Death Benefits: A Novel

by Thomas Perry

  People passed by or went into the twenty-five or thirty buildings on Main, and Walker could see that they had little curiosity about a pair of tourists. But when they went into a coffee shop, the elderly man who waited on them said, “You haven’t been in before, have you?” He was staring at Walker.

  “No,” said Stillman. He pointed to his Danish pastry. “If this is any good, you might see more of us.”

  The old man looked at Walker. “You,” he said.

  Walker froze.

  “You look a lot like the Ellisons. I’ll bet you’re here to visit.”

  “Do I?” said Walker. “No relation that I know of. We’re just here exploring.”

  Stillman seemed eager to keep the old man talking. “How about you? Have you lived in town long?”

  “Long? I was born here.”

  “Really,” said Stillman. “That reminds me. I was going to ask somebody, so I’ll ask you. I didn’t notice a hospital.”

  The old man shook his head. “Never had one. In the old days, the doctor would come out to your house. I was born a couple of blocks from here. No more, though. Now, if your wife is due, you drive her to Keene.”

  “The world’s a different place,” said Stillman regretfully.

  “You can miss those days if you want,” said the old man. “I sure don’t. I got a pacemaker.” He pointed to his chest. He noticed that a young man and woman had stood up from their table and were bringing their bill to the counter. He stepped around the other side to meet them.

  Stillman spent the next few minutes eating his pastry and looking around him. Walker could tell he was trying to make eye contact with the people nearby. There were three well-dressed women in their thirties who looked like lawyers, a pair of boys in their late teens who were drinking some kind of whipped fruit concoction, and a pair of men about Stillman’s age who seemed to be sitting together to share a newspaper. Stillman seemed to have no luck, so he stood up and gave the old man his bill and some money.

  As he pocketed his change, he said, “I was wondering. The place a couple of blocks over—New Mill Systems. What do they do there?”

  “Do?” The old man looked confused, then a little embarrassed. “Oh, some high-tech stuff. It’s way beyond me. I can’t program my VCR.” His eyes seemed to stray from Stillman’s face and dart over his shoulder.

  When Walker turned, he couldn’t pick out anyone who was paying attention. The three women were leaning forward talking and laughing, the two middle-aged men were still engrossed in their newspaper, and the boys were just standing up to come toward the counter too. Maybe that had been what had distracted the old man, Walker decided. Teenaged boys were always closely watched.

  He followed Stillman into a drugstore and watched him go up the aisles picking out a small bottle of sunscreen and a pack of chewing gum. The only employee in the store was a man in a white coat who was at least as old as the man in the coffee shop, sweeping the floor. He put aside his broom, went behind the counter, and took Stillman’s money.

  Stillman smiled and said, “Is this the only drugstore in town?”

  “Yes,” said the man. “Got a big drug habit?”

  “No,” said Stillman happily. “I was looking for those Dr. Scholl’s pads for inside your shoes, and I didn’t see any.”

  The man pointed, his hand shaking a little. “Over there. That aisle.”

  Stillman followed his gesture, then came back with a flat package that he tossed on the counter. “Thanks,” he said. Then he added, “I wonder if you could give me directions to New Mill Systems?”

  The man’s brow furrowed a little and he looked up in the air for a second, as though he were trying to place the name. Then he said, “That way up Main, turn left at Grant, and you’ll already be there. You a salesman or something?”

  “Sore feet gave me away, huh?” said Stillman. “Maybe you can help me. What is it they make?”

  The old man shook his head. “Something to do with computers. I hear it’s mostly government contracts, though, so they may not even let you in.” He went back to his broom.

  Later, at the end of a side street, they found another large, modern building; this one had COULTER SCHOOL emblazoned on a sign. It was summer, so Walker wasn’t surprised to see that the building was deserted and the windows dark. He could see that it must have been built to accommodate all of the town’s children. One side of the building had a small playground with swing sets and monkey bars and slides, but at the other end there were full-scale athletic fields.

  There seemed to be only one real restaurant in town. It was in a big turn-of-the-century brick building across the bridge on the other side of the river, and the sign on the door said simply FINE DINING. There were about forty tables, twenty of them set with crisp white linen, and three waiters who hurried back and forth carrying trays and folding stands to set them on.

  Walker studied the old photographs on the wall above their table. There were men in high collars, pinch-shouldered, rumpled suits, and derby hats standing beside a horse and wagon, a gathering of women in full skirts, wasp-waisted and wearing feathered hats, in some garden. There was one that had men standing in the street outside a building he had seen on Main that still bore the sign BANK OF COULTER, but the street in the picture was cobblestones. There was another picture that seemed to be the building they were in.

  Stillman asked their waiter, “What was this building originally—a mill?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered the waiter. “People call it the Old Mill. But that was a hundred years ago.”

  “That explains that place we saw before. New Mill Systems. You happen to know what they sell?”

  “Electronics. Something to do with communications.”

  When they had finished their lunch, they walked back along the river to the other side of Main, and made their way up the side streets there. As they reached Maple Street, Stillman looked at his watch. “It’s after two-thirty. Let’s get back to Keene. We can stop at Foley’s and get your new glasses, then go to the hotel and get some sleep. When I wake up, I’ll call you.”

  30

  Walker awoke in the dark, already looking at the telephone. He wondered if that was what had awakened him, but he waited for a few seconds and it didn’t ring. He looked at the digital clock beside the bed. It was already ten-fifteen.

  He considered calling Stillman, but he remembered that Stillman had definitely said he would do the calling. He went to his suitcase, opened it, and laid out fresh clothes, then went into the bathroom for a shower. He left the door open so he could hear the telephone.

  He dressed quickly, then left the room and counted the doors as he walked down the hall to the exit. When he reached the parking lot, he counted the windows from the end of the building to find Stillman’s room. The light was on.

  He went inside and knocked on Stillman’s door. He heard Stillman say, “Just a minute,” and the door swung open. Stillman walked back to his desk and picked up the phone that had been lying there off the hook. “It’s just Walker,” he said into it. “He and I have got to talk. I’ll call again when I can.” He hung up and turned his attention to Walker.

  “I thought you were going to sleep,” said Walker.

  “I did. When you get to a certain age, you don’t need as much. When was the last time you talked to Serena?”

  “Just before we went to Coulter. It was . . . what? Three-thirty A.M.”

  “Nothing since then?”

  “No. Why? Is something wrong?”

  “She left. I just talked to Gochay, and he said she quit. She picked up her belongings and walked out on him.”

  Walker said, “Just like that? She didn’t say anything like that to me.” He felt a sudden emptiness, a sense of loss so deep it surprised him. He had never gotten an address and telephone number for her except Gochay’s. She had never offered one.

  Stillman intruded on his thoughts, as though he could read them. “She’s perfectly capable of finding you anytime she wants.” H
e lifted the telephone again and punched in a number, then punched two more digits, listened in silence for a few seconds, then hung up. “Uh-uh.”

  “What was that?”

  “My bug in Jim Scully’s house. It’s plugged into the phone jack, and whatever it hears is recorded on a little sound-actuated recorder. It doesn’t ring, just plays back what it’s heard. It hasn’t heard anything. Forget Serena for a minute. We’ve got to figure out how to get from Scully to the other dead guy—this cousin of his.”

  Walker sighed and forced himself to think. “You made some acquaintances—the waiter, the druggist, the old guy in the coffee shop. In a town that size, I’m sure one of them must have known Scully.”

  “It takes time to get people to talk. We’re liable to be asking about him an hour before or after the FBI announces he’s been killed by two guys who can only be us.”

  “The Coulter police, then?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. They probably know what we need to know. Guys who grow up to carry guns for a living usually get noticed long before they turn pro. Say we take the direct approach. We go to the station, identify ourselves, and tell them what we want—a short list of Scully’s friends and relatives. There’s no rational reason for the police to give it to us. If they do, what’s our next move? We can’t go to their houses, break in, and look around. In fact, if the police know Scully’s house has been broken into, we’d be confessing to that.”

  Walker was frowning as he stared at the wall.

  “What is it?” asked Stillman.

  “That town. I guess I wasn’t sleeping very deeply, because when I woke up, I was already running the statistics.”

  “The statistics?”

  “Well, think about it. Coulter has four hundred and twenty-eight people in it. From looking at it, I’d say there are about a hundred and sixty-five houses: eleven purely residential streets with around fifteen houses each. That’s roughly two point six people per dwelling. The average family in the country has two point six four people, so that works out about right. About a third are kids under eighteen, so you figure a hundred and forty-three of those, and two hundred eighty-five adults.”

  “The school looks about right for that. Maybe a bit on the roomy side,” said Stillman. “But there might be farm kids bused in.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay,” said Walker. “Even without them. There’s obviously money in town for public works, so you’d expect it to be better than minimum. But there are sixteen cars in the lot of the police station.”

  “Seemed a little high, didn’t it? I’ve been wondering about that too.”

  “It was two-thirty in the afternoon when I looked for the last time. You have to figure some of the cars were out, don’t you? Looking for speeders, or something?”

  “There were,” said Stillman. “We saw two out in the morning.”

  “That’s right. Let’s be conservative and say we saw all the police cars in town. Eighteen. Suppose only half are ever manned, so each of the three shifts has nine cops. If there’s no chief, dispatcher, watch officer, or anybody but those nine cops, you still come up with twenty-seven cops. That would mean roughly one in ten adults in Coulter is a police officer.”

  “It’s a lot of cops,” Stillman mused. “I can see we’re lucky we didn’t get our asses tossed in jail for burglary. What do you think is going on?”

  “I don’t know,” said Walker. “The place seems to have a lot of money. Maybe they’re using it to keep people employed.”

  “That’s a possibility,” said Stillman. “At least they’re not suspects. You know, maybe in a town this size that’s the way to narrow down the field. If a person has a job, he’s not running around Florida killing people. Where else do people work?”

  “How about New Mill Systems?”

  “How many people do you figure work there?” asked Stillman.

  “We saw at least thirty cars in the lot. Since there’s nobody in town who doesn’t live within easy walking distance of the place in good summer weather, figure that’s half the work force. That would be at least sixty people. If you figure two hundred and eighty-five adults, you’ve got about a hundred and forty-five women and a hundred and forty men. Sixty percent of all women over eighteen work outside their homes. That’s . . . what? Eighty-seven women. Of all men over eighteen, seventy-five percent are employed outside. That’s a hundred and five. The work force is a hundred and ninety-two. Twenty-seven are cops. That leaves a hundred and sixty-five. If sixty of them work for New Mill Systems, that’s one in every three working adults. If another third live by selling goods and services to the company and its employees, it’s two-thirds of the economy.”

  “Interesting,” said Stillman. “Nobody seems to know what they do in that building. One says computers, one says communications, and one says high tech, which means nothing.”

  “It could be all three,” Walker said. “It doesn’t matter. If we want to use it to eliminate people who work there, we need to know who they are.”

  “I know one way that might do it,” said Stillman. “Another burglary.”

  “On what?”

  “The pharmacy. The old guy said it was the only drugstore in town. That makes it the only place you can fill a prescription. There are federal record-keeping requirements. Paper, not computers. Over the years, just about everybody needs a prescription once.”

  “So our guy would be in the records. How do we know which he is?”

  “Same way: the process of elimination. Some are women. The ones who work for New Mill Systems will all have the same health insurance. The ones who work for the city will have another. Some would be paid by Medicare, and that would mean they’re over sixty-five.” Stillman paused. “There may be other things that I haven’t thought of yet that will eliminate others. I’ll let you think of those.”

  Walker glared at Stillman for a moment. “It’s a lousy idea. Let’s go do it.”

  Stillman immediately began packing his lock picks and video camera and flashlights into his leather bag. “Get that jacket I bought you in Nashua, the navy blue one. And put on a different shirt. Green would be good. And dark shoes. I’ll meet you in the car.”

  When they were on the road again, Stillman stopped sorting his equipment. “You didn’t happen to look closely at the door locks in that place, did you?”

  “I don’t remember very clearly,” said Walker. “The ones on the front door were old brass. There was a long handle with a thumb latch.” He squinted. “I think there was a dead bolt above it.”

  “What did the keyhole look like—the regular kind, or a weird shape, like a circle?”

  “Regular, I think,” Walker answered. “Why this uncharacteristic concern?”

  “I told you about security systems,” said Stillman. “Some are simple and easy.”

  “I take it this won’t be one of them.”

  “I doubt it. Even in small towns, the drugstores are full of drugs. In some circles, money is a second choice. Having cash just puts a middle man between them and what they really want. We might run into some features we can’t easily defeat.”

  “If we can’t get in, what are we doing?”

  “Oh, we can get in,” said Stillman. “The only thing that’s at issue is how we get out.”

  When they reached the COULTER sign, Walker made the turn. He was getting comfortable with the road now, and soon they were in the open between the two fields. Stillman said, “Slow down and watch this side.”

  “For what?”

  “There’s a dirt road up here. There . . . stop.”

  Walker stopped, and Stillman got out. He lifted a section of fence rail that served as a gate and walked with it, then waved Walker in. Walker drove off the road and found himself on a dirt surface. Stillman closed the gate and got in again.

  “Turn off your lights.”

  Walker obeyed. He looked at Stillman, who was watching him impatiently. “It’s a dirt road,” said Stillman. “Follow it.”

  W
alker sighed. “I think the term ‘dirt’ is accurate. I’d hardly call this a road.” He cautiously moved forward.

  “Keep going. I have a theory I want to check.”

  “Does your theory tow stuck cars?”

  “Just do it.”

  Walker bumped along over the rutted, uneven ground, and then the ride became smoother. The road was so narrow that at times he could tell both front tires were passing over grass at once.

  “See the barn ahead?” asked Stillman.

  “Yeah.” In the dark field, it was a high rectangle of deeper darkness. Walker drove on slowly. He found that he could see much better than he had expected, and soon he was approaching the black shadow of the barn.

  “I got this idea when you said there were no cows,” said Stillman. “Stop.” He got out and ran ahead. In a few seconds, Walker saw his flashlight go on, then sweep the floor of the barn, then go out. When he returned, he said, “It’s empty. Pull inside, and turn around so you’re facing out. Then kill the engine.”

  When Walker had done it, he joined Stillman. They began to walk across the field. After a few minutes, Stillman spoke again. “Here’s how we do it: we go up the back of Main Street. There’s a passage. I don’t know if it counts as an alley, because it’s empty ground and unpaved. But it runs behind the row of businesses. Anyway, we walk it without going up Main.”

  “Okay,” said Walker.

  “When we get to the drugstore, we take a few minutes to see what we’re up against. If we can’t get in, we’ll leave. If we do get in, we’ll do just what we did before. We’ll videotape the records.”