by Archer Mayor
Messing about with Willy on a persistently weakening tangent was guaranteed to bode ill for her.
Willy, unsurprisingly, showed little concern for any of this.
“What was the address Maggie gave you?” he asked, straining to see the passing street signs in what was becoming the worst snowstorm of the season. It had already taken them twice the normal travel time to get here, and the snow had only started falling an hour ago.
Sammie told him. Securing the address had been simple. Once Willy had revealed his strategy—to locate Stuey following the same route Maggie Kinnison had taken on Susan’s behalf—Sam had merely called Maggie up, hoping the pressure that she’d applied in person would still yield results. It had. In a monotone, Kinnison had recited Younger’s address and phone number, and agreed to not give him a heads-up, although Sam wasn’t putting much faith in that part. Presumptions notwithstanding, almost everyone lies to the police, from the hardened criminal to the little old lady caught speeding to church.
She and Willy were fully prepared for Brandon Younger to be either expecting their visit, or conspicuously out of town.
“There.” Sam pointed down a narrow side street, lined with three-story, industrial-era worker’s housing, called triple-deckers for their stacked exterior staircases crisscrossing from one balcony to the next. In these near-whiteout conditions, they looked vaguely like a flotilla of ancient, beached riverboats, left to rot by the side of a stagnant stream.
“How the hell’re we gonna know which one’s his?” Willy said mostly to himself, struggling not to sideswipe any parked cars. “Can’t see any house numbers.”
Sam glanced at her notepad. They’d gotten dispatch to retrieve Younger’s registration earlier. “It’s this one. That’s his car.”
Willy pulled over, more or less. As soon as he killed the engine, the windshield was covered with a screen of white snowflakes. They struggled with gloves and hats to better protect themselves from the elements, knowing the wind would seek out any exposed skin for a painful bite.
“You set?” Sam asked.
Willy zipped up his coat. “You do know it sucks to live up here.”
She laughed. “Yes, dear,” and she opened her door.
In contrast to the car’s combination of heater fan, engine noise, and the police radio murmuring under the dash, what they stepped into—even with the wind—was an eerie, all-enveloping, world-sized cotton ball of sound-absorbing silence.
Stumbling in the gray light, slipping and catching their boots on unseen obstacles, they made it to the sidewalk, up the swaybacked building’s uneven steps, and onto the porch.
Willy leaned in close to Sam’s head. “What floor?”
“First,” she answered in a low tone, feeling oddly exposed in a sound vacuum with no visibility.
“There’s gotta be a back entrance,” he said. “If he spooks, I don’t wanna go after him in this shit.”
“You want to go ’round?” she asked.
He mulled it over before nodding. “Give me five minutes and then pound on the door.”
“Roger.”
Back outside, Willy realized that five minutes wouldn’t give him much time. The narrow passage between the buildings was plugged with a Dumpster, two vehicles, and piles of trash, all cemented in place by past snowfalls and ice from the roof high above. Giving up discretion and even safety, he stumbled, lurched, slipped, and staggered through the barricades, cursing nonstop all the way, until—breathless and sweating—he reached what passed for a backyard.
There, simultaneously, a ground-floor plywood door flew open and a heavyset bearded man burst out onto the back porch, wearing only jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. He gave Willy a quick glance, cut in the opposite direction, and made to vault over the railing ahead of him to escape across the yard. He didn’t make it, catching a foot as he leaped and sprawling onto the thickening snow with a resounding thud.
Struggling with his own footing, Willy tried reaching him before he got back up, not counting on the man finding a chunk of cinder block in the snow, which he hurled at Willy’s head with surprising ease and accuracy. Willy dove to one side as his attacker made for an opening in the gaping wooden fence surrounding the yard.
Awkwardly regaining his footing, Willy glanced at the back door to see Sam appear, quickly assess where Brandon was going, and vanish again, presumably to circle around from the front to cut him off. Encouraged, Willy continued his chase.
Beyond the gap, he found himself in a narrow alleyway filled with more obstacles and hemmed in by more fencing. Ahead of him by a dozen yards, but already more ghost than man, Brandon was using his familiarity with the terrain to make good headway. Willy began ruing that he hadn’t kept his gun in his hand from the start, and shot the bastard when he’d first caught sight of him—counterproductive, maybe, but much more satisfying.
Gasping for air, constantly reaching out for support, Willy found his physical asymmetry costing him distance, to where all he was doing finally was running in the same direction as his quarry, without actually seeing him anymore.
That was explosively remedied when Younger sprang out like a pit bull from behind a stack of garbage cans and caught Willy from the side, lifting him up and smashing him against a tree trunk, wrenching his back and banging his head—the sounds of their bodies colliding and the wind escaping their lungs the only things breaking the universal silence.
Dazed by the blow, Willy struggled against his pummeling opponent. However, it was the dull crack of a gun barrel striking the back of Younger’s head, accompanied by Sammie stating, “You move, you die, motherfucker,” that finally did the trick. Willy dropped his arm, fell back, and exposed his face to the falling snow, letting out a groan. “Damn, girl. You do know how to make an entrance.”
* * *
Brandon Younger lived alone in a barely furnished ground-floor apartment dominated by a huge, stained couch, an arena-sized flat-screen TV, and little else. Her rage compensating for their difference in size, Sam almost threw the wounded man, covered with snow, onto the couch and stood over him, her gun still out. Behind her, Willy shut the back door and quickly checked the one bedroom and bath for other residents. There were none.
“You are some piece of work, you know that?” Sammie asked their reluctant host. “What the fuck were you doing?”
Younger was rubbing the back of his head. “This really hurts.”
Willy pulled out his own gun and pushed it between Younger’s eyes. “You know I can take care of that, right? You resisted arrest—I got the bruises to prove it—so I shot your pathetic ass to save my life. That work for you?”
Younger looked from one to the other of them. “I thought you were cops.”
“We are cops, stupid,” Sammie told him. “Pissed-off cops.” She leaned forward and placed the barrel of her gun next to Willy’s, pinning Younger’s head to the back of the couch.
“You guys are crazy,” he said timidly. “I could get you in trouble.”
“Not if you’re dead,” Willy said menacingly.
“This won’t hold up in court,” Younger tried one last time.
“It’s never going there,” Sam assured him.
The man’s body deflated as he sank into the stained cushions. “What d’you want?”
“Stuey Nichols,” Willy said.
His eyes widened. “Who? You did all this for someone I never heard of? You’re kidding me.”
Sam rapped his forehead with her gun barrel, making him wince. “Let’s try Maggie Kinnison.”
This time, they got somewhere.
“That crazy bitch?” he said. “Did she put you onto me?”
“Not even close,” Sam lied, straightening and holstering her weapon. “What’s she to you?”
“She used to be a customer. That’s over with, for sure. I don’t need shit like this.”
Willy was still standing over him. “Are we gonna have to start all over again?”
Younger scowled. “Give it a r
est. I get who’s the alpha dog.” He shifted his glance to Sam. “Maggie dates back to the old days. But I haven’t sold her dope in forever. People move on, or I thought they did. Now, I can’t get rid of the bitch.”
“What’s that mean?” Sammie asked.
His face displayed amazement. “Well, damn. First, she calls me outta the blue and asks where she can score some weed, then some crazy queen bee wannabe shows up and demands to know what I told Maggie, and now it’s you two. Fucking Maggie Kinnison is like comin’ outta the walls. I never made a cent outta any of it, and now I’ll probably have to go to the hospital for my head.”
“Not unless you want a brain transplant, moron,” Willy said. “You’re not even bleeding.”
“Fuck you.”
“Shut up,” Sammie yelled at him. “Will you focus for one goddamned minute? Who’s this queen bee you’re talking about? What was her name?”
“Right,” Younger retorted. “Like she told me. I don’t know your names, either. Good thing, too, considering the lawsuit I could throw at you.”
Willy flicked his hand at him, which made the big man cower. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Describe her, then,” Sam persisted.
“Don’t have to. She’s all over the news. Got herself strung up, which she totally deserved.”
“The woman hanging over the interstate?” Sam asked.
“That’s her. The politician.”
“She came here?” Willy asked.
“That’s what I said.”
Sammie sat on the couch arm next to him. “What did she want?”
“To know what I’d told Maggie, duh.”
This time, Willy did hit him across the head, albeit with the back of his gun hand. “Manners, asshole.”
“What did she want?” Sam repeated.
“Like I said,” Younger replied in a whine. “She just wanted to know what I told Maggie.”
“Why?”
“She was pissed, is why. She said she’d been ripped off, and nobody does that to her, and heads were gonna roll, and shit like that. It was crazy.”
“How’d she been ripped off?” Sam pressed him, not revealing what she knew.
Younger rolled his eyes. “Well, weed, of…” He broke off to cover his head as Willy raised his hand again, still holding the gun. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. She was complaining about the weed she got—or Maggie got for her, or whatever. She wanted her money back.”
“And you told her…”
“I told her she was outta luck, that I’d given Maggie a phone number that didn’t work anymore.”
Willy did one better than Sam, and sat beside Younger on his other side, so that his body was pressed up against him. The big man pulled himself together, trying to appear smaller.
“Don’t give me that, Brandon,” Willy said, dragging out his name. “There is no way in hell she took that, said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and walked out of here empty-handed. How’d you get her to leave?”
Younger hesitated, struggling to come up with something plausible. Willy leaned into him, his face inches from his ear. “We could’ve killed you back then. We can sure as shit throw you in the can for resisting arrest, attempting to escape, and assaulting two police officers, not to mention what we’ll find when we toss this dump and discover what you’ve got for sale.”
“Oh, no,” Sammie added. “It’s worse than that. He’s directly tied to a homicide. His ass is ours.”
Younger began struggling to get up, which met with Sam pushing him back into place. “You can’t do that. I only read about it in the paper. I didn’t even know that broad.”
“So, tell us how the conversation ended,” Willy told him in a reasonable voice.
“I gave her a name,” Younger finally admitted.
“How’d that happen?”
“She told me she wanted to talk to the guy with the Indian belt buckle. Well, I know who that is. I mean, everybody does. That’s like his calling card. They even call him The Indian. Kinda stupid, you ask me, but to each his own.”
“You’re killin’ me,” Willy almost whispered.
At last, he gave up the rest of it. “His name’s Buddy Ames,” Brandon sighed.
* * *
Joe sat at his desk in Brattleboro, staring out the window, the falling snow drawing his attention with the mesmerizing appeal of a fire in a grate.
Sam stood before him, studying his profile, her emotions still sorting through the tangles of Brandon Younger’s revelation. From a nonsanctioned side action with Willy in Rutland, urged on by the ghost of a ten-year-old failed covert operation, she’d become the bearer of what Joe had just enigmatically termed “the domino we needed”—a solid lead connecting Susan Raffner’s last few hours with something that might explain how and why she’d died.
Joe’s silence, however, had her worried. The light was fading, they were alone—Willy had gone home to Emma—and Sam had been hoping for her news to be met with actions and commands, or at least enough motion and noise to cover the unconventional nature of her information’s journey to his ear.
But he was too experienced a cop to not consider precisely that, and therefore to ask, “What were you and Willy doing in Rutland?”
“Like I said, Maggie Kinnison set that going.”
“To a motel room with an overdose?”
She hesitated. “Stuey Nichols came up as a possible involvement. The girl’s place was the best we could figure as his last known address.”
He kept staring at the snow. “So Willy then thought of Younger when the girl turned up dead.”
“Right.”
“And Younger in turn just gave you Buddy Ames.”
Joe swung around enough in his chair to fix her with an unblinking gaze.
She felt her face warm under the scrutiny. “Yeah—eventually. You know how it goes. Back and forth.”
“This was recorded?”
“No. Willy and I can both vouch for what was said, though. And it’s in our written reports.”
“And Younger? What will he vouch?”
She swallowed hard. He could vouch, she thought, that we hit him, intimidated him verbally, and probably made what he told us inadmissible—if it ever reached court. Instead, she said, “He’s cool. In exchange for what he told us, we let him walk on attempting to escape and assaulting a police officer.”
He looked at her for a couple of seconds in silence, their shared knowledge hanging between them of how often these types of encounters could quickly morph into something beyond a conversation. As boss and subordinate, mentor and acolyte, Joe and Sam had long walked a road lined with mutual respect, shared allegiance, interdependence, and even love.
Moments like this, simmering with unspoken truths, could take time to be absorbed through such layers of trust.
Time that Joe now mercifully brought to a close.
“Okay,” he said quietly, as if accepting not just her version of events, but—by having granted a risky player like Willy such independence to begin with—his own collusion in their retelling. “Let’s see if we can find Buddy Ames.” He then smiled slightly and added, “Because regardless of what really happened between you and Brandon Younger, you two may have given us the kick-start we’ve been looking for.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Rutland Police Chief Peter Quayles was angular and hawk-nosed, with a penchant for moleskin trousers and tweed jackets. The look, combined with his British accent, made for a caricature of a 1940s Pinewood Studios actor. His actions and demeanor, however, spoke otherwise. The man was businesslike and direct, if a little flowery with his syntax. Joe was delighted he’d chosen not to invite Willy Kunkle to the meeting.
In fact, Joe had brought along only fresh faces—and certainly not the same two people who’d prowled around Quayles’s building without introducing themselves.
Instead, it was reliable Lester Spinney who accompanied him into the chief’s office, along with Bob Crawford, of the drug task force, with
whom Quayles was comfortably familiar.
“VBI, eh?” Quayles said as he shook hands and bowed toward a cluster of chairs in the corner. “I’ve been hearing about you boys—and about you in particular, Special Agent Gunther. You are a highly respected man. Very flashy initialization, by the way—VBI. Does it earn you much respect?”
Joe was used to most variations on that comment. He tried deflecting with, “Most people think we deliver packages.”
“According to my man Bruce,” Quayles countered, his smile fading, “you recently helped to deliver a dead body.”
“We did discover one—sadly,” Joe readily admitted, wary of what their host thought of outsiders poaching on his territory.
But the chief surprised him by replying sympathetically, “Sadly is the word. Despite our attempts to address the ills of this beleaguered city, I remain staggered by its daily heartbreak. The poor woman had three children. Did you know that?”
Joe opted for playing it straight. “No. After my people briefed your response team, they took off. Jackie Nunzio had been mentioned as a conduit to another source, which obviously didn’t pan out. I don’t think they actually learned a great deal about her.”
“And yet”—Quayles looked him straight in the eyes—“here you are again.”
Joe nodded. “Yes. The other source turned out to be Buddy Ames—otherwise known as The Indian. That sent us full circle, back to Rutland.”
Again, the chief shifted moods, his expression creasing into a broad smile. “Indeed. Thanks so much for sending us his name.” Quayles reached out with one long arm and retrieved a file from his nearby desktop. “Bruce tells me that Buddy has quite the history around town. Bit of a swaggering brute, from what little I read—complete with that belt buckle trademark.”
He switched his gaze to Crawford, who was there mostly to smooth out this initial meeting, being a trusted ally to both parties. “You are acquainted with Mr. Ames, Bob?”
“Historically, yes,” Bob replied. “Not lately, though. Has the PD had any recent dealings with him?”
