The Company She Kept (32 page)

He stopped speaking, but remained motionless. She was overtaken by emotion, and her head flooded with paradoxical images of Emma, Manny Ruiz as a younger man, Willy, and—always—Joe, her surrogate father.

“I'm really sorry,” she managed to whisper.

“I'm glad for that, but what I want to hear is that this is going to stop,” he said calmly. “One Willy Kunkle is all I can handle. I need to have back the woman who provides him with a centerboard and gives me someone I can trust with my life—like I always have.”

She waited for more, but that was not his style. He was inclined to utter a few words, with the expectation that his listener would absorb their full dose.

To drive the point home, he reached out, briefly laid his hand atop hers, and said, “Go back to your family. I'll see you in the morning.”

*   *   *

“Hey,” Willy addressed Joe before the latter had even taken off his coat the next day. “We're actually going on Stuey's say-so that Raffner had a phantom passenger? That lying sack of shit killed that woman, sure as hell, and now he's blowing smoke up your skirt just for fun.”

Joe shook his head, removed the coat, and crossed to the coffeemaker. “Don't think so. The whole interview is recorded.” He reached into his pocket and tossed a thumb drive to Lester. “Check it out and let me know what you think. It won't take long and it's worth every second.”

He and Sam set it up while Joe continued preparing his usual concoction of cream and maple syrup in his coffee.

Thirty minutes later, he'd finished catching up on his e-mails and the statewide dailies from the other VBI offices, and his squad had returned to their respective desks.

Joe looked directly at Willy. “So?”

The response was pure Kunkle—completely at odds with his earlier outburst. “I'm not a hundred percent, but I see what you mean.”

“And what he says he did to Susan matches what Hillstrom found at the autopsy,” Sam added.

“Except for the two sequential blows to the head,” Joe partially agreed. “One of which—to the occiput—preceded death and might have been intended to knock her out. Also, the horizontal marks across her back don't fit Stuey's narrative.”

“They would if she was bludgeoned and shoved into the back of the car,” Lester said. “Like we were thinking.”

Joe put his feet up on his desk. “Which is probably what happened right after. As I was telling Sam earlier, this is the missing piece we've been looking for. Let's talk it through. What d'we got?”

“Both Stuey and Buddy Ames said she was hotter'n hell,” Sammie said. “Madder than she should've been over a bad business deal and a few bucks.”

“She coulda been arguing with her passenger,” Willy suggested.

“A passenger who then immediately took advantage of her weakened state,” Joe continued, “further rendered her harmless, and then cobbled together a plan to throw us off the trail.”

“Why not just frame Stuey?” Lester asked.

“Too direct,” Sammie said, “and too easily proven wrong.”

Joe agreed. “Even Stuey could pass a lie detector test. Plus, he told me after the interview that he had a girlfriend in the trailer. I sent someone to talk with her and she backed him up—saw everything through the window. And, no, she couldn't identify the passenger, either.”

“I agree,” Willy said. “It's looking like Stuey punching Raffner in the ribs was manna from heaven for our mystery player—an inspiration that set him off on his own plan.”

“An almost unbelievably complicated plan,” Lester commented. “For something made up on the go.”

“How so?” Sammie asked.

“Look at it. The hanging, the mutilation, the ditching of the car in exchange for a pickup truck. Like Willy was saying—way beyond Stuey's capability. Most people's, for that matter.”

“And knowing just where to hang the body, too,” Joe said thoughtfully. “We considered that earlier, but we never really chased it down.”

“No one we've looked at lives in that area,” Sam said.

“Doesn't mean they might not've been born there,” Willy countered. “Or have a camp nearby.”

“Or that he travels the state a lot,” Joe said. “Maybe with a specific purpose.”

Sam heard something in his voice. “What're you thinking, boss?”

“There's symbolism in all this, or at least attention-getting posturing. It could've been so much simpler, and still've left us in the dark. But it was flashy—a look-at-me kind of thing.”

“Small kid on the block getting back at the world?” Lester said.

“More like someone used to influencing people, and who knows the state,” Joe expanded. “Most crimes are localized to a pretty small area. This one's all over the place.”

“You make him sound like a traveling circus performer,” Sam commented incredulously.

Willy laughed, looking at Joe. “That's not what he's saying. He's thinking of a Raffner type, aren't you, boss? The kind of person she'd have riding around with her in a car in the first place. You're saying politics.”

Joe took them in as a group. “It does have a ring to it. You gotta admit.”

“A politician?” Sammie asked, only slightly less doubtful.

“Someone
in
politics,” Joe emphasized. “Certainly someone trained to suddenly changing situations, redirecting people's focus, and staging sensationalist events.”

“That doesn't help us much,” Lester said. “Raffner was in politics for most of her life, so we're still looking at roughly the same pool of people.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Joe argued. “Let's take this from the top without the distractions.”

“From where Mystery Man sees Raffner get pushed around by Stuey?” Sam asked.

“How 'bout what put him in her car to begin with?” Lester suggested.

“Not yet,” Willy replied. “Boss is right. We'll get to that later. Right now, Mystery Man—MM—gets a situation handed to him—
bam
. Stuey acts out, Raffner's on the ropes, and MM's suddenly got his opportunity. Whatever it was that got him in the car with Raffner in the first place, now it's time to
carpe diem.
”

Sammie picked it up. “But first things first, MM severs all connection to Stuey by leaving.”

“We don't know who was driving,” Lester pointed out.

“Doesn't matter,” Sam continued. “Either MM grabs the wheel because Susan's too woozy, or he tells her where to drive in order to get out of danger so that he can take a closer look at her.”

“'Cept he does a little more than that,” Lester picked up.

“Right. He smacks her a good one.”

“The first injury to the head,” Joe suggested, “rendering her unconscious.”

“They might've been simultaneous,” Willy argued. “A blow to the back of the head followed by the fatal follow-up to the temple. Could Hillstrom tell if there was any time-lapse between them?”

Joe shook his head. “Not with one hundred percent accuracy. But, if the two blows came at once, how do you explain the bruising across her lumbar, presumably from tipping her into the rear of the car? There wouldn't've been bruising if she'd been dead. And don't forget that David Hawke found her nail back there, which Raffner's bloody fingertip tells us was ripped off as she was trying to get out.”

“The point is,” Sammie almost interrupted, wanting to keep the momentum going, “MM gets the upper hand one way or the other, and then without a doubt takes the wheel.”

“So he can swap vehicles for a pickup,” Lester finished, adding, “But why? It's not like he went seriously off-road to hang her from the cliff.”

“You sure about that?” Willy asked. “You know you're gonna be driving in the snow, and nothing sucks worse in the snow than a Prius. Seems like a smart trade to me.”

“Plus, it's not just the truck you need,” Sammie threw in. “You need rope, boots, whatever else…”

“Maybe do the chest carving then, too, since she's dead by now,” Willy said.

“Then off to the cliff for the grand finale?” Lester said tentatively.

“Not yet,” Joe replied. They looked at him as he explained, “He has to set up his frame—or his misdirection. The fake letter from Nate Fellows, found in Susan's Montpelier apartment—with the conveniently missing canceled stamp—to go along with the carving. This is his only opportunity to do that.”

“Which means Montpelier.”

“Which means that crazy old bat,” Willy said.

Sam stared at him. “Regina Rockefeller,” he clarified. “Raffner's landlady. What do the case notes say about what she saw? It would've had to've been in the middle of the night.”

Silence.

“Damn,” Lester half whispered.

“Good,” Joe said. “Then she needs to be interviewed more in depth. Don't know how those questions were missed.”

“I do,” Sammie said. “I remember talking to Parker on the phone about her. He said she wouldn't shut up—ran her mouth from the moment they walked in to the time they left.”

“She talked so much they didn't get what they should've,” Joe finished. “We've all been there. So, let's hit her again, and keep our fingers crossed that she was in when MM dropped by—'cause he had to have been on his own, which might've made him stand out. What else?”

“Why Nate Fellows?” Willy asked. “Of all the screwballs in the world? And MM knew exactly where Raffner lived, and that she had an office with a recycle box? Those're two questions I'd like answered.”

“Did he know where and how to access the cliff?” Lester asked. “That's a third.”

“And a fourth,” Sammie contributed. “The salvage yard where the Prius was left. That didn't happen without prior knowledge.”

Lester was shaking his head. “We still have hundreds—maybe a thousand—names to go through.”

“Not really,” Joe argued. “We've had dozens of people combing through Susan's files from the beginning.
They're
the ones we should ask to see if any of these details rings a bell. And let's dig into each area more thoroughly—like interviewing Rockefeller—to see if a single name doesn't begin to repeat.”

Sam suggested, “There's a fifth item we haven't mentioned, and that's Raffner's Prius. If we're right, MM and Raffner spent a lot of shared time riding around in it.”

“It's still in Waterbury,” Lester said. “They finished processing it. There were several prints they couldn't match to anyone, mostly from the passenger seat, but nothing that stood out. Might be worth one of us going by to at least take a look at what they pulled out of it.”

“David Hawke and I are old friends,” Joe commented. “I don't mind doing that.”

“I'll take Rockefeller,” Sam said. “Might be different if it's woman-to-woman this time.”

“What about all that riding around together with MM and Raffner that Sam brought up?” Willy asked. “Can we explain what that was all about?”

Nobody answered.

Willy smiled. “Right. One piece of fantasy at a time.”

“Hey,” Joe countered hopefully, “we get lucky with this other stuff, that may just come gift-wrapped at the end.”

*   *   *

Sammie was pleased with the Regina Rockefeller assignment. It wasn't that she was holding out hope that the old woman had actually witnessed someone creeping into her house to plant evidence—that probably would've come up by now. Mostly, Sam was just happy to still be employed.

She hadn't told Willy of Joe's visit until early the next morning, and then only that he'd dropped by to tell her that their pursuit of Manny Ruiz had paid off. Willy, naturally, hadn't completely missed the point. He'd responded, “I bet he wasn't thrilled.” She hadn't said he was wrong.

But she'd also understood why Joe had made their conversation private. Willy hadn't let Joe down—from the start of this investigation, Joe had made Willy's job open-ended and nonspecific. Joe knew his man. He had hoped he'd known her, and that's where she had dropped the ball.

What troubled her, however, was less the actual transgression—Joe had dealt with that last night. It was more what had led up to it, which was more deep-seated in Sammie's personal psychology. All her life, she'd had a self-destructive trait—in her willfulness as a child, her careless choice of men later, her volunteering for dangerous tasks in the military, and even in her decision to link her future with Willy Kunkle's and have a child with him. Joe's more hopeful view of her notwithstanding, her actions of a decade ago had been a typically rash example, and one she'd hoped had marked a turn toward more rational thinking.

But what she'd just done—despite its successful conclusion, and Willy's active role in it—raised doubts in her mind that she could rid herself of her own corrosive impulsiveness. Joe's response had been thoughtful, supportive, and unequivocal, all at the same time. It had also made clear that she was no longer an irresponsible kid, and that he wasn't the only person that she needed to impress and respect.

When Sam drove up, Regina Rockefeller was in front of her battered Victorian, stabbing erratically at the snow on her top step with a rickety shovel. She was dressed in an odd assortment of clothes—clearly grabbed on the way out with no thought as to their originally intended use. She looked like a deranged stage actor impersonating a bag lady.

“Welcome, welcome,” she called out cheerily as Sam picked her way carefully up the roughly hewn path. “You'll have to excuse the minefield. I tell all my guests to make sure they're wearing climbing gear when they visit. Not that they pay attention, of course, although if you think about it, most people around here tend to wear pretty practical foot gear, just out of habit. I notice you're doing just that yourself, young lady, which I can only applaud.”