by C I Dennis
Someone in a Hummer had followed me all the way into the woods, sneaked up on me, and coldcocked me, and I was going to find out who it was, because that hadn’t been a random attack. It was a message, and I had a message for them:
I can hit back.
*
John Pallmeister wasn’t at the Middlesex State Police barracks when I stopped in, which was fine, because what I really wanted to do was go to my mother’s house, open a beer, recline in my deceased father’s Barcalounger and wait for this headache to go away. I would call the lieutenant in the morning, and in the meantime I put in a call to my friend Bobby Bove at the Indian River Sheriff’s office, where I had worked for twenty-five years before getting the boot. I asked Bobby to run a DMV check on the white Hummer. He said there were a total of one hundred and thirteen in that color registered in Florida, and he would email me the info.
As I pulled into the driveway of my mother’s house I saw two women approaching down the leafy street that I grew up on. One of them was holding a leash and was being pulled toward me by a small horse or a very large dog—it was hard to tell from a distance—but as they drew closer I recognized my mother and Mrs. Tomaselli, who was getting her arm dislocated by some kind of monster. The dog stood as tall as her waist and had to weigh a hundred pounds or more. He didn’t look happy to see me. In fact, he began barking as they drew closer to the car, and the sound was making my head want to burst open like a dropped cantaloupe.
“I’m sorry, Vinny,” Mrs. T yelled over the commotion. “He hates men. He tried to eat the UPS man.”
“Nice doggie,” I said, tentatively reaching out a hand toward the dog’s muzzle, which probably wasn’t the smartest move, but the dog immediately stopped barking and recoiled. He gave me an incredulous look, like: Nice doggie? Did you really say that?
“What is this thing?” I asked the women.
“It’s an Akita,” my mother said. “They’re Japanese. That’s why Grace calls him Chan. After the movie star.”
“Jackie Chan is Chinese, not Japanese,” I said. “What are you feeding him?” The dog was sniffing at my trouser legs, and he allowed me to pet him on the back of his neck, which I could reach without bending over.
“I’ve already gone through a whole bag of Purina,” Mrs. Tomaselli said. “I need to go to the store.”
“He eats a different brand,” I said. “I saw it in Grace’s car. I should have brought it.”
“Did you find her?”
“No, but I have some leads. I’m going to talk to the police in the morning.” The dog continued to sniff at my pant legs, and then he suddenly yanked the leash free from Mrs. Tomaselli’s hand. He leaped though the open window of my rental car, leaving scratches on the red paint, and climbed into the back seat where I had put Grace Hebert’s overnight bag and her revolver. The dog stuck his nose into the bag and sniffed for a moment as I opened the door and attempted to grab the leash, but I couldn’t reach it. He raised his muzzle and let out a low, mournful howl that was the sorriest noise I had ever heard coming from an animal. After a while he stopped and his brown eyes focused on me, as if I was directly responsible for his misery:
Find her. It was as clear as if he had said it out loud.
“I intend to,” I said.
“Vinny? What was that?” my mother asked.
“Let’s go inside,” I said. “I need a beer. And then Chan and I are going to go buy some dog food. He likes the expensive stuff.”
*
The modern detective needs to be on top of technology, because computers, search engines, databases, tracking programs, listening bugs, remote cameras, and license plate readers have made solving most cases as easy as pushing a button. Meanwhile, those same devices have also stripped away every shred of privacy, and it’s unnerving to know that somewhere, someone knows that you Googled one of your high school girlfriends just to see if she was still alive, or married, or still hot, or that you wear a size thirteen loafer, or that you have pretty much survived on Hot Pockets and ramen noodles since your wife took off.
It’s a challenge to square these concerns with my profession, seeing how invading privacy is the whole point of the job. So I do what any Fortune 500 CEO would do: I outsource it. Roberto Arguelles, my teenage friend and tech guru, has been guiding me through the technological woods since he was thirteen. I figured I had about six months of his attention left, since he was a senior at St. Edwards School in Vero Beach and would be off to college soon. I would miss him.
I had forwarded Bobby Bove’s email with the various Hummer registration details to Roberto and was resting in the Barcalounger with Chan by my side. I was lazily stroking the fur of the dog’s back, who lifted his head and looked at me as if to say don’t get used to this.
“Right,” I said out loud, and my mother glanced up. She was in her chair across from me with the local paper, and she returned to her reading when she realized that I wasn’t talking to her.
Roberto sent me back an email with an analysis of the one hundred and thirteen white Hummers with Florida plates. Seventy-two were located in Dade County. Fifty-nine of those were registered to names that had Spanish roots, but somehow that didn’t click. Roberto had come to the same conclusion, and his research had led him to a car that was domiciled in Pensacola, the westernmost city on the Florida Panhandle before you get to Alabama. I’d been there once for the Crawfish Festival, but it was a part of the state that I was not that familiar with, even though some people say that Pensacola has the best oysters in the South, and my internal GPS pretty much directs me from one raw bar to the next.
The white Hummer was registered to the New Commitment and Love Society of Jesus Christ, which Roberto had already cross-referenced on the search engines, and he had included several links in his email. The first one showed maps of the Society’s recent real estate acquisitions, one of which happened to be in Vermont. In fact, the organization had closed the previous year on a piece of land along the Lamoille River that had formerly been known as the West Eden Bible Camp: a collection of unheated bunkhouses, a mess hall, and a central meeting house that had been a religious retreat since the mid-nineteenth century. Camp meetings used to be common in Vermont, where the participants prayed, baptized each other, sang hymns, and socialized for a few weeks each summer at rustic locations. The attendance had waned over the years, and some of the nicer properties were now private homes. West Eden, according to the Society’s website, was to be maintained as a special retreat for “select leaders” of the New Commitment and Love Society, presumably because religion was such a grind and the top brass deserved a few perks.
Roberto had also included a link to the “About Us” section of the Society’s webpage. Prominent among the executive staff, friends, and benefactors was a photograph of a handsome, seventy-something man in a goatee whose name I recognized: Clement Goody, the founder of Goody’s Peanuts and one of the wealthiest men in southern Georgia. Goody had become ordained as a Baptist minister, and he had a Sunday morning radio show with a devout listenership that numbered in the thousands. It was said that he had cashed in his peanut fortune and had given it all to God, but from the looks of the website he was the control person for whatever the Society was doing, and they owned a lot of high-end real estate. There were holy places in London, D.C., New Orleans, midtown Manhattan, and a few thousand no-doubt sacred acres in Colorado, near Vail. Praise Jesus and pass the warranty deed.
I zoomed in on the map to see exactly where the Vermont property was. The location was along a stretch of the river near Johnson, about two miles west of the village, directly adjacent to the Long Trail. Right next to where I had parked, and taken a hike, and been whacked in the neck by someone who may have been driving a white Hummer.
I sent a text to Roberto: Bullseye.
I’ll put it on your bill, he replied.
I was eager to return home and see my son, and Roberto, and get back to my life. But whether or not I would be able to enlist John Pallmeister’s h
elp in finding Grace Hebert, I would be heading north in the morning, and if Mr. Clement Goody was in residence at his newly acquired prayer camp, he had better start praying.
THURSDAY
Chan was on my bed when I woke up. He covered a third of the mattress with his front and back legs stretched out like a steeplechase horse going over a jump. The dog had effectively pinned me under the bedclothes. I jostled him to get him to move, but instead I got a look:
No way.
“Move, you big lunk,” I said.
I’m not a morning person.
“You’re not a person,” I said. He rolled over, let out a huge sigh, and fell back to sleep while I extricated myself from the covers and stumbled into the kitchen.
My mother is a product of the Betty Crocker generation, gastronomically speaking, but in her later years she has become addicted to the Food Network, and a few minutes after I poured myself a generous mug of black coffee she put a plate down on the table in front of me.
Mama mia. Eggs Benedict with Parma ham, a side of hash browns, and a Hollandaise sauce so lush and rich that it ought to be a controlled substance. If the world’s governments ever served food like this to their arms negotiators, there would be no more war, just mutually assured arteriosclerosis.
Chan and I were on the road by eight. The dog spread out on the back seat of my rental car while I sat at the wheel listening to an old Talking Heads song on a Montpelier radio station. Chan dozed and I drove the little vehicle north through the fog-draped morning, wondering what my next move would be.
When faced with a choice between making a discreet inquiry and barging through somebody’s door, I tend toward the latter, or at least I had in the days before my brain injury. I wasn’t on such firm ground now. I had been thinking that I would hang out in Johnson for the morning—check out the places where the townspeople congregated, like the coffee shops, or the post office, and ask a few questions, but the back of my head was still tender, and my inclination was to drive balls-first into the West Eden Bible Camp and raise some hell. My health concerns were trumped by the fact that someone had assaulted me, and I’d already had to reschedule my return to Florida, which didn’t make me happy, so whatever I could do to expedite the process would be a plus. My strategy was to find Grace Hebert, give her back her gun and her money, and thump the bastard who had thumped me up on Prospect Rock. It seemed like a reasonable plan.
You keep saying that.
The dog was right. I needed to stop trying to control things and go with this. Investigations take time. The trajectory of events is unpredictable, and you can’t rush them—like hurrying a Hollandaise sauce—or they will turn into a curdled mess.
The entrance to the bible camp was at the bottom of a gravel road that led up a hill. I stopped when I reached a grassy meadow dotted with small buildings, mostly simple structures with white clapboard siding and with no sign of chimneys or insulation—this was a summer-only place. A large barn stood in the center with a dark green crucifix mounted above the central door. A basketball court at the far end of the meadow was flanked by tall white pines that loomed over the recreation area. I noticed another road that led up the hill but was closed off by an iron gate. An electrician’s van was parked at the foot of the extension road. I pulled my car next to the van. A young man in coveralls and a Red Sox cap leaned into the open back door of the vehicle, and he jumped when he heard me approach.
“Jeezum, mister, don’t do that. Ya made me screw up this solder connection.” He smiled, revealing a set of perfect teeth that belonged on a dental hygienist.
“Sorry,” I said. “Nobody else around here?”
“Just me,” he said. “You looking for Mr. Goody?”
“Yes.”
“They took off an hour ago. Didn’t say when they’d be back.”
“You work for them?”
“Nah, I’m independent, but I have to say he’s a good customer. I been rigging this place up since he bought it. Name’s Eric.”
“Vince Tanzi,” I said. “What are you working on?”
“This here’s a Fence Hawk,” the young man said. “Electric fence, all the way around the main house. Meaning the one up there, up on the hill.” He pointed up the road that led out of sight beyond the gate.
“That’s where Mr. Goody lives?”
“Yeah,” Eric said. “It’s a real nice place, and he’s spent a bundle. Got a home theater and everything. I wired the shit out of it.”
“So the fence is to keep animals in?”
“Nope. This fence is to keep people out. You know what a prepper is?”
“You mean a survivalist?”
“Yup. He’s got a whole frickin’ arsenal up there, and a couple years’ worth of food, too. Real nice guy, but kind of a whack job. I put in a generator and a big fuel tank, but if the shit hits the fan these preppers won’t last much longer than the rest of us. Wasting his money if you ask me. But don’t say nothin’, because I need the work. Sorry, I talk too much. At least that’s what my wife says.” He flashed the perfect teeth again.
“When you said that they left, who else was in the car?”
“Just Miss Lila. You know what a MILF is?” I got another blinding grin.
“She’s his wife?”
“Don’t know about that,” he said. “People in town say she’s his girlfriend. But he’s got more than one. A gal I know cleans for them, and they have these sex parties. No secrets around this town, no sir.”
“Sex parties?”
“I heard he was a rich preacher,” he said. “But you ought to see the women. Jeezum crow, I should a gone ta church more often.” This time he laughed, and he had to hold onto his teeth, which I realized were dentures.
My phone rang in my pocket and I got it out to take a look. VT STATE POLICE TROOP A showed on the display, and I knew who it was: John Pallmeister, calling me back.
“Where are you?” he said, not bothering with small talk.
“Johnson,” I said. “I might need to get you involved in something. I’m looking for a missing girl, and I think I’m getting close.”
“Stay right there,” Lieutenant Pallmeister said. “I’m on my way to the college. I’ll meet you at the Campus Security office.”
“What’s up?”
“You know someone named Donald Lussen?”
“I met with him yesterday afternoon. He’s the advisor for the girl I’m trying to find.”
“He’s dead,” Pallmeister said. “A jogger found him on the Water Tower Trail this morning, next to the campus, with a hunting arrow through his skull. Bow season started on Saturday, but the Lamoille sheriff doesn’t think it was an accident.”
“Why not?”
“Because there was another arrow in his chest.”
“Uh-oh.”
“He had your business card in his pocket. We’re going to need a statement. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
Donald Lussen was dead? I shuddered involuntarily. Somehow he had seemed too perfect to die, but death doesn’t care how good-looking you are.
*
Duffy Kovich had been a New York City cop, and he had no doubt seen some truly bad things over the course of his career. That didn’t stop his hand from trembling enough to spill a good portion of the coffee I’d brought him onto his desk. The ambulance had left, the State Police forensics guys had packed up, John Pallmeister and a stocky, cropped-blonde sergeant named Janice had taken Duffy’s and my statements, and it was down to the two of us in the cramped office where the older man worked dealing with lock-outs, noise complaints, students’ cars that wouldn’t start, lost laptops, and kids who had partied too hard and were passed out on the library steps. Finding the dead body of a theater professor with one arrow through his eye socket and a second one that had punctured his lungs was not supposed to be part of the job.
The last time I’d been through something like that I had gone home, picked up Royal from his crib, and walked him around on the cool floor tiles of my d
arkened house, even though he was still asleep. When you’ve been slapped in the face by some gruesome event, you have to find a way to reaffirm that life isn’t completely depraved. I wondered who Duffy turned to.
The big ex-cop had been in the room when I’d spoken to Pallmeister and his partner, so he’d heard what I had told them about my morning trip to the West Eden Bible Camp. I asked him what he knew about Clement Goody. “He’s on the campus now and then,” he said. “He gave money to the theater program last spring. He underwrote the play that your girl was in.”
“Grace?”
“Yes. I didn’t go. Not my thing. But Goody’s OK.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Not well, I just hear what I hear.”
“About the sex parties?”
“Who told you that?”
“Local scuttlebutt,” I said. “But I’m supposed to leave it alone. Pallmeister asked me to lay low while his team looks around.”
“You’re going to do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not the lay low type. And I still haven’t found Grace Hebert.”
*
I had to steer through a throng of reporters, camera operators, satellite relay trucks from the Burlington TV stations, scared students, freaked-out staff, and the usual ghouls who had seen the report on the news to get to the parking lot. I didn’t go directly to the West Eden Bible Camp. Instead, I drove around the village for a while, because I needed to mentally reboot. Finding a loaded gun and a bunch of money, and then getting hit on the head out in the middle of the wilderness—that was motivation enough to stay in Vermont to figure out what was going on. But with this new element, I was even more fearful for Grace Hebert’s safety. Someone very close to her had been murdered.
Donna Tomaselli’s worries were becoming mine. Her granddaughter had been friends with Professor Lussen, and the two kids who I had met yesterday had intimated that the student-advisor relationship went well beyond that. The Vermont State Police’s crime scene search team was now combing through the professor’s office, and they would be logging every email, text, and cellphone call that Lussen had made. If there had been any unusual extracurricular contact with his young student, it would be revealed. Pallmeister promised that he would keep me in the loop, but I wasn’t convinced that I could be that patient. Police investigations are slow by nature because they have rules and protocols to follow and also because they have the press watching every move. I’m not so encumbered, and I wasn’t thrilled about sitting by the phone like a teenage virgin, hoping that the lieutenant would call. I didn’t think that time was on our side, and it wasn’t because I needed to get home. It was because this was October. October is arguably the most spectacular month of the year in Vermont. It is also the start of hunting season, and I needed to resolve this before Grace Hebert became the prey.
