The Second Mouse

by Archer Mayor

  Without comment, he returned his attention to the road, although he found his thoughts focusing neither on the scenery nor on the condition of Bennington’s battered self-image.

  It didn’t take long for Sam to notice the change. “You all right, boss?” she eventually asked him. “You’re kinda quiet.”

  He turned briefly to glance at her. “Sorry. A little distracted. Something about this case has gotten under my skin. Don’t know why.”

  “She didn’t seem old enough to die of natural causes,” Sam ventured.

  Joe burst out laughing. Sam was the youngest of his squad, and an interesting clash of boldness and hesitation, ambition and self-doubt, experience and naïveté, which her taste in men helped exemplify. Currently, and for the past couple of years, she’d been discreetly but determinedly involved with Willy Kunkle, a hookup that boggled Joe’s mind, although he tried to show his support.

  “Very diplomatically put, Sam. Nicely done,” he finally said.

  Sam was looking flustered. “I didn’t mean you were at death’s door . . .”

  He waved her off. “I know, I know. I’m just pulling your leg—an old man’s prerogative. That is part of it, actually—she was young in my book—so you’re right. But there’s a whole element of pathos around this, plus a hint of something darker.”

  “Newell Morgan?” she asked, having already read the file.

  Joe pursed his lips before responding. “The ME sees nothing wrong, Matthews is happy to move on, and nothing jumped out at me at the scene, so I’m hardly planting a flag in the ground here. But Morgan is definitely a man I want to look at eye to eye.”

  Gunther began the miles-long curving descent off the western slope of the mountains, his softly playing car radio losing contact with all signals to the east and picking up instead the latest news from around Albany. They passed through a couple of vague hamlets, mostly made of nondescript one-story homes and winterized trailers, before he finally made one last gentle turn—down on the flats at last—and abruptly entered Bennington’s Main Street.

  “You got that address?”

  True to form, Sam didn’t need to check. She rattled it off without hesitation.

  Newell Morgan lived nearby, off Gage Street, somewhere shy of the historic red-brick downtown—a street referenced by local politicians when invoking the area’s blue-collar bulwark. Joe, who knew Bennington well, took the first available right in pursuit of Gage.

  It was an unremarkable neighborhood, neither old nor new, and not given to any style beyond functional. For all that, it was pleasantly shaded by trees, and each house seemed reasonably cared for. It was the sort of street that Gunther, long ago in his patrol beat days in Brattleboro, had traveled only to get from one part of town to another.

  Not that everyone living in such a neighborhood was necessarily squeaky clean—such as, perhaps, Mr. Morgan. Unfortunately, the emphasis right now was on the “perhaps,” since Joe’s digging hadn’t revealed much about the man.

  Armed with a name and a birth date, most cops in Vermont could search a single widely shared database called Spillman and find out if the individual sought had been even peripherally involved in any shenanigans. It was an advantage most other states lacked, since the majority of departments nationwide, although computerized, worked with closed systems. There were so-called national data banks, like the famous NCIC, but your information had to qualify in order to be inserted, and Newell Morgan didn’t reach that standard.

  Which was the bad news, in terms of research—in Vermont, Morgan had surfaced in connection only with a few traffic stops, a check fraud case, and two neighbor disputes. He’d also been the complainant a half-dozen times in situations ranging from someone not cleaning up after their dog to a neighborhood teenager playing the radio too loudly. A pain in the ass, in other words, but not a Dillinger. As to what he might have done outside the state, nobody knew—and nobody would unless they could build a bigger case against him.

  Gunther pulled up opposite the address Sam had recited, and waited while she radioed their arrival to dispatch. Over the few short years of the Bureau’s existence, niceties such as office space, basic equipment, and communications had been slow and cumbersome in coming, if they came at all. A smoothly working radio system had been a recent arrival only, obviating the need to rely on either the state police or a cell phone system that both Vermont’s topography and its cranky antitower regulations made spotty at best.

  Not that Joe minded the deprivations as much as some. He got a perverse kick out of being considered among the profession’s elite while simultaneously being underfunded and ignored. There was a puritanical element lurking there that helped him feel he could keep pridefulness at a safe arm’s length.

  “You want company?” Sam asked as he unlatched his door.

  “Oh, you bet,” he said, smiling to himself at her predictable politesse. “That’s why you’re here.”

  He had wanted her along as a witness and a possible sounding board later, but as their feet touched the lawn, he thought the additional role of backup might also come in handy. They hadn’t advanced two yards before the house’s front door banged open and a large man in a bulging T-shirt stepped out onto the porch with a querulous expression on his face.

  “Who’re you?” he asked.

  Not for the first time in such situations, Joe was instantly grateful he hadn’t asked Willy along. He pulled out his identification as he continued toward the porch steps.

  “Joe Gunther. Vermont Bureau of Investigation. This is Agent Martens.”

  The man sneered. “Big surprise. You guys all drive the same cars.”

  Joe paused with his hand on the railing. “You Newell Morgan?”

  “Yeah. What d’you want?”

  “Talk about Michelle Fisher a bit.”

  “She’s dead.”

  It was Joe’s turn to smile. “Yeah.” He dragged out the word tellingly, allowing the ensuing silence between them to speak for him.

  Morgan got the point. He scowled. “Oh, for Christ sake. Fucking woman’ll never let me go.” He turned on his heel and added wearily, “Come on in.”

  Joe climbed the steps and opened the screen door that Morgan had let slam behind him. He and Sam entered a freezing air-conditioned living room clearly decorated by a woman. Only a single La-Z-Boy planted before a flat-screen TV set of Olympian proportions and brilliant clarity had escaped her touch. Running soundlessly across its surface, pumping the air with one fist, was an overweight baseball player trailing a mane of greasy hair. The TV and chair made the scene appear farcically lopsided, the former’s robotic sleekness and size making the room’s array of 1950s china figurines crowding every flat surface look like refugees seeking a way out.

  That wasn’t the only contrast. The chair and the rug immediately surrounding it, unlike the rest of the truly pristine room, were borderline disgusting, stained and soiled by its occupant’s haphazard eating habits. It seemed clear that a truce of sorts had been made in this house—she could rule, and clean, the roost, in exchange for his living like an old dog in one restricted corner.

  Morgan half fell into his reclining throne and reached down to retrieve an opened beer can placed on the embattled rug, spilling part of its contents in the process. He stared at the muted screen without expression and took a noisy gulp from the can. He did not offer either of them a seat.

  “I guess you two didn’t get along,” Joe suggested as Sam began walking slowly around the room, quietly taking inventory.

  The fat man swiveled his head to look at him. “Fucking right we didn’t. That little whore may’ve turned my idiot son’s head, but she didn’t fool me.”

  “How so?” Joe asked when nothing further was added.

  “She was a leech. A freeloader. She saw him as a soft touch, and she milked him till he died.”

  “There didn’t seem to be much to milk,” Joe said mildly, sitting in a ladder-back chair near the wall.

  “That’s because I wo
uldn’t let it happen,” Morgan muttered, and went back to watching the game.

  “Oh?”

  He kept his eyes where they were. “I controlled the purse strings. Archie didn’t know anything about money. She would’ve cleaned him out.”

  “I thought you said she did.”

  Morgan angrily hunched forward in his chair, fixing Joe with a glare. “I said she would have. I didn’t let her. I can smell someone like her a mile off—a conniving little cock teaser. And my son was the perfect mark.”

  “How did they meet?” Joe asked, hoping to move him along.

  “What do I know? She probably got him drunk and spread her legs. Archie was no rocket scientist. He went where you pointed him.”

  Joe scratched his head. “From what I’ve learned, they seemed pretty happy.”

  Morgan looked as if he were addressing a moron. “Well, of course they were happy. They had me to mooch off of, all the booze they could drink, and no responsibilities. What’s not to be happy about?”

  “They mooched how? The house?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Joe pretended to be confused. “But they paid you rent and made and paid for any renovations. I saw the bills.”

  Morgan was clearly stumped by that, if only for a couple of seconds. “That was nothing,” he finally blurted. “It was the least they could do for my giving them a place to live. I could’ve sold that house for a small fortune instead of letting them run it down.”

  “What do you do for a living, Mr. Morgan?” Joe asked out of the blue.

  “I’m on disability,” Morgan said quickly. “The battery plant fucked me up and I can’t work no more. How’s that matter?”

  “Just wondered,” Joe said. “Does your wife still work?”

  Morgan’s face reddened. “Yeah, she works. Look, what’re you busting my balls for? Why’re you even here? Am I supposed to get a lawyer or somethin’?”

  Joe’s eyes widened. “A lawyer? What for? You feel like you need one?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just, all these stupid questions. I mean, who cares? The bitch is dead. There’s nothing to talk about.”

  Except maybe how she got that way, Joe thought. “It must have been tough on you, after Archie died, having to deal with Michelle directly,” he said instead.

  “Trying to deal is more like it,” he grumbled. “She just pretended I didn’t exist.” He suddenly put the beer down, as if to clear his mind. “Look. I tried being nice. I’m no shit bag. Whatever she was after at first, I knew she was up a creek after Archie died. So I told her she could stay an extra month before I threw her out. She ended up totally abusing that generosity, like I was some landlord she could fleece or something. I mean, damn”—here he pounded his fleshy knee with his fist—“I gave that woman the roof over her head. You’d think she could show some consideration.”

  Joe nodded. “You’d think. What reason did she give for staying put?”

  “Oh, Christ. You know, ‘I can’t find a place,’ ‘I have no money,’ ‘I’m looking for a job.’ All the usuals. She was just trying to see if she could ride me as easy as Archie.”

  All these allusions suddenly prompted Joe to ask, “Did she try anything sexual to convince you?”

  Newell looked stunned for a moment. “Me? She’s not my type. I’m a married man, besides. She would’ve known what I’d say.”

  But he hadn’t actually answered, Joe thought, and the question still remained whether Newell had ever propositioned her. “She was a good-looking woman,” he pressed.

  The fat man allowed for half a concession. “If you like that type.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “I didn’t. I mean, not lately. I’d call on the phone. Later I communicated through my lawyer.”

  “But when was the last time?”

  Morgan put on a show of thinking hard. “Well, there was the funeral. I tried being nice then, like I said, dropping by to see how she was doin’. God, I don’t know . . . maybe about four months ago.”

  “That would be after you served eviction papers on her, right?” Joe pretended to be scribbling something in his pad, unconcerned and purely conversational.

  Morgan’s face reddened, but he said nothing.

  Joe looked up. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. That was just a legal thing, to show her I was serious.”

  “I heard you’ve been out of town for a few days.”

  “So?”

  “Where’d you go?”

  Joe expected some resistance, but Morgan immediately said, “New York—Frankfort. It’s outside Utica. It was like a reunion with some buddies.”

  “You were there the whole time?”

  The big man’s eyes narrowed, and he stood up, looking down at Joe. “Yeah. What’s that to you?”

  Joe’s response was mild, although he noticed that Sam had casually taken up a good place from which to throw a tackle if necessary. “This is a death investigation, Mr. Morgan. Pretty routine question.”

  “Bullshit, it is. You’re thinking I had something to do with her dying. I heard she did herself in. You saying she was murdered?”

  Joe put on a show of bewilderment. “Jeez Louise. You’re starting to make me think this is something it’s not. What’s got you so worked up?”

  “You do,” Morgan blustered. “I know who you are. The VBI is like major crimes. They only do murders and rapes and bank robberies and stuff like that. If Michelle drank herself to death, there’d be some deputy dog here, not you.”

  He was perfectly correct, which made Joe long for the recent past, when he’d routinely had to explain that the Bureau wasn’t an enforcement arm of something like the restaurant sanitation division.

  “The FBI does banks,” he explained disingenuously. “And I’m just here covering for the state police.”

  Morgan rose and moved toward the window, as if giving himself room to escape. “Right. Real likely. That’s why there’re two of you.”

  Joe stood up at last, his face set and his voice harder. “Think what you will, Mr. Morgan. Can you prove you were in Frankfort?”

  “You bet. I got six buddies to vouch for me, and if you think they’re all in the bag, then I got a bunch of credit card receipts and shit like that to back me up. I wouldn’t stick my neck out killing that fucking whore. No way she was worth it. What happened to her was just a matter of time anyhow. It wouldn’t have been long before I got my house back. Besides, even if she hadn’t died, she would’ve found some other sorry loser like my son to move in with.”

  Gunther took the pad he was holding, flipped to a fresh page, and handed it over. “Write the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the people you were with, as well as the names of any motels or restaurants you might have used.”

  Morgan held the pad in his hand, motionless. “Why do I have to jump through a bunch of hoops for you?”

  Joe tilted his head slightly to one side. “You don’t, which’ll really start me wondering why you’ve gotten so cranked up over this. Do yourself a favor, Mr. Morgan. Cooperate.”

  Morgan did just that, moving over to a couch and hunching over the coffee table to laboriously scratch out his information. As Gunther glanced around the room, trying to gauge from its contents the lives it contained, his reluctant host chanted a muttered, half-intelligible but clearly vituperative recitation in frustrated protest.

  Finally, he put his pen down, lunged to his feet, and thrust the pad back at Joe. “There, have fun wasting your time and pissing off my friends.”

  “Thanks,” Joe said, pocketing it and moving toward the door, Sam silently in tow. He put his hand on its knob and then asked, “By the way, what’s going to happen to the house now?”

  “I’m going to sell it. See if I can at least break even.”

  Gunther laughed and headed out onto the porch. He knew how long Morgan had owned the place, how much he’d charged his son in the interim, and what the market would probabl
y deliver in an upscale area like greater Wilmington. Morgan was going to make a killing—assuming he hadn’t already done so.

  “You have a good day, Newell. Enjoy what’s left of the game.”

  They got back into the car, and Joe continued driving west into the center of town, rejoining Route 9, passing through the infamous intersection with Route 7, and going up the hill past the old Hemmings News gas station, the elaborate Catholic church, and the art museum, into what was called Old Bennington—the fancy historic part of town that had also once been its center before industry decreed that the mills and their workers gather on the banks of the river below.

  “What was your take?” he asked Sam as he drove.

  “I disagreed when he said he was no shit bag, but looking around, I didn’t see anything that suggested he was another Ted Bundy. Just a slob. I hope his wife isn’t there much.”

  “How ’bout his story?”

  “I think you got him when you said he’d been to see her after filing the eviction papers. You have anything behind the theory that he put the moves on her and got turned down?”

  “Not a shred.”

  He left Route 9 at the top of the hill and drove along a block suitably named Monument Avenue, lined with a series of old-time New England mansions, classic enough to have appeared in a daguerreotype. Just beyond it, opening up onto a gently rounded hilltop, was the site of the famous Bennington Battle monument, a three-hundred-foot-tall obelisk built in the 1880s and more an homage to local jingoism than to historical accuracy. In fact, the Revolutionary War battle so celebrated took place five miles away in New York State—Bennington and its alluring supply depot had been merely the goal of an ambitious British army.

  Nevertheless, the area had become a graceful, peaceful, oddly sylvan spot from which to enjoy the low, rolling countryside around it, and Joe parked by the monument’s side to give them a suitable setting for contemplation and, a little subversively, to enhance Sam’s impression of the town.

  “Still,” he resumed, “assuming we ever get enough to officially take this case, I wouldn’t mind canvassing Michelle’s neighborhood with a picture of Newell and whatever vehicle he drives. I have a hard time believing that a guy like him could leave a woman like Michelle alone in her time of grief.”