Open Season (Joe Gunther Mysteries)

by Archer Mayor

  “Nope.”

  “I was afraid of that. Girls?”

  “That’s why Gail isn’t here.”

  “Bummer. Well, I guess it’s home, then. Pizza tonight.”

  “You ordering out?”

  “Hell, no. Mom does the slicing and dicing and I do the rolling—that part’s rough on her wrists. It’s a group effort.”

  He jogged off to his car—a ’65 Corvair—and I followed him back to the farm. The afternoon had been well spent. My headache was finally gone. I was as tired as I ever remembered feeling, but not exhausted. It had all the omens of a good night’s sleep.

  Mother was indeed slicing and dicing when we got home, on a board laid across the arms of her wheelchair. The two of them worked well together. As usual, I stayed out of the way, my culinary prowess being rarely in demand.

  After dinner, Leo put on his coat and beckoned to me to follow. We went across to the barn. He switched on the light and nodded at the Cadillac. “How did she handle?”

  “Pretty well. I was surprised.”

  “Yeah, I’ve updated her a little. The purists wouldn’t like it, but then they never drive the goddamned things either. You want to borrow her until you get another one?”

  “No, Leo. I wouldn’t want to take the risk. I don’t seem to be leading the most sedate of lives right now.”

  “So I hear. What are you going to do about a car?”

  “I don’t know. I can bum rides until I find another one.”

  “Pretty weak, Joey. You can’t borrow mine ’cause you’ll smack it up, but you can destroy someone else’s—and possibly its driver—with no problem. Did I get that right?”

  “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  “Right. Here are the keys.” He slapped them into my hand. “Remember, one scratch, one smudge, one single bird dropping, and we never speak again, okay?”

  “Okay.” He covered the Corvair and revealed the green T-bird, the most garish of his collection. “You heading out?”

  “Uh-huh. Heavy date.” He got in behind the wheel.

  “The gas station owner?” He furrowed his brow, visibly pained. “Oh no, not in this. Tonight’s very high-class. I’ve found a Dartmouth prof. She’s a Roman civilization nut.” The engine started up with a mellow, deep-throated roar. He grinned with pleasure. “See you later.”

  I turned off the lights after he’d left and walked back to the house. It was a full moon, and the snow around me exuded an eerie pale-blue glow.

  Mother was back at her station, the TV off, the radio burbling in the background. The single lamp on one of the tables made her white hair shine, setting her apart from the surroundings as if she were floating in the dark.

  I sat in an overstuffed armchair across the room from her. “How was your afternoon?”

  “You ought to know. He just lent me the Cadillac.”

  “He’s a nice boy. A little strange, but I’m glad I have him. When you two were little, I never would have dreamed things would turn out like this.”

  “You two really get along, don’t you?”

  “He does all the work. I’m just a cranky old lady. I sometimes wish he would go out on his own so I could die peacefully, but that doesn’t seem to be the way it will happen.”

  “You worried your dying will knock the pins out from under him?”

  “Good Lord, no. I’m much more selfish than that. I would just like to get it over with, and that’s hard with him around—he’s so irrepressible.”

  I smiled. “Is it that bad?”

  “No. I suppose not.” She reached for something beside her and pulled out a large book. “It’s just that when everything else you’ve known is dying around you, you sort of feel left out. When I heard of your accident, I had Leo get this out. It’s your album.”

  Over the years, she had built up separate photo albums for Leo and me. Typically, the only signs of her and my father were fleeting appearances in the background of some of our pictures. I got up and laid the book open on the table under the light.

  Whatever pains we might recall from endless photo sessions, grinning for some relative until our teeth began to dry, there is something magical, years later, about the result. I saw myself in those pages, from babyhood on, looking ahead; not to what I now was, but to what I was to be and yet had never become. It was like looking at pictures of the twin brother I’d lost to history. He had my face, he shared my memories, but he’d ended up somewhere else in this world.

  Frank began appearing in the photographs, at first peripherally and out of focus. I found one taken at town fair. I’m about nine or ten, holding a kitten we later named Heather, and in the background is Frank, a skinny blond in overalls talking to a girl, one foot maturely planted on a tree stump—the older teenager, soon to go off to war—not that any of us knew it then.

  He steps forward thereafter, coming into focus at my side, laughing, painting the house, working with my father, grooming a horse. Suddenly, in his World War II uniform, he retreats, looking again like the boy at the fair, gathering his courage in front of him so he can believe what he sees.

  Then comes the crucible—the years immediately after, when, giving up on my father as a guidepost to the future, I narrowed in on Frank, the returning veteran. He’d blazed through the protective bubble created by my parents, returning wiser and more bold. When my turn came to pose in front of the Army camera, it was Frank’s steps I was following, even more than my own desires.

  There are lots of shots of Korea in that album; everyone seemed to have a camera. They were mostly taken during R & R, or at rest spots far from the action. Some were taken in the field but only when nothing was happening. They don’t show the wounded men we all saw later during Vietnam; they don’t show burning huts or huddling civilians or helicopters bearing body bags. They just show erstwhile kids, looking the same as when they left—dirtier maybe, thinner certainly—but lacking something fundamental, as if only the photographer had noticed they were no longer tied to their pasts.

  I began to weep then, flipping through those pages. Nothing terribly emotional, of course—I couldn’t let go that much. But the tears still fell, no less real. I missed Frank, and missing him made me cry. I guess we don’t really cry for the dead, but for the people they leave behind—ourselves.

  Somehow, our lives had branched apart. He had married and had kids. I had married and she had died. He’d become a cop and had made captain. I’d become a cop and would become captain over his dead body. And yet he’d gone into that river without a struggle, already conceding death before knowing when it would come. And I had not—and would not. Perhaps in exchange for having lost the standard human goals of life, I felt imbued with a sense of survival, as if I were standing by the side of a road, watching everyone else walk by.

  17

  THE FIRST PERSON I MET when I drove into the Municipal Building’s parking lot was Stan Katz. He was standing by the steps, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, a frozen camera around his neck, a cloud of vapor in front of his face. I wondered how many days he’d been waiting.

  I had hoped to park quickly and make a run for the side door, but Leo’s taste in automobiles precluded that—Stan saw the car before he realized I was driving it. Like a well-trained factotum, his hand was on the door handle as soon as I cut the engine.

  “Is it true you’ve been named acting captain of Support Services?”

  “Nice to see you too, Stan.”

  “What exactly were the causes of Frank Murphy’s death? Rumors are floating around that there might have been foul play.”

  “Did you talk with the Mass State Police?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, they’re the guys with the answers. As far as I know, it was an accident.” I gently shoved him out of the way so I could get out.

  “The state police mentioned finding a cooler in the back of your car marked Human Remains. Any comment on that?”

  “No.”

  He stared at me for a seco
nd in silence. “What’s the cover-up, Joe? What are you guys hiding?”

  “Nothing, Stan. We’re digging. You know how that works.”

  “I’m not sure I do this time. We’ve never had a cop murdered before.”

  I stopped midway up the steps. “Where’d you get that? Did I say a cop had been murdered?”

  “Word’s out it’s a possibility.”

  “Word’s out Adolf Hitler lives in Paraguay. Do you believe that?” I opened the side door that led straight into the police department, bypassing the central hall. He called out to me one last time.

  “You know, Gunther, if you could hear what I hear, you’d be suspicious as hell. Bodies are piling up out there and you people aren’t coming clean. You know that stinks.”

  I had to sympathize with his frustration. We were treading a fine line. I stopped by Max’s cubicle to sign in and to pick up last week’s pile. To my surprise she got up and gave me a hug. “Welcome back.”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, Max. Nice to be back.”

  “The chief ’s waiting for you in his office, by the way. The State’s Attorney is with him.”

  I put the paperwork she’d handed me into my box in the patrol room. I had met with Brandt the night before, as soon as I’d gotten back from Thetford, to tell him what Frank and I had found out in Connecticut. I’d also asked him to set up a meeting with James Dunn.

  They were both smoking as I entered Brandt’s office—the chief his pipe, Dunn a cigarette. The place looked like a fog bank had rolled in off the ocean.

  Brandt stood up and shook my hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.” I nodded to Dunn, a far frostier fellow. He smiled slightly and nodded back. “Tony’s been telling me about your latest activities. I’m a little disappointed you waited this long to bring me in.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Until we met with Dr. Kees, we didn’t really have anything to go on. The whole thing might have died with his findings.”

  “The Kimberly Harris aspect of it might have died, but the maniac in the mask is still on the loose. It would have been nice to know they were related. This last week the press has been after me every single day. It’s been relentless.”

  “Again, I apologize. But we don’t have anything on Ski Mask either. I don’t really see why they were after you anyway. You don’t have anything to do with this yet.”

  He stubbed his cigarette out as if he wished the ashtray were my eye. “I happen to know that. They don’t give a damn. The point is, you people have put the Harris case under a cloud. That, perhaps, is your prerogative, but I damn well expect to be let in on it.”

  Brandt shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “I think that’s a legitimate beef. If Joe hadn’t been in a coma the better part of a week, I think things would have been handled with a little more grace. So, better later than never. Here we are at last; I’ve told you what we know. What do you think?”

  Dunn lit up another one. My eyes were beginning to water. “I think we should bring in the state police. This should have been theirs from the start.” He paused, but neither of us responded. “Look, our two offices work pretty well together, but let’s face it, this is out of your league. We have a murder once or twice every ten years; half the men on your staff have never even seen a corpse. Let’s just pack it in now and hand the thing over.”

  I kept a neutral voice. “We haven’t been able to do anything because we didn’t have anything to go on. The state police would have been in the same bind. Now we can start moving.”

  “On what? A paper chase after some prescription? From what I was told, you still don’t have much. Have you even thought about who this guy might be?”

  “Sure we have, but we don’t have much to go on yet. We checked Davis out—background, friends, family, all that. As far as all this recent shit is concerned, he looks clean. Ski Mask may be Kimberly Harris’s brother or lover or the father of her fetus or maybe a sister who’s undergone a sex-change operation. We’re digging. We’re not pinning it all on finding a prescription.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re shoveling smoke. I mean, you’ve got nothing.”

  “We don’t have as much as we had to jail the wrong man, that’s true enough.”

  Dunn tore the cigarette from his lips. “Wait a damned second. You haven’t one shred of evidence that Davis isn’t exactly where he belongs. You’ve let some homicidal basket case dictate everything from the very start. From what I hear, even your old friend Murphy thought you were way off base on this one.”

  “You haven’t the slightest idea what Murphy was thinking.”

  “I think,” Brandt interrupted, “we ought to give Joe a few days to see what he can come up with. After all, we have now ruled out everything except the connection between the Phillips killing and the Harris case. We’re no longer chasing every stray possibility; we’re building a case now.”

  “Give me a break, Tony. We’re looking at a man with a white cane here—he’s hardly Sherlock Holmes.”

  Brandt held up his hand. “Granted. Let’s look at it another way. Right now, Murphy’s death has been ruled an accident—by a state police force, no less—and Ski Mask is laying low. And the press hasn’t made the connection to the Davis jury yet. The selectmen and the town manager are jumping up and down, but they concede it’s still mostly a PR problem. They’re caught between the news boys and the public. If we bring in outside help, all that’s going to blow sky-high.”

  “Municipal politics are not my concern.”

  “Maybe not. But if the state police do come in, the fact that the Harris case is officially under investigation will come out. You might have to face some embarrassing questions, for which none of us have the answers—yet.”

  Dunn crossed his arms and glared out the window. “I stand by my actions in the Harris case.”

  Neither Brandt nor I said a word. In the long silence that settled among us, we could hear the boiler in the basement fire up and the radiators begin to rattle and ping.

  Dunn finally let out a long puff of breath, as if he’d been holding it all this time. “Well, it isn’t really my decision to make. It’s still police business at this point. If you want to hold on to it a while longer, be my guests.” He got up and put his cigarettes and lighter into his pockets. “Do try to let me know what the hell is going on, though, will you?”

  Brandt nodded. “Absolutely. Thanks for coming by.”

  I waited until he closed the door behind him. “Stan tells me I’ve been made acting captain.”

  Brandt shook his head. “God, I’m starting to think we ought to hire him as a messenger boy. Yes, you have been.” He paused, feeling for a reaction. “Is that all right?”

  I got up. “Yeah.”

  He let it be. “So, what’s your first tack?”

  “To get reorganized. I want to check on what came in last week. Let me see what’s what and I’ll get back to you. From the way it looks now, though, we’re going to end up putting a lot of people on this. If anything else breaks loose, we won’t have a choice about bringing the state police in.”

  Among the pile Max had given me was a letter from Beverly Hillstrom confirming the survival of the samples, the official accident report from the Mass State Police, and a message that Floyd Rubin had called.

  He was tending to a customer when I walked in, so I loitered by the magazine rack and waited. He saw me and came straight over, leaving the woman at the counter, money still in her hand.

  “Lieutenant Gunther, I heard about the accident. I’m so terribly sorry about the other man.”

  “Thanks. Why don’t you finish up with her so we can talk.”

  “Certainly.”

  He returned to the counter and nervously set to work. His demeanor was totally unlike when we’d first met—I’d expected a far more hostile reception. Now, he seemed more scared than anything else.

  He showed the woman to the door and locked it behind her, pulling down a shade marked �
�Closed.” I started to tell him not to bother but then kept quiet. Maybe it was best we were left alone.

  “Did you find those time sheets you mentioned?”

  He nodded quickly. “Oh yes. Very soon after we talked. You said you’d be going out of town for a few days, so I held on to them, and then I heard about your accident. I became very frightened.”

  “Why?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t really know. When we talked, I was left with an ominous feeling, and then the newspaper started reporting on all those incidents, trying to tie them all together to a masked man. And then you almost died, and the other man did. I couldn’t help but feel that your looking into Kimberly’s death was somehow connected to it all. I began to feel very nervous, as if I was in the middle of something, but I didn’t know what.”

  “You are.”

  He leaned against the counter. “Oh, my Lord.”

  “You didn’t tell me everything that went on between you and Kimberly, did you?”

  His eyes closed tightly and he shook his head. “Yes, I did. I may have down played my affection for her, but that’s all.”

  “You did love her?”

  “Yes, I suppose. I know that’s stupid—it’s like a boy falling in love with his teacher. It’s not real—it wasn’t real. I know she felt no similar feelings for me. In fact, she laughed when I told her. Not cruelly, mind you—I mean, I had to laugh with her. She just saw how silly it was, which I couldn’t see until she showed me. That’s why she left and why I didn’t keep in touch. I was too humiliated to tell you all that. You can see why, surely.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I patted him on the shoulder. He looked so utterly humiliated I didn’t have the heart to ask him flat out if they’d actually made love. Odds are they had, which explained his embarrassment cutting so deep. “I am going to ask you for a favor, though, and chances are it’s going to make you twice as uneasy.”

  “What is it?”

  “A blood test. There is absolutely no suspicion of your being involved in this case in any way whatsoever, understand? But I’m asking everyone who had any kind of involvement with Kimberly for the same thing, just so the totally innocent people don’t clutter up the picture.” I was overstating the case, of course. For all I knew, this man was a closet psychopath. I doubted it though.