by Archer Mayor
Joe parked in the barracks lot, walked up the handicap ramp bordering the low building’s oppressively bland exterior, and was met at the door by a square-built young man wearing a dark blue shirt and matching tie. Cops find it hard to resist discounted tie-and-shirt bargains at Sears and Penney’s.
“Joe Gunther?” the man said, extending a broad and powerful hand in greeting. “I saw you drive up. I feel like I’m meeting a legend. This is a real honor. I’m Owen Baern.”
“Hardly a legend,” Joe told him, admiring the young detective’s distinctive head of curly hair—an unusual feature in a profession renowned for crew cuts and flattops. “More like a guy who never learned to quit.”
Baern escorted Joe into the building, through the secure lobby, and back into the core of the barracks. “That’s not what I’ve heard. You’re like the most famous cop we have.”
“How long you been at it, Owen?” Joe asked, as much to change subjects as out of modesty.
“Seven years. I’ve only been working plainclothes for a couple of months, though, so anything you can give me will be much appreciated. I need all the help I can get.”
They’d worked their way down a long central corridor, and now entered a small office equipped with two desks. “We talking in general?” Joe asked. “Or the Benjamin Kendall case I mentioned on the phone?”
Baern pulled out a guest chair for him. “Both, maybe. That’s up to you. You want some coffee or a soda?”
Joe sat down. “I’m good, thanks.”
There was a moment’s pause between strangers at a loss for words. Joe’s host settled hesitantly behind his desk.
“Why not start with Kendall?” Joe prompted. “How did you catch the case?”
Gratefully, Baern turned to his computer and began reading from the screen. “Came in as an anonymous tip. We chased the cell phone data upstream and pinned it to a guy named Jason Newville, DOB: 7/30/84. I know him from my days on the road. He’s a regular when it comes to B-and-Es, selling stolen copper, ripping off car stereos, even shoplifting. And of course, the standard pissant drug deal to see him through the weekend. He targeted Kendall’s place because he heard it was a gold mine and Kendall hadn’t been around lately.”
“Was that common?” Joe cut in.
Owen looked at him. “That Ben disappeared now and then? Just the opposite. He was a local fixture—him and his truck. You know about him?”
“I heard he was a hoarder.”
“Yeah. Amazing place. I never saw anything like it. Jammed, everywhere—floor to ceiling. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. My dad was a pack rat. I hated it. Stank, too. But for the Jason Newvilles of the world? That’s the smell of opportunity.”
“You interviewed Jason,” Joe stated, assuming it was a given.
“Yeah. In the long run, he didn’t steal anything that I could tell—not that it’ll make much difference to the judge. Finding Ben creeped him out. He literally fell over him, according to his story, hightailed it out, and then couldn’t figure out what to do next.”
“So he called it in?”
Baern shook his head. “I know. Crazy enough to make it believable. Don’t know what to do? Call the cops, even if they’ll still arrest you for burglary.”
“You believe him?” Joe asked. “Newville?”
Owen absorbed the question before readjusting himself in his chair, thinking for a couple of seconds. “You know? I do,” he admitted quietly, as if fearful of being called out on it.
“The medical examiner phoned me,” Joe explained. “Ben was her cousin, it turns out.”
“Ouch,” Owen said, although clearly relieved to gain some insight on why Joe was there. He leaned into the computer again, checking its contents quickly. “The ME sent me a preliminary finding. I didn’t think there was anything suspicious, or that I’d dropped the ball. Just a heart attack and some minor trauma related to the landslide.”
“Undetermined for the time being,” Joe clarified. “You ever meet Hillstrom?”
“The chief up there? I heard about her. She’s not much fun, supposedly.”
“She can be driven,” Joe specified. “With Ben, she’s saying she wants to wait for the tox results, but that’s because she has no hard evidence of a straight-out coronary. This one is bugging her.”
“He was family,” Owen suggested.
“True,” Joe agreed affably. “But that should sharpen everyone’s game. Not just hers. Most people have family somewhere.”
Baern looked down at the desktop, abashed, before looking up and raising his eyebrows. “You want to see the place? Where we found him? I wouldn’t mind a second pair of eyes.”
* * *
Dummerston is typical of many communities across Vermont, less an actual town than a collection of sub-villages. There’s an elementary school at one location, a church and municipal offices at another, the meeting hall and the primary fire station at a third. It’s largely a spiderweb of roads, dirt and paved, including the longest covered bridge within Vermont proper. But its spread-out quality notwithstanding, the people who live in its embrace are more interconnected than residents of the average urban apartment building. Visitors—and locals—sometimes poked fun at the layout, referring to the homegrown as “woodchucks.” Joe Gunther, however—a native of a similar town, farther north—knew better. These communities could come close to being disjointed families, along with a vitality—and a level of caring—that most neighborhoods could only envy.
Owen Baern drove an unmarked four-wheel-drive vehicle to the end of a badly rutted, overgrown dirt road that finally ran out of ambition at a clearing on the edge of Ben Kendall’s property. It was past the foliage season, and what leaves were slated to fall had done so, leaving a skeletal superstructure of stark and empty hardwoods crowding in from all sides, as well as a dark blanket of rotting vegetation underfoot. To Joe’s eyes, it set the perfect backdrop to the bleak, time-pummeled collection of aging buildings before him, guarded by a thrown-up palisade of twisted and rusting machine parts that made the totality look like some sole survivor’s last stand in a postapocalyptic wasteland.
“Wow,” Joe commented, stretching his legs beside the car as he got out, and trying to read the lay of the land.
“That’s one word for it,” Owen agreed. “You can see the challenge to conducting a by-the-book scene survey. It reminds me of one of those man-against-the-machines movies, where everyone lost.”
“That it does,” Joe muttered, choosing a deliberate course between the obstacles, heading for the compound’s main house, and fighting the notion that one of the bristling metal haystacks might suddenly stir to life. It also didn’t help that, typical of this time of year, the low sky was bruised and menacing.
Baern fell in beside him. “Not hard to figure what Jason found attractive. When I interviewed him, he admitted that before he knew Ben was inside, dead, he didn’t know where to start. There was so much to choose from, he wished he’d stolen a flatbed truck first.”
“Tell me more about Jason,” Joe requested.
“Meaning might he have killed Ben in exchange for all this?” He waved an arm at the piles they were skirting.
“Maybe if he got surprised?” Joe asked.
Owen gave it some thought before shaking his head. “Never say never, as they say, but I don’t see it. Beyond a totally nonviolent rap sheet, I don’t think it fits his personality. He’s a schmoozer, and probably a bit of a coward. Plus, he did make the phone call, which speaks of somebody seriously out of his element. And let’s not forget that the body was already decomposing.”
“Good point,” Joe agreed.
They reached the door, which had been sealed with yellow tape and a NO TRESPASSING order. Baern pulled out a knife and cut through it, explaining, “We might not’ve done this normally. But with the autopsy still pending, and no other residents, I figured it couldn’t hurt.…”
“Sure,” Joe said. “You put a man out here?”
“The lieuten
ant said it wasn’t warranted. The tape’s to discourage more Jasons from crawling out of the woodwork for a shopping spree, but the budget couldn’t handle a babysitter.” Owen yanked open the door, adding, “Prepare yourself. It don’t smell pretty.”
It didn’t, despite the removal of Ben’s body. It was also no brighter inside than at midnight, every window being blocked by possessions.
Equipped with flashlights and breathing with their mouths open, they retraced Jason’s journey through tunnel and over dunes, to where the funeral home and others had excavated around the landslide’s foot, mostly by throwing heaps of material across the room. Joe could only imagine the disgust that had accompanied the clearing process.
“You were here when he was removed?” Joe asked.
Owen was looking around, playing his light across the landscape. There was an overhead bulb burning, here and there, but to little effect. “Yup. Took pictures, too. Believe it or not, it seemed tidy compared to this. Everybody was in a rush to get him out.”
Joe was trying to reconstruct the scene as they’d found it. “You never suspected foul play?”
Baern sensed where this was headed. “Honestly? No. I know what you’re thinking: that we just wanted to get the hell out of here. I’ve asked myself that a dozen times already, especially since you walked into my office. I swear to God, between how we found Ben and what I found out later about Jason Newville, I can’t see anything here beyond a really sad accident.”
“So, how’s that work?” Joe asked him. “Ben was walking by the doorway and everything from one room suddenly caved in on him?”
Baern fidgeted with his tie. “That’s the way it looked at the time. Things have been moved—”
“Not that much,” Joe pointed out. “There’s no place to walk by. You either approach the pile head-on, from this direction, or you slide down it the way Jason did, from the other.”
Owen became a little defensive. “There are other rooms where it’s not a pile that spills into the next room, but a stacked wall. I was thinking the same was true here, and that maybe he was standing in front of it, maybe looking for something down low, when he destabilized the whole thing and it crushed him. I mean, it looks like the side of a hill now, but it might not’ve been that way originally.”
Joe was nodding. “Okay. I could see that. Do you remember—was he mostly pinned by tools and hardware, or magazines and boxes?” He gestured toward the rest of the room. “Like what was thrown off to get to him afterwards?”
“Softer stuff,” Owen said. “Why?”
“I haven’t seen the autopsy photographs yet, and I know he was partially decomposed, but from what you told me, he was kind of beaten up—scratches and bruises and whatever.”
His younger colleague pondered that a moment before conceding, “Which is a little unlikely from a pile of paper.”
Joe faced him encouragingly. “Not impossible, but ‘unlikely’ is a good word.”
CHAPTER THREE
Joe was sitting in a booth at the back of an out-of-the-way restaurant in Burlington when a woman slid onto his bench, pressed herself up against him, and delivered a kiss. He responded by infiltrating her unbuttoned coat with his hand and caressing her flat stomach and the underside of one breast.
Beverly Hillstrom broke away only long enough to murmur, “Special Agent Gunther. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Taking advantage of a consenting adult, I hope,” he said, kissing her.
She slid back out to remove the coat, hung it on the booth’s outer post, and took the bench across from him. Her arrival made the air around them smell of the cool, fresh outdoors.
“This okay?” he asked, indicating the seating.
“Wonderful,” she said, as she reached out to take his hand, “And it’s not that I don’t want to be seen with you.”
“No, no,” he almost interrupted. “I totally understand. It makes life easier for the both of us, to be honest.”
She laughed then. “You should know, your ex-girlfriend being the current governor of Vermont. That has to have been awkward on occasion.”
He allowed for a rueful smile. “It had its moments when it was news, but no more. Thank God we weren’t an item when she got elected. Not that dating the state’s chief medical examiner is a step down.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Perish the thought.” She gave his fingers an extra squeeze as she said, “I love that you drove all the way up here to see me. You are something else—one of the most thoughtful people I know.”
“It’s my pleasure,” he assured her. “I’m just sorry about the circumstances.”
“It was a little disconcerting to see my own cousin on the table,” she allowed. “Did you get to meet with the VSP investigator? His name didn’t ring a bell with me.”
“He’s new,” Joe told her. “Owen Baern. Solid guy. He’ll get the hang of it faster than most.”
“And you found nothing suspicious about Ben’s death?”
Joe tilted his head slightly. “I’m not saying that.”
Their waitress arrived and took their drink orders. Joe waited until she’d left to answer Beverly’s question. “It’s a given that every investigation has a few questions you can’t answer. The trick is to ask if you can live with them. Right now, I can’t say that. I’ll need some more facts before I’m happy with a finding of ‘Accidental.’”
Beverly took a sip of her drink before saying, “Fire away.”
He tapped his finger on the menu. “First things first. Otherwise, she’ll just keep interrupting.”
They therefore dealt with their orders before Joe asked, “Tell me about Ben. You said he moved to Vermont because of you. What’s the story there?”
“We were all brought up in Philadelphia,” Beverly began. “I come from quite the clan—what you might call Brahmins of the Main Line, not that the phrase means anything around here. The Main Line is a string of suburban towns running west of the city, alongside the primary tracks of the old Pennsylvania Railroad: places named Lower Merion, Villanova, Gladwyne, Bryn Mawr—where I attended college—and several others.”
“I was down there on a case,” Joe said. “Some pretty fancy houses—not that you can see them too well.”
“I should say not,” she agreed. “Several of those towns are among the priciest in the country, as they were in the late 1800s. People pay to be invisible from the road—unless, of course, they’re showing off.”
“That explains the Ferrari dealership I saw,” he suggested. “New Money versus Old?”
“As always,” she said. “Anyhow—full disclosure—your latest girlfriend is a hopeless blue blood.”
“I’m shocked.”
Her voice became nostalgic. “I know. That’s actually one of the reasons I became a physician—because I was told I didn’t have to. All such stuffy idealism aside, however, being a kid down there in those days was pretty magical, as un-PC as it sounds. We had a wonderful, pampered, catered-to childhood, which even then—in my defense—I knew not to take for granted. My parents had figured out that much—they made sure we appreciated how advantaged we were.”
“This included Ben?”
“Yes, although from a different angle, and in less than ideal circumstances in the long run. Ben’s mother and mine were sisters. They were inseparable as children—my grandmother used to say they were like twins. But my aunt married for love at too young an age, and it didn’t turn out well for her. Ben was the result, and in the early days, when things were still happy—he was just part of the gang. But later, his father started drinking, made a string of bad investments, and alienated everyone. They moved away, refused to keep in touch, turned down offers of help. By the time Ben was a teenager, his mother had died and he was living with a drunk. I always thought that was one reason he turned to photography—to put a camera between himself and the world.”
“That must’ve been hard to watch,” Joe said supportively.
Beverly leaned toward him. “
It should have been, and I have beaten myself up for most of my adult life because it wasn’t. Shameful as it sounds, Ben’s departure from our special kingdom barely caused a ripple. My mother took it hard. It changed her to have lost her sister. But we kids paid little attention. We were busy having fun and growing up like royalty and going to all the right schools and parties and what have you. It left me with a feeling of lapsed responsibility that I will take to my grave.”
Joe took one of her hands in his, stunned by how her own self-doubt was so at odds with his respect and admiration for her. “Whoa. Beverly. Slow down. How were you supposed to know what was going on between the adults? Much less take on the burden of what happened? This kind of crap happens in every family, from the Cabots down to the street sweeper.”
She was already shaking her head. “I realize that, Joe. You know me. I’ve put it all under a microscope—the scientist in the lab coat. You think I am unaware that half the cops in Vermont refer to me as the Ice Queen? That’s my armor, and what happened to Ben plays a big role in it. I let him down when he needed me, even if he didn’t know to ask for help, and I will never let that happen again. I will be just shy of fanatical in speaking up for the people who appear on my autopsy table—not to mention friends and family.”
They paused as their waitress returned and served them their meals.
“It wasn’t just that Ben fell off the radar when his parents left Philadelphia,” she resumed as they began eating. “I probably could have remained clueless and guilt-free if he’d just grown up to be another banker or insurance salesman or even a passport photographer, for God’s sake. It’s what did happen to him that fused with the family’s earlier sins, and made me feel that I should have paid closer attention.”
“What happened?” Joe asked.
“In a word, Vietnam,” she said.
“He served in Nam?” Joe blurted out.
“Yes. It didn’t sound too threatening at first. He shipped out as a Signal Corps photographer. He’d married and tried to find work, but without much luck. The army was recruiting, making all sorts of promises, including that you could pick your job and not be sent to Vietnam—both of which were usually so much hot air. But he actually landed one out of two. We were worried for him, of course, but amazed that they’d recognized his skill with a camera and put it to good use. So, despite his being sent to a war zone, we were hopeful that he’d be kept away from any direct line of fire.”
