Snow Blind (3 page)

“Holy Jesus,” Roger said from the steps. “That’s it. How’d you figure that out?”

I returned to the house and stepped past him into the living room. “Educated guess,” I told him. “Did Jenny keep any plastic bags around?”

He closed the door and walked over to the counter with the gas burner on it, pulling open a few drawers until he found what he was after. “Are bread wrappers okay?”

“They’ll do. And show me where she kept her personal papers.”

I examined the cat carefully before he gave me the bags, which I then used to carefully and completely wrap up the animal’s stiff legs and head.

Roger had approached a small school desk in the meantime, and now lifted its lid to reveal a jumble of bills, letters, and junk mail. “This is the only place I know that she kept stuff.”

I sat before the desk and began sorting through its contents. Ten minutes later, I discovered why the cabin had seemed so familiar to me earlier. Satisfied, I placed several documents in my pocket and looked up at him, pointing to his belt as I did so. “You don’t want to carry a gun that way. Could mess you up if it went off.”

He looked embarrassed and laid his hand on the weapon’s wooden butt. “Damn. I didn’t think of that.”

He hesitated a moment before gingerly pulling the pistol free and handing it to me, almost apologetically, along with my own gun from inside his coat. “I guess maybe you should keep these.”

I took them both and put them away, suppressing a paradoxical mixture of relief and anger as I did. “Yeah–maybe.”

After a telling pause, he asked, “What happens now?”

“That’s a loaded question, Roger,” I admitted, the anger just barely riffling the surface. “Technically, you’ve committed some pretty serious crimes–assaulting a police officer, reckless endangerment, kidnapping. We could even pile on your putting my car in the ditch. None of which even touches the young woman in the next room and how she ended up dead. You can’t be accused of being overly smart.”

He didn’t deny any of it. All the turmoil, frustration, and anxiety that had fueled him earlier seemed to have dissipated into simple lethargy. “I know.”

I stood up. “That having been said, I think we should hitch a ride on the first plow truck that comes through here and deliver you home.” I leaned forward slightly so that our eyes were just a foot apart. “With one understanding.”

The uncertain relief on his face was palpable. “What?”

“You stay put there. If this works out the way I think it will, you might be asked to tell the prosecutor or a judge about how you came here and found Jenny dead, and then stopped me for help on the road, but that should be it. Jenny’s killer will be behind bars and there’ll be no reason for anyone to know what else you did tonight.”

“You’d do that?” He sounded incredulous.

I took hold of his shoulder and squeezed hard. “Yeah. But if you do me dirt–disappear, act stupid, anything at all–I’ll make sure you go to jail. Understood?”

He nodded once, his eyes wide and clear. “Yes, sir.”

Two days later, I climbed the staircase of an old, red brick throwback to the Industrial era that had been cut up into dozens of tiny, dark, airless apartments overlooking Main Street on one side, and the railroad tracks on the other. It was a toss up about which was the preferable location, given the distinctly different, but equally jarring noise levels emanating from both.

Roger Blake lived over the street, and answered at the first knock.

“Hi, Lieutenant,” he said, his nervousness making him awkward and shy. “How’re ya doin’?”

“I’m doing fine,” I answered. “More to the point, so are you. You won’t have to talk to a judge after all. The man who killed Jenny confessed.”

“How?” he blurted, straightening with a start. “Who was it?”

I stepped past him uninvited and walked into the one-room apartment, drawn by the sun pouring in through the dusty window opposite the door. I stood next to it, feeling the heat on my face, along with an unexpected resurgence of the mixed emotions I’d felt when last in this man’s company.

“Her landlord,” I answered him. “When I went through her papers that night, I saw she was behind in the rent. He’d written her a letter that if she didn’t pay up, he’d come by personally to collect what she owed him–one way or the other. I knew the guy, as it turns out. I couldn’t put my finger on it when you and I were there, but I’d been in that cabin years ago to interview him about a sexual assault. Given that, I figured he’d done what he’d promised her he would, probably just before the storm broke, considering how long she’d been dead.”

Roger was standing behind me. In the window’s reflection, I could see him shaking his head. “Wow–that’s incredible. I mean, everything pointed to me. You really saved my butt, just on a hunch.”

I turned to face him, his gratitude raising my ire. “Not really. The cat’s head had been smashed against the corner of the wood stove. No reason to have done that unless it had hassled the killer first. You didn’t have any scratches, nor did Jenny’s body, and there were traces of skin in the cat’s claws.”

“The landlord?”

I nodded. “His hand was not only all scratched up, but bruised from hitting Jenny. DNA analysis will bear it all out, but the confession should stand in any case. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time–and you acted like a jerk.”

Now it was Roger’s turn to stare contemplatively out the window. “I thought I didn’t have any choice.”

“You didn’t think at all,” I corrected him, my voice tightening with a simmering anger I was surprised I couldn’t control. “You just made assumptions, and sold everyone short, including yourself.”

“I knew how it would look …”

“You had no idea.” I interrupted, and pointed to a hole in the wall next to his rumpled bed. “That where you messed up your hand?”

He nodded.

“Punching the wall in rage against Jenny, just before you set out in mid-storm to confront her?”

He was utterly still, seemingly frozen by my tone of voice.

“What were you going to do, Roger, if you hadn’t found her dead? You didn’t stop somewhere to bring her flowers, did you?”

“I wasn’t gonna to kill her,” he whispered.

I moved closer to him, forcing him to look at me, a professional lifetime of pent-up resentment and frustration pushing to find expression. “The landlord didn’t set out to kill her, either. But he’d hit women before, just like you hit Jenny that once. She didn’t put up with it from you, and she wasn’t going to take it from him. The only difference was that he didn’t take no for an answer. He was farther down the road than you are, Roger, but it’s still the same road. And as sure as I’m standing here, you’ll end up in the same place.”

He didn’t say a word, not surprisingly, but his uncomprehending silence triggered a burst of pure rage in my brain, like a single electrical spark from an overloaded fuse. I smacked his forehead with the heel of my hand, hard enough to send him staggering a step or two backwards. He stared at me, open-mouthed, his hands at his sides.

“Focus on that fine line, Roger. Stop feeling so goddamned sorry for yourself and think about what you’re doing when you’re doing it. Is that too much to ask? From one human being to another?”

He blinked a couple of times. “No.”

In control once more, I crossed over to the front door and stepped out into the hallway, turning to look back at him. “I hope not.”

But I knew it was just a matter of time.

Archer Mayor is the author of the highly acclaimed, Vermont-based series featuring detective Joe Gunther, which the Chicago Tribune describes as “the best police procedurals being written in America.”

He has won the New England Independent Booksellers Association Award for Best Fiction–the first time a writer of crime literature has been so honored. Mayor’s 22nd Joe Gunther novel, TAG MAN, earned a place on the New York Times bestseller list for hardback fiction.

Mayor’s critically-acclaimed series of police novels features Lt. Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont police department. The books, which have been appearing about once a year since 1988, have been published in five languages (if you count British,) and routinely gather high praise from such sources as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, and many others, often appearing on their “ten best” yearly lists.

Archer is a death investigator for Vermont’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, a detective for the Windham County Sheriff’s Office, a travel writer, and he travels the Northeast giving speeches and conducting workshops. He also has 25 years experience as a volunteer firefighter/EMT.

Whereas many writers base their books on only interviews and scholarly research, Mayor’s novels are based on actual experience in the field. The result adds a depth, detail and veracity to his characters and their tribulations that has led the New York Times to call him
“The boss man on procedures. ”

The Joe Gunther Series

Open Season

Borderlines

Scent of Evil

The Skeleton’s Knee

Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

The Dark Root

The Ragman’s Memory

Bellows Falls

The Disposable Man

Occam’s Razor

The Marble Mask

Tucker Peak

The Sniper’s Wife

Gatekeeper

The Surrogate Thief

St. Albans Fire

The Second Mouse

Chat

The Catch

The Price of Malice

Red Herring

Tag Man

Paradise City

Nonfiction

Southern Timberman: The Legacy of William Buchanan