Death Benefits: A Novel

by Thomas Perry

  Stillman frowned at the wall for a few seconds. “Not just yet.”

  Walker watched him. “What do you have against the police? You were a cop once.”

  Stillman slowly turned to face Walker. “Who told you about that?”

  “The police captain in Miami. The one who asked all the questions,” said Walker.

  Stillman looked at the carpet for a moment, then raised his eyes again. “I don’t have anything against the police. Or the FBI, for that matter. But they’re in a slightly different business than we are.”

  “What do you mean? What’s different?”

  “They’re in the business of arresting and convicting people.”

  Walker stood up and walked across the room. “Isn’t that what we want? This isn’t some isolated fraud that’s going to be okay the minute we get the money back. They’re not just stealing money from a company. They’re doing it by taking ordinary people, one at a time, and killing them. Somebody’s got to get arrested.”

  “I’m just not sure this is the time,” said Stillman. “Suppose we call the FBI and bring them up here. They’re at Scully’s house by morning. They begin an investigation—go around methodically and thoroughly collecting all the evidence in little plastic bags. The investigation hits on all cylinders, they eventually ferret out every one of the people who were in on this, put them on trial, and convict them of everything they did.”

  “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  “The trouble is, an investigation like that takes at least two months with a strong wind behind it. If it succeeds, they make arrests. The trials begin six months after that, if the federal attorneys prepare their case with due speed and diligence. All that has got to happen, of course. And since they’re already on the case, we couldn’t get them off it if we wanted to.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “What I just said. The second we make that call and let them actually talk to us without McClaren’s in between, we’re out. The FBI is not going to let us keep poking into everything we have a theory about.”

  “Are they wrong?”

  “No,” said Stillman. “They’re right. But right now we know who one of these guys was and where he lived. His buddies may or may not know that much. Maybe they know Scully’s dead, but the last time they could have seen him was in Miami, where the police are telling reporters they don’t know who he is. It’s possible that James Scully’s house is just the way he left it. By the time the FBI could get up to speed, it may not be.”

  Walker thought for a moment. “What if the Miami police have already figured out who Scully and the other one were? How do we find out at this time of night?”

  Stillman shrugged. “The time of night isn’t the problem. If they don’t want to release information, they won’t. If they do, it’ll be in the papers.”

  “Serena,” said Walker. “She was reading the Miami Herald today. Maybe it’s late enough for the morning edition.” He dialed the number, and Serena’s voice came on instantly.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi,” he said. “It’s the usual me. I’m sorry to call you at this hour, but it’s—”

  “What hour?”

  “It’s three thirty-five here, so it’s twelve thirty-five there, right?”

  Her voice was amused. “You didn’t know? This is when we do most of our work, sweetheart. The preteen geeks and stock traders are asleep, the phone lines and networks are clear, so things happen faster. Haven’t you ever noticed that languid, sensuous look I have around the eyes in the daytime?”

  “I’ve never seen you during the day,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, we’ll have to go have a picnic beside the freeway, or whatever it is people do.”

  “I called to see if the Miami police had announced anything about who those two guys were.”

  “No,” said Serena. “But they’re still trying. The FBI has been doing tests on the two bodies.”

  “We know,” said Walker. “The company has been talking with them.”

  “Do you know about the blood tests?”

  “No. What about them?”

  “The cops type the blood at a shooting scene right away to figure out whose blood got spattered where. These two both had O positive—not unusual, but inconvenient. So the FBI sent samples to a lab in Wisconsin that does DNA tests. That was in the Miami papers, so I hacked into the e-mail at Donnard Laboratories to see what they were saying to each other. Apparently there are at least two kinds of examinations. One takes a month or two, and tells you more than you wanted to know. But while they’re doing it, they get preliminary results that can at least tell one person’s blood from another’s. They told the FBI that the two men were relatives. Not brothers, though, or father and son. Something more distant, like second cousins.”

  “Can they tell that?”

  “They seemed to think they could, and I don’t know why they’d say so to the FBI if they weren’t sure. I mean, how many customers can a company like that have? And it makes theoretical sense. First cousins would share one-eighth of their genes, so these guys share less than that, but more than two random guys.” She paused. “Are you even listening?”

  “Yes,” said Walker. “I’m trying to figure out what it means.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “It’s not going to be a shock to the FBI that criminals sometimes have relatives who are also criminals. Do you have news for me?”

  “I guess all I’ve got is questions. We’ve figured out that one of those two guys was named James Scully, and he lived at 117 Birch Street, Coulter, New Hampshire.”

  “C-O-L-T-E-R?”

  “With a U. C-O-U-L—”

  “Got it. Right here on the handy New Hampshire tourism Web page. What do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you know.”

  “Population, four hundred and twenty-eight—or twenty-seven, now.” She paused. “No pictures of it. Founded in 1753—no big deal. So was everything else around there. It’s not too far from Keene. It’s about an hour northeast of you, on Route 9. That’s marked as a scenic route, so let me see if they say anything about that. Yes. It’s called the Old Concord Road, because eventually it gets to the state capital. It says ‘eventually’ because it winds around a bit. That’s all I can see. Coulter seems to be just one of a few dozen places just like it.”

  “Okay. We’ll find it.”

  “You stopped using Stillman’s credit card. Where are you calling from?”

  “The Days Inn in Keene. The number is—”

  “That much I just got, from caller ID. What room?”

  “Stillman is 93, and I’m 95.”

  “Cozy. Are you going to Coulter now?”

  “I guess so,” he said.

  “Be careful. Stay close to Stillman and do what he says.” She corrected herself. “I guess staying close to Stillman isn’t being careful. Just remember he’s been doing stupid things a long time, and he’s alive, so pay attention.”

  “He’d be flattered.”

  “I’m going to drop everything else and find out whatever I can about James Scully.”

  “Do you—” But the line was dead.

  “I’d be flattered about what?” asked Stillman. Walker turned and saw that he was taking things out of his suitcase, putting some of them into his leather bag, and others into his pockets.

  “She pointed out that you’re alive.”

  “Smart as a whip, that girl. Presumes very little on your time, too.”

  “That hasn’t escaped my attention,” said Walker glumly. “I’ve talked to her about three times in the past two days, and she’s hung up on me every time.” He added, “The police don’t know the names yet.”

  “Get your stuff. Wear jeans and hiking boots and a jacket. Try to look like a harmless, respectable guy on vacation. I’ll meet you in the car.”

  Five minutes later, Walker found Stillman sitting in the passenger seat of the Explorer studying a map in the light from the open glove compartment. Walker go
t in and drove out West Street until he saw the sign for Route 9 he had remembered. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. “It’s already almost four. She said it’s about an hour away. Is four forty-five A.M. a good time to arrive in Coulter?”

  Stillman said, “It’ll do. We’ll take a look around before they get to look at us.”

  “There are four hundred and twenty-eight people.”

  “I’ll keep count when I see one,” said Stillman. “What else did she tell you?”

  “The FBI apparently hasn’t identified Scully and his friend yet, but they know they were related.”

  “What do you mean, related? How?”

  “Like second cousins, but not as close as first cousins. They had some company do DNA tests. Don’t ask me to explain more than that. She stole it off some e-mail the company was sending to the FBI. Smart as a whip, as you said.”

  Stillman was staring ahead at the road, and his brow was furrowed.

  “What?” asked Walker. “Does that mean something?”

  “It’s odd,” Stillman mused. “Brothers, I can easily take in stride. Somebody comes up with a way of making big money, tells one of them, and asks if there’s somebody else he can trust to bring in on it. The one he thinks of is his brother. Fine for us, because we can find a brother. But this business of second cousins twice removed or something, how do we use it? Most likely they’d have different last names, and nobody but them would even know they were related. That’s no help.”

  “I suppose not,” said Walker. He drove in silence for a while. Stillman’s sharp eyes stared, unblinking, into the dark, until Walker said, “Is there something else wrong?”

  “I was thinking about all of them: Ellen Snyder, Fred Teller, the two people who got killed in their swimming pool, the guy in that swamp in Florida.”

  “What about them?”

  “I was thinking we’re way behind. We still haven’t figured out very much about the way these people are doing this, or what they’ll do next. I’d say that all we can be sure of is that they always move a little faster than we can, and they don’t mind killing people.”

  “We know a little more than that. We know about James Scully.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Stillman. “After all this time, we managed to get through all the intentional confusion just once. This time while we were flailing around, we reached in blind and got our hands on a throat. The fellow’s dead, but all we can do is keep squeezing.”

  28

  They drove along the Old Concord Road, following its meanderings around gentle hills that had been cleared two hundred years ago for sheep that would keep the woolen mills along the Ashuelot River spinning. There were no sheep now. As the mills had died a slow death, the land had been turned, acre by acre, into pasture for dairy cattle, but now another change had occurred. At short intervals, the pastures would be interrupted by stands of second-growth forest, the tall trees blocking the dim purple glow that had begun to tinge the horizon beyond the eastern hills, making it full night again.

  There were few cars on the road, but as they drove on they began to see houses with dim lights glowing from windows near the back, and Walker decided somebody must be getting ready to make breakfast. Once when Walker coasted to a stop at a blinking traffic light, the silence let him hear birds chirping unseen in a big tree to his left.

  A few minutes later Stillman said, “Wait a minute. What was the name of that last town?”

  “South Haverley.”

  Stillman switched on the dome light and studied the map. “That was five or six miles ago, I think. Okay. We should be at Coulter, or almost.”

  “Could I have driven through it without seeing it?”

  “I doubt it,” said Stillman. “Keep going, but slowly.”

  After another mile, there was a crooked stretch of road that traced the bases of two identical hills, and then Walker saw a narrow secondary road that met the highway to the right. On the left was an old, sparse apple orchard with rows of low, gnarled trees that looked black in the dim light. At the shoulder was a small blue sign that said COULTER. He continued on the highway for a mile, but there seemed to be no buildings. “This can’t be right.”

  “Go back,” said Stillman.

  Walker stopped and turned the Explorer around, then drove until he came to the sign. He decided it was safer to park on the secondary road, so he made the turn. A few yards down the road was a sign that said MAIN ST.

  “Well, hell,” said Stillman. “Here we are, right on Main Street.” He glared at his map, then waved it at Walker. “See the dot that says ‘Coulter’? It’s on the right side of the road, but it never occurred to me that the whole town was off the highway. Go ahead. Let’s see what it looks like.”

  Walker drove on slowly. The narrow road pierced the space between the two hills. At a narrow curve where the hills edged up to the road on both sides, the tires passed over a wide metal grate that gave a hollow, ringing noise.

  “Wonder what that was for,” Stillman said.

  “Must be a cow stile,” said Walker. “The cows won’t walk over one of those, so it works like a fence. I guess that must be why it goes all the way across from hill to hill.”

  “Maybe,” said Stillman.

  As soon as it was out of the pass between the hills, the road widened. Curbs had been poured, and the pavement was new, black macadam.

  “Looks like the Department of Public Works is on the job,” said Walker.

  “Right,” said Stillman. “Odd that they didn’t take it the last two hundred yards to the main highway.”

  “Summer isn’t over yet,” said Walker. “And cities here must be like everywhere else. They get people to vote for a bond issue, and by the time anything gets built, the price goes up.”

  “It’s possible,” said Stillman. The road passed into a wooded lot, then curved a bit and there was a sign that said BRIDGE 100 FEET. The road straightened, and before them was an old wooden covered bridge.

  Walker slowed to five miles an hour as they came closer. “That’s something, isn’t it?” As he was about to drive under the roof, Stillman said, “Stop for a minute.”

  He got out of the Explorer, and Walker pulled over to the narrow shoulder and got out too. He found Stillman kneeling on the bridge, looking down between two of the thick planks. Walker bent down too. Between the boards he could see a black stream of water. He said, “You afraid it won’t hold us?”

  “No,” said Stillman. “The roof and sides look really old, but the bed has been replaced. If you look down here, you can see they’ve left the old cross ties in, but they shored it up by putting concrete piles and steel beams between them. You drive to the end of it, and I’ll join you.”

  Walker went back to the Explorer and drove it slowly across the bridge. In the middle, both sides were left open for a space of about four feet, where he could look out and see the course of the stream. He revised his assessment, and promoted it to a river. The current was flowing steadily, but the surface had the untroubled look that deep water had, and it was wider than he had expected. He stopped at the end of the bridge and watched Stillman walking to the open spot. Stillman looked out at the river, then went on.

  When he climbed into the Explorer again, Walker asked, “Why are you so interested in the bridge?”

  “I don’t know what they’re supposed to look like,” Stillman answered. “I’m not about to drive all over New England looking at covered bridges to compare. If the bridge was out, it would be pretty hard to reach the town by road.”

  “That’s probably why they shored up the beams with steel supports.”

  “Right,” said Stillman. “Your tax dollars at work.”

  “Not mine,” Walker said.

  “Don’t be too sure. Any city council that couldn’t get federal money to preserve a landmark that also happened to be the bridge to the main highway wouldn’t be worth a damn.”

  They drove on for another mile, past open fields that Walker judged must be pasture for
cattle that were let out at dawn. There were a couple of old barns, but he didn’t see any lights or any vehicles. “This should be about milking time,” he said.

  Stillman looked at him. “I’ll have my secretary free up an appointment. Have you been reading the farmer’s almanac, or what?”

  “I grew up in Ohio. There’s pasture, and there are barns.” Walker added, “You said—or implied—that I should be mentioning things that I notice. This is when dairy farmers feed and water their cattle, and milk them. When that’s done, they let them out to pasture and clean the barn. But I don’t see any signs of life. No lights, no pickup trucks. If the barn’s that far from the house, you drive there.” He shrugged.

  Stillman said, “That’s a point. I suppose what it means is there are no cows. If you have to get up this early to shovel cow shit, they were probably murdered.”

  Beyond the next row of trees that had been left as a windbreak at the end of the field rose the gray roofs of buildings. The little river they had crossed at the covered bridge had looped ahead of them in its meandering. It ran along the edge of town in a stony bed, and the trees were just above the riverbank. There was a short, modern steel bridge with no sidewalks about fifteen feet above the water, and then they were in town.

  Walker drove slowly along Main Street, turning his head to take in both sides in alternation. The buildings along Main looked old in the same way as the ones in other towns, the biggest faced with red brick and three stories high, with ornate struts holding the overhangs of the eaves. There were others in wood and clapboard that had pilasters flanking the doors and triangular cornices above the windows that gave them the look of the eighteenth century. Stillman said, “One more nice little town. Everything’s squared away and shipshape. Look for Birch Street.”

  The town was too small for traffic signals, but there were stop signs at each corner. Walker would coast to a stop, look at the street sign on a post to his right, stare up and down the cross street, and then move on. The side streets all appeared to be about four blocks long, disappearing at either end into an empty field or a building or a stand of trees. The names in this part of town were the names he remembered from small towns in Ohio: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, then jumping ahead to Grant. More recent heroes came too late, probably after the town had stopped growing.