by Archer Mayor
But not Lorraine. Lester hadn’t called ahead, preferring the advantage of an unannounced visit. However, he knew enough to presume that he’d find somebody at home, regardless of the hour.
She was in. After knocking on the door of her third-floor apartment, he heard a shuffling gait approach, before the door was pulled open by a tired-looking woman with long, blond, dirty hair pulled back into a ponytail. She had a cigarette dangling from her lips, which stayed put as she asked, “Who’re you?”
Her voice was husky and pleasant, her eyes bloodshot but alert, and her body language relaxed—all good signs to a man well used to the opposite. Early in the morning was no time for a screaming match or a brawl.
In his most self-effacing manner, Lester showed her his credentials and introduced himself.
“VBI?” she said. “You trying to say VSP?”
Lester laughed. “No, ma’am. I used to work for the state police, but I moved over to this outfit. Stands for Vermont Bureau of Investigation. We do things like bank robberies, murders—major cases.”
“You don’t say? I never run into you before.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” he said.
She tilted her head slightly, watching him. “That mean it’s bad we’re meeting now?”
He loved it. Insightful, smart, a little funny. He sensed he could work with this woman. “I hope not. I think I’m just here for a little information.”
“About what?”
“Your brother, Kyle.”
Her face didn’t move at all, but in some extraordinarily subtle way, it transformed. From watchful and guarded, it became reflective and soft.
“Poor baby,” she said, and stepped back, asking, “You want to come in? I got coffee on.”
“Thank you,” he said, and accepted her invitation.
The apartment contrasted with her untidy appearance. It was spare, open, and sun-filled with the morning light—at once startling, given his expectations, and instructive, considering the odds against her. He imagined that since her life had been all but reduced to this one small apartment, she was going to do the best she could to make it exemplary.
“It’s a beautiful place,” he complimented her. “You’ve done a great job.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “Have a seat by the window.”
He did so, and watched her move painfully, stiff-legged, across to a kitchen counter, where she filled two cups. “Milk or sugar?”
“No. Straight is fine.”
“Me, too,” she commented, and slowly crossed over to join him, choosing a ladder-back chair she apparently found more comfortable than anything softer.
“How’re you doing?” he asked, his meaning clear by his glancing at how carefully she moved.
“Some days are better than others,” she answered indirectly, not addressing which kind this was.
“I can imagine,” he said, taking a sip of coffee.
“Why’re you here about Kyle?” she asked.
“I’m looking at his death,” Les answered honestly. “Not because I think there’s anything wrong with the conclusions reached, but mostly to satisfy my curiosity.”
Her eyes widened slightly, as if amused by something very minor. “That the company line?”
He smiled politely. “For the moment. I guess so. I don’t have anything else to go on.”
She nodded in sympathy with his predicament. “I didn’t either, at the time,” she said. “I still don’t. Two men are dead, each with the other’s bullet in him. Hard to argue with that. But it still feels wrong to me.”
“That kind of explains my visit,” Lester told her. “I’d like to hear why.”
She removed her cigarette and sipped from her cup before saying, somewhat doubtfully, “You’re a strange sort of cop.”
He chuckled. “So I’ve been told.”
“Okay,” she then said, cradling the cup and sitting back to get more comfortable, the cigarette forgotten in an ashtray. “For one thing, I can’t figure out a situation where Kyle would ever use a gun.”
“He owned one.”
“Oh, I know,” she agreed. “Like everybody else around here. He even used to shoot it with that knucklebrain friend of his, Chad. But there’s a big difference between shooting at a target and another human being. One thing about Kyle you probably don’t know: He never shot anything living. Never went hunting, never took potshots at squirrels or birds like most boys. When we were growing up, he’d cry whenever he saw a dead animal by the side of the road. It was a thing with him. I never knew why.”
“People can be pushed over that line,” Les suggested gently. “Pacifists driven to violence by the right circumstances.”
“But isn’t that because they got pushed there by what was happening?” she argued. “They say that cop and Kyle didn’t know each other. What could happen in the two minutes it takes for a traffic stop to lead to people shooting each other?”
It was an excellent point, and one that lay at the heart of Lester’s ongoing discomfort. “He could’ve been having the ultimate bad day,” he suggested. “The kind of thing where one last push is all that’s needed.”
“I know what you mean,” she said, surprising him again with her open-mindedness. If sister and brother had been blessed with similar temperaments, it was hard to imagine either one of them blowing up to the point of using violence.
“We’ve all had days like that,” she was saying. “But that’s when you yell or punch a pillow. You don’t fire a gun at somebody. Sure as hell not a cop.”
“It sounds like you two were pretty close,” he said, changing approaches slightly.
“We were all we had left,” she said, her tone wistful. “There’s no other family to speak of—not in-state or nearby. There’s a cousin, Molly Blaze. She’s a good egg. Lives down near Jacksonville, where we all came from. But that’s it.”
“Had you and Kyle been in touch that last week?”
“Oh, yes. Like usual. He was unhappy, but not mad—not like you’re thinking.”
“What was he unhappy about?”
Lorraine tossed her head slightly. “Oh, another woman, naturally. That was Kyle, through and through. If you wanted to pin a particular problem on him, it wasn’t a short temper, it was his heart. That poor sap fell in love at the drop of a hat.”
“Really?” Lester feigned surprise. “I had no idea he had it that bad.”
“Oh, yes. That’s what I meant before. All the crying at dead animals? He was a real softy. Women loved it. He could dance, cook, he had good manners. Compared with most of the lunkheads out there, he was a woman’s dream come true.”
“Okay,” Les followed up. “So tell me about this latest love interest.”
She looked a little surprised. “Oh, I don’t know her name. I often didn’t. He had a good turnover, like I said.”
“You know anything about her at all?” he persisted. “Where he met her, maybe? Or where she worked?”
She was shaking her head. “No. Just that it was over, like all the others.”
Lester placed his coffee mug on the floor beside his seat. “I’m not here to harass you, Lorraine, believe me. But this might be important for what happened that night. Anything might be. What exactly did he say about the breakup?”
She didn’t roll her eyes or act impatient. It was as if from the start she’d accepted his reason for being here at face value, and thus saw him as an ally. She liked his manner, and trusted that he was in earnest. “Well, for all his successes, Kyle loved his independence. I only caught the tail end of these affairs, and only from him, but a lot of the time, they fell apart because the women wanted more of a commitment than he did.” She laughed softly before admitting, “There’s the irony, right? It was all about falling in love for him; after that, he couldn’t wait to get out. He was always the most surprised when they beat him to it, and bailed first. Wounded his ego. He always claimed those would’ve been the true keepers, of course.”
“Did you ev
er meet any of them?”
“Sometimes. For dinner, maybe. He’d bring one by. I never really knew why. He wasn’t looking for my approval, and he never stayed with any of them long enough for it to matter. It was one of those things people do, I suppose.”
“Any of them married?”
“Sometimes. It didn’t seem to matter.”
“You say he was the sentimental type, but these breakups can be hard to control. I heard he might’ve gotten a little physical sometimes.”
She didn’t take umbrage, smiling instead. “Love and liquor, right? The fateful combination. You get that from checking his record? It’s true. He got arrested for domestic violence a couple of times, I think—maybe it was just once. They were shoving matches. I’m not saying it wasn’t the right thing to do. Best way to break up a fight is to lock somebody up. But nothing came of it—couple of sloppy drunks throwing beer cans at each other. Look at those more carefully. I bet that’s what you’ll find.”
In fact, he had, and she was right. He returned to his original inquiry. “All right. So, this last breakup.”
She nodded. “Right, right. That’s what you asked. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure she was married, now that you mention it. And I think that’s what caused the rift—she wanted things to be more serious.”
“Leave her husband?” Lester asked.
“That’s what Kyle was worried about. I don’t know if they’d actually started talking about it, but he thought he saw the writing on the wall.”
“Had he broken it off?”
“Oh, yes. That was why he was upset. She didn’t take it well at all. Very worked up. And of course, there was no better way to drive him away faster.”
“He didn’t call her by name? Even a nickname?”
“Nope. Well … The dragon lady. But he’d used that one before.”
Lester retrieved his coffee and took another sip, thinking back. Lorraine waited patiently.
“Did you ever see Kyle’s gun?” he asked eventually.
“He showed it to me once,” she said. “It was a revolver. That’s about all I know. I’ve fired a gun a couple of times, but it’s not my thing.”
“What was the occasion?”
“He’d just gotten it. It was a few years ago. He got it secondhand.”
“Did he carry it around often?”
She frowned. “Not that I know. I doubt it. I thought he’d lost it. That was another thing that surprised me when he died—I didn’t know he’d found it again.”
“He told you when it went missing?”
“Yes. He was pretty upset, I think mostly because he couldn’t figure out what had happened to it.”
“Did he think someone’d stolen it?”
“He didn’t tell me if he did. At the time, I thought he blamed himself.”
“When was this?”
She hesitated. “I don’t really know.”
“Near the time he died?”
“Oh, sure,” she said without hesitation. “I just can’t remember exactly.”
“But within a week or something?”
“Maybe a little more.”
Lester eyed her closely. “Lorraine, since we’re on this topic, did the timing of the gun disappearing coincide with him and the mystery woman breaking up?”
She didn’t answer immediately, returning his scrutiny. “You think they’re related? How?”
“I’m not saying they are,” he stated. “It just struck me as an interesting coincidence.”
She nodded slightly, just once. “I thought you cops didn’t like coincidences. That’s what they always say on TV.”
Lester smiled, but he was less amused than suddenly caught by the notion. “Yeah. Well, for once, they’re right. We don’t.”
* * *
Some twenty minutes later, back outside in his car, Spinney pulled out his cell phone and dialed Sturdy Foster.
“You getting anywhere?” Foster wanted to know, in lieu of the standard greeting.
Lester laughed. “Hi to you, too. I’m pokin’ along, trying not to make waves. I learned a couple of things which may or may not have anything to do with the price of eggs.”
“Like?”
“Kennedy had just broken up with a married girlfriend, and he’d lost track of the .357 you later found in his lap.”
“What’ya mean, lost track?”
“Lost it. Both his sister and his shooting buddy said he’d reported it missing.”
“Stolen?”
“Not necessarily. Just missing.”
“So he might’ve found it again, like under the couch?”
“Yup, but he never said so if he did.”
Foster was impressively nondefensive. “Huh,” he grunted. “Interesting. Who was the girlfriend?”
“Don’t know. He didn’t tell anyone I’ve met so far.”
There was a momentary silence between both men as each mulled over what had just been said.
Lester took advantage of it to ask, “Was there anyone you met during your investigation who’d qualify as a best buddy to Ryan Paine?”
“Dylan Collier,” Sturdy said quickly. “He’s with A Troop—A4, specifically—St. J. He and Paine were joined at the hip. He made a total pest of himself during the investigation. Worse than the press, the SA, my boss, and the commissioner, combined.”
“Why?”
“At first, I thought it was the whole ‘thin blue line’ thing—or green and gold, in our case—ramped up to the max. All he did was rant about how Paine had been killed in cold blood because of a lack of support for the troops from the top. It got so bad, I told his sergeant to yank his leash, which probably made it into his permanent file and put my name on his hate list. You talk to him, you better not mention me. I don’t know what wound him up, but you should’ve heard him on Kyle Kennedy. It was like the man had raped his mother.”
“He had killed his best friend, sounds like,” Lester sympathized.
“I get it,” Sturdy said irritably. “Trust me. I’m playing ball with you ’cause we go back and I know you. But don’t read me wrong. I don’t like that my case is being picked over and a cop-killer is being given the benefit of the doubt. But my saying that to you? That’s nothin’ compared to what I got from Collier. He was unhinged. It was like Kennedy had been acting on behalf of the VSP brass to get rid of people like Paine. Absurd. Totally went off track. It went beyond what you’d expect from a grieving man. Made me think the guy might be overdue for a psych eval.”
Lester gazed across the empty town green, watching how a slight breeze was fluttering the uppermost foliage in the trees bordering the common. The leaves were new and translucently bright in the morning sun, looking freshly unpacked and ready for the summer ahead. He’d been struck into silence by Sturdy’s honesty, which in turn reinforced the man’s reputed integrity.
“Sorry,” Sturdy said curtly.
“No need,” Les told him. “You’ve been a stand-up guy, and I appreciate it. Don’t apologize for being straight with me.”
“Right. So why did you want the name of Paine’s best bud?”
Lester proceeded gingerly. “I’ve been digging into Kennedy so far. Seemed like I shouldn’t play favorites.” Hearing the words out loud, Lester wondered if he wasn’t being disingenuous. It was accurate on its face, but he was being propelled by something less purely objective—an uncomfortable feeling, as though he was getting close to something that so far, and for unknown reasons, had been left undisturbed.
“Watch yourself with Collier,” Sturdy recommended, his voice still sounding rigidly neutral. “I’ll talk with you later.”
The line went dead.
Lester started his car and left town, his earlier enthusiasm for the hunt replaced by a heavy heart. It was common, sometimes—perhaps self-protectively so—to exchange the wider picture for a more narrow focus. On the firing range, it was precisely what police instructors routinely warned you against doing. Be aware of the peripheral threat, they would say.
“Scan!” was the constant reminder to look around and take heed.
Sturdy’s words had reminded Lester of that, bringing alive the bigger story behind what had at first been merely an intriguing puzzle. As clichéd as it sounded, real people had died, one of them doing the kind of work that Lester had done more times than he could recall.
It was a sobering thought, and an encouragement to get everything right.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I still say you’re nuts,” Sammie said, moving into the passing lane. “You should be in your own car.”
Willy looked over at her. “We’re both going to Burlington. We’re carpooling, for Christ’s sake. How much more crunchy-granola can you get? The governor or the commissioner gets wind of this, we’ll be good for some environmental plaque. Crossed unicycles on a field rampant or something.”
“You are so full of it,” she said. “You’re gonna rent a car to get back home. How crunchy is that? And how’re you going to legitimize the expense?”
“Joe’ll love it,” he countered. “His troops carving out quality time while we’re on the job? It’s a win–win.”
“You forget: I’m Joe,” she reminded him. “And I say you pay for the rental out of your own pocket.”
He laughed. “Sold. You think I care?” He reached far over with his right hand and gave her a poke in the ribs. “I get to spend a few daylight hours with my sweetie pie. When was the last time that happened?”
She squirmed away from his probing finger, laughing. “What the hell’s gotten into you? You drinking again?”
He took it in stride. “No way. I was never a happy drunk. Much as that’s hard to believe.”
“Yeah, right.” She took her eyes off the road long enough to look at him. “Seriously. This is almost creepy behavior.”
He settled back in his seat and gazed out at the passing countryside. They were traveling north on I-91, in preparation for catching the state’s only other interstate—I-89—that cut diagonally through the Green Mountains to reach Burlington on the western border. It was a beautiful, scenic, thinly traveled road, showing off some of the best views that northern New England had to offer. And at this time of year—the soothing, seductive, emerald green stretch of time between the end of mud season and early fall, when this patch of earth holds out the brief glimpse of perfection—it was difficult for even a hard-bitten soul not to be influenced.
