by Archer Mayor
“We think it’s new,” Willy answered. “Without tipping off who we were, we talked with some of his coworkers after hours. He’s been real happy just recently, and he doesn’t deny it’s because he’s getting his rocks off.”
“He mention her by name?” Joe asked.
“Didn’t have to—one of his pals saw them in a pickup truck in town. He said their relationship was crystal clear.”
Joe turned to Massucco. “You know anything about this?”
“News to me” was the response. “When they all shared the trailer, it never came up.”
Joe nodded. “The reason I’m interested is that I traced the source of that missing radioactive garbage bag. Looks like Ellis Robbinson stole it while he was visiting his sick mother at the hospital, accompanied by someone fitting Nancy Martin’s description.”
He placed both hands on the tabletop for emphasis and added, “All of which means we’ve got even more going on we know nothing about—namely, what’s the story behind the bag? The Fusion guys talked dirty bomb because that’s their thing. But what if it’s tied to this romance between Mel’s wife and his best friend? What’re Nancy and Ellis up to, and is Mel in on it in any way?”
Lester raised his hand. “We keep dismissing the dirty bomb idea. Couldn’t that be an option?”
Joe shook his head. “I double-checked with the hospital. The half-life of the stuff in the bag was over almost from the start. It’s just trash now.”
He looked at Sam again. “What else?”
“Not much. We saw the pickup Mel bought from Newell outside his trailer, so he’s still driving it. We didn’t tail him anywhere, ’cause we didn’t want to spook him, so we’re a little vague about his movements. He is on the move, though. The pickup comes and goes all the time—’course, some of that’s Nancy getting a little afternoon delight, and Mel also has his Harley.”
“Does Mel work anywhere?”
Willy shook his head. “Nope—happy ward of the welfare state. He’s definitely got something going, though, just from the way he’s cruisin’ around, looking over his shoulder all the time. You can almost see the fuse hanging from his butt.”
Joe nodded, pushed himself away from the table, and began pacing the breadth of the room. “I had a small talk with Conrad Sweet’s parole officer.”
“Who?” Willy asked.
“High Top,” Sam answered.
“He still hasn’t heard from the kid,” Joe continued. “One second he was there, the next he wasn’t. Johnny, your department was asked to help look into that, right?”
“Right,” Massucco confirmed, sitting slightly straighter in his chair. “High Top’s a local boy. Been a customer of ours since he was eight or so. Parents were a mess; older brother from a different father is doing time up north for sexual assault of a minor, but he was High Top’s primary influence before we nailed him. High Top himself’s never gone for the violent stuff. He mostly steals, hustles small-scale dope deals, and earns his nickname. The only times I’ve ever seen him, he’s looking like a space cadet.”
“Any ideas where he disappeared to?”
“Not a one. We interviewed all his contacts and got nowhere.”
“His PO thinks something bad happened,” Joe told them. “He said High Top could be a smartass but was otherwise harmless, and he was regular as rain when it came to checking in, since he didn’t want to go back to jail. Did any of you come across anything in your digging that might connect him to the Martin-Robbinson trio?”
“Only Piccolo’s,” Massucco said.
They all looked at him.
“That’s—or was—one of his hangouts. It is for Mel Martin, too.” He tilted his head equivocally to one side. “Of course,” he added, “the same thing could be said for half the lowlifes in this town, so that’s hardly a neon arrow.”
“Martin’s into drugs,” Willy said flatly.
“True,” Massucco agreed. “But it’s not his primary line. He’s mostly a thief and a bully—more into beating people up.”
Joe was by this time leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets, too restless to sit at the table with the others.
“All right,” he said. “What about the whole reason we’re here, which is Michelle Fisher? Has anyone found anything connecting her to Mel, Mel to Newell Morgan beyond the sale of the truck, or for that matter, anyone to anyone?”
Lester asked almost mournfully, “You all read my report?”
“Yeah,” Willy conceded, “but that was it, right? The two old snoops that live on her road, seeing Newell’s truck go by?”
“That’s all I could find.”
“And they weren’t even sure who was at the wheel each time.”
Sam tried supporting Lester. “Newell didn’t sell the truck until after their last sighting of it.”
“They said one thing,” Lester spoke slowly, “that didn’t make it into my report, mostly because they didn’t actually see it.”
Predictably, Willy let out a laugh. “That stopped you?”
“I asked them,” Lester continued, ignoring him, “if they could see how many were in the passing truck from their angle, and they said no.”
“Meaning Newell and Mel could’ve ridden together at some point, like on a training run,” Sam suggested.
Joe rubbed his forehead. “Okay. Let’s back up a little and see what we’ve got.” He began counting off items on his fingers as he resumed pacing. “We’ve got Michelle dead of propane poisoning and clear signs of how that was both done and covered up. We’ve got circumstantial evidence pointing at Newell Morgan having an interest in her, being resentful of her, and finally benefiting from her death. We’ve got Newell establishing a firm alibi for the time of that death, but also selling his truck to a man with a known history of violence who could have functioned as the agent of Newell’s intentions.”
“Meaning we ought to lean on Mel to see if he’s got an alibi,” Willy cut in. “Along with a fattened bank account.”
“And if Newell has a thinner one,” Sam added.
“We don’t have enough probable cause to get warrants for that,” Joe cautioned.
“Plus, Michelle’s house is for sale,” Lester said.
They all stared at him.
“So what?” Willy asked.
“That may be the money—or part of it—that’ll end up in Mel’s pocket if this was a contract killing,” he said.
Joe smiled at the notion. “Les is right,” he agreed. “Newell’s on disability. His wife works at a bottom-level job. They’ve got their own house and she says they’re okay, but my bet is, that’s about it. If Newell did want Michelle killed but didn’t have the cash to pay for it, selling that house becomes crucial.”
“Wow,” Sam murmured. “So the house she lived in was the symbol of her happiness, and the grubstake to finance her death.”
“Could be,” Lester said.
“So how do we find out, if we can’t get warrants?” she asked.
Joe was staring at the floor, thinking. “We approach them from another angle,” he mused.
They waited for him to explain.
He looked up at them after a few moments. “If these two guys are in cahoots, they built a plan. They scouted the scene, maybe. They set up a cover story for Newell, and probably for Mel, too. They built all their defenses facing the direction they expected us to come from.”
Willy smiled and tilted his chair onto its back legs. “Right,” he said. “But we have a back door.”
Joe nodded. “Exactly. We do have enough to get a warrant for Ellis for stealing that trash bag.”
“And maybe enough to pick the girlfriend up as an accessory,” Willy added.
Joe crossed over to the door and opened it. “Let’s round ’em up and have a chat.”
Chapter 20
She loved riding on the back of a bike. The noise, the vibration of the engine, the sense she always got of almost flying at ground level were all memories of her past that she didn
’t regret in the least and loved to revisit, especially now that she was once more with a man she believed she could trust.
At least for the moment. Not that Ellis wasn’t dependable. Of that she had little doubt. But she wasn’t kidding herself about the life they were facing—or, more precisely, the length of it. Even if they were successful in eliminating Mel, stealing the dope, and staying clear of the law, they were still looking at a future on the lam.
But today they were merely on a day trip. Mel was all consumed with his plans; they’d been all consumed with each other and, lately, their own big plans. Ellis had finally suggested a miniature breakout—a chance to enjoy the fresh air, the sun on their backs, just to taste what freedom might be like.
It was a great idea. Nancy’s emotional claustrophobia had been worsened by the mounting gloom on both their parts. It was nice simply to ride away from it all, even briefly, and soak up the scenery and warmth of a summery Vermont day.
Perhaps presciently, they’d chosen Pownal, and the site of the abandoned racetrack there, for their trip. A huge oval laid out near where the road overlooked it, the track started life in the sixties as a horse racing venue, switching gears in midcourse to feature greyhounds. But it had closed about ten years ago, and, despite the occasional plan to use it somehow, from gambling to housing development, it remained empty, ghostly, and weather-beaten—a testament to high hopes, big dreams, and ventures run aground.
It was a setting strangely in keeping with their mood, and they celebrated the choice by taking the Harley onto the vague grassy footprint of the track, through a break in the chain-link fence, and spinning around and around the oval, throwing up dust and scattering dirt into the banks.
Later, they sat on a hill gazing down at their handiwork, eating sandwiches and drinking beer, yielding to the temporary illusion that they had nothing to worry about.
Nancy was still enjoying that feeling on the way back north toward Bennington, wondering not just if but when the fantasy of such simplicity might become fact. This made her completely unaware of the car that swung in behind them as they passed the cemetery below town.
Ellis leaned slightly to the left, abandoning Route 7 as it began filling with traffic, and took them up Monument Avenue—narrower, tree lined, and dappled with sun filtering through the leaves. He, too, was inattentive of the following car.
Holding on to Ellis’s waist, Nancy resumed daydreaming. If things did work out and Mel could be eased into the woodwork, what would they do then? Where would they move to? It wasn’t the first time she’d engaged in such fantasies. If pressed, she’d have admitted to having done nothing else from the day she left home as a teenager.
The bike began to slow. Nancy looked up and saw a couple of cars in the far distance, next to each other and blocking the road.
“Cops,” Ellis said.
She leaned in so her mouth was near his left ear. “They don’t have lights.”
“I can smell it,” he said, slowing even more. He straightened slightly. “And there’s one behind us. Shit.”
He checked what he’d seen in the rearview mirror by swinging his head around. “We gotta get out of here.”
“Ellis, maybe not. We haven’t done anything.”
“You haven’t. I’m an accessory to murder, and they probably think I’m a terrorist, too.”
He swung the bike around in a tight circle, putting their backs to the roadblock and facing the single approaching car.
“Hang on.”
He gunned the throttle, and she felt the bike heave forward beneath her, its rear wheel squealing. Ahead of them, the car fishtailed slightly and positioned itself so that it could move forward or backward, depending on how the Harley tried to cut around it.
Nancy could feel Ellis’s body tense.
“Okay, here we go,” he shouted back at her, and launched up a driveway to their right, marked “Southern Vermont College.” Behind them, sirens began to wail.
Southern Vermont College occupied the once remote five-hundred-acre Everett estate, carved into the side of Mount Anthony. Neither Ellis nor Nancy knew anything about the place—or more important, whether there was another way off the campus.
They were aimed at a huge, pale hangar-size building up the hill and slightly to their right, opposite what looked like an apartment complex. Ahead and higher still, the steep drive continued toward something huge with multiple pointed red roofs. Ellis hung left at the complex, not wanting to go any farther up and hoping to double back somehow onto Monument Avenue. The sirens were closing in. Nancy glanced quickly over her shoulder and saw that the previously nondescript cars were now sparkling with hidden blue strobe lights.
Traversing the hillside on what turned out to be a parking lot, Ellis poured on the speed, heading around a slight curve in front of the apartments, to discover at the far end that a police car was closing in from a feeder road below and to the left. Not only that, but a large pond had appeared on the right, just past the apartments, and the parking lot petered out to a narrow drive.
Ellis took off across country at a slight angle, roughly parallel to the pond—terrain to which the Harley was poorly suited.
Nancy screamed as they hit the first series of dips and humps.
“You okay?” Ellis yelled back at her.
“Yeah,” she answered before reclenching her teeth. She felt as if she were walking on a tightrope—so precariously perched, she didn’t dare to look down, didn’t dare even to think.
Somehow or other, in defiance of gravity and common sense, Ellis reached the upper end of the same feeder road the police car was still traveling. He hit the smooth surface with an explosion of power, causing Nancy to almost lose her grip on him, and aimed, engine screaming, for the school’s showcase centerpiece, Edward Everett’s eccentric, Norman castle-like mansion, built in 1914. Beyond that, however, all Nancy could see were the trees clotting the rest of Mount Anthony. It looked as though they were heading into the top end of a box.
The road ended at the narrow end of the mansion’s enormous rectangular parking lot, which was located to the building’s south side so as not to interfere with its view down the mountain, to the east.
Ellis, in a last desperate attempt to find a way back into the valley and Bennington beyond, shot off toward the mansion, hoping there might be a road beyond it. Nancy watched the fairy tale structure, red-roofed, ornate, absurdly otherworldly, grow in size before them as Ellis aimed for the narrow alleyway to its rear.
It wasn’t to be. There was no road. It was a dead end. Again Ellis slammed on the brakes, kicked the bike into a skid, and swung the large machine around to face the direction he’d just traveled from.
For the few seconds they had left, they watched four cars abreast, all with blue lights firing like flashbulbs, bearing down on them.
“Down the hill,” she shouted, pointing at the steep grassy slope back down toward the main driveway, in effect suggesting closing the circle they’d begun by entering the estate.
But Ellis shook his head, patting the Harley’s gas tank. “I know what she can do. It won’t work with two of us on board.”
Without hesitation, Nancy stepped back off the machine’s rear seat, leaving Ellis alone on the bike.
“Go.”
He whipped his head around. The cars were so close, they were skidding to a halt.
“You can’t.”
“Go,” she repeated. “I’ll be fine. I haven’t done anything.”
It took him a split second. “I love you,” he told her, and gunned the throttle one last time.
The Harley roared across the parking lot, its lightened tail end slithering to and fro, before Ellis jumped it over the lower embankment, hit the downward slope like a circus performer, and, barely under control, proceeded toward the distant road far below.
Nancy stood in the parking lot, feeling utterly alone, even the growl of the bike vanishing by the instant. Her legs were trembling with exhaustion and spent adrenaline.
>
Seeing Ellis reach the road safely and speed off toward Monument Avenue and freedom, she turned to face their pursuers.
The violence she’d expected to follow—shouted commands, drawn guns, handcuffs, being thrown to the ground—none of it came about.
Instead, with the dust swirling around them in the sun, the four cars remained quiet, their lights flashing silently, and a single man in a jacket and tie got out and approached her at a slow, almost leisurely pace.
She watched him carefully, anxious about what he might do. But his hands were open and loose by his sides, his gait relaxed, and as he drew nearer, she saw that his face, older and friendly, was calm, almost reassuring.
He nodded his greeting as he stopped near her. “Nancy?” he asked.
She nodded back, not sure she could trust her voice.
He smiled slightly, which touched his kind eyes. “My name’s Gunther. We should probably talk.”
It wasn’t a friendly room—small, bare, with a steel table bolted to the floor and two metal chairs. There were strategically placed bars on the wall, at waist level, that Nancy figured were used for handcuffs. The lighting was fluorescent and harsh, the floor gray concrete. There was a camera mounted high in one corner.
Nevertheless, the man who’d introduced himself at the college didn’t seem any less peaceful or friendly. He’d brought her a glass of water, asked her if she wanted to use the bathroom. He’d even cupped her elbow supportively as he steered her to her chair, and asked if the temperature was all right.
“Am I under arrest?” she finally asked.
“No, ma’am,” he said immediately. “You can leave anytime you’d like.”
She hesitated, surprised by that, wondering what the catch might be. “Like right now?”
He smiled slightly. “Like right now.”
She frowned, troubled by her own ambivalence. In the old days, when this scenario had been discussed over beers, it had always been punctuated by admonitions to keep silent, be stern, tell them all to fuck themselves.
But now that she was in it, she felt differently.
“I was hoping you might hear me out first,” he then said. “Your choice, though.”
