Presumption of Guilt (2 page)

There was one exception, however, which he noticed only as the sun drifted out from behind a cloud. His gaze was attracted to the contrasting field of gray wreckage that he'd created in his multiday assignment to crumble the concrete slab of a recently dismantled warehouse. In the sun's sudden glare, Nelson saw a flash of something white and thin amid the lumpish shards.

Frowning, he rolled over onto his hands and knees, preserving his line of sight, and crawled to the lip where the old concrete met the edge of his latest efforts with the jackhammer, a few feet away.

“Damn,” he said, the word carried away by the gentle breeze.

What had beckoned him appeared to be part of a human hand—a curved finger, bleached white and encircled by a thin gold ring.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Sammie Martens put down the phone. “Huh.”

Joe Gunther looked up from his paperwork. “New case?”

She answered indirectly. “Over the years, how many times did you think tensions at Vermont Yankee might get hot enough to trigger a homicide?”

“You're kidding me.” He pushed away from his desk, preparing to rise.

Sam, usually first to head out the door, checked him with an upheld hand. “Not that kind of call. This time, I don't think we're gonna find the doer standing over the body.”

They were the only two in the small office, on the second floor of Brattleboro's timeworn municipal center.

“Okay,” Joe said slowly, letting Sam have her moment.

“Some guy with a jackhammer was taking apart one of the old warehouse slabs and found a skeletonized hand.”

“Only a hand?”

She shrugged. “So far. Unlike some of the bozos we've dealt with, sounds like this one knew when to stop. From what I was just told, right now all we got is a finger with a ring on it. I was being generous, calling it a hand.”

“The warehouse inside the inner fence?”

“Right beside the reactor building.”

“How'd we get the call?” he asked.

“Through the state police. Guess they figured we'd get it eventually. Plus, I bet the last thing they want is another pain-in-the-ass cold case.”

Joe nodded. “Okay. Given how that plant's been a publicity shit-magnet since before it was plugged in, you better call the state's attorney while I let our esteemed director know at HQ.”

Two minutes later, after they'd both hung up, Joe looked questioningly at his colleague. “I take it you got the same ‘mother of God' reaction I did?”

“Along with a prayer that this can be kept quiet for as long as possible,” she reported.

He rose and walked to the coatrack by the office's front door. “People's continual belief in miracles never ceases to amaze me.” He handed Sam her jacket. “Good news is that at least we'll have a secure scene. That might help delay things.”

She laughed. “And we won't need to rig any lights after hours, according to all those glow-in-the-dark rumors.”

*   *   *

Vermont Yankee is located in Vernon, Vermont, about five miles south of Brattleboro. It occupies 130-plus acres, more or less, of sacrificed farmland that sticks out into the Connecticut River like a fat man's belly overhanging his belt.

It's an unusual-looking plant—at least to Joe's eye. Informed as he was by icons such as the four Three Mile Island hourglass cooling towers, he found Vernon's monument brutish and massively squat—a series of huge, utilitarian, blank-faced cubes and boxes, offset only by a single tall, thin, slightly ominous smokestack located on the facility's edge.

He'd been here multiple times over the decades, especially when he'd led the Brattleboro Police's detective unit before becoming head of VBI—the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Back then, the plant's management was forever inviting local emergency personnel to participate in tabletop terrorist countermeasure exercises, or briefings on catastrophe protocols, or sometimes merely to share security concerns. The latter had become especially topical as relations between the plant's owners and the state's political leaders soured—spurred on by steady protests from area antinuclear activists. Indeed, this broiling antipathy and its attending legal wrangles were touted by observers as having played as big a role in finally shuttering the plant as its advancing years and the advent of cheap natural gas. Certainly Joe was among those who believed Vermont Yankee's management eventually just tired of the squabbling.

One advantage of all this past cooperation was that Joe and his colleagues had come to know the well-armed and highly trained defense force that protected the campus, specifically Jim Matthews, its current leader.

It was Matthews, in fact, who met them at the newly unmanned front gate, on Governor Hunt Road, and directed them to pull over.

He did not look happy.

“Hey,” he greeted them, leaning over to look into the car Sam was driving.

“Hey, yourself,” Joe answered. “You know anything more than when you called us?”

“Only that we'll be knee-deep in bad press again. I never would've seen this one coming, though. Not in a million.” He straightened and pointed them to the right of the entrance road. “Drive down there. One of my guys'll wave you through, right up to the scene. We've had everything cordoned off. You'll see.”

As Sam pulled away, Joe saw Matthews reach for his radio to warn others of their approach. For all the talk of decommissioning and downsizing, the power plant remained a nuclear site and, as such, a high-security concern to a lot of people and agencies—a fact highlighted by the number of armed people they saw positioned along their way, not to mention a scattering of watchtowers, camera stations, heavy fences, and even the occasional odd-looking, one-man concrete pillbox, complete with firing ports.

As if echoing his private ruminating, Sammie observed, “Always gives me the creeps coming here. It's like a prison for the undead.”

They rolled to a stop beyond the last open gate and got out of the car near the remnants of a flat, half-crushed concrete slab ringed by men with guns, some of whom were further isolating the area with yellow tape and metal barricades.

They were met by a serious young man with a clipboard. “Could I see your identification and get your names, please?”

They complied, although Joe could see Sam suppressing a smile at the formality. But he and she were both ex-military, if a generation apart, and he found value in the ritual nature of the exchange. And as he'd said at the office, he sensed they'd be having few problems maintaining the scene's integrity—often a hassle in the real world.

Free to proceed, they advanced to a couple of dark-clad officers standing next to a twentysomething man in a hard hat—a pair of earbuds dangling over his collar—not far from a jackhammer's compressor.

As they drew near, Joe announced conversationally, “Special Agents Joe Gunther and Samantha Martens, VBI.”

One of the security men indicated the man in the hard hat. “This is Nelson Smith. He was breaking up the slab for removal when he found…” He paused, groping for a description, and finished lamely with, “what he found.”

“I stopped for lunch,” Smith volunteered, “and saw the sun reflecting off the white bone. I couldn't figure it out, first. Gave me a real shock.”

“So you saw nothing while you were working the jackhammer?” Sam asked as Joe drifted off toward the tool itself, which was lying still and quiet at the edge of the broken field.

“No. It was just dumb luck that I stopped when I did.” Smith paused before adding, “I woulda stabbed right through it if I'd kept going.”

Joe crouched low, bringing his eyes to within a few inches of everyone's topic of interest.

Sam joined him from the other side. “Damn,” she said quietly. “What d'you think?”

Wearing a latex glove, Joe reached out and shifted a small chunk of material that was leaning against the ring finger, revealing a bony mate still half encased in untouched concrete. It vaguely looked like a dollhouse-sized version of a dinosaur dig.

“If I were a betting man,” he said, “I'd say these two are attached to an impressively well-preserved skeleton.”

They both looked up as Jim Matthews joined them, squatting down to their level. “So?”

Joe tapped gently on the one fully revealed finger. “I was just telling Sam that this is probably the tip of the iceberg. That's a guess, of course—could be these two fingers're all there is. Don't know why, though. If I'd wanted to get rid of a body when all this was going up, this place would've seemed like a gift from heaven.”

Matthews shook his head. “Christ. So you know, both the state's attorney and our vice president in charge of operations are here, looking to be briefed.”

“I'll get to them in a second,” Joe said, unhappy to be facing such conversations so early on.

“When was the slab put in?” Sam asked.

Jim looked at her, his expression showing a preference for facts over politics. “Nineteen seventy. I have the exact date in my office. I looked it up. They documented everything as it went in, almost brick by brick—not that they used bricks, come to think of it.”

“Any changes since?” Joe asked. “Additions, repairs to the floor, anything?”

“It was a metal warehouse,” Matthews said. “It went up, served its purpose, and they decided to take it down. As far as the records go, this floor's been untouched for over forty years.” He paused before reflecting, “Wonder who this is.”

Joe smiled grimly. “Unless we get lucky, I'd say somebody who's going to keep us busy for a while.” He rose and said to Jim resignedly, “Better take me to the grand pooh-bahs.”

They were waiting for him in a small security building built into the inner fence system. The interior consisted of a row of now silent, alarm-equipped, passkey-operated turnstiles, once designed to handle shift changes of hundreds of people in short order.

The Windham County state's attorney was a tall, slim, serious-faced woman with a thatch of close-cropped white hair and a fondness for low-heeled shoes and practical pantsuits. Her name was Janet Macklin, and Joe had heard her referred to variously as Jammin' Janet, Manglin' Macklin, or inevitably, Mack the Knife—presumably, all from people who'd come up short against her. While Joe dealt mostly with the AG's office in his VBI capacity, he knew Janet Macklin and knew her to be sharp, tough, good in court, and supportive of law enforcement.

The Vermont Yankee VP—Roger Goodhugh—he'd never met and didn't know. VY had been sold some fifteen years earlier by its local birth parents to a Louisiana-based monolith named Entergy—to instantaneous scorn by activist opponents. Joe had always avoided the emotional turmoil around the plant's virtues or flaws, but could see that in the person of Roger Goodhugh, the “anti's” had an easy target to parody. Through no fault of his own, he was double-chinned, narrow-shouldered, and wide in the hips. And as Goodhugh extended a predictably flaccid, damp hand and spoke his greeting, Joe also picked up a discernibly thick southern accent. It almost seemed unfair, which immediately made Joe think kindly of him—and made him wonder if some corporate Machiavelli hadn't worked hard to put Goodhugh precisely where he was for precisely the effect he unconsciously made.

Joe nodded to both of them as part of the formalities. “Janet. Mr. Goodhugh. My colleague, Special Agent Samantha Martens. As you can imagine, we don't have much to tell you yet.”

“Nevertheless,” Macklin said quickly, “thanks for calling so fast,” cutting off Goodhugh's soft-spoken, “Call me Roger.”

“No problem,” Joe told her. “Given how the place attracts attention, I figured you'd want an early heads-up.”

He looked at Goodhugh. “And thanks for all the help we've been given. Appreciate your adapting the security routine for our convenience.”

“Of course,” Goodhugh said with an anemic smile. “Do you have any idea how quickly you'll be done?”

“We've barely arrived. It'll be an excavation, like for an archeological dig. Those are not fast-moving, Mr. Goodhugh—Roger. I do have a related question for you, though.”

“Of course.”

“Actually, it applies to all of us. How do you want to handle the press? Word gets out about a dead body at Vermont Yankee, all sorts of fireworks could blow up if we don't plan ahead.”

“You have to throw them something,” Macklin said bluntly, pointing out a window. “Right now, people are phoning and texting whatever they can make up.”

Goodhugh surprised them with his response, suggesting that he might have been made vice president for some unexpected prowess. “From the little we know, it's ancient history and unrelated to anything radiological.” He reached into his jacket pocket and presented them with copies of a single sheet of paper. “I had our PR people write this up. It refers to y'all as just ‘authorities,' since I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting you, but I hope it'll do the trick for the time being.”

Joe, Sam, and Macklin quickly read the release and exchanged glances.

“That's fine with me,” Janet announced.

Joe folded it up. “Vague, almost boring, and throwing it onto us, as promised. Nice, Roger. You've clearly had practice.”

Goodhugh glanced at his feet. “More than you could imagine.”

In a large urban area, with a police department of thousands, the process thereafter would have taken a few hours. But there weren't many cops across Vermont, from the lowest town constable to the commissioner of public safety. As a result—and as Joe had implied to Roger Goodhugh—what was immediately set in motion took much longer to occur. By nightfall, although a tent had been rigged over their crime scene and the perimeter sealed to Jim Matthews's standards, they were still reduced to waiting for other investigators and/or technicians to appear, including a forensic anthropologist and scientists from the state's only official crime lab, in far-off Waterbury.