by C I Dennis
My phone buzzed. I didn’t recognize the caller, but I answered anyway, partly to get away from Chan’s glare.
“Tanzi?”
“Yes?”
“Duffy Kovich. The Hummer is in the tennis court lot, here on campus. The girl’s car is gone. I have no idea how long it’s been there.”
“Did you look inside the car?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Nothing I could see that was out of the ordinary.”
My phone rang while I was on the call, and I checked the screen: John Pallmeister. “Call you back,” I said to Duffy, and we clicked off.
“I have a number of favors to ask you,” I said to the lieutenant.
“They’ll have to wait,” he said.
“My runaway might have left the country. I need you to check with customs.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Meaning?”
“You stepped on some toes, Vince. You’re shut off. I’m not supposed to be talking to you anymore.”
“What? Look, John, I have a lot of information for you. You can sit on your duff in your office all you want, but I’ve found some things out. Like, for instance, you should be looking harder at Trish Lussen. Talk about a motive.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Explain?”
“I can’t do that either, Vince. You crossed a line.”
“What? You have a homicide case here, and a missing person, and you know that they’re connected. And you’re refusing my help?”
“It’s not my decision.”
“Meaning that somebody above you told you to shut me down?”
“I can’t go into it. You’re on your own. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is.”
John Pallmeister and I had started our law enforcement careers the same year, as rookie Barre patrolmen. I’d moved to Florida shortly afterward, and he had transferred to the State Police and had risen through the ranks. He was a far more accomplished cop than I had ever been. But when you get to be a lieutenant, the politics start to become a factor, and someone had waved him off. Pallmeister had a career to think about, and our friendship was too thin for that. I drew a preliminary conclusion about where this was coming from.
“I get it, John,” I said. “Somebody is in Angus Driscoll’s pocket, right?”
“I can’t comment.” Meaning that I was right. Driscoll didn’t like me snooping around his daughter, and he’d made a phone call.
“You remember Fish Falzarano?” I said. “He’s his driver. I saw them both at Trish Lussen’s house this morning.”
“Fish earned a Distinguished Service Cross in Afghanistan,” Pallmeister said. “He was career Army. He straightened out, not long after you and I busted him as a juvenile, and he’s been out of the service for a few years now. He does security for the Driscoll family.”
“You seem to know a lot about the Driscolls.”
John Pallmeister waited for a while until he spoke. “Lay low, Vince. Please. I’m not in anybody’s pocket. With any luck we’ll find your girl.”
“Then you’ve already lost.”
“Beg pardon?”
“My dog,” I said. “He comes up with these things.”
*
The farther I get pushed back from my objective, the more it comes into focus. Adversity breeds clarity. Maybe I should get that tattooed on my ass.
Angus Driscoll had called somebody, and I no longer had access to what the State Police knew, because I was considered a pest. Or had I come too close to something that he wanted to keep hidden? Did he know about his son-in-law’s secret life? If so, why was that a big deal? These days, people gave about as much thought to having affairs as they did to deciding what to have for breakfast. The Internet had offered up a wild new cornucopia of temptation in every possible flavor, and monogamy was as passé as parachute pants. No, a guy like Driscoll would be far too pragmatic to concern himself with something like his daughter’s marital problems. Donald Lussen and Trish Driscoll could get a divorce, their assets would be divvied up, and life would go on. Lussen’s infatuation with Grace was a distraction, not a motive for murder.
My investigating had bothered Angus Driscoll in some other way, which I didn’t yet understand. It may or may not have had something to do with Grace. I would chase it down eventually, but I tend to work off of a list, and Driscoll was way down the list from the two things at the top. Number one was to find out if Grace had left the country. And number two was to check out the Belvidere Mountain sugar shack where Lussen wrote his plays. I was halfway there, and I had just enough of a signal to make a phone call while I drove. That is illegal in Vermont these days, but I didn’t care because I was already in hot water with the cops.
Robert Patton answered on the first ring. “Tanzi? Don’t tell me. You want to tell me how warm it is in Florida and how much you’re getting laid.”
“I’m up here.”
“In Vermont?”
“I’m in Johnson, headed for Belvidere Mountain.”
“That’s my back yard,” he said. Patton was the head of the Border Patrol, and he knew every square mile of the territory near Canada. We had met a few years before, and I had become friends with the gruff, bulldog-faced law officer who might have even intimidated the huge animal snoring in the back seat.
“I need a favor,” I said.
“Say the word.”
“A young woman named Grace Hebert. She’s a student at Johnson State. She may have left the country. I want to know if you can find her on the exit records.”
“When?”
“Sometime between Friday morning and now.”
“Does this have anything to do with the professor who got killed?”
“They were lovers,” I said. “He had a cabin up in Belvidere.”
“Really? Isn’t John Pallmeister handling that? I saw him on a TV conference.”
“He’s not cooperating,” I said. “Apparently I stepped on someone’s toes.”
“Whose toes?”
“Angus Driscoll’s. The victim was his son-in-law.”
“Those are big toes,” Patton said.
“Yeah.”
“You seem unconcerned.”
“I’m not running for office,” I said. “I’m just trying to find the girl. She’s Donna Tomaselli’s granddaughter.”
“Mrs. T?” Patton said. They had both done shifts at my bedside after I had been shot, and Mrs. Tomaselli was one of those people who if you spent five minutes with her, you loved her.
“That’s right,” I said.
“I’ll check it out,” he said. “How’s your health?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Vince. You sound tired.”
“I’ve been better,” I said. And that was the truth, because ever since I’d left Clement Goody’s house I’d felt tired and on edge. I would make a fast trip to the Lussen cabin, and then get back to Barre for some rest. It would be dark soon, and I was eager to be home, knock off eight or ten leftover cannolis, and climb into bed.
Robert Patton and I hung up right as the signal went dead, with Belvidere Mountain just coming into sight. I had made myself a crude map from the land records that I had pulled off of the town’s website: up the Old Mine Road several miles and then a left turn on what used to be a logging road. The former asbestos mine bordered the property, and when I’d looked it up, I had found out why Lussen had been able to purchase his getaway shack for so little money: the hundred-year-old mine had closed in 1993 after asbestos fibers had been confirmed as a carcinogen. The now-bankrupt company had left a two-mile-long scar at the base of the mountain that resembled a moonscape. It was not what people thought of when they pictured rural life in Vermont. More like a toxic wasteland, although the huge piles of tailings and the polluted streams were already being reclaimed by nature, albeit slowly. The Green Mountains were formed several hundred million years ago, and it would take another hundred million for the scar to heal.
Chan had transferred h
imself to the front seat and was helping me navigate. His ears were perked up, making him look anxious. We found the logging road and followed it for less than a quarter mile before we came to a chain that was secured with a padlock. Unfortunately, it was a combination lock, and you can’t pick those unless you’re clairvoyant. I would either need to return with a hacksaw, or hoof it up the hill to Lussen’s cabin. I had no idea how far that would be, or if I could make it there and back in the fading light.
I parked the rental car and put on a fleece jacket. It was going to be a cold night—not uncommon for the month of October in Vermont. A brief hike in the cool air might do me some good. At least I hoped so, because I was starting to feel as nervous as Chan. I didn’t need any more bad things to happen—I needed a break in the case. The whole thing was about as clear as the clouds that were now coming in from the northwest, enveloping the top of Belvidere Mountain and obscuring the already weak sun.
Maybe Chan was right when he’d said dogs know. And maybe the same held true for private investigators who had taken a nine-millimeter slug to the head, because both of us sensed trouble. We stepped over the chain and started up the hill past tall hemlocks that cast dark shadows on the forest floor. Bursts of wind scattered leaves and pine needles across our path. The air felt cold and dense in my lungs, and I had to shorten my gait as the road steepened. Chan stayed close beside me, not venturing ahead. Somewhere along the line, someone had trained him. Either that, or he was afraid.
We followed the logging road up the hill until we came to a clearing. A small wooden cabin sat in the middle, flanked by a rustic outhouse. The door to the cabin was wide open, banging in the wind. And as I got closer I noticed a car obscured by a stand of trees. It was a yellow Saab convertible with a torn roof and a blacked-out fender, and for the first time since I had arrived in Vermont I wished that I’d brought a gun.
*
I don’t like blood. It’s not that it makes me squeamish, or light-headed, or want to run out of the house and puke on the lawn, although there have been some close calls. I just don’t like it. It’s messy, it’s impossible to clean up, and it leaves an unpleasant smell, like dirty pots in the sink. Blood should be kept inside the body, not outside. Not sprayed across the floor of Donald Lussen’s writing cabin in a grotesque Rorschach blot that had only one possible interpretation: violent death.
Matthew Harmony still wore his mechanic’s coveralls, which were strangely free of the sticky red liquid now drying on the floor behind his supine body. The top of his head was missing, and the barrel of a gun was jammed into his mouth. Grace Hebert’s gun. Actually, Clement Goody’s gun, which had been lent to Grace, found by me, and then reclaimed by Grace.
From ten feet away you would say suicide. The young man had lain down on the floor, put the barrel of his girlfriend’s borrowed .44-magnum revolver into his mouth and had checked out in the messiest possible way. Heartbroken ex-lover. Junkie. Lost soul.
But good police work isn’t done from ten feet away. I had managed to get enough of a cell signal to dial 911, and the blue lights had quickly accumulated in the cabin’s yard during the hour since Chan and I had discovered the body. The small clearing looked like an alien ship had landed: rooftop speakers blasting police communications, outdoor floodlights being set up, Orleans County deputies, local EMTs, and even a beat-up, rusting fire truck from a nearby village. It was all I could do to preserve the scene for the State Police forensics team, because everybody wanted a look at the body, and in my time as a deputy one of the things that I had learned was how easy it was for well-meaning public servants to screw up a crime scene. I’d had to reprimand several of them, and by the time John Pallmeister and his crew arrived my voice was hoarse from barking orders. I had taken charge, partly because I had a proprietary interest in this and partly because I had to wonder, in the farthest recesses of my mind, whether I held some responsibility, seeing how the first thing that I had done today was to break Matthew Harmony’s stones. I would leave that one to the cops, but it was going to take some explaining as to why I kept having conversations with people who had subsequently turned up dead.
Another hour later I had been demoted from my self-appointed managerial duties to sitting in the back seat of Pallmeister’s cruiser with Janice the sergeant watching over me. The lieutenant and I had spoken for less than five minutes, after which he’d gestured to his car and said: wait inside. He’d no doubt had his fill of me, seeing how I had thrust him into two investigations in as many days. Chan lay on the back seat of the cruiser next to me, and we decided to go with the flow. Let them do their job. Not make it any harder than it was, because investigating a crime scene—or a suicide—was a bitch. You had to examine everything, log it all, keep the evidence untouched, and in some cases, deal with relatives, reporters, and curious assholes. I watched the team do their work, and I realized that I didn’t miss any of that. You can pick your messes when you’re a private investigator, but when you’re a cop you have to be part superhero and part garbage man, and if you did the slightest thing wrong you would be taken to task in the local papers. No thanks.
Chan was catching up on his sleep, but my fatigue had disappeared the moment I’d found the body. My mind was working overtime trying to figure out how Grace might have played into this. Matty had somehow ended up with her gun. He’d freaked out when I had accused him of being her lover. He had also denied any knowledge of the relationship between Grace and Donald Lussen, but here he was, dead, in Lussen’s cabin. I had some thinking to do, because as perplexing as the two deaths might be, I was still faced with the same problem: Grace Hebert wasn’t here.
SUNDAY
“Your prints weren’t on the gun,” Pallmeister said. I was in my mother’s kitchen with a cup of coffee and Chan curled up at my feet. The dog and I had made it back to the house at four AM, and it was now almost noon. I had stayed up way past my bedtime in Pallmeister’s Middlesex office playing what-if, but it was all guesswork until the forensic reports came in. The good news was that the lieutenant had dropped any reluctance to share information with me. I didn’t press him about who had put the clamps on in the first place, because I already knew.
“It must have been wiped,” I said. “Mine should be on it, and Grace’s. And possibly Clement Goody’s, since it’s his gun.”
“But that isn’t the big news.”
“What’s the big news?”
“We found a compound bow in the Saab shop. It has an attached quiver that holds four arrows, but only two were left.”
“Carbon fiber?”
“Yes, and they match the ones that hit Lussen. No prints at all on the bow or the remaining arrows, but they had traces of a solvent, like you might use in an automotive shop. It looks like Matthew Harmony killed Lussen and then himself. The coroner said he’d been drinking, and there was an empty bottle of vodka in the cabin.”
“Wouldn’t that be convenient,” I said.
“You don’t buy it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Did you ever find out if Matty had a bow permit?”
“He didn’t,” Pallmeister said. “But some of these guys don’t bother.”
“Did he even hunt?”
“We’ll be asking his family, and Carmela Tomaselli.”
“Did anyone go see her yet?”
“Janice is with her right now.”
“I’m going to talk to her too,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve been getting the straight story.” Karen Charbonneau had told me in her office that Carmela knew some things, and I hadn’t followed up, but I would now. Carmela might be in more of a talking frame of mind now that her boyfriend was dead. Events like that usually make the guilty more secretive, and the innocent more forthcoming. I couldn’t imagine that Carmela was anything but innocent, and if she had a brain in her head she would cooperate fully, for the sake of her daughter.
“So why don’t you like this?” Pallmeister said. “Everything fits, so far.”
“Because it’s too easy,” I said. “You know better, John. Real life doesn’t work that way.”
*
Chan and I were walking through my mother’s neighborhood. He was still on edge, which was understandable after the events of the previous evening, as he had gone into the house with me and seen the mess. I had quickly escorted him outside, not wanting to introduce anything into the crime scene that would confuse the investigators, like dog hair or paw prints that didn’t belong there.
I heard myself thinking: crime scene. Not suicide. Faking a suicide was no simple task, but it could be done. If that’s what had happened, there might be blood traces elsewhere on the property, because if you somehow get a gun into someone’s mouth and pull the trigger, you’re going to get some on you. Matty’s hands had shown traces of gun-shot residue according to the cops, but that was relatively simple to stage: you just had to make the dead person take a posthumous shot out of an open door or a window. The team could look for signs of another vehicle, but after the circus that had ensued, any tire tracks and tread patterns would be long gone. The Vermont State Police’s crime scene team was as good as they come, but there is only so much that you can get from the actual location.
My money was on the old-fashioned detective work: interviewing friends and family, checking the computer and phone records, and burning gasoline and shoe leather by making the rounds to all of Matty’s haunts and hangouts until you finally turned something up. There weren’t a lot of shooting deaths in Vermont, and Pallmeister had the resources, unlike a big city like Philly or Baltimore where somebody took a bullet every few hours and the detectives had open caseloads that would fill up a whole file cabinet.
Of course they could just say it was a suicide, tag Matty as Donald Lussen’s killer, and call it a day. Why the hell not. The Pats were hosting the Jets, so let’s crack open a beer, make some popcorn, and watch a bunch of three-hundred-pound men give each other concussions.
I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t buying into the murder-suicide. Like John Pallmeister had said, everything fit. But I didn’t get how Matty found his way to Lussen’s cabin, opened the combination lock, closed it behind him, and then did himself in without bothering to shut the door. Too many loose ends for my bullet-damaged brain.