Open Season

by Archer Mayor

  “Are you going to roll heads then?”

  Wilson slapped the arm of his chair and stood up. He crossed over to the window and looked out at the frozen parking lot. “Christ, I hate this. No, I’m not going to roll heads. We’re standing together, at least in public. You just tell them what you’ve got and handle questions—as agreed this morning.”

  Brandt looked over at me. “What you got cooking so far?”

  “A team is going over everything we grabbed at the office and home; I’ve got a blood sample being looked at by Kees in West Haven; I’m getting a warrant for all his phone records, from both office and home; we’ve lifted his fingerprints and are having them coded; and I’m having duplicates made of the photos we found in his medical file—Dr. Duquesne was a very thorough fellow. We’ve also located his dentist and are having copies made of his X-rays and charts. By the time we finish, we should have as complete a description of him as we could want. Once we spread the word—as discreetly as possible—we should be able to nail him. If nothing else, his medical problems will get him; he needs a steady supply of prednisone, and according to Duquesne, he won’t even be able to walk in a couple of years.”

  Wilson flapped his arms. “A couple of years? Hallelujah. That ought to satisfy everybody. What’s this mystery man’s name, anyway?”

  Brandt and I looked at each other. Wilson immediately flared. “Hold on a goddamn minute. You’re going to sit on his name? After what I’ve done for you bastards?”

  Brandt laid a hand on his shoulder. “The name’s Steven Cioffi. He’s a VP at Leatherton, but we don’t want that out yet. That’s why we hesitated.”

  Wilson shook off the hand, but he was calmer. “Christ. We finally get something and you don’t want to release it. What the hell is the problem?”

  His narrow focus was beginning to irritate. “We only found out who this guy was a few hours ago. We got to figure out what we’re holding before we start bragging.”

  “There is another reason,” Brandt added. “The way Ski Mask is stepping out front, we’re fearful of giving him anything he might take advantage of. If he gets to Cioffi ahead of us and kills him for some reason, then we—and Davis—might be stuck high and dry.”

  The phone rang and Brandt picked it up. He listened for a while, took some notes, thanked the caller, and turned back to us with a big smile. “Hey, just like in the movies. You wanted something to tell the press? Looks like we just located Pam Stark’s home address.” He waved the slip of notepaper in his hand. “She had given a phony to the Boston cops, but it turns out she was from Connecticut—Danbury—or at least she was born there, daughter of Henry and Eleanor Stark. They tracked her through vital records. Then—I’ll give these guys high marks—because they couldn’t find a current address, they checked the state tax records just for kicks, and sure enough, Henry and Eleanor still own some Connecticut land, and the bill is sent to Voorheesville, New York. That’s just next to Albany.”

  Wilson merely shook his head and kept staring out the window. “Pam Stark’s address.” He finally muttered, “Three years too late. Christ.”

  After a while he turned to face us. “What good is Pam Stark’s address?”

  I answered that. “She’s the keystone to this whole thing. Judging from what he did to Susan Lucey, Ski Mask is obviously linked to Pam in some strong emotional way. And now we know Cioffi is definitely connected to her. If we can talk to her parents, they might help us bust this thing wide open. This is exactly what wasn’t done the first time around and what landed us in this mess.”

  Brandt handed me the note he’d made with the New York address. “Look, Tom, Joe can follow this up right now. It’ll take him a couple of hours to drive there; we’re assessing everything we’ve collected so far. This will just add to the hopper, maybe in a big way. We’ll know before the day’s up.”

  Wilson mulled it over. “All right, fine.” Then, after a pause, “Are you two absolutely positive you’ve got the right man in Cioffi? Or are we opening ourselves up to yet another lawsuit by some clown who may be just on vacation?”

  Brandt and I looked at each other. This was not a question either one of us relished, but it was probably better that Wilson brought it up before the cameras started rolling.

  Brandt cleared his throat. “What we have in Steven Cioffi is a man who in all probability was involved in the Pamela Stark killing.”

  Wilson stared at him, his eyes widening. “That’s it? ‘In all probability’? I’m supposed to stand next to you in front of a bunch of reporters and that’s what you’re going to say?”

  “If they ask me that question—and without mentioning his name.”

  Wilson’s face reddened. “And how the fuck do you think that’s going to go down? They’ll eat us alive.”

  “That’s all I can really tell them right now. We’ve got a circumstantial case. Had we located Cioffi, it might have been different, but right now, that’s it. Given more time to dig through what we’ve got, I’ll probably have more, like Joe said.”

  Wilson seemed to have stopped breathing. He glared at both of us for a long moment after Brandt stopped speaking, and then he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Brandt smiled at me. “I think the press conference is off.”

  26

  VOORHEESVILLE, WHICH I REACHED by heading due west on Route 9 through Bennington and Troy, was the epitome of the bedroom community. I’m sure it had a town center, or at least a cluster of tasteful buildings passing for one, but from what I could see, it consisted of mile after mile of undulating, well-kept interweaving blacktop, hemmed in by tamed trees and regularly placed, half-seen tidy houses. Some of these were pretty grand—English Tudor near-misses and combination Federalist-Southern plantations with swimming pools out front, but for the most part they were white, wooden, neat, and reclusive. They clung to the centers of their two-acre lots, surrounded by enough shrubs and trees to shield them from all but a glimpse of their neighbors’ roofs.

  I stopped at a filling station among an odd and incongruous collection of fake-Georgian commercial buildings and got directions to the address Brandt had given me. It was located in what must have been the low-rent district. The trees were not as tall, the lawns not as large, the shrubs not as fat, and the houses, with a couple of garish exceptions, were downright self-effacing. Along a spur marked Dead End, cluttered with split-levels on half-acre lots, I found a mailbox marked Stark.

  I pulled into the driveway and parked in front of a one-car garage. Above the door, its six-foot wingspan painted in peeling gold, was a wooden bald eagle. To the right of the garage, parallel to the driveway, was a one-and-a-half story white clapboard house as lacking in distinctive features as the one-dimensional boxes in children’s drawings. I walked up the shoveled path to the front door and knocked.

  The door swung back two feet, revealing a short, thin, white-haired woman who instantly struck me as the cleanest, neatest person I’d ever met. There was not a wrinkle or a fold out of place. Her dimly flowered housedress and cardigan sweater looked as if they were on a hanger; her brown lace shoes were spotless and scuff-free; her face and hands pale pink and practically shimmering; every hair was rigidly in place.

  “Yes?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Mrs. Stark?”

  “That’s right.”

  I pulled out my badge, something I rarely did at home. “My name is Lieutenant Gunther. I work for the police department in Brattleboro, Vermont. I called you a few hours ago?”

  She nodded, just barely.

  “I have no jurisdiction down here, so you’re under no obligation to talk with me, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about your daughter, Pamela.”

  Her eyes, which had been focused somewhere over my shoulder, dropped to my shoes. In that one gesture, I sensed some vital part of her anatomy giving way. She said, just audibly, “Of course,” and, turning from the door, vanished into the gloom of the hallway beyo
nd.

  I hesitated—the door was still barely open—before I followed her inside. From what I could see of it as my eyes adjusted to the dark, the hall was empty. I walked its ten-foot length and looked to both sides. To the left was another hallway leading presumably to some bedrooms; to the right was a totally green living room. Mrs. Stark was sitting on the edge of a straight-backed chair, her immaculate hands in her smooth lap, looking at the green shag carpeting. She seemed so lost in her thoughts, I wasn’t sure she remembered I was there.

  The room was dark, the only light a green seepage through thick drapes drawn across a large patio window. Hanging on the walls, along with the occasional half-visible picture, were several military swords—some cavalry, some oriental—four glass-faced display frames filled with medals and insignia, and two oil paintings, both depicting modern battle scenes, one featuring World War II—vintage tanks, the other Vietnam-era helicopters. Above the dark green mantle at the far end of the room was another eagle, surrounded by gold stars. The rest of the room looked more normal—no army cots or pup tents—but I did notice that most of the furnishings were equipped with sanitary fail-safe devices: antimacassars on the backs of armchairs, a doily under every lamp, glass cups under the table legs, small rugs on the carpeting in front of each chair. The entire room was as neat and antiseptic and green as a freshly filled fish tank. The only sound I could hear was a clock ticking somewhere.

  I walked over to the sofa and sat gingerly, conscious of squashing its pillows’ perfect plumpness. “Mrs. Stark, when did you last see your daughter?”

  She looked up at me slowly. “Three-four years ago.”

  “And where was that?”

  “Here. She was living at home. She and the Colonel had a fight, only this time she left—forever.”

  “The Colonel?”

  “My husband.”

  “And where is he?”

  “Gone. I don’t know.” She went back to staring at the floor.

  I looked around the room again. Of all the scenes I’d played in my head prior to coming here, this was not one of them.

  “Did he go shopping or something?”

  “No. He left.”

  “When?”

  “A couple of months ago.”

  I wanted to return to her daughter, but something tugged at me to keep this line going. “Why did he leave?”

  “To find her.”

  “Did he?”

  “I don’t know. He found something.” One hand rose slowly and barely touched her forehead with its fingertips before resettling next to its peer. It was like the kiss from a solicitous bird. “She is dead, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  She let out the softest of sighs. “And now he’s dead too.”

  “Your husband?”

  She nodded again.

  “Not that I know of.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photograph of the late Kimberly Harris. “Mrs. Stark, I hate to do this, but I have to ask. Is this a picture of your daughter?”

  I crossed the room and laid the picture in her lap, face up. She didn’t touch it, she didn’t even react, but she did look.

  “Yes,” she said simply, her voice unchanged. It was an utterance from someone drained of any emotional reserves. She was like a well of tears long run dry.

  “If your daughter left home several years ago, why did your husband wait so long to go after her?”

  Another sigh escaped her, a sound so gentle in this quiet green room I could almost see it. “They say fathers and daughters are supposed to have a special bond, don’t they?”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “Colonel Stark and Pam had that once, when she was a little girl. They seemed able to talk to each other without saying a word. It troubled me, because of what he did for a living. I was afraid that one day something would happen to him, that he would be gone forever, and she would be destroyed.”

  “What did he do for a living?” She looked surprised. “He was a soldier.”

  It was my turn to nod. She didn’t say anything for a moment. I was afraid my interruption might have broken her concentration, but she went on. “Perhaps that’s what should have happened. She would have loved him if he’d died. Instead, they grew older, and began to fight.”

  “About what?”

  “Nothing. Everything. Private things. She was no longer a little girl. And she grew up to be a young woman. I think that surprised him. He wanted everything to be the same. Of course, it wasn’t.” The hand fluttered up again and settled down. “It’s a little confusing. I don’t know. Maybe he loved her too much—not like a real father and daughter.”

  A sour taste came to my mouth. I remembered Susan Lucey saying something that had struck that same chord. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  She shook her head slightly and shrugged.

  “The Colonel was more than just a soldier, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes. Very special, very secret. He would just go off.”

  I thought of the bug I’d found in my apartment. Very special. “So they had one last big fight and she left?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I mean, how did your husband react after her departure?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He left on assignment for two years.”

  “And when he came back?”

  “He was different.”

  “How so?”

  “He talked about her all the time. He thought she’d be here when he returned. He couldn’t believe it—that she had really left. He thought I was lying when I told him I hadn’t heard from her since that day.”

  “The day of the fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was that fight about?”

  She looked at a spot on the wall about a foot above my head. “They fought a lot.”

  I took a shot in the dark. “About her behavior… like with men, maybe?”

  “Yes.” There was a pause. “Boys her age… the Colonel was a jealous man.”

  The odd taste returned to my mouth. “So what happened after he discovered she’d been gone all that time and wasn’t coming back?”

  “He was convinced she was dead—that that’s the only reason she hadn’t come back to him. Some man must have killed her.” She emphasized the word “man.” “He started looking for her, calling police departments, checking the newspapers in the library, going on trips. Finally, he left for good.”

  “About two months ago.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know where he was headed?”

  “No.”

  “Did he mention Boston or Brattleboro or Vermont?”

  “He didn’t mention anything.”

  “The day he left, did you know he was going for good, or did you think he was just off on another of his little outings?”

  “I felt he was going on duty.”

  “How’s that?”

  “When he’d get his orders to go somewhere I couldn’t be told about, he’d call that ‘going on duty.’ I always knew when that was about to happen because he changed. That’s what it was like.”

  “And he’s never gotten in touch?”

  “No. But I didn’t expect him to. He didn’t do that.”

  “You mean send letters or call home?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How about when Pam was little?”

  “He did then. He’d call her sometimes, but only when she was little.”

  “You mentioned he’d go places you weren’t supposed to know about. Was he in Intelligence?”

  “Yes. Maybe.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Not really.”

  “Is he still on active duty?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know who to call in the government about something like this? A superior officer or something? What was it, b
y the way? The U.S. Army?”

  “We started in the Army, but I’m not sure anymore; it stopped being normal a long time ago. I don’t know who to call.”

  “Has anyone called you about him?”

  “No.”

  I closed my eyes for a second. This was one weird couple. “I don’t mean to pry, Mrs. Stark, but I think your husband is in big trouble, and I need to know everything I can about him. I get the feeling he was a little unusual—that is, that he may have had unusual habits. Is there anything you can tell me about him that might help me to find him?”

  She frowned and leaned forward in her chair, picking something invisible off the rug and putting it into her cardigan pocket. Then she rose and walked over to the glowing green curtain. I expected her to throw it open and let in the sunlight, but she just stood there, her nose almost touching the fabric. Her hands reached out to either side and her fingers played gently on the folds of the curtain, making it ripple like murky sea water.

  Her words, when they came, were slow and carefully chosen. “Our marriage was not a conventional one, Lieutenant. We shared very little. I did as I was told and he supported me. If it hadn’t been for Pamela, we might still be together. Having a daughter was very complicated—I don’t know why. Maybe we all got too close.” She shook her head and repeated. “I don’t know.”

  I decided not to press it. “Did your husband have an office or a den I could look at?”

  She didn’t move. “Yes. It’s upstairs to the right.”

  I got up and left the room. I’d noticed the staircase when I’d come in. The office was a small room tucked under the eaves, half its ceiling sliced away by the slant of the roof. But it was white and brightly lit by two unshaded windows—a positive relief from the funereal gloom downstairs.

  Again the walls were like those of a military museum, covered with odds and ends: bayonets, several old rifles, more medals, a couple of helmets, photographs of groups of men in uniform, either in the field or all spruced up as if for graduation. I looked for a face common to all the pictures, figuring that would be Stark, but I couldn’t do it. The hats or helmets and uniforms—not to mention the obvious passage of years—made them all look pretty much alike. I did notice, though, that the uniforms weren’t just American. One shot showed what was definitely a French group, and at least two others had an anonymous Latin American look to them. Our boy apparently got around.