Open Season (9 page)

She nodded. “You’ve obviously never seen my boss.”

I had. It was a rhetorical question. “What would you do if you found someone going through those files without your clearance?”

She pursed her lips. “Other people have junk up there.”

“This would be your junk—like, say, in a bathroom.”

“If he was someone I knew,” she smiled, “and he wasn’t removing anything or making a mess out of the filing, I think I’d just say ‘Hi’ and maybe offer him a fan.”

I smiled back. “Thank you.”

The first thing I did was search the upper floor for a light with a stronger bulb than the one hanging from the middle of the bathroom ceiling. The best I could manage was seventy-five watts. I then stripped to the waist, shifted the boxes into a rough beginning-middle-end order, and settled as comfortably as I could on the toilet seat. I opened the first file from the first carton and began to read.

· · ·

Gail lived on Meadowbrook Road, north of West Brattleboro, actually not far from Orchard Heights. But where the latter had appeared as if by the wave of a Realtor’s wand, Gail’s neighborhood had followed an unrushed evolution from countryside to farms, and from farms to large family homes. Lately, the occasional one-and-a-half story modern ranch-style was starting to appear, but with discretion—even lending a certain democracy to the street.

Her house had been an apple barn once, a small part of a large area still referred to as Morrison’s Farm. No one named Morrison lived on the road anymore, and perhaps predictably there wasn’t a real farm anywhere in the vicinity. But the apple barn remained, high at the top of a field facing east, overlooking where the main house had once been and where a long uncared-for driveway now struggled up the slope to meet it.

That, of course, was unplowed. Every year I reminded her to set up a contract with someone to plow the drive regularly, and with equal consistency she forgot about it until she’d been snowed in several times. Her stubborn absent-mindedness had become an early winter rite for both of us, a demonstration of her reluctance to let the fall slip away without protest. Sentiment aside, I thought it was a pain in the butt.

I made as good a try as I could at the hill, fishtailing like crazy, bald tires whirring like dynamos, and ran out of steam about half way up, as usual. With a world-weary sigh—always good for the soul when no one else is around to lend sympathy—I got out into the early evening darkness and trudged the rest of the journey in my ancient, half-laced boots. I saw her watching me from behind the sliding-glass door of the porch, a mug of something hot cradled in both hands. She was wearing blue jeans and a work shirt, and they and the soft backlighting from within the house showed off her slim, almost skinny outline. She turned on a light as I reached the porch steps, and drew open the door.

“When are you going to put on snow tires?”

“Ha, ha.” I got to the top and she carefully wrapped her arms around me and gave me a kiss. I lifted her slightly off her feet, swung her into the house, and closed the door.

“I think I just poured tea down your back,” she whispered in my ear.

“Then it’s probably on your rug, too.”

We separated and looked at the small dark stain on her rug. She shrugged. “One of thousands. That’s why I put it in front of the door. You want some?” She proffered her cup.

I sniffed suspiciously. “What is it?”

“Sleepy Time.”

I wrinkled my nose. “How about some nice, sweet, artery-clogging cocoa or something?”

“You got it.” She headed for the kitchen, and I went for the huge, overstuffed couch in front of the fireplace. I settled in its buxom embrace, stuck my stockinged feet out on the coffee table, and laid my head back on the pillows. I loved this woman, if not for herself then for her truly unique sofa. High above me a shiny aluminum mobile turned slowly in the air currents near the cathedral ceiling. The house was a mishmash of open levels, bare beams, and narrow staircases; you couldn’t walk ten feet without climbing up, stepping down, or fighting vertigo at some railing-free edge. Even then, it paid to watch your step. Dozens of little knickknacks—pots, wooden boxes, statuettes, rocks, sea shells, and God knows what else—lurked like frozen pets all over the house, hiding on the stairs and around corners as if waiting for dinner.

She came back in, handed me a mug, and wedged herself in the opposite corner of the couch, wriggling her toes under my thigh. She looked beautiful with her long hair spread out against the pillows.

“I’m glad you’re back.”

She took a sip of her tea and smiled. “Did you miss me?”

“Yes. A lot.”

She was quiet for a while and I just lay there, trying to melt through the pillows to the floor. The crackling of the fire massaged my brain.

“Sounds like you’ve been busy.”

I rolled my head on the pillow to look at her. “Oh?”

“The shooting. It’s all I’ve heard about since I got back.”

“Yeah. It’s still up in the air. We’ll see.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“The shooting?”

“That or whatever is causing that furrow on your brow. It always gets deeper when you’re thinking about something.”

Involuntarily I touched the permanent crease between my eyebrows. My father had sported one too. When he got mad it had given him the look of a wrathful Zeus—used to scare the hell out of me.

I smiled at the memory. “I guess it’s time for a vacation.”

“You just had one.”

“Wasn’t long enough.”

She laughed and put her cup down. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

I was a little embarrassed. The urge to share my thoughts quarreled with the stiff-upper-lip image I had of myself. She’d also made me feel I was on a psychiatrist’s couch, which was not somewhere I ever yearned to be. “Do you charge for this?”

“Maybe—but not money.” She gave me a friendly leer.

“Well, hell. Let’s pay now and talk later.” I stretched my hand up the inside of her thigh.

She caught my fingers with her own. “Seriously, what’s up?”

I leaned back again and waved my hand. “I don’t know; it’s nothing specific. Feeling old, I guess.”

“I used to do that when I was thirty-five.”

I tapped the side of my head with a finger. “You and me both. No… Murphy asked me to quit and join him in some business in Florida. I turned him down.”

“What kind of business?”

“No kind—he had no idea. He just wanted the company. I felt badly because I owe him a lot.”

“You have your own life to lead.”

That made me smile. “That’s what they say.”

“What happens to you once he leaves? Captain?”

“Probably. The chief and I get along; I’m next in line.”

“Nervous?”

“Not from the command angle—I’m used to that. I just hope it doesn’t change me.”

“Like Frank?”

“You’re pretty good at this. Yeah, like Frank. I’m digging into something right now, and I get the feeling he wishes he was already in Florida. It bugs the hell out of me.”

“Does it tie into Phillips? A cover-up?”

I shook my head. “Nothing quite so glamorous, although Stan Katz will probably start along those lines soon. I think maybe it’s what they used to call OTJR—On The Job Retirement. Frank doesn’t want to get dirty this close to the end. He has a nice clean record and a clear conscience. I can’t blame him, but it’s sad to see. I just hope to hell it never happens to me.”

“What is it?”

I hesitated to tell her. “Your selectman hat could get us all into some trouble here.”

“I’m not wearing it.”

“You might start.”

She looked at me silently.

“It
is
connected to Phillips. What have you heard so far?”

“Just what’s been in the newspaper. Some of the screamers on the board have been making a few phone calls, trying to get information.”

“Mrs. Morse?”

“She’s convinced you tell me everything.”

“Don’t I?”

“You’re not now.”

It was silly to hedge with her. I didn’t tell her everything, but what I did she always treated confidentially—always had and always would. That was the nature of the woman.

“I’m digging into the Kimberly Harris murder.”

“Wow. We’re not talking parking meters here, are we? No wonder Frank’s nervous. You mean this shooting’s tied in to the Harris case?”

I hesitated a moment. Maybe Frank had a good point. This whole thing was a can of worms just waiting to be opened. She shoved me with her toe. “My lips are sealed.”

I took her at her word. “Someone in a ski mask has been setting up ex-members of that jury—five so far. I think to force us to reopen the investigation.”

“Bill Davis’s jury?”

“Right. Reitz and Phillips were on it. Since them, three others have been snared, none as permanently. Just last night a girl was molested by a masked man and led to believe he was someone who served with her on that jury.”

“All in two days. He doesn’t waste time.”

“No, he doesn’t. And he may have a valid point.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I spent almost the whole day reading the trial transcripts and all the rest—years’ worth of legal back and forth. It was kind of weird. Perry Mason always got his man in half an hour. These guys took two years and didn’t come up with anything more than what they started with. If I’d have been Bill Davis, I would have been a basket case by the end of it. I mean, they pulled stunts like taking eight months to process the paperwork before the defense could get an appeal heard—it dragged on forever.”

“But wasn’t Davis guilty?”

“He was found guilty. We had a full plate of evidence against him, and the prosecution fed it to the jury one spoonful at a time—blonde, beautiful, young, pregnant girl found tied down and raped on her bed. The stuff of Hollywood dreams. Dunn played with the fantasy, building it up, filling in all the details. The struggle, the ripped clothes, the rope around the wrists and ankles, one final burst of resistance with a lamp and fingernails, then the rape, the semen in the mouth, the strangulation. It was a real performance.”

“But essentially true, or not?”

I couldn’t answer that. The question wasn’t relevant. What had occurred in that courtroom in the quaint county seat of Newfane hadn’t happened in a vacuum. Outside, in the street, in the bars, in the chance encounters of friends, the murmurs had floated—of outrage, of revenge, of racism. The supposed violent meeting between one of their own and a black flatlander junkie had stirred up a long-denied Yankee prejudice that rose slowly like a bubble in a tar pit.

“I remember at the time hearing that racist jokes were being kicked around between some of the jurors and the bailiff. It was hardly the most impartial of surroundings.”

I leaned forward and picked up my mug. The cocoa was cool now. “I’ll give Davis this much. He took it on the chin. Without saying a word, he told us all to take a long walk off a short pier.”

“So do you think he was guilty or not?” she asked again.

“As far as I know, he’s as guilty as he’s always been.”

“Then why are you digging into all this? The publicity’s already pretty hot without it.”

I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. Why indeed. “Because I think things are going to force me to change my mind.”

I PARKED OUTSIDE MY HOME
about ten that night. Gail wanted an early start the next morning. I spent the night with her every once in a while, usually on weekends or days when we didn’t have to tear off to some job at the crack of dawn. We were both old enough now that we wanted our time together rounded out and comfortable, including a good night’s sleep and a casual, stretched out breakfast. That hadn’t stopped us from making love on the couch before dinner tonight, but we hadn’t seen each other in a while.

Happier and whole again, I felt a little silly remembering the tape I’d placed across the apartment door that morning. It was something I’d seen James Bond do some twenty years earlier in a movie—a way for him to detect intruders while he was away. Of course he had used a hair, but I didn’t have enough left to start plastering them across doorways.

Why I had done it was another matter. The Plymouth Duster had definitely unsettled me, and the appearance of the masked avenger—or whatever he was—had hardly helped. Putting tape on the door had been an impulse but one that had made me feel a bit more in control, as if proving to the Plymouth’s driver that he wasn’t the only one taking notes.

But whatever confidence it had gained me quickly vanished. As I reached the top of the stairs, I could clearly see the tape was broken. I stood there for a moment, uncertain of what to do. Outside some stranger’s apartment, a similar setup was easy to deal with. You pulled a gun, organized your troops, knocked politely, and, if necessary, had the door broken down. It was scary but routine—at least on paper. This was not routine.

I stepped out of the way of the door, slipped my key in as quietly as possible, pulled my gun, and turned the lock. The door opened with a loud click. I waited a bit, breathing hard through my mouth. I felt terribly hot. I pushed the door wide open, still from around the corner, and listened, cataloguing each sound—the clock, the heating pipes, the hum of the refrigerator—until I could hear no more. Only then did I step cautiously across the threshold and into the semidarkness.

It took me fifteen nervous minutes to find out the apartment was empty. I went through it twice, increasingly angry that my own house had become a place of menace on the strength of one half-seen Plymouth Duster and a torn piece of Scotch tape. I was angry that the place had been invaded and all my things picked over, and I was angry that I might be inventing the whole goddamned thing to begin with—torn tape notwithstanding.

Finally, and I suppose fundamentally, what bothered me most was that basic elements in my life were being disturbed, some by the simple pressures of time, like Murphy’s retirement, and others by a more malevolent force. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like how they were all mixing together, forcing everyday events to assume ominous proportions. Having to put tape on the door was bad enough; finding it broken and stalking through my own apartment with a gun was downright disturbing. I wanted to be tightly focused as I began this investigation, but it wasn’t happening. Whether it was Murphy’s timidity or something subliminal I’d gotten from reading those transcripts, I was beginning to feel out of sorts.