Tucker Peak (16 page)

Gripped by real fear now, I began speaking in a rush. “You got it wrong. My name’s Joe Gunther. I’m a special agent with the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. We’re looking for Marty. We didn’t know he was dead. But that doesn’t matter. We’re after the same people you’re afraid of. If you know who they are, we can nail them for you. You can go back to walking around without looking over your shoulder.”

“Right. This where I give you my gun so you can blow my brains out? Maybe make it look like suicide? How dumb do you think I am?”

I couldn’t believe the irony of it—to be executed as a hitman. “Not dumb, Richie, but plenty scared. We were thinking you killed Jorja Duval to find out where Marty was, but I guess that’s not what happened, right? They knocked her off, looking for you and Marty both. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it?”

He didn’t say anything.

“They cut her throat, Richie—almost took her head off. Why’re they after you? What did you and Marty steal, anyway?”

“We didn’t steal anything,” he said stubbornly.

I couldn’t believe he was still pitching his own innocence, especially given the circumstances. “Maybe you didn’t personally,” I tried conceding. “But you set it up so Marty could. You were his spotter, finding rich targets like that woman downstairs, checking out their houses and getting some action on the side. He’d call you on the first-floor locker room pay phone a few days before every hit. You did that eight times. Think about it, Richie. We know all that. That’s why we were tailing you. If we were the people you’re so afraid of, you’d be dead already.”

“Fuck you,” he said, his voice revealing his own frustration. “First you say you thought I killed the girl, now you say I’m a sitting duck for the guys that did. You don’t even have the number right on the break-ins. You’re just jerking me around, and I’m getting sick of it.”

I opened my mouth to answer him but was stopped by a blinding flash of searing pain in my head. I didn’t even see the floor as I bounced off it with my face.

I HEARD A FAINT HUMMING AT FIRST, LIKE A DISTANT
furnace, steady and deep throated. It altered as I homed in on it, lightening in tone but becoming no louder. And it was accompanied by a headache of statuesque proportions that banged off the walls of my skull like a ball with boundless energy. I winced and became aware of a second pain between my eyes, but on the outside. Gingerly, I rolled onto my back and raised my hand, surprised to find it stiff, numb, and difficult to move, and touched my face around the nose and forehead, discovering both to be sore, tender, and crusty with dried blood.

I finally took a deep breath and opened my eyes, instantly closing them against the glare directly above me.

I realized I was cold. Not just chilly, but cold enough to rob my hands and feet of feeling, to make breathing tough and movement a challenge. I opened my eyes again, slowly this time, getting them used to the light, which I realized half a minute later belonged to a fluorescent tube—also the source of the humming noise.

I was still in the garage.

I turned my head awkwardly, looking first one way, then the other, and found that all but a few of the cars had left, including those parked right beside me. People in considerable numbers had walked by me or even stepped over my unconscious and bloody body, and driven themselves home. I checked my watch—four-thirty in the morning.

Perhaps more wearied by that realization than by any of my injuries, I slowly got myself together—going from flat out, to sitting, to standing and leaning against the wall, to finally walking toward the stairwell like an octogenarian—and eventually managed to wend my way back to the employee dorm. There, after getting out of my clothes without waking up Fred, I shuffled into the bathroom to look at myself.

The damage was mostly internal, and I sensed by now it would probably be transient. No concussion, no split skull. I had a hell of lump on the back of my head, a bloody nose, and a scraped forehead, only the last of which displayed any damage after I washed up, and even that was no more than your average rug rash.

But still I knew, embarrassment notwithstanding, that I better get to a hospital—I’d seen before how convincingly a wounded man can kid himself.

· · ·

An hour and a half later, sitting on the edge of an ER gurney, rebuttoning my shirt and with my bloodstream full of pain killers, I told Lester and Willy about Richie Lane. Sammie had already heard it driving me to the hospital.

Willy was predictably unsympathetic. “I can’t believe you walked into it. You should’ve called for backup as soon as he went upstairs—sure as shit when you saw he’d pulled a Houdini.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kunkle,” Sammie said irritably. “Is that how you would’ve done it?”

He was unrepentant. “People expect me to be a bonehead.”

I waved the issue away. “Okay, okay. That may have been a compliment, so let’s drop it. The trick now is to find Richie before Jorja’s killer does. Lester, you better pull out the stops on every name on Richie’s rap sheet—the same drill we did on Marty Gagnon. And let’s get search warrants for his room at Tucker Peak, his locker, his residence if he has one, his car unless he took it, and if he did, a New England-wide BOL on it and him both.”

“What about his mountain contacts?” Lester asked.

“Who was he closest to among the instructors, Sammie?”

She thought a moment. “Hard to tell, he schmoozed around so much. I guess Kurt Peterson—he actually seemed to like the guy. The rest of us mostly talked behind his back, especially the women.”

I touched the nape of my neck with my fingertips. My headache was beginning to descend to normal levels, but the goose egg was still hot and fragile, as if ready to burst.

“Speaking of women,” I continued, “I guess we know how at least some of Marty’s targets were selected. We need to go back over each household, find out about any woman who might’ve been involved, like the invisible Mrs. William Manning, and put the squeeze on them as diplomatically as possible. If we’re lucky, Richie let a little of himself show through while he was grilling them—a reference to a hunting camp, a favorite hideout, a relative in some distant town—something that might let us know where he’s at.”

Sammie had been taking notes and now looked up from her pad. “What about the woman you saw him with?”

I nodded, irritated that I’d forgotten about her. “Right. Locate her, find out where they were headed, what Richie’s line was.” I gave Sammie the Mercedes plate number I’d memorized.

Lester cleared his throat gently and asked, “Are we taking Richie’s word for it that Marty’s dead?”

After a brief general silence, Willy said, “I’m not. If Richie’s really so sweaty about it, why’s he still working on the mountain? Doesn’t track.”

“Might make sense if Marty killed Jorja because of what she knew, and both he and Richie are pretending it was somebody else,” Lester ventured.

My headache found a second wind. “That’s getting pretty complicated. Let’s just keep it open for now. Assume Marty’s still alive and working with Richie, and that there’s another guy out there gunning for them both. That way, we keep everyone in our sights. We can sort out the realities after we round them all up.”

“What about Win Johnston?” Sammie asked.

I considered that for a couple of seconds. “He’s a wild card.”

“We could tail him.”

“Can’t justify it. It would cost too much, chances are his client contacts are by phone, and we have no idea what he’s doing anyway. Place like Tucker Peak, with its PR sensitivity, my guess would be embezzlement. Anyhow, I think he’ll tell us if anything comes up we need to know about.”

“Your call,” she said mostly to herself, clearly unconvinced.

“That does remind me, though,” I added. “Did we get anything from Snuffy’s people about the TPL backgrounds he’s been running?”

Lester didn’t even look up. “Too early yet, he keeps bitching about being swamped. Wonders why in the hell he ever contacted us.”

“I’ll see if I can’t get him moving,” I said.

“Oh,” Lester added, “I did get a call from the Tramway investigator last night. Definite sabotage on the hanger arm of that chair.”

“Okay. Guess that makes it official then.”

Willy spoke up from where he was stretched out on an adjoining bed. “On the subject of official business, I take it we’ve pretty much blown the undercover gig.”

I regretfully stroked my beard, which had grown on me in several ways. “Not totally. I doubt Richie’ll be hanging around the slopes tomorrow telling people he smacked a cop over the head. Besides, he didn’t even believe me.”

“And Sammie’s still okay,” Lester added.

I nodded gingerly in agreement. “I don’t doubt Richie’ll talk to somebody about me, though, sooner or later, and who knows who might’ve stepped over me going to their car last night, and who might come squealing later. So I think I will give it up—Bettina smells a rat anyhow—but let’s leave Sammie in a little longer.”

Willy sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “Great. So, Blondie lives on.”

· · ·

I recognized the car before I even saw the New York plates because it was so flagrantly from out of state: a black, late-model, very shiny Lexus with glittering gold trim. Even upscale Vermonters don’t go for a vehicle like that. Too flashy. And too lordly. Might be a good car but not worth the attitude.

Mrs. William Manning got out hesitantly, adjusting her oversize dark glasses as if to ward off a crowd of clamoring paparazzi. Unfortunately, there were none, and the few passersby took no notice of her.

We were in a convenience store parking lot, halfway between Tucker Peak and Brattleboro, both in separate cars—an arrangement I’d made with her by phone the day before. She was on her way to the condo, where her husband was waiting for her, and had just driven up from the city.

I let her stand there awkwardly for a moment, out of place, out of sorts, and at a loss to explain herself if anyone were to ask. I wanted her own discomfort to melt some of the ice for me before I introduced myself.

Finally, I swung out of the van I was in and motioned her over. She was so relieved she actually stumbled walking my way, looking left and right, presumably still waiting for a shout of recognition—a Jackie-O without foundation or credentials.

I slid open the back door and ushered her inside. It was the same van we’d used for our squad meeting a few nights before.

“Glad you could make it,” I said, following her in and slamming the door. The light inside was soft and calming, almost like a psychologist’s office.

She settled into one of the captain’s chairs, tore off her glasses, and glared at me. “I could make it? What choice did I have? I’m being blackmailed here.”

I handed her my identification, which she barely glanced at. “Mrs. Manning, you’re here of your own accord. The fact that you’re worried about your affair with Richie Lane has nothing to do with us.”

“As if you wouldn’t go straight to my husband with it.”

“We wouldn’t, in fact, although I do have to warn you, if any of this goes to trial and the prosecution deems it relevant to their case, you could be called to testify.”

She covered her forehead with one perfectly manicured hand. “Oh, my God.”

“I wouldn’t worry yet. It may not come to that.”

The hand dropped, she sighed theatrically, blinked several times as if to control tears I saw no sign of, and finally said, “It wasn’t an affair. We only met once.”

I suspected better, but I couldn’t resist. “A one-night stand?”

She stamped her foot. “Christ. It sounds so tacky. You have to understand, I was lonely, my husband and I have been having some problems. I felt my life was falling apart.”

I saw her give me the quickest of glances, as if to judge her performance by my reaction.

“Mrs. Manning, I don’t care. I just want to know what happened between you and Richie Lane.”

She looked faintly scandalized. “You
know
what happened. Isn’t that why we’re in this… thing.” She waved a hand around the van.

“I don’t mean the sex. I want to know what he said.”

She looked at me blankly. I began to think Richie had been underachieving when he put the moves on this one.

“What do you mean?”

I was tempted to tell her he’d not only used her to pay for his drinks and get a roll in the hay, but that he’d scoped out her house to be robbed a few days later, and that she’d been lucky he hadn’t threatened to tell her husband for a cash bonus. But I didn’t want her to have a fit and storm out the door, not yet.

“We want to get this man,” I said instead, “without involving you if possible. He’s dangerous, he has a record, and he’s involved in things that’ll put him in jail for a long time. You were very lucky—unless he chooses to come back, of course—but we don’t want some other woman to suffer at his hands.”

The veiled threat of his return—of which he’d shown no signs so far—did the trick. She sat forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees, and gave me the instantly sincere look. “What can I do to help?”

“He made small talk when he approached you at the nightclub. Did he tell you anything about himself that might tell us where to find him—some family names, where he was brought up, a favorite summer place, a restaurant he really likes—anything at all?”

She furrowed her brow, which by now only made me doubt her veracity. “It’s hard to remember. I wasn’t drinking much—I never do—but I was tired and hadn’t eaten all day, and I’d been ill the week before. My system hadn’t fully recovered, so I’m afraid I was caught unawares.”

“You were drunk, in other words.”

She frowned and stiffened slightly. I was happy I wasn’t Willy Kunkle right then. “No, I wasn’t drunk. I was overtired and my metabolism was off kilter. He took advantage of me.”

I tried again. “Do you remember anything he might have said?”

“He talked about Switzerland, how much more fun it was to ski there than here, how the Tyrol was like a magic kingdom. He did make it sound wonderful.”

I bit off telling her the Tyrol was not in Switzerland. “How ’bout something closer to home?”