And, at precisely 9:17, the man decided he’d had enough. “What do you say we get started here?” he growled. “I got a full plate and I can’t sit around all morning waiting for the goddamned bureau to grace us with its presence.”
“Okay by me,” said The Aardark, slurping loudly from his container of coffee.
Yolie nodded her head in agreement.
Questa glanced down at a yellow legal pad. “Fine, then let’s get down to business here.…”
That was when the conference room door burst open and in strutted a twenty-something testosterone jarhead wearing a pair of aviator shades and a snug-fitting red ski jacket. He whipped off his shades, then off came the jacket, too. Underneath it he had on a white merino wool turtleneck that was stretched so tight across his pumped-up muscles that Des swore she could make out his entire six-pack of abs as he stood there styling self-importantly for everyone’s benefit, his granite jaw working on a piece of chewing gum.
“Lord help us, they’ve stuck us with Maverick again,” Yolie groaned under her breath. “Did we piss somebody off?”
“Possibly in a previous life,” Des murmured unhappily.
“You know him?” whispered Toni, who was positively goggle-eyed.
Yolie looked at her, aghast. “Don’t tell me you want that,” she whispered in response.
“Loo, I swear I’ve just laid eyes on the father of my children.”
“Trust me, you won’t feel that way once it opens its mouth.”
Toni continued to gape at him. “Oh, it doesn’t have to talk.”
“Oh, yes it does. And every single word that comes out of its mouth rhymes with ‘asshole.’”
“Sorry I’m late, people,” he declared in a booming, authoritative voice. “They closed I-95 because of a jackknifed tractor trailor and I had to make it out here on Route 1. I’ve never seen so many muffler shops in my life. Seriously, how do folks out here afford to eat three meals a day if they’re always buying so many mufflers? Am I right or am I right?” He went around the table and shook hands. First with Sam Questa. “Grisky, FBI, how are you? Then with Joey Amalfitano. “It’s Grisky.”
“We’ve already met, Agent Grisky,” The Aardvark pointed out. “We worked the Sour Cherry Lane case last spring.”
“Sure, we did.” Grisky’s eyes said he didn’t remember The Aardvark at all.
But he did remember Des. “Hey there, girlfriend,” he exclaimed, grinning at her wolfishly. “Sure never thought I’d find myself back in your sleepy little hamlet again.”
“It’s not sleepy and I’m still not your girlfriend,” Des said. “You remember Yolie Snipes of the Major Crime Squad, don’t you?”
“You kidding me? How could I forget a sweet-looking sister like Miss Yo-lan-da Snipes. How goes it, Sarge?”
“It’s lieutenant now,” Yolie informed him between gritted teeth.
“Moving on up, hunh? Good for you. And, whoa, look who they gave you for a sergeant—it’s Snooki. Are we on MTV right now? Seriously, am I or am I not standing in the presence of Miss … Nicole … Polizzi?”
“Actually, my name’s Toni Tedone,” she simpered breathlessly. This qualified as a major departure for Toni the Tiger. The last time someone at the Headmaster’s House dared to call her Snooki he got a knee in the cojones.
“Real glad to know you. And, hey, lovin’ the patchouli,” he said as he made his way to the other end of the conference table.
Toni gaped at him, awestruck. “I’m going to marry that man.”
Des and Yolie exchanged a horrified look before Des said, “Toni, there are two very important words you need to know about a man like Grisky.”
“What are they?”
“Premature and ejaculation.”
Toni frowned at her. “You say that like there’s some other kind.”
Grisky parked himself in a chair and said, “I just heard that the DEA’s jonesing to get in on this, too. That means they’ll be crawling up our butts if we don’t nail it in the next thirty-six hours—which I’ve assured my boss we will. We have to. I’m flying to Cancún late tomorrow night to hook up with my Quantico buds for a sacred ritual. We spend the week before Christmas down there every year and I cannot, will not, miss it. So let’s hit this out of the park and I mean now. So far it looks to me like we’ve got ourselves quite a little shitstorm. Possible organized drug activity, theft of the U.S. Mail, a dead mailman…”
“Postal carrier,” Questa grunted.
Grisky raised his chin at him. “Sorry?”
“They’re known as postal carriers, Agent Grisky. I thought you’d like to know since you seem to think you’re in charge of my investigation. What we’ve got here is a matter for the U.S. Postal Inspectors to deal with.”
“Well, that’s a big no,” Grisky fired back cheerfully. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t all be sitting here at this large table with you. We’re all working together on this one, Inspector. And we need to share what we know. So how about you put your dick in a box and tell us what you’ve got, okay?”
Questa shifted around unhappily in his chair. “I’ve had two teams of investigators on the ground since approximately nine o’clock last evening,” he said grudgingly. “One of my teams is presently up in Norwich working the supply chain. The other’s at the Dorset Post Office conducting interviews. I personally interviewed Postmaster Zander at her home early this morning. The victim, Hank Merrill, was her live-in lover. She’s grieving and extremely upset. I also spoke with her son, Casey, who’s a part-time carrier. I found him to be reasonably cooperative, although I did think he gave me an attitude.”
“It was nothing personal,” Des said. “He gives that to everyone.”
“At the present time,” Questa continued, “there is no reason to suspect Postmaster Zander has been complicit in any wrongdoing. But, based on my experience, the odds are good that she knows more than she was willing to admit about what’s been going on.”
“Which is what?” Grisky asked.
“High-value parcels have been disappearing from Hank Merrill’s route for the past two weeks—retail gift cards, choice little Christmas presents from the likes of Amazon and, most notably, prescription meds.”
“How much are we talking about? Can you give us a dollar figure?”
Questa shook his giant head. “We’ll have to canvass each resident on his route before we know that. Frankly, I’m still not entirely certain why Postmaster Zander didn’t contact us immediately when she became aware of the situation.”
“I may be able to help you with that,” Des said. “Dorset’s a small town with small-town traditions.”
Questa stared across the table at her. “What kind of traditions?”
“Folks put Christmas tips in their mailboxes for Hank. Some of them bake cookies, others leave him cash. Hank donated the cash to the Food Pantry.”
“I don’t care who he donated it to,” Questa blustered. “Mail carriers are prohibited from accepting holiday gratuities.”
“I know this. I also know that the boxes aren’t supposed to be used for anything other than official U.S. Mail. But in Dorset they are. Lem Champlain, our busiest private plowman, conducts his business by mailbox. That’s how he bills his customers and that’s how they pay him—mostly in cash. Lem told me he’s short about two thousand dollars this month in payments that his customers swear they put out for him, although I’m not one hundred percent sold on his credibility.”
Questa gazed at her sternly. “Sounds to me like you know an awful lot about this case. Was Postmaster Zander in contact with you?”
“Let’s just say I got wind of it, okay?”
“Homegirl keeps her ear to the ground,” Grisky said admiringly.
“When did you get wind of it?”
“Yesterday. I spoke to Hank Merrill about it at the Post Office.”
“That’s not your job,” Questa fumed. “It’s mine.”
“I’m aware of the protocol, Inspector. But Paulette was highly resis
tant to contacting you. She was worried about how it would look. I told her that I’d be willing to make some informal inquiries on the matter if she’d agree to contact you. I was making a concerted effort to move the investigative process your way. She promised me she’d reach out to you.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
“Well, that’s not my fault.”
“Well, it’s somebody’s fault.”
Des let out a sigh. “Inspector, do you want to throw down or do you want to figure out what happened to Hank Merrill?”
Questa didn’t respond. Just glowered at her.
“So you spoke with the victim yesterday?” Grisky asked Des.
“Informally,” Des reiterated.
“And now he’s formally dead. What do we know about this gee?”
“We know that he had financial problems stemming from his divorce,” she replied. “We know that he texted Paulette a suicide note in which he appeared to confess to stealing the mail himself. The trouble is…”
“Okay, I need for you to stop talking now,” Grisky broke in. To Questa he said, “Tell us what you’re doing about this.”
“We’ve brought in a temporary supervisor from Norwich to take over for Postmaster Zander. He’ll assign a part-time carrier to Hank Merrill’s route until this matter resolves itself. We have to keep the mail moving. That is, and always will be, job one for the USPS. Meanwhile, we work our fundies.”
Grisky peered at him curiously. “Work your what?”
“Our fundamentals,” Questa said, louder this time. “We acquaint ourselves with every aspect of the operation at this individual branch. Interview each and every carrier and clerk. Determine if anyone has recently transferred, retired or been terminated. Determine when the keypad lock in the office was most recently updated. We undertake a top-to-bottom investigation of the security procedures that are in place. Check the padlocks and deadbolts, the safe where the scanners and vehicle keys are kept. According to Postmaster Zander, only she and her senior clerk know the combination to that safe. We’ll have to see about that. We’ve encountered these types of thefts numerous times before. Maybe we’re looking at a dirty carrier. Maybe not. There are other possible scenarios. One is that the theft of these valuables occurred before they got to the carrier. A dirty clerk or clerks can divert them as soon as they come off of the truck, repackage them and send them on to a complicit third party. I’ve seen it happen.”
Des considered this, wondering if Hank had accidentally seen something going on in the back room. Wondering if this was what he’d wanted to talk to her about.
“If that’s how it went down,” Toni said, “then wouldn’t parcels have been disappearing from more than just Hank Merrill’s route?”
Grisky raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Snooki makes an excellent point.”
“Thank you, Agent,” she said, blushing. The poor girl was totally gaga. A temporary and treatable affliction, Des hoped and prayed.
“Not necessarily,” Questa responded. “Hank Merrill had the choicest route in Dorset. And if stuff from all over town started disappearing that would have set off too many alarm bells. Besides, that’s just one possible scenario. Another is the supply train, by which I mean the trucks that bring the mail to this branch from the distribution hub in Norwich. The postal service outsources the trucking to private contractors these days. We perform background checks on all of the drivers, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have ourselves a bad apple. So we work that, too. Interview each and every driver who comes in contact with the Dorset-bound mail. Review the security procedures that are in place in Norwich, then keep on backtracking from there. The Norwich hub gets its mail from Hartford and Wallingford. If mail comes into this state by air it arrives at Bradley International and is trucked to Hartford. We’ll follow it every step of the way. And if we turn up a bad apple I assure you we will prosecute him to the full extent of the law. We’re the US Postal Service. We take our responsibilities seriously. We were on the front lines in the War Against Terror from day one, in case you’ve forgotten the anthrax scare. Because we haven’t. We’re professional investigators who do a professional job. We’re not clowns.”
“It never occurred to any of us that you were,” The Aardvark assured him.
“What he said,” Yolie agreed, nodding his head.
“Kind of thin-skinned, aren’t you, Inspector?” Grisky asked.
“Maybe I’m just sick of you gung-ho frat boys from the bureau taking over our cases.”
Des found herself starting to like little Sam Questa, even if she did keep expecting him to let loose with a yabba-dabba-doo.
Grisky ratcheted down his hard-charging tone a bit. “No one here is doubting that you know how to do your job. And I’m not trying to muscle you. I just do what I’m told, same as you.”
“We all do what we’re told,” The Aarvark agreed. “So let’s just get it done, okay?”
“Fine,” Questa growled.
Grisky looked across the table at Des. “The trouble is?…”
“Excuse me, Agent?”
“You were saying that Hank Merrill had money problems stemming from his divorce. That he texted Paulette Zander a suicide note in which he appeared to confess to stealing his own mail. But that the trouble is…”
“That he didn’t commit suicide,” Yolie spoke up. “Hank Merrill was murdered last night on Kinney Road. There was a cylindrical bruise on his right temple. Early this morning our medical examiner confirmed that it matches the nose of a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson Special. The victim didn’t have a gun permit for any such weapon. We’re checking to see if any of his close friends or coworkers do. There were bruises on the left side of his neck that indicate he was physically coerced. Also bruising beneath his lower lip that suggests he was forced to drink the large quantity of the bourbon that he ingested shortly before his death. His blood alcohol level was .26—more than three times the legal limit to drive in this state. No way he drove his Passat to such a remote locale in that condition. He drank it after he got there. Had to. Yet we can’t find a bottle. If he tossed it out the window then the town plowman most likely shoved it into the snowbanks surrounding the parking lot. I’ve got eight trainees from the academy digging their way through those snowbanks as we speak. If there’s broken glass they’ll find it. We’re also canvassing Hank’s neighbors on Grassy Hill Road to determine if any of them saw him drive away last evening and if so what time. One more thing—when we searched Hank’s jacket pockets we found an unmarked prescription bottle with a half dozen pills in it. The M.E. identified them as ten-milligram doses of diazepam, better known as Valium. Hank had what they estimate to be twenty milligrams of diazepam in his bloodstream when he died. He still had traces in his stomach. We just checked with his personal physician. Hank had never been prescribed diazepam.”
“Sounds to me like he was pacified into submission,” Des said.
“I hear you,” Yolie agreed.
“Were his fingerprints on that pill bottle?” The Aardvark asked her.
Yolie shook her head. “It was wiped clean. The passenger seat floor mat was removed. The passenger seat was moist. The duct tape and box cutter on the seat were wet. Yet when Resident Trooper Mitry found Hank, his hair and shoulders were dry. So were his shoes and the floor mat under them. The man never got out of that car. Someone else duct taped the garden hose to the tailpipe. We found Hank’s fingerprints on the hose. No prints on the duct tape that was wrapped around the tailpipe. Not that we would. The car’s exhaust heated the tailpipe enough to evaporate any fingerprint residue on the tape. We’re continuing to search the car and its contents for prints. We still have to take fingerprint samples from Paulette and Casey Zander, who’ve doubtless ridden in that car a million times and probably driven it, too. We need to eliminate their prints so we can isolate any others that don’t belong. Although I’m guessing that these people were careful enough to wear gloves. And I do mean people. We believe we’re looking for a pair. One d
rove up there with the victim. The other followed in a getaway car.”
“That’s good work,” Grisky concluded. “Sounds like you’re right on top of this case.”
“We may be talking two cases. Resident Trooper Mitry caught another suicide earlier in the day—a man named Bryce Peck who lived out on Big Sister Island.”
“Are you telling us Bryce Peck was murdered, too?”
“I’m telling you we’re looking into it.”
“Initially, Bryce’s death played suicide all of the way,” Des explained. “He was someone who had a long history of depression and substance abuse. And I found nothing at the scene to suggest a struggle.”
“How did he die?” Questa asked her.
“By washing down a one-month supply of Vicodin, Xanax and Ambien with a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold.”
“Prescription meds again,” The Aardvark reflected, slurping his coffee.
“Bryce had legitimate prescriptions for the pills. And his live-in girlfriend, Josie Cantro, swears that all three bottles were full last time she looked. But we only have her word for that. And we won’t know for a fact what Bryce swallowed until we get his toxicology results, which Lieutenant Snipes fast-tracked last night, right after Hank Merrill’s death.”
Grisky furrowed his brow. “Have you got reason to believe that this Josie Cantro might have been less than truthful with you?”
“Let’s say I have more information about her today than I did yesterday.”
“What kind of information?”
“Bryce Peck’s attorney drew up his will for him last week. It seems that he left Josie his house on Big Sister, which he owned free and clear. It’s worth in the neighborhood of five million.”
Sam Questa let out a low whistle. “Nice neighborhood.”
“Josie’s a life coach who has a thriving little practice around town. She had a professional relationship with Hank Merrill. And she currently has one with Paulette Zander’s son, Casey, who she also happens to be sleeping with. I know this because I walked in on them getting busy yesterday, less than two hours after Bryce Peck was pronounced dead.”
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