by Archer Mayor
Rachel had her window down and the radio up, hoping the combination would keep her awake. It wasn’t just the long hours. Ever since childhood, she’d used sleep to escape from stress. And stress, right now, was the driving emotion.
Her mom had been great when she phoned her a half hour earlier. As usual, calm, a good listener, and a thoughtful advisor, she’d done everything right. And it hadn’t had the slightest impact.
Rachel was in an emotional turmoil of her own making. She knew Sam had been within her rights and acting protectively when she’d asked Rachel to leave; she also recognized that slimy Philip Beaupré had been utterly and self-servingly manipulative by challenging her youth, competence, and integrity. But both encounters, taken together and ramped up by exhaustion, had exacted their toll.
Any such realization, however, didn’t reduce the resulting anger, frustration, or guilt. Rachel wanted to do good work, to be considered apart from her hyperaccomplished mother, and like most people at her career stage and age, didn’t want to screw up. She was unusually levelheaded, compared to her peers, perhaps due to her prior exposure to trauma and loss. Earlier, while still in school in Burlington but living off campus, she’d taken in a young woman on the spur of the moment, who’d turned out to be a runaway from Albany, New York. Unbeknownst to Rachel, she’d had some very bad people on her tail, resulting in the girl being assaulted and killed in the apartment. Rachel had woken up in time to chase the assailant away, but too late to help her newfound friend.
But whatever the leavening agents in her maturation, the result had been an unusually rational insight into her own weaknesses and strengths.
However, any such armor is vulnerable when the subtext of an accusation—no matter how crudely delivered—smacks of the truth. Rachel could handle Sam’s rebuff. It was humiliating, but quickly balmed by time and understanding. Beaupré’s comments, conversely, rankled deeply, striking at Rachel’s own burgeoning self-worth. Was she a child of privilege and connections, using both to navigate the real world under false colors? Had she earned her job at the Reformer, or had it been her mother being the state’s chief ME? Certainly her ease of access with cops spoke for itself. She’d interpreted that earlier as simple good luck, but with Beaupré’s sneering words in her ears, it morphed into entitlement, which as a socially conscious young woman, she found repellent.
All of which helped explain her present single-minded conviction that she’d found a way out of her humiliation: His taillights were ahead of her right now.
Mr. Beaupré may have hit the nail partially square-on, but that didn’t absolve him of his own misdemeanors. He was a rat. Rachel knew it in her gut, and was convinced the police shared her opinion.
But where they were constrained by procedures and rules of evidence, she was free to discover what she could about this man, and expose it for all to see.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
They all took their time. From what Sam had said on the phone, Lillian Wuttke was, “most sincerely dead.” And given the circumstances behind that condition, no one was entering her house until Beverly arrived and issued a thumbs-up. Cops as a rule aren’t too crazy about the deceased. The unknown factors, not to mention the accompanying odors, made that easy to comprehend. Adding a possible exposure to Ebola, however, pretty much sealed the deal.
Chief medical examiners rarely did fieldwork anymore. They had once. That was in part how Beverly had established her no-nonsense public presence, keeping overalls and a pair of barn boots in her car trunk just in case.
Situations like this, however, were the wrinkle that proved the exception. And one she actually enjoyed, despite the situation and the stifling equipment required to explore it. Bioexposure scenes like what Sam had uncovered were, in Vermont, the exclusive realm of a truly tiny cadre of experts, Beverly among them. If you had a body, possibly killed by lethal contagion, she was on the call list.
As was her diener, Todd, who was now suiting up beside her in the postdawn coolness, next to their official van, in view of Wuttke’s small house.
It had been cordoned off with gently fluttering yellow police tape, and the lonely, narrow street it fronted blocked by police vehicles. The only people present were there by necessity, and—aside from Todd and Beverly—keeping their distance, as if the virus inside were watching at the windows, coiled and ready to strike anyone foolish enough to get close.
Beverly, of course, knew otherwise. Her training had informed her of Ebola’s life cycle, habits, and abilities. It was highly unlikely that simply entering this house was going to expose anyone to much of anything, and that wasn’t factoring in the protective clothing she was donning with Todd’s help. That was dictated by protocols, not because it was actually necessary.
These were total isolation suits—white, bulky, cumbersome, and awkward to walk in—made a cliché by overexposure in the movies. They came equipped with their own breathing apparatus, allowing the wearer to enter most toxic environments with impunity.
But comfortable, they were not.
To Beverly, that merely heightened her sense of purpose. Despite her knowledge of the risks involved, putting on the suits—as she imagined had been true of a knight’s armor of old—served to sharpen the wearer’s focus.
At last, with a final tap on his back, she informed Todd that he was as secure as he’d just finished making her.
He turned to look at her, one face mask to another, and gave her a thumbs-up. “You hear me?” he asked over their closed-circuit radio.
“Loud and clear,” she replied. “Ready?”
He stooped like a white bear, uncomfortably balanced on his hind legs, and retrieved a large equipment case at his feet. “Sooner the better. I’m already dreaming of getting this thing off.”
The house was locked, an obstacle Todd solved by immediately smashing a small side window with the corner of his case and reaching in to work the door handle.
“You’ve had practice at this, Todd?” Beverly asked, easing the tension.
“It’s called preplanning, boss,” he said grimly, pushing open the door.
Probably because they were seeing the world through plastic-lensed hoods, with the sound of their own breathing resonating in their ears, they couldn’t deny the dread of what lay ahead. They’d been briefed that Lillian Wuttke’s remains were in a back bedroom, visible through her window. Nevertheless, they hadn’t been trained in self-protective police tactics, and the house, while presumably empty, hadn’t in fact been officially cleared. Lastly—all rational thinking aside—there loomed in the surrounding air the mythologized specter of Ebola, eager and ready to kill them.
In fact, Beverly reassured herself, not only was this virus not airborne, but the standard isolation of U.S. patients infected with it consisted mostly of shutting their doors to outside visitors. All this hoods-and-air-tank rigamarole notwithstanding.
She brought her attention back to reality. Wuttke’s house was modest, aging, dirty, and cluttered, forcing both visitors to pick their way slowly between boxes, bags, old product containers, and piles of clothing lining the opposing walls. It wasn’t a hoarding environment per se. Beverly was overly familiar with that phenomenon. But it suggested one.
“You okay?” she asked Todd, whom she could hear breathing hard behind her.
“I’m good, Doc. It’s just hard running an obstacle course in this getup.”
Beverly reached the bedroom door and said softly, “Well, it’s all but over now. I think we can tell the others that a preliminary diagnosis of Ebola is within reason. You have that body bag in your kit?”
He drew up behind her and looked at the ravaged woman spread out on the bed before them, mired with all the gruesome end results usually attributed to the disease. “Damn. Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Then we better start buttoning up what’s left of her,” she said, stepping forward.
* * *
“I seriously doubt you’re here with your doctor’s permission,” Joe addressed Willy. “But welcome anyhow
.”
“From my mouth to your ear, I’ve been officially cleared for duty,” Willy came back, carefully settling into his office chair so as not to jar his slinged arm. He finished by leaning back and propping one foot into an uppermost drawer, as was his habit.
Lester laughed outright. “That’s the most equivocal statement I’ve heard in a while.”
All four of them were assembled in the Brattleboro squad room, the first time in some time, given how often they’d been pulled afield by recent events. Daily reports had been appearing in the unit’s online log, but Joe—along with the rest of them—had always preferred face-to-face meetings. It was by now late in the day, which had begun with the discovery of Lillian Wuttke’s remains.
“Seriously,” Joe followed up, delaying protocol for the moment. “How’re you feeling?”
Unusually, Kunkle did not respond with something dismissive. “Seriously? I wish I’d had this done years ago. Except for when I had an arm that actually worked, I’ve never felt better.”
Joe nodded in acknowledgment. “Can’t ask for more than that.” He shifted his attention to the team in general. “Okay. Over the last twenty-four hours, I thought we’ve had enough jackrabbits jump out of the hat to warrant an actual in-person brainstorming. But before we get into that, I want to rule on whether the poisoning of Victoria Garlanda had anything to do with the assaults on GreenField. Who’s got the goods on that?”
Almost from tradition, given how long these four had been together, Willy spoke first. “No connection, despite her having been Robert Beaupré’s high school squeeze.”
“Arguments?” Joe asked the others.
“What’s Beverly say about Wuttke?” Sam asked.
“She couldn’t do the autopsy herself,” Joe reported. “Her office doesn’t have a high enough biohazard rating. But I heard half an hour ago that Ebola was confirmed.”
Lester added, “And the lab weighed in on her fingerprints being on the Ebola-laced eye-drop bottle Willy found in Victoria’s office.”
“Outstanding,” Joe commented.
“How did Lillian get infected?” Sam asked.
“Can’t say for sure,” Lester answered. “The theory is she had no more clue than the rest of them about what was killing the pilot when he arrived at UVSS. She just knew he was wicked sick. The thinking is that she swabbed his mouth, mixed it with a small amount of saline, dumped it into the bottle, and waited to see what would happen. Given that, they think she must’ve wiped her eye or rubbed her nose, and Mother Nature did the rest—she was infected. She probably wasn’t wearing gloves, ’cause you don’t walk around the hallways like that—it looks suspicious.”
“What I don’t get is why she didn’t come in once she started showing symptoms,” Sam said. “She was a nurse—good, bad, or indifferent.”
“She was an arrogant crap artist,” Willy argued. “I bet she thought she could beat it. Like Les said, nobody ID’d Ebola. There’s no reason she thought that, either. Probably figured she’d caught the flu. Before I snuck out of there, I asked the hospital administration why they hadn’t chased her down when she didn’t answer their heads-up. They showed me the email she’d sent them. It said she was on vacation, out of state as planned, and feeling fine—probably lying to keep people at bay. Not much they could do with that.”
“To a notice that she might have been exposed to Ebola?” Lester asked incredulously.
“That’s not how they worded it,” Willy corrected him. “They didn’t want to put that out there, so they called it a serious infection threat, or some crap. She died never knowing.”
“And we’re sure all this is because she wanted Garlanda’s job and was pissed about being passed over?” Joe asked for confirmation. “No doubts on anyone’s mind?”
“No doubts from Victoria,” Sammie said. “She says Lillian made it crystal clear. Keep in mind that for Lillian, probably none of this was intended to go where it went. By putting that germy shit into the eyedropper bottle, she was just hoping Victoria would lose her sight, or get too ill to keep working. Nobody I talked to believes she had homicide in mind. How else could she’ve been considered next in line for the position? And that was her rationale—she was that deluded about her qualifications.”
“Guess that’s been taken care of,” Willy said quietly.
“Which still leaves the fact that Victoria and Robert Beaupré were sweethearts,” Joe stated. “Is Willy right about that being a coincidence?”
“We got nothing more to go on,” Lester said. “Victoria herself is our best source, and she says she and Robert haven’t been in touch in decades. We can keep the door open a little, but I doubt there’s anything left to it. Consider it a false lead.”
No one argued the point. Joe finally bobbed his head once. “Okay. Moving on.”
“J.R.?” Sam inquired hopefully.
Joe wouldn’t bite. “Not yet. I want to end with him, so we don’t overlook anything else we’ve got on our plate.”
“Mick Durocher,” Willy suggested.
“Good,” his boss agreed. “We now know unequivocally that he isn’t a match to Teri’s fetus. We also have no witness or evidence even connecting the two of them—”
“Except the surveillance shot of him carrying the body up the mountain,” Willy interjected.
“Granted,” Joe agreed. “But the neighbors drew a blank, no bartender we could find saw them together, nor did his buddy Seth Villeneuve, and Mick’s so-called confession was a joke.”
Once more, nobody said anything, allowing Joe to add, “Finally, there’s the money Mick’s daughter received—a quarter million bucks of untraceable cash, delivered after her old man’s death.”
“Payment for the false confession of a terminally sick man with nothing to lose,” Sam proposed, “and a daughter he feels guilty about?”
“Payment from a very rich real murderer,” Lester suggested. “Of which we have several candidates to choose from.”
“Is that true?” Willy asked, understandably not quite as up to date on the smaller details as the rest of them.
“Yeah,” Lester explained—their resident GreenField expert. “For tax reasons, the old man set things up so that management gets some seriously impressive compensations. Bobby, Philip, Brad, and even Elaine are the big winners, but there are others in the millionaire category. Not sure what the advantages are to doing that over stock options, or inheritance, or whatever, but that’s how he structured things.”
“I didn’t think Elaine even drew a salary,” Sam said.
“She doesn’t, not as such. She gets a stipend, like an allowance. And Brad pulls in a bundle.”
“For that matter, so does the rarely mentioned Mrs. Beaupré,” Joe mentioned. “The mother of the clan.”
“Any of them lose two hundred and fifty thousand bucks recently?” Willy asked.
“No way of knowing,” Lester answered. “If we were a TV show, I could just call up their financials.” He waved at his computer. “Unfortunately, the law makes that impossible till we get a judge to agree to it.
“Speaking of which,” he added, “Sam got a warrant for that coffee mug Philip Beaupré left behind, making us so legal, we squeak.”
“And?” Willy asked leadingly. He then glanced at Joe theatrically, saying, “Uh-oh, don’t wanna get in trouble with Dad. Okay to mention the five hundred-ton, J.R. elephant in the room?”
“It is,” Joe acquiesced.
“Nothing on the prints,” Sam reported. “But we did get enough touch DNA to create a profile, which might help us out with Teri Parker’s baby.”
“Is it a match?” Joe asked.
“Not quite. There are familial markers, but he’s not the actual father.”
“Jesus,” Lester said. “This is relentless.”
“Leaving Bobby and the old man,” Willy mused, ignoring him.
“We have no DNA on file for either of them?” Joe asked, already knowing the answer.
“No reason for
it,” Sam answered.
Joe was unfazed. “It’s still enough to apply for nontestimonial warrants, just like the AG did for Mick’s DNA.”
Willy was the only one in the room whose enthusiasm wasn’t ramping up. “Let’s say we do nail down who’s dear old Papa. So what?” he asked. “Maybe it gets us a little extra to apply pressure, but it still doesn’t identify who used the two-by-four on Teri, or killed those poor bastards in the warehouse, or the truck driver. That’s the bug I wanna step on. Boss, you just mentioned old lady Beaupré—”
“Martha,” Sam injected.
“Whatever,” Willy resumed. “She should have an ax to grind—knocked up and married to a guy who loved somebody else. What d’ya wanna bet she knew all about that?”
“And now she strikes all these years later?” Lester argued.
“Far as we know,” Willy said with a smile, “only Robert or Bobby are left as Teri’s sperm donor.” He eyed Sammie. “What was it you reported Philip said about Daddy Dearest?”
Sam was nodding in support of where Willy was heading. “He said he thought his dad impregnated Martha with Bobby, which is why he and Victoria didn’t get married. What Willy’s talking about was what J.R. said right afterwards, when he bet his father was generally screwin’ around on the side, anyhow. The exact quote was, ‘That’s much more his style,’ using the present tense.”
“That’s it,” Willy announced. “We have no frigging clue what’s going on inside that family. Buncha gerbils, you ask me, and I think it’s sexist if you exclude Martha.”
Sam burst out laughing. “Oh, please.”
But Willy was only half joking. “Philip clearly has a love–hate thing goin’ on with Dad. Why wouldn’t Martha, too? That’s all I’m sayin’. Somebody planted those Beaupré wigglers inside Teri, but it’s not necessarily the person who caved her head in. I think we have the makings of a daytime drama here, and I bet the evidence’ll support it.”
“Or a Greek tragedy,” Joe said quietly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Rachel jerked awake, hitting her hand painfully against her steering wheel and swearing. She was sore, hungry, smelled of body odor, and needed to pee. As she worked her tongue across her teeth, she also suspected that her breath could melt paint.
