The Second Mouse (24 page)

“Take, for instance,” he continued, “the thing about the stolen bag from the hospital.”

She stared at him with her mouth half open. “How did you know about that?”

“Where is that, by the way?” he asked suddenly. “Is it still . . . ?” He snapped his fingers as if trying to extract a memory.

“In his car,” she said softly.

“Right. Never did anything with it, did he?”

“No,” she admitted. “I thought he planted it like we planned. I couldn’t figure out why nothing happened. He told me later it was still in the trunk.”

“Well,” Joe said offhandedly, not only pleased with the conversation so far but amazed by his luck in getting the location of that bag so easily. Such a creaky old trick. “It doesn’t really matter—that stuff had the half-life of a fruit fly.”

“I guess,” she said vaguely. He guessed that radioactivity wasn’t her strong suit.

“Still,” he carried on, “so much for plan A, eh?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “It didn’t have much going for it anyhow.”

He almost looked like he disagreed. “Which part do you mean?”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “It wasn’t like Mel and that terrorist guy were exactly the same. You know? The one who got locked up all those years without a trial?”

“Right,” Joe said confidently, stretching his brain to fill in the blanks. “Maybe turning Mel into a terrorist bomber was a little thin.”

Nancy just stared at the floor.

“But you had to do something, right?” Joe prompted her, worried he might have miscalculated. “It’s not like you could leave things the way they are.”

She looked straight at him. “He’s gotten worse, almost all of a sudden. And we were getting desperate.”

Joe swung for the bleachers, hoping against reason to put Michelle Fisher to rest at last. “If you’re talking about the murder,” he told her, “you’re right—it doesn’t get much worse than that.”

The effect was startling. Her face crumpled up with concern. He couldn’t believe his luck, after all this effort. “You can’t pin that on Ellis,” she cried. “That’s where the discretion thing comes in, right? He didn’t even know the kid. That’s got to count. And he just saw it happen. He didn’t even touch him till he had to bury him.”

Joe was stunned. This had nothing to do with Michelle. In the surprise of the moment, his brain locked and he couldn’t think at all what she might be referring to.

Instead, he punted. “Guess they got lucky there. Usually burial sites get uncovered pretty fast—dogs, hunters in the woods, you name it.”

She looked at him, her eyes wide. “You didn’t find it?”

“It’s the only missing piece,” he said quickly.

“It’s in the park, by the river,” she said without great interest. “Behind the State Office Complex.”

“Thanks,” he said, hoping to match her detached tone. “The other thing was, we couldn’t figure out why.”

She became suddenly animated. “That’s what I’m saying. And that’s what Ellis said. There
was
no reason. The kid was talking, telling Mel what he wanted to know. He just killed him. Ellis said it was like he was curious, like it was a whim or something.”

Joe abandoned Michelle for the moment, hoping to keep this new train on the tracks for as long as he could. At least he knew who they were talking about.

“What did High Top have that Mel needed?” he asked her.

She shook her head vaguely. “I don’t know exactly, but it tied into the Niemiecs, and Mel wanting to rip them off.”

She was suddenly very quiet, and he guessed she was thinking she might have said too much.

The problem was, he was stumped himself. He had no idea who the Niemiecs were. “Well, you’re perfectly right,” he tried, “Mel is getting crazier, and he is on a roll. The thing with High Top and the Niemiecs’ll end up being just the tip of the iceberg. Know what I mean?”

She nodded thoughtfully, to his relief. “Yeah, I do. Never do it honestly if you can steal it from someone else.”

Joe recognized that she was talking to herself as much as to him now. “There you go,” he played along. “But it’s like anything else in life. You can’t keep doing the same thing again and again, especially if you’re a guy like Mel. Life gets too boring. You keep wanting to stir things up. Problem is, eventually it all falls apart.”

She was staring off into space.

He took a stab at bridging their two divergent trains of thought. “It can end up like a death wish nobody else wants to share.”

That brought her around. She looked at him again. “That’s it. That’s been it for a long time. I was thinking maybe a baby and some security, getting a good job and buying a home. With him, it’s always been
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
I just didn’t see it, I mean, not really.”

She knocked the side of her head gently with her fist. “Stupid. I’ve always been stupid that way. I don’t see people straight.”

“You fall in love with them,” Joe suggested. “That can fog your thinking.”

She suddenly looked irritated. “And I’m doing it again,” she said darkly.

But he didn’t want her to go there. Not now. “I don’t think so,” he said, hoping to steer her back. “Not from what I saw.” He leaned forward again for emphasis. “Just because you failed at something a few times doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, Nancy. Ellis is no Mel, right?”

“No.”

“He’s as horrified as you about what’s happened, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” she admitted, half reluctantly.

“Then don’t give up on him so fast. If you both get free of Mel, there’s no telling what you might be able to do together.”

Her expression became almost pleading. “That’s what I was hoping.”

He smiled broadly, grateful to be on surer footing. “Then stick with that. One thing at a time, okay?”

She nodded slowly.

“But we can’t let Mel blow it up. ’Cause he can if we don’t stop him. If he pulls this latest thing off against the Niemiecs, there’ll be no saving anybody—everyone’ll go down the tubes. You can see that, right?”

She rubbed her face with both hands and spoke through them in barely a whisper. “Yeah.”

Joe dropped his voice a father-confessor notch lower and placed his last bet. “Then let’s talk about what he has planned.”

Chapter 21

A
t least the weather was cooperating. Warm, no wind, a sky full of stars but no moon, making visibility a perfect balance between seeing and not being seen. That perfection played to the strengths of all three conflicting parties due to arrive.

Joe stood slowly to stretch his legs and readjust his bulky ballistic vest, wishing he had more to do. Unfortunately, it was no longer his show, and although he had a radio whisper mike strapped to his throat, and an ear bud to listen through, he knew there would be hell to pay if he uttered a single word uninvited.

Cautiously, he edged up to the window and glanced out. As before, the place was empty. A few planes were tethered in the large parking area between the taxiways, and beyond them the paved runway shone slightly pale in the starlight. But no one moved among the shadows of buildings, planes, and assorted equipment. The Bennington airport was unmanned during nonbusiness hours, and it was certainly deserted now.

Or was being made to look that way.

In fact, elements of the VBI, the Vermont State Police, the Bennington County Sheriff’s Department, the Bennington police, and the latter’s SWAT team, complete with a sniper, were secreted in nooks and crannies all across the airport grounds, from inside its buildings and on its roofs to along its feeder roads far outside the property perimeter.

And they had all been in place for hours, having infiltrated quietly, discreetly, in small numbers, just to be the first to arrive. The second group due, from what Joe had been told, would be Mel and his team of two, one of whom—Nancy—would be carrying a tiny GPS emitter so they could track at least her on a computer-mounted map. As for how they’d position themselves and what they were planning, Joe and his colleagues had only Nancy’s version. And they all knew how prone to spontaneity Mel could be.

Finally, there was the Niemiecs’ gang, coming in from somewhere inside Bennington to pick up what was sounding like the largest haul of hard drugs ever to be interdicted in Vermont—assuming things worked as planned. And nobody knew what the Niemiecs truly had up their collective sleeve, either, Mel’s self-confidence notwithstanding. Even the choice of this particular night was in some doubt, since it dated back to Mel’s last interview with one of the gang members.

It was very possible nothing would happen at all.

But Joe didn’t think so. He’d spent hours with Nancy Martin on the day of the interview. At one point, he’d even gone on a walk with her, switching the recording from the video at the PD to a handheld unit in his pocket. They’d strolled outside for a time, sat under a tree, taken pauses to hear the birds sing. He’d done everything he could to coax every last memory, reminiscence, and reflection out of her, while maintaining an almost father-daughter tone to the conversation. In a move that had later caused Willy almost to lose his composure, Joe had even bought her an ice-cream cone.

But it had worked. He had learned not just about the raid on tonight’s planned delivery but about the removal of the M–16s from the armory, the practice session with them in the woods outside town, the theft of the bingo money, the killing of High Top, the growing love between Ellis and Nancy, and their screwy plan to throw Mel to the Homeland wolves. He also listened to the all-too-familiar tales of young lives sacrificed for the immediate pleasures of the here and now, to poor choices and bad decisions leading into emotional box canyons offering no options and no escape. And hoping he wasn’t just cynically adding to the latter, he encouraged Nancy time and again to think of a better future, to believe that she might have found at last her Mr. Right, and that he, Joe Gunther, might well be the man to make it all come about.

That last part still wasn’t sitting too comfortably on his conscience.

Other things were sitting awkwardly as well, not the least of which was what they were all doing here tonight. Nancy’s information had created an instant flurry of debate among the leaders of most of the agencies represented in the county. Her evidence pointing to things as varied and damning as murder, assault, robbery, and grand theft promised a healthy combination of case clearances and good press.

But none of it touched her prize offering. Being told of the Niemiecs had been like finding a solid gold nugget in an otherwise bulging Cracker Jack box, and when it came to tantalizing law enforcement, the promise of a big drug bust was hard to resist.

Thus, despite Joe’s urging that a bird in the hand could just as easily be complemented by a separate operation against the Niemiecs, the decision had been made not to grab Mel separately but to sweep them all up at one time.

To pay them their due, the advocates of this approach did have a few points buttressing their position, not the least of which was that Mel had gone to ground, leaving a message to Nancy at the trailer that for security reasons he’d decided they should reassemble only at the airport on the night in question. According to the note, which she’d read to Joe over the phone after reaching home, Mel had heard there were extra cops in the area, asking questions about him.

Ellis had also proved problematic. Nancy, using the police department phone, had located him after calling a half-dozen numbers, and had stopped him from telling Mel what had happened at the college. However, he’d also refused to speak to anyone but her. He’d understood that she was making a deal with the cops and that he was the primary beneficiary, but he’d said no to coming in. An uneasy compromise had been cobbled together where he would see how things stood only after Mel was in handcuffs.

His position thus weakened, Joe had been forced to concede. But as he stood in the dark, watching the peaceful scene outside, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d taken on something involving far too many variables.

Finally, for Joe personally, there was one last disappointment that had nothing to do with this, at least not apparently. He couldn’t escape a lingering sadness that Michelle Fisher had never surfaced in any of Nancy’s tellings. While she had acknowledged Mel’s purchase of his truck from some “fat guy” on Gage Street, she had cast no light on any trips to Wilmington or any boasts about a lucrative hit job.

Michelle Fisher, as seemed her fate, had once more slipped into the background.

Joe crossed over to the shadowy figure of Johnny Massucco, who was, as it turned out, the team leader of the Bennington SWAT.

“Any problem with my going up to the roof?” he asked in a whisper.

Massucco, calm but focused, shrugged and pressed his throat mike. In a murmur, he warned the crew above them that Gunther was on his way. He didn’t bother telling Joe to keep low and quiet when he got there.

Up top, Joe cleared the darkened trapdoor on the roof and scuttled over to a makeshift tarpaulin tent that had been erected even with the low wall along the edge. Crouching inside, shielded from sight by the tent, Sammie Martens was manning a laptop computer whose unearthly glow lit her face. On its screen was a map, with the airport in its middle.

“Any sign of her?” Joe asked quietly.

“At the edge,” Sam confirmed, tapping the image with her fingertip. “Looks like she’s stationary near the corner of Gypsy Lane and Route 9, probably in a car.”

They’d had Nancy Martin attach the GPS transmitter to her bra, between her breasts, where they knew it would be the most comfortable, and presumably the least visible.

“Wish we could tell if she’s alone or not,” he muttered, half to himself. They hadn’t dared tell Ellis of this one small detail and had sworn Nancy to silence.

Sam made no comment.

Thirty feet away, low down and braced by the wall, isolated in all senses of the word, the police department’s sniper sat alone, his eyes locked on the still darkness below them—a fitting symbol of the potential violence they were about to face.

“I can’t wait for this to be over,” Joe added.

Nancy shifted in her seat, taking advantage of the gesture to poke at the plastic module perched between her breasts. It wasn’t really uncomfortable, but it did feel weird. And so huge, she was convinced all the world could see its bulge.

She also didn’t like what it stood for. She felt like a snitch.

“You okay?” Ellis asked. Per agreement, she hadn’t told him about the transmitter—she’d merely promised that tonight would put Mel where they’d been wishing him.

“Fine,” she said shortly.

They were in his car, the one with the now nonradioactive trash in the trunk, parked along the edge of a narrow road leading to the airport a mile farther on.

“I wonder where Mel is,” Ellis said.

Nancy didn’t know, which bothered her more than she let on. She felt as if her head were about to explode, she was so nervous. Ever since her long afternoon with that cop, she’d been like a pressure cooker with the heat turned on, gradually building up steam to the blowing point. Her affair with Ellis already had her on edge. Tack on her having spilled her guts to the cops, for which she knew Mel would kill her. And now she had this . . . thing jammed between her boobs, making her feel like a radio beacon. She hadn’t seen or heard from Mel since discovering his note at the trailer, and had grown steadily more convinced that the reason he’d disappeared was because he knew what she was up to.

Which, in a predictable vicious circle, only encouraged her own feelings of self-loathing. She felt like the Judas they’d all scorned of old—the unspeakable life-form that could betray its own kind. The more she’d pondered it, the more she’d become disgusted with herself and, by extension, Ellis. Both of them had turned their backs on the rough-and-tumble life they’d chosen from puberty, but which had, nevertheless, rewarded them with friendship, camaraderie, love, and a true sense of belonging. It hadn’t always been easy—the tolls of a nomad existence, the price that cigarettes, booze, drugs, and hard living had exacted, the daily violence she’d experienced, often at the hands of her own husband.

But somehow all of it—even Mel’s growing craziness—began to seem less awful than what she’d just done to be free of it.

She felt cut down the middle by guilt.

The cell phone in her pocket burst into life, making her and Ellis both jump.

“Yeah—what?” she stammered into it.

Mel’s voice sounded rich with self-satisfaction. “Where are you pussies? The fun’s about to start.”

“Mel?”

“Yeah, right. No, it’s the fucking president, stupid. Get your asses up here.”

“To the airport?”

She could almost taste the scorn as he answered, “God, you are a dumb bitch. Give me Ellis.”

She handed the phone over, grateful for the exchange. She was doing the right thing.

“Yeah,” Ellis said. He then listened a few seconds, muttered, “Right,” and hung up.

He returned the phone, explaining, “We’re just supposed to drive up and park in the lot. He’ll find us. The place is deserted.”

Nancy put the car into gear.

The drive up Airport Road and into the facility itself was eerie. There were no cars, no people, no signs of life at all the whole way.

“Creepy,” Ellis said softly, craning slightly to see better out the windows as they pulled into the parking lot.

“It’s late,” Nancy said, mostly to comfort herself.

“Still,” he said, adding, “You said the cops are here, right? Hidden somewhere?”

She started slightly, as if he’d pricked her with a pin. “Don’t say that.”

He looked at her. “Isn’t that right? That this is how we’re getting rid of Mel?”

“Yeah,” she said with emphasis. Then, looking around at the emptiness, “I guess.”

“You don’t
know
?”

She stopped the car and turned on him angrily. “Ellis, fuck you, okay? Just shut the fuck up. I’m not some fucking cop. I
don’t
know. I
think
so.” She took her hand off the steering wheel and grabbed her forehead. “Leave me alone.”

“He buggin’ you, babe?” came a voice from outside, making them both shout in surprise. Mel’s grinning face was hanging in the open frame of her side window.

“Mel—Jesus,” she said.

Mel opened her door and stood back. “You people have got to chill. This is just another op.”

Ellis got out from the other side. He was smiling, putting on a good front. “This is the mother of ops.”

Mel laughed. “Okay, you got it.” He looked back down at his wife. “Come on, Nance, heave your butt outta the car. We need to make like ghosts.”

They both followed him across the lot to a rental van parked on the edge of the grass by the nearest taxiway. He patted its side. “My newest wheels—all nice and legal and anonymous.”

He opened its rear double doors, reached inside, and pulled out the two M–16s, handing one to Ellis. “There you go, bucko. A little old-fashioned firepower. Got something else, too.” He reached back a second time and pulled out two ballistic vests, again handing one to Ellis. “Just like the big boys.”

Ellis was impressed. Nancy watched his eyes grow as round as a kid’s. “Holy shit. You did good, Mel.”

Mel had propped his gun against the van’s side and was slipping the vest on over his head. “No point screwin’ around, right?”

Nancy looked from one to the other. Mel misinterpreted her gesture. “You don’t count,” he told her. “You’ll be behind the wheel, like always. By the time we get to you, the shooting’ll all be over.”

“There’s going to be shooting?” she asked, remembering his assurances that the Niemiecs wouldn’t be armed.

He laughed. “Not for sure. I don’t want to wake up the neighborhood, but if we gotta, we gotta. You know that.”

He brushed by her and slapped Ellis’s shoulder as the latter was attaching his Velcro straps. “Come on. Let’s get in place.”

He looked back at his wife as they started off into the darkness between two of the buildings. “Just wait in the van, in the back, until after they get here. Stay out of sight till the last second, but be ready, okay? Don’t fuck up.”

“What about the car?”

“What about it? It’s just a parked car, like all the others.”

She nodded without comment and then cast her eyes over the entire scene—the few cars he’d mentioned, the darkened buildings, the starry sky overhead.