The Company She Kept Read online

  Joe thought for a moment, priding himself on knowing all of VBI’s special agents. “We met a couple of times. She came from the Burlington PD, didn’t she?”

  “Yup. Her hubby wanted to try farming, and the best land deal he could find was up here, so rather than commute, she applied to join us. Worked out pretty good for both of them—and us, too,” he added. “I hear she does a hell of a job around here. She’s a tough little bugger.”

  The description helped Joe to sharpen his memory of her, which was a relief.

  “You’re an old-time farmer, Joe,” Lester went on. “What chances do you give them?”

  Joe glanced at him. “I’m the son of a farmer, and I got out as soon as I could. My brother did, too—became a butcher. Farming’s a hard life. The long winters and short seasons this far north don’t help.”

  Spinney drifted toward the interstate’s off-ramp—two exits shy of the Canadian border. Joe took advantage of the brief silence to admire a brightly painted silo in the distance. A couple of hours earlier, they’d actually driven by where he was born and brought up.

  His brother, Leo, still lived on what was left of the farm, with their ancient but spry mother. Joe hadn’t mentioned it to Lester, savoring the memories in private. He might have realized early on that the farming life was not his, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t loved being a part of it. His rural heritage—truly springing from the soil of this unusual, hardworking little state—had given him not just an identity, but a sense of moral sturdiness that had served him well through the decades.

  “I’m starting to wonder what life isn’t hard,” Lester reacted, negotiating the exit ramp and aiming them down the long, broad Newport feeder road. “Not mine,” he added quickly. “But certainly for most of the company we keep.”

  They reached Route 105, swung south and crossed the bridge at the grain elevators into the city itself, turning away from the huge lake. The modern post office was on Coventry Street—its low-slung, bland, and efficient architecture a far cry from some of the more distinguished-looking buildings farther downtown.

  “There she is,” Lester said, taking them into the snowbank-lined parking lot.

  A short, compact woman—her dimensions exaggerated by a bulky down overcoat—stepped away from her car and walked over to Lester’s window as he rolled to a stop.

  “Hey, guys,” she greeted them.

  “Cila,” Joe replied, waving at her across Lester. “Good to see you.”

  “How’s the farming life?” Les asked her.

  “You don’t wanna know,” she told them.

  “We get lucky with that PO box?” Joe asked, at once getting to the point and reacting to the wash of cold air that was pouring through the open window.

  “Yup. Belongs to Nathan Fellows—not one of our brightest citizens, thank God.”

  “How so?” Joe asked.

  “’Cause I’d say he fits what we’re looking for,” she answered. “I ran him through Spillman and the fusion center while I was waiting, and he’s up to his neck with everything from gay bashing to white supremacy to National Socialism—meaning Nazis to us lowbrows.”

  “He violent?”

  “He’s had his moments—bar fights, assaults, domestic violence, disturbing the peace. Done time for some of the above. If he’s killed anybody, we don’t know about it. I called one of my Newport PD contacts, and he asked around. Fellows is a known player, but mostly for being an idiot. He’s got the look down.” She pulled a photograph from somewhere inside her Michelin Man coat and handed it over.

  “Tatts,” she resumed. “Shaved head, piercings, motorcycle tough-guy clothes, complete with chains. Bad dude, one-oh-one.”

  Joe looked at the mug shot in Lester’s hand. Lewis had pretty much nailed it.

  “Where’s he live?” he asked.

  “Not far,” she said. “Edge of town. I drove by it. It’s your predictable dump, surrounded by trees, not far from the quarry. He’s got maybe four Vermont planters out front, and the usual assortment of trash, scrap, and mystery piles.”

  Vermont planters were abandoned cars—“parts cars,” in some people’s parlance—but only if you like your parts corroded beyond recognition.

  “He’s gotta be a gun nut,” Lester said.

  “He’s not supposed to be, legally,” Cila replied. “Not according to his conditions of release. But we all know what that’s worth. He could have three grenade launchers and a machine gun in there.”

  Joe knew that to be more than a one-liner. “Okay,” he said. “I don’t really want to do a knock-and-talk—not with so many unknowns.”

  “And a man’s house is his castle,” suggested Lester leadingly.

  “He work?” Joe asked Cila.

  She looked surprised. “Yes, believe it or not. For a pallet- and box-making company, off exit twenty-eight, between here and Derby, in the middle of a whole miracle mile/industrial park thing.”

  “You think he’s there now?”

  “Could be. When I drove by his place, I noticed his truck was missing, and he only has the one vehicle registered to his name. If nothing else, we could check out the factory’s parking lot and see what we see.”

  “You bring the local PD up to speed about what we’re up to?” Joe wanted to know.

  “Yup. They’re ready if we need backup.”

  He pondered that a moment. “What the hell? Have ’em join us—more the merrier.”

  She left her car at the post office after making those arrangements and rode with them, Lester heading northeast out of Newport along Route 105. Followed by two police cruisers, they were aimed inland, however, and quickly lost the mesmerizing lake behind them, exchanging it for the flat, bland, snow-covered terrain suggestive of the Stanstead Plain across the border in Quebec.

  Approaching the interstate and Derby beyond, they came upon the area Cila Lewis had described: the standard and ubiquitous American offering of mall stores, gas stations, car dealerships, and—set back from the road—small industrial operations such as the one employing Nathan Fellows. Lewis directed them down a service road between a fastfood restaurant and a gas station, toward a long, featureless, metal-sided building, its flat roof covered with a couple of feet of snow.

  A low mountain range of snow had been scraped from the parking lot and shoved to the edges, where it took on the look of a row of colorless icy hedgerows.

  Spinney slowed, prowled along the rows of serried cars until Cila said, “There. That’s it.”

  Joe glanced at the two of them. “We good, then? Direct approach?”

  “Works for me,” Lester answered, heading for an open spot.

  Aside from the usual row of loading-dock doors, there was only one entrance to the building facing them, and from its battered, half-boarded-over appearance, this company was clearly not out to impress retail customers.

  Leaving the local cops outside, they found two women inside a comparatively small room, sitting at cluttered desks, and surrounded by the requisite office paraphernalia of printers, computers, copiers, cabinets, and the rest. All of it was illuminated by parallel strips of overhead fluorescent tubing, and all of it was dusty, dingy, and—to Joe’s eyes at least—depressing.

  But not, apparently, to the one woman who looked up as they entered. She gave them a bright smile and an upbeat, “Hello. How may we help you?”

  Joe almost hated showing her his badge and watching her expression melt as she listened to him say, “Hi. We’re from the police. Wondering if we might have a quick chat with one of your employees.”

  That caught the attention of the other woman, who had been staring at her computer screen. “Who?” she asked.

  “Nathan Fellows. He working today?”

  The second woman gave a sour expression, muttered, “Shoulda known,” and returned to her screen.

  The cheerful one answered. “Nate? Sure.” She reached for her phone, adding, “I’ll call the floor.”

  “That’s okay,” Joe stopped her.
“We’d actually prefer to just go out there and find him ourselves, if that’s all right.”

  “I bet,” the sour one said, as if to herself.

  Her companion’s smile became a little stiff. “Well, I guess. I mean, I don’t know. We’re not supposed to let people back there. You know: insurance.”

  “Jesus, Betty,” the surly one burst out. “They’re cops. They’re not gonna sue us. Let ’em take the jerk out.”

  Lester laughed at the comment. “We probably won’t go that far. We just want to talk to the guy.”

  “More’s the pity,” she growled, and dropped back out of the conversation.

  Joe moved on presumption and raised the counter section that gave them access to the desk area. All three of them filed through and gathered around Betty.

  “Do you have a map of the building’s layout?” Joe asked pleasantly. “Just so you can show us where Nate’s likely to be working.” He gestured toward the door behind her.

  “Oh,” she said. “We have a floor plan showing the maintenance schedule for the machinery. That might work.” She pulled back and opened the drawer at her waist, pawing around until she retrieved what he was after. She tapped on a section of the floor plan with her finger. “Here. At the planers.”

  “And where are the exits?”

  She indicated a few more spots. The three cops studied the map. Cila pointed to an exit not far from where they’d parked. “I’ll go around outside and position myself here. This must be how most of them go to and from the lot, correct?”

  Betty nodded without comment.

  “Okay,” Joe agreed. “And deploy the others appropriately. I’ll go in through here and work down the center aisle. Looks like it’ll give me cover till I’m pretty close. Les? Why don’t you take the other angle and cut off access to the bay doors?”

  “Roger that.”

  Betty was looking from one of them to the other as if they’d just been beamed down from outer space.

  Joe laid his hand on her shoulder. “Just routine,” he said dismissively. “Keeps things nice and peaceful if you plan ahead.”

  “Okay,” she said doubtfully.

  Joe straightened and addressed both women. “A wild guess is that Nate is not your favorite guy on the floor.”

  The other secretary looked at him pityingly. “Really?”

  “What’s he like?” Joe asked her.

  “He’s an obnoxious loser peckerhead.”

  “Our kind of people,” Lester said.

  “What’s he done to deserve that description?”

  “He’s not very nice,” Betty volunteered.

  “God, Betty,” her friend burst out. “He’s a pig. Hates women, hates minorities, hates everybody he works with, walks around with all that Nazi crap tattooed to his scrawny body. He doesn’t wash, his breath stinks, he’s foulmouthed and crude. I’ve felt more for some roadkill than I feel for him. Make sure you arrest him and haul his ass out of here.”

  None of the cops responded for a few seconds. “Okay,” Cila finally said. “I’ll circle around.”

  “Thank you,” Joe said to the women. “We’ll get out of your hair. Just so you know, chances are he won’t even talk with us and we’ll be back on the road in ten minutes.”

  They barely heard Betty’s colleague whisper, “Whatever,” as Joe and Lester crossed to the far door.

  At the last moment, Joe looked back to ask, “What’s he wearing, by the way, just so we know what we’re looking for?”

  “Black,” was the abrupt answer. “Never wears anything else.”

  The contrast between the office and the manufacturing floor was abrupt and jarring. The office was a hyper-insulated shell tacked onto the building’s front door like a limpet to a rock. The rest of the structure was a single large room with crisscrossing girders overhead and rows of pendulous sodium lights—all of it vibrating with the ear-splitting orchestration of dozens of screaming machines. Saws, planers, drills, pneumatic hammers, sanders, and forklift motors all contributed to the clamor. Everywhere they looked, Les and Joe saw people walking around or laboring at their stations equipped with industrial-grade hearing, head, and eye protection.

  Defeated by the din, Joe signaled to Lester to head off according to plan, while he walked down an aisle between stacked pallet parts, aiming for where the planers were located.

  Nate Fellows turned out to be easy to spot, even with the camouflaging effect of the protective equipment. As Willy might have observed, it probably had something to do with the large black swastika tattooed on the back of the man’s neck.

  Joe paused at the end of his aisle to allow Spinney to get into position, before venturing onto the open floor, heading toward Fellows while pretending not to notice him. Joe was too experienced not to know the consequences of prematurely revealing himself.

  But his caution couldn’t compete with his quarry’s paranoia. Halfway into feeding a board into a howling splinter-spewing planer, Fellows looked up at Joe as if attracted by a bright light, and without hesitation abandoned the board and took off as if startled by a pistol shot. The board blew back, skittering across the concrete floor, causing several other workers to dance out of the way, their shouts overwhelmed by the surrounding industrial howl.

  “Damn,” Joe swore, and broke into a run, seeing Lester do the same.

  The upside was that Fellows was headed toward the exit they’d anticipated him using; the downside was that neither one of them could beat the noise and let Cila know what was coming at her.

  Which was when Joe saw Fellows reach under his bedraggled wool jacket as he ran and extract a gun from somewhere near the small of his back. Both cops pulled their own weapons as nearby workers began scattering in alarm.

  Fellows hit the metal door like a linebacker, causing a burst of outside light to flash against the corrugated wall. Spinney got there next, pausing only a split second in case Fellows might be waiting. Joe arrived a moment later, in time to hear the stutter of two gunshots stepping on each other’s heels.

  He found Fellows motionless and spread-eagled on a bloodstained splash of red snow, his gun ten feet from his outstretched hand, and Cila crouched and clutching her arm, Spinney and two cops by her side and beginning to catch her weight as she slowly toppled over.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “A fucking disaster.”

  “The docs’re saying Cila Lewis will come through without any permanent damage,” Joe said.

  Bill Allard glared at him, his years as a no-nonsense road trooper showing through his administrator’s thin veneer. “Fine. Which has nothing to do with the price of eggs, as if you didn’t know it. The fact that one of our own didn’t get killed in this mess isn’t going to make the headlines. Her shooting him will see to that.”

  Allard pointed out the window of his office, despite there being nothing to see besides a distant brick wall. “Have you ever seen so many news trucks and reporters camped out front of this building? Ever?”

  Joe didn’t respond. In truth, he hadn’t. And Susan’s spectacular murder combined with a related death in a police shoot-out was only part of it. Lately, Vermont had been regularly leading the news roundups—Gail’s dramatic and unconventional gubernatorial victory a couple of years ago, Tropical Storm Irene’s devastation of the state shortly thereafter, and several recent New York Times stories about Vermont’s heroin epidemic immediately popped to mind.

  Allard was still ranting. “And Christ knows what’s next, right? I have no doubt your maniac poster child Kunkle is out there as we speak, cooking up something. What do you have him doing, anyhow?”

  “He’s in the trenches with everybody else,” Joe answered vaguely.

  Bill Allard finally calmed down. “What are you going to do next?” he asked, his tantrum swept away as quickly as it had arrived.

  “Try to connect Nate Fellows to Raffner’s murder. That would be the shortest distance between the dots. I’ve already got people seeing what he was doing when she was killed, as well
as interviewing his pals and associates, and tearing his house apart. A guy with that much attitude is not gonna be self-effacing. If he did it, he told somebody, and we should know about it, probably within twenty-four hours.”

  “And if he didn’t?”

  Joe shrugged. “None of this has slowed down our checking her background, associates, and activities. That’s still going full guns. We are starting to run into resistance, though—just so you’re aware.”

  Allard had settled back at his desk and now looked up at him suspiciously. “What kind of resistance? From the governor? She’s the one telling us to damn the budget.”

  Joe was shaking his head. “Not from her. In her book, we can’t do enough, fast enough. It’s from some of Susan’s inner circle. I know a few of them from decades back, and a couple can get pretty extreme. They’re starting to suggest we’re up to something more than a murder investigation.”

  Allard’s face darkened again. “What? All this is some conspiracy? To what end? The fucking woman is dead, for crying out loud. Seems like her buddies ought to be pissed at whoever did it.”

  He rubbed his face with both hands. “Why’re we never the good guys?” he asked rhetorically.

  * * *

  Gail scanned the faces of the key staffers gathered in her office. Alice Drim, her personal assistant, general factotum, and volunteer reelection manager; Rob Perkins, her omnipresent chief of staff; Joan Renaud, her legal counsel; and Kayla Robinson, her press secretary. Solid people, loyal and committed to her and the office she occupied. Alice and Kayla were the youngsters, both gangly and in their late twenties; Rob was tall and middle-aged, like Gail herself; and Joan was the old hand, although her looks made her appear more wizened than she deserved.

  To a person, they had past governmental experience, for the pro tem or the house speaker or even some politician from out-of-state. They were professionals at what they did—and not personal friends, as Gail had been used to as a Brattleboro politician—with the contradictory effect that their skills sometimes made her feel like a virtual amateur, despite her own achievements.

  Right now, for example, reading Renaud’s severe demeanor, Gail knew she was in the doghouse, but in the eyes of a woman far too polite to ever voice her disapproval. Joan was old school, which struck Gail as ironic, given her own reputation as a maverick. But a smart maverick, Gail liked to think, and therefore ill-inclined to have an equally nonconformist—and possibly careless—lawyer. Still, at moments like this, following Gail’s impulsive—and unmonitored—meeting with Joe earlier, she knew that she’d stepped on Joan’s sense of caution and propriety.