The Price of Malice

by Archer Mayor

  She decided to play by his rules. She rose and crossed to the door. “Look,” she told him. “You already screwed up. You agreed to talk with me. Not smart if the names I gave your secretary meant nothing. Cops don’t need proof to start with; they just need it at the end. Till then, they run around interviewing people, staking out offices and homes, and getting court orders to dig everywhere.” She pointed to a row of beige file cabinets lining the wall. “I can get that ball rolling, if you want. Even if it doesn’t pan out, your clients might decide you’ve got a reputation they don’t need.”

  She paused by the door, while he stared at her meditatively.

  “Tough little bitch,” he finally said. “You sure they didn’t commit suicide just to get away from you?”

  She placed her hand on the knob. “That the best you can come up with?”

  He flapped a hand in the air, as if shooing away a fly. “Sit down, for crying out loud. Let’s see what we can figure out.”

  She accepted his offer, genuinely curious.

  He laced his hands behind his neck. “All right. Despite your being obnoxious and wrong—about everything—I can see you’ve had a rough time, and I’d like to show you I’m not the asshole you think.”

  “Meaning you know something?”

  “Meaning I know people who know people. I deal in finances. That’s a who-you-know kind of business. If I want to get in on a deal at the bottom, I’ve got to know what’s going on in the street.”

  A comment welled up in her throat, but she kept it quiet so he could keep laying out a mythology he probably believed was being captured on a tape recorder.

  “Okay,” she said instead.

  Brandhorst pulled a pad toward him from the middle of the desk. “Why don’t you give me a few details? How to spell your dad’s and brother’s names, the name of the boat, where it’s moored now, a few dates—stuff like that. I’ll make some inquiries and get back to you.”

  She covered her contempt with a counteroffer, smiling as she spoke. “How ’bout this, instead? I’m at a local motel—what time should I come back tomorrow?”

  His hand froze around the pen again. “That’s not much time. I might not have anything for you.”

  “Then I’ll come back the day after that.”

  He frowned, glanced out the window overlooking the street, as if composing himself, and then suggested, “Let’s get to it, then.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sam slowed down at the entrance of the West Bratt Mobile Park, a name conjured up, she imagined, by a developer with a loathing for polysyllables and a marginal sense of subtlety. It was a middling place on the economic scale, neither high-class—with picket fences, concrete slabs, a central clubhouse, and aboveground pools—nor subsistence level. The roads were dirt but free of roots and car-sized potholes, and some effort had been made to preserve a few trees, instead of either clear-cutting them or wedging the homes amid a tangle of half-dead, mature evergreens destined to fall over and crush the nearest roof.

  For that matter, it wasn’t far from what Sam herself had called home as a child.

  She glanced down at the printout she had cradled in her lap and drove down the road, killing the air conditioner and rolling down all the windows. She wanted to feel and hear what this neighborhood experienced daily, if only in passing.

  It was incredibly hot, and very quiet, the temperature having either driven everyone indoors or reduced their activities to merely breathing, like iguanas on a rock. In fact, she did see a few people, sitting in the shade, moving as little as possible.

  Sam reached the address and slowly rolled to a stop, the back of her shirt already sticking to the car seat.

  She opened the door, got out, and looked around. The heat almost buzzed inside her head—echoing the sound of distant grasshoppers and the gentle hum of traffic.

  “My mom’s not here.”

  She tried locating the source of the boy’s voice, but saw nothing moving.

  “How do you know I’m looking for her?” she asked the surrounding air.

  “You’re a cop, right?”

  “Your mom get a lot of visits from us?”

  “Wouldn’t you know that?”

  Sam smiled. “Yeah, we probably would.”

  “So, you either know or you didn’t check, which makes you pretty sloppy.”

  That made her laugh. “Ouch. Are you the family member who gets all the high grades?”

  “I hate school.”

  “Maybe you’re too smart for it.”

  There was no answer. For a moment, she wondered if that would be an end to it, and that she’d be left wondering if the conversation had ever taken place.

  But the suspense was broken by a single word, “Here,” and the tiniest movement of what looked to be a child’s finger, wiggling from between the crisscrossed slats skirting the foundation of the trailer.

  Sam crouched low by the latticework. “That your clubhouse?” she asked.

  “I don’t call it that,” the voice answered. She could make out the faintest of shadows in the gloom.

  “Right,” Sam agreed. “Kind of dorky.”

  “Yeah. What’s your name?”

  “Sam.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s short for Samantha, but nobody calls me that.”

  “Just Sam?”

  “And Sammie, sometimes. I don’t mind that. What’s yours?”

  “Richard. Nobody calls me that, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “They like Ricky, or Richie. I hate those.”

  “Kid stuff,” Sam agreed. “Okay if I call you Richard?”

  She could hear the pleasure in his voice. “Yeah.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Vial.”

  She passed her sleeve across her forehead. She was squatting in the full sun and it was starting to bear down on her.

  “You wanna be where it’s cooler?” Richard asked.

  “I wouldn’t mind it. I’m cooking out here. Is anyone home?”

  “Just me.”

  Suddenly, a section of the latticework popped away from its surroundings, revealing a narrow entrance. “Come in. You’ll like it.”

  She hesitated. She only had his word for it that he was alone, didn’t know when that might end, and also had to assume that the lair he was offering came with a decades-long accumulation of dirt, pet shit, and garbage—exactly what he would never notice, but which would force her to maybe throw out her clothes afterward.

  But she liked him, and liked having even an underage ally on-site. Given what little she already knew of the address and its residents, this was not likely to be a onetime visit.

  She pulled open the slat and slipped in beside the boy, closing the latticework behind her. To her double surprise, she found herself on an old, fairly clean rug, and ventilated by a nearby oscillating fan.

  She laughed gently, looking around. There were toys, books, bedding, and assorted childish accoutrements. “These are quite the digs,” she commented.

  He smiled in the gloom. “Yeah. I sleep down here sometimes.”

  “I bet,” she said admiringly. “Lot of people know about this?”

  “Not too many,” he admitted.

  She stuck her hand out for a shake. “Well, I’m privileged to be one of a small group, then.”

  He took her hand awkwardly, and only for a second. His hand was tiny, cool, and as muscular as a piece of liver.

  “You been a cop for long?” he asked.

  She studied him closely, now that she was out of the glare and could actually see him. He was thin, with a bladelike face and worried, watchful eyes.

  “Yeah—years.”

  “You local or state?”

  “Neither, really,” she told him. “VBI.”

  She was about to explain, as was her habit, but his eyes widened. “No shit? The Bureau? That’s really cool. I read about you guys. You do all the big cases.”

  She smiled and
nodded. Leave it to a kid to nail it when half the adult population still had no clue. “Yup.”

  “That’s gotta be neat.”

  She couldn’t argue. “It’s interesting. I get a charge out of it.”

  “I bet. You done murders and everything, right?”

  “Right.” She figured him for being about ten, precociously poised between childhood’s receptive innocence and the vast expanse of the storm-tossed teens—at least according to her own experience.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “I think I would like that.”

  She grabbed her opportunity. “What would you like the most?”

  “To put things right,” he said without hesitation.

  She was struck by this choice from among so many. “There’s a lot of that to do,” she commented.

  “I know.”

  She lay on her stomach beside him and took in the world beyond the latticework—the cars, the dusty, dazzling road, the other silent trailer homes. A couple of dragonflies were darting over the weeds near the bumper of her car.

  “This is a really nice spot.”

  He rested beside her, his chin cupped on his fist. “Yup.”

  “Guess it’s not always this quiet.”

  “Nope.”

  “What happens?”

  He thought a moment. “Cars and fights, and people drinking.”

  “Bet that makes this hiding place pretty safe.”

  He glanced up at her and smiled. “Yeah. Most of the time.”

  She rolled her eyes to look overhead. “You live with a lot of people?”

  He frowned slightly. “Don’t you know?”

  She laughed. “People think we know more than we do. We have records about some of them—mostly when they’ve broken the rules—but the computer’s not great about keeping addresses up-to-date. The rest of them—like you? We have no clue. I didn’t know you even existed, Richard.”

  That clearly struck him as interesting. He went back to gazing at the street. “Huh.”

  She didn’t interrupt. She thought he might appreciate the time to think.

  “There are six of us that’re related, more or less,” he finally answered.

  “Wow. That’s a lot. All at once?”

  “Most of the time. When she’s kidding around, my mom calls it a hotel. I think she likes it that way.”

  “Not someone who prefers being alone?”

  He laughed, but it seemed almost private. “Nope.”

  “Just so I get it right,” Sam asked, “your mom is Karen Putnam, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “So, you have a lot of brothers and sisters.”

  He paused before saying, “Kinda.”

  “Like a mixed family?”

  “That’s it, all right,” he responded freely. “None of us has the same last name; well, Nick changed his. Basically, I have two brothers and a sister—Nick, Ryan, and Becky. But nobody knows we’re related. That used to be kinda funny sometimes, when we were little.”

  It sounded like the reminiscence of an old man.

  “No dad?” Sam asked quietly.

  But Richard wasn’t so sensitive. He laughed. “I have more dads than I can count.”

  Again, the line sounded stolen from an adult. Sam wondered what the age gap was between the four siblings.

  “Why’re you here?” he suddenly asked.

  Sam thought a moment before answering. From what she and Willy had separately gathered from less than reliable sources, Karen Putnam had been sleeping with a man who might have been also abusing her daughter. It seemed a dicey subject to dangle before a ten-year-old, even if he might be a bit of a philosopher.

  “A name came up in one of my investigations,” she said, instead. “I wanted to fly it by your mom.”

  The next question was a given, even if he seemed to understand its futility. “And you’re not gonna tell me.”

  Sam abruptly changed her mind. “Wayne Castine. Why wouldn’t I tell you, Richard?”

  He smiled broadly. “ ’Cause grown-ups don’t. What’s your excuse?”

  She laughed with him.

  “I know Wayne,” he admitted.

  She watched his face. “And?”

  He looked away—back toward the street. “I don’t like him.”

  “Why not?”

  She was about to rephrase the question when he didn’t immediately answer, but then stopped, remembering his thoughtful tempo.

  “He makes me feel dirty.”

  She kept her voice neutral. “Has he done anything bad to you?”

  Richard shook his head silently.

  “But he has to other people?” she asked.

  His answer was small and fragile. “Yeah.”

  “Your mom?”

  He nodded.

  “Your sister?”

  He turned his head so his cheek was resting on his fist and he was looking up at her. “Why’re you here?” he repeated. “VBI only does big crimes, like murder and stuff.”

  “He was murdered, Richard,” she explained. “That’s why we’re trying to find out about him.”

  He sat up and crossed his legs. “He was murdered? How?”

  She hedged. “An autopsy’s being done right now.”

  “Wow. Who d’you think killed him?”

  Again, she chose carefully. “Well, we have a few ideas.”

  “Like my mom?”

  She laughed, defeated, and laid her hand on his thin back. “Richard. I only heard your mom knew the guy, probably like a hundred other people. You knew him, too, right?”

  She forced him to nod before she continued.

  “And I don’t think you killed him. But somebody did, and right now, we think it was somebody who didn’t like him a whole lot—someone who was really angry at him.”

  “I just thought he was creepy,” Richard stated, almost as an apparent alibi.

  Sam leaned in slightly closer, sensing that some of her ground laying might be about to pay off. For, as sad as it was to admit sometimes, and as compassionate as she knew she could be, she remained a hunter, stimulated by the pursuit. “In what way, Richard? Why did you say what you did about him and your mom?”

  But in a textbook example of one of those moments you repeatedly play over in your brain, her opportunity abruptly vaporized in the noisy, dust-shrouded, skidding-to-a-halt arrival of an older, rusty Town & Country van. Squinting through the brown, swirling cloud that rolled toward them and broke against their crisscross of slats, Sam and Richard watched a tall, slim, hard-faced woman in tight jeans and a spaghetti-strapped crop top emerge from the van, carrying a translucent grocery sack revealing two cartons of cigarettes and some beer. She stood motionless for a moment, studying Sammie’s car, before she put the sack on the ground, crossed the narrow swatch of grass between the street and the latticework, and crouched down directly before them.

  From sensing she’d gained access to an inner sanctum of security and privacy, Sam now felt like an adult trapped wearing a kid’s costume, suddenly thrust into public view.

  “Who the fuck’re you?” the woman demanded, shading her eyes and squinting into the gloom. “Ricky, what the hell do you think you’re doing under there? This is way over the line, you little jerk.”

  She began tearing at the slats, looking for the opening. “Get the hell out of there, you pervert. He’s a fucking kid, for Chrissake.”

  Seeing no other way out, literally or otherwise, Sam tried meeting force with force. She pushed open the entrance, showing her badge as she awkwardly but quickly emerged, dusting herself off.

  “Calm down. I’m a police officer. You weren’t home, so I was chatting with Richard.”

  The woman straightened along with Sam, taller than her by half a head. “The fuck you were. You weren’t invited in there, and don’t tell me he did, ’cause he’s a kid and you know better. You get the hell off my property.”

  “You Karen Putnam, ma’am?”

  “You’re damn right I am, and you’re trespassing.”


  “I’m Samantha Martens, of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, and I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

  Putnam reached out to push Sam’s shoulder toward her car, but Sam caught the hand and held it in midair, halfway between merely stopping it in motion and swinging it around to throw the taller woman into an arm lock.

  “Do not touch me, Mrs. Putnam,” Sam warned her.

  The hand was yanked back, as if from a hot stove.

  “I don’t want to even look at you, bitch. Now get the fuck away from here. NOW,” she shouted.

  In the corner of her eye, Sam saw Richard taking this all in, his expression tight and edgy. One of his hands was unconsciously scratching at the dirt, like a nervous animal’s.

  Sam kept her voice calm. “Mrs. Putnam. I am investigating a homicide . . .”

  But Putnam cut her off. “I know all about that—Wayne. It was on the radio. Who gives a shit about that shitbird?”

  “You knew him, then?”

  Putnam gave her a withering stare. “Well, you’re here, for God’s sake. What do you think? Or are you just crawling under every trailer in town, hoping to get lucky?”

  She distractedly finger-combed her long, tangled hair, glanced down at her son, and snarled, “Get out of my sight, Ricky. You and I’ll talk later.”

  Richard vanished, pulling the slats tight behind him, reminding Sam of a pet bolting for cover.

  Putnam then turned on her, her voice just under the yelling she’d maintained until now. “Okay—you. Don’t get all twitchy now. I won’t touch you. I’m poor, not stupid. And right now, I’m hot and angry. You feel like you have a real deep need to get in my face, I figure you’ll find a way. But I’m going inside now, and you’re not, so have a nice day and fuck off.”

  She made an exaggerated show of sidling around where Sam stood, both hands held up as if showing her passiveness, and then swooped down, grabbed her grocery bag, and stamped up the trailer’s steps, slamming the door behind her.

  There was a stunned silence for a moment, as if all of Nature took a breath to recover, before Sam became aware of the two dragonflies again, still darting about aimlessly, along with the distant sound of a lawn mower starting up.

  She tucked her chin in slightly, so no one could see her mouth moving from the trailer windows.