Rough Country: A gripping crime thriller

by T. J. Brearton

  Now that the fire was completely out and structurally things seemed okay, the arson guy was sifting through, looking for the accelerant. Probably gasoline. As soon as Reed had thought it, he saw the investigator hold up a mostly melted plastic gas can for Reed to see.

  “There you go,” Griff said.

  Reed nodded to the arson investigator as he asked Griff, “You know this family well?”

  “Not really. Dan’s from out of state originally. Michigan or something. Tyson was born there. Moved here when he was a kid. I dunno, five or six years old maybe.”

  Reed kicked at something on the ground – a charred coffee mug with a drawing of a human bone. He rolled it over with his toe, and the caption read I find that humerus.

  “How about Ida Stevens? You seem to have a rapport with her.”

  “Well, we went to school together.”

  “So you go back,” Reed said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You still talk to her on a regular basis, or…?”

  “Nah. Just see her around town. A wave and a nod, that sort of thing. She was… boy, back in the day she was something.” A light came into Griff’s eyes, then he shook his head. The closer they got to the house, the more saturated the lawn. Their feet sank into the ground as they walked.

  “She was something?” Reed asked.

  “Free spirit. Ida didn’t care about school, frustrated the teachers. But there was something about her… you couldn’t stay mad at her long. That type of thing. Some people have that.”

  “That’s called attractiveness,” Reed said.

  Griff stuck out his lips, smiled, then nodded as he laughed.

  Reed said, “Yeah, but seriously, they’ve done studies on it. Good-looking people do better with juries. Get off lighter with judges.”

  He watched the arson investigator some more; the guy’s name was Chuck Dearing. Dearing had been joined by two firemen and was pointing and gesturing. A bed frame had fallen through when half of the top floor collapsed, then taken a couple of tumbles to wind up in the yard.

  Reed said to Griff, “How about Daryl Snow? He’s from here too, right?”

  “Yeah. Oh yeah.”

  “You weren’t sure what’s up with him and Ida…”

  “No, I mean, who knows. Back in school, they were an item. Him the big athlete in high school and her the bad girl. The two of them had plenty of drama. The school was bigger then, you have to understand. I graduated in a year with fifty-five students. Not like today. My granddaughter has a first-grade class of twelve.”

  “An aging population.”

  Griff looked around, drawn out of reverie. “What’s that?”

  “I said it’s an aging population. Not a lot of new people coming in, kids are leaving after high school…”

  “Let ’em leave, I say. Go out and see the world.” The corner of his mouth turned up in a half-smile. “Just come back.”

  “Yeah,” Reed agreed. “Right.” He’d heard about the phenomenon called “brain drain,” but otherwise didn’t know much more about rural dynamics; he’d grown up just outside New York City, his graduating class teeming with five hundred kids. There were people you went to school with for four years and never met. Didn’t know their names. Here, everybody knew everyone else, for the most part.

  “I got one more question for you – is Daryl Snow the father of Kasey Stevens?”

  Griff got a bemused look. “Now you’re into things that small towns don’t offer up too much: family history. Much as we think we know, there’s always the little kinks we don’t.”

  “Well, were they married? Ida and Daryl Snow? How about that much?”

  “No. Never married. I mean… you want to know if he was Kasey’s legal father and all that, I don’t think so. But I guess you could say they spent plenty of time together. You’d see them at the Elliston Fair, and every once in a while, Daryl Snow shows up to a school concert.”

  “A school concert? That’s pretty parental.”

  “Yeah. But Kasey, she has two half-brothers. They’re both up in Plattsburgh, I believe.”

  “But they’re not Ida’s kids?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess that’s where we’ll start looking for her biological father. Thank you, Griff. You’re a wealth of information.”

  “I don’t know about that… A what?”

  Reed smiled. They left the pile of blackened house and walked back toward the vehicles. Just in time to see the TV people coming in. A little late to this one. But, then again, they were right on time for the black Chevy truck trying to get through all the police vehicles.

  And you could tell by the man’s sad, contorted face behind the steering wheel that he was Dan Wheeler, Tyson’s father.

  Reed saw in Dan Wheeler a grim reflection of his own grief. The man had lost a child. The house, he said, was something you could replace. His son was not. Wheeler put his hand against his truck and dipped his head and cried, and then he threw up.

  Reed did his best to keep him guarded from the press. A camera was filming the whole thing from behind the tape – Reed gave the reporter a look that said Have a heart or I’ll crush that thing with my boot.

  Griff stood opposite Wheeler. They were mostly unfamiliar with each other, as far as Reed understood it, but Griff put a hand on the guy’s back anyway.

  “Where is he?” Wheeler said when he’d composed himself. “Morgue?”

  Reed nodded and found the man’s sad eyes and took a breath. “I know this is a hard time to talk…”

  Wheeler’s expression hardened. “Tyson was with me last night. Me and my other boy. We just had a normal night at home.”

  “Okay.” Reed tried to take it slow. “He didn’t go out at any point? Even for a little while?”

  “No. He’s getting a start on his Regents exams for school. Studying old tests.”

  Hmm. Might be a wrinkle. “Where does he do that?”

  “Where?” Wheeler blinked, as if Reed were being coy. “In his room.”

  “So he might’ve been on the phone, anyway. We’d look, but his phone is likely…” Reed’s eyes drifted to the devastation, and Wheeler looked there, too.

  “He was home,” Wheeler said.

  “What about the vehicle?”

  “He don’t drive my truck.”

  “I meant his.”

  “The Subaru was here all night,” Wheeler said. “And that’s it.” The note of finality in the man’s voice rang loud and clear. Even if Tyson had left through the back door unbeknownst to his father, or if he’d shimmied out a window, Dan Wheeler didn’t know or wasn’t going to say. His son was dead. There was no sense aiding any effort to hang a murder rap around his neck. Reed could understand that. Anyone with half a brain could understand that.

  But still. Wheeler sounded damn convinced Tyson had been there all night.

  “All right, Mr. Wheeler,” Reed said. “You see the troopers right over there…?”

  And Wheeler went off, eventually, to talk with the state troopers, who would help make sure he and his younger son, Brayden, had a place to stay for the night. The boy was currently still at school. Reed called Pyle’s supervisor, Kruse, and relayed Dan Wheeler’s story, asked if someone could talk to Brayden.

  “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

  “We need to nail down this alibi,” Reed said.

  “Okay… With respect – Tyson just burned his house down and killed himself in the process.”

  “I know. Now, imagine if the reason that happened wasn’t because he was guilty, but something else. Something he knew and maybe couldn’t live with. We’d want to know that thing.” He paused, hearing Kruse’s agreement in the silence. “I could talk to the younger brother, but I’d like to get up there to see the medical examiner.”

  “Happy to do it,” Kruse said. There was something in his voice – maybe guilt for talking about Reed’s earbuds? “Pyle said you were quick on your feet. If it weren’t for you, it might’ve been worse for him.”<
br />
  Reed made no comment on that. Partly because there was nothing to say, partly because the latest group to arrive at the party was just pulling in – a dark blue Chevy Impala with a woman driving and a man riding shotgun. State Police Internal Affairs Bureau, there to talk to Reed and Kruse about Pyle’s shooting, the juvenile involved in the exchange of gunfire and self-immolation, as well as whatever else might be weighing on their minds. They stepped out, she in black slacks and cream turtleneck sweater, him in a dark gray suit, their eyes homing right in on Reed.

  “I hope you brushed your teeth and combed your hair,” Griff said.

  At the trooper barracks in Carmen, Reed took his duffel bag from the van and went inside. He tried to smile and meet the eyes of everyone who stared at him, his shirt splattered with Pyle’s blood, face smeared with soot, hair and skin still ripe with sweat and adrenaline. No, he had not brushed his teeth or combed his hair before talking to IAB. But at least his disheveled appearance had hastened the process; both of the investigators seemed sympathetic to letting Reed out of there to clean up and regroup – they’d follow up with him later, they’d said. But no one was putting him on leave, which was a relief.

  He showered in the locker room, pulled on fresh jeans and a clean white T-shirt, a brown fleece sweater over that. His hiking boots were still good to go.

  After checking in with the sergeant in charge, he made a temporary home for himself in Kruse and Pyle’s small office. It wasn’t a bad place to work, and they had donuts.

  The first order of business: untangling Kasey’s tangled family tree. Notifications were part of the process. If she had a biological father out there somewhere, maybe Ida had already said something, maybe he’d already seen it on the news or heard it through the grapevine. But it was a courtesy. More than that – it was respect.

  Reed called two area hospitals and got lucky with the second. Paternity records showed a man named Andy Zurn, who lived in Plattsburgh with his wife and two sons, eight and six, Kasey’s two brothers mentioned by Griff.

  Zurn…

  He flipped through his notebook.

  Bob Zurn. Okay. Robert Zurn was the guy Griff thought might’ve loaned Ida the white pickup truck she’d driven to the crime scene. Griff had called Zurn “a neighbor.” It was unclear if he meant his own neighbor’s or Ida’s neighbor. Either way, Griff didn’t seem to connect Robert Zurn to Andy Zurn, up in Plattsburgh. But with a name like that, they were almost certainly related. Maybe cousins. Could even be brothers.

  Reed got a number for Andrew Zurn and called, got an out-of-service message. Huh. Have to circle back to that.

  And still no response from his earlier call to Daryl Snow.

  At two p.m., he phoned his research assistant in Albany. Virginia Leithsceal was already looking into the symbol; she would also help him go through the online lives of Kasey Stevens and Tyson Wheeler. “And I need a list – this place is like a soap opera with all the characters – I need a script supervisor to help me keep track of her friends, family. I’m trying to get a hold of Andrew Zurn, but can only find one number for him.”

  “Got it.”

  “Also I’d like to see what Aimee Hetfield posted over the past forty-eight hours. She’s the friend of Kasey’s I spoke to, and the last person to see her alive.”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, and see if a guy named Daryl Snow has a history. Run him through Department of Public Safety, DMV, all that. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Just feeling a little…” He cut himself off. The mounds of paperwork he needed to complete on the morning in the woods and the midday firestorm at the Wheelers’ were legion. But he didn’t need to whine to his researcher about it. “Any progress on that symbol thing?”

  “Well, I was waiting to talk to you about it. In short, No. I mean, not yet. I could use a better image. The picture of the drawing you made, it’s very nice and everything…”

  “I’ll get a good image from the pathologist.”

  “Perfect. From your drawing, it’s not really Celtic or tribal – if anything, it looks like it might be some kind of Zodiac thing. I also thought pagan. Even Wiccan. I’ve been going around on sites, seeing if anything turns up.”

  “I saw a tattoo on a guy this morning,” he said, thinking about the cook at the diner. “An endless knot kind of thing.”

  “If I can get an image of the symbol on the victim that’s cleared of the blood, I’ll be able to do a lot more.”

  “I promise, I’m on it.”

  He got a call from the DA just as he was about to head up to the morgue. “You’re going to be at the press conference, right?”

  Reed cringed. “Kruse can handle it.”

  She paused. “Hmm. Really like you to be there. Especially now, with this whole Tyson Wheeler angle.”

  Press conferences gave him anxiety ten times worse than crime scenes or shoot-outs.

  “I’ll meet you at the courthouse?” Tallman asked. “My office.”

  Something slid over his bowels, like a stone weight settling in. His lips felt numb when he spoke. “Sure. I’ll be there.”

  7

  Intimate partner violence

  The placard on her shiny oak desk read District Attorney Anna Tallman. Filling her windows was downtown Elliston, such as it was – a grocery store, a drugstore, a single restaurant called the Dancing Pony. A hamlet in the Adirondacks. A wide place in the road.

  They went over the basic rundown of what Tallman would say to the public.

  When Tyson’s name came up, her blue eyes probed Reed. “You don’t think he did it?” She seemed genuinely intrigued.

  “I don’t know if Tyson Wheeler did or didn’t do it. I’m working to make sure there isn’t anyone else for us to prosecute.”

  “Persons of interest?”

  “Daryl Snow. He dates the mother, as far as I can tell, and he’s sort of a handyman-slash-manager for the truck stop diner, which is right around the corner from the park.”

  “I know where it is. There’s that hiking trail that starts behind the park and comes out about two hundred yards from the truck stop.”

  Reed nodded. “Also interesting – he wasn’t at the crime scene today. Everybody else was – Tyson Wheeler was, Ida Stevens was, some guy wearing ten pounds of clothes riding a bicycle was – but no Snow.”

  “Lloyd Cox,” she said. “The guy on the bicycle. I know Lloyd. He’s a character. I believe he worked at the local convenience store here in town for a while.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said. Point is, someone – anyone – could have gone into the park last night. I’d like to clear them out. If I can do that, and we get something from the body that points to Tyson Wheeler, I’ll be happy it fits.”

  Those sharp eyes stayed on him. “What about this thing on her stomach?”

  “I’ll get a clearer image from the pathologist. I’m working with my own drawing right now, but I want to keep that close to the vest. I’d like genuine first reactions from people I show.”

  Tallman nodded, glancing away. When her gaze slid back, he could tell she was in a new frame of mind.

  “So,” she said.

  “Ma’am?”

  She made no bones about giving him an up-and-down look, really exploring every detail of him. It made him feel like twisting out of the chair. Finally, she said, “I make it a point to know my investigators.”

  “Okay…”

  She paused. “I understand you were in the Navy.”

  “Yes. In effect.”

  Her eyebrows went up, inviting an explanation.

  “I enlisted in the Coast Guard,” he said.

  “Ah, that’s right.” There was a hint of extra color in her cheeks, as if she were embarrassed for getting it wrong or forgetting. Reed got the quick impression that there wasn’t much Anna Tallman got wrong or forgot. She quickly said, “When you deploy as Coast Guard, you transfer to the Navy.”

  “I wanted to enlist after 9/11 and thought t
his was the best way to do it. Then the solicitation came out – the call – that they needed more backup in the Middle East. That was in 2006. I was a petty officer 2nd class, an E-7. I deployed as a boatswain’s mate.”

  She listened, her eyes shining as she watched him. “Any special reason why they picked you?”

  “I had my weapons qualification and had taken Basic Classical Arabic in school. I think that helped make me eligible. Over there I became attached to an anti-terrorism group called PATFORSWA.” He pronounced it as one word – Patforswah.

  “Patrol Force Southwest Asia.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I was on a couple of different boats. They call them one-tens. Wranglers.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, she said, “You came back after eighteen months. And you stayed on with the Coast Guard?”

  “I did. Worked in the forensic lab in Connecticut doing oil analysis, then up in Massena on the Saint Lawrence as a marine science technician. Mostly hazardous waste, security for four-hundred-gross-ton freighters. We worked with Transport Canada.”

  “You worked with DEA.”

  “Them too.”

  She glanced at the file again. “But then you joined the New York State Police and in just two years went into Major Crimes. You’re working with J. T. Overman.”

  When he made no response, Tallman continued, “That man has an impressive record. Thirty-one years, five hundred death investigations, a hundred and one homicides. Did you know Overman personally before moving to Major Crimes?”

  “A little.”

  She waited, gauging him.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “if you’ve read my file… why are you asking?”

  “I don’t like to assume anything.”

  She waited, and he realized he wasn’t leaving here without giving her the whole story.

  Damn prosecutors.

  “I met Overman on my daughter’s case, ma’am. My daughter went missing in 2007, while I was overseas. I came back and… I just met J. T. Overman through the course of that investigation. He wasn’t working it directly, but I met him through the people who were.”