The Ragman's Memory (27 page)

I got up and went over to the white board mounted on the wall, a felt-tipped marker in hand. “Because, despite some differing opinions in this room, I don’t think Wallis took off under her own power. I think she was grabbed. She knew something, and someone was afraid she would eventually tell it to us.”

I wrote “Shawna” and “Milo” next to each other at the top left corner of the board but left the spaces below them blank. “Unfortunately, while Mary Wallis is a top priority, we’re stuck for options on what to do for her. We’ve put everything available into motion. Photos and descriptions have been issued to all major agencies in New England, along with the bigger newspapers. The
Reformer
has agreed to play the story big and get it on the wire services. And each of her personal contacts has been asked to let us know as soon as they hear anything. We’ve been reduced to waiting for a break.”

I wrote “Mary” on the board and left it blank under her, also. “Okay—the building project. This one gets a little more complicated. Ron, Gail, and Justin Willette worked together to come up with a few possibilities here. There’s a chance that during the permitting process, the wheels might’ve been greased to speed things along. One person has claimed he was coerced to support the deal.”

I glanced at Gail, who merely nodded her assent. “Ned Fallows,” I went on, “says Tom Chambers blackmailed him with proof of some prior malfeasance, the nature of which Fallows won’t identify.”

There was a predictable muttering around the table.

“Fallows is also saying he won’t corroborate that story, no matter how much pressure we put on him.”

“Screw him,” Willy said. “Hit him with a subpoena and force him to talk.”

“About what?” I asked. “Right now all we’ve got are two conversations I had with him. His attitude is that if he clams up, we’ll have no proof he was forced to vote for the convention project—nor will we find out what crime he committed in the first place. We need to do the same digging Tom Chambers did to force Fallows to spill the beans.”

“And that,” I waved a hand in his direction, “is what I want Ron to do.”

I put “Chambers” and “Fallows” up on the board under the heading “Project” and drew an arrow connecting Ron’s name to Fallows’. “We’ve also got a few other players we need to look at.” I added Eddy Knox, Rob Garfield, and Lou Adelman’s names. “These three are only guilty of being unusually supportive of the project so far. We need to examine their lifestyles, bank accounts, past histories, and finally conduct interviews with them. I’d like Sammie spearheading that, working with Marshall Smith.”

I wrote all that down, with more arrows, and then circled “Tom Chambers” in red. “Here’s the catch. How to dig into the town’s richest political hotshot—not to mention one of our esteemed leaders—without his catching wind of it. The answer, I hope, lies in Chambers being the one common denominator among everyone in this group,” I tapped Fallows’s name and the three men Sammie and Marshall were assigned to. “Plus Harold Matson, the Bank of Brattleboro’s president.” I added his name to the list.

“The B of B got its fat saved by Ben Chambers. If we think the permitting process was tainted, there’s a chance the funding was, too. J.P., find out how the financing was put together. I want you to work with Sheila Kelly—her expertise in this area should be an asset.

“Assuming Fallows is right about NeverTom Chambers being corrupt, my hope is we’ll be able to catch Chambers in a pincer movement, between what we can get from the zoning and planning people, and what we can find out about the recent financial bailout. My other hope is that by following this approach, it might lead us to finding out what happened to Mary Wallis.”

There was a muted stirring among most of the people in the room. I capped the pen in my hand and let them quiet back down. “For those of you who think we’re putting too many eggs in one basket by focusing on the building project, let me remind you how we all agreed earlier that coincidence was a bad thing to rely on.” I waved my hand at the board behind me. “Well, if all this isn’t coincidence, then what ties it together? The convention center has cropped up—however vaguely—with Milo, Mary Wallis, and through Wallis to Shawna Davis. At fifteen million dollars, it’s the biggest real estate deal this town’s ever seen, and that sum doesn’t include the financial benefits a lot of people are hoping will come their way once the center’s up and running.”

I leaned on the conference table with both hands. “We have limited manpower we need to use wisely, to pursue the hottest and most available targets we can locate. It may turn out that Milo died of rabies, pure and simple, and that Shawna was killed for reasons we haven’t even guessed at. But Mary Wallis is still out there—maybe alive—and everyone involved in creating the convention center is identifiable and can be interviewed. On the chance those two are connected, I think this approach is worth the gamble. If anyone disagrees, let’s hear it now.”

“What about Gene Lacaille?” Willy said. “He got the whole thing started.”

“He’s losing his shirt,” Sammie countered. “You know that for a fact?”

I rapped the table again. “Hold it. We should and will look into him, but our caseload is enormous, and we haven’t even mentioned our latest addition.” I turned and wrote “Sawyer” on the board.

“Right now, Lacaille does seem to have lost out heavily in this deal, and it’s unlikely he did that on purpose. So, our priorities and resources being what they are, he’s going to have to take a back seat. But,” I emphasized, “it should be noted that every lead on this board is subject to change. Names will be removed and added as we go along, and I don’t want anyone skipping details just because they don’t fit some particular assignment. Either hand over anything odd to the appropriate investigator, or let me know about it. Also, given the chance that some or all of these investigations might be linked in some way, and that we may end up with more on our plate, I want every new case that comes into this office looked at with a microscope—I don’t care if it’s a ninety-year-old cancer patient who dies in the hospital.” I tapped the white board with my finger. “Everything gets a review in relation to this.”

I wrote Kunkle’s and Sol Stennis’s names under that of Adele Sawyer. “Okay—Willy, find out who knocked her off. This one’s out in the open—it’s already on the radio, and it’s going to be front-page news tomorrow. It’s a whodunit and it has a cast of dozens—the lady was not well liked, the night shift is thinly staffed, and most of the home’s residents are pretty much free to wander. And that’s not even considering someone from the outside. No need to tiptoe—take the place by storm if necessary and get this wrapped up fast. Billy?”

Manierre looked up suddenly, as if I’d interrupted a compelling daydream. “I know, I know—all the help I can spare, especially on the Sawyer case. I’ll juggle the shifts and see what I can do.”

I smiled at his world-weary voice. “Thanks. One last thing, everybody. There’ll be a slight change in Gail’s role as contact person for the SA’s office. As before, if you’ve got questions or are dealing with anything involving town government, go through her first. But if it’s a straight legal question, as with the Sawyer killing, use whoever’s available, like we’ve always done.”

The meeting broke up in piecemeal fashion. I gestured to Gail and led her across the squad room to my office, closing the door behind us.

“You okay with how I handled Ned?” I asked her.

She frowned but gave me a reassuring squeeze of the arm.

“He’s going to have to account for it. It’s too bad he’s doing everything possible to make things worse for himself.”

There was a knock on the door and Willy walked in without waiting for an answer. “I’m guessing,” he said, “that you’ll be riding my back on the Sawyer case?”

“I’ll fill in where I’m needed—on all of them.” Gail got up and headed out, giving me a small wave. I reached for a sheet of paper that was lying on my desk and handed it to Kunkle. “This is what I found out from the Skyview staff and Sawyer’s next of kin. Hillstrom’s report’ll come by fax in an hour or two, but she told me on the phone that it was a two-handed attack, like J.P. thought. How d’you want to tackle this?”

“Interviews first. We know she was whacked between ten p.m. and one in the morning. That ought to help with checking alibis. I don’t know… I thought I’d play it pretty much by ear. That a problem?”

I caught the defiance in his eye. “Not for me.”

He checked his watch. “All right. I’m going to see who Billy can cut loose, and maybe head over there in an hour or so.”

· · ·

I had been up all night, and was planning to stay up a good part of the night ahead, so, despite the flurry of activity I’d set in motion, I told Harriet where I was headed—and went home to bed.

Under similar past circumstances, this had rarely been a successful ploy. When things got this crazy, turning my brain off became a near impossibility, and I routinely sacrificed the hope of some relief to the reality of a few restless, wakeful hours.

This time, however, I surprised myself. As soon as I was under the covers, I fell into a deep sleep.

Part of this may have been due to sheer exhaustion. But I think I was also comforted by having organized our caseload the way I had. Whether proven right or wrong in the long run, it gave order to what had started to become a chaotic jumble of seemingly unrelated cases. I knew the links between some of them and the convention center project were tenuous right now—a cheap pen, the location of a one-night crash pad, the sudden retreat of a firebrand activist. But I was also confident that mere happenstance hadn’t conspired to hand us five separate major cases simultaneously. There had to be a common thread linking most of them, and I felt we were on the right track to finding it.

Unfortunately, my peaceful eclipse proved relatively short-lived. Three hours after I’d shut my eyes, the phone dragged me back to a world intolerant of daytime sleepers. Not that this particular caller would have hesitated at any hour.

“You’re a hard man to locate,” Stan Katz said cheerfully.

I piled several pillows behind me and sat up. “What d’ya want, Stan?”

“We’re running dual pieces on Wallis and the Sawyer killing. I was wondering what you had to say about them.”

“Talk to Brandt.”

“I did. I’m going for more color—a personal angle.”

“Not from me, you’re not. It’s too early on both cases for that. Give me a couple of days to find out what happened. Then you can have your color.”

“Come on, Joe. I’ve got nothing right now. Didn’t you guys find
anything?
How ’bout the timing? Do you know if Wallis and Sawyer knew each other?”

“Down boy. If we start hypothesizing in public right now, we’ll only do everyone dirt. We’ll give you the facts as we get them.” I could tell from the pause at the other end how much credibility that carried. “What about the other cases, then?”

“Look—Stanley—I know what you’re up against—”

“Spare me the sympathy, Joe,” Katz interrupted testily. “Just because we’re operating on a shoestring doesn’t make us less viable. We don’t need your help—we deserve a little honesty from our public officials.”

I shrugged at the phone. “All right, how ’bout if you give me some help? Beverly Hillstrom told me this morning that one of your people called her to confirm that Milo Douglas had died of rabies. Who was your source?”

Katz burst out laughing. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You called me for a favor.”

“Meaning you’ll give me something if I tell you?”

“Soon enough.” There was another pause before he finally said, “What the hell, I’ll play. It was an anonymous call—a man. He said, ‘The bum Milo died of rabies—check it out,’ and then hung up.”

Echoes of an earlier conversation I’d had with Kunkle came back to mind. “Did you get another anonymous call about the Satanist inscription on Shawna Davis’s tooth?”

This time, Katz’s silence smacked more of embarrassment. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Stan. He called you.”

“We thought maybe he was a cop.”

“I’ve pretty much ruled that out.” I hesitated and then added, “My personal guess—off the record—is that we’re dealing with someone who either thinks the publicity will throw us off track, or who needs the limelight for his own self-gratification. I think we’re sniffing around the edges of something pretty significant here, Stan.”

“Damn,” he muttered. “When will you clue me in?”

“Soon as I can—no bullshit.”

He slipped back into his hard-bitten role, like an actor stepping on stage. “I can hardly wait,” he said, and hung up.

· · ·

Unable to get back to sleep, I returned to the office to deal with several days’ worth of paperwork. The squad room was empty. Everyone had either gone home or was in the field.

Since almost before I could remember, the quiet of an after-hours office was a meditative tonic for me. It gave me an air traffic controller’s view of the world I inhabited—not just the investigations I was working on personally, but bits and pieces of every case currently active in the squad. It supplied me with a sense, however artificial, of being in control.

Nevertheless, by almost ten p.m. I was sick of the paper shuffling.

In truth, my timing was calculated. Sometimes, when in a jam, I had found it helpful to revisit the scene of a crime at the same time of day it had occurred. I therefore got into my cold-stiffened car and drove west toward the Skyview Nursing Home.

The neighborhood around the home was illuminated by periodic street lamps, so I instinctively cut my lights as I entered it, preserving the sense of stealth that might’ve been used had last night’s killer been an intruder.

I was amused, if not surprised, to discover I wasn’t the only one acting out theories. Parked under the last streetlamp, facing the Skyview’s front entrance, was Willy Kunkle’s car, a small plume of exhaust trailing from its muffler. I cut my engine and rolled to a stop as silently as a shadow, settling some ten feet behind him.

It hadn’t been my intention to actually sneak up on him, even after my stealthy approach, but seeing the back of his head, still motionlessly facing forward after I’d quietly emerged from my car, I was bitten by pure gratuitous impulse. Kunkle was a man who took everything and everyone head-on, with no apologies or mercy. He was so assertively in your face, so stridently claiming control at all times, that I couldn’t resist exploiting this one instance of vulnerability.