The Second Mouse (17 page)

He packed his camera into a black plastic suitcase and snapped it shut, resuming: “I always hate it when we get called in so long after discovery.”

“We didn’t know it wasn’t a natural.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “I wasn’t complaining. I also read how this all played out—plus,” he added with a smile, “a few little birds are already adding some interesting political tidbits. I wonder who Hillstrom’s new boss is going to be? Rumors are, Freeman resigned so he wouldn’t have to fess up to some huge skeleton in his closet. Big mystery.”

Joe laughed. “Forget it. I’m not touching that. Was the stove the source of the propane?”

Hawke shook his head, still amused. “Very good. Nice, elegant change of subject. Okay, yes, the stove fits as a possible source. How’s that?”

“There’s another one?”

Hawke led the way into the big room and over to the linear kitchen, speaking as he went. “Not that we’ve found, but that doesn’t mean a portable one couldn’t have been removed. You have to start thinking like a scientist, Joe.”

He stopped before the stove and pointed at its row of control valves. “These are all off, the gas tank out back is three-quarters full, consistent with the delivery schedule, and the pilot lights are on and burning.”

“Meaning that if the stove was used to kill her,” Joe interpreted, “not only did the killer turn the controls back off, but he relit the pilots, too.”

“And opened the windows,” Hawke added. “Probably ran the ceiling fans, too, to speed things up.”

Joe turned to look at the long bank of windows across the room. “That does make you wonder, doesn’t it? Why bother? Why not just blow out the pilots, turn on the gas, and walk away?”

“So the house doesn’t explode,” Hawke said simply.

“Right,” Joe agreed. “Which would make sense if you had a vested interest in it.”

“Or were just a neat and careful person, which this one was.”

Joe looked at him inquiringly.

Hawke smiled. “I think we figured out how it was done,” he explained. “Follow me.”

They went out the back door at the end of the kitchen, stepped off the small, cluttered porch there, and circled back along the outside wall, eventually reaching two small, curtained windows located near where the stove was situated inside.

There Hawke stopped, pointing at a large cylinder of propane gas, whose feeder line vanished through the building’s wall. “Our theory right now is that the killer cut the gas here initially, which knocked out all the pilot lights. He used a wrench or some mechanical device to turn the valve. We found the tool marks. He probably did this while the victim was in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, which—what with the noise of running water and all—would have isolated her acoustically from any sounds he was making, or from any sounds the cat might have made in reaction.”

“But just turning the gas back on and letting it seep in through the pilots wouldn’t have been enough, would it?”

“True,” Hawke agreed. He crouched down and pointed out four small, deep impressions in the dirt. “A stepladder,” he explained. “We matched these holes to the ladder we found on the back porch.” He glanced up at the window beside the tank. “The gas gets turned off, the pilots go out, the gas gets turned back on, the killer climbs the borrowed ladder, leans in through the window, which is unlocked, reaches across the top of the stove, turns on all the valves, and then sits back and waits. The victim continues doing her thing in the bathroom, steps out into the bedroom, does whatever she does, eventually feels woozy, sits on the edge of the bed, and is overcome.”

“Plus,” Joe added, “I just heard back that she had no sense of smell.”

Hawke’s eyes widened. “Anosmia? Really? Interesting twist. Well, that would definitely explain it. I was wondering about that.”

He straightened and returned to the back porch, pointing out the small stepladder that Gunther hadn’t noticed earlier. “In any case, our bad guy replaces that, enters the building, which, I gather, was usually unlocked, opens the windows, runs the fans, shuts the valves, relights the pilots—”

“
Hey, Dave,
” a voice shouted at them from near the woods at the property’s edge. “
I got it.
”

They both turned to see one of the technicians pointing down at a small pile of dirt at his feet.

“Thanks, John,” Hawke answered. “Be right there.” He then turned to Joe and finished his sentence: “. . . and buries the dead cat that crapped all over the place before it died.”

Joe’s eyes widened slightly, as if suddenly recalling a long-forgotten tune. “Man, that cat’s been driving me nuts. Georgia.”

“First thing I asked myself when we got here,” Hawke agreed. “That’s why I had John go looking. Georgia, huh?”

“After Georgia O’Keeffe.”

They began walking toward the tiny burial site, which the technician was documenting with a camera of his own.

“Oddly sentimental thing to do,” Joe wondered aloud, “especially fresh from killing a human being.”

“Yeah. People are funny that way.”

Joe suddenly stopped and looked back at the house. From where they were, they could see down the length of the exterior wall to the gas tank and the small window.

“What kind of shape would you have to be in to do that little stunt?”

“Reach in through the window?” Hawke asked. “You don’t have to be a gymnast. But somewhat agile. It is awkward, and the trick was to be quiet, even with the bathroom walls and the running water acting as a muffler. I think that’s why he didn’t just walk in—that and Georgia, who might’ve made a fuss.”

“So a fat man on disability is unlikely.”

“I’d say so,” Hawke said.

“On the other hand,” Joe went on, “a familiarity with the layout and Michelle’s routine was key, all the way down to the kitchen window’s location and when she was most likely to use the bathroom.”

David Hawke nodded thoughtfully. “From what I’ve put together so far, this is way too calculated to have been done on the fly. Somebody planned this and took their time doing it.”

Chapter 14

W
illy dropped heavily into the car’s passenger seat as Sam fitted the key into the ignition.

“Damn,” he said peevishly. “If you can tell what a guy’s like from his friends, like they say, then old Newell must be a grade A, prime-beef, award-winning asshole.”

Not actually starting the car, Sam rolled her window down to let in some fresh air. She consulted her notes.

“Four down, two to go.”

“Screw it,” he said. “I’m sick of these jerks. All red-white-and-blue on one side, and all fuck-you-cop on the other. We know Newell is clean, Sam. He made sure of it. Let’s give it a rest.”

“Be nice to know they’re all on the same page. Maybe one of them’s willing to rat the others out.”

Willy slapped the dashboard in frustration. “What’s to rat? The son of a bitch was in Frankfort, like he says. We called the places they ate at and stayed in, we compared four of their stories with each other, and we even looked at those stupid pictures the last one showed us, so conveniently stamped with the time and date. I mean, okay, fine, so maybe they’re all in it together, but if they are, they were also in goddamn Frankfort when they said they were. There’s not a frigging thing we can do about that. We’re working the wrong angle. We’re doin’ what they want us to do.”

It was the opening gambit for a ready-made argument between an impulse-driven reactionary and a by-the-numbers solid soldier, except that in this case, although usually playing the latter role, Sammie Martens didn’t have it in her to disagree.

She tossed her notes onto the seat between them and said, “You’re right. Fuck it.”

Willy stared at her. “Huh?”

“It’s a waste of time. You’re right,” she repeated.

He absorbed that for a few seconds, pleased but surprised, his brain in sudden need of an alternative plan.

“Maybe we should hit him again—directly,” Sam suggested, thinking along similar lines.

Willy shook his head. “We don’t have anything to hit him
with.
” He paused again, looking out at the street. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d pissed off some of his neighbors over the years.”

Sam laughed and turned the key.

“They really let you be a police officer?” she asked, pointing at Willy’s limp arm. “That doesn’t sound very safe.”

Willy either was too stunned to react or was reaching deep for something properly weighted. Sam decided she didn’t want to know which.

“He passed the physical, ma’am. He can definitely do the job, just like he’s been doing for the past two decades.”

“Really?” the woman asked, her face open and smiling. “Well, good for you. Why don’t you both come in? And you, little girl, you’re such a slip of a thing, I’m not sure I see how you can do it, either.”

“I used to be in the military, ma’am. Combat trained.”

“Isn’t that nice? Would you like some tea?”

“I’ll take a Coke,” Willy said, his expression dark.

The old woman paused in the hallway and peered up at him. “You speak? That’s very good. How do you know I have any Coke?”

Once again he was stumped.

“We’re all set,” Sam said, starting to rethink their entire strategy. This was the fourth of Newell Morgan’s neighbors they’d met, and so far, they’d gotten nowhere. This time it looked as if they were headed for an assault on an old lady by a cranky cop.

“Nonsense,” their hostess said, resuming her course. “He wants a Coke; that’s what I’ll get him. I like a man with direction.”

Willy nudged a secretly grateful Sam and waggled his eyebrows as they fell in behind and ended up in the kitchen. Sam ignored him.

“Sit, sit,” the woman ordered, and guided them toward a wooden table set into a windowed nook. As they slid onto the bench seat, Willy pointed out the window. They were overlooking Gage Street and Newell Morgan’s house.

“I’m so sorry,” their hostess said, placing a Coke before Willy, “but I’ve already forgotten your names.”

“I’m Sam. The one with direction is Willy.”

The old lady laughed. “Well, I’m Mary Ann Gagen, and I’m very pleased to meet you both. You sure you don’t want something now that he’s all set?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Sam told her.

Mary Ann Gagen sat at the head of the small table and shook her head. “No wonder you’re so tiny.” She smiled suddenly and leaned forward. “Now, tell me, are you two romantically involved, too?”

Sam’s face went red as Willy muttered, “Jeez.”

Gagen burst out laughing. “I thought so.” She reached out and patted Sam’s hand as it rested on the table. “He must be a tough one to handle. Bossy, right?”

“This is not happening,” Willy said, and began getting up.

But Sam arrested him in mid-motion with “He has his moments, but I’m getting used to him.”

He stared at her incredulously. Their relationship, while not an absolute secret, was known only by a very few. They’d certainly never shared it with a stranger before.

Gagen looked up at him questioningly. “Did you want something else, dear?”

He pressed his lips together angrily and then managed to say, “This is private stuff.”

She repeated her gesture with Sam, reaching up and laying her hand on his arm. “You’re quite right. But you’re cross with me and not her, I hope.”

Slowly he sat back down. “Yeah.”

“Well, that’s all right, then. Drink your Coke.” She then turned to Sam. “What was it you wanted, by the way? I’m sure it wasn’t just to get all worked up by a nosy old woman.”

In a sudden change of tack, Willy took her up on her one-liner, cutting Sam off as she opened her mouth to speak. “A nosy old woman is just what we were looking for.”

Gagen’s eyes came alive. “Really? Who do you want to know about? I practically live at this table.”

Willy tilted his head toward the street. “How ’bout Newell Morgan?”

Gagen sat back and laughed. “Oh, ugh. What an awful man. Why on earth would you be interested in him?”

“Can we say that’s confidential and not hurt your feelings?” Sam quickly asked.

“Of course, sweetie. I’ve always thought he must be up to something, but I very much doubt I want to know what. He’s such a terrible fellow.”

“How so?” Willy asked, finally taking a sip of his drink.

“He yells at his wife, for one. I cannot tolerate that in a man. I hope you never do that.”

“He’s more the silent type,” Sam said with a smile, not being entirely truthful.

“Well, I wish Newell were more silent, but I wish even more that Lillian would just leave him. She never will, though. She’s a God-fearing woman, and that man is her cross.”

“How ’bout other people?” Willy asked. “Does he have friends drop by?”

“Oh, Lord, yes, usually when she’s not around. Large, lumpish men like him. Never women, thank goodness. I have no idea what they do in there, but it’s usually noisy, and the trash he puts out afterward is mostly empty bottles. He’s on disability, so called—probably his brain—which means he has way too much free time. He spends most of it watching that enormous TV set. You can see the glow of it at night—and hear it, too. So rude.”

“Do you know who the friends are?” Sam asked her. “Maybe seen them around town? Or where they work?”

Gagen shook her head. “No, but they come here often enough.”

Willy took a shot in the dark. “Did they come by as a group a couple of weeks ago and all pile into a car together, like they were going on a trip?”

“Yes, they did,” she said excitedly. “Were they off to rob a bank or something?”

Willy looked sour. “Hardly. They spent four days getting drunk.”

Her expression matched his own. “Oh, poor Lillian.”

Sam was thinking back to their last update from Gunther, who’d called them this morning with the crime lab’s findings in Wilmington.

“Mrs. Gagen . . .”

“You can call me Mary Ann. I’d like that.”

“Okay. Mary Ann, have you ever seen him with someone else? Maybe recently? Someone who caught your eye in particular?”

“There was the truck man. At least, that’s what I called him.”

“He drove a truck?” Willy asked.

“No. He bought one. Newell had it for sale.”

“Oh.” Willy nodded, his disappointment obvious.

Once more Gagen reached out, her eyes bright again. “No, you don’t understand. He was a mean-looking man, and he came by a couple of times. I remember thinking at the time that I should pay attention. You know how some people just strike you that way? Like they’re up to no good? This man was like that, and he dressed like a biker, complete with tattoos. He even arrived on a motorcycle.”

“About how long before the big trip was this?”

“Maybe three weeks, and there was something else. I didn’t really think about it until now. But after the truck was sold, I saw Newell get in his car a few times—several days apart—and drive off for an hour or two each time.”

“He doesn’t drive much?” Sam asked.

“That wasn’t it,” Gagen continued. “It was the way he did it, just on those occasions. It was sneaky. He looked around really carefully. I had to make sure I was hidden by my flower boxes. I just knew he was up to something.”

Willy pulled a photograph from his pocket of a laughing Michelle Fisher and Archie Morgan, posed together at some beach. He passed it over to Gagen.

“Ever see either one of them?”

She tapped the picture slowly with her fingertip, her face grave. “That’s Archie, poor boy. Died half a year ago—maybe a little more. I don’t know the woman . . . Don’t they look happy, though? I hope this is a recent picture. I’d like to think of Archie being happy toward the end.”

“Wild guess,” Willy said. “He and the old man didn’t get along.”

Gagen returned the photograph slowly. “What they had made Lillian’s relationship look normal. I always wished Archie had been underage. Then I could have called on you folks to have his father arrested for abuse. The way that man treated that boy . . . Shameful.”

“Did it ever get physical?”

“Not that I saw. It was just the way he talked to him, like he was less than dirt. But I haven’t seen Archie in years. This is all ancient history.”

Sam and Willy exchanged glances.

Half an hour later, they were back in their car.

“God bless busybodies,” Willy said. “What do you say we drop by the local PD and follow up on some of this?”

The Bennington police occupy the old post office building, just a block south of the town’s infamous major intersection. An enormous, hulking marble edifice, it looks like a leftover from a Hollywood sword-and-sand epic—a wannabe Greek Parthenon. For all that, however, it probably helps to endow this one department with more immediate awe and stature than any of its sister agencies across the state, including the federal field offices. And the impression doesn’t stop on the front stoop. The lobby is a vast, vaulting echo chamber, fronted on one wall by a row of bullet-resistant windows from which dispatchers and office personnel can peer out at any visitors.

Sam and Willy showed their badges and were soon ushered into the inner sanctum by a tall, affable plainclothes officer named Johnny Massucco.

“What can we do you for?” he asked after introductions had been exchanged.

“Got a computer, Johnny?” Willy asked, looking up and down the hallway they’d just entered.

Instinctively, Sam moved to soften Willy’s standard effect on people. “Sorry about him,” she said, drawing Massucco’s startled attention. “He gets a little overly focused. We’re in town doing homework—got a homicide outside Wilmington that’s touching on a few Bennington folks.”

Massucco nodded distractedly, still studying Kunkle. “I heard about you,” he finally said.

Willy turned at that. “Me? Nothing good, I bet.”

Johnny laughed. “Well, yes and no. Everybody hates you and everybody wants to be like you.”

Willy shrugged. “Everybody’s stupid. Got that computer?”

Massucco shook his head and began taking them down the corridor, saying, “I think I’m starting to get it.”

He led them into a small office with a couple of desks equipped with monitors. “Take mine. You use Spillman?”

“Yeah.” Willy sat before the computer and quickly entered his password, his one hand moving in a blur across the keyboard.

“Who’re you after?” Massucco asked Sam.

“Guy named Newell Morgan. Lives on Gage. That ring a bell?”

But the young man shook his head. “Nope, but it’s not a bad neighborhood—kind of the Joe Blow street. The average citizen.”

“The average jackass,” Willy said, studying the screen. “According to this, he either rats on his neighbors for noise and parking complaints or gets them to squeal on him for yelling at his wife.”

“Pretty much what we already knew,” Sam commented, watching Willy shift over to the vehicle table.

“You like working for VBI?” Johnny asked.

“Best job in the state,” Sam said without hesitation. “It’s major cases only, you work border to border, and you don’t have to belong to the state police.”

“I was thinking they might be my only option if I ever want to leave here.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“Not really, but if the state cops are the only way to go, I better start early—it’s hard to move through the ranks with them.”

“Screw ’em,” Willy said without turning around. “Stay where you are, bust your hump, and join us when you hit top of the class.”

Sam stared at the back of his head. Never before had she heard him say anything positive about any job he’d held or anyone he’d worked with.

“Got it,” he said, sitting back, cutting off anything she might have been tempted to say. “Newell sold that truck to Melvin Curtis Martin, who lives in one of the local trailer parks, at least according to this.”

“That he does,” Johnny agreed. “Him I do know. Go to the names table and I’ll fill you in.”

Willy did as suggested while Massucco continued, “Martin’s a New York import. Albany area. Came over a few years ago. He’s done federal and local time both, has a biker background, and is into drugs and stealing and beating the crap out of people.”

“Says he’s married,” Willy read, surprised.

“Wife’s name is Nancy,” Johnny confirmed. “She’s calmed down lately, at least according to her arrest record, but she used to be a biker babe recruiting poster. No kids. With their lifestyle, they probably fried whatever was in the gene pool long ago.”