by Archer Mayor
Frank grunted. “And Phillips’s death guarantees we can’t just ignore him.” He got up. “So I guess we won’t.” He paused at the opened door. “You can look into Harris, with my incredibly valuable backing, but still try keeping it under your hat, okay?”
7
EARLY ON SEPTEMBER 15, 1983, the police were called by the manager of the Huntington Arms on Putney Road. One of his tenants, Kimberly Harris, had made arrangements with a local cab company to be picked up and driven to the Keene airport, but she wasn’t answering the repeated knocks on her door. From what the manager could see through the living room window, the apartment appeared ransacked. He said he didn’t want to use his pass key until the police were with him.
Two patrol cars were dispatched to the scene, driven by Sergeant George Capullo and Patrolman John Woll respectively, each of whom was near the end of his shift. They entered the apartment with the manager and found the nude and strangled body of Kimberly Harris tied to her bed. Calls were put out to Support Services, the State’s Attorney and the regional medical examiner. Detectives Willy Kunkle and J.P. Tyler arrived ten minutes later; Kunkle took charge of the investigation while Tyler went about gathering physical evidence.
A preliminary review of the site led officers to believe that a struggle had taken place, ending in Kimberly Harris being tied to her bed. The rope attaching her right hand to the bedpost had worked loose, and her fingernails were jagged and bloody, indicating she had scratched her assailant. A broken, blood-smeared lamp was found on the floor near that same hand, rousing suspicions that it may have been used for self-defense. Wet, viscous deposits in and around her mouth and pubic area led Tyler to assume she had been sexually assaulted.
The regional medical examiner, Alfred Gould, recommended that the state medical examiner take personal charge of the forensic investigation, and James Dunn, the State’s Attorney, agreed. Dr. Beverly Hillstrom was therefore contacted and arrived on the scene from Burlington three hours later.
Meanwhile, based on the manager’s statement that the leather belt found around the victim’s neck belonged to the janitor, Kunkle quickly secured a warrant allowing a search of the janitor’s quarters. During the search, the police found a woman’s undergarments, a small quantity of heroin with the appropriate paraphernalia, and the janitor, a black man named William Davis. Davis was sitting on the edge of his bed under the influence of the drug, nursing both a bad head wound and several deep scratches on his left cheek. He was booked on a charge of felony-murder.
Several days later, Dr. Hillstrom reported her findings. They were compared with additional tests conducted by the state crime lab. According to both reports, the blood under Harris’s nails matched Bill Davis’s; his fingerprints were in various parts of her apartment and on the belt used to strangle her; the blood-smeared dent found on the lamp matched the cut on his head; the rope used to tie her down was cut from a coil found stored with the rest of his tools; and the semen found on her body was compatible with his blood type.
One additional detail surfaced but was deemed largely irrelevant: Kimberly Harris was five-and-a-half months pregnant at the time of her death. Davis’s blood chemistry ruled him out as the father.
Davis’s statement to the police, obtained after he’d been apprised of his rights, was a rambling, barely coherent denial of the accusations made against him. He claimed he’d been hit on the head from behind sometime the night before and had woken up in his bedroom shortly before the police had arrived. He also claimed he’d been injected with heroin while he was unconscious. He denied ever having an interest in Harris. When asked if he had a lawyer, he burst out laughing. The public defender was called in to take his case.
From that point on, the legal dance began, and the police all but vanished from the scene. Davis was arraigned, his counsel pleaded for release, the judge set a stiff bail, and Davis ended up as a target for the white pranksters in the Woodstock State Correctional Facility, all in short order.
All that was according to the official written report, tailored for public consumption and rendered in such obtuse pseudo-legalese that I had trouble translating it. There were three remaining sources of information I could use to dig into the case: the court records, located upstairs in the derelict, sauna-like bathroom; the police case file, a bound logbook stuffed with additional odds and ends scribbled on napkins, paper placemats, and what have you; and the officers’ notebooks, those small black jobs we all carry around to make personal notes and which don’t belong to anyone but ourselves. The notebooks are usually the most telling, of course, assuming the owner has kept them and can still decipher his own handwriting, but they are sacrosanct—some of what’s in them could get a cop into serious trouble. Had the head guy on the job been Murphy, I might have gotten some access to his notebook. Considering that man was actually my dear friend Kunkle, I wasn’t going to waste time worrying about my chances.
The case file was the logical first step, but it too demanded some deciphering. Many of the items thrown into it were comprehensible only to the throwers, and since Frank wanted me to act invisible, I was in a bad position to ask for favors.
So, for the moment, the court records were the only road I could travel. I closed the written report before me, returned it discreetly to the filing cabinet in the main office, and lumbered my way back upstairs to the Clerk of Court.
The girl behind the counter was her usual summery self. “Two days in a row? I thought you didn’t like the stairs.”
“I’m working on a medical disability. I need your indulgence again.”
As before, she glanced at the door behind her and lowered her voice. “Shoot.”
“Are you the only person from this office who goes upstairs?”
She nodded. “You’ve obviously never seen my boss.”
I had. It was a rhetorical question. “What would you do if you found someone going through those files without your clearance?”
She pursed her lips. “Other people have junk up there.”
“This would be your junk—like, say, in a bathroom.”
“If he was someone I knew,” she smiled, “and he wasn’t removing anything or making a mess out of the filing, I think I’d just say ‘Hi’ and maybe offer him a fan.”
I smiled back. “Thank you.”
The first thing I did was search the upper floor for a light with a stronger bulb than the one hanging from the middle of the bathroom ceiling. The best I could manage was seventy-five watts. I then stripped to the waist, shifted the boxes into a rough beginning-middle-end order, and settled as comfortably as I could on the toilet seat. I opened the first file from the first carton and began to read.
· · ·
Gail lived on Meadowbrook Road, north of West Brattleboro, actually not far from Orchard Heights. But where the latter had appeared as if by the wave of a Realtor’s wand, Gail’s neighborhood had followed an unrushed evolution from countryside to farms, and from farms to large family homes. Lately, the occasional one-and-a-half story modern ranch-style was starting to appear, but with discretion—even lending a certain democracy to the street.
Her house had been an apple barn once, a small part of a large area still referred to as Morrison’s Farm. No one named Morrison lived on the road anymore, and perhaps predictably there wasn’t a real farm anywhere in the vicinity. But the apple barn remained, high at the top of a field facing east, overlooking where the main house had once been and where a long uncared-for driveway now struggled up the slope to meet it.
That, of course, was unplowed. Every year I reminded her to set up a contract with someone to plow the drive regularly, and with equal consistency she forgot about it until she’d been snowed in several times. Her stubborn absent-mindedness had become an early winter rite for both of us, a demonstration of her reluctance to let the fall slip away without protest. Sentiment aside, I thought it was a pain in the butt.
I made as good a try as I could at the hill, fishtailing like crazy, bald tires w
hirring like dynamos, and ran out of steam about half way up, as usual. With a world-weary sigh—always good for the soul when no one else is around to lend sympathy—I got out into the early evening darkness and trudged the rest of the journey in my ancient, half-laced boots. I saw her watching me from behind the sliding-glass door of the porch, a mug of something hot cradled in both hands. She was wearing blue jeans and a work shirt, and they and the soft backlighting from within the house showed off her slim, almost skinny outline. She turned on a light as I reached the porch steps, and drew open the door.
“When are you going to put on snow tires?”
“Ha, ha.” I got to the top and she carefully wrapped her arms around me and gave me a kiss. I lifted her slightly off her feet, swung her into the house, and closed the door.
“I think I just poured tea down your back,” she whispered in my ear.
“Then it’s probably on your rug, too.”
We separated and looked at the small dark stain on her rug. She shrugged. “One of thousands. That’s why I put it in front of the door. You want some?” She proffered her cup.
I sniffed suspiciously. “What is it?”
“Sleepy Time.”
I wrinkled my nose. “How about some nice, sweet, artery-clogging cocoa or something?”
“You got it.” She headed for the kitchen, and I went for the huge, overstuffed couch in front of the fireplace. I settled in its buxom embrace, stuck my stockinged feet out on the coffee table, and laid my head back on the pillows. I loved this woman, if not for herself then for her truly unique sofa. High above me a shiny aluminum mobile turned slowly in the air currents near the cathedral ceiling. The house was a mishmash of open levels, bare beams, and narrow staircases; you couldn’t walk ten feet without climbing up, stepping down, or fighting vertigo at some railing-free edge. Even then, it paid to watch your step. Dozens of little knickknacks—pots, wooden boxes, statuettes, rocks, sea shells, and God knows what else—lurked like frozen pets all over the house, hiding on the stairs and around corners as if waiting for dinner.
She came back in, handed me a mug, and wedged herself in the opposite corner of the couch, wriggling her toes under my thigh. She looked beautiful with her long hair spread out against the pillows.
“I’m glad you’re back.”
She took a sip of her tea and smiled. “Did you miss me?”
“Yes. A lot.”
She was quiet for a while and I just lay there, trying to melt through the pillows to the floor. The crackling of the fire massaged my brain.
“Sounds like you’ve been busy.”
I rolled my head on the pillow to look at her. “Oh?”
“The shooting. It’s all I’ve heard about since I got back.”
“Yeah. It’s still up in the air. We’ll see.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“The shooting?”
“That or whatever is causing that furrow on your brow. It always gets deeper when you’re thinking about something.”
Involuntarily I touched the permanent crease between my eyebrows. My father had sported one too. When he got mad it had given him the look of a wrathful Zeus—used to scare the hell out of me.
I smiled at the memory. “I guess it’s time for a vacation.”
“You just had one.”
“Wasn’t long enough.”
She laughed and put her cup down. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
I was a little embarrassed. The urge to share my thoughts quarreled with the stiff-upper-lip image I had of myself. She’d also made me feel I was on a psychiatrist’s couch, which was not somewhere I ever yearned to be. “Do you charge for this?”
“Maybe—but not money.” She gave me a friendly leer.
“Well, hell. Let’s pay now and talk later.” I stretched my hand up the inside of her thigh.
She caught my fingers with her own. “Seriously, what’s up?”
I leaned back again and waved my hand. “I don’t know; it’s nothing specific. Feeling old, I guess.”
“I used to do that when I was thirty-five.”
I tapped the side of my head with a finger. “You and me both. No… Murphy asked me to quit and join him in some business in Florida. I turned him down.”
“What kind of business?”
“No kind—he had no idea. He just wanted the company. I felt badly because I owe him a lot.”
“You have your own life to lead.”
That made me smile. “That’s what they say.”
“What happens to you once he leaves? Captain?”
“Probably. The chief and I get along; I’m next in line.”
“Nervous?”
“Not from the command angle—I’m used to that. I just hope it doesn’t change me.”
“Like Frank?”
“You’re pretty good at this. Yeah, like Frank. I’m digging into something right now, and I get the feeling he wishes he was already in Florida. It bugs the hell out of me.”
“Does it tie into Phillips? A cover-up?”
I shook my head. “Nothing quite so glamorous, although Stan Katz will probably start along those lines soon. I think maybe it’s what they used to call OTJR—On The Job Retirement. Frank doesn’t want to get dirty this close to the end. He has a nice clean record and a clear conscience. I can’t blame him, but it’s sad to see. I just hope to hell it never happens to me.”
“What is it?”
I hesitated to tell her. “Your selectman hat could get us all into some trouble here.”
“I’m not wearing it.”
“You might start.”
She looked at me silently.
“It is connected to Phillips. What have you heard so far?”
“Just what’s been in the newspaper. Some of the screamers on the board have been making a few phone calls, trying to get information.”
“Mrs. Morse?”
“She’s convinced you tell me everything.”
“Don’t I?”
“You’re not now.”
It was silly to hedge with her. I didn’t tell her everything, but what I did she always treated confidentially—always had and always would. That was the nature of the woman.
“I’m digging into the Kimberly Harris murder.”
“Wow. We’re not talking parking meters here, are we? No wonder Frank’s nervous. You mean this shooting’s tied in to the Harris case?”
I hesitated a moment. Maybe Frank had a good point. This whole thing was a can of worms just waiting to be opened. She shoved me with her toe. “My lips are sealed.”
I took her at her word. “Someone in a ski mask has been setting up ex-members of that jury—five so far. I think to force us to reopen the investigation.”
“Bill Davis’s jury?”
“Right. Reitz and Phillips were on it. Since them, three others have been snared, none as permanently. Just last night a girl was molested by a masked man and led to believe he was someone who served with her on that jury.”
“All in two days. He doesn’t waste time.”
“No, he doesn’t. And he may have a valid point.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I spent almost the whole day reading the trial transcripts and all the rest—years’ worth of legal back and forth. It was kind of weird. Perry Mason always got his man in half an hour. These guys took two years and didn’t come up with anything more than what they started with. If I’d have been Bill Davis, I would have been a basket case by the end of it. I mean, they pulled stunts like taking eight months to process the paperwork before the defense could get an appeal heard—it dragged on forever.”
“But wasn’t Davis guilty?”
“He was found guilty. We had a full plate of evidence against him, and the prosecution fed it to the jury one spoonful at a time—blonde, beautiful, young, pregnant girl found tied down and raped on her bed. The stuff of Hollywood dreams. Dunn played with the fantasy, building it up, filling in all the details. The struggle, the rippe
d clothes, the rope around the wrists and ankles, one final burst of resistance with a lamp and fingernails, then the rape, the semen in the mouth, the strangulation. It was a real performance.”
“But essentially true, or not?”
I couldn’t answer that. The question wasn’t relevant. What had occurred in that courtroom in the quaint county seat of Newfane hadn’t happened in a vacuum. Outside, in the street, in the bars, in the chance encounters of friends, the murmurs had floated—of outrage, of revenge, of racism. The supposed violent meeting between one of their own and a black flatlander junkie had stirred up a long-denied Yankee prejudice that rose slowly like a bubble in a tar pit.
“I remember at the time hearing that racist jokes were being kicked around between some of the jurors and the bailiff. It was hardly the most impartial of surroundings.”
I leaned forward and picked up my mug. The cocoa was cool now. “I’ll give Davis this much. He took it on the chin. Without saying a word, he told us all to take a long walk off a short pier.”
“So do you think he was guilty or not?” she asked again.
“As far as I know, he’s as guilty as he’s always been.”
“Then why are you digging into all this? The publicity’s already pretty hot without it.”
I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. Why indeed. “Because I think things are going to force me to change my mind.”
8
I PARKED OUTSIDE MY HOME about ten that night. Gail wanted an early start the next morning. I spent the night with her every once in a while, usually on weekends or days when we didn’t have to tear off to some job at the crack of dawn. We were both old enough now that we wanted our time together rounded out and comfortable, including a good night’s sleep and a casual, stretched out breakfast. That hadn’t stopped us from making love on the couch before dinner tonight, but we hadn’t seen each other in a while.
