Turns out she used to target shoot with her father and brothers when they were kids,” Joe explained. “Throw bottles into the ocean and blow them up. Not PC, but I guess a lot of fun.”

  Sam was already typing at her computer, checking her morning e-mails. “Useful, too, as it turns out. I can’t believe the bastard attacked your house. It’s like a big-city war story from the flatlands.”

  “Speaking of flatlanders,” Joe segued, “you and Les get anything on Leppman?”

  Sam looked up from the screen. “Yeah. We just drove down from Burlington this morning.”

  “Didn’t trust our own people?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips, considering how to answer that. In fact, the VBI had five offices strategically located across the state, staffed with squads like their own. That was what he’d meant when he encouraged her to bring in extra help if needed.

  He interrupted her with a raised hand. “Don’t worry about it, Sam. I know what it’s like to share. Tell me what you got so far, instead.”

  She gave him a slightly embarrassed, rueful look. “Yeah, I’m a little possessive.” She then pointed at Lester. “He’s just as bad, though. Didn’t once suggest farming this out.”

  “It was worth it,” Spinney said defensively. “Nobody knows the case like we do.” Not having all the years the other three had shared working for the Brattleboro PD, he was a little less sure of the limitations to this sort of banter.

  Sam returned to the question. “It was good news, bad news, to be honest: the good part being that we got a solid picture of his activities and whereabouts; the bad being that, as a result, we couldn’t put him in Bratt on the dates of either killing.”

  Joe scowled slightly. “No doubts?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “We got the right judge, which got us access to Leppman’s phone records and credit card receipts. We talked to neighbors, a package delivery driver who handed him something on one of the days, a few other people we found out about. All this was on the q.t.—not that he won’t find out eventually—but every time, we came up empty for both dates.”

  “And it wasn’t just the timing,” Lester added. “We asked about his demeanor, too. I mean, I
know he’s a shrink, but they all said he’s been fine—upbeat and cheery, just like he was when I was with him. No signs of stress at all.”

  “What about the phone records?” Joe asked. “Anything stick out there?”

  Sam shook her head. “Nope. And sure as hell nothing to Pennsylvania or Waterbury or anything as easy as that. It was like taking apart Mr. Average Joe Citizen.”

  “You interview the vet?”

  “Yup,” Spinney answered. “Followed up on that phone call I made back when. What the stable lady told me was right—Leppman does like to hang out and ask questions—but the vet said he never thought anything about it, that Leppman never asked him any leading questions about overdosing or lethal chemicals, or even anything about fentanyl or DMSO.”

  “They use those, by the way,” Sammie interjected. “But nothing’s gone missing from their stock.”

  “What about the wife and daughter?” Joe asked. “Pardon my prejudice, but when I hear horses, I hear more their gender than Leppman’s. Did they hang around the vet at all, or visit the stables?”

  “No on the first,” Sam told him, “but yes on the second. They both ride, but neither of them seems to have Leppman’s curiosity about everything. In fact, a stable girl we talked to said none of them really liked the women that much—thought they were kind of snotty.”

  Joe let out a sigh. “All right, so, right now, all three are a wash.”

  “ ’Fraid so.”

  “What else?”

  “We met with Matt Aho and really went through his list of possibles,” Les volunteered, trying to sound helpful.

  “You get anything?” Willy asked.

  Sam answered from her desk. “Could be.” She sat back to explain. “We not only ran Aho through the wringer, trying to get him to remember anything he could, but we also chased after most of the people he’d highlighted, just in case one of them might’ve seen something.”

  “What we found,” Spinney picked up, “maybe falls into the category of pure dumb luck. The day Leppman came to visit, he had an escort from their patrol division—not for security, since they considered him an insider, but to introduce him to a couple of people he didn’t know.”