Open Season (Joe Gunther Mysteries)

by Archer Mayor

  Gorham had become a town besieged as state troopers, sheriff ’s men and even the town constable marched about in contrasting uniforms, notebooks in hand, radios squawking. Patrol cars, ambulances, snow plows, a coroner’s station wagon all sported blue, red, and yellow flashing lights with a competitive energy wasted on the local population, none of whom was in the way. In contrast to the chaos that had led up to it, this flurry of post-shooting investigations had all the earmarks of textbook efficiency. McNaughton, I and everyone else had been interviewed again and again by the representatives of those offices who now had to pick up our broken pieces. The veiled skeptical glances and toneless questions had done little to bolster what was left of our pride.

  The day had concluded with several hours of isometric exercise on a jump seat in the back of the lurching ambulance carrying Kunkle home to Brattleboro. By the time I slumped onto the front seat of Gail’s car, I had been awake and tense for roughly thirty-four hours.

  And yet, now that I was back in the lap of normalcy, heading toward bed with nothing but warm and soothing comfort attending, my mind began to stir from its torpor. I ran it all through, from the discovery of “Kimberly’s” twisted nude body to the snow-dusted corpse of her murderer, and all I could see were unanswered possibilities. The only light left, the only potential oasis in this desert, floated in Cioffi’s last words.

  “Does the name Teicher ring any bells?”

  “John Teicher?”

  “Maybe. Who is he?”

  “Head of Leatherton, Inc. I met him a few times when he was coaxing a building permit out of the board for that industrial park—not that it was any great feat. We were pushovers. Why?”

  I didn’t answer at first. I was basking in the oasis. This piece of chitchat had handed me the source of Cioffi’s wealth, the probable reason for Pam Stark’s death, and, I thought, the father of her fetus. The sensation that washed over me was not unlike pure bliss. For the first time, I was convinced all the puzzle pieces were on the table—and I had just caught a glimpse of the box top.

  “Why, Joe? What’s Teicher got to do with this?”

  “I don’t know. His name just came up. Drive me by the office.”

  She stared at me in amazement. “Joe, it’s the middle of the night.”

  “I need to talk to Tony.”

  “You can barely talk to anyone. Can’t it wait?”

  “No. Please.”

  She shook her head and turned the car around.

  · · ·

  “You’re not going to be able to get a warrant just because Cioffi mentioned his name. You know that.” Tony was sitting on the edge of a cot he’d set up in his office. He was wearing his pants and an undershirt.

  I nodded.

  “You also know that if you waltz through his door and piss him off, he’s liable to stir things up a little—like reporting you to Tom Wilson or the board.”

  I nodded again.

  He stood up and put his shirt on. “You look like hell.”

  “Thanks. Can I do it?”

  “You’re asking permission?”

  “I want backup—lots of it.”

  “You really think this is it?”

  “Yes.”

  Brandt gave me a half smile. “We’re in such hot water now, I don’t see where a little extra can do any harm. I’ve already been given thirty days vacation without pay, so you might do me some good for once.”

  “They suspended you?”

  “Yes and no. They won’t identify it, but I’m out of here next week for a month. That’ll give ’em time to decide whether to make it permanent or not. If you come up with something, I might be invited back.” He gave me an odd smile, and added, “Of course, that’s a two-edged sword for you. They plan to have you stand in for me while I’m out. That might grow on you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He continued smiling. “Thanks. Well, I’m off to the hospital, for what little good it’ll do. Let’s reconvene here at 8:00 A.M. I’ll set everything up.” He put on his jacket and patted me on the shoulder. “I’m sorry about the screwup, Joe. Try to get some sleep.”

  33

  “WANT ANY?” Billy Manierre offered me a cup of coffee.

  “No thanks.” I checked my watch. It was 8:15. “How are we set?”

  “I’ve got three patrol cars, two men each, one van with a driver, and all the special gear I could find. What are we doing anyway? Taking a fort?”

  “I just want to talk to a man—forcefully.” Aside from Brandt, no one knew what I had planned.

  “I guess.” We set out in single file toward the Leatherton, Inc. headquarters, driving along the back roads as much as possible. I’d collected seven hours of the deepest sleep I could recall. Now I sat in the passenger seat of Tyler’s unmarked car, squinting against the glare off the early sun-bleached snow, wondering for the first time if I was right. I wondered if my desperation to save at least one piece from the chess board was clouding my judgment, or worse still, whether I was leaving open yet another hole for Stark to gain the advantage.

  Leatherton had been open since eight o’clock, but I’d wanted every one to get settled before making my play. I’d also wanted to make sure that Teicher would be there. His secretary had assured me he would when I’d anonymously phoned twenty minutes before.

  We drove up, lights flashing, and clustered around the two entrances—the van, Tyler’s car, and one patrol car out front, the rest covering the back. I led my four men, armed with Winchester pumps, through the lobby, past the startled receptionist and up the stairs to the top floor. There I showed my badge to the woman at the first desk I saw and demanded to see Teicher. She looked at the badge, at the guns, at her phone and then silently pointed down the hallway. We marched off like a bunch of commandos in search of a battlefield, and I threw open the double doors at the end of the hall.

  We fanned out into a large, square, dark-paneled office that looked as if it had been helicoptered in from some New York corporate penthouse. It made Cioffi’s digs look humble by comparison. Whatever other philosophies fueled Leatherton’s machine, one of them was obviously to pamper the executives. In this case, the executive was a middle-sized man, both in girth and height, with a swept-back shock of dazzling white hair and a wide-open mouth. He was standing next to a ping-pong-table-sized desk, holding a folder in his hand.

  I pointed to Tyler. “Watch the door.” Tyler made a nice snappy move with his shotgun and put his shoulder against the doorjamb, looking fully prepared to die for the cause.

  I crossed over to the man, whose mouth was beginning to close, while at the same time ordering one of the patrolmen to close the curtains. “Are you John Teicher?”

  “Yes. What’s going on?”

  I grabbed his elbow and propelled him to the corner of the room away from the window. I noticed the patrolman looking through the curtains. “See anything?”

  “No, sir. All clear.”

  Teicher was now standing with his back against the wall. “What’s this all about?”

  I ignored him and pulled my radio from its pouch. “Red Two, this is Red One. Do you read?”

  I had to admire the response. Billy Manierre was enjoying himself. “Roger, Red One. That’s affirmative. The perimeter’s secure. No sign of hostiles. I’ve opened a field patch to headquarters.” Total baloney, of course—we were all on the same frequency.

  “Roger. Red One out.” I pocketed the radio. “Mr. Teicher. We have strong reason to believe your life is in danger. Are you aware of the man the newspapers have identified as the Masked Avenger—Colonel Henry Stark?”

  He blinked several times and wet his lips. “I’ve read something about it, yes.”

  “Well, we believe he has made the connection between you and his daughter’s murderer, Mr. Cioffi. He has vowed to kill everyone even remotely involved in her death, and you are very high on that list.”

  I was crowding him, and he started to step away but bumped into the wall. His eyes were flittin
g around the room, as if looking for a place to rest. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Come on, Mr. Teicher. Cioffi and I talked before he was shot through the head with an explosive bullet. Your name, shall we say, came up rather prominently. Now, if you want to play dumb, that’s your prerogative, but I doubt you’ll live to see the end of the week. This man’s very good.”

  Now was the break point. This had all been pretty hokey, but I was hoping he had been spending the last few weeks watching the waters slowly rise around him. Unless he was made of stern stuff indeed, he had to be feeling pretty isolated by now.

  It worked. His head suddenly slumped to his chest, and he rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Christ. What a nightmare.”

  “Then, just for the record, you admit to knowing that Cioffi killed Pam Stark and to covering up that fact?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ll have to place you under arrest.”

  He nodded dumbly, and I read him his rights. After he’d acknowledged them, I steered him to the sofa lining the wall to his right. “You want to talk about it now, or wait for a lawyer?”

  He sat down heavily and laid his head back so that he was staring at the ceiling. “How much do you know?”

  I thought hard for a second, deciding how far I should stick my neck out. “I know you’d been having an affair with Pam Stark at the time of her death and that she was pregnant with your child. I also know that Cioffi put the squeeze on you for a promotion and a steady payoff. What I don’t know is how you tie in to her murder.”

  He stared at me anxiously. “I had nothing to do with that. I was in love with her. I was going to divorce my wife and marry her.” He looked away, his face creased with sorrow, his voice suddenly low. “I guess in that sense I did have a hand in her murder.”

  “How so?”

  “Cioffi had been blackmailing me with the affair. Somehow he’d found out about us. It was odd, actually. It wasn’t like anything you see in the movies. He was very polite about it, and not very greedy. In a funny kind of way, I liked him then. He was the one person I could talk to about Kimberly—I mean Pam Stark. He would listen and sympathize and sometimes even give me advice. Kimberly could be pretty demanding and she was a lot…” He groped for the word. “… Younger than I was; I mean in her tastes, if you get my meaning.”

  “Sexually,” I muttered.

  “Yes. Her needs were considerable. Anyway, things changed all at once, it seemed. Cioffi became quite ill—I think it was his asthma—and began taking massive doses of medicine. It changed him completely, physically and emotionally. He was like a temperamental time bomb. He became very suspicious of me and insecure about his position. I noticed he began to follow me around after work. He also began visiting Kimberly—Pam—and making friends with her. That upset me a bit. And then, right in the middle of it all, she became pregnant.”

  “Did you think Cioffi might have been the father?”

  He looked at me wide-eyed. “Oh, Lord, no. She thought he was a joke; she would never have done that with him—at least not then. No, she loved me, I think; or that’s what she said. In retrospect, I think I wanted to see more than there was. But anyhow, she wanted to get married and have the child.”

  He sighed and shifted his weight. “At first, I couldn’t see it. I do love my wife, too, you see. And we have children. But Kimberly was like something I’d never dreamed could be mine. I couldn’t imagine giving her up, even though I subconsciously knew she’d probably tire of me before long. So I told her I’d do it. That’s what made Cioffi kill her. That’s how I’m responsible.”

  “He saved the golden egg by killing the goose.”

  He gave me an odd look, which I suppose I deserved. “I guess so. He was really quite unbalanced. It was like being with a schizophrenic, listening to him describe every detail. He demanded that I know it all—every move.”

  “He framed Bill Davis.”

  “The black man? Yes. Knocked him out with her lamp and dragged him into the room, scratched Kimberly’s dead fingernails across his face, left incriminating evidence all over. He was like a madman; completely demented. He said he wanted the scene to look as gruesome as possible so that no one would ever forget. But it was more personal than that. I realized he’d harbored a real hatred of me all that time, despite his amiability—he hated me for my money, my relationship with Kimberly, even my health. He told me time and again how he was going to end up in a wheelchair and that I was going to pay for that. He told me he did things to Kimberly, and that she’d done things to him, that were guaranteed to get at me. He was totally unbalanced.”

  “What do you mean, ‘he did things to Kimberly’?”

  He rubbed his forehead again. “They were sexual in nature. When he first came to see her that night, I guess he threatened her or something. He said she made love to him—orally, that is. He claimed it was her choice, but I don’t believe it. Then he killed her, tied her down, arranged the scene, and finally he masturbated on her—just before he left. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was watching me like a hawk as he was telling me all this, looking for my reaction. I felt I was with a monster.”

  He was slumped over in his seat by now, his hands clasped behind his neck, as if warding off an avalanche. He raised his head and sought my eyes with his. Tears were on his cheeks. “I was terrified. Terrified of him, of what he’d done, of what it would mean if it came out. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “So you did nothing.”

  “No. Not even after he was off the drug and was normal again and tried to make amends.”

  “Make amends?”

  “Well, that’s what it seemed like. He became friendly again, dropping by here after hours, telling me about his stock market coups. But I remained scared of him forever after. It was like waiting for Mr. Hyde to reappear; instead, it was Colonel Stark who appeared.” He paused and wiped his eyes.

  “What happened when it started coming out—when Stark did his little number and the newspapers grabbed hold of it?”

  He gave an enormous sigh. He seemed utterly exhausted. “We were like two men in a sinking lifeboat; totally different from one another but bound together, you know? We spent more time together these last few weeks than we had since Kimberly’s death. I never would have imagined any of this happening to me—not in a million years… I’m glad it’s over.”

  “You may not feel that way when all this comes out.”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  “Not any more.” Unlike, I thought, ten minutes ago.

  34

  I GROPED FOR THE PHONE with my eyes still closed, hoping the call would be brief enough that I could handle it without fully waking up.

  “Gunther?” It was James Dunn.

  I opened my eyes. “What?”

  “What the hell are you doing? You sound half asleep.”

  “I am. Tony sent me home. Said I was a hazard to operations.” I looked at my watch. It was seven o’clock at night.

  “Sorry. Thought you’d want to know the judge kicked Teicher loose at the arraignment.”

  “What?” I sat straight up.

  “Released on his own recognizance.”

  “But what about protecting him from Stark?”

  “Stark has made no threat against him, real or implied, as the saying goes.”

  “But he’s a witness, goddamn it.”

  “To what? All the principals are dead.”

  “How about Bill Davis?”

  “He’s being processed out anyway, and as quietly as possible I might add. That’s a hint, by the way, in case you decide to rub noses with Katz again.”

  “Where’s Teicher now?”

  “I think he went home.”

  I hung up and dialed Brandt. “You hear about Teicher?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “Dunn did the honors. What are we going to do about it?”

  There was a pause. “Not much we can
do.”

  “Stark’s going to kill him.”

  “Why? Teicher was going to marry the girl. That’s hardly a killing offense, even if it didn’t work out.”

  “Stark doesn’t know that; he just knows Teicher knocked her up—that’s a capital crime in his book. Jesus, Tony, what the hell have you been doing all this time? Paying me lip service? Why did you let me do all that razzle-dazzle with the shotguns at Teicher’s office?”

  “You told me that was to squeeze him for a confession.”

  “Well, it was, but all I did was soup it up a little. The threat is real, believe me.”

  There was a momentary silence at the other end. “What makes you so sure?”

  I couldn’t believe I had to replow this field. The frustration made me blurt out: “Because by approaching Teicher like a platoon of Marines, we’ve all but challenged Stark to knock him off. I thought you understood that.”

  Brandt’s voice went totally flat. “It wasn’t clear. Why did you go home without laying it out?”

  “I thought Teicher would be locked up for a while. The arraignment wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow. Look, I don’t know what I thought. Maybe I got cold feet, setting Teicher up as bait.”

  “You sure choose your moments to be coy.”

  I let a petulant flash of anger cover my guilt. “I told you he was in danger. I told Dunn that, too. What the hell did you guys think? That I’d suddenly gone soft in the head? Hasn’t Stark proved he’s nutty enough for something like that? Teicher’s all we have left, for God’s sake.”

  “All right, all right, let’s drop it. You challenged him to a duel and Teicher’s the prize. We better get him back under cover. I’ll send a patrol out to his house now to sit on him until you get there.”

  I fumbled with my clothes in a blind fury. Once I’d set the ball in motion, I should have covered it like a blanket. There was no excuse for slacking off at the last moment. I’d been complacent and stupid and scared to play by Stark’s rules to the end. As I slammed the door behind me, I inanely swore it wouldn’t happen again.

  As it turned out, I was lucky. I found Teicher intact at his home, a patrol car parked out front. But he was obviously not a happy man.