The Ragman's Memory Read online

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  “So what role did Hennessy play in all this?” Gail asked, after I’d brought her up to date.

  I slowed for an upcoming curve in the road, the blue lights on top of the car flashing off the snowbanks on either side. I was leading a short caravan of vehicles, including an ambulance, to Sunset Lake Road in West Brattleboro, where Ben Chambers had told us Mary Wallis was being held captive in a trailer.

  “It was purely financial. He’d been skimming Carroll Construction for years, which Ben discovered early on. When Ben hatched his plan to take over the convention center project, he needed someone dependable to remove Gene Lacaille from the picture. Hennessy supplied the answer—the PCB—and even salted the Keene construction site. Problem was, Hennessy was promised a piece of the action once Ben sold the project a few years down the line, but Hennessy was a short-term thinker, and maybe a little nervous about Ben. He decided to milk the deal up front by embezzling from Carroll like never before. Ben got pissed. That was the fight Milo overheard, and which got him killed. Hennessy’s greed was why Ben killed Adele Sawyer—to get his partner back under control.”

  “And NeverTom knew nothing about any of it?” Gail asked skeptically.

  “According to Ben, he knew only the bare necessities. Tom applied the pressure to Eddy Knox, Ned Fallows, and the others, and he was fully aware of the squeeze being put on Harold Matson and the bank, but he had nothing to do with the killings and thought the PCBs that stopped Lacaille’s Keene project were just a stroke of good luck. We’ve had him picked up by the state police in a Montpelier hotel about an hour ago. Politicking to the end. They’ll be delivering him to us in the morning.”

  I slowed down, killed the blue lights, and got on the radio. We’d turned onto Sunset Lake Road and were now minutes away from the trailer Ben Chambers had told us about. “O-3 to all units. SRT assemble at the lead vehicle. All other units stand by for backup as assigned.”

  I saw the string of headlights behind me die as I pulled over. I stepped out onto the frozen dirt road, grateful for the cloud-covered moon and the night’s total stillness. Appearing from the gloom like menacing ghosts, the rest of the Special Reaction Team gathered around, dressed as I was in black watch caps, black BDUs—Battle Dress Uniforms—and Kevlar vests.

  I put my hand on Gail’s shoulder. “You wait here. Once we give the all-clear, come to the trailer. Okay?”

  She nodded, her eyes narrow with tension.

  Moving soundlessly in rubber-soled combat boots, I led the team up the road another quarter-mile. Just shy of the small clearing surrounding the trailer, whose anemically glowing windows we could just make out, I signaled the five people behind me to stop.

  Sammie came up and handed me an infrared night-vision monocular. I scanned the area slowly, studying every pale, green-tinged detail for any anomalies, any movements. There were none.

  “Okay,” I murmured. “It’s a go.”

  Sammie, Sol Stennis, Marshall Smith, and I crossed the thick snow to the front door, making no more noise than the creakings in the trees nearby. The two remaining members of the team spread out to cover the far corners. In the reflected amber glimmering from the small, grimy windows, we could just make out a trailer whose traveling days were over—overpatched, sagging, and surrounded by insulating hay bales. The wispy smoke of a wood stove escaped into the night air from a crooked metal chimney. At the rear of the rig, plywood panels had been bolted to the windows of the room we’d been told was Mary Wallis’s prison.

  Marshall Smith and I positioned ourselves to each side of the rickety door, located to the right of the long wall, while Sammie and Sol stood slightly back and to the center. All of us except Marshall were armed with thirteen-inch shotguns with powerful flashlights strapped to their barrels. Marshall had a pry bar which he quietly fitted between the door and the jamb. From inside, all we could hear were the muffled exclamations of a TV set.

  At a nod from me, Marshall threw his weight against the pry bar, springing the door open. Following his own momentum, he fell away from the opening, allowing me and the two others to pour past him, while he circled around to bring up the rear, a pistol now in hand.

  I went straight across the narrow space to the opposite wall, quickly checking to the right where there was only an empty sofa and table. Sammie and Sol came in covering the left, from where we’d heard the TV, she in a crouch, and he standing.

  “Don’t move—Police,” we all shouted simultaneously.

  Before us, sitting in matching upholstered rocking chairs, their mouths open in astonishment, were an elderly couple, their eyes as wide as the three shotgun barrels facing them.

  “Tim and Bernice Walters,” I said, “you’re under arrest. Is there anyone here besides the woman you’re holding in back?”

  Speechless, both of them shook their heads.

  Sammie and Marshall moved farther into the trailer, checking all the doors, including the only locked one at the end of the narrow hallway. “Clear,” she reported. Our assault had taken about eight seconds.

  I nodded to Sol, who pulled his radio from his web belt and forwarded the all-clear to the others. Sammie had Tim and Bernice Walters sit down on the floor next to each other and cuffed their hands behind their backs.

  Gail arrived moments later, and I escorted her down the narrow hall, leaving Sammie to read from her Miranda card.

  “You ready?” I asked her.

  “Go on,” she urged.

  I worked the heavy lock and pulled the door open. It was dark inside and utterly airless.

  “Mary?” Gail asked tentatively, squinting to see better.

  “Who’s there?” came the tired, confused reply.

  A light flashed on, and Mary Wallis was revealed sitting up in bed, one hand on a small lamp, the other shielding her eyes. She looked dirty, haggard, and weak. “Gail?” she said incredulously.

  Gail crossed the room and held her in her arms. I faded back to the front room. The old couple were being led outside by two patrolmen. Sammie glanced at me expectantly.

  “She looks like hell,” I told her, “but she’s alive. Might as well bring up the ambulance.”

  · · ·

  The next morning was overcast, the sky as gray as the now-gritty snow. There was a dampness to the cold, making it difficult to ward off. After the satisfaction of escorting Mary Wallis to the hospital and from there to her mother’s bedside, I’d returned to the office to bring the paperwork up to speed. What we’d stopped Ben Chambers from burning in his office had amounted to a gold mine of evidence against both him and his brother.

  In addition, without fanfare or drama, Paul Hennessy had turned himself in at the dispatch window three hours earlier, having heard of our arrests on the radio—a special irony, I thought, considering how much I’d relied on the newspaper. Now, Stanley Katz’s “exclusive” on the case’s wrap-up would trail Ted McDonald’s reports by a full day. Sweet revenge for Ted, not that Katz had much to complain about—Hennessy would produce enough copy to keep Katz content for weeks.

  Maxine Paroddy’s voice came over the intercom. “Lieutenant? State Police just called—they’re about five minutes out.”

  I rose and grabbed my coat. “Willy?” I shouted across the squad room, “want to help with the honors?”

  For once, there was no grousing. Kunkle appeared from around the corner, dressed for the weather. I wondered how long he’d been waiting. Although neither one of us had ever referred to it, I knew how NeverTom’s reference to Willy as a cripple had hurt, which was precisely why I’d asked for him now.

  We went outside and stood around the parking lot for a few minutes. Willy had slept no more than I had and was in no mood for conversation. Eventually, the crunching of tires on old ice announced the arrival of the dark green state police cruiser. We waited for the car to roll to a stop, and then Willy bent forward to open the back door.

  Thomas Chambers sat in the rear, his eyes fixed straight ahead, his cuffed hands
nestled in his lap. Two troopers emerged from the front.

  “Quiet ride?” I asked the driver.

  “Yeah—snowing a little up north.”

  “Coffee’s fresh inside.”

  Willy reached into the car and grabbed NeverTom’s arm. Chambers jerked it away angrily. “Get your hands off me.”

  Willy laughed and dragged Chambers completely out of the car, landing him on his knees. “Not this time, asshole.” With his one good arm, he lifted the other man up as if he weighed no more than a child. The two troopers looked slightly alarmed.

  “Not to worry,” I muttered. “He had it coming.”

  The driver nodded and went around the car to park it properly, while his companion joined us as we walked toward the building.

  It was the slight crackle of ice underfoot that caught my attention. Otherwise, the dark shadow appeared from around the building’s edge with all the sound of a gentle breeze. I glanced over casually, expecting to see one of our officers walking toward the parked cruisers. Instead, it was Ned Fallows who stood there, legs slightly apart, a semiautomatic pistol held in both hands. Willy Kunkle, oblivious to all but his prisoner, was directly between Fallows and his target.

  “Gun,” I shouted, diving in front of Chambers and pushing Willy hard in the chest with one hand.

  The explosion went off just as I hit the icy ground, Willy’s startled cry still in my ears. I heard the trooper who’d been walking behind us shout, “Freeze,” and looked up to see Fallows standing, hands high in the air, the pistol at his feet. I rolled over to check the damage he’d done. Willy was struggling to get up. Tom Chambers lay spread-eagled on his back, motionless.

  Willy’s face was twisted with humiliation and outrage. He looked from Fallows to Chambers’s prone body. “God damn it,” he yelled at me, “I could’ve handled it. What the fuck did you push me for?”

  A pool of blood was rapidly expanding from the gaping wound in Chambers’s head. I slowly got to my feet and walked tiredly over to Ned Fallows, taking him by the arm. I looked him in the face for a moment, studying its familiar, haggard lines. “You did this because of what I told you, didn’t you?”

  His eyes flickered to mine for a moment, but thankfully, he didn’t answer.

  · · ·

  I sat exhausted in my office, my head throbbing. Instead of the elation I’d hungered for, especially with Mary Wallis being found alive, all I felt was sorrow and loss and depression. The motivations I’d recently witnessed—Ben Chambers and his amoral brother; Paul Hennessy and his beguilingly dissolute girlfriend; Ned Fallows, whose life of good work had grown twisted and bitter with pride—had shaken my trust in human nature. I thought of their victims—Shawna, Milo, Mary Wallis, Adele Sawyer, even poor old Bernie, who’d been forced to revisit the battlefield that had scarred him—and wondered how it was that they should have been singled out for such wanton destruction. It seemed so carelessly capricious. The irony was that NeverTom—who’d killed no one—had wound up the victim of his own devices.

  Unfortunately, that gave me no solace. Too much damage lay in the way.

  “Joe?”

  I looked up and saw Gail standing in the doorway, the smile on her face oddly fitting the tears in her eyes. We silently embraced, lost in each other’s arms—the mutual harbor we’d nurtured over the years.

  She knew of my troubles as if by telepathy, and after a few moments unhooked my coat from the back of the door and said, “Let’s go home.”

  “It’s the middle of the day.”

  “And other people can finish it—for both of us.”

  I sighed at the sense of relief that gave me and let her slip the coat over my shoulders.

  Outside, I held open my passenger door for her and circled around to the other side. As I slid in behind the wheel, she handed me a large sheet of paper. “This was on the seat. What is it?”

  I held it up. It was a beautifully rendered pencil sketch of the Skyview Nursing Home, huddled against a looming black mass of hills, vanishing into a star-packed sky. “I think it’s a gift.”

  “Anyone I should worry about?” she asked with a smile.

  I laughed and carefully placed the picture on the back seat. “No… Not in the least.”

  Excerpt

  If you enjoyed The Ragman’s Memory, look for Bellows Falls, the eighth in the Joe Gunther series.

  Bellows Falls

  FROM THE SIDEWALK, Burlington’s Flynn Theatre on Main Street is at best unprepossessing. One-and-a-half stories high, it is by all appearances solid and well-built, with a white stone facade demurely but elegantly carved with its name, but in that it is no different from an old bank building or a pretentious post office. The striking thing about it is the marquee crowning its bank of front doors like a jester’s gaudy hat. Multi-hued, ornate, and speckled with hundreds of flashing colored bulbs, at night it draws in theatergoers like moths to a flame.

  It was not at night that we gathered under that marquee, however, but shortly before ten o’clock the next morning, the time specified by Lenny Markham for his meeting with Duncan Fasca. We’d never considered making this a one-on-one affair, of course, but with the discovery of Jasper’s body, and of what we were presuming was one of his runners, our wariness of Lenny’s role had ratcheted up several notches. No longer were we content with merely stacking the meeting in our favor numerically. Now we were going to stake out the whole building, curious to learn what Lenny might do following our talk.

  Unfortunately, our team had not grown much in size, the Burlington PD not being in a position to supply us reinforcements for a case they didn’t own. Our adjusted plan of attack, therefore, was for Fasca and me to meet with Lenny, while Audrey McGowen, Jonathon, and a single plainclothes officer Audrey had begged from Patrol kept watch on the various exits around the building. We all had portable radios, turned off until needed so Lenny wouldn’t be spooked by an inadvertent transmission.

  Following some last minute detailing, therefore, Duncan Fasca and I separated from the others and entered the lobby. Like the exterior, it was tastefully low-key—terrazzo floor tiles, antique marble half walls, niched display cases, alternating with mirrors and gentle lighting. The farther we walked, the more that lighting lit the way, allowing for an elegant transition from the glare off the sidewalk. The first sign that the theater’s muted facade was in fact a charade surfaced as we passed from the lobby to the foyer. It soared overhead well in excess of two stories, dwarfing us physically, and injecting an element of wonder. The back of the building was not only taller than its entrance, but being sited on the slope of a hill, extended downward as well.

  The effect of this architectural slyness reached completion upon entering the performance hall itself. Even warned of something grand by the foyer’s sneak preview, I was totally unprepared for the enormity of what we encountered. Huge, dark, cavernous, and as resonant as a tomb, the hall seemed more grotto than man-made structure. The orchestra seats swept down and away toward the enormous distant stage, taking full advantage of the site’s natural incline, while the walls, ornate in lavish Art-Deco, hurtled skyward to meet in an elaborate, graceful curved ceiling, some forty feet above our heads. It had been like entering a modest house, discovering an impressive living room, and then proceeding into a cathedral at the rear. I was so taken with the effect that despite our reason for being here, I tilted back my head, let out a quiet laugh, and said, “Jesus. This is wonderful.”

  Fasca glanced at the ceiling, muttered, “Yeah, I guess,” and pointed to a staircase along the side wall. “Let’s head up and see if we can find him.”

  We didn’t look far. As we reached the mezzanine, we were stopped by a teenager lounging by the guardrail, watching some 80 musicians tuning their instruments.

  “You want to see Lenny?” the boy asked, visibly uncomfortable with the setting, obviously not an employee.

  “Yeah,” Fasca answered.

  “Follow me.”

  He led us past an “employees
only” sign up another set of stairs, to a landing with a steel ladder leading to a small, square opening some eight feet off the ground. “He’s up there on the grid. Make sure you don’t got nothin’ in your pockets that’ll fall out—pens, pads, stuff like that.”

  The boy stood there, waiting for us to go on without him. Fasca hesitated, struck as I’d been by the meaning behind his instructions, remembering what Audrey had said about it being no place for those with vertigo.

  “Where will he be?” Fasca finally asked.

  “Over the stage. I gotta go.” The boy bolted downstairs and vanished.

  “This setup bother you?” I asked Fasca, “knowing Lenny?”

  He shrugged and grabbed the first rung of the ladder. “He’s used rug rats before.”

  Beyond the square hole at the top of the ladder, there was a tiny landing, a flight of three steps, and a broad wooden catwalk running from one side of the theater to the other, high above the mezzanine, and parallel to the stage. Not that any of this was clearly visible. The lighting was like the dead of night, with only occasional glimmers casting the vaguest of shadows.

  I pulled a penlight from my pocket, having ignored the boy’s warning, and turned it on.

  We were enmeshed in a spider’s web of enormous steel girders, crisscrossing the air space between the roof overhead and the ceiling I’d admired from below. Shooting off from our catwalk were two others, each at a ninety-degree angle, leading to the grid over the stage. Killing my penlight for a moment, I could see the barest outline of a man, far in the distance, moving around a large, dark piece of equipment.

  “I think that’s him,” Fasca muttered and headed gingerly in that direction, as conscious as I was that a fall off the narrow plank bridge would take us right through the ceiling to the seats far below. None of the catwalks had railings.