The doorknob turned noiselessly in my hand, and I quietly stepped inside, avoiding the broken glass to my right. Snowy footsteps, barely melting and broadly spaced as if from someone running, led toward the rear of the building, to beyond the closed kitchen door. Standing still and silent, I could hear the murmur of tense, angry voices.
I pulled my gun from its holster and gently went down the hall, constrained by the knowledge that this was the only access to the kitchen from the front of the house. At the thick wooden door, while the two voices were still too muffled to understand, I could tell Duncan’s was closer than Gail’s, giving me hope that I might be able to come up behind him.
It wasn’t much, but it didn’t matter in any case. A sudden shout by Gail ended the debate and sent me flying through the door in a low crouch.
What I saw was later etched in my memory as a portrait of matched opponents: Phil Duncan, still in his overcoat dusted with snow, holding a knife, his face set with almost demonic determination, and Gail, in jeans and a turtleneck, armed with a carving knife, facing him with equal aggression. Both stood like combatants, a small table between them, highlighted like prizefighters by the harsh fluorescent panels overhead.
That portrait, however, lasted only a split second. Carried by the momentum of my entrance, I overcompensated, bringing my gun around to bear on Duncan and staggered against one of the kitchen chairs.
It was all he needed to drop low and throw his weight against the table, sending one corner of it into the pit of my stomach.
The pain seemed to lift me up like an explosion, blinding me, deafening me, sending my mind reeling back to a dark, dank tunnel far underground. Now as then, I couldn’t feel the floor as it came up to catch me, nor could I operate the gun in my hand. I could only watch as Duncan moved to my side, as swift as a cat, and see Gail, who turned and ran to the far side of the room, disappearing from my line of view behind the upended chair now before me.
One foot on my gun hand, the blade of his knife held just under my eye, slanted toward my brain, Duncan pushed the chair aside to reveal Gail standing by the back door, near a row of hanging coats, Mary Wallis’s pistol in her hand.
Fighting to overcome the white-hot pain from my reopened stomach, I heard him address her in a careless, mocking voice. “Drop it, or the knife goes in.”
Gail shifted slightly, setting her feet better, bringing her other hand up to clasp the gun in a classic shooter’s stance. Despite the anxiety on her face, the pistol didn’t waver.
“He either dies for your dubious virtue, or I let him live to see you get one last good fuck—right here, on the floor. What do you say?”
Arrogant to the end, he slowly reached for the pistol near my immobilized hand.
“I don’t think so.”
The shot exploded off the walls, instantly matched by Duncan’s high-pitched, hysterical scream, filled with agony and outrage. The knife vanished from my cheek as he was spun away from me by the force of the bullet smacking his kneecap, its blood splattering us both.
He rolled on the floor near the corner, both hands trying to contain the devastating damage, covered with blood and splinters of bone. He screamed, over and over, his pale face contorted. “You bitch. You fucking bitch. You think this is going to end it?”
“I hope not,” she finally answered, “it’s your turn to suffer now.” And she reached for the phone.
25
NURSE ELIZABETH PACE CAME INTO the hospital room, and seeing Gail sitting next to my bed, she checked the catheter in my forearm, closed off the line, and replaced the near-empty bag with a new one. “I heard tell you were unkillable, Lieutenant. You’re not trying to test that theory, are you?”
I smiled weakly. “Not willingly.”
She filled out something on a clipboard and then fixed us both with a clinical eye. “Good, because you almost flunked this time.” She reached over and squeezed Gail’s hand. “How about you? Over the worst of it?”
Gail nodded. “Getting there. Thank you.”
Pace nodded, smiled, and left us alone.
It was more than a week later—my first day out of ICU. Philip Duncan, crippled and in another part of the same hospital, had confessed to the rape, basking in his cleverness. We’d already located a court clerk in Greenfield who remembered him spending hours going over the public records there, exhibiting a keen interest in Bob Vogel—a man whose style he could copy, and whose fate he could seal. And now that we knew who to look for, we’d found other evidence of Duncan’s stalking of Vogel—a sighting of him near the yard man’s garage at the time of the fire; a screwdriver in the trunk of his car, smeared with the same motor oil Vogel used; a receipt for malleable molding wax. Still, a confession never hurts.
Of course, Duncan’s plan had called for Vogel to wind up back in prison, and when our case had begun to unravel, so had Duncan’s debatable grasp on reality. By the time Sammie Martens had provoked him in his home, the cold-blooded ruthlessness that had served him so well turned on itself and had sent him raging into the storm.
Goss had been right about the rapist’s penchant for collecting. When Tyler had led a team into Duncan’s house, they had found not coins or stamps or Early American milk bottles, but keys. Over the years, greatly aided by a profession which gave him access to hundreds of houses and dozens of other realtors, Duncan had copied, labeled, and collected keys. At night, recreationally, as some men go to bars or the movies, he would enter other people’s homes—usually those belonging to single women. What he did there still wasn’t clear; Megan suspected that he probably masturbated or walked around the places naked, establishing a bizarre, private ascendancy over the owners. But Duncan himself wasn’t talking about that yet. What mattered to us was that one of those keys had Gail’s name on it.
All of which made Stanley Katz a very happy editor. With the furor following Duncan’s arrest dying down, most of the out-of-town media had headed home. Tony Brandt had made a point of giving Katz everything he could on the case, and making the Reformer the news conduit to the rest of the world—or that part of it which still showed any interest. The effects of this on the Reformer’s future were yet to come, but in the meantime, press/police relations had never been cozier.
Things had not turned out as successfully for James Dunn. On the second Tuesday of a snow-free, balmy November, with the season’s first storm a mere freak of nature for future almanacs, Jack Derby had been elected the new State’s Attorney for Windham County by a considerable margin.
Gail had also made political news. She’d resigned from the board of selectmen and announced her intention to return to law school, resuming an educational path she’d interrupted twenty-five years ago to “drop out” and move to Brattleboro.
She’d been detailing her plans when Elizabeth Pace had come in to check on me. “There’s something else,” she added, once we were alone. “I think I’ll sell the house.”
It didn’t come as a surprise. Her persistent reluctance to do more than drop by and pick up the odd item or two had warned me of that. But it still caused a cool tremor to run through me. Combined with her school plans, the sale of her home didn’t bode well for her staying in the area.
I thought back over the past two months, at the limits to which we’d been pushed, individually and as a couple—at how much I’d come to see her as an integral part of my life.
But apparently those were my feelings alone, and since we’d never made any overt commitments to each other when we could—determinedly living apart and maintaining our “freedom”—I now felt the swelling grief of an opportunity lost forever, sacrificed to selfish notions of independence.
I nodded quietly, suppressing this private turmoil. “Makes sense.”
She reached over and took my hand. I felt a hesitancy on her part, and braced myself for the inevitable. “You may not think so in a minute, and maybe this isn’t the best time to hit you with this… ” She paused, searching for the right words.
I squeezed
her fingers, spurred on by a sudden impatience. “Go ahead. We can sort it out afterward.”
She chuckled, throwing me off guard. “Okay. What do you say we move in together? Get a place of our own?”
I stared at her openmouthed.
She spoke quickly, as if trying to outrun my anticipated rejection. “I’m not talking about marriage, and I’d have to have my own space—a study or a couple of rooms—so we’d both still have lots of breathing room, like before… I realize it would mean giving up your apartment… ” Her voice trailed off.
I laid my head back on the pillow, slightly giddy at this emotional turnabout.
Gail watched me closely. “Would you be interested?” Her face was a mixture of hopefulness and doubt.
I smiled at her, sharing her feelings, willing to put my trust in the former. “Yes. I would.”
Excerpt
Now available as an e-book, Archer Mayor’s The Dark Root is the sixth Joe Gunther novel.
The Dark Root
THREE MONTHS LATER, with the snow nestled only into those nooks and crannies where the sun couldn’t reach it, I got a call at home—our home, I was becoming used to saying—which Gail Zigman and I had recently bought on Orchard Street in the quasi-rural no-man’s-land between Brattleboro and smaller “West B,” as the locals call it.
The caller was Sergeant George Capullo, an experienced patrol veteran of many years. “Sorry to bother you, Joe.”
It was after midnight. I blinked at the jet black skylight above the bed, trying to clear my brain. “What’s up, George?” Gail rolled over beside me, her eyes still shut, and slid a naked thigh across my legs.
“We got a call for a disturbance on Wantastiquet Drive about forty minutes ago. A neighbor reported a big commotion and people screaming next door. By the time we got there, everything was quiet and the homeowners wouldn’t let us in.”
“Who’re we talking about?”
“Thomas Lee and family. Owns the Blue Willow. He’s got a split lip and a bad cut on his forehead, but he won’t cooperate—doesn’t want an ambulance, won’t let us in, and claims he fell downstairs. If both he and the neighbor are telling the truth, I’m guessing he took a good half hour to hit the floor.”
“The neighbor see anything?”
“That’s why I’m calling. She saw a dark green sporty number with out-of-state plates peeling out right before we showed up. She didn’t get the registration, but she thought she saw several heads through the car’s back window. Normally, I would’ve forced the issue and demanded entry, to see if everybody was okay, but I really don’t smell a domestic here. I think something else is going on, and I thought you might like an early crack at it.”
I reluctantly slid free from Gail, still speaking softly on the phone. “Okay, George. I’m on my way.”
Wantastiquet Drive is not a neighborhood the police are called to visit much. A gentle, peaceful street, trailing off of the heavily traveled Putney Road, its postwar, middle-class homes are the sort one typically associates with suburban New Jersey. The lawns are littered with swing sets and bicycles, and basketball backboards hang like recreational targets over cluttered two-car garages.
The address George had given me was on the Connecticut River side of the street, although the implication was misleading—any potential view of the river was blocked by several rows of tall, sound-absorbing trees, planted to block the noise from the train tracks at the foot of the steep embankment.
I parked my car behind George’s, a few houses down from the Lee residence. He was sitting alone with his lights out, the gentle country music from his radio occasionally drowned out by some terse murmuring on the scanner. I squatted down by his open window. From what I could see, every single light was on at the Lee’s, in contrast to the tomblike darkness of its neighbors. The effect told less of a nest of night owls, and more of a forlorn desire to ward off evil with artificial brightness.
“Any movement?”
George shifted the chew of tobacco he had stuck in his cheek. “Nope.”
“You said a neighbor heard people screaming. She understand any of it?”
“Not a word. And the car could’ve been from anywhere. She only knew it wasn’t Vermont because the numbers were dark on light, instead of the other way around.”
“Didn’t get the make of the car?”
He laughed softly. “It was dark green, low-slung, and had four wheels. She’d probably swear to that much on a bible.”
I straightened back up. “Well, let’s give it another shot.”
We cut across the lawn to the house’s front door, taking advantage of the angle to peer through the windows as we went. But translucent curtains, while they let the light out, didn’t show much of what was going on inside. I paused for a moment before ringing the doorbell. All was quiet.
It took several attempts at the bell and my pounding on the door to finally rouse a response from the other side.
“Who is it?” The voice was male, slightly high-pitched, and hesitant.
“This is Lieutenant Joe Gunther, of the Brattleboro Police. Could I have a few words with you, Mr. Lee?”
“We already spoke to your men.”
“I realize that, sir, but you have to understand that this is an unusual situation. We need to talk.”
I guessed it was no more than the man’s innate sense of politeness that got him to reluctantly open the door, if only a crack. His injuries, to my unfortunately practiced eye, had all the earmarks of a classic beating.
“I fell down the stairs,” he said in careful English. “I am sorry I disturbed others, but I am all right—in perfect health.”
“Is the rest of your family here?”
“Yes. We are all here. Everyone is okay.”
“May I come in, Mr. Lee?”
There was a cry of pain from somewhere behind him. Lee whirled around, obviously near panic, and called out something in Chinese. A woman’s voice answered. Through the gap in the door, I caught a glimpse of a house in turmoil—two crooked pictures on the one wall I could see, a side table leaning drunkenly on a shattered leg, the hallway rug wadded up and shoved against the baseboard.
Apparently appeased by the unseen voice, Thomas Lee swung back to block my view again. “I have nothing more to say, Lieutenant. Thank you for your concern.” The door moved slightly.
I blocked it with my foot. “Mr. Lee, please. Your closing that door won’t make this situation go away. We know you didn’t fall down any stairs, unless you were pushed. We know several people in a car with out-of-state license plates were here before our first unit arrived. I can plainly see that your house has been ransacked and that someone inside is in pain. Based on all that, we cannot walk away from this.”
The stress on Lee’s face tightened into anger. “We have broken the laws?”
I adopted my most diplomatic tone of voice, hoping to avoid a show of force. “Mr. Lee, look at this from our side. You are a prominent and respected citizen of our town. You have a wife and daughter. It’s our job to protect all of you, if necessary from one another.”
His eyes widened in horror at the implication. “I didn’t do anything to my family. What are you meaning?”
I spread my hands. “How can I answer that? You won’t talk to me. Either your wife or child is hurt in there, it’s the middle of the night, and there was enough noise here to wake up the neighbors. Normally, that adds up to a domestic dispute. Considering the way you look, and the fact that you’re the strongest member of the family, I hate to think what shape the others might be in.”
“This is wrong. You are wrong.” he shouted.
“Then prove it. Let us in. Let me talk to them.”
His face jammed up with frustration. Thomas Lee was no stranger to us. The Blue Willow was a popular, highly profitable restaurant, and almost everyone I knew had at one time or another enjoyed at least one meal there. It also employed a huge and faceless staff of Asian workers, some of whom we suspected had bogus papers. One
of the INS’s two Vermont-based investigators had dropped by the restaurant recently, but what he’d found—beside a suddenly diminished crew that day—hadn’t been enough to warrant any action. Nevertheless, it was a common law enforcement assumption that the Blue Willow was one of dozens of way stations along the Montreal-Boston-New-York illegal alien pipeline.
Lee, of course, knew of our suspicions, and no doubt guessed that our present interest fell a little shy of the altruism I’d just spouted. But he also knew we had him over a barrel. Slowly, as if yielding to a great weight, the door finally swung back.
Without a word, he stiffly led us back to the kitchen. Throughout the house, furniture was broken, pictures smashed, closets emptied and their contents ripped and torn, and spray paint had been used on the walls. If this attack had taken a half hour, it seemed a short time for such utter destruction. The people responsible had obviously been experienced.
The kitchen was in similar turmoil, its cabinets empty, the floor covered with a gritty, slippery mixture of food. The refrigerator stood wide open, there being nothing left inside to protect from room temperature.
At the counter separating the breakfast nook from the rest of the room, an exhausted and anguished middle-aged woman was daubing the face of a teenage girl with a wad of alcohol-dampened cotton. The girl, whom I guessed to be about sixteen, was strikingly pretty, despite the livid bruise on one cheek, and the cut on her chin that her mother was trying to tend. The girl’s expression, however, was unmistakable. It was the same blank-eyed look of desolation and loss I’d seen haunting too many victims of sexual assault.
Thomas Lee wordlessly introduced his family with a vague wave of one hand. I nodded formally to both women and introduced myself. The mother didn’t answer; the girl didn’t seem to know I was there.
I stepped closer to them, gently putting my hand on Mrs. Lee’s to interrupt her ministrations. “I need to ask you some questions.”
Fruits of the Poisonous Tree Page 32
