by Archer Mayor
Joe kept on message. “Until Kinnison saves the day by knocking on your door with a bag full of cash.”
Stuey laughed. “Bingo. Like the answer to a prayer. I mean, who cares about customer relations with somebody you never met? A referral, no less. It was Brandon that would catch hell later. What did I care?”
“Okay,” Joe reiterated. “Again, so we’ve got it for the record: You sold low-grade marijuana to Kinnison without telling her because you needed the money, had nothing better to sell, and had to stay on Manuel Ruiz’s good side. Is that a fair summary of what you just told me?”
“Yeah—like I said.”
“Throughout any of this, did the name Susan Raffner ever come up?”
“Nope. When Buddy was closing the deal with the lady in the car, she said something like how this would get her boss off her back, but that was it. I didn’t know anything about that crazy bitch senator till afterward.”
“All right, let’s get into that. What happened after the sale to Kinnison?”
“Nothing at first, then—outta the blue—I got a call from Buddy saying the bitch was tearin’ his head off and wanted her money back and was gonna call the cops, and stuff like that. It was insane. Call you guys on a drug deal? Are you kidding me? And she’s a state senator? Jesus, I mean, I knew right then why she took weed—no doubt about it. Musta barely scratched the surface. No wonder she wanted high-grade stuff.”
Joe waited for him to finish before gently prodding, “Details, Stuey. One after the other. For example, what time was it?”
“When I got the call from Buddy? I don’t know. Middle of the night. I don’t log in phone calls—not my style.”
“What did he say?”
“What I told you—he had this woman demanding satisfaction.”
“Demanding satisfaction?” Joe asked. “Whose phrase was that? She actually say that?”
“After she took the phone from Buddy and talked to me direct, yeah.”
“Did you ask to speak with her or did Buddy want you two to talk directly?”
“I told him to put her on. I was sick of him being in the middle.”
“What happened then?”
“Me and her talked. I already told you this, for Christ’s sake.”
“What did you say?” Joe prodded him patiently.
“She demanded we meet. I said sure and told her where.”
“Which was?”
“A friend’s house.”
Joe stared at him silently, encouraging Stuey to volunteer the address—a trailer park outside of Rutland.
“Go on.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
Joe was silent for a slow count, watching Stuey’s face like a scientist studying a bug. “Why would you say that, all of a sudden?”
Stuey had become anxious. “’Cause you fuckers’re trying to pin it on me. You think I don’t know? You got zip and you’re pissin’ on my shoes ’cause of what I did to that bitch cop way back, and now it’s payback. Don’t have to be a genius.”
“Tell me about Raffner getting to the trailer park.”
Nichols looked from one to the other of them. “You gonna let him treat me like this?” he asked LaBelle. “I work for you.”
“I want to hear the answer, too,” LaBelle said mildly.
“She drove up, I told her to fuck off, and she left,” he said, virtually in one word.
Joe made an expression as if he’d swallowed something sour. “Right. All of a sudden, I’m gonna be happy with that. Get it over, Stuey. If you’re clear of this, you have nothing to worry about.”
But as soon as the words had left his mouth, he sensed why Nichols was so concerned. Joe recalled Beverly’s findings during Raffner’s autopsy.
“You should know something, Stuey, in case it helps,” he said. “If you roughed her up a bit—maybe pushed her around—we’re not gonna jam you up over it. We’ve got bigger fish on the line than an assault charge.”
That reached home. The fear left Stuey’s eyes. “Okay,” he said.
“Now, tell me what happened after she drove up. First of all, what was she driving and how was she dressed?”
“Hard to tell about the car. Dark sedan, ugly. New. Mighta been one of those half-battery, half-motor things that cost a fortune. Prius?”
“And the clothes?”
“Long, dark coat, sweater, white shirt, pants.”
“Did you see her drive up or did she knock at the door?”
“Oh, I was waitin’ for her. What d’ya think? Having a fucking hissy fit in the middle of the night, waking me up? I was pissed.”
“So you met her in the driveway?”
Stuey opened his mouth to answer and then paused a split second to think before saying, “No. I was standing in the doorway.”
“You made her come to you,” Joe suggested.
“Damn straight.”
“You invite her inside?”
“Fuck no, I did not. We weren’t gonna talk that long.”
“All right. And then?”
“She walked up, poking her finger at me and sayin’, ‘I want my money back or you’re gonna wish you’d never been born,’ or some crap like that, and I told her to go fuck herself. I even said that if she hadn’t been such a douche about it, I mighta been willing to work something out, but that she’d burned that bridge a long time ago.”
“How did she react?”
Stuey was getting upset again, shifting in his chair and motioning excitedly with his hands. “The bitch came at me. I thought she was goin’ to slug me. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, the balls on her. I had a gun on me. I coulda killed her.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and quickly added, “I didn’t, though, and I didn’t show the piece.”
His eyes betrayed that he’d gotten carried away, glancing nervously from one cop to the other. All three of them knew that he wasn’t supposed to be near a gun, given his record.
Joe ignored the issue. “Go on.”
“Well,” Nichols said more carefully, “that’s when it happened—to protect myself—I had to kind of hold her off.”
“You were standing in the doorway of the trailer?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly.
“At the top of the steps?”
“Yeah.”
Joe shook his head. “Don’t mess this up, Stuey. Not now. You can’t hold off anyone from there—you’re like three feet higher than anyone coming at you. What exactly did you do?”
Stuey’s voice fell. “I came off the stairs and I let her have it. She was askin’ for it, man.”
“You hit her?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“I slapped her across the face. That just got her goin’ more, so I hit her a couple of times in the ribs. That put an end to it.”
“She fall?”
“Yeah, she fell. I put some muscle into it. Then I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and yanked her up and sent her flyin’ toward her car. That’s when her coat came off. Guess she hadn’t buttoned it. I got rid of it later, after what happened to her hit the papers.”
He hesitated, looking shamefaced, or perhaps just embarrassed, and said, “Look, I was really angry. She was so over the top. I know she was pissed, and I know we … okay, I screwed her on the dope. But it was like she was on fire, you know? It was a little crazy. She just ticked me off.”
Joe eyed him in silence, recalling what Stuey had done to Sam ten years earlier. Over the decades that Joe had been doing this job, over the thousands of interviews he’d conducted, he’d grown used to witnessing this level of sociopathy—indeed, he’d had to struggle against concluding that it defined the human norm. But the level of disgust that Stuey Nichols stirred in him was a thick, penetrating ooze that was hard to take in stride.
“What did you use to smack her in the back of the head?” he asked, again referring to the autopsy. “That pistol come in handy after all?”
Stuey reacted immediately. “That’s a
crock. I did nuthin like that. Didn’t have to.”
“You didn’t hit her in the head at all?”
“Just the slap.”
Joe acknowledged the precision of the answer, which he thought added to its credibility. “What happened next?” he asked without affect.
“It took the fight right outta her,” Stuey said, a touch of pride returning. “She fell against the hood of her fancy car, gasping and holding herself like some old cow. Served her right. I told her if she wanted to call the Better Business Bureau, that was fine with me. Otherwise, she could screw off.”
“She say anything?” Joe wanted to know.
“Nuthin to say. And I wasn’t interested. Her friend was comin’ outta the car to help her anyhow, so I just went back inside and slammed the door. That was the last I saw her.” He pointed at Joe. “And I’m not shittin’ you. She was fine. A little winded, is all.”
Joe kept his demeanor neutral, despite the jolt he’d received. “Describe the friend.”
“I don’t know. There wasn’t any light. Once I saw they didn’t have a gun and weren’t coming for me, I didn’t care.”
“Man? Woman?”
Nichols looked frustrated. “I don’t know. I told you. Dark clothes, wearing a hat. Moved like a guy—sort of fast and smooth, and tall enough. I couldn’t tell and I didn’t ask.”
“You must’ve made sure they left.”
“Yeah. A few minutes later. I saw ’em go.”
“Who was driving?”
Stuey shrugged. “Dunno.”
“And you went back to your life, no questions asked?”
“Yup.”
“You didn’t get in touch with either Buddy or Brandon Younger to either bitch ’em out or compare notes?”
“Nope. Life goes on. You let it go.”
“Very Zen,” Joe commented.
Nichols smiled. “Yeah. She coulda learned from that.”
For once, Joe couldn’t argue with him. The comment did, however, trigger another question. “Stuey, you said that when Raffner came out of her car, she seemed ‘on fire,’ implying she might’ve been mad about something else, as well. What did you mean?”
“You know how it is when everything goes wrong some days? It was like that—she made me think of me sometimes, when everything I touch turns to crap.”
Joe sympathized in principle, but it wasn’t how he was feeling now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Where’s Willy?” Joe asked, adjusting the car’s heater.
Sammie watched him carefully. “Inside, reading Emma to sleep.”
“He ask why you stepped outside?”
“He doesn’t know. I was in the kitchen washing dishes when you called. I didn’t want to disturb them.” She placed a hand on the door handle. “I can tell him, if we’re going somewhere.”
“No. This won’t take long.” Joe stayed looking out the front window, his hands in his lap. He’d killed the headlights, but the engine was still running. It was quiet and peaceful and comfortable.
Except that Sam wasn’t feeling that way. Her boss had something to get off his chest, and she was painfully aware that it probably involved her field trip to Holyoke.
“Susan Raffner wasn’t alone, the night she met Stuey.”
“Who was with her?” she asked, caught off guard.
“I don’t know. He couldn’t make it out—too dark. But it kicks the investigation wide-open, at long last. And in my gut, I feel we finally got where we’ve been going. The timeline is too tight for anyone else to have killed her.”
For the first time since she’d slid into his passenger seat, he turned and looked at her, his face barely visible in the green glow from the instrument panel before him. “It’s the breakthrough we’ve been looking for, Sam, and you and Willy bagged it.”
She heard the ambiguity in his voice. “I’m sorry we did it the way we did, Joe.”
He went back to staring forward. “Yeah. So am I.”
“It was just so frustrating hearing that HSI had put Stuey off-limits,” she said, instantly regretting the comment.
“Which therefore justified you two running the risk of making Emma an orphan.” It was a statement, not a question.
Sam was silent.
“Willy was responding to pure instinct,” Joe continued. “He’s built that way. He meets a barrier and he kicks it down, almost without thought.”
Again, he faced her. “But you? I think you put pride before responsibility, Sam, and you were careless of everything and everyone in the process. When you and I started out, I thought you’d increasingly find your footing, including when you hooked up with Willy, and that I’d have to worry less and less. But there’s something about Rutland and Stuey and Manuel Ruiz that makes you stupid.”
He paused. She sensed it wasn’t to allow her to respond.
“Ten years ago,” he resumed, “you acted impulsively, went undercover, and made it out intact. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked for the most part, and everybody survived. Ironically, this time wasn’t as bad, and you came up undamaged and with the goods. But I’m twice as disappointed with you. I gotta be honest: If you want to stay being a cop, and sure as hell if you want to stay working with me, you’re going to have to stop pretending that the ends justify the means. They don’t.
“I know this sounds unfair,” he went on, “because it’s you in this car and not the both of you. But I think you know what I mean when I say that Willy’s beyond your kind of salvation. He’s better because of you, but he’ll always be damaged goods. You, on the other hand, can actually affect your own destiny. You have that much intelligence and strength of character. At least, I hope so.”
He stopped speaking, but remained motionless. She was overtaken by emotion, and her head flooded with paradoxical images of Emma, Manny Ruiz as a younger man, Willy, and—always—Joe, her surrogate father.
“I’m really sorry,” she managed to whisper.
“I’m glad for that, but what I want to hear is that this is going to stop,” he said calmly. “One Willy Kunkle is all I can handle. I need to have back the woman who provides him with a centerboard and gives me someone I can trust with my life—like I always have.”
She waited for more, but that was not his style. He was inclined to utter a few words, with the expectation that his listener would absorb their full dose.
To drive the point home, he reached out, briefly laid his hand atop hers, and said, “Go back to your family. I’ll see you in the morning.”
* * *
“Hey,” Willy addressed Joe before the latter had even taken off his coat the next day. “We’re actually going on Stuey’s say-so that Raffner had a phantom passenger? That lying sack of shit killed that woman, sure as hell, and now he’s blowing smoke up your skirt just for fun.”
Joe shook his head, removed the coat, and crossed to the coffeemaker. “Don’t think so. The whole interview is recorded.” He reached into his pocket and tossed a thumb drive to Lester. “Check it out and let me know what you think. It won’t take long and it’s worth every second.”
He and Sam set it up while Joe continued preparing his usual concoction of cream and maple syrup in his coffee.
Thirty minutes later, he’d finished catching up on his e-mails and the statewide dailies from the other VBI offices, and his squad had returned to their respective desks.
Joe looked directly at Willy. “So?”
The response was pure Kunkle—completely at odds with his earlier outburst. “I’m not a hundred percent, but I see what you mean.”
“And what he says he did to Susan matches what Hillstrom found at the autopsy,” Sam added.
“Except for the two sequential blows to the head,” Joe partially agreed. “One of which—to the occiput—preceded death and might have been intended to knock her out. Also, the horizontal marks across her back don’t fit Stuey’s narrative.”
“They would if she was bludgeoned and shoved into the back of the car,” Lester
said. “Like we were thinking.”
Joe put his feet up on his desk. “Which is probably what happened right after. As I was telling Sam earlier, this is the missing piece we’ve been looking for. Let’s talk it through. What d’we got?”
“Both Stuey and Buddy Ames said she was hotter’n hell,” Sammie said. “Madder than she should’ve been over a bad business deal and a few bucks.”
“She coulda been arguing with her passenger,” Willy suggested.
“A passenger who then immediately took advantage of her weakened state,” Joe continued, “further rendered her harmless, and then cobbled together a plan to throw us off the trail.”
“Why not just frame Stuey?” Lester asked.
“Too direct,” Sammie said, “and too easily proven wrong.”
Joe agreed. “Even Stuey could pass a lie detector test. Plus, he told me after the interview that he had a girlfriend in the trailer. I sent someone to talk with her and she backed him up—saw everything through the window. And, no, she couldn’t identify the passenger, either.”
“I agree,” Willy said. “It’s looking like Stuey punching Raffner in the ribs was manna from heaven for our mystery player—an inspiration that set him off on his own plan.”
“An almost unbelievably complicated plan,” Lester commented. “For something made up on the go.”
“How so?” Sammie asked.
“Look at it. The hanging, the mutilation, the ditching of the car in exchange for a pickup truck. Like Willy was saying—way beyond Stuey’s capability. Most people’s, for that matter.”
“And knowing just where to hang the body, too,” Joe said thoughtfully. “We considered that earlier, but we never really chased it down.”
“No one we’ve looked at lives in that area,” Sam said.
“Doesn’t mean they might not’ve been born there,” Willy countered. “Or have a camp nearby.”
“Or that he travels the state a lot,” Joe said. “Maybe with a specific purpose.”
Sam heard something in his voice. “What’re you thinking, boss?”