The Company She Kept

by Archer Mayor

  “Sure,” Sam said, barely following.

  But Chris needed no prompting, informed or otherwise. “If you and Willy raid a dope-dealing operation in the Northeast Kingdom, say, you might expect to find all local product. But test what you grabbed for its stable isotopes, and voilà,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Turns out some of it’s from California or Mexico or Washington State. That would probably be an eye-opener, no? Is that what you’re talking about?”

  Sam gave her a rueful smile. “Exactly why I’m here, Christine.”

  Her friend stared at her, slightly embarrassed. “Of course you are. Okay—a compromise: If you get the proper blessing or Hail Mary or whatever from your prosecutor—SA, AG, whoever’s on this case—I’ll send a sample to my brother and ask him to give it top priority. Turnaround time should be a few days, tops, and I’ll ask him to waive the cost as a family favor. Would that do the trick?”

  As a response, Sam leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

  Chris patted her back. “Cool,” she said. “And once we get that data, we can run it by the DEA’s index of drug profiles, which is growing weekly, and see if we get a match—that should be virtually instantaneous. Drug dealing is becoming so organized by the crooks that there’s an impressive amount of product consistency—at least compared to the old days. It’ll end up being like quality control in the legal pharmaceutical market. Who knew?”

  “Who, indeed?” Sam agreed.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Sammie hit the Off button to her smartphone and let her hands drop to her lap. She’d pulled off the road in Middlesex—almost to the interstate that would return her to Brattleboro—in order to get authorization for Chris Hartley to send her samples out for testing.

  It felt odd to be delving back into illegal drugs. Sam hadn’t ventured there since she’d gone undercover to shut down what she’d thought was a major drug operation in the making.

  It hadn’t been, as events had later proven. She’d been an unwitting pawn in a turf war originating in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and acted out in Rutland, Vermont. She’d feared that she’d stumbled upon an assault by drug traffickers on the little-exploited Vermont market, and had seized on an opportunity to infiltrate one of the warring parties, posing as a local dealer.

  But it had been a disaster from the beginning. She hadn’t cleared her actions with Joe or anyone else, forcing him to rally a support operation too quickly and with too little information. She’d also completely misinterpreted the true intentions of her supposed partners and had almost gotten herself killed not once, but twice. More personally—and never revealed to a single soul—she’d become too close to her partner-in-crime, a smart and urbane man named Manuel Ruiz, and had almost gone to bed with him.

  It had all collapsed on her with devastating effect, keeping her on the job, but reducing her self-esteem to levels she hadn’t experienced since childhood. The survivor of a home wracked by alcoholism and abuse, Sam had grown up fearful, angry, and doubtful of her potential. Her almost merciless journey through her teens, a brief career in the military, and then her early years as an overachieving cop, resented by many of her male colleagues, had almost been destroyed by what she’d interpreted as a public humiliation.

  Joe, as usual, had smoothed things over and salvaged the good from the rubble of her ambition. Furthermore—and most crucially—neither he nor any of her colleagues had ever expressed anything but support thereafter, allowing her time and space to heal in private.

  By the same token, she’d steered clear of drug cases from then on, and—she’d noted ruefully—Joe had never assigned her to one. He was a supportive, caring, and considerate leader. He was also no idiot, as this delicate reprimand had proven—although, in his defense, she’d never asked him if her interpretation was accurate, or a figment of her paranoia.

  Life had therefore carried on. The VBI—then virtually an experiment—had earned its keep. She and Willy, who’d just started seeing each other romantically, had moved in together and formed a family with Emma. Manny Ruiz—who’d escaped capture—had slipped from the forefront of her memory, as had his embarrassing effect on her emotions.

  The corrosive irony of all this—and perhaps one more reason it had struck her so hard—was that she’d rarely enjoyed working a case more than she had that one, perhaps even because of how intimate she’d become with Ruiz. The adrenaline of flirting with exposure while constantly adapting to changing events had been intoxicating, and had left her as euphoric as she imagined many combat vets were after surviving a close encounter. As a result, a persistent, oddly empty sensation had haunted her ever after, and continued to tug at her imagination. Equating her attraction to undercover drug work with the appetite that rules an addict was an overstatement, but with resonance, nevertheless.

  Of course, there was also the argument that her longing was based on the need for personal redemption. That possibility hadn’t escaped her, either.

  Ever since Willy had first broached the topic of drugs, following his meditation on Raffner’s sensual needs, Sammie had wondered if this was what she’d subconsciously hungered for—a chance to succeed where she’d once stumbled, achieve absolution, and even put to rest her dormant remorse over having almost cheated on Willy.

  The cell phone in her hand disturbed her reverie. She was surprised to see Chris Hartley’s name appear on its screen.

  “Hi. You forget something?”

  “Just the opposite. I wandered down the hall to consult with my latent print colleagues, and they actually had the results.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Crazy, right? Anyhow, there were two sets of identifiable prints on the larger of the two bags of marijuana—one belonging to Susan, no surprise there—and one to someone named Margaret Kinnison. That one may be a surprise, huh?”

  “Why was she on file?”

  “Pure quirk,” came the answer. “Her prints were collected years ago for exclusion only—an embezzlement case where all the employees were printed in order to find the on-staff thief. But the prints were never thrown out, as they should’ve been. Dumb luck, huh? Gotta love it. Of course, you know you can only use them for investigative purposes—they’re inadmissible as evidence. But it shouldn’t be too tough to get a separate set on your own if and when you meet her. Anyhow, I thought it was such a fluke, I couldn’t resist telling you ASAP.”

  “Totally.” Sam matched her enthusiasm, feeling the very rush of adrenaline she’d been contemplating earlier. “You are too much. Thanks, Chris. I owe you big time.”

  “I’ve always wanted to hear that one.” Chris laughed before hanging up.

  Sammie glanced at her watch and began heading for Montpelier as she auto-dialed her phone.

  “How’s the road trip goin’?” Lester asked as a greeting.

  “Not bad. Can you take a look at that list kicking around the office? The one with the names we’ve associated with Raffner so far?”

  There was a pause before he announced, “Got it. Who do you need?”

  “Margaret Kinnison.”

  “Yup. She’s here.”

  “Any context given?”

  “Just that she works at the State House, is listed as a staffer in the Senate secretary’s office, and therefore must’ve worked with Raffner.”

  “Outstanding. Thanks.”

  “She a lead?”

  Sam laughed dismissively. “Right up there with looking for Jimmy Hoffa’s killer.”

  She hung up before he could press her further, her hopes overriding a nagging undertow of guilt.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Vermont State House is a curious combination of elegance—complete with gold dome and classical columns—and lopsided quaintness, because of its small size and oddly imbalanced proportions. But it is pleasingly placed before a broad, snow-covered slope, flanked by the appropriate cannon and statuary, and is a perpetual favorite among camera-toting tourists.

  Unless they want to park. On
that score—at least while the legislature is in session—Sam found the capital to be the single most irritating place in the state. As she always did when in town, therefore, she abandoned her car at the first illegal spot that she happened upon, threw her credentials onto the dash, and walked to the capitol building.

  There, just inside the heavy front doors, she introduced herself at the sergeant-at-arms’s office, and asked where she might find Margaret Kinnison.

  In terms of efficiency and protocol combined, Sammie knew that she shouldn’t be here. Parker and Perry included this town in their territory, after all, and were already fully engaged in the investigation. Vermont cops had jurisdiction wherever they went within the state, and certainly any VBI agent was free to act wherever he or she chose. But there were rules of etiquette, which Sam had already bruised by traveling to see Chris Hartley. Coming here, to meet someone with whom she had no personal connection whatsoever, was a more flagrant affront—and one about which she couldn’t have cared less. It was becoming increasingly clear that the influence she and Willy had on each other was happily cross-germinating—good news for him, more complicated to define for her.

  She ended up on the first floor, amid a tangle of offices and cramped hearing rooms, fed by an inexhaustible flow of people moving at high speed and either talking to each other or muttering on cell phones. Sam felt like a teenager on her first day in high school, scrutinizing door numbers and labels to find out where she needed to be—hoping not to be run over. The capitol is reflective of the sobriquet “the people’s house” in quite concrete terms—for the most part, its elected residents don’t have offices. They are therefore readily available to their constituents, unless they’re hiding off campus in their cars or at a bar. Everyone tends to mill about, as a result, either on a mission or hoping to find a quiet corner to do some work. It makes the efforts of the shared secretarial and support staff that much more challenging.

  At last, Sam found herself in the doorway of a small subcommittee room, overfilled with a long table and a cordon of empty chairs. It was populated solely by a short, sturdy, nervous-looking woman, standing at the table’s head and gathering together a thick sheaf of loose papers left over from a just-concluded meeting.

  She looked up as Sammie entered. “May I help you?”

  Sam showed the badge on her belt by opening her coat. “Margaret Kinnison?”

  The woman’s expression didn’t change, but her hands froze in mid-motion. “Yes.”

  “You available to answer a few questions?”

  “What about?”

  Sam kept her voice at a near monotone—neither threatening nor comforting. “A couple of things, starting with Susan Raffner’s murder.”

  Kinnison straightened. “Me? What would I know about that?”

  Sam barely smiled. “My very point.”

  In the brief silence following her one-liner, Sam watched the other woman lower her eyes, swallow hard, fiddle with her papers without seeing them, and then say, “I don’t know anything.”

  Sam stepped farther into the room and shut the door behind her, severing the hubbub outside as if with a guillotine. She asked, “We gonna be left alone here for a few minutes?”

  Kinnison checked her watch. “We should be.”

  Sam gestured with her chin toward the chair at Kinnison’s waist. “Sit.”

  She did so as Sam removed a small recorder from her pocket, laid it on the large table, and removed her coat. “You got a problem with me recording this?”

  Kinnison was sitting down awkwardly, bumping her knee against the table’s skirt board. “No, no. That’s okay.”

  Sam sat nearby. “For the record,” she intoned, “I’m Special Agent Samantha Martens of the VBI, and I’m with”—she looked directly at her subject—“would you state your name for the record?”

  “Margaret Kinnison.”

  “What is your date of birth?”

  Kinnison recited it, followed by Sam’s informing the recorder of the day’s time and date, and their present location.

  “What do you do at the State House, Ms. Kinnison?” she then inquired.

  “I’m a senate liaison. Kind of a glorified secretary, really,” Kinnison threw in with a sad smile. “I and people like me keep the paperwork moving in the senate and between the senators and others in this building.”

  “Did you know Susan Raffner?”

  “Sure. I know all the senators.”

  “Some better than others?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean. I work more for some than for others. A few of them are well enough organized that they don’t need much help.”

  “And Raffner?”

  Again the nervous half smile. “She was one of the needy ones. Very nice woman, and supersmart. Not so good keeping everything in order.”

  “So you spent a lot of time with her.”

  It wasn’t a question. “I guess I did.”

  “Outside the building, too?”

  “We go over to the Pavilion next door sometimes, if we have to coordinate something with the governor’s office.”

  “How ’bout beyond there, maybe for personal errands?”

  Kinnison repeated the eye shifting and paper shuffling. “I guess,” she replied in a lower voice. “Maybe.”

  “What for?”

  “You know, normal stuff. Get a sandwich for her.”

  “Did you ever see her socially?”

  That response immediately invoked a rare flash of direct eye contact, quickly broken off. “Oh, no.”

  “She draw the line there?”

  “Not in so many words, but she was nice to us, generally.”

  “You’re suggesting a have/have-nots division.”

  “I guess,” she said again.

  “How did that feel?”

  “Okay. They’re the bosses. We just work here.”

  “Did you have contact with her only during office hours?”

  “No.”

  “So how did that work?” Sam pressed her. “She call you?”

  “She gave me a pager.”

  Sam scowled. “She do that with the other staffers?”

  “No.”

  “How did you rate the extra attention?”

  “I … don’t know.”

  Sam placed both forearms on the table. “What did she have on you, Margaret?”

  Kinnison remained tucked in, with only the crown of her head showing. “I don’t know why she was killed.”

  “I didn’t ask you that. Why did you say that?”

  Long pause. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you have your suspicions, Margaret. She was a powerful, influential woman. She pissed off a lot of people. Did she piss you off, too?”

  Surprising to Sam, Kinnison did not look up. “No.”

  “Then what?”

  No response. Sam reviewed what she’d just heard, comparing it to what she knew of Susan Raffner.

  “She scare you?” she asked.

  The head nodded wordlessly.

  “That’s ‘yes’?”

  “Yes.” It was barely a whisper.

  “To the point where you thought you might lose your job if you didn’t cooperate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that because of something she said to you?”

  “No.”

  Sam fought to control her frustration. This woman was making her think of a small animal, responding to threats real and imagined without discrimination.

  “Margaret, I think I’m getting it,” she said in a gentler voice. “Susan Raffner was like a force of nature, expecting a response whenever she made a suggestion. Did you find that both attractive and maybe a little scary?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it made you feel important and invisible at the same time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did that make you volunteer more than you might have for somebody else?”

  This time, it was just the head nod again, which Sammie didn’t ask to be verb
alized. She’d abandoned any notion of a clean and forensic interview by now, opting instead for leading questions only. She was impatient enough that she no longer cared how well this recording would hold up to legal scrutiny—and by contrast, sure enough from her subject’s compliance that she’d get what she was after.

  “Let’s focus on what she asked you to do when you were off the clock, Margaret,” she said. “You said you’d go out for food sometimes.”

  “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  “Groceries. Dry cleaning.”

  “Buy some drugs.”

  The muted noise from the hallway slowly took over the long silence in the room. Sam became aware that Kinnison was crying, her tears dropping on the backs of her clutched hands.

  “Tell me, Margaret.”

  Nothing.

  “We have your fingerprints on a bag of marijuana.”

  Still, silence.

  Sam changed directions slightly. “What do people call you? Is it Margaret?”

  “Maggie.”

  Sam rose, her chair screeching on the floor. She leaned across the space separating them, her hands flat on the table. “Maggie, if you were worried you might lose your job because of pissing off Susan Raffner, I guarantee you a lot worse if you don’t start talking. Tell me how your prints got on that bag.”

  At last, Kinnison looked up, her cheeks damp. “She said her regular supplier had been arrested, and that she needed a refill.”

  “How did she know to ask you?”

  “She got me talking one day, about when I was younger and a little out of control. She could be really persuasive and nice when she wanted to be, and I was trying to make a good impression. I told her I’d done some drugs but had managed not to get busted. It wasn’t then, but maybe a few weeks later, she brought it back up, and told me how I could help her out. Not ‘if,’ but ‘how.’ That was the way she put it. I didn’t feel like I had much choice.”

  “Plus,” Sammie suggested, “you were still doing drugs, even if only now and then.”