Open Season (2 page)

I nodded to him, he returned the silent greeting, and I read aloud from the dead man’s driver’s license. “James Phillips—Orchard Heights. Ring any bells with anybody?”

“From the address, I’d say we didn’t travel in the same circles,” George answered from the steps.

Another pocket yielded a long, thin metal chain. “Interesting tool for a break-in.”

George’s curiosity wore him down. He walked over and crouched next to me. “What is it?”

“A dog leash. Here’s something else.” It was a miniature leather photo album, about the size of a checkbook. Inside were ten pictures—seven of a prissy toy poodle standing alone; two of the poodle and a smiling man, who was on all fours next to the dog; and one of the man, the poodle, and a woman standing in front of a house. In the last shot, the woman was holding the dog. She looked like she’d rather have been elsewhere.

George tilted his hat back on his head. “Weird. You ever have a picture book of your pet?”

I pushed myself up off my knees and grunted to a standing position. Dunn was still standing there, silently watching. I continued to ignore him, as he once had asked me to. “I wonder what our Mr. Phillips was up to? What’s the old lady’s name?”

“Thelma Reitz.”

She was sitting in the kitchen, thin, frail, and beaten, her white head bowed and shimmering under the harsh fluorescent glare. The attendant from Rescue, Inc. was making notes at the table. I took a chair like the one lying in the hallway and sat facing her, elbows on knees, my legs slightly apart to allow for my gut. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Dunn enter the room and lean against the wall.

She stared at her lap, where her hands were slowly destroying a damp and wadded Kleenex. I noticed the thin gold band on her left ring finger had almost vanished into the flesh around it, as over the years something nailed to a tree becomes absorbed by the bark.

“Mrs. Reitz?” I let the fingertips of my hand brush hers. She looked up. Her face was so pale it blended imperceptibly with her hair.

“My name is Gunther. I’m another policeman. I know you’ve explained what happened, and I know you must be tired, but I was wondering if you could go over it again—just for me.” I paused a moment. “Do you have somewhere you can stay, by the way? A son or daughter, maybe?”

She shook her head. “My daughter doesn’t like me.” Her voice was high and thin—a piano string stretched as tight as it could go.

I called George in from the hallway. “Call Susan Henderson at the Retreat and ask her if Mrs. Reitz can spend a few days there until she gets her feet back on the ground.” I glanced at the Rescue guy. “Okay with you?”

He shrugged.

George nodded and left. Thelma Reitz watched him leave and gave me a wan smile. “Thank you.”

“No problem. I’m sorry about your daughter.”

She shook her head. “I lost her a long time ago. I don’t know why. I called her when all this started—I was so frightened—but she told me phone calls like that happen all the time. She said I should be flattered.”

“What were the calls like?”

That brought some color to her face. “I couldn’t repeat them. They were dirty. Very dirty.” She opened her mouth to say more but changed her mind. She was obviously deciding something and finally rose painfully to her feet and crossed the room. She handed me some index cards from a drawer. “He left these too. On my pillow, in my bathroom, in here—he came into my house any time he wanted. I found them every time I got home.”

The notes were short, brutal, and graphic ditties; a rhyming hodgepodge of sexual threats offensive enough to embarrass an Elks meeting. I wrapped them in my handkerchief and put them in my pocket. “Why didn’t you call us?”

I held her elbow as she sat back down. She smiled again and sighed. “I did.”

It was my turn to be embarrassed. “Did you tell them the notes were found in the house?”

“They weren’t. They were phone calls.” She closed her eyes and put her hand to her forehead. “I’m not making sense.”

I took her hand in mine. “My fault. You mean the notes didn’t start until after you called us?”

She nodded.

“And when you told us about the calls, you were told there was nothing much we could do about them.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry about that.” I let a few seconds go by. “So then he attacked your cat?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes. Poor Albert… What had he done? What had I done? Poor kitty. He was all I had.”

“When did you find him?”

“Tonight. I’d stayed out all day. I knew the notes would be there… I couldn’t stay inside—I was so scared. I went to the library, I went to the movies, to the store. I tried to stay out as long as I could, but it was cold, and places kept closing and then it snowed. I had to come home. I had nowhere else to go. That’s when I found Albert. And that’s when he called—right at the same time—as if he were standing there seeing everything I did. He said I wasn’t home when he’d visited, and that’s why Albert died. And then he said he’d come back later—tonight—to do the same thing to me. And when I didn’t say anything, he said, ‘What’s wrong, Thelma—the cat got your tongue?’”

She stared hard at me suddenly, the tears finally pouring down her face in earnest. The piano wire was broken, and her voice was ragged and full of pain. “It made me mad—so mad. I told him, ‘You come. I’ll be here,’ and I got my husband’s shotgun out of its box and I waited—a long, long time. And then I killed him—that… bastard.”

Her hand flew to her mouth and she folded in on herself, sobbing. The ambulance attendant glared at me. A little self-consciously, I reached over and patted her back. After she’d calmed down a bit, I placed one of the pictures we’d found of Phillips and his dog in her lap. “Do you recognize this man?”

She didn’t touch the photographs. She became utterly motionless. My hand on her back could feel the distant thump of her heartbeat—her only sign of life.

Still without moving, she asked, “Is this the man outside?”

“We think so.”

“Mr. Phillips.”

I sat opposite her again. She wouldn’t look at me. “You knew him?”

“Yes.”

“From where?”

“Jury duty. We served together. He used to pass that very picture around. He loved that dog like I loved Albert… I don’t understand… He was nice. He was the last one to vote guilty. He said he couldn’t condemn another man, no matter how horrible what he did.”

“It’s not your fault; you know that, don’t you?”

She thought a while before answering. “No.”

She wasn’t the only one.

ORCHARD HEIGHTS IS AN EXCLUSIVE
developer’s dream come true. Once a farmer’s rolling field off Orchard Street west of downtown, it sits high enough to both “afford” a view and to overlook but not actually see Interstate 91, which separates it from Brattleboro. The field consists of five low hills, each crowned with a $200,000 ranch-style house that looks down on a narrow, winding street, fed like a stream by one slim driveway per house. Token trees have been planted tastefully here and there, hitting a medium between privacy and the view. In all, the effect is so carefully manicured that even the mountains, the snow, and the distant woods look totally artificial, as if some low-key, expensive Hollywood set were awaiting the arrival of the camera crew.

The sun’s first predawn pallor was just staining the far horizon as I turned off Orchard Street into the Heights in George’s borrowed squad car. I didn’t need to check for the house number—I recognized it from the photo in Phillips’s puppy album. It would have been hard to miss in any event. Of the several homes I could see, it was the only one lit up like a bonfire, complete with strings of Christmas lights. It was a tan brick, one-story affair with columns in front and a carport on the side—as unique to Vermont as to Pasadena, California.

One half of the paneled double front door jerked open as my finger approached the bell. A wreath hanging on the door’s knocker fell to the ground and rolled into the snow. The woman I’d seen holding the poodle stood before me, fully dressed and made up, her face drawn and anxious.

Her eyes flicked from me to the police car and back again. “Oh shit,” she muttered and turned and walked away. I followed her in and closed the door behind me.

Through the hallway, I saw her sit down on a living room couch. She crossed her arms tightly over her stomach and stared furiously at the floor—a curious mix of sorrow and rage. As I entered the room, its festiveness struck an incongruous note: the fire was burning, the tree lit up, poinsettias and evergreen boughs abounded, and strings of cranberries and popcorn laced back and forth in front of the mantelpiece. Christmas had been over a week ago, yet all this looked like a permanent display, as in a museum of American culture or an advertisement for Smirnoff vodka.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I’m afraid he is.”

“That stupid dog.”

Her tone was so flat I couldn’t tell if she meant her husband or the poodle in the pictures, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to ask; her reactions were odd enough already. I waited hopefully for more, but she was silent, so I sat on the end of the armchair opposite her and kept quiet, watching her rocking back and forth in her seat. I don’t get much practice telling people their companions have had their necks atomized by little old ladies with shotguns.

“Mrs. Phillips?” I finally asked.

“What?” She didn’t look up, but she didn’t explode either.

“What was your husband doing out there?”

“Getting the dog.”

That seemed a decent enough opener for something more comprehensible, but she obviously didn’t think so. As if having explained all there was to explain, she lapsed back to her silent rocking.

I got up and took off my coat. “Could I have a glass of milk?”

That seemed to do it. She looked up at me as if I’d just walked in. “Milk? Of course. I should have offered.”

She got to her feet and efficiently marched through a set of swinging double doors to the dining room and the kitchen beyond—the perfect hostess skating on ice. I followed her.

The kitchen was enormous, white and dazzling. No appliance was below industrial quality, no pot or pan lacked either a copper bottom or a French-made high-gloss paint job. Knives worthy of a Swift packing plant gleamed along magnetic wall strips, yards of thick unscratched cutting-board counter space stretched in all directions. Just as the front room was pure
Family Circle,
the kitchen was high-tech
Gourmet
magazine.

I sat down at an island separating production from consumption. Behind me was the eating area—table, chairs, a sofa, two La-Z-Boys and a TV set; in front, where Mrs. Phillips had set to work, were the makings of the cleanest, most expensive, futuristic greasy spoon I’d ever seen.

She didn’t talk nor did I. By chance, I’d hit on the best possible therapy for her, and I wasn’t about to screw up what dumb luck had handed me. But I was starting to regret I hadn’t ordered breakfast.

She made a pot of tea for herself, and as I watched, her distress surfaced through her automated gestures. She put water on to boil but not enough for a single cup, much less the pot, and had to start over. She took a bag of lemons from the steel-faced fridge, ignoring several precut slices, and carved up a new one with a dull butter knife, butchering the lemon in the process. She grabbed a glass the size of a tankard and poured my milk into it until it overflowed. It was not a comfortable performance to watch.

Finally, her Christmas-bright dress splotched with the debris from her efforts, she loaded up a tray, moved it from her counter to mine, and unloaded it.

“Sugar?” she asked.

“No, thank you. I’ll just take the milk.”

Her perfect, brittle smile twitched just slightly. “Of course. How silly, I forgot.”

I reached gingerly for the milk and slid it toward me without spilling too much. Mrs. Phillips perched on a stool and began poking at the tea bag inside the pot with the butter knife—she’d forgotten a spoon.

“Do you feel you can talk a little?” I asked.

She didn’t answer at first but just kept jabbing away. Finally the bag punctured, releasing a flurry of tea leaves, and she stopped.

She bit her lower lip and put both her hands to her cheeks. Her eyes were dry and terribly, terribly sad.

“Yes, I’m sorry about all this.”

I smiled at her. “Don’t worry. You should see where I usually go for breakfast.” I paused, and she placed her hands flat on the white counter. Her wedding band, unlike Thelma Reitz’s, rested around her finger—an attractive and impermanent piece of jewelry. “Why was your husband out there tonight?”

“He went to pay the ransom for our dog, Junior. Jamie was very attached to him. He even carried around pictures of him.”

I refrained from blurting out that I had seen them. “How long had the dog been missing?”

“Several days—long enough to make Jamie really frantic.” She shook her head slightly. “It was my fault, I guess. He didn’t say that, but it wouldn’t have happened with him.”

“What wouldn’t?”

“Junior wouldn’t have been stolen. Jamie always took him for walks, you know? On a leash? It always seemed so stupid to me—I mean we’re almost out in the country. I used to just let him out when Jamie wasn’t around and call for him after he’d done his business. He’d always come back. When he didn’t that last time, I had to tell Jamie what I’d been doing.”

“Was he upset?”

“He was stunned. Not angry with me though. He never was.”

She stopped speaking for a few seconds. “That dog was like his child. We don’t have any children; and Jamie didn’t have any by his first wife.” She held up her ring finger. “We haven’t been married very long—just four years.”

“And the kidnapper called?”

“Yes—yesterday. He told Jamie to deliver a thousand dollars to a certain address or he’d kill Junior.”

“Was there anything more specific about those instructions? A time or a certain door to be used, or some special clothing that your husband was supposed to wear?”

“I don’t remember the address, but he had to go to the back door of the house at two this morning and just walk in. He wasn’t supposed to knock. There was no mention of clothing.”