by Archer Mayor
“Willy?”
The voice was nice, oddly familiar, and comforting. Under normal circumstances, a stranger’s voice from inches away would have caused him alarm. But not this time, which surprised him.
“Willy? It’s Sue.”
Okay. Now it was coming back to him. He opened his eyes slowly.
Above him, haloed by blond hair, was Sue Spinney, filling his field of vision with her smile and blue eyes.
He just barely resisted reaching out and touching her cheek. “Hey, Sue.”
The pain notched up a click and made him wince.
“Still hurting pretty badly?”
“What did you two do?” he asked. “I feel like I been drugged.”
“Victoria did give you an injection, but I also tried a massage technique that seemed to work.”
He closed his eyes again. “I remember that. I thought it would be complete crap.”
“And?”
“I apologize,” he told her. “I’m not in great shape right now. I know that. But you did good. Thank you.”
He heard a noise by his side, and a second female voice joined Sue’s. “You’re back,” Sam said.
Willy smiled and looked at her, her face now hovering next to Sue’s. This, he didn’t have to think about. He reached out and laid his hand against her face. “Hi, sweetheart. Sorry I messed up.”
He saw her register the endearment, maybe a first for him, or close to it.
Sam glanced at Sue. “You should give him that shit daily.”
* * *
Joe punched in the code on the VBI office door lock back in Brattleboro and let himself in. It was rare that he got the place to himself at midday, and he enjoyed the solitude, standing in the middle of the room, absorbing the silence. But there was something more. As he surveyed the four desks and the walls covered with bulletins, reports, stat sheets, and the like, he realized that the other sensation he was enjoying was a lingering aura of industry—as if the air itself were redolent of past arguments, theories, questions, and responses.
Joe had progressed beyond simply loving what he did. The job and the people he worked with had fused with his spirit. He had no delusions that any of them could change the world for the better, or have a lasting impact upon society’s behavior. It sufficed that they did good work, had a positive influence, and were of use to people in need. Cumulatively, it had become, in a phrase, the driving force in his life. Where those like Lester had a family and lived where they’d been born, and Sam and Willy a child they both adored, Joe was the one whose identity had gradually melded with what he did for a living, rather than who he was outside the job. His romance with Beverly was softening that, but he’d suffered from heartbreak before, and while hopeful now, as never before, he also knew they were still testing the waters together.
He moved to sit at his desk, his back to the room’s one window, and dialed the phone.
“Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility,” was the response moments later.
“Walter Easton, please. This is Joe Gunther of the VBI.”
Easton had worked as a supervisor at MVRCF for eighteen years. He was a born Vermonter, a Rutland native, and could have once evolved into your average woodchuck. Instead, upon graduating from the police academy, he’d magically transformed into a natural networker and student of correctional systems nationwide. Most members of his profession were dismissed as “guards,” doing little more than shepherding inmates through their daily brain-numbing routines. Easton had recognized that among other things, jails contained among the highest concentrations of special-needs occupants shy of a mental hospital. Thus, his job, as he saw it, was to make his prison a safe and supportive environment in which all residents could treat their court-ordered time-outs as opportunities to do something beyond killing time. Walter Easton would’ve been the last person to label himself as such, but in many ways, he’d become if not a radical, then at least a devoted social engineer.
He was also well placed in Vermont, where the view of mental health naturally leaned in his direction, especially lately.
Joe was calling him not only because of all this—along with its implication that Walter would have an eye peeled for a sick inmate—but also because Joe had made it his business years ago to keep track of as many people in law enforcement as he could, if for no other reason than to have them available in times of need. This semi-closed community, in all its guises and jurisdictions—federal to local—was little different in terms of networking than most other professions. What you knew was an asset; who you knew was often the key that opened doors.
“Joe Gunther,” came the familiar voice after a few minutes. “How long’s it been?”
“Too long,” Joe admitted. “I’d blame the fact that you’re located on the far side of the state, ’cept that’s only an hour away.”
Walter laughed. “Too bad we don’t live in Texas or Oklahoma, huh?”
“Nah, I’m good where I am,” Joe replied.
“What can I do for you?” Walter asked. “I know in my bones this ain’t a social call.”
“Well, truth be told,” Joe conceded, “I do have an ulterior motive. Are you aware of a newcomer to your population named Mick Durocher?”
Walter’s response was immediate. “Hell yeah. Like we have so many murder suspects, we lose count of ’em. Funny he should come up, though. We’re on the edge of shipping him to a hospital.”
Even with his misgivings, Joe was caught off guard. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Sick as a dog, Joe. I’m guessing cancer, but it’s hard to say. He’s refusing treatment, which puts the debate into tricky territory. We’ll be okay in the long run, but we need a diagnosis and for him to sign the paperwork. After that, we’ll just make sure he dies comfortably in the infirmary, but we’ve just started all that. Funny you should call now, though. Did you know this was happening?”
“I had my suspicions,” Joe told him. “Do you have his daughter on his next-of-kin information? Mandy Lawlor? I didn’t get the feeling Mick has anyone else.”
There was a pause as Walter consulted a computer at his end. “Nope,” he eventually reported. “Give me her particulars.”
Joe did so, adding, “Could you keep me up to date on this? There are elements to the investigation that’re ongoing, and Mick’s health is relevant.”
“Sure thing, Joe, and thanks. The way things’re going, I’ll be calling her and you soon.”
* * *
Despite having done so too many times to count, Joe remained captivated by sitting quietly in someone else’s living space. The sounds, smells, and surrounding landscape of another person’s intimate environment reflect if not them, precisely, then certainly something fascinating to the interloper.
He was perched on a kitchen chair in Mick Durocher’s trailer, studying the walls and surfaces as he might a museum gallery’s. Like many tourists, he’d visited restored stately homes or colonial cabins, and sought to learn what their prior inhabitants had been like, taking in the furniture and artwork and tools—even the clothing, carefully laid out across the foot of a bed.
But the true essence of these ghosts had remained elusive, as they were now in the humming of Mick’s refrigerator, the smells of aging food and unwashed clothes, even the sight of a field mouse gingerly making the rounds of crumbs and scraps wedged under the cabinet toe kicks. This was where Mick had lived, what he’d seen every morning, and—Joe was hoping—where he’d left evidence of what had brought him to everyone’s attention.
Lester had earlier collected all the available paperwork. That’s how they’d found the will and, later, Mandy Lawlor’s address. But he’d left behind most of the personal effects, the few pictures on the walls, the food in the cabinets—now reflective of a man largely beyond their reach.
In response to Joe’s hopes for inspiration, there was an unexpected knock on the trailer’s flimsy door.
Smiling at the timing, he rose, crossed the narrow space, and swun
g open the door, revealing an older man in coveralls, a T-shirt, and an ancient, much-stained baseball cap, looking up at him.
“Can I help you?” Joe asked.
The man smiled back, if warily. “I was about to ask the same thing. Saw your car out front. Was wondering what you were doing.”
His tone of voice was pleasant, but his proprietary interest was clear.
Joe revealed his badge. “I’m the police. You wanna come in?”
The older man hadn’t been expecting that. “Well, I don’t want to interrupt. It’s none of my business.”
“Maybe not,” Joe said, catering to his visitor’s self-esteem. “But you’re clearly looking out for Mick’s property. To me, that shows you’re a good neighbor. Maybe even a friend.”
He hoped to seal the deal by reaching out with an extended hand. “Joe Gunther.”
The man responded in kind. “Ray Davis. People call me Reefus.”
Joe stood aside. “Please. Feel free.”
His impromptu guest hesitated no longer, and laboriously climbed the wobbly metal steps into the trailer.
“This look the way it usually did?” Joe asked, gesturing around.
Reefus followed his lead with a glance, nodding once. “Pretty much. Kind of a mess down the hall. I’d guess that’s where the fight happened.”
“You heard about that.”
Davis chuckled shortly. “Heard? Hard not to. All of you yelling and throwing people around.”
Joe nudged a chair with his toe so Davis could sit. “Yeah, the adrenaline gets pumping. Also, believe it not, it sometimes takes screaming our heads off to get people to listen. They can be pretty pumped up, too.”
Reefus appeared to accept that, or chose not to argue. “What’s happened to Mick?” he asked instead.
Joe began carefully, “Well, it turned out we interrupted his attacker’s assault in the nick of time, so Mick didn’t suffer too much there. But you must’ve noticed he’s not been looking good lately.”
Davis looked sympathetic. “Yeah. And feeling like hell, too.”
“You were friends?” Joe asked hopefully, wondering if pure good luck wasn’t about to hand him the prize he’d been seeking. For all their digging into Mick’s paperwork and background, and driving for hours to interview his estranged daughter, the best source into his recent history might be the man next door.
“I guess so,” Reefus allowed. “Nora and I only live a couple of units down. We and Mick struck it up a while ago for no reason I can recall. He’s a nice fellow, so we sort of fell into sharing a cup of coffee now and then.”
“You didn’t want to tell that to the officers who went door-to-door the other day?” Joe asked, genuinely curious.
Davis shrugged. “They didn’t ask. They wanted to know if we’d heard this or seen that, which we didn’t. Nobody asked if we were friends.”
Joe laughed, covering a pang of disappointment. “Yeah. Stuff like that happens more often than we like to admit. Still, here we are. You okay with my asking you a few things about Mick?”
Reefus gave him the kind of appraisal he’d received all his life from rooted, steady people like this—beginning with his own father.
“Depends on the things, don’t it?”
Joe nodded. “It does. Sure enough. Well, let’s start where you did, then. You said Mick was feeling like hell. What did you mean?”
“He was sick. Nora thought it was cancer, not that we asked. But he was losing weight and looked terrible. From how he handled himself, I’d say there was a lot of pain, too.”
“He ever discuss it?”
“Nope.”
“Ever mention a doctor, or seeking medical care?”
“Not that, neither.”
“But you knew him in better times, so you could tell the difference.”
“We could, yup.”
“’Bout how long was that—that you knew each other?”
Davis paused to reflect. “Oh, I’d say maybe five years.”
“That’s good,” Joe said. “Gives me something to work with. Let me ask what the other folks didn’t: How would you describe him? What kind of man is he?”
“Nice fellow,” Davis remarked. “Can’t imagine he did what the papers are saying.”
It had been slow in coming, and posed in the usual roundabout fashion, but now Joe was aware that his guest kept up with the news.
“It was a murder, Mr. Davis. There was evidence suggesting he committed it just down the street, in fact, in that park-’n’-ride near the main road, after Mick and his girlfriend had a knock-down-drag-out in here.”
Reefus shook his head, removed his cap, and scratched his pale, bald pate, looking down at the unswept floor.
Finally, he replaced the cap, which suited him like a head of hair, and stated flatly, “Don’t see it.”
“I’m listening,” Joe encouraged him.
“I’m an old man,” Davis started. “Not educated, and not trained like you people. But I been around. I’ve worked farming and factories and most things in between, and it’s not been too often that anyone’s pulled a fast one on me. The way a person talks and acts, the way they work—that all speaks of what’s inside.”
“Okay.”
“Well, what you’re telling me don’t make sense. I’m not saying somebody didn’t kill your girl, whoever she was. But it wasn’t Mick.”
Davis reached up and pulled on his nose with his index finger and thumb, before shifting in his seat and repeating, “If I was you, I’d go back to that evidence and check it again.”
“That’s why I’m here, Reefus. I want to get it right. Maybe you could pass along a little of what makes you so sure he’s not the one. What did you two talk about when he’d drop by?”
“The usual, mostly. Weather, sports, that useless truck of his.”
“He ever refer to his daughter?” Joe asked.
“Mandy? Sure. He was so happy to hear she had a daughter. That was the worst thing that ever happened to him, his break with her.” He quickly held up a hand. “Not that he complained. Don’t get me wrong. He respected that she wanted to be free of everything that had gone before. Mick was straight about his problems—the drinking and the way he treated that little family. I know his ex-wife was no prize, either, but he never blamed her. And he was so proud of that daughter of his. His biggest regret was that he had nothing to pass along to her.”
“We heard he was almost a recluse. Like a hermit. Did you ever see him with anyone? Man or woman?”
“That’s what the other cop asked. Nah. There mighta been a friend who picked him up for work, now and then, on one of the times his truck would crap out, but that’s about it. I don’t know the friend’s name, but I seen his pickup around town, so I guess he’s local.”
Davis rubbed his palm hard against his knee. “He was a loner. You heard right. And that’s another thing, by the way: the way he was looking lately, the whole idea of his carrying on with some girlfriend is a joke.”
“How often did you see each other?” Joe asked.
“Less, lately,” Davis admitted. “Maybe once a week, maybe twice, and mostly ’cause I’d come by here. He was low, on top of bein’ sick.”
“He say why?”
“Nora says it was the cancer, but I think it was more like the weight of the world. Good news like Mandy having a child can cut both ways, you know? It’s like there’s no room in the world for you anymore. And he felt bad, like I said, that there wasn’t something he could do for them.”
“The man who attacked him the other night,” Joe said, “was someone he once worked for, maybe five months ago. He was pissed Mick had stolen his four-wheeler.”
“That was Thurley?” Davis asked flat out. “I know about him. Total crap artist. I didn’t realize that. The four-wheeler was his? Son of a bitch. Small world.”
“You’ve had dealings with Thurley?”
“Not directly. But I know some who have. Talk about a bad reputation. See? That’s what I
mean. Mick hated the guy, ’cause of his way with people—cheating everybody, treatin’ them wrong. Mick was more stand-up than that.”
“He did actually steal the four-wheeler,” Joe pointed out.
“I’m surprised Mick had anything to do with that,” Davis allowed. “Or Thurley, especially the way things went at the end. Thurley tried to get Mick tied into an insurance scam—something about stolen chain saws that weren’t really stolen.”
“What had Mick done before working for him?”
“This and that. Mick wasn’t too proud to do anything that paid a wage. But that was another thing that made him feel so low, I think—the lack of a real job, with benefits and retirement and all that.”
“He had that?”
“At one time, yeah. Not for a long time. Nothing ever lasted with Mick, but when he had it, it picked up his game. You could see it. He walked straighter, taller.”
“When was this?” Joe asked.
“Maybe three years ago. For only about a year.”
“What happened?”
Davis acted out holding a bottle and tilting it up. “The booze, like usual. He could never get ahead of it. That was really sad, though, ’cause that time, he finally felt like he’d caught the gravy train, and that he’d be able to help out Mandy.”
“I see your point,” Joe said softly. “Like having an elephant parked on your chest.” He pulled out his notepad and asked, “What was the name of that company with the benefits and all? I probably ought to look them up.”
“Oh,” Davis replied, his eyes widening. “Big outfit. The commute was a bitch, but worth it to Mick. Talk about upward mobility. It woulda been a really good gig, if he’d only hung on to it. It was that wholesale grocer up in White River Junction. GreenField. You musta heard of it.”
Joe closed the notepad, unused, and returned it to his pocket. “Yeah,” he replied. “I have.”
* * *
The supe was back, this time walking the warehouse floor, taking his time, pausing at the various locations where workers were restoring the fire-damaged pallet racks to their previous condition.
“Hey, J.R.” one of them greeted him, glancing over his shoulder.
“Hank,” J.R. acknowledged with a nod. “How’s it going? Things almost up and running again?”
