The Company She Kept

by Archer Mayor

  “She was that,” Willy agreed. “But you know how it goes—you start looking at a frustrating case’s bits and pieces, till you get stuck on the one that looks like it might have some meat on it.”

  Crawford was nodding agreeably. “Cool. I know the feeling.”

  “Well, with her,” Willy continued, “or maybe I should say, to me, it was her grass stash that struck a chord. Almost everything in her life was controversial, from her politics to her sexual orientation. But the grass was flat-out illegal. That struck me as an anomaly—not because it didn’t fit her character, but because it introduced a different world from hers—of crooks, drugs, and illegal deals.”

  Bob snorted. “It’s just pot, Willy—it’s not like she was shooting smack.”

  Willy didn’t react, staying on track. “It reminded me how in the old cocaine days, a huge number of U.S. dollar bills became tainted with minute traces of coke, regardless of whose pocket they were in—including little old ladies’. It was crazy how that shit got everywhere, just from money changing hands, day to day.”

  “Okay,” Crawford said, by now mystified by his friend’s line of thought.

  “Well, what you were saying made me think: If a dealer peddles heroin and marijuana, both, is it possible that a trace of the first could end up contaminating the packaging of the second?”

  Bob’s expression cleared. “Which would give you a double trail to follow: the marijuana inside a baggie and a dusting of heroin on the outside. That’s neat. You’re saying she was maybe done in over a drug deal, and not over her politics at all. I didn’t think of that. Never needed to, since we’re not murder police like you boys. But I like it. And the contamination angle’s very CSI.

  “Of course,” he continued after a moment’s reflection, “identifying that tiny amount of heroin—minus its own stamped packaging—isn’t going to be easy. You’ll have to focus on things like purity and adulterants before you can maybe guess where it originated. On the bright side, connecting that both marijuana and heroin came from the same place would make you more interesting to federal prosecutors and might help in identifying some of the people involved—or in ruling others out. Now that could be useful.”

  “So it is possible?” Willy asked, sounding to Bob unusually tentative.

  “Sure. Why not? These bozos aren’t neat freaks. Most assembly spots I’ve seen have drug dust all over the place. I’d give it a try, if I were you.”

  Willy nevertheless pressed what he sensed was a reservation. “You have a problem with it, though.”

  “I wouldn’t say a problem. Maybe I been spending too much time chasing morons, but I was just thinking there might be a simpler way: Why not just go after all of Raffner’s friends till you find the one who smoked with her, or maybe even supplied her? Spare yourself all the super-scientific mumbo jumbo.”

  Willy pulled a face and stared glumly out the window. “I thought of that. But her buddies’re starting to get wound up, wondering why this wasn’t solved three minutes after we found her. They’re already growling about how we’re trying to make Raffner the criminal instead of the victim. It’s just paranoia, but it’s closing the ranks of the faithful.”

  “Ah,” Crawford muttered sympathetically. “And shooting that guy up in Newport didn’t help, I bet. Assuming,” he emphasized, “that he’s not your guy.”

  Willy looked at him. “What makes you say that?”

  “You told me as much, and I trust your instincts. Besides, if he had been, it would’ve been plastered all over the five o’clock news.” He paused before adding, “Something tells me you haven’t been able to connect the dots—not to mention that you’re sittin’ here playing twenty questions with me. You guys are up shit creek without a paddle.”

  Willy wasn’t going to argue otherwise. “We could do with a break.”

  * * *

  Sam checked the nightstand clock. Three-seventeen. She barely glanced across the bed, knowing that Willy wouldn’t be there. He was sometimes, usually lingering after they’d made love. But generally, he wandered around the house like a cat or dog, finding opportunistic spots to make a temporary bivouac. That’s how she’d known to find him beside Emma’s crib.

  It was part of the PTSD—what he called his “war thing.” It made him restless, a poor and sometimes terrified sleeper, and directed him to sit with his back to all walls, to work alone if he could, to avoid creating predictable habits, which in turn dictated that he almost never slept twice in a row in the same place. Those and about fifty other eccentricities.

  Tonight, they hadn’t started out in bed together anyhow. He’d left home earlier to do “some poking around”—his favorite pastime. The Raffner killing had made him more restive than usual.

  Sammie rose, not feeling like returning to sleep, and slid into a long, warm, flannel robe. She didn’t worry about waking him up, wherever he was. The nearly inaudible sounds that she’d made getting out of bed were guaranteed to have alerted him.

  Perhaps it was an indicator of the many quirks that kept them together, but she enjoyed the occasional night when she went hunting for him, trying to figure out where to start. Surprise was clearly not a factor—all the better since he never went anywhere without a weapon, including to the bathroom—so the challenge boiled down to determining his predictability. She gave herself bonus points for locating him on the first try—almost as much as he saw it as a sign of personal weakness.

  This time, however, she didn’t stand a chance. She hadn’t reached the end of the hallway when his quiet voice crept up behind her. “Got the midnight munchies?”

  She turned to find him leaning against the wall, a shadow in the distant night-light’s glow. He had a pickle in his hand. She walked up to him and took a bite.

  “Why not?”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Perhaps disturbed by their quiet voices, or more probably because she was due, Emma began crying softly from down the hall. Both parents moved into her bedroom.

  “Hey, little girl,” Sam cooed as Willy picked the child up. He shifted her expertly to the changing table against the wall, and swapped out her diaper with practiced skill—all with one hand.

  “Wanna spoil her a bit?” he asked her mother, tucking Emma into the crook of his arm. “A few minutes on the couch?”

  Sam, always impressed by his easy dexterity, led the way to the living room.

  “You got something on your mind,” she stated as they all three settled down. Through the broad window facing the street, they could see snow falling under the streetlamps posted along the horseshoe-shaped street outside their home. “I can hear the gears going ’round. You find anything interesting on your outing?”

  She drew a blanket from the back of the sofa to cover their shoulders, bringing them under a tent. This was a proximity she knew he never would have tolerated a couple of years ago.

  “I went to see Bob Crawford,” he said. “To spitball a few things.”

  She nodded, letting Emma curl her fingers sleepily around her extended thumb. She trusted Willy to explain when and if he was ready. “He doing okay?”

  “Yeah,” he replied distractedly, before asking, “You’re the air traffic controller on this case. Where do things stand?”

  “Not good. We either have no planes to land or they’re all crashing like in Newport. The press hounding us and interviewing everybody before we can get to them isn’t helping, either.”

  “What about any Raffner-related evidence?”

  She leaned into him slightly and looked him straight in the eye. “No change, as you very well know. Everybody’s still digging through it like tunnel rats. What’re you really after?”

  He liked that. “You are getting to know me.”

  “I better be. Spill.”

  “Such a hard-ass. You hear of anybody looking at the drug angle?”

  She smiled broadly and poked him, making Emma gurgle happily. “Aha. Bob Crawford. Things’re coming clear. Do tell.”


  “The dope Raffner had in Montpelier and Brattleboro. There was a major bag of low-grade marijuana in her apartment and what looked like a travel supply in her love nest at home. Got me curious about how she scored her stash, and who from. Old-time doper like her probably had a regular supplier. I wanted Bob to give me an update on the state of the trade, just in case it could give us a trail to follow. God knows, a little progress would be nice.”

  Sam had been nodding throughout. “I made sure we got the baggie and both samples up to the lab, but I’ll ask ’em to step up the pace a bit. Given all the headlines around this case, they’ll probably cooperate—happy to see the last of us, sooner the better.”

  Willy extended the pickle to her for a second bite, which she accepted. “Thanks.”

  She spoke again as she chewed. “One thing you might want to consider.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The governor coming out at the memorial’ll mean we’ll have to watch our step more than ever.”

  “Why do we give a rat’s ass about that? We knew she had no taste in men after she dumped the boss.”

  Sam burst out laughing. “Well, I’ll be damned. He’d take that as a total compliment, if I repeated it to him.”

  “Which you won’t, knowing me to be the vindictive, unstable person I am,” he said in a threatening tone.

  She shook her head. “God, do I ever. I am serious, though. Zigman doing what she did makes Raffner a romantic partner, which for us means that what’s good for the goose might’ve been good for the other goose, too.”

  Willy gave her an appreciative look. “You’re saying the governor of our fair state and her girlfriend smoked dope together.”

  Sam went further. “I’m saying that’s what the tabloids, the talking heads, and the headlines’ll be screaming if we don’t keep this little inquiry under wraps.”

  She reached up and touched his cheek. “I’m saying, Willy, that for once in your life, keep an eye on the politics here. We’re the governor’s special unit. If she’s part of this somehow, and we make that connection—and I mean more than sharing a joint in bed—then we better make damned sure we have a rock-solid case, ’cause our employment could be on the line.”

  This time, he leaned over carefully and kissed her cheek. “I love it when you talk dirty.”

  “You hearing me, Mr. Kunkle?” she asked, her expression serious.

  He saw the look in her eye. “I hear you, babe.”

  But the look wasn’t reserved solely for him. His mention of the marijuana and wanting to chase down the connection between it and Susan Raffner had revived a ten-year-old, still-open wound in Sammie’s history—which made her think that Willy might not be the only one on the team who should start indulging in a little freelance investigating.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Across the board, there are roughly eleven hundred fully certified police officers in Vermont—compared to some sixteen thousand in Massachusetts and sixty thousand in neighboring New York. It’s the lowest number among all fifty states. Even largely rural New Hampshire has over twice as many cops.

  That boils down to the Vermonters being a pretty tightly-knit group, regardless of uniform.

  Sammie Martens counted on that when she traveled to the state’s forensic lab in Waterbury a few days following her late-night conversation with Willy. Given the above statistics, it wasn’t long before every plainclothes investigator got to meet at least a few of the crime lab scientists.

  Sam, given her energy and overall style, had made a point of going beyond mere chance encounters to make friends with several of the lab’s personnel. This was practical—the efficiencies of asking a favor of a well-placed pal being self-evident. But Sam’s interest in forensics was also genuine, and appreciated by the people she befriended.

  The lab was located where it had always been—attached to the building housing the Department of Public Safety and the Vermont State Police, among other agencies. But where in the past it had occupied the top floor only—in what had resembled a 1950s high school, complete with lockers lining the hallway—it was now a wing unto itself, modern, up to the latest rigorous standards, and a monument to a small group that had dedicated itself to making this lab one of the best in the nation, despite its small size and budget.

  Sam signed in at the reception desk and was met by Christine Hartley, one of the lab’s senior chemists, whom Sam had first met ten years earlier.

  They exchanged hugs at the door, before Chris escorted her into the facility’s bright and spacious embrace.

  “I guess you’re earning your big bucks on this case,” she commented, leading the way.

  “If only,” Sam replied. “I’m not complaining. It’s a lot more interesting than the domestics and juvie crimes I used to handle at the PD. But if we get one more major headline thrown at us, we may have to bring in the National Guard just to reach the office. The boss has taken to either meeting in weird places at odd hours or calling us on the phone instead of holding staff meetings. It’s gotten a little strange.”

  “We get the same thing with the occasional high-visibility murder or kidnapping,” Chris commiserated. “The advantage here is that it’s a secure building.” She jerked a thumb out one of the large windows they were passing. “They get stuck out there in the weather; no wandering the halls unescorted. I do love that.”

  She opened the door to an airy lab room, empty aside from another white-coated employee, working at something in a far corner.

  Sam looked around admiringly. “God. I still can’t get used to this building.”

  Chris smiled broadly. “Neat, huh? So much space. I can’t, either.”

  She sat down at a counter strewn with folders and paperwork—her workstation, which Sam supposed doubled as an office.

  “Okay,” Chris then said. “Let’s talk drugs. That’s what you mentioned on the phone, right?”

  Sam parked herself on an adjacent stool. “Right. Did you get a chance to check out the marijuana we sent up?”

  “I did. And you were right. There was some trace on the packaging, and it did test for heroin.”

  “Could you tell anything from it?”

  “Like did it have additives or dilutants mixed in?”

  “That and anything else,” Sam said. “Could you tell where it came from, for instance?”

  Chris frowned. “You know that most of the time we get that from what’s actually stamped on the Baggie, right? Horse from Hell, Dragon Tattoo, etc. I’ve even had ’em with Snoopy on them, which I thought was a goddamned sacrilege.”

  “I know, I know,” Sam told her. “But I thought you could identify a geographical source from the chemical makeup.”

  “You can,” Chris agreed. “That is, other people can, using what they call stable isotope ratio analysis. We don’t do that kind of work here. Don’t have the equipment, the expertise, or the money. The DEA’s who you want there—but bring a lot of time to kill, ’cause they’re wicked backlogged. I also guarantee that they’ll rank the request pretty low on their priorities.”

  Sam was disappointed. “What about the weed?” she asked.

  “Same thing,” Chris replied. “I mean, I can tell you it’s terrible stuff, if that’s any help—full of dirt and twigs and crap like that. ’Course,” she added with a smile, “that’s what I know from the literature—not from personal use. But that being said, I have no idea where it’s from. Used to be that most of our marijuana was locally produced, but times have changed, as if you didn’t know. Now it’s a wide-open market and we’re getting product from all over the place—including our own backyard.”

  Her friend’s disappointment prompted Chris to add, “I did run it through the mass spec, just to see, and I can tell you it’s clean in the sense that nothing’s been added to it. There was a craze awhile back when they soaked it in nutty additives like PCP. But not this load. It actually reminded me of the kind of grass they’d rake off the production room floor and sell for cheap to idiot teenagers. Befo
re everybody wised up.”

  That did little for Sam’s mood.

  Chris tried another tack. “There were fingerprints on the bag.”

  That helped. “Whose?” Sam asked hopefully.

  Chris hedged a bit. “Not my department, but they are being analyzed by the latent print folks. I can find out for you, outside normal channels. Be a lot quicker.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course,” Chris promised. “I’ll get right on it. The stable isotope ratio analysis I mentioned might be worth a look, by the way. It’s something they were starting to apply as part of the Marijuana Signature Project, around 2006 or so—in Utah, I think—with good results. The nutshell explanation is that plants grown in different settings or regions have different and distinct signatures based on the isotopic composition of a particular region’s water. It’s like a fingerprint from nature herself. You can see why so many people are using it to trace marijuana.” She made a sad face. “Except us, natch. I am sorry about that. Is it very important?”

  “It’s so low on the totem pole,” Sam conceded, “that Willy and I are the only ones looking into it. Between you and me, we’re kinda stumped on all fronts right now, so we were hoping this might help.”

  “As in finding a source for Raffner’s stash,” Chris sympathized. “I can see where that might be useful.”

  “Is this isotope thing hard to do?” Sam asked.

  Chris laughed. “Can’t be too hard. My brother does it in California. Actually, he’s tons smarter than me—he sure as hell makes more money. But I’m the bratty little sister, so I have to dis him, right?” She let that go, seeing that Sam’s smile was forced at best, and resumed in a more serious tone. “Okay, basically, base elements like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and others are in almost everything on earth, albeit in multiple forms. But each form has a specific atomic mass. You remember that from chemistry class?”

  “Can’t say I do,” Sam murmured, having never sat in a chemistry class, much less retained anything said in it.

  “Never mind,” Chris said. “What matters is that they’re called stable isotopes, as against unstable ones, which of course are radioactive. Anyhow, isotopes are attached to everything in the plant world and therefore used to do ecological research. That’s what my brother’s been doing for years.”