Presumption of Guilt Page 6

  She was already waving her fingers at him apologetically, still holding the pen. “I know, I know. This has been a lot to take in, all at once.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he quickly soothed her. “We unfortunately do this quite a bit, and believe me, you’ve been a terrific help. It’s a hard thing to process.”

  “Thank you,” she said, straightening and pushing the notepad toward Willy, asking, all of a sudden, “What happened to your arm?”

  Joe looked at him, unsure of how this poster child for unpredictability would respond.

  But Willy simply said, “It was a bullet wound—a line-of-duty thing.”

  She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Crazy world. Even up here in the backwoods. You never know what’s going to happen.”

  “Not till the last second,” he agreed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Those shirt stays work out for you?” Lester asked his son, entering the kitchen and tossing a grape into his mouth from a bowl on the counter.

  “Yeah. Thanks. Mine kept letting go whenever I got out of the cruiser. I was starting to think I’d just live with tucking my shirt in whenever I had the chance.”

  “You boys,” his sister, Wendy, addressed them, her head in the fridge. “It’s all about underwear and looking good.”

  Her brother threw a piece of the popcorn he was eating at her, hitting her in the back. She withdrew from the fridge with a can of whipped cream in her hand. Dave, still in uniform, recoiled in horror.

  “Don’t, don’t. I can’t get this dirty.”

  She laughed at him. “I rest my case. You are such a coward.”

  “You can’t say that. I’m armed.”

  She proffered the can threateningly. “And I’m not?”

  “Where’s Mom?” Lester asked, in part hoping to head off a food fight.

  Wendy exchanged her weapon for a casserole dish, which she placed next to the stove. “Had to extend her shift. Someone called in sick at the hospital—there’s irony for you. We’re on our own tonight, with leftover lasagna.”

  “Okay,” Spinney said, as Dave inquired of his father, “You work on that buried body case today?”

  “Not much. Today was mostly putting all the pieces on the board—autopsy, background checks, who’s who and what’s what. The boss and Willy are interviewing the guy’s wife right now.”

  Dave was beginning to set the kitchen table. “So you know who he is?”

  “We think we do.”

  Wendy opened the microwave next to the stove and slid in their meal. “We were talking about it at school today. It’s like a movie or something. A real whodunit.”

  Lester opened a cabinet and lined up three glasses for drinks. “Yeah, with the ‘who’ in this case maybe living in an old folks’ home. Can you see us walking into some guy’s room and trying not to get the cuffs tangled up with his oxygen tubing?”

  “That would be awk,” his daughter said.

  “You think that’s what’s going to happen?” Dave asked.

  “Beats me. Everyone involved has to be about sixty or older to have been there,” Lester said. “For all we know, the doer’s already dead and buried. You go around killing people in your twenties, it generally means you’re not an exercise and health food nut.”

  “Live by the knife, die by the knife?” Dave said.

  Wendy laughed. “Oh, please. Where’d you get that?”

  Lester brought the drinks to the table as the microwave’s dinger went off. “It may sound like an old radio show,” he said. “But Dave’s right. Most of the bad guys we deal with come from the same group of fifty to a hundred people, more or less. It’s like they’re on a merry-go-round. They just can’t stop making all the wrong choices.”

  Wendy delivered the lasagna as they sat down to eat. “Sounds kind of hopeless, if you ask me.”

  “Dad,” his son asked, “isn’t it a fact that if you’ve got a tough case with no leads, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, ’cause someone’s going to blab and spill the beans?”

  “Often, yeah.”

  Dave continued. “Well, then it sounds like you’re stuck tween a rock and a hard place, ’cause that would’ve happened by now, right? Which means you’re not dealing with the same bunch of losers who can’t get out of their own way.”

  “Don’t you sound like Sherlock Holmes,” Wendy said.

  “He’s probably right, though,” Lester confirmed, dishing out the food. “The killer could’ve been grabbed right after and put in jail for who-knows-what; he might’ve died robbing a bank, taking his secret with him; or just maybe, he got away with it because it was either a random act of violence, or very carefully planned.”

  “And he got lucky,” Dave added.

  Lester smiled and nodded. “And he got lucky.”

  Wendy raised her glass in a toast. “He or she—and here’s to their luck turning, since Dad’s on the job.”

  Lester accepted the toast, but he was quietly considering what—besides the body of Hank Mitchell—might have been festering for forty years, waiting to be uncovered. And at what cost.

  * * *

  Joe had borrowed a whiteboard from somewhere, and set it up that morning in the corner of the office, prompting Willy to stop on the threshold to comment, “We better get milk and cookies with this, or I’m goin’ home.”

  “Do shut up for once,” Sammie urged him, pushing him forward so she could enter.

  Joe didn’t care. “I have color markers,” he said. “In case you get confused.”

  Lester laughed as Willy scowled and said, “I’ll manage.”

  Joe waited for them to settle in, fix coffee, check e-mails—and in Willy’s case, put his feet up on his desk—before writing HANK in the middle of the whiteboard, in red.

  He circled it, saying, “This is our starting point. No telling what he did to get himself killed. He may have been a son of a bitch whose thirty-one-year life expectancy was up, or the perfect example of a wrong time–wrong place kind of guy. Whatever it was—big or small, illegal or not—somebody decided he was better off dead. What Willy and I got from his widow last night was a bunch of dominoes, one or all of which may have played a role in toppling this one over.” He tapped on the name with the marker.

  “Sharon Mitchell being the first,” Willy said. “Always start with the wife.”

  “Usually a safe bet,” Sam seconded.

  Joe wrote the name SHARON above Hank’s and drew a line between them. “Fair enough. She told us she tossed him out of the house a month before because he was cheating on her.”

  “BB Barrett,” Lester read off the report that Joe had entered into the computer the night before.

  Joe wrote down BARRETT, while explaining, “He had the hots for Sharon and wasted no time making his play after Hank disappeared.”

  “But got nowhere,” Sam pointed out.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Willy said. “Lust was in the mind of the beholder. Also, we only have her word she didn’t go for it.”

  “Which suggests they knocked off Hank together,” Sam filled in, “only to find out they weren’t the perfect couple.”

  “The son, Greg Mitchell,” Lester offered. “If you want to play tag team, your report says he was devastated by his old man abandoning them. Could be the kid knifed him, after which his mom, or BB, or both, covered it up and buried him to save the kid’s hide.”

  “At nine years old?” Sam protested.

  “Sure,” Willy told her. “Two thousand eight—an eight-year-old in Arizona shot his father and another man with a .22. It happens.”

  Without comment, Joe wrote GREG on the board.

  “If you’re going to list the wife,” Sam said, “fair play demands you write down the girlfriend—for the same reasons, more or less.”

  Joe marked down GF.

  “Does the same logic apply to the daughter?” Lester asked before checking the report to add, “Julie? Her mom called her a wild child—with the same adult assistance?”r />
  Willy protested. “A seven-year-old? I thought I was the cynical one. There are limits, even for me. Besides, she got wild afterwards.”

  “I agree,” Joe said. “I think we can leave her off. Let’s be practical and hopeful, for once.”

  “I got a practical wrinkle,” Willy offered. “If BB Barrett was sniffing after Sharon, what better way to improve his odds than by introducing Hank to Tootsie, whoever she is? He might’ve even paid for her dedication.”

  “Eww,” Sam said, but Joe nodded slightly, drew a connecting line between GF and Barrett, and balanced a red question mark on top of it.

  He raised a questioning eyebrow at Willy, who responded with a thumbs-up and added, “It would explain why BB made his move so fast after Hank’s disappearing act.”

  “Don’t forget William Neathawk,” Lester contributed. “And while we’re at it, you should list … I don’t know … Call him the ‘Missing Man.’ The guy who might’ve set Neathawk’s van on fire to draw attention away from the warehouse site. I’m thinking Neathawk was a convenience anyhow—just the patsy whose vehicle was chosen.”

  “This might’ve been all one person,” Willy mused. “A wireless detonator or a timer, planted under the van at any time, including in the middle of the night. Chances are Neathawk was living locally, to cut down on the commute, assuming he was from out of state.”

  Lester was shaking his head. “KISS, as they say—Keep It Simple, Stupid. My instinct tells me there were two of them—just makes it easier, and more realistic.”

  Willy, surprising Lester, didn’t argue. “Maybe.”

  “Moving on,” Joe said, turning to the board to list TOM, JIMMY, CARLO. He circled them as a group, explaining, “First names of the three drinking buddies Sharon could remember. When she got ticked off at us for suggesting her family members as possible suspects, she implied it was more likely that Hank had been killed by one of his pals.”

  “But she did say her old drunk dad pegged Hank as a loser from the get-go,” Willy recalled. “Was that to make sure he wouldn’t make our list, even though he’s dead and buried?”

  Joe shrugged. “He’s already in the report. My vote is to leave him there, to be considered if and when everybody else drops out of contention.”

  Willy had no complaint.

  “Same for Sharon’s brother and sister?” Lester asked, for the sake of argument.

  “I think so,” Joe agreed. “Anyone disagree?”

  There was no response. Joe therefore faced the board again, looking at the list. “That’s ten. It’s a start. We may get lucky—it’s been known to happen, but before we’re done, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with twice that many.”

  “Cheery thought,” Sam reacted.

  Joe turned to face her. “I hope I’m wrong. Maybe it’s because Hank’s been dead so long, but I have a feeling we’ll be digging deeper than usual with this one.”

  “The mere fact you just said so’ll make it happen, oh fearless leader,” Willy said resignedly. “That is the way it works.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Summit Circle, as befitted its name, was a hilltop road ending in a circular dead end, alternatively cloaked by trees and offering sweeping glimpses north, across Brattleboro township and the Connecticut Valley beyond. For owners with the right acreage—and who’d carefully chosen which trees to cut—the view encompassed a vision of New England approximating what the original inhabitants had enjoyed.

  It was a far cry from Joe Gunther’s standard field of operations.

  This last point was driven home as he rounded the final curve in the access road to encounter a broad, paved driveway flanked by two enormous granite pillars supporting matched concrete vases.

  He looked in vain for an overarching wrought iron sign declaring Xanadu, before he swept up the avenue, rounded a manicured copse of trees and a fountain, and found himself staring at what he imagined to be an undersized knockoff of a run-of-the-mill palace.

  “Jesus,” he whispered.

  There was a cool breeze at this altitude, carrying the odor of new spring growth, reminiscent of what drifted out from a flower shop’s refrigerator when a bouquet was being retrieved. Joe paused by his car and faced the view, letting the sensation of yearly renewal soak into his bones, along with the anemic but welcome sunshine. He wondered if bears underwent the same level of appreciation when they finally escaped their dens. Joe was a native-born son of the soil, descendant of a long line of stoic Vermont farmers, but he was hard-put to argue against this past winter as having challenged a man’s patience.

  “Perfect time of year, isn’t it?” said a male voice from behind him. “Especially before the bugs wake up.”

  Joe turned to see a white-haired, unshaven man in old jeans and a soiled shirt round a corner of the elaborate house, a shovel in his hand.

  “You had to bring them up, didn’t you?” he asked.

  The man shrugged, approaching. “That’s why we live here, ain’t it? Nine months of snow and three more of damned poor sledding, swattin’ at flies.”

  The two men shook hands, in so doing recognizing a kinship in pedigree, and perhaps background.

  “Joe Gunther—Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”

  “No shit? A lousy copper. You finally caught me; took you long enough. BB Barrett.”

  Joe smiled. “Thought you worked for the lord of the manor. Today casual Friday?”

  Barrett laughed and turned to face his easily seven-thousand-square-foot home. “Yeah, right. Ridiculous, ain’t it?” He hefted the shovel. “Nope. I’m the lord, and the gardener, and the master of all my goods and chattel. What the fuck is chattel anyhow?”

  “Your personal belongings besides real estate.”

  Barrett stared at him. “Really? Then what’re goods?”

  “Merchandise.”

  The other man grunted. “Huh. Guess those days’re behind me, then. No goods. Shitload of chattel, though. What do the cops want with me? And the Bureau of Investigation? What the hell’s that? I never heard of you guys. No offense.”

  “None taken. We’re a major crimes unit. They invented us a few years back, supposedly to streamline things and ramp up the quality of work.”

  “You a state cop?”

  “Yes and no. We’re not state police, but most of us were recruited from them. Not me. I used to work for the local PD.”

  Barrett leaned forward slightly and peered at him intently. “Who did you say you were?”

  “Joe Gunther.”

  “Holy shit. I remember you. You worked for Frank Murphy back when. Headed up the detective squad after he died.”

  “There’s a name from the past. Yeah, that’s me.”

  Barrett shook his hand a second time. “Jeezum, man. You been around forever.”

  Joe shrugged without comment.

  Barrett placed a hand on his back and ushered him toward the huge house. “God. I know what that’s like. Come on in. You wanna drink of something? I won’t offer you a beer, unless you’re real old school, but we got all sorts of other stuff here.”

  “You have a Coke?”

  His host let out another guffaw. “Do we have a Coke? Christ, no, we don’t. Black Death. That’s what it’s called around here. Rot your guts out. Oh, no. Our bodies are temples in this house. We only eat birch bark and drink lilac piss.”

  He stomped up the broad marble steps and threw his shoulder against one of the oversized cherry doors, bringing his shovel and Joe into a cathedral-sized front lobby with a chandelier the size of an upside-down parachute.

  “But do I have a Coke?” he continued. “You bet your ass I do. I just keep that kind of so-called poison in the bar, far from inquiring eyes. The wife and I have an informal arrangement. If I mind my manners around her and her pals, and don’t make cracks about their running outfits and spinning classes and bottled water and foofy food, then I get to eat and drink like I want on my own time.”

  He led the way down a hallway carpeted with th
ick Oriental rugs, under the gaze of a row of ponderous landscapes that looked like they should be famous—but just slightly missed the mark. “Come with me. This museum makes me uncomfortable.”

  Joe followed the man with his shovel, quietly noticing that one of his shoes was leaving clots of dirt in its wake. About halfway down the corridor, Barrett took them through a side door, down a set of stairs, and after several more turns, into a light-drenched, wood-lined, man cave of a room, complete with pool table, jukebox, leather furniture, stuffed animal heads, and a corner bar equipped with a neon sign advertising Budweiser.

  “Ah,” he said with evident relief, propping the shovel against a wall. “One Coke, coming up.” He headed off for the bar.

  Joe toured the large room, admiring the trophies, the racks of expensive rifles and shotguns, and the wall of French windows overlooking an enormous swimming pool. Evidently, the mansion had been built partially into the hillside, allowing for the grand entrance they’d used, while making room for this sheltered, less regal spot under one of the wings.

  Joe estimated that his own home, a rented carriage house behind an old Victorian in Brattleboro, had about the same square footage as this one room.

  “Take a load off,” Barrett offered, clumsily waving a hand filled with one drink toward a semicircle of seats near the window. Joe chose a leather armchair and received his Coke, still in its can, before Barrett settled into a corner of the sofa at right angles to him.

  “Ahhh,” the big man sighed, taking a long swig of what looked like a gin and tonic. “The rewards of life.”

  Joe took a sip of his drink, waiting for his host to say more.

  “Okay,” it finally came, as Barrett fixed him with a pair of cold, calculating eyes and said without a smile, “Enough of this. What’d you want?”

  “Whatever you can tell me about Hank Mitchell,” Joe said, watching for the reaction.

  It grew slowly, by degrees. Barrett’s face didn’t change at first, which Joe ascribed to pure calculation. He’d appreciated the man’s earlier lack of pretense. But questions about the meaning of “goods” aside, this house spoke of someone with brains and probably no small amount of ruthlessness.