Open Season (Joe Gunther Mysteries)

by Archer Mayor

  “Robert Smith.”

  “Nice try.”

  “Really—I’m a private investigator. I have a license inside my coat. Top left.”

  I opened the coat, found a wallet with the license, along with a revolver clipped to his belt. Robert Smith came from Burlington. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I was hired to follow you.” He was sniffing the blood up his nose and trying not to choke.

  “I don’t want to play question-and-answer here. Tell me what I want to know.”

  “Can I get up? It’s cold.”

  “Of course it’s cold—it’s January. Talk to me.”

  “I was hired to follow you at night. Once you get to your office every morning, I’m supposed to let you go. I’m told by phone when and where to pick you up each night.”

  “How?”

  “This guy rented an answering service—he leaves messages for me, I leave messages for him.”

  “How do you get paid?”

  “By mail—cash.”

  “This guy has no name, of course.”

  “Mr. Jones.”

  “Cute—Smith and Jones. How did he contact you first?”

  “He called my office in Burlington.”

  “What did he sound like?”

  “Average. No accent. Not a high voice or a low one—nothing unusual.”

  “Did you bug my place?”

  “No.”

  I rapped him on the forehead with my knuckles. He let out a cry of surprise and pain. “I didn’t, goddamn it. I didn’t even know it was bugged. I just followed you and gave my reports—that’s all.”

  I jerked him to his feet by the collar. “All right. Come with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To make a phone call.”

  I dragged him down to the public phone booth outside Dunkin’ Donuts and made him call the answering service. He left a message that he’d seen me put a suitcase in the trunk of my car, as if preparing for an early morning departure. Did Mr. Jones want him to follow me if I left town, or would somebody else take over? It wasn’t much, I’ll admit, but I felt I had to put Smith to some use before I let him go.

  We stood by that phone for forty-five minutes, feeling the cold creep up our bodies like freezing water in a bathtub. I was better dressed for it than Smith, but even I was starting to hurt. I had decided on a public phone on the off chance that someone else might be watching the apartment, but I was beginning to think that frostbite might be too high a price for discretion.

  When the phone finally rang, Smith could barely hold the receiver. “This is Bob Smith,” he chattered. He listened for a moment and hung up. “I’ll be damned.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He left a message. I’m fired and we’re both supposed to get out of the cold. Thanks a lot.”

  I handed him his gun and wallet and walked away without saying a word.

  · · ·

  I was asleep in bed. That much I knew for sure—I remembered turning the electric blanket on high to thaw the chill out of my bones. But I was also having a dream unlike any I’d ever had before. It was a sound dream, with no pictures, and just one voice.

  The voice was just as Bob Smith had described it: not high, not low—average. It didn’t have a detectable accent, either, which made me think of somebody else’s description of it—John Woll’s. I’d been scornful then—as if all bad guys had accents—but now I thought maybe there was something to that. Maybe the man was a foreigner faking a nonaccent, or an actor pretending to be a foreigner faking a nonaccent. All of a sudden, I became convinced that the solution to this whole thing lay in the absence of the accent. Of course… that was it; it had been in front of my eyes all along. Or at least my ears.

  My ears, in fact, were beginning to hurt. It was the voice, of course, yelling. I opened my eyes.

  Black against black; it was hard to see, and it was all spinning slightly. I could make out a head, or something like a head, with pale holes where the eyes normally were. And there was an enormous white hand near the head, moving quickly back and forth, making slapping sounds to which I was keeping rhythm with my head. In fact, the head with the pale eyes wasn’t moving—my head was. And the hand was slapping me. That was it; I was almost sure. But I didn’t feel anything.

  The voice stopped and things suddenly tilted. I felt my bed shift under me and slide away, leaving me to thump on the floor. The softly lit ceiling moved before my eyes. I saw the top of my bedroom door go past, then my living room ceiling. It was almost like being dragged along the floor, except I couldn’t feel the floor.

  Abruptly, it got colder. I saw the ceiling of the landing outside my apartment door. Somebody grabbed my collar and propped me up against a wall; there was that head again in front of my eyes, looking just like an animated ski mask.

  “Can you hear me, Joe?”

  I noticed the eye holes of the mask had pretty red stitching all around them—nice touch.

  “Nod if you hear me.”

  I could do that, if that’s all he wanted. Things bobbed in front of me a couple of times, and I felt slightly nauseous. Had I nodded?

  “Good.”

  All right. I guess I had.

  “Look at me.”

  I’ve been doing that. I even complimented your mask.

  “They tried to gas you, Joe. They tried to kill you. It would have looked like an accident or something. Do you understand?”

  Sure, I guess.

  “Do you?”

  He wanted another nod, but that hadn’t felt too good. I grunted.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  Oh, for Christ’s sake. I nodded again and swallowed hard.

  “They want you dead, but they don’t want it to look like murder. They don’t want to draw attention to the Harris murder. The Harris murder is the key, Joe; you’re right about that. Stop chasing down blind alleys. We’ve brought them out into the open, you and me, so keep the heat on.”

  He shook me violently—that felt just great. “But remember: they’ll try to make something normal turn against you, like your stove or your car, to make it look accidental. Remember that. Do you understand?”

  I tried to grunt again. This time he bought it. In fact, he disappeared. I went back to sleep.

  I woke up at dawn, shivering in the cold, wondering if I’d just collapsed at the foot of the public phone. I was still on the landing, dressed only in my pajamas, bathed in the dim red, blue, and yellow hue from the stained glass window over the stairwell. My neck ached from being propped up against the wall, but when I tried to move, the pain brought tears to my eyes.

  Slowly, a living monument to mind over matter, I got to my feet and opened the apartment door. A freezing draft of air made me gasp and lurch toward the open windows. I slammed them shut, cringing at the noise. Then I locked and chained the door, relit the stove’s pilot lights, and got back in bed.

  As the blanket brought some feeling back to my body, I went over what had happened, and for the first time since Korea, the taste of real fear rose in my throat.

  10

  AS SOON AS I THAWED OUT and could stand without falling on my face, I swallowed half a bottle of aspirin and dialed the office.

  “You sound like death warmed over,” was Murphy’s cheery greeting. “Where the hell are you?”

  “At home. Did you get any reaction to that bug?”

  “Not yet. How was Woodstock?”

  “I’ll tell you later. You haven’t sent anyone back to where Kimberly Harris was murdered, have you?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Talk to the manager again, whatever residents date back that far; you know, whatever.”

  “That’s your hot potato. I’ve got people all over town digging into every nook and cranny on the Reitz-Phillips thing. I’m not about to touch Harris too.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in in an hour or so.”

  I left the apartment and headed north on the Putney Road to the
Huntington Arms. It was a medium-sized rental complex of twenty units, forming a U on three sides of a too short, too shallow, empty swimming pool. The open end of the U was blocked by a ten-foot-high brick privacy fence.

  It looked like all its clones across America: two stories, an outdoor balcony running around the inside of the U on the second floor, rhythmically intercepted by metal staircases leading down, a tunnel-like entrance from the parking lot to the inner court. It was flat-roofed, red-bricked and generally looked like a motel, albeit a fairly good one. I knocked on the manager’s door, the first left off the entranceway, and showed him my badge. “Are you Mr. Boyers?” My voice rattled around my head like a billiard ball.

  He was a short, skinny man with glasses—the high-school nerd grown old. “What’s up?”

  “Is your name Boyers?”

  “Yes.” He seemed embarrassed by the fact. “So you were the manager when Kimberly Harris was killed.” His mouth opened and shut a couple of times in astonishment.

  Whatever subtlety I’d used on others when mentioning the Harris case had been literally beaten out of me by now. All I wanted from this bird was some answers.

  “Kimberly Harris?”

  “You do remember the name.”

  “My God… Of course.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “But that was years ago. I mean, they caught the guy.”

  “I’m aware of that. I’m cleaning up some paperwork.”

  “Paperwork? I thought you people were all working on that shooting.”

  “Most of us are. I will be too once you’ve helped me out a little here.”

  “This really is a little crazy, you know? What’s left to be said?”

  “Humor me, okay?”

  He looked at me oddly, bobbed his head, and disappeared for a moment. He came back out pulling on an overcoat. It was bitterly cold, about ten degrees. The sky was pale blue and utterly cloudless, giving the white world around us the look of a dazzling, gigantic wedding cake. The brilliance burned straight to the back of my skull and made me feel slightly woozy.

  “I can’t believe my story isn’t already in your files ten times over.”

  I didn’t answer, despite a long opportunity, so he finally gave up with an exaggerated sigh. “The cab driver knocked on my door and said he wasn’t getting any answer from Miss Harris’s apartment. That had happened to me before. Usually people call several cabs and take the first one that comes. That way, they’re sure of not being late. You know, the cabs around here are not famous for being on time.”

  “Go on.” We were standing in the entrance tunnel, our hands in our pockets, our mouths and nostrils spewing vapor like chimneys. I wondered why he hadn’t invited me in.

  “Well, anyway, I didn’t think that’s what she was doing because she’d never done it before, you know, and she used cabs a lot. So I knew it had to be something else, like maybe she had forgotten or had changed her plans, or maybe was even in the shower.”

  “So you went to her door.”

  “Right. And I knocked and got no answer. That’s when I noticed through the window that the place was a mess. I called you people first thing. I never even went inside, not until they took the body away a long time later. Even then, it was horrible. I threw up the first time I went in to clean up.”

  “Show me the apartment.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that. It’s rented.”

  “Is anyone there now?”

  “No. She’s at work.”

  “Then there’s no harm done.”

  He looked at me anxiously, torn between caving in and telling me to take a hike. The conflict made him grumpy. “I don’t know if this is right. Anyway, it’s ridiculous.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it. If I was a prospective renter, you’d show me one of your apartments in a flash, wouldn’t you?”

  “This isn’t the same.”

  I officiously looked at my watch, hoping to hell he wouldn’t ask for a warrant. “You want to get the key, please?”

  He reluctantly stepped back through his door and reappeared with a large key ring. “You’d think you people had better things to do.”

  I let him grumble. He led the way, stepping awkwardly through the snow he hadn’t yet shoveled. We ended up at the door nearest the brick wall on the first floor.

  “I hope you aren’t going to stir this whole thing up again. The publicity last time almost cost me my job, and it took me months to rent this unit out.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m just clearing up some details—pure paperwork.”

  He paused at the door. “You want in?”

  “That was the idea.” I pressed both palms against my eyes for a moment’s relief from the light.

  While he pounded on the door to make sure the place was empty, I looked around the corner at a narrow alleyway between the back of the building and the high brick wall. It was more of a slit, really, just a bit wider than the breadth of my shoulders, and barred at the far end by a tall chained gate. A glance across the courtyard showed the same layout for the opposite wing of the building.

  I walked down the alleyway, which was fairly free of snow, to a small rectangular window mounted head-high on the wall. The manager appeared at the corner. “No one’s home. I’d appreciate it if we could get this over quickly. I’ve got shoveling to do.”

  I nodded to him and cupped my hands around my face to ward off the sunlight as I peered through the window. I was looking straight into the bedroom and the bathroom beyond—a perfect view of the glass-walled shower stall.

  “What are you doing, anyway?” Boyers’s voice had a whine to it I was finding increasingly unattractive. I didn’t answer him and retraced my steps to the apartment door.

  Lightly scented warm air billowed out as he opened the door and ushered me in. He called, “Hello? Is anyone here?” and then closed the door behind us. The darkness was a pure blessing.

  We were standing in a small living room, boxy but pleasant. Nice wall-to-wall, nice furniture, good paint job. There was a short hallway beyond, kitchen on one side, closets on the other. The bed and bathroom I’d seen from the window were at the back. It wasn’t imaginative, but it was clean, tidy, and well maintained.

  “Do you rent this furnished?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you when Harris lived here?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “What did you charge her?”

  “Let’s see. I think it was two seventy-five a month, heat included. It was close to that anyway.”

  “And now?”

  “Three twenty-five. Why, you interested?”

  I ignored that. “Who rents it now?”

  “A young lady.”

  I looked around the bedroom and picked up a framed photograph on the bedside table. A good-looking blonde girl in her twenties, arm-in-arm with some hunk with football on the brain. “Is this her?”

  Boyers sidled up and peered around my shoulder. “That’s right.”

  “Pretty.”

  “Oh, yes. Friendly, too.”

  “Did Harris pay her rent on time?”

  “Every month like clockwork.”

  “How?”

  “With a check. Vermont National.”

  “How do you think she was set financially? Well off? Scraping by?”

  “Well, she wasn’t scraping by, I know that. There are cheaper places to rent than this, and for most of her stay here, she didn’t seem to have a job.”

  “What did she do with her spare time?”

  “I don’t know everything, of course. In fact, all I can say is that every time the sun came out, she was tanning by the pool. She had beautiful skin.”

  “What kind of swimsuit did she wear?”

  He glanced at me, quickly and nervously. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess it was a bikini.”

  “You don’t know if it was a bikini?”

  “Well, I imagine it was, if that’s still what they call it.”

  “In othe
r words, she didn’t wear much of anything.”

  His face reddened. “It was a small suit.”

  “Tell me about Davis.”

  He straightened his back—safer ground. “That was a mistake.”

  “What was?”

  “My hiring him. I felt sorry for him—a Vietnam vet down on his luck. He said he’d come here to get away from the stink of the city. Instead, he brought it with him.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “Across the courtyard. It’s the match of this apartment, in fact, on the ground floor, but it’s an efficiency to allow for the laundry and utility rooms.”

  “Did you ever notice Harris and Davis having anything to do with one another?”

  “No. They’d be out by the pool together on sunny days, but only when he was working out there. And of course there were usually other people too—you know, other tenants. I never saw them even speaking to each other.”

  “Did Davis mix with anyone here that you know?”

  “No, never. He came and went and minded his own business, so it seemed. Of course, God only knows what he was doing during his time off in other parts of town.”

  “Did you ever see him drunk or doped up?”

  “Oh, no. I would have fired him if I had.”

  “No friends ever dropped by to see him?”

  “Not that I ever saw.”

  “How about Harris? Any friends there?”

  “You know, I never did see anyone. That’s strange, but I guess they both were loners. I’d never thought of that before.”

  I walked over to the bedroom window. The light was pretty dim because of the brick wall.

  “Isn’t that a shame? There used to be a pretty view out that window years ago. But they built that mess out there—that storage rental place. That’s when people started trespassing to use the pool late at night; there were some ugly incidents, as I’m sure some of your people would remember. That’s why they built the wall. The view was ruined anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

  I drew the curtains. Something blocked them from closing all the way, leaving a two-inch gap. I tugged at the curtain cord several times without success.

  “What are you doing?” The nervousness was back in his voice.

  “The curtains don’t close all the way,” I pulled at them with my hands and finally reached up to feel for the mechanism along the top, searching for what was blocking it.