The Ragman's Memory Read online

  I was rubbing my forehead. I had never been big on finances, figures, or even talk about banks. “So Ben Chambers got something for nothing. But he did assume twelve million dollars of debt. Why’s that such a great deal?”

  “Because he’ll sell it in the end,” Sheila said simply, “and possibly triple his current net worth. In this state, that would transform him from a local rich guy to a major player, especially if his brother keeps climbing the political ladder and ends up in Montpelier or Washington.”

  The ambition of the scheme filled the room. “All right,” I finally said, “but what laws have been broken? Or if nothing else, what rocks do we look under, besides sweating Harold Matson and hoping he fingers NeverTom?”

  “We’ve got some other options,” J.P. said with a small smile, “the best being the pollution in Keene.”

  I raised my eyebrows, and Sheila joined in. “J.P. gets full credit for this one—what caught us there was the timing. Not only was the mall about to open, and supply Gene Lacaille with a steady cash flow, but the B of B half of the funding was about to run out. The partner banks were just about to step up to the plate. Had that happened, the weight of the decision about which white knight to accept would have shifted from Matson to them. Plus, they might’ve put their investigators to work if they’d smelled something fishy. We called a couple of those banks yesterday, and asked them if they’d gotten sweaty palms at the time. The answer, of course, was no—since they hadn’t invested a nickel so far, they wouldn’t have cared if it had gone belly-up.”

  “The kicker,” J.P. continued, “is that the Keene mall closed down because someone made an anonymous phone call. No PCB would’ve been found otherwise, and the quantities the EPA has located are randomly and widely spaced.”

  “As if they’d been planted,” I suggested, caught by the mention of yet another signature phone call to the press.

  “Exactly.”

  “How easy is PCB to get?” I asked.

  “It’s all over the place,” J.P. answered. “Most of the industrial motor oil used fifteen years ago contained the stuff—that means almost every transformer or capacitor made from the early fifties to the late seventies. PCBs were added to oil as a stabilizer so it wouldn’t break down in violent temperature changes. Tons of your older motors are full of it—even some water well pumps, if you like irony. Not only that, but because of its very design, PCB is basically permanent—it doesn’t degrade. The only way to dispose of it is either through environmentally safe incineration or legally sanctioned storage, both of which are incredibly expensive. That’s what’s killing Lacaille right now.

  “To answer your question, the reason it’s so easy to get hold of is that lots of people—in electrical supplies, for example—have just opted to park whatever contaminated equipment they might have in a back room somewhere, and ignore disposing of it altogether. You could also find an old transformer and drain it, if push came to shove.”

  “How much are we talking about?” I asked, my imagination suddenly stimulated by this last statement.

  “Twenty-five gallons, tops. One man in a pickup, driving around that site for an hour, dropping a little here, a little there, would do the trick. PCB contamination is quantified at fifty parts per million. That’s not much. In fact, nowadays, you wouldn’t need any at all. PCB is such a buzzword that the phone call alone would’ve been enough to temporarily stop construction—of course, whoever did this wanted more than that.”

  “And the phone call was made how?” I asked.

  “To the Keene Sentinel, on the morning of January tenth.”

  My smile matched their own. “And if I’d just spent the evening creeping around spiking a building site, I’d make sure people knew about it first thing.”

  “Meaning the PCB was probably dumped the night of the ninth,”

  J.P. concluded. “And that if the call was made from here,” Sheila added, “it’ll appear on somebody’s long-distance phone bill.”

  “All right,” I said. “Get it all into a report, and tell Sammie about that date. She’s putting together a time line, and we can all cross our fingers that one of the alibis we have on file will fall apart right there.”

  They both stood and prepared to leave. “I also think,” I added, stopping them, “if you’re comfortable with the idea, that you ought to bring in Harold Matson for a talk—sweat him a little. If you do, make sure he knows he doesn’t have to say anything, and that he can have a lawyer present if he wants one. You’ll need to coordinate what time you can use the interview room with Sammie—she’s pulling in Eddy Knox this afternoon.”

  They both nodded, their faces reflecting their pleasure at the offer.

  Interviews of this importance were usually handled by the other members of the detective squad and rarely by anyone from Patrol. J.P. had always shied away from them in the past, preferring his world of scientific detachment. Reading his expression now, I was glad to be giving him another shot.

  · · ·

  Gail’s usually cool demeanor fractured at the notion. “Joe, for crying out loud.”

  “It’s got to be an old cat, or a dog—anything that’ll just sit there and be petted.”

  “Are you sure he saw anything?”

  “In my gut? Yes. But we’ve got to get it out of him.”

  “And my looking like his daughter and holding a cat will do that?”

  “No—he gets to hold the cat. We’ve got to win him over as much as possible—make him feel secure.”

  I could hear her switching the phone from one ear to the other. “Joe, I’d like to help, but there have got to be other dark-haired women with more time on their hands than me right now.”

  “I cleared it with Derby.”

  There was a stunned silence, so I added diplomatically, “He said it was entirely up to you, but that whatever you were doing could wait an hour or so.”

  “Oh, right,” she said sarcastically, “that’s not what I hear.”

  I kept quiet, trusting her to look fairly at the issue without further prodding.

  “When do you want this done?” she finally said wearily.

  “The orderly just called me from the home and said Bernie had pretty much settled down. His name’s Harry. He’ll be waiting for you on the second floor.”

  “And you just want me to be chummy, right? No pointed questions?”

  “Right—this is purely an icebreaker. The real meeting will be with the shrink later on, tomorrow if we’re lucky. If not, I might ask you to do it again, just to build on the relationship. Would that be all right?”

  She let out a short laugh. “Sure, what the hell? Maybe some time with an ancient nut case’ll give me a glimpse of things to come.”

  · · ·

  Harriet’s detached voice over the intercom brought my attention to one of the blinking lights on the phone. “Gunther,” I answered, punching the button.

  “It’s Sol,” he said breathlessly. “I lost Hennessy. He must’ve spotted me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the gas station where High meets Green. I followed him into the Chestnut Reservoir area, but I had to give him room so he wouldn’t—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Get back in your car, switch to the private channel, and stay put.”

  I ran out, forgetting my coat, and made for my own car as fast as the slippery ground allowed. I noticed for the first time that it must have been snowing for at least an hour—in big, fat, mesmerizing flakes.

  As soon as I started the car, I changed over to the closed radio frequency we didn’t share with the half-million scanner listeners I was convinced inhabited the area. “M-80 from O-3. Contact any units in the Birge Street area to be on the lookout for any vehicles registered to Paul Hennessy or Virginia Levasseur. Sol Stennis is standing by with a description of Hennessy’s car. Get hold of Ron for what Levasseur might be driving or call it up on the computer. No unit is to pursue. I just want their location reported if spotted.”


  I dropped the mike into my lap to better negotiate the corner onto Grove Street, heading toward Main, and hit the toggle to the blue emergency strobes hidden behind the car’s front grille. Without them, I knew the traffic would never let me onto Main, and I had a fair distance to cover fast.

  I waited until all my instructions had been forwarded before keying the mike again. “Sol? I’m heading for Birge via Canal. Take Union Street to close it up from the other end, all right?”

  “Copy.”

  Even with a fully equipped patrol car behind them, complete with howling siren, motorists are often at a loss about what to do, assuming they do anything at all. So my demure, silent, flashing blue grille beacons did more to frazzle my own nerves than they did to move any traffic. Nevertheless, mostly through reckless driving, exacerbated by the thickly falling snow, I managed to reach my end of Birge in about five minutes. During that time, the radio informed me that Ginny Levasseur was registered to a ’95 dark green Ford Explorer, Hennessy to a red, plow-equipped ’96 Ford 350 Custom pickup with dual rear wheels, and that nobody had seen either one since I’d raised the alarm.

  Birge Street was one of Brattleboro’s significant historical sites, although you had to know the history to believe it. Narrow, nondescript, and located in a ragged section of town, its south side was dominated by a row of ancient, narrow, slate-walled warehouses, each of which nosed into the curb—long, thin, and tall—like oil tankers at a dock. Once home to the Estey Organ Works, they were now the domain of an assortment of diverse businesses, including Carroll Construction, where Ginny Levasseur worked in Payables.

  I was here on the probability that if Hennessy had panicked as I hoped he had, his first order of business would be to warn his girlfriend. Now that I was parked at the end of the street, however, having sent the whole department into frantic motion, it suddenly occurred to me that the basis for my action stemmed from a gossiping, gum-snapping, post pubescent clerk I’d met for the first time this morning.

  I picked up the mike again and crossed my fingers that Nicole’s friend Nancy was a sound judge of character. “Sol, can you see the parking lot?”

  “Yeah, and the Explorer. Fancy car—has all the trimmings.”

  “It should, if we’re right about these two. M-80 from O-3, we’ve located the Explorer. All units can stand down and return to regular duties, but keep your eyes peeled for the pickup.”

  Dispatch responded in flat Chuck Yeager fashion, and I went back to watching the snow build up on the hood of my car.

  “Here she comes,” Sol said about five minutes later. “He must’ve called her, ’cause she’s moving fast, carrying a man’s briefcase.”

  “Which direction?”

  “Hang on. She’s still in the lot… Okay, she’s headed my way… I’m on her tail, going back toward Union Street.”

  “10-4. I’m right behind you,” I said, and began rolling down Birge to catch up.

  · · ·

  Whatever the pitch of her anxiety, Ginny Levasseur did not set us onto any high-speed chase. The combination of slippery unplowed roads and increasingly poor visibility made her move at an almost leisurely pace. The only indicators of her frame of mind were her car’s occasionally nervous sideslips as she overgunned the accelerator.

  Not that Sol and I were having an easy time of it. Driving rear-wheel-drive light sedans, we had our own work cut out for us, especially on Union Street’s cliff-like incline up to Western Avenue.

  Thereafter, however, things settled down. The Explorer took Western to the interstate on-ramp and headed north. The three of us, mixed in with dozens of other snow-blanketed cars, stuck to the right lane like timid dowagers, relying on the barely perceptible dark double ribbon of cleared asphalt before us for both safety and comfort. One mile south of Brattleboro’s last exit, I got back on the radio and told Dispatch to widen the alert for Hennessy’s truck to include the Vermont and New Hampshire State Police and the Windham County Sheriff ’s Department, and to focus on the area north of town.

  A few minutes later, after passing the exit, I was glad I’d invited more company.

  For most of its length within the state, I-91 parallels the Connecticut River, servicing Vermont and New Hampshire equally. Exits occur about every ten miles, and in between, the views to both east and west rival the prettiest in the country. Today, however, was like driving through a pale gray tunnel, the only things visible being the taillights ahead, and the only sense of motion the sound of the engine and the occasional small bump passing beneath the wheels. This spatial detachment was enhanced by the endless, hypnotizing wash of snowflakes against the windshield. For all intents a solid indicator of forward motion, this cone-shaped vortex never seemed to move, dulling the driver’s concentration, until his primary impulse was not to steer but to sit back, drop his hands from the wheel, and lose himself in the display. By the time we were approaching Exit 4 in Putney, I felt my eyes might never uncross again.

  “She’s getting off,” Sol reported, much to my relief, and I saw his right-hand flasher begin to wink.

  The Putney exit is located south of the village, so we followed Levasseur on a slow parade along the main street, still accompanied by several other cars. I wasn’t too worried she’d notice the same headlights had stuck with her all the way from Brattleboro—the nervous, halting way she drove told me she kept her eyes glued to the road—but I was beginning to worry where this little trip might be leading us. If she was going to meet Hennessy, I wanted to make sure I had enough support units to hem him in. But until I knew where that encounter was to take place—or even if it was—there was little I could do to coordinate with other agencies. In frustration, I gave Dispatch a geographical update instead and maintained my twenty feet off Sol Stennis’s barely visible bumper.

  We continued through town to the junction with the Westminster West Road, took it for a mile, and then veered left again onto West Hill Road, heading back toward Dummerston, between Putney and Brattleboro. We were starting to make a big circle. I began to reconsider Levasseur’s ignorance of our presence.

  “Sol? She given any sign she knows you’re there?”

  “I don’t know if she has yet, but she’s bound to soon. These roads are getting narrower and narrower, and we’re about all the traffic that’s left.”

  “When she takes another turn, pass by and double back. I’ll pick her up and you can follow me for a while.”

  “10-4.”

  The opportunity for this maneuver occurred ten minutes later, when the Explorer turned right onto the Putney Mountain Road—a one-lane dirt trail leading to the crest of a string of steep hills separating Putney from Brookline to the west. In the summertime this road went all the way through, giving both communities a significant shortcut to the thirty-minute run-around through Dummerston. But at this time of the year, it was a virtual dead end. Brookline did not plow its side of the mountain.

  Coming abreast of a house, I put on my turn signal, as if pulling into the driveway, and let the car ahead disappear into the veil of falling snow.

  “What’s up?” Sol immediately radioed.

  “I don’t want her to feel crowded. She’s got nowhere to go, and I can see her tracks in the snow. We can just follow them.” I raised Dispatch again and suggested that any additional units should approach from the Putney side.

  I moved slowly from then on, focusing on the twin furrows her tires had left behind, my only concern now that we would come upon them too fast and lose our element of surprise.

  I keyed the mike again. “M-80 from O-3. Does either subject own any known property on Putney Mountain?”

  I drove on for a quarter hour before Dispatch came back. “Negative.”

  The Putney Mountain Road is long, twisting, and steep, with deep ditches on both sides. It is also thinly populated and buried in the woods. The oddness of the situation, the growing sense of isolation, and the awareness of the tightly packed trees pressing in from either side of the car began to heighten my
anxiety. Something was going wrong—slowly but surely. In a snail-paced parody of some careening, madcap chase, I could sense we were losing the advantage we’d been counting on. The farther I drove, the more convinced I became that instead of following some unaware suspect, we were in fact heading for a destination solely designed for our benefit.

  Higher and higher we climbed, past most of the houses here, past Banning Road, the last feeder trail shy of the mountain’s top, and almost to where I knew the road was supposed to be blocked by a season’s worth of accumulated snow.

  That very thought jogged my memory, and I spoke into the radio. “Sol, doesn’t Hennessy’s truck have a snowplow on—”

  It was all I got out. Directly ahead of me, looming large and fast like the red-eyed monster from a nightmare, the rear end of the Explorer came barreling down upon me, its backup lights blazing. I had time only to throw my arms across my face before the hood of my car crumpled like an accordion and smashed the windshield, letting in a swirling white torrent of snow and shattered glass.

  23

  GAIL STOOD AT THE FOOT OF THE emergency room bed, shaking her head. “My God, Joe, you are the most accident-prone man I know. What were you doing running around the mountains in a blizzard?”

  I gave her a lopsided smile, tilting my head so the nurse could finish taping a dressing to my temple. “Hennessy took off, his girlfriend took off after him, and we took off after her. I didn’t realize till too late that he might’ve figured we’d follow her.”

  She came up alongside the bed and kissed me on the cheek. “How is he?” she asked the nurse.

  “Hard-headed. He has a bruise and a cut where he should have a concussion.” She finished her handiwork. “I’ll get some painkillers. Be right back.”

  Gail watched her leave and then examined me again, her concern more apparent now. “Joe, you’ve got to stop getting banged up like this. You’re not built for it anymore.”

  I saw the fear in her eyes, and recognized its source. We’d been through a lot in the last couple of years, traumatically and emotionally, and had survived it only by letting go of the independence we’d long thought was the strongest link between us. But the trade-off was what I saw in her now, and felt within myself—a more mindful acknowledgment of life’s transience, and a growing dread that what we’d built together, despite the effort, could be forever destroyed by mere chance.