St. Albans Fire

by Mayor, Archer

  On the surface, it was no meeting of equals. He was old enough to have fathered her, for one thing, but it was precisely the age disparity that she hungered for the most. She catered to his whims, his appetites, his need for her, while he supplied the mature shelter and security she’d yearned for all her life. It was arguably lopsided, unhealthy, and grossly manipulative, but in its excess, it was also as numbing as a narcotic and equally addictive.

  And now it was over—violated and trampled not just by bad luck, but by the very factors that had already once pushed Gino to the edge of near terminal grief.

  For this wasn’t the first time a police officer had mindlessly reached into his life and carelessly extinguished someone central to his emotional well-being. Over twenty years ago, Vinnie Stazio had been killed by an off-duty cop for no reason. A moonlighting watchman, twitchy, trigger-fingered, too stupid to yell out at a passing shadow before shooting it, had taken from Gino his mentor, his father figure, and the man who had helped him give birth to his own self-respect.

  Vinnie’s death had devastated Gino, as much for the friendship it interrupted as for the feeling of impotence it spawned. For mere loss and grief weren’t the only legacies of this ancient killing. Humiliation was there, too, since, despite his vow to seek revenge, Gino never acted on it, continually finding ways to avoid seeking out the offending cop and serving him his just desserts.

  But that, of course, had been a long time ago. Gino had been young, insecure, grateful for Vinnie’s attention, but still largely unformed. While furious and frustrated by the older man’s sudden death, he’d still lacked the nerve to set things right.

  No longer.

  This time the man responsible for Gino’s heartbreak would suffer, and he would do so in kind.

  Famolare closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips hard against his tear ducts, using the resulting pain to clear his head. He then reached into the back seat of his car and retrieved a woman’s photograph and a powerful pair of binoculars. He propped the picture against the dash and focused the field glasses on the front steps of the ornate building across from his parking space—the Vermont state capitol building.

  He’d been doing his homework, using the phone, the old-boy network, and the Web to gather information. He knew all he needed to know about Joe Gunther, the man who’d killed Peggy.

  He knew Gunther had a woman he cared for.

  Most of all, he knew Gunther would soon be feeling the same pain Gino was carrying around in his chest like a stone.

  · · ·

  Joe entered the conference room in the St. Albans state police barracks that he and Michael and Shafer had used days ago to decipher the arson pattern just south of the city.

  This time, however, although the basic purpose was the same, and those two men were in attendance, the scope had been expanded, and with it, the team. Now added to the large table were Willy Kunkle, Sammie Martens, and Ross Braver of the VBI Burlington office, who’d been busy all this time on an unrelated, still-open homicide case. There were also two liaisons each from the Sheriff’s Department and the Vermont State Police. Nine officers in all, not counting Joe.

  “Sorry I’m late and thank you all for coming,” Joe began, placing his paperwork on the table before him. “I know everyone’s knee-deep in alligators right now. There’s a lot we’ve been dealing with and still more starting to come together. But it’s with that in mind that I thought we better meet so we can all get on the same page.”

  Still standing, he paused to open a file folder and consulted its cover page. “To bring the newcomers up to speed, let me summarize a bit. In the folders before you, you’ll find much more than what I’m about to say, but this is the once-over-lightly.”

  He stepped away from the table and began pacing as he spoke. “In a nutshell, it seems we’re looking at a real estate deal gone haywire. A St. Albans Realtor named Clark Wolff caught wind that the feds were planning to site a major Homeland Security operations center just south of town but needed to put a bridge across Lake Champlain to better establish an east-west travel corridor paralleling the border. On one hand, it looks ridiculous, but on another—if you look at the map—you can see where someone in Washington might’ve thought it was a great idea. More to the point, the reality of the thing doesn’t matter, ’cause Wolff bit the bait and started buying up farmland where the bridge is supposed to hit the shore.

  “The problem was, he needed a lot more money than he’s got available, and he didn’t want to tip his hand to the local banks and risk spilling the beans prematurely. Enter John Samuel Gregory, a young, rich, ambitious exile from Newark, New Jersey, complete with shady past and connections to the Mob.”

  “Great,” muttered one of the state troopers.

  “Exactly,” Joe agreed. “It took Mr. Gregory about fifteen seconds after joining Wolff’s firm to catch wind of this scheme and up the ante by strong-arming a few deals to speed up the process. From what we’ve pieced together, it looks as if—without Wolff’s knowledge, according to him—Gregory hired an arsonist named Gino Famolare from back home to come up here and torch three barns that we know of.”

  Joe paused to hold up a hand. “Keep in mind that some of what I’m saying is speculative. We are pretty confident about two of the fires, since the MOs are almost identical, but the third one—the Loomis fire—was electrical, making it different in origin, and the damage was severe enough that we can’t absolutely be sure Famolare was involved.”

  “You don’t even know it was arson,” Willy added helpfully.

  Joe didn’t argue the point. “He’s right. We don’t. But read the files to see why we’re going with that assumption—you’ll find mention of some milk tampering we think occurred to weaken the target financially just prior to the fire. And while we’re on the subject of things we can’t prove, pay attention to the vehicular death of Arvid Beatty, who died when his tractor brakes failed. Similarly, you’ll find mention of another farmer named Martin, who was accidentally gassed checking his own silage and sold his farm after waking up from the resulting coma. To be honest, though, he’s included only because the sale went to Wolff and Gregory, not because we think the gassing was somehow rigged.”

  “How solid are you that Wolff knew nothing about Gregory?” Ross Braver asked. “Someone gets killed, it’s usually whoever he was sleeping with or in business with.”

  “True enough,” Joe agreed. “And you may be right. My gut tells me he’s clean, but he’s still on the radar along with everyone else.”

  “On the land deals,” the other state trooper asked, “what kind of acreage are we talking about?”

  “That’s a little vague right now,” Joe admitted, crossing back over to his notes. “Of the eight area transactions we know about in the past few months, Wolff knew of three, including Loomis—the electrical fire I mentioned. He didn’t realize his supposed partner, Gregory, had also picked up the tractor death and the gassed guy. But those’re only the ones we’re sure about. Total, that comes to about sixteen hundred acres. They had more on their wish list.”

  He looked up at them. “Okay, so far, so good. We know the players, the motive, and the methods. All that seems pretty complete.” After a beat, he added, “But there’s one small off-key note.”

  “Gregory got himself killed,” Shafer said quietly.

  “That’s not it,” Sammie countered, her eyes bright and glued to Gunther.

  Joe smiled, not surprised that she’d done her homework both thoroughly and analytically. “No. Gregory’s death was certainly a surprise, but that’s not what I meant.”

  “What, then?” Shafer asked.

  “It’s the death of Bobby Cutts,” Sam answered.

  Joe nodded slightly. “There’s your oddball from the start. It’s the last of the arsons, the only one outside the cluster, the one the Realtors had no interest in, the only one where cows were killed on purpose and the human by mistake.”

  “You saying we have two separate cases?” one of
the sheriff’s men asked.

  “No,” Willy drawled, his voice rich with contempt.

  “The arsonist who did Noon also did Cutts,” Jonathon explained.

  “And Gregory did visit the Cutts farm,” Sam added. “He left a business card behind.”

  “We don’t have separate cases,” Joe continued helpfully, trying to make the deputy feel less targeted. “But we may have two separate investigations based on separate motives.”

  Braver, the newcomer, asked, “You say Bobby Cutts died by mistake. Are we absolutely sure about that?”

  Joe nodded, happy to field such questions, for all of their sakes. “Absolutely? No. From what we know about his recent activities, and following the logic that most violence stems from sex or greed, we can suspect Barry Newhouse, Marianne Kotch’s old boyfriend, and Rick Frantz, the guy she was seeing behind Bobby’s back. Jonathon’s done some digging on both subjects.”

  Michael picked up the cue. “While you and Willy were in Newark, I found out they both have alibis for when the Cutts barn went up, but I also ran tests on a variety of sodium chlorate incendiaries and found the timing variances to be pretty wide. Still, for what it’s worth, I also don’t think either of them did it. Newhouse fits Marianne’s description of him—all hot air and laziness. When I squeezed him hard in an interview, the one thing I got for sure was that at heart he didn’t really give a damn about who Marianne was sleeping with. Frantz was a little trickier, since now it looks like his coma will be permanent. I had to talk with family and friends and work in from the edges, and I had the extra disadvantage of knowing that he might be capable of arson, being a habitual offender. But there again, I came away empty-handed. There is nothing at all—in his background, his habits, or in anything I could get from the people I interviewed—that would indicate he had anything to do with that fire.”

  Ross Braver wasn’t giving up quite yet. “That all works if there was a grudge against Bobby personally,” he said. “What about if he was just a symbol? A way to break his father’s spirit and force him to sell?”

  “You thinking Billy St. Cyr?” Joe asked.

  “Why not?” he answered. “According to the case file, St. Cyr and Calvin Cutts were cat-and-dog for twenty years. Now, all of a sudden, St. Cyr turns into Mr. Nice Guy just before he makes an offer to buy.”

  “Then why burn the herd?” Sam asked.

  Braver was warming to his topic. “That’s the beauty. He doesn’t want it. He’s been telling people he wants to get out of the business altogether. But if you look at a property map, you can see how the Cutts farm makes a big dent into St. Cyr’s western boundary. Combined, they form a nice, huge, well-proportioned whole. Pretty as a picture and twice as salable.”

  “But he could have sold those cows,” Sam protested.

  Braver shook his head. “Only if he had them to sell, and that wasn’t going to happen if Cutts wasn’t interested in any deal at all—until his son and whole herd had been killed.”

  “Jesus,” one of the deputies commented. “That’s cold.”

  “Maybe,” Braver agreed. “But that’s how it’s panning out, isn’t it?”

  They all looked at Joe, who had in fact made the Cutts family his assignment.

  “I’d heard an offer had been made,” he admitted. “I don’t know where it stands right now.”

  “I do,” Tim Shafer announced. “Or at least I know a bit more than that. You’d asked us to look into St. Cyr before you went south.”

  Joe had completely forgotten. “Too many people involved in all this,” he commented. “Good thing I’m not an air traffic controller. What did you find out?”

  “We were told that he cut corners whenever he could and took advantage of every government handout. All true. I got an unofficial look at some of his financials. It was like untangling spaghetti, and I didn’t go too far into it, but from what I could figure out, he’s rolling in dough. He has no incentive to get out of farming, and buying the Cutts place makes all the sense in the world. He’s got kids with big plans who want land, too, so that’s an additional booster.”

  “You think he’s good for the fire?” Joe asked.

  Shafer equivocated. “I’m saying it’s possible. Means, motive, and opportunity are all there. He doesn’t have a criminal history, but we know what that’s worth.”

  Sam was scratching her head. “I admit I’m the newcomer here, but I thought that fire was set by Famolare, who was hired by Gregory because of their mutual Newark background. If St. Cyr is behind the Cutts burning, how’s he connect to either one of them? It seems so totally out of left field.”

  “That’s because this whole deal is out of left field,” Willy said, having kept his peace for an unusually long time. “The only hard-core information we got out of Newark was from a juicer who thought we were about to kill him, and even that was about only one of the three fires—which one is anyone’s guess. All the rest of it—Vinnie Stazio maybe having a student named Gino, Gregory’s brother paying off Lagasso, and then Lagasso ordering up a fire that looked like a Stazio burn long after Stazio was dead—is just a bunch of conjecture.” He pointed to Sam’s piled paperwork. “Jonathon’s report says that the motel clerk was given Gino’s mug shot. Couldn’t ID him. Said he had that stupid hat pulled down too far over his face. Same thing for the two farmers who supposedly saw him—too far off to see his face. I mean, Jesus, we’ve been playing fast and loose from the start.”

  “Initially,” Joe agreed. “But I don’t think so lately. Regardless of those failed IDs, Gino’s connection to Vermont is solid, and juicer or not, Santo sounded pretty sure of himself to me—and talking to us definitely got him dead.”

  “Speaking of getting dead,” Willy said, “shouldn’t we be talking about Gregory?”

  Joe held up a finger. “In a minute. I don’t want to lose track. Here are some of the issues I think we need to keep in focus: Was Bobby killed accidentally or on purpose, and if the latter, was it personal or symbolic, as Ross suggests? Is the Cutts fire related to the others in some way other than having been set by the same arsonist? What’s the real motivator behind Billy St. Cyr’s recent change of attitude? And finally, what was the desired end result of the Cutts fire? If we find someone whose fortunes suddenly improved, we may also have our primary actor.”

  He now looked at Willy. “Okay. John Samuel Gregory. Who knocked him off and why?”

  Braver, not well known to Joe, seemed to like his theories straightforward—and didn’t take no for an answer. “My vote’s on Wolff. It’s a money deal. Gregory did him dirt by going maverick and screwing everything up.”

  Jonathon tilted back in his chair and rested one foot against the edge of the conference table. “What I’m wondering is, who did he piss off the most?” he asked, before quickly gesturing to his colleague. “Not that Wolff doesn’t qualify, Ross. I didn’t mean that. But there’re others standing in line. Gregory comes from Newark, basically exiled for misbehavior. His brother doesn’t like him, the Mob thought he was a welcher when Lagasso squeezed the family firm for what he was owed, and who knows who else may hate his guts around here for all the mischief he’s committed? Which reminds me,” he added almost as an afterthought, “we shouldn’t forget that unless we find out otherwise—which is pretty unlikely—it was also Gregory who hired Gino to torch the Cutts barn. Why did he do that?”

  Total silence greeted this question.

  “Seems like,” he resumed, “we ought to take a closer look at the members of the Cutts clan.”

  Chapter 23

  GINO WAITED PATIENTLY IN THE SHADOWS, indistinguishable from the tree trunk he was leaning against. During the past couple of hours, several pedestrians had strolled by not ten feet away without even imagining his presence.

  He was good at this. He could wait forever.

  The target had actually arrived ten minutes ago, driving into the condo garage and closing the door behind her electronically before leaving the locked car. A cautious woman, he�
��d noticed earlier. The kind of caution born of a bad experience. Bordering on paranoia.

  But whatever that experience, it had been a long time ago. He could tell that the edge had left her fear. Already, in the few days he’d been doing this, he’d seen a curtain left open a crack, a window left unlatched for an hour to allow some air in. Finally, yesterday, after her half-hour jog with whistle and pepper spray canister, she’d committed the ultimate mistake, punching in her security code on the front door alarm without blocking the keypad from view. He’d been there, of course, binoculars in hand, ready and waiting. Twenty-three forty. The magic number to the kingdom.

  Content that she was in for the night, or at least wasn’t coming right back out, he eased away from his post, checking all around for possible onlookers, and stealthily crossed over to his parked van.

  Quietly, he got into the back, pulled the blanket closed to block off the front seats, and switched on the laptop computer. The van’s back windows were tinted, but as an extra precaution, he’d also taped black plastic garbage bags over them. No one passing by would see what he was doing.

  The screen’s ethereal glow colored his impassive face a pale blue as he waited for the program to boot up. Gino Famolare was on emotional autopilot—all professional, all the time. Despite what he had planned for this woman—a first in his career, given that the farmer kid had been a mistake—and despite the stakes and extra effort he’d put into this job, it remained just that for him. A job.

  Or so he was telling himself.

  The screen finally resolved into what he was expecting: a mosaic of eight postage-stamp-size images, each of a different aspect of the interior of Gail’s apartment. As he watched the tiny pictures, she passed from frame to frame, walking around the privacy of her home, going about the business of settling in for the night.