by Archer Mayor
“Probably tossed there to attract attention,” Willy replied. “Which is what it did, making them look up.”
“The ME hasn’t issued the autopsy results yet,” Joe told them, “but cause of death seems to have been the second of two blows to the head. The rope was just for show—postmortem—as was the wording on her chest.”
“She raped?” Willy asked bluntly.
“It doesn’t appear so,” Joe said. “She was manhandled some.”
“Her house showed nothing unusual,” Lester offered. “No signs of struggle, blood, or forced entry. The dog sitter she used said she dropped off the pooch like usual. Dog lived at the sitter’s during the legislative session ’cause of Raffner’s crazy schedule, so she hadn’t seen Susan in a couple of weeks.”
“She was a slob, though,” Willy added. “And had a little weed by the bed, no surprise.”
“What about her car?” Joe asked. “Anyone get a copy of the report on that yet?”
“It was the state police who located it,” Sam reported, “so it went straight to the crime lab. They also processed the junkyard where it was found, but so far, I haven’t heard they found anything—sounds pretty much like the house.”
“The legislature’s still going strong,” Joe continued. “So, she would’ve been in Montpelier, most likely, which explains the dog. A lot of the senators from far away either have apartments or condos locally, to cut down on the commuting, or they’ve got roommate setups with other politicos. Do we know about her?”
“She rented the top floor from an old lady who lives below,” Willy said, causing everyone to look at him. “With the unlikely name of Regina Rockefeller.”
“How do you know that?” Sam asked.
“I am the poh-leece,” he replied. “And we got our guys from the headquarters unit going to check it out. I called the woman who’s in charge of herding senators up there—some title with ‘clerk’ in it—and she gave me Raffner’s particulars.”
“Nice work,” Joe said. “Along those lines, have we started on a timeline for her? Last seen? Last contacted via electronic device? Last appointment met and missed?”
“I’m on that,” Sam said. “I’m coordinating it with the crime lab folks. I figured we might as well use them as a conduit for now, since they’re the catchall for everything else being collected from all quarters. So far, there’s a cell phone, two home computers, a laptop, and a tablet. With any luck, we’ll get an idea about her last movements from one of them.”
Joe resisted reacting to anyone having or needing so many screen-equipped nuisances.
As if reading his mind, Sam added, “Along with those gizmos, she had dozens of filing cabinets filled with probably thousands of documents, any one of which might have something to do with how she ended up. She had hundreds of friends, allies, fellow protesters, and who knows what else that should be interviewed.”
“And colleagues she worked with in the State House,” Joe threw in. “They don’t have personal secretaries or staffers under the dome. They share a clerical and legal pool of people. They should be questioned, too.”
Sam addressed that, being the squad’s primary traffic manager. “Parker and Perry are on it already, that being in their backyard. We’re gonna have to expand this conversation to include more bodies, if you want some of these answers. It’s already gotten way beyond just us. The paper files alone are going to take an amazing amount of time to process, unless there’s a break to help us out.”
Parker Murray and Perry Craver were two ex–state police VBI investigators assigned to the central Waterbury unit, out of the headquarters building. There were five VBI squads, or units, across the state, located geographically for convenience. Murray and Craver didn’t lead their squad, nor were they the only ones comprising it; it was the alliteration of their first names that always lumped them together, and gave the unit its identity within the VBI. It also didn’t hurt that they usually teamed up on a case.
Joe spoke to Willy. “You mentioned fundamentalist right-wingers. Were you just being opinionated, or do you actually have a lead?”
Sammie let out a brief laugh. Willy cast her an amused look and asked generally, “What do you think?”
Joe ignored the humor. “So, who do we know who hates lesbians enough to kill one?”
For once there was dead silence in the room, followed by Lester saying plaintively, “It’s Vermont, boss. It’s like a nonissue.”
“That’s what I was saying at the top,” Joe reminded them. “We need to get our heads out of that cloud. If this killing was about Susan’s sexual orientation, it wouldn’t be the first instance of something happening in Vermont attracting a flatlander nutcase. We need to broaden our horizons.”
Sammie had opened her laptop and was typing at high speed—another skill Joe didn’t have.
“Southern Poverty Law Center,” she said. “They collect so much information on these groups, they have their own intelligence unit. The fusion center in Williston put me onto them.”
“Speaking of the fusion center,” Lester suggested, “they’d be good to consult, too. If they don’t get an immediate hit in-state, they can spread the word.”
Joe nodded. It was a good idea. There were seventy-eight centers across the United States, many with staff experts on specific topics, who cross-communicated regularly.
“I’m sending an e-mail to someone I know up there right now,” Sam said, her eyes locked on the screen.
Willy, who did his best to present as a troglodyte, was almost as comfortable with computers as Sam—although Lester had them both beat. Nevertheless, he routinely talked down his prowess, as he did indirectly now. “None of that typing’s gonna nail the crazy bastard who did this.”
“You know that for a fact?” Joe asked.
Willy tapped the side of his nose. “I smell it. We’re not talking Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City federal building. This is somebody who was pissed off—up close and personal.”
“Maybe it’s local politics after all?”
Willy canted his head to one side, considering his boss’s question. “Maybe. Could also be sex-related.”
“Fair enough,” Joe agreed. “Another reason that we ask about any complaints, fights, disagreements—be they political or personal—when we start asking time, place, and last-seen questions.”
“You’re gonna have to talk to your old girlfriend, boss.”
An awkward stillness caught the room. Sammie eyed Willy reproachfully. “Jesus. You are smooth.”
Willy’s eyes widened innocently. “I’m just sayin’.”
Joe broke the tension. “He’s right. I was probably the first person Gail called after she heard. She, Susan, and I go back. I doubt the governor had a closer friend, including me—even before we broke up. If Susan was having problems, Gail most likely would’ve heard about it.”
“Speaking of which,” Lester said, “what if this is connected to politics? Would that mean the governor’s under threat, too?”
“What if it’s connected to sex?” Willy offered, looking directly at Joe. “After you two went your separate ways, could Gail’ve found comfort in Susan’s bed?”
Sammie, always the loyalist, slapped her computer closed. “You can be such an asshole.”
“It’s a fair question,” Joe said calmly, adding with a tension-dissolving half smile, “if indelicately put. The answer is: I don’t know. I’ll ask.”
“Better you than me,” Willy admitted.
“You’d never get in the room with her,” Lester said. “She hates you.”
There was scattered laughter as everyone considered the long list of such people.
“You are an acquired taste,” Joe told him.
Gilbert had returned to the countertop to be with Joe, who now reached out to scratch him behind the ears, changing subjects as he did so. “Okay. Unless somebody has something more to add, I think that wraps it up. Allard has given us a total green light—we can go anywhere, use anyone f
rom the other VBI units, and we have access to discretionary funds to make it happen. That also means that if we screw anything up, it’ll be our butts on the barn door, so we need to be careful, courteous, and thorough. We will be dealing with other agencies, entitled political types, hypersensitive true believers, and a growing number of reporters. Sam and I will work out assignments.
“Willy,” he added, giving his attention to his least diplomatic subordinate, “let’s try to keep you clear of most of that—no teams, no interactions with the press, no task force activity with other cops.”
Kunkle opened his mouth to complain, but Joe cut him off. “I want you flying under the radar. Do what you do best. Coordinate with the three of us—especially Sam—but operate solo.”
Joe pointed at him for emphasis. “This does not mean you’re off the leash. Is that clear? You are to keep in touch and mind your manners. You want me to say this in your language? I want you working where you can do us the least harm and the most good. I’ll have enough on my hands without picking up after you.”
Willy was clearly pleased. “Works for me.”
“It better work for all of us.”
CHAPTER SIX
Vermont’s governor doesn’t get a mansion. Not even a split-level suburban. The official residence is not a cot tucked into a one-window room behind the front office, as rumors have had it. But it’s still just a nicely appointed apartment and office suite, located on the top floor of a high-rise, catty-corner to the gold-domed state house. In real-world terms, it’s about what a junior lawyer might rate in a mid-market city.
Joe had always thought it was pretty swank. Gail, on the other hand, chose to live in a condo on the edge of town, which, to her viewpoint, was much more appealing than an empty office building after hours.
They were expecting him. A somber receptionist fairly leaped to her feet as he crossed the threshold and escorted him through to an inner office. There, a tall, slim man with graying hair and a look of permanent watchfulness was standing in the middle of the room, looking ready, to Joe’s eyes, to either receive a ball or run a block.
“Rob,” Joe said, extending his hand in greeting.
Rob Perkins, Gail’s chief of staff, responded in kind, his body language easing. “Thanks for coming. This has really shaken her. She’s a brick, normally. You know that better than most. But this came out of nowhere.”
Joe was nodding sympathetically. “I understand, and I’m definitely wearing kid gloves, but you should know that I’m not just here to lend support. I have an investigation to conduct.”
“Of course, of course,” Rob said supportively, but Joe could see that the man’s watchfulness had returned.
That notwithstanding, Perkins stepped aside and indicated an inner door leading to Gail’s office. “She’s waiting for you.”
Joe hesitated. “You not going to join us? Or her legal counsel?”
Perkins shook his head. “Normally you’d be right. This time, she just wants you.” He hesitated before adding, “You should know that she was urged not to see you alone, for propriety’s sake.”
Joe thanked him and entered the other room, closing the door behind him. Gail was standing by the window, her back to him, and turned at the sound of his entrance. Her face was damp with tears as she approached and buried herself into his shoulder.
“Oh, Joe. Thanks for coming.”
He rubbed her back, finding his own words inadequate. “Least I could do. We’re old friends, you and I.”
She pulled back at the comment and studied him, her cheeks pale and her eyes red-rimmed. “We are, aren’t we?”
It was phrased as a question, which he actually appreciated, given how their rapport had waned recently. They had once been very close—lovers, emotional allies, intellectual equals. But life had been hard on them, separately and as a couple. Gail had been raped many years earlier; Joe had come close to death more than once due to his job. The steady amassing of concern, paranoia, and a need for self-preservation eventually took their toll, commingling with Gail’s post-traumatic need to make more of her life than she had hitherto.
She had always been a strong-minded woman—a feature Joe had enjoyed. Politics, however, and ironically Gail’s uncanny success in practicing it, had, in Joe’s estimation, tainted her resolve with some recent mean-spiritedness. He understood that the pressures she’d been facing—including a recent tropical storm that had inundated the state—were cumulatively more than she’d ever encountered before. But it didn’t mean that her short temper couldn’t hurt all the same.
With all of that crowding his thoughts, he laid a hand alongside her cheek—hoping none of it showed—and reassured her, “Of course we are.”
At that, she stepped back and indicated two armchairs facing her desk, instinctively understanding—better than Rob Perkins—the double roles that Joe had to play here.
“You want to ask me questions,” she said. “And I want to help.”
After they’d both sat, he began with, “First and foremost, how’re you holding up? This was your oldest friend, as far as I know, predating even me, and what with everything else this office throws at you, my guess is that you don’t have the reserves you once did. I appreciate that we both have jobs to do, but how’re you doing?”
She didn’t answer immediately, glancing around the room first and then settling on his face before responding, “I have a broken heart.”
It wasn’t said without affect, as by a woman in shock, nor did she have fresh tears in her eyes. It occupied a middle ground, at once emotional but clear-sighted, as from someone who’d come to grips with permanently losing a part of her anatomy. Joe felt his own throat tighten as a result.
“Susan was my keel,” she continued. “Always there, always reliable. I’d come to see her as an extension of my own thinking, as if she was in my head. If she hadn’t been so consistently supportive and selfless, I would’ve thought it was eerie.”
She sighed and looked down at her hands. “But it never was. Hers was the kind of love they write about.”
Joe exchanged the role of friend for that of the sympathetic investigator. “You were probably among the last to have contact with her, given how often you talked together.”
She nodded without shifting her attention. “That’s been troubling me almost most of all.” Her voice had softened to a distant, far-off tone. “I keep wondering how long it was after we last texted that she was killed. Was it hours? Minutes? Did she break away from writing me to answer the door?”
“What was the nature of the text?” he asked, not revealing that they’d already downloaded the contents of Susan’s phone.
She looked up to think. “Some news item she’d read from California. She was such a nerd—always fussing about things no one could control. That’s what made her so good. She anticipated everything.”
She stopped, arrested by the irony of her own words. “Obviously not everything,” she added dully.
“When was this?” he asked.
In answer, she leaned forward and plucked her cell phone from the desk. She located what she was after and handed it over. He read the last of a text string, a cheery, “Later, girlfriend!” It was time- and date-stamped close to midnight two days earlier—the night before Susan was found.
Joe returned the phone. “And you never heard from her all yesterday?”
“No,” she said simply. “I texted her a few times. I was starting to get really worried, when Rob told me she’d been found. It wasn’t like her not to respond to her messages. She was one of those funny people that way: Her house was a total wreck, which made her look sloppy and disorganized, but she was a fiend about hitting deadlines, getting things done, and keeping everything in order. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to her when she didn’t answer my texts.”
“And you called, too?” Joe asked, not having sent a text in his life, but again remembering what he’d read on the download.
“All I got was her voice mail.�
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“Do you know where she was when she last contacted you?” he asked. “Was it Brattleboro or here in town, or maybe someplace else?”
A crease appeared between her eyes. “I just assumed it was here, because of the legislature still being in session. But I don’t know. I didn’t ask, and she didn’t say. You think she was somewhere else?”
“I have no idea,” he answered honestly. “But speaking of the legislature, were there any ongoing issues that had really heated up?”
She stared at him. “To the point of murder? What do you think we do here?”
Diplomatically, he resisted answering.
Gail was rubbing her forehead, thinking. “The hot-button issues are about the same as always: health care, marijuana legalization, farming issues, cell towers and wind turbines, school control. There’s nothing like some of the showdown issues we’ve had in the past, especially now that the Democrats have such a majority.”
“What about the gay/straight debate?” he asked.
Her reaction mirrored Lester’s earlier. “What debate?” Her face reddened as she continued. “What is it about this? I had no idea you were so narrow-minded.…”
“Stop it,” he ordered.
His tone brought her up short. She stared at him openmouthed as he went on, “You know very well whether I’m narrow-minded or not. Your best friend—whom you acknowledged was a lesbian—had ‘dyke’ cut into her chest. Don’t you think that might…”
This time, she did the interrupting, actually reaching out and touching his mouth with her fingertips. The pain in her eyes arrested his continuing.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Joe. Please.”
He took her hand in his and squeezed it gently. “Of course,” he said.
She retrieved her hand and covered her face, rubbing her eyes. “I don’t know how to handle this,” she moaned. “The phones are starting to go crazy, the press is lining up at the door, you’re here asking questions, my staff wants to know the party line. And all I want to do is crawl into a hole and mourn my friend in private. It’s like all the bullshit after the rape is being stirred up again. I can hardly breathe, and I’m supposed to be the cool-headed chief executive, setting the example.”
