Red Herring

by Archer Mayor

  “Which pissed off Mom big time,” Sam guessed.

  “Right. Whether she killed our vics or not, I don’t know, but whoever did apparently wanted the three ladies to suffer as Gini Coursen had suffered—by losing a loved one and living with the pain.”

  “Jesus,” Sam said softly.

  “So you know what to do: Tear apart that family and find out who fits the profile we’ve got with the oak wood, the gunpowder, the acetylene, access to blood samples, and everything else. At least one name’s got to surface on those lists you’ve been building.”

  “Roger that, boss. By the way, you might want to check your phone messages. David Hawke’s been trying to get in touch. He wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Joe snapped the phone shut and then reopened it to navigate through the commands to his voice mailbox, hitting several wrong buttons and cursing along the way. He saw the purpose of all these computers, PDAs, and electronic gadgetry, and used them as best he could, which he knew wasn’t all that well. But in his heart, he didn’t like them. They offered too much access, and deprived him of the silence and privacy that he used to enjoy to simply think. He’d tried playing the game of limiting his availability, but after a chorus of “Turn on your cell phone,” he’d finally given in to the fate of always being a call away.

  Which, of course, also had its advantages. Smiling ironically, he dialed David Hawke’s number.

  “Joe,” answered the scientist happily, his tone betraying no sense of intrusion whatsoever. “Thanks for calling back.”

  From his point on the crest of the hill, Joe could see southward down several miles of gently winding Connecticut River. Near Ascutney Mountain, the Connecticut Valley opened up to offer some of the best that this region had to offer photogenically—rolling farms, silvery ponds, the occasional proud church spire, gleaming white. He’d always thought that if this wasn’t balm for the soul in all of us, the species was indeed in dire shape.

  “No problem, David,” he answered his friend. “What’s up?”

  “It’s that little assignment you requested when you were up here—the familial DNA search, using the three drops of blood? It takes a while, as you can imagine. We’re trying to locate at best something like twenty-five percent matches, rather than the perfect fits we’re usually after, but we got lucky.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s called an off-lateral allele,” Hawke explained. “I won’t bore you with the technical details, but it’s like an aberration in the DNA profile, and it’s pretty rare. If we find one, like we did, then instead of going through thousands of comparison profiles, we only look for ones that also have off-lateral alleles.”

  “And you found one?”

  “We did,” he admitted. “It lines up very nicely with the blood drop that the Brookhaven folks thought might fit a black man with cancer.”

  Joe fumbled to pull his notepad and pen out of his pocket. “What’s the name?” he asked.

  “Peter Hildreth,” was the answer. “He was put in the system eight years ago for aggravated assault. He maxed out his jail time, from what I was told, so Parole and Probation has nothing current on him, but he was last known living in your neck of the woods, which isn’t too surprising.”

  “You have an address?” Joe asked.

  Hawke gave him a number on Sak Road in Vernon, a town south of Brattleboro most famous for its power plant.

  “This is great, David. You have anything else on this guy?”

  “I both faxed it to your office and sent you an e-mail attachment,” Hawke told him. “I thought you’d prefer that over scribbling down notes on the phone.”

  Joe stopped doing just that, remembering his thoughts on the world of electronics moments earlier. “Point taken,” he said with a laugh. “I’m heading south right now. I owe you big time.”

  “Always a pleasure,” was the response. “It’s nice when the planets line up.”

  Joe snapped the phone shut again and nosed into traffic once more, musing about how often good celestial alignments for some could spell bad luck for others.

  That was certainly what he was hoping for now. They were long overdue for a break.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Vernon was a curious town. Lacking a traditional town center, and substituting a bland hodgepodge of buildings to house its police, library, and town offices, it had a power plant to give it identity. But this was no pestilence-belching, ancient coal burner—dark, sooty, and brooding. This was the same Vermont Yankee with its headquarters in Brattleboro—a huge, looming, concrete-hued nuclear facility with the obligatory cooling towers looking like outer space transplants. Yankee had made of its host town an odd contradiction of model community and hotbed of controversy.

  The first badge had come from an early Big Brother benevolence, typical of the largesse of many newcomer capitalist endeavors. In the early 1970s, Yankee had invaded southeastern Vermont with its pockets bulging. Schools were helped, local ambulances purchased, sports fields built, hospital wings funded, and dozens of floundering community projects assisted. There seemed to be no end to the gravy train. In some respects, being Vermont Yankee’s home base was like having—out of the blue—an ice cream–loving, Rolls Royce–riding child maharaja arrive in the neighborhood with a passion for distributing his family’s assets among the local folk. In ever-widening concentric circles, starting with Vernon, people and struggling organizations throughout the county—governmental, altruistic, and entrepreneurial—began looking at Vermont Yankee as a cash cow of unimaginable dimensions.

  Which is precisely what froze the hearts of local outspoken environmentalists. Over the ensuing decades, in busloads and parades, carrying placards and bags of fake blood, yelling, chanting, and being dragged off in handcuffs, this ragtag army of protesters brought varying degrees of attention to their cause and their source of ire. As a result, Vermont Yankee either saved your life or threatened to end your world, but it was rarely held in neutral regard.

  And Vernon was stuck, hapless in the middle, between the wooing of the early days and the dread of a gloomy future, for it turned out that benevolence and nuclear plants have life expectancies. And VY’s was nearing expiration, making of Vernon an erstwhile smudge on the map that might soon be facing the fate of the dodo bird.

  Willy, of course, had his own take on it all. “They should’ve told those assholes to shove their millions and slammed the door in their faces—stayed the goat fuckers they were to start with.”

  He and Joe were driving to the Sak Road home of Peter Hildreth, whose blood was genetically tied to the drop they’d found decorating Doreen’s forehead.

  “A lot of people were helped with that money,” Joe commented.

  Willy twisted in the passenger seat to stare at him. “Oh, my God. Is this the man who used to sleep with our future governor? A closet toady of capitalist pigs? No wonder Miss Hug-the-Trees threw you out. And you told us she couldn’t live with the stress of your job. What a crock.”

  Joe smiled at the outburst. “Are you done?”

  Willy pulled out his phone. “Done? I’m calling the media.”

  “She’s not the governor yet,” Joe said obliquely.

  Willy pocketed the phone, his smile widening. “Oh, oh. Don’t tell me you’re voting for the other guy.”

  Joe rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying it’ll be close. And you should talk. Why’re you bashing Big Business? I thought you’d be delighted with what they’ve done.”

  Willy snorted. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the environmental crap. That’s all he-said, she-said to me. I am suspicious of anyone who buys affection, and I hate people who trade their self-respect. As far as I’m concerned, both the town and the plant deserve each other.”

  Joe didn’t respond, knowing better than to feed such a conversation. Willy was many things, including a man of integrity and strength. But he’d come to it the hard way, and harbored some rigid, close-minded principles as a
result.

  The bland countryside drifted by. The hilly terrain making Vermont famous was considerably diminished in Vernon, being close to the Massachusetts border and the banks of the Connecticut River. That’s what had made it so attractive to the state’s first settlers, when they built Fort Dummer on the water’s edge in the early 1700s.

  On the other hand, the irony of Vernon’s current plight—being at the mercy of the now aging and endangered enterprise that had made it rich beyond its means—could be glimpsed in the fate of that original fort. The actual historic site was underwater today, a victim of the Vernon Dam, built around 1910.

  And so it goes, Joe thought, turning off the main artery of Route 142 and onto Pond Road. Call it progress if you will.

  In some ways, he mused, taking in surroundings so rural as to defy the suburban label some Brattleboro residents applied to Vernon, it was an odd magnet for so much heated attention. It wasn’t surprising that Vermont Yankee was always pictured when this town was featured in the news—there wasn’t that much else to photograph.

  They took two turns off of Pond to finally enter Sak Road, and up to a modest but well-maintained trailer, about two hundred yards along.

  “What do we know about Peter Hildreth?” Willy suddenly asked as Joe pulled over to the side of the road, clear of the house’s narrow dirt driveway. There was an old Chevy sedan beside the trailer.

  “I ran him through Spillman,” Joe began, killing the engine. “He did time five years ago for aggravated assault—some bar brawl in Bellows Falls. That’s how we got his blood on file. Other than that, he’s pretty run-of-the-mill—a couple of domestics, some neighbor complaints now and then, a DUI.”

  “Married?”

  Joe opened his door. “The computer said he wasn’t; he may have been, considering the two domestics.”

  “I saw a woman’s face looking out at us,” Willy told him over the roof of the car.

  They crossed to the trailer as its flimsy front door opened to reveal an angular blond woman with a hollowed-out, tired face.

  “Who’re you?” she asked without preamble or real show of interest.

  “Police,” Willy answered, flashing his badge.

  “Great,” she said. “He rob a bank or something? That would be a laugh.”

  “Why?” Joe asked.

  “ ’Cause he can barely move. What do you want?”

  Joe gave her a sympathetic smile. “Must be tough. What happened?”

  “Has its moments. Dumb bastard broke his leg. You didn’t answer my question.”

  Willy laughed. “I like that.”

  “Good for you,” she said, still looking at Joe.

  “We’d like to talk with him, ma’am,” he said, adding, “Assuming we’re talking about Peter Hildreth.”

  This time, she smiled, if barely. “Right. That would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”

  He nodded. “A bit.”

  She glanced at Willy. “You gonna threaten me or something? You look like the type.”

  Willy was enjoying himself. “Nope. I’m like him. You don’t want to know why we’re here, we’ll just take off.”

  That got her interest. “You want to hassle him for something?”

  “We need his help,” Willy admitted. “A drop of blood led us here.”

  That disturbed her demeanor. It also caused a voice to slip by her. A man asked, “What the hell’s that mean?”

  “Mr. Hildreth,” Joe spoke to the shadow now looming behind the woman. “We’re in a jam and we need your help. We think a family member of yours may be in trouble.”

  A tall black man appeared beside the woman, his right leg in a cast. “What family member?”

  “That’s what we’d like to find out.”

  The couple exchanged looks. The blond shrugged. “You have to admit, at least they’re original.”

  They stepped back as the man said, “Come in.”

  Willy and Joe climbed the metal steps in single file and entered a neat, spare living room with a large, muted television facing a couch banked with a pile of carefully placed pillows, obviously designed to support Hildreth’s leg as he watched the set. Football players were running across a field bordered with stands jammed with silently cheering people.

  “Good game?” Joe asked.

  “College,” Hildreth answered. “I like it better than pro ball. You want coffee?”

  Both cops shook their heads.

  “Sit,” the blond woman instructed them.

  They complied, choosing armchairs, as Peter Hildreth settled back onto his couch and raised his leg with a wince.

  “What happened?” Willy asked.

  Hildreth grimaced. “Fell off those goddamned steps. Stupid as hell. So, what about this family member of mine?”

  “Let me start over,” Joe began. “I’m Joe Gunther and this is William Kunkle. We’re from the VBI, which as you probably know only takes on major cases, so why we’re here is pretty important. I hope you’ll understand, therefore, if I ask you for some form of identification.”

  Without comment, Hildreth extracted a wallet and tossed it to Joe, who opened it to the driver’s license tucked behind a scratched plastic protector. Joe half rose and returned it to him. “Thanks. Sorry for the formality.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, replacing the wallet.

  “Ma’am?” Willy addressed the woman.

  She smirked at him. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “You may be, but you can’t have my ID. I’m in my own house here, and you’re guests. Live with it.”

  Joe was impressed by Willy’s self-restraint.

  He shrugged and said, “You got it.”

  Joe addressed Hildreth’s earlier question. “We’re investigating a crime where a drop of blood surfaced that didn’t make any sense to us. We had to find out who it belonged to and so we ran it through the state data bank. We didn’t get a direct hit, but enough of one to discover that it belongs to a male relative of yours. Mr. Hildreth, do you have a brother?”

  Hildreth let out a little snort. “Call me Peter. I used to have a brother—not much left of him now.”

  “Cancer?” Joe asked.

  Hildreth’s eyebrows rose. “How’d you know that?”

  “That was in the blood, too, duh,” answered the woman, her scorn undisguised.

  Joe nodded. “It looked pretty serious.”

  “Leukemia,” Hildreth conceded. “He doesn’t have much time left.”

  “You two close?” Joe asked.

  But the woman overrode his answer. “How the hell does Robert’s blood get at a crime scene? He’s been sick a long time.”

  “We don’t know,” Joe told her. “That’s part of the puzzle. We would sure like to talk with him to find out, though, in case someone’s trying to frame him.”

  “To hell with ’em, Peter,” the woman urged her companion. “Robert’s in enough trouble anyhow. Who cares about a drop of blood?”

  But Peter was smiling. “You shitting me? He’d love this. It’s right up his alley.”

  “That is so not true,” she countered. “The man’s paranoid about his privacy. You think he’s gonna like the cops telling him they traced his blood all the way to his bedside? That’ll flip him out totally.”

  “It’ll do him good,” Peter argued and addressed Joe. “He’s at BMH, in Bratt—under Robert Jones. It’s really Hildreth, but like she says, he’s a little paranoid.”

  The woman, who’d been leaning against the wall throughout the conversation, straightened and glared at Peter. “You are such a shit sometimes.” She began walking down the length of the trailer, talking angrily as she went, “The poor dumb slob is dying, and you still have to fuck with him. No wonder he never liked you.”

  The door at the far end of the room slammed behind her.

  In the stillness following her departure, Joe muttered, “Sorry about that.”

  Hildreth let out a short laugh. “You kiddi
ng? That was nothing. I fell off the steps because she pushed me.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Lester said under his breath.

  “What’d you find?” Sam asked from across the office. Each of them was sandbagged by a semicircle of piled folders, making their desks look like machine-gun nests. They were the clearinghouse for every officer in the field combing establishments that could have produced Brookhaven’s trace evidence. New folders containing lists of customers, clients, subscribers, practitioners, employees, and patients seemed to arrive hourly.

  He held up a sheet of paper. “This one. He’s on a list of somebody named Schuyler Thurber’s customers.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Friend of mine; runs an oil undercoating shop. What’s the name?”

  Les held up another page. “He’s on this one, too. Part-time hospital employees, as a per diem janitor. And I talked to him at the Back Stop gun store. I met the man. I think we got a winner.”

  “Sky?” Sammie asked, looking confused.

  “No.” He shook his head emphatically. “The one on both lists and who works around gunpowder all day—Ike Miller.”

  He gave her a broad smile. “We just earned a field trip.”

  . . .

  Robert “Jones” Hildreth was in a hospice room at the hospital, although it proved difficult to get in to see him. Apparently, his thirst for privacy had been all but injected into his caregivers. Instead of simply poking his head in the door, as planned, Joe had to work through legal channels to even approach the man.

  That, as it turned out hours later, proved less than worth the effort.

  Hildreth’s back was propped against a snowbank of pillows, much as his brother’s leg had been perched on one earlier, but where Peter had offered the world a sort of weary amusement, Robert’s energies were wholly given over to anger.

  “What do you want?” he demanded testily as soon as Joe came into view.

  Joe had left Willy in the hallway, for obvious reasons.

  “I’m the police officer I think your lawyers told you about, Mr. Hildreth,” he said.