St. Albans Fire

by Mayor, Archer

  Except, of course, for the blood.

  “Yeah, Sam,” Joe said to her. “Just wondering what the hell’s going on, is all.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said supportively, and quickly moved over to one of the lab technicians, who was putting away his equipment after a full day of trace evidence collection. Joe watched her at work—earnest, high-strung, responsible to a fault, constantly worried she might let something slip, Sammie Martens was as dedicated to her job as a bloodhound in pursuit.

  And for all of that, she was also as vulnerable, insecure, and in need of praise as a child being judged by her elders. He’d often thought that her romantic connection to Willy Kunkle was either the most counterintuitive of lifesaving medicines or a recipe for disaster. Two more volatile personalities he was hard put to imagine, and yet, by now, they’d already been together for several years.

  Joe continued surveying the scene—the designer chair facing the window, the blood down its back and covering the floor behind it. The body had long since been removed for autopsy in nearby Burlington, but it was clear what had happened. Joe could almost see, as if they were visible, the killer’s footsteps as he’d entered the large room from the hallway, approached the chair across a rug-covered, silent floor, and killed John Gregory where he sat.

  Whoever he was, he’d been in here before, Joe ventured. And he’d had a key.

  Sam reapproached, her conversation with the technician concluded. “What do you think?”

  “Not a stranger killing,” Joe said. “You up to speed on what’s been going on?”

  She nodded once, sharply, a tiny reflection of her military past. “Jonathon filled me in on the local background, and I managed to squeeze just enough out of Willy to hear that things didn’t turn out too well in Newark.”

  “You could say that,” Joe admitted ruefully.

  She digested that before asking, “Did anyone besides Clark Wolff and Gregory know they were working a land deal together?”

  “Not that Wolff will admit to or knows about. That was the whole point of the secrecy.”

  “And as far as we can tell,” she continued, “Gregory hasn’t pissed anyone off a whole lot since he’s been here.”

  Joe half smiled. “Well, I’ve clearly got some reservations now. But no, you’re right. So far, we don’t know of any run-ins.”

  Sam was nodding to herself, her brain in overdrive. “On the other hand, you lost track of Famolare what? A day or two ago? Plenty of time for him to drive up here and do the dirty.”

  Joe couldn’t disagree. He’d considered it himself. “For what reason, though?”

  “He might’ve thought Gregory squealed on him.” She pointed at the chair. “That he pointed you in Gino’s direction. That would’ve explained why you were in Newark checking him out.”

  “Could be,” Joe conceded. “Seems a little extreme. Wasn’t the first time the police had sniffed up his pant leg.”

  “Except that we don’t know what kind of relationship the two of them had.”

  Joe pushed his lips out contemplatively and lowered his chin to his chest. “I’m not sure what we know anymore.” He let out a sigh and straightened his back suddenly, eyeing the hallway to the front door. “Guess it’s time to see what forensics has to offer.”

  The office of Vermont’s chief medical examiner was buried on the edge of Burlington in the middle of a concrete maze, otherwise named the Fletcher Allen Health Center. A new facility, hard-won and much appreciated by its occupants, the so-called OCME was a far cry from its prior self, tucked away in the basement, just off from the loading docks. It did have, however, a couple of eccentricities: a row of pleasantly appointed windows, each with a myopic view of a concrete wall, and a set of directions that made finding it at the end of a perplexing tangle of hallways and elevators a challenge of orienteering.

  The health center was undergoing change, as it had been for years. In a seemingly random process, suggestive of the workings of an unsupervised, dinosaur-size, ADD child, the controlling powers of a massive reconstruction project had pulled down walls of the old hospital, erected others that had left heads shaking in wonder, started building garages that no one had budgeted, and otherwise worked to sow chaos where on paper—a long time ago—there’d once been an organized, well-designed, and reasonably priced renewal plan. By the time Joe pulled into the parking lot and began the standard odyssey of finding his destination, the cost overruns were legendary, the accusations of at least incompetence too numerous to count, and the changes of management evocative of the proverbial revolving door.

  Whenever he successfully reached the ME’s, Joe always felt like a small boat that had finally found harbor in bad weather.

  The feeling was enhanced by the personality of the woman in charge, Dr. Beverly Hillstrom, who had been the chief medical examiner for over twenty years. A no-nonsense tall blonde with a frightening intolerance for laziness, incompetence, or any show of disrespect, she was also very responsive to all forms of perseverance, dedication, and courtesy.

  She and Joe were a matched set.

  After changing into some pale green scrubs, Joe was allowed by the administrative assistant to find his way down the gleaming hallway to the autopsy room at the end, he being a regular enough presence here to be considered part of the family.

  There, standing opposite one of her ubiquitous assistants on loan from the medical school, Dr. Hillstrom was gazing down at the prostrate body of the late John Gregory, a scalpel poised in her right hand.

  She looked up at Joe’s appearance.

  “Special Agent Gunther,” she said, smiling in welcome. The two of them, despite a fifteen-year friendship, always referred to each other by title, which struck him as eccentric, although it clearly pleased her.

  He gave her a slightly mocking bow. “Dr. Hillstrom.”

  She in turn inclined her head toward the student. “Maria Carlita from Argentina. This is Special Agent Joseph Gunther from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”

  Joe and the young woman exchanged nods, handshakes at autopsies being occasionally awkward.

  “I would ask to what I owe the pleasure,” Hillstrom continued, “but I have a sneaking suspicion he’s lying right here.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Joe agreed, stepping up to the table and looking down at the cadaver. It had been opened up like an unzipped canvas bag, its contents largely removed, and the top of its head had just been removed like an oversize yarmulke, revealing a bloodstained brain. This process was done by first cutting the scalp from ear to ear over the top of the head—so that later the mortician would have no visible incisions to deal with—and then peeling the remarkably rubber-like face down and under the chin to reveal the cranium.

  “Well,” she said brightly, “your timing couldn’t be better.”

  As well he recognized. The next step in this procedure was to extract the brain and move it to a side table for closer scrutiny, which is why Hillstrom currently had the scalpel in her gloved hand.

  “So far,” she continued, “all we’ve found is a normal, healthy, otherwise untraumatized young male. Of course, we won’t know anything about his blood chemistry for some time, but I saw no indications of any chronic abuse.”

  After a few quick and expert swipes with her knife, which use she made sure Maria Carlita noted, Hillstrom cradled the brain in her cupped hands.

  “What you saw at the scene is all there is, as far as I know,” she said, placing the brain on a scale reminiscent of old-time grocery stores, reminding Joe of how many items in this room might come from local hardware and restaurant supply outlets. “A single blow to the head with a long, pointed object.”

  Hillstrom recorded the brain’s weight before transferring it to a work surface beside the sink, where she proceeded to slice it in sections with a large knife, from the outside in, parallel to the axis of injury. Joe watched, intrigued, his imagination conjuring up the picture of a cake being cut away until the track of a sing
le candle could be revealed from the side.

  Sure enough, after a series of cuts, Hillstrom reached the traumatized area, where they both could appreciate how something long and pointed had penetrated the brain to about three inches.

  “Any guesses on what was used?” Joe asked.

  She cast him a sideward glance. “You know better than that, Agent Gunther. I will tell you it was rounded, tapered, and slightly curved. If that helps.”

  “Curved?”

  She used the tip of the carving knife as a pointer. “Follow the arc of the blow. This is the brain’s front. Impact came from behind and above. Taking note of the distribution of small bone fragments and the bruising, and factoring in the natural swing of an arm coming down as it might while splitting a log, you can see how the lethal object had a distinct hook to it.”

  “He used a hook?” Joe asked.

  This time she straightened. “Someone did, yes. I have no idea of the assailant’s gender. I might be willing to add, under the heading of probabilities only, however, that the assault was from a person using their right hand.”

  “Nifty,” Joe said with a small laugh. “So we’re looking for someone with a hook for a right hand. That should narrow things down.”

  The tiniest of furrows appeared between Hillstrom’s eyebrows.

  “It was a joke,” he explained.

  She shook her head. “No. That was clear. I was considering the possibility. That could be the case—a hooked prosthesis.”

  “I think I’ll stick with a baling hook for the moment,” Joe told her. “I’m keeping pirates for last.”

  Hillstrom didn’t laugh, which came as no surprise. Instead, she crossed over to another work surface, where she’d placed the top of the skull, now hairless, clean, and brutally punctured with a single, slightly splintered hole.

  “The two things that steer me away from a prosthetic,” she persisted, “are the depth of the injury, which is deeper than the standard hook-as-hand replacement, and this.”

  She picked up a small square of something pale, bristly, and vaguely suggestive of a thin slice of hairy cheddar cheese, if slightly more flexible. It, too, had a hole in it.

  “This is the decedent’s scalp at the point of impact,” she explained. “I cut it free and snipped away the surrounding hair to better reveal the entry site.”

  Again, she used a knife as a pointer. “I’ll be sending it along to the lab for analysis, largely because of this tiny crown of debris surrounding the wound. Can you see that?”

  Joe squinted from close up and studied what she was referring to. “You think that was left behind by the shaft of the hook as it slid in?”

  She put the skin flap back on the table, clearly pleased. “Exactly. Very good. That’s the second reason I don’t believe a prosthesis was used. Most people keep their hooks quite sanitized. It’s not unlike having clean hands.”

  Joe laughed. “Right. And, of course, you wouldn’t venture a guess on the nature of the debris.”

  She smiled broadly. “I don’t need to. The lab will tell us that.” She sobered abruptly, as if embarrassed by her own inappropriate humor. “I don’t know how many attacks you’ve seen of this nature,” she said, “but from my experience, you’re looking for someone who knew the victim personally and hated him with a passion.”

  A hint of the smile reappeared in her eyes as she added, “That, of course, is strictly between you and me.”

  Hillstrom’s confidence in the crime lab was well placed. One day later, David Hawke, its director, called Joe from Waterbury. In the tradition of how things worked differently in Vermont from the way they did most other places, Dave and Joe were old friends, given to working outside—or at least parallel to—official channels. Not content with just sending paperwork to each other in the standard formal fashion, they were equally prone to using the phone or at least an e-mail to add a personal touch.

  “Long time, Joe,” Dave said after the two of them had exchanged greetings. “How’re you enjoying being the other half of a politician?”

  It was a pertinent question, of course, and typically asked by a scientist who had to deal with legislators to an inordinate extent, while wishing he could spend all that time behind a microscope.

  It was also a question that cut deeper than Hawke could know. Upon returning from Newark, Joe had only spoken to Gail once on the phone, and that only briefly. She’d been on her way to some evening political function and had sounded distracted and under pressure. He’d kept it short and upbeat and hadn’t called again. For her part, she hadn’t called back at all yet.

  “Not too bad,” he said vaguely. “I mostly just stay out of the way. You get lucky with any of that stuff your boys and girls collected from St. Albans Bay?”

  “Mostly still plowing through it,” Hawke admitted cheerily, knowing that any findings would be unexpectedly early. “But I did get a fix on that little patch of scalp Hillstrom sent me. I thought you’d like to know right off. The residue around the puncture wound is about as Vermont as any I’ve dealt with—number one on our list of known substances, in fact.”

  “All right,” Joe played along, “I’ll bite.”

  “There are technical terms,” Hawke went on, “but I’ll try to keep it simple. It’s cow shit.”

  Joe didn’t respond. He was too busy trying to fit the information into all the other puzzle pieces he had floating around inside his head.

  “Good news or bad?” Hawke wanted to know. “If it helps, there were also traces of hay.”

  “It definitely helps, Dave,” Joe finally said. “I’m not sure how yet, but it definitely helps.”

  Chapter 22

  GINO FAMOLARE PULLED OUT OF TRAFFIC into a convenient parking space directly across the street from his destination. He sat there for a moment, his eyes still fixed forward, his hands on the wheel.

  He blinked once, slowly, and let out a sigh as if he’d been in suspended animation for the last several hours. Which he might have been, for all he knew. He was so numb—had been for so long, it seemed—that he had no idea when he’d last eaten, changed clothes, or even used the bathroom.

  He focused on releasing the steering wheel, watching his hands drop to his lap as if they belonged to someone else. The radio was on, he noticed, but not tuned to any station. Whatever had been playing back in Newark had long since been left behind. Now there was only static, which, given his mood, was about right.

  He switched off the ignition and sat there listening to the engine ticking.

  He missed her so badly, it was a physical pain in his chest, like the building of a heart attack. But worse. Had to be worse. He’d heard heart attacks described as crushing or radiating. But this was less a pain and more like a combination of every childhood nightmare, every unrequited longing, every shock of betrayal. He didn’t know how to manage it, what to do with it, how to channel it.

  But he was working on that last part. If sorrow and loss could be softened by action, he knew the right action to apply. That was one thing he had no doubts about.

  He saw a girl walking down the opposite sidewalk, heading his way. She was slim, dressed in jeans and a short jacket. The pants were hip-huggers, and she was wearing a crop-top sweater which revealed her flat stomach. She looked nothing like Peggy except in the broadest possible way, but she was young and athletic and attractive and clearly full of the sort of confidence that beauty bestows upon a woman, even when she herself may not know enough to trust it.

  Peggy, of course, had been luminescent. This girl, now drawing near and about to pass his line of vision, was merely eye-catching by comparison. She didn’t have Peggy’s inviting aura of innocence and experience combined, that made her look both like a child and the picture of every man’s sexual fantasy come suddenly and tangibly alive.

  Gino remembered when he’d first met her. At a party. His cousin’s birthday. There’d been a crush of people. He hadn’t been in a mood to go out, but life at home had become something to avoid. So he�
�d stood in a corner, generally unengaged, nursing a beer.

  He’d seen her enter from across the room, a beauty so remarkable she seemed to carry her own light within her. He watched her, as he imagined most men did, as an unobtainable object of desire, suitable only for dreams, and was already relegating her to a mental picture gallery when she veered toward him in order to share his piece of wall. It turned out that she, too, didn’t like crowds, didn’t want to be here, but wanted to be back home even less.

  From then on, whatever Gino imagined about them came true, and almost as quickly. As in a movie come to life, his opening lines drew laughter and pleasure. In what seemed moments, she was touching the back of his hand while she talked, or resting her fingers on his arm. He opened up, unused to such receptiveness, shared more than usual, finally admitting to things he almost dared her to reject—he was married, had two kids he disliked, drove a truck, worked on the docks. Nothing dampened her warmth, her clear desire to stay in his company. Their leaving the house together felt seamless and natural, their ready agreement to retire to a nearby motel, their natural, easy, incredibly satisfying choreography in bed. Afterward, sheened with sweat, still breathing hard, he looked down into her face, her damp hair stuck to her forehead, and fully expected to see her pleasure fading away. A one-night stand. A good roll in the hay. Ships passing in the night. All the rest.

  Instead, he found her eyes bright, happy, hopeful, and pleased, taking him in as if he were the promise of the future incarnate. She reached up and took his face in her hands and kissed him with such passion and relief that he knew then and there that he’d been blessed. They made love three times that night, something he hadn’t attempted in years, and parted, finally and reluctantly, as if neither one might survive the separation, however brief.

  And Gino made sure their times apart were only brief. He became a man obsessed, calculating his every move around when they could next get together. He bought her gifts, clothes, exotic underwear, a town house. They made love in its every room, from the basement to the attic; they tried positions they’d never tried with anyone else; they spent countless hours in bed, simply wrapped up in each other, as if letting go would risk drowning in the separate sorrows they never shared, but both knew existed.