The Price of Malice (22 page)

Kravitz smiled again. “Sure.”

Willy straightened, back on track. “You read the papers at all?”

“Some.”

“You hear about the murder?”

“Wayne? Yeah. That’s a little beyond just the papers.”

“Okay, okay. So, you’d have to be brain-dead. But you knew the guy, right?”

“I met him.”

“At the trailer?”

“Yup. He came by once, sniffing around Karen, among others.”

Willy eyed him carefully. “Meaning?”

“She wasn’t his only interest.”

“The kids?”

“The younger ones.”

“Any in particular?”

But there, Kravitz shook his head. “Not that I know of. I saw him window-shopping when he came by. My priority was my daughter, but she’s too old.”

Willy pulled out a notepad and consulted one of its pages, listing the inhabitants of the Putnam trailer. “So, we’re talking Becky, Richard, Nicholas—or is he too old, too? He’s thirteen, right?”

“Yes, but he’s also pretty immature. Physically, he looks younger. Emotionally, he’s got problems. I know more about him because my daughter sleeps with him.”

Willy raised his eyebrows. “No shit?”

Kravitz shrugged. “He’s a good boy, and Sally takes care of him. He gets the mother going in her, and she’s not looking for anything in return.”

Willy paused, not wanting to stray too far afield.

“Moral opinions aside,” Kravitz volunteered, settling the dilemma, “I’m a lot happier living with people who’re off the social radar. They have standards like everybody else, but they can be a lot more generous and less judgmental. Like Karen and her needs.”

“And yours?” Willy asked, since the subject was in the air.

“Because she and I share a bed sometimes?” Kravitz asked. “You think I’m taking advantage of her?”

Willy realized he’d been blindsided after all by his own prejudice. He held up his hand. “Okay. My bad. I shouldn’t have gone there—and I get your point, or maybe I do. Todd would probably kill you if
he knew, so you could argue that Karen’s actually taking advantage of you.”

Kravitz smiled. “And maybe he wouldn’t.”

Willy laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

Kravitz joined in. “Yeah, I am.”

“Okay,” Willy said afterward. “Keep on going. What about the kids?”

“Ryan’s the oldest. Last name Hatch. He’s seventeen, hates Todd but uses him as a template, and is therefore heading down the same slope fast. You probably already know that, since I’d bet he’s all over your computer files.”

Willy couldn’t disagree. “You think he could kill someone?”

“Now you’re pulling my leg,” Kravitz commented.

“Point taken. Was he around when Wayne came by?”

“I only saw Wayne once, so I can’t say. He wasn’t there then.”

“Was Wayne ever talked about?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know what he was doing with Karen?”

“I assume they were sleeping together.”

Willy looked up from his notepad. “How did you feel about that?”

“Jealous?” Kravitz asked. “No. But I did tell her once to watch herself.”

“Why?”

“The body language from the kids made it clear none of them liked him. Kids are like animals that way—good warning bells, if anyone’s listening.”

“How did Karen react?”

Kravitz chuckled. “Same as you. She said I was jealous.”

Willy kept going, glancing at his list. “Ryan got a girlfriend?”

“Maura Scully, aged sixteen. Nice girl, bad taste in men, likely to end up like Karen. I don’t see her as a killer, if that’s your next question.”

“Actually,” Willy corrected him, “I was going to ask if you think Ryan would confide in her.”

Kravitz straightened slightly. “Huh. Good question. I don’t know.”

“Nicholas?” Willy asked next.

“Nicholas. Right. Last name, King—none of the children are Todd’s. Aged thirteen, as mentioned. A good, quiet boy, but differently wired from the others. Sally likes him a lot—tells me that he has nightmares sometimes, and won’t tell her what they’re about. In fact, he won’t tell her much of anything—he’s reserved that way; he’ll accept what she offers, but doesn’t give anything back, which works for her, luckily. I like him, too, but he sets people off—he’s pretty compulsive, and does weird stuff, like stands too close, or walks out in the middle of a conversation. He’s manically neat, obsessively reads about baseball, is very smart but not interested in good grades. I’ve seen it before in something called subthreshold autism, but that probably doesn’t mean much.”

“He a special ed kid?”

The other man tilted his head to one side, considering the question. “He is special, all right, but not diagnosed, as far as I know. His big problem is Ryan—the father substitute, at least in his own eyes. He and Nick fight a lot, with Ryan usually winning. That puts Nick out of the house most of the time, and—if you ask me—probably doing a fair amount of drugs. Throw Todd into the mix and you’ve got a ton of masculine, Alpha-dog, rub-your-nose-in-it nonsense going on between those four walls, and none of it dealt with well.”

“Richard,” Willy intoned, moving on.

Kravitz smiled. “Ah, the exception to all that. Richard, the
Dreamer. Actually,” he interrupted himself, “I should call him Richard, the Thinker, or the Wise Man. Eleven years old, last name Vial, hates being called Richie or Ricky and is called nothing but. There’s the most solid of Karen’s kids.” He added, “And no, I don’t think he’s a killer.”

“What about Dan Kravitz?” Willy asked.

The man in question rose and stretched—his lean, wiry body half a parenthesis. “Could be, I suppose,” he answered. “Given the right encouragement. Not this time, though.”

Willy pulled out a buccal swab from his pocket and held it up. “Mind if I collect some DNA?” he asked.

“Knock yourself out.” Kravitz opened his mouth, unasked.

Willy got up and quickly collected the sample. “Guess we’re almost done.”

“For now,” Kravitz agreed. “I gotta get back to work.”

“You didn’t tell me about Becky.”

“You didn’t ask. Why did you save her for last?”

Willy was surprised, again. This man had a way of sneaking up on him, which Willy took pride in making difficult. “I don’t know.”

Kravitz let it go. “She’s in trouble,” he said bluntly. “The only friends she has are Richard and Nicky. Sad to say, she’s outgrowing the first, and only interacts with Nicky when he’s around or receptive, which isn’t often. Her mother thinks she’s just being a hormonal kid, but she needs help. Something happened there.”

“Like Wayne?”

He tilted his head to one side thoughtfully. “Maybe. I’m not in a place to know, and she covers it up with a smoke screen of standard preteen crap that’s worked on Karen—the clothes, the hair, the accessories, the attitude.”

“But you think something happened, why?”

“She’s not just a preteen. She’s withdrawn—repressed, like a ticking bomb, but I’ve got nothing concrete to go on. How I am is because of my own choice. She’s the way she is because I think someone made her that way. Big difference.”

Willy nodded, reviewing the conversation in his head before he let Kravitz go. “Thanks, Dan. And I won’t spill the beans about you not being a dummy.”

“I know.” Kravitz walked away from the pile of pallets, heading back to the shed’s entrance around the corner.

“Set things right, Mr. Kunkle,” he said before disappearing.

“I will.”

Willy stayed put for a few minutes alone, half a dozen possibilities rattling around inside his head. Including the question: If Dan Kravitz was the smartest man in that trailer, wouldn’t that make him smart enough to steer Willy wrong?

J
oe fumbled at his waist, wrestling to extract his pager from behind the car’s seat belt, without also steering into the ditch. Keeping the road in sight, he raised the device before his eyes and squinted at the number on the screen. Sammie Martens had text-messaged him, “In case you think all is quiet, your cell phone died.”

“Damn,” he muttered, and went through the same contortions to free his phone from its clip. Sure enough. He plugged the recharger into the car’s cigarette lighter and tried again—no bars.

He glanced at the passing countryside, recognized where he was, and calculated where he’d be able to find a public phone. Cell phones might have been around for a while, but across large swaths of Vermont, poor reception still made sure they were occasional luxuries at best—assuming they’d been recharged.

Fifteen minutes later, he parked across from the pumps of a Mobil station and walked into a minimart.

The clerk glanced up from behind the counter. “Coffee’s fresh; bathrooms are in back.” He pointed to the far wall.

“Just need a phone,” Joe told him, already heading that way.

Sam picked up on the first ring. “Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”

“Hey there,” Joe said. “Got your page. Sorry about the phone.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Thought you’d like to know.”

“Anything cooking?”

“We’re collecting interviews and DNA swabs from the Putnam trailer tribe, doing pretty well. Willy hit a home run with Dan Kravitz, who turned out to know a lot. He gave us a good picture of everybody under that roof. Where are you, anyhow?”

“ ’Bout an hour out,” Joe told her. “I saw Hillstrom and smoothed Allard’s feathers a little. Did you just page me to let me know the phone was flat?”

“Not only,” Sam reassured him. “It’s Lyn. She called a couple of hours ago, then about an hour ago, and a third time just now. Never left a message, but she was pretty worked up the last time. You guys okay?”

“Yeah,” Joe said absentmindedly, his brain already racing. “She’s got some family problems I’ve been helping with. No big deal. I guess something blew up. I’ll give her a call.”

“You got it,” Sammie said. “See ya soon.”

Joe hung up, pulled out a small address book, and looked up Steve’s number in Gloucester.

His voice was tense. “Yeah?”

“Steve? It’s Joe.”

“Where you been, man?”

“My cell phone died. What’s going on?”

“Somebody trashed my boat. Ripped it all to hell.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Yeah. It happened last night.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Lot of good that did. Wilkinson spent more time looking for what I might be smuggling than trying to find out who did it.”

“Brian Wilkinson?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“Back when I first met your sister. So he didn’t give you much hope?”

“He didn’t give me much anything. Guy’s a loser.”

Joe didn’t pursue that. “I’m really sorry, Steve. Is Lyn there?”

Steve’s voice grew more anxious still. “That’s the point, Joe. She’s gone. She tried calling you a bunch of times, and then she split.”

Joe gripped the phone tighter. “What do you mean? Where?”

“I don’t know. She just said she had to give somebody a piece of her mind and she took off. Why didn’t you have your phone on, man?”

Joe didn’t bother explaining himself again. Lyn’s brother was no monument to rational stability, despite his recent improvement, and Joe knew that the additional pressure of their mother’s condition was already challenge enough.

“Steve,” he said. “How’s everything else? Is Maria okay?”

“She’s fine. She’s got the TV.”

“And other than the boat, you haven’t been harassed?”

“No. Why should I be?”

Joe ignored him. “Why do you think you were targeted?”

“I don’t know that, either. I figure some of the assholes I used to hang with. If that’s true, they’re gonna pay.”

That told Joe that Lyn hadn’t explained anything to him. “One step at a time, Steve,” he counseled. “Was anything missing? Maybe it was thieves.”

“No way. It was weird. They tore stuff apart, like some of the cabinets, but they didn’t take anything.”

“They were looking for something, maybe?”

“Could be. The boat was with a drug runner for years. He mighta stashed stuff on board.”

Joe checked his watch. “All right. I’ll call Lyn on her cell and . . .”

“Won’t work,” Steve interrupted. “She didn’t take it. She couldn’t find it when she was leaving.”

Naturally, Joe thought. “Okay, not to worry. I have a vague idea where she might be headed. I’ll see if I can’t find her—right now. I’ll have my cell recharging in the car, so you should be able to reach me if she calls or anything develops. In the meantime—and I don’t want to alarm you or anything—but I think you and Maria should go somewhere to stay for a while. Just a couple of days.”

“What? Why?”

“Just to be on the safe side. I’m mostly thinking of Maria,” he lied. “You don’t want her shaken up any more than necessary.”

“By what?”

“I’m just being cautious—since we don’t know what they were after on the boat.”

Steve moaned softly. “Oh, shit.”

“Steve,” Joe spoke with authority. “Don’t get worked up. Just do it, okay? I’ll pay for it later, but for the moment, go to a motel and stick her in front of a TV there, all right?”

“I hate this.”

“I know, but it’ll make me feel better knowing you two are in a safe place. So, do this, okay? No screwing around?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Good man. I’ll let you know as soon as I get hold of Lyn. What motel will you go to?”

“The Clipper Ship, I guess.”

“Got it.”

Joe hung up and flipped through his address book one last time.

“Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. How may I direct your call?” a female voice asked him a minute later.

“Cathy Lawless, please,” Joe told her. “Tell her it’s Joe Gunther, Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”

In a style not unlike Sammie’s, Cathy picked up the phone almost immediately. She’d been working the same drug case where Joe had stumbled across the Silva lobster boat.

“Joe,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re headed this way again?”

“Not officially, Cathy, but I am fishing for a favor.”

“Shoot.”

“I’d like whoever’s out there to keep an eye peeled for an ’02 Honda Civic, dark blue, with Grateful Dead and Planned Parenthood bumper stickers next to the right taillight. Vermont registration.” He gave her the plate number.