by C I Dennis
“I can’t think,” she said. She was freed now, and she began to walk around the room. “You want coffee? I need a coffee.”
“I want some answers,” I said.
*
Karen served me a cup of French roast that burned my lips because I was too anxious to let it cool. She said that Cindy had let herself into the apartment in the middle of the night with a spare key. Cindy knew all about Karen’s and my entanglements. Karen was supposed to share her men, and Cindy was off-the-charts jealous. So Cindy had tied up her sister, called me with Karen’s phone, and then turned out the lights. She was going to bed me with her sister watching, even though I wasn’t her “type.” I had news for her: she wasn’t mine, either.
Cindy Charbonneau was now solidly at the top of my list. The woman was an expert archer, and she had pulled this latest stunt on her own twin. I would call Pallmeister to have him bring her in. He could get the details on the bow sale and have the seller ID her, and they could build a case against her for Donald Lussen’s murder. If he worked her hard enough he might also find that she’d been involved Matty Harmony’s death, and had tossed a bomb in Fish Falzarano’s lap. All he had to do was do his job.
And all I had to do was find Grace and get her out of here. The rest was for the cops. Goody had hidden her away, but Karen said she didn’t know where. Grace could be anywhere.
Karen could barely keep her eyes open, and I decided that I’d gotten what I could from her. There was no reason to stay in the apartment any longer. She needed to sleep, and I needed to get on the road, because I had work to do. I was going to start by following up with one of my best sources so far: Eric Gagnier, who had built Clement Goody’s bunker. He’d held back that secret, but had spilled it willingly when I pressed him. I had a feeling that he knew more about Goody than I’d been told, probably because I hadn’t known what questions to ask. I did now.
*
Eric’s van was outside Sudsy’s Wash-N-Dry, a defunct laundromat in the middle of Johnson village. His wife had told me that he was uninstalling the equipment that was headed for auction. I found him inside, bent over the back of a commercial dryer with his tools. The only light in the building came from a battery-powered work light that sat on the dust-covered floor next to him. He looked up as I neared.
“Me again,” I said.
“You found the place?”
“Yes,” I said. “Nothing there.”
He put his tools down on the top of the machine. “What was it you were lookin’ for, if ya don’t mind my asking?”
“A young woman. Her name’s Grace Hebert. She’s being held against her will.”
“The dark-haired girl with the dog? I seen her coming and going while I was up there.”
“When did you see her?”
“Let’s go outside,” Eric said. “Get a smoke and some daylight.”
I followed him out into the parking lot, where he took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. “Tell me about the girl,” I said.
“She started coming a lot last spring. Sometimes she had her own car, sometimes she was with that professor. The one who got killed.”
“Lussen?”
“Yep. And a couple of times in the limo. Near the end of the summer when I was working on the fence.”
“She arrived in a limo?”
“Town Car, you know. Big ugly guy driving it. Don’t think it was a boyfriend, ’cause she sat in the back, and besides, the guy looked like a freak. Like he was lookin’ at you two ways at the same time.”
Fish Falzarano? He had driven Grace to Goody’s place?
“Did you ever talk to the driver? Get his name?”
“No, but I seen him up at the barn, too. Couple a times. Once by himself, and once with the young dude with the tattoos. He was helping him move in the welding equipment.”
“Hold on,” I said. “What barn? And what do you mean about welding equipment?”
“A job Goody had me do up in Lowell. Next door to the asbestos mine. He owns one of the machine sheds, and the tattooed kid was using it to work on shipping containers. They fix up rusted-out ones and sell ’em. They had me put in three-phase power for the welder.”
“Did you get a name for the guy with the tattoos?”
“Nope. He was a local though—drove a Saab with Vermont plates. They left me alone, and I didn’t bother them none.”
“The Saab was bright yellow, right?”
“Yep.”
So, Matthew Harmony and Fish Falzarano had been seen together, way up in the boondocks near a closed-down asbestos mine. And Matty was doing a job for Clement Goody, involving shipping containers and his welding skills. This was the Clement Goody who was out of money, according to my web search. Why would he be involved in something as mundane as that?
Back when I was learning to knit I would occasionally screw up a whole row, curse loudly, and fix it. Some days I spent more time cussing than I did knitting. Solving a case was no different. If you are a person who needs to be right all the time, don’t become a P.I., because you will be miserable. You have to take it stitch by stitch, you do a lot of fixes along the way, and eventually it comes together and your sweater begins to look like a sweater. I had made a number of mistakes over the past two weeks, but I could finally feel things coming together with this case, and I sensed that what I had just learned from Eric Gagnier was at the center of it.
I would call John Pallmeister and would bring him up to date. I’d check in with Rose and would make up some kind of explanation for my early AM departure without getting into even more trouble. And then I would drive north to Belvidere Mountain to find Clement Goody’s machine shed where the now-deceased Matthew Harmony had been in the business of restoring old shipping containers. I would poke around a bit to see if I could add a stitch or two to my investigative sweater, because the idea of fixing up containers didn’t sound like a business venture that was going to save Goody’s fortune. It sounded like bullshit.
*
The trip to the mine should have taken half an hour, but it took me twice as long. I spent the first ten minutes on the phone with Rose, who pried the details of the previous night’s events out of me and was incensed that I wouldn’t wait for her. I promised that I’d be back as soon as possible, and asked her to relay everything to Pallmeister. I’d tried him first, but he wasn’t in, and I was about to go out of cell range. Somebody needed to start on the police work and lock up Cindy Charbonneau, and probably Clement Goody too.
The next half hour was a blur. I had felt another whiteout coming on and pulled over into a driveway. I spent twenty minutes slumped back in my seat until I came to. The seizures were happening closer together, which couldn’t be good. I got out of the car, stretched for a while, and continued north.
The trees that lined Route 100 were now completely bare, as autumn would soon yield to the long Vermont winter. My GPS pointed me down a road to the west, and a few miles after that the asbestos mine came into view: a two-mile-long defacement of the pristine landscape, as if someone had taken a box cutter to a priceless oil painting. Immense piles of gray tailings flanked either side of the central road, empty structures loomed over overgrown parking lots, and rusted mining gear was strewn around the fenced-off grounds like abandoned toys. The place was an environmental graveyard. If you had worked here and could still breathe, you were one of the fortunate ones.
I drove the length of the perimeter road looking for the building that Eric Gagnier had described. He said it was newer than the rest, and I figured that there would be signs of recent activity. I located it at the far end, surrounded by stacked-up shipping containers and partially obscured by another small mountain of tailings. The structure had a painted metal roof, new-looking siding, and fresh car tracks leading up to it. No vehicles were parked in front, except for a kind of crane-on-wheels thing beside a pond that had turned gray from the runoff. I drove around the back of the building and found a small car under a blue tarp. I parked the Sub
aru next to it, got out, and looked beneath the covering. It was Grace Hebert’s Ford Aspire. I was suddenly glad that I’d made the trip.
I checked the doors for an easy entry point, but they were all locked. Not a problem: I didn’t have my full kit with me, but I had the wire in my wallet, and I brought it out. The back door had a sliding bolt with a padlock that was too old to put up a struggle. I was in within seconds.
The interior of the shed was an open expanse of concrete littered with welding equipment and tools. A kitchenette was tucked into one of the corners, next to a small dining table, a chair and a single bed. Somebody lived here.
In fact, the somebody was still in bed, and she sat up when she heard me enter. It was Grace, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt with her hair uncombed and her eyes full of sleep. “What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’re working for them?”
“I’m working for your grandmother,” I said. “Let’s go. I’ll take you to her house.”
“Not happening,” she said. She held up her left hand. On it was a leather manacle attached to a slim steel cable that led to a girder above our heads. “I’m on a leash. I’m Clement’s sex toy, and he’s gone completely insane, if you haven’t figured that out already.”
Her face was pale and she was shivering. I sat down next to her on the bed and held out my hand toward the manacle. “Let me get you out of that.” The young woman eyed me, unsure. I took the wire from my wallet and showed it to her. “This shouldn’t take long,” I said. “Goody told me he was protecting you.”
“Clement has been manipulating me from the start. He tracked me down when I was living in London, and he got me clean. He underwrote my performances at the college. And then I started seeing Donald, and he went crazy. I found out that it was Clement who wrote the letters with the threats. He told me that he would protect me, but what he really wants is to own me.”
“And you were also seeing Matty? And Angus Driscoll?”
“Matty was like a brother. And Angus is like a father. It’s not just sex.”
I would leave that one to the psychiatrists. “How did you end up here?”
“I was in his bunker until yesterday. They said the bunker wasn’t secure anymore.”
“How did Goody get you to fly back from Florida? I don’t get it, Grace. You say he’s crazy, but you go along with whatever he says.”
She used her free arm to roll up the sleeve of the arm I was working with. Her veins were dotted with needle marks, some of them fresh. “I stayed clean until a month ago. Clement gave me some, because he realized he can’t control me unless I’m stoned. Matty went crazy when you told him I was using again. Clement has the best junk in the world.”
“He gives you heroin?”
“You have no idea how good it is. Nothing like the garbage you buy on the street. He gets it from Albania, and they bring it down from Canada in these containers. It’s welded into the walls, and Matty cuts it out. Clement likes to pretend he’s not in the dope business, but he’s huge. He says someone else would be doing it if he wasn’t, and he can use the money to save souls.”
Goody was a heroin smuggler? Lord have mercy. That was twisted criminal hypocrisy at its finest. The Reverend Clement Goody, great saver of souls, was happy to spread around the most addictive, poisonous scourge known to humankind if it meant bailing himself out of a financial hole. I have been chasing after bad guys for most of my adult life, and the one thing that they all have in common is the ability to rationalize anything. Sell heroin, and use some of the proceeds to save pretty girls from heroin? It was classic perp-think.
I wiggled my pick in the right direction and Grace’s manacle clicked open. She surprised me by putting her arms around me and giving me an embrace. It was the nicest moment I’d experienced with her since I had met her.
But it didn’t last long.
“Thank you,” she said. “And I’m sorry, but I have to do this alone.”
She sprinted out the door and slid the bolt into place before I could react. I kicked at it, but it was securely shut, as were the other doors. I would have to call Rose and have her rescue me yet again.
Several minutes later, while I was trying to get a signal, I heard the bolt slide and the door opened. Karen Charbonneau stood at the threshold, dressed in blue jeans, a tight black sweater, and hiking boots. She wore the same distant look in her eyes that I had seen earlier in the morning. “How did you find this place?”
“Where’s Grace?” I said. “She took off a few minutes ago and locked me in.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me about the containers. She said that Goody was keeping her here. This is his heroin depot, and Matty was doing work for him.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Karen said. “You look really bad.”
“I had another seizure,” I said. “I have to get Grace to her grandmother’s. My car is around the side of the building.”
“Leave it,” she said. “You shouldn’t be driving. You can ride with me. I need to show you something.”
She took me by the elbow and led me to her Jaguar. My head was still spinning from the last whiteout, and too many people were telling me too many different versions of events. “Where did she go?” I asked Karen.
Karen ushered me into the passenger seat and got in behind the wheel. “Don’t worry about Grace. She’s an actress, remember? We’ll deal with her, but you and I have to make a stop first.”
“Where?”
“Clement wants me to show you something,” she said. “It will explain everything.”
*
Karen Charbonneau and I had a one-sided conversation as we drove out of the mine road and back onto the highway. I told her what I’d learned, but she didn’t respond to anything I said. She looked like she hadn’t slept since I’d left her apartment, and her silence was unnerving.
Rose DiNapoli flew past us in the Marquis going at top speed toward the mine. I yelled at Karen to go back, but she paid me no heed. Instead, she turned up the road that I’d been on the previous week: the primitive gravel drive that led to Donald Lussen’s writing cabin where I had discovered the corpse of Matthew Harmony.
The Jag struggled to take the bumps. I wondered if we’d make it to the top, but Karen skillfully avoided the roughest spots, and we approached the clearing where the cabin stood. Instead of stopping, she continued onto a narrow road beyond the cabin that was little more than a trail. It looked like a leftover from the last time that the hillside had been logged, and Karen maneuvered the Jaguar as if it was a Jeep. I was impressed, but most of all I was wondering what it was that she wanted to show me. The cops would have searched the whole area after Matty’s death, and I doubted that they would miss anything significant, even though they’d ruled it a suicide. We continued for half a mile until we were at the upper boundary of the gash on the face of Belvidere Mountain where the topmost excavation had been done.
Karen stopped the car on a level area fifty yards from the edge, and turned off the ignition.
“Get out and have a look,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a beautiful view,” Karen said. “Once you see it you’ll understand.”
I got the same read from her expression that I’d had when she had opened the door to the workshop. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
“Vince—this is what you’ve been waiting for. You can only see it from up here.”
I couldn’t guess what I might learn from gazing down into a valley of asbestos slag, but I’d been down too many false trails in the last two weeks, and I wanted to solve this. And after I solved it, I would get my brain operated on, I’d go back to Florida, and everything would be right again.
So I went.
The vista from the top of the mine was as appalling as it was beautiful. In the distance were layers of fog-draped mountains extending to the Canadian border. Directly below me was a series of mine terraces, as if a gigantic rice paddy had been gouged into the
surface of Mars. Perfection and destruction. And none of it enlightened me in the slightest, except to illustrate how people can destroy a spectacular landscape when they want something within it. I turned back to the car.
Karen Charbonneau had gotten out of the driver’s seat and stood by the open trunk of the Jaguar. She removed a hunting bow, strung it with an arrow, and pointed it at me.
I jerked away as her shot released. The arrow flew low and hit me in the side of my ass. It punctured the muscle and protruded out of the back of my pants. I fell to the ground at the top edge of the mine screaming in pain as Karen approached with the bow, stringing a second arrow as she strode across the clearing. She raised the bow and aimed it at my face.
“You killed Donald,” I said through the scorching pain. The slightest movement telegraphed waves of agony through my body.
“Clement sent Cindy for Donald,” she said. “He assigned you to me.”
“You’re a junkie again, aren’t you?”
“Clement saved me—”
“No, Karen. He’s a killer, and you’re his pawn. And Cindy didn’t overpower you last night. You two staged everything.”
“I’m a drama teacher, Vince.” She drew back the string for the kill shot. Karen Charbonneau would put the second arrow into my head, just as her twin had done at the water tower with Lussen.
“Why?”
“Because you found out too much,” she said. Her arms began to tremble with the tension of the drawn bowstring. “We were seeing what you could uncover. Clement wrote the play, and my sister and I acted it out.”
“But you and I—”
“It wasn’t all acting,” she said. “I have to do this. You’re a danger to us.”
“You would kill me because he told you to?”
“You don’t understand. You have no idea about his work.”
She inched nearer—near enough for me to kick out hard with my good leg and knock her off balance for a split second. The arrow shot into the ground, and she screamed and dived for me.
I grabbed her by the hair and used her momentum to throw her past me and over the rim. She tumbled down the escarpment and landed on a terraced road fifty feet below with a hoarse shriek. The bow went with her and stopped near her feet.