The Company She Kept (19 page)

“Ah. Less easy to define. We did—I can tell you that. You know how it goes—you get a population of a few thousand people, you tangle pretty much all the time with the same fifty or a hundred badasses. And inside that group of frequent flyers, you get the select few who just bust your balls like clockwork. That was Nate. And we weren't the only ones. He just had that effect on people.”

“And yet he was employed when we found him,” Joe commented.

“Yeah,” Mares agreed. “Recently. He was smart enough, and capable. Good with his hands. But it would never last. On that level, he was like his buddy Wylie, but where Wylie can never qualify for much more than taking out your garbage, Nate could sell himself—until he actually got the job, of course. Then he'd turn into a jackass and get himself canned. Regular as rain.”

“Okay—that's his institutional reputation. What about one-on-one? Did he ever send anyone to the hospital or get into a feud or target somebody for special attention?”

“Like gays?”

“No. Someone specifically, who might've decided to pay him back.”

Mares poured himself a third cup of coffee, having demolished the sandwich. “Oh, I get you. Huh. God, the guy was so busy pissing everybody off, I'm having a hard time picking out just one.” He paused to think and take another sip, before admitting, “Nothing stands out, Joe. I'm sorry. Maybe that's where Wylie'll come in handy, specially now that Nate's dead. I would guess he's dyin' for company.”

*   *   *

Sammie Martens pulled into the Rutland Plaza shopping center's vast parking lot, its stark modernity at odds with the row of ornately decorated, turn-of-the-century buildings directly across the street—standing shoulder-to-shoulder as if in defense of an older, less efficient, but more artistically sensitive time.

She was feeling forlorn, unsure of her motives or even her loyalties, amid the ghosts of her decade-old fiasco. Back then, the generalized relief over her survival had allowed everyone to more or less move on. But now, once more in Rutland—to which she hadn't returned since—her adrenaline of a couple of days ago, stimulated by hopes of redemption, had yielded to a fear that she might be not only repeating history, but involving the father of her child in the process.

She checked her watch. She was here to meet Willy, who was coming from another direction. She'd actually cooked up an excuse not to ride with him, in order to arrive sooner and allow some time to drive around the city, reacquainting herself with the geography.

Rutland was not a complex socioeconomic puzzle. A working-class, ex-railroad and marble quarrying center, it had the standard big-town skeleton of rich and poor neighborhoods, historic downtown, and a couple of tacky commercial strips. It also had the railroad, was the state's third largest city, and a major urban hub.

And it was home of the Gut, a mysteriously named neighborhood, literally located beyond the railroad tracks, that had long been the recipient—often unfairly—of people's disparaging comments. Nevertheless, the Gut had historically attracted most of the city's more active drug business, which had only grown as of late.

That last development had only further darkened her mood, seeing her old stomping grounds slip by. The so-called war on drugs had been invoked enough times to drain the phrase of meaning. Which didn't mean that Vermont's recent headlines for heroin abuse weren't well deserved. The forces that Sam had tried to staunch had only expanded, and their lethality had spread with heroin's increasing purity and affordability.

Was it therefore wrong of her to have seized on a vague connection between the high-profile murder of Susan Raffner and the overall drug trade, possibly to the benefit of addressing both?

It was a stretch. She knew it. But with Willy's help and encouragement, she'd been loath to resist the temptation to coincidentally correct an old embarrassment, while making some headway on a stalled case.

Some old impulsive habits were harder to break than others.

“If I'd wanted you dead, you'd be dead.”

She snapped out of her reverie at Willy's voice in her ear, and twisted around to find him inches away from her side window.

She rolled the glass down. “Jesus. How long you been there?”

He jerked his thumb to the back of the car. “I parked right behind you. Where were you?”

She rubbed her forehead. “Wondering if this is such a great idea.”

He walked around and got into her passenger seat. “Ah, scruples,” he sighed. “I always wondered what it was like to drag those around.”

“Fuck you,” she said. “You got more scruples in that stupid arm of yours than anyone I know. You just pretend you're a tough guy.”

He didn't argue the point. “You wanna call this off?”

She cut him a look. In the old days, he would have been all derision and taunting. Such a question now reinforced her high opinion of him.

Which didn't mean she was buying it. “So you can turn cowboy and maybe get yourself killed? I don't think so. If we're about to end our careers, I'd just as soon do it together.”

“I doubt it's that hairy a deal,” Willy commented. “By following Raffner's stash to its source, we're just following a lead.”

“Without telling anyone,” she countered. “That shows the courage of our conviction.”

Willy laughed. “Hey. I'm covered. I'm the official stray bullet—per the boss. You're the one feeling like you're playing hooky.”

“Thanks a lot,” she muttered.

He grinned. “I'm here, Sam. So what's your plan?”

“You ask Bob Crawford to hook up with us?” she asked.

“You command, I do,” he replied.

“You are such a bullshitter.” She smiled. “Well, Bob
is
my plan, since you already briefed him on the Newport mess. There've been a lot of changes in this town since I was under—the drug squad's been disbanded, a new police chief's taken over, the community's more involved than it was. Crawford has his eyes open. I'm hoping he'll give us a lay-of-the-land snapshot. I don't want to cold-call Stuey without knowing what he's been up to and who he's allied with nowadays.”

Willy checked his watch and slouched down in his seat. “Okay—hurry-up-and-wait time.”

*   *   *

Joe slowed just shy of Wylie Dupont's address on Bay Street. Mares's description of the place as a flophouse had been charitable. It was a two-story, small-windowed, sway-backed, ex-barn wrapped in peeling Tyvek sheeting. It looked as if someone years earlier—fueled with ambition and few funds—had begun a restoration project with no skills and little hope of success, and had met his expectations.

The irony of the setting's misery lay across the street, which was a beautiful and uninterrupted view of a finger inlet of Lake Memphremagog, now a slab of frozen water cloaked in snow. The juxtaposition made a lie of the premise that all waterfront property was pricey, while saying a great deal about Newport's relative isolation from the commercial mainstream.

Joe found a spot at the foot of the poorly plowed driveway, and gingerly ascended its slippery incline, his hands out to his sides, fully prepared to suddenly find himself extended flat out in midair like a cartoon character in mid-pratfall. Considering that he thought himself on little more than a minor inquiry, it figured that this would be how he'd wind up in the hospital with a broken leg.

Such, thankfully, was not to be. He reached the building's tilted front porch, weighted down by cordwood, and seized its railing like a drowning man reaching shore. Not minding the clumps of frozen snow glued to each step, he hauled himself up, reached the apartment building's front door, and stepped inside after seeing no doorbells or signs to direct him.

He found himself inside a gloomy central hall constructed of unfinished drywall and scarred plywood flooring, facing a barely visible array of metal mailboxes. Pulling out his small flashlight, he studied the names labeling each box—several of which were illegible—until he spotted a cramped “D'pon,” which he took to be the best effort of Wylie Dupont.

He did not press the buzzer mounted above box number six, not only convinced that it didn't work, but also not wanting to give Wylie a heads-up.

Number six, on the third floor, unsurprisingly faced not the photogenic view, but the rear of the building, where Joe had earlier noticed a caved-in, ancient horse stable, now filled with abandoned trash and rusting metal equipment.

He paused to catch his breath, unzipped his parka, and knocked on the flimsy door.

Without warning or approaching footsteps, it opened within seconds, revealing a young bearded man with long hair and slightly vacant eyes.

“Hi,” he said without expression.

Joe responded with a friendly smile. “Hi, yourself. You Wylie?”

The young man seemed to consider that for an instant, before saying, “Yeah,” and then turning on his stockinged heel to leave the doorway empty and Joe standing by himself. Joe's built-in caution loosened another notch.

Wylie's greeting had been neither hostile nor welcoming, but oddly neutral, as if he were simply too distracted by something else to make an effort either way.

Leaning forward at the waist to better see ahead, Joe slowly crossed the threshold.

Unexpectedly, Wylie Dupont was indeed otherwise occupied, delivering worms one-by-one to a box turtle housed at the bottom of an old fish tank. Looking around, Joe took in a single room with one window, no closet, and no bathroom—a communal lavatory presumably being located somewhere on the landing.

The place struck Joe as a large closet, converted into a bedroom, if only through the application of a number on the door. He did discern, spotting it through the mess, what he thought might be a bed—or at least a thin mattress—along one wall. But otherwise, the tiny space was filled with an upended stack of two-by-fours, half of a bicycle, a collection of empty picture frames, several plastic garbage bags, an assortment of dropped clothes, tools of all kinds—in various states of disrepair—and three broken TV sets. From waist height on down, the place was a jumble; from there to the ceiling, it was as if the room was empty. The fish tank was spacious and upscale by comparison.

Wylie seemed to have forgotten him.

“I'm Joe,” he said. “You live here alone?”

His host didn't respond, intent on his mission. The turtle's neck was fully extended as he reached for the dangling prize Wylie held above him.

Joe tried again. “I wanted to talk to you about Nate.”

“He's dead.” The reply came fast and without inflection.

Joe kept addressing the young man's back. “I know. That must've been tough. You were good friends, weren't you?”

“We were friends.” Same toneless high-speed delivery.

Joe paused, considering the value of continuing the conversation. Mares had implied that Dupont might be a worthwhile witness, but so far, the evidence was lacking.

“I'd like to ask you a few questions about him, if that's okay,” Joe tried, mostly to be thorough.

The turtle finally took hold of the worm, allowing Wylie to turn around. He looked happy with his success.

“Sorry,” he said, smiling. “Jack comes first when it's lunchtime. Who're you?”

Joe hesitated at the startling change. This was evidently a one-thing-at-a-time sort of guy.

“My name's Joe. I'm hoping to learn a little about Nate. What kind of person he was, who his other friends were. That kind of thing.”

Wylie seemed confused. “Why?”

Joe decided to begin again. He opened his jacket to reveal the badge attached to his belt. “I'm a police officer,” he began. “And I'm trying to find out…”

He stopped in mid-sentence, brought up short by Wylie turning red-faced and bunching up his fists.

“You killed him,” Wylie growled through clenched teeth.

“No, no,” Joe tried placating him, holding up both hands. “I want to find out why that happened.”

But the transformation was complete and irreversible. The gentle, childlike man of moments ago tucked down and charged Joe as if wishing to spear him with his body. Joe had only time to catch his head like a basketball as it careened into his midriff and propelled him backward toward the half-open door.

Wylie's fury turned him into an irresistable force, as brainless and direct as an attacking bull. Joe's shoulder struck the edge of the door, pivoting him slightly as they both blew out onto the landing. For a split second, Joe saw the yawning top of the staircase approaching at speed—along with the good chance that he was about to become a human toboggan—before he twisted violently in the same direction that he'd already begun. He used Wylie's momentum against him by grabbing his ears and throwing him forward as if passing a ball, reversing their positions just as they flew into the void and down the staircase.

The next few seconds became an explosive ecstasy of arms, legs, glimpses of passing stair treads, and a rapid succession of painful and jarring body blows. It ended as abruptly as it had started, with both men in a heap at the bottom.

Half-conscious, his head ringing and his body throbbing, Joe gasped for air as he kept slapping at Wylie and trying to push him off, only slowly becoming aware that his attacker had become a dead weight.

With that, he stopped his efforts, hearing shouts as from a great distance, and lay back against the wooden floorboards, caving in to an overwhelming urge to rest.

He shut his eyes, he thought for just a moment, and passed out.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Joe.”

He kept his eyes closed, half hoping he was still dreaming.

“Joe.”

The dream had been negligible, but it had helped dull a pain in his head of staggering intensity. Not so the man's voice.

“Wake up.”