Borderlines (12 page)

There is no local constabulary.” He smiled and waved that away. “I meant the State Police.” “So who are the bad guys in your world?” He didn’t duck it this time, nor did he bother to argue semantics. “The materialists.” “The head of General Motors or the woman buying groceries at the P&C?” “Both. They both contribute to the erosion of those parts of life that are healthy, benevolent, and in harmony with nature. They are the water that cuts away at the sandy bank of our existence, making our foothold on this planet increasingly precarious.” I leaned against the rail. From the edge of the deck, overlooking a good twenty foot drop, I felt like a bird at the top of the trees. I chose to avoid a philosophical debate, by which, I was quite sure, neither one of us would be satisfied. “Did the materialists burn your building?” His face clouded. “I don’t know. I have no reason to think so yet.

Do you?” “No. What about Bruce Wingate?” “Bruce Wingate has chosen not to look in the mirror. He blames us for his errors and attacks us for putting his wrongs right.” “But did he kill your people?” I could see he was wrestling with his composure. I had hit a button with Wingate’s name. “I’ve already answered that.” “I understand Fox was one of your lieutenants.” “We have no such ranking: We are as one. “You’re the leader.” He hesitated. “I am.” “You must need people to help you run things.” He made an impatient expression. “Very well, as you see things, was a lieutenant.

An Elder, perhaps, more accurately.” “One of many?” “Fox was a friend and an advisor. He was among a small group imilarly trusted individuals. We shall all miss him, as we shall miss people who perished with him.” His tone was final. I switched tack.

“What does Julie think about all this?” “Julie?” “Cute. Julie Wingate.”

I could just hear a small sigh. “I cannot speak for other members he clan.” “Can I speak to her, then?” “No.” Now it was my turn to smile.

“You want to expand on that a bit?” “No.” “You’d be good in court.” “I have been good in court.” I laughed at that, and he joined me after a moment’s hesitation.

ere was an appeal to this guy. He used the language well, he had e wit, and although dogmatic, he lacked that self-righteous tone always made me want to strangle the likes of Tammy and Jimmy kker. “I bet. I tell you what. Right now, we’ve got your man Fox ing head over heels downstairs, knocking over the stove, getting ned to death and killing the rest of the people in the building with smoke.” “So I gather.” “But I don’t swallow that.” He was staring out at the distant mountains, his hands resting on rail. He nodded. “All right.” “And you don’t swallow it either.” “I don’t?” “I’d like to know if I can have your cooperation on this investigan.

“I’ve always cooperated with the police.” “Why do I think we’re beginning to kid around a little here?” He turned toward me. “Lieutenant Gunther, we are not on the e side. You would like to believe that you are preserving peace and maintaining rationality in a society that occasionally runs amuck. In our view, you are the chief engineer in the belly of an aging, leaking tramp steamer caught in the middle of the storm that will mark your demise. You are not in control, your crew is not in control, and the ship in which you ride is doomed. The sea controls you, the winds control you, and when you die, you will rot, and Nature will repossess your carcass. Nature will out in the end, Lieutenant, regardless of how you might choose to see things. My cooperation with you and minions like you is pragmatic-the price of survival in this society. But do not think for a moment that I will allow you voluntarily to come among us and spread your diseased philosophies. You are the plague to us, the enforcer of the greedy, the corrupt, the polluter, and all those who would take this planet and reduce it to a poisonous wasteland. I will cooperate. I will not embrace.” I smiled and gave him a mock applause.

He turned away in disgust and took several steps-I wondered if he ever wore a cape; the gestures would have gone well with one. He turned back to face me. “I was hoping for better from you.” “From the enforcer of the greedy, the corrupt, and the polluter?” “You are being flip.

Surely that cannot be your intention.” “Look, I don’t really care what you and your little band believe in. You could spend all day worshipping cucumbers and painting yourselves green, for all I care.

That’s your right. I’m not here to swap philosophies or to measure up to your expectations. I’m here to investigate the deaths of five of your members.” “I said I’d cooperate.” “But only kind of.” “Lieutenant, I do not trust you or anyone else of your ilk. You may believe what you will about us-or me-but I have not reached my conclusions without serious contemplation. You do not impress me with your self-assessed role in all this; you have long been duped into thinking the way you do.

You are blind to reality, even as bright as you are, which is a shame.”

He began to walk purposefully back toward the house, clearly intending to show me the way out. “However, your societal placement allows you a certain power over me, which I must practically recognize and to which I will occasionally bow. But that’s it. Do not expect me to be awed by your office or to view your coming with anything other than dread.” We had reached the front door. He opened it wide to let me pass.

“I guess I’ll never get to call you Ted.” He gave me a disappointed teacher’s look again. “You may call me thing you please, as long as it isn’t libelous.” I shrugged and walked away. I’d liked him better when he was wing my socks off.

The room was stuffy-too small, with too many smokers. It rended me of Chief Brandt’s office in Brattleboro, where he and our James Dunn, dueled regularly with pipe and cigarettes as if the n who passed out last would win the debate. It was a contest I could ly rarely witness to the end. We were at the State Police barracks in St. Johnsbury, and the der of the band was Lieutenant Mel Hamilton, the local Bureau of iminal Investigation Chief. Sitting around in his small, bland office, th tiny rectangular windows irritatingly placed six feet up on the Il, were myself, Ron Potter, Dick LeMay, Steve Wirt, and a secrery. In addition, there was Anson “Apple” Appleby, from the Derby rracks upstate, and another plainclothesman whom I guessed was pple’s sidekick.

Apple, whom I knew from his earlier career as a eputy Sheriff in Windham County-where Brattleboro is located a twenty-year State Police veteran.

He had been called in to head e arson deaths investigation. Crofter Smith, the chilly BCI investigator LeMay told me was amilton’s Number One man, was not there. As yet, despite the pletha of questions we all had, the house burning was still being officially ted as “an accident pending the accumulation of further details.” Hamilton was obviously not a smoker, but polite-he didn’t ask yone to crush their butts. “I’m sorry we had to meet here. The nference room is tied up. Does everyone know everyone?” “Nope.” I pointed to the sidekick. “Sorry. Mike Churchill-Joe Gunther.” We waved feebly at each other.

Hamilton sat on the corner of his metal desk. He was a tall man with a pudgy middle, a pleasant, uninteresting face and, judging from zs office decorations, a stickler for keeping things clutter-free, neat, d tidy. To me, that was not necessarily a good sign.

“I’ve invited the SA and his investigator to sit in so they can get it straight from the horse’s mouth.” He smiled a tiny smile. “No offense.” The joke landed like a dud. Although he had Waterbury-based bosses who outranked him, as far as we were concerned, Lieutenant Hamilton was the top cop here-the State Police equivalent of Ron Potter.

It was he who would be most influential in deciding just how smoothly things traveled between the SA’s office and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. I was becoming worried he might be as guarded and rigid as Potter was skittish and uncertain. If he was, I’d be in a hell of a bind, dangling in between them.

“Dick, what’s the arson report?” LeMay shifted in his seat and cleared his throat, the playful, nonstop manner he’d displayed in the burned house reduced to an official drone. “No better than yesterday-can’t prove willful and malicious.

What we got so far from the lab shows nothing unusual: no accelerants, no misplaced matches or candles. From what we can tell, nothing of value was removed from the building prior, and nothing was there that looked out of place. There wasn’t much in there period, really.” He held out his hand and began counting off his fingers as he went.

“There was no sign of violence except the window, which we know about.

I didn’t get anything unusual out of the firefighters involved no suspicious smoke or flame color or noises. The spread, evolution, and speed of the fire were natural. The building didn’t have any wiring or gas lines or even plumbing, for that matter. The explosion that almost got Joe and his pal was superheated air caught in a natural dead airspace in the attic. Turns out they ventilated the wrong place when they cut through the roof, the attic was partitioned and they entered the space that was fire-free.” He put his hands down. “The building is owned by something called The Elephant Clan, which is a corporation listed under Edward Sarris’s name. The insurance was legit for the value of the house, and PILR didn’t come up with anything when I ran Sarris, Elephant, The Elephant Clan, the Natural Order, or Jesus Christ through their computer.” Hamilton’s face tightened slightly.

“Sorry. Anyway, the whole thing looks clean as a whistle.” “Thank you.” “What’s your gut reaction?” I asked. “I hate it.” Hamilton gave me a baleful look that wasn’t neat and tidy. But his tone was utterly neutral. “You hate what?” LeMay shifted again and flopped his hand over, palm up on his “Lot of things. The bullet, the locked door, the way that body’s g on the stove, among other things. Just doesn’t look real. I don’t w… I’m stuck with a lack of evidence, but I smell a rat.” Hamilton nodded.

“Okay. That’s good. Appleby?” The one man who wouldn’t call him Apple.

Still, I was pleased at way he’d accepted what LeMay had just said. I began to hope I was ing him short, maybe his mind wasn’t as restrained and unimaginaas his exterior had led me to believe.

“We’re not getting much help from the Order on this. Churchill ed to Sarris and asked him to get his people to open up. He said wasn’t in a position to do that, gave us some crap about their dom to interact or something.” Hamilton frowned again and glanced at Churchill, but Apple n’t even pause. These weren’t his barracks; he’d be back in Derby ore too long.

Besides, he was an old-time street cop, less inclined to id crude language, and considerably less concerned with impressing superiors.

“The local who pulled the alarm outside the firehouse said he woke hearing shouts in the street, looked out his window, and saw people ning around the house. Said it didn’t look like they were doing much d, and he hadn’t heard the siren yet, so he ran off to sound the alarm self.”

“Did he recognize any of the people in the street?” Hamilton ed.

“Nope. Says they all look the same to him and it was too far away way. His house is pretty far off.” “How involved was the house when he stuck his head out the dow?” “He said he saw flames downstairs; he’s a little vague about upirs.

Says he might have seen a flickering.” Apple opened a file he’d been holding in his lap. “I got the autopback from Hillstrom. The four upstairs died of smoke inhalation.

e guy downstairs-Fox is a different matter.” He nodded in May’s direction. “Dick’s gut is right on the money: Whatever the y died of, it sure as hell wasn’t smoke. Hillstrom says she has no ubts he was dead before he hit the stove. The fire did a pretty good on him; so did moving him from the house to Burlington, for that tter. His neck was pretty well burned through; lot of bone breakage e to heat-” “Any guesses what killed him?” Hamilton interrupted. “She can’t say for sure; she’s mostly ruling stuff out, like no bullet le, no depressed fractures, no poison in the system, no bloody knife found nearby, etc…. She did find something interesting, though-a feather in the neck.” Hamilton’s brow furrowed. “Where in the neck. I thought you said it was burned through?” Apple closed the file with a small slap.

“Well, that’s what makes it iffy. I mean, we’re talking about a piece of meat that’s been cooked right down to charcoal almost. There’s a photo in here, but you can’t tell squat from it, so I drove over to see it all for myself. What she’s got is all burned and microscopic, but she swears it’s the remnants of a feather. What she can’t swear to is whether it was on the guy when he burned, or in him.” “Like swallowed by him?” LeMay asked.

“Swallowed, inhaled… You know as much as I do. Maybe the guy ate raw, unplucked chickens or something. I hear they’re pretty strange.” LeMay spoke up. “We found a feather on the landing upstairs.”

There was a pause. Nobody apparently could make much of that.

The mention of the landing, however, made me think of the four other victims. “Dick, you said the fire smoldered for quite a while before it finally took off, but Rennie and I found the four victims upstairs all huddled together on one bed. Why didn’t they open the window if they smelled smoke? Why didn’t they shove a blanket under the door?” I hadn’t meant to put Dick LeMay on the spot. He shrugged and looked over to Appleby, who shook his head. “Beats me.” “Maybe they were all huddled on that bed for some other reason.

When we first went in, and I saw them under the blanket, I thought it was there to block off the smoke. But I’ve been thinking-the blanket was around them, not over their heads. They were all crunched up like they were afraid of something.” Apple frowned thoughtfully. “You’re saying they were frightened by something before the fire even started, something that may have distracted them from smelling the smoke before it was too late.” “Right,” I said. “Like when kids get scared of lightning in the middle of the night, or they hear something creaking outside. They get together; they huddle up. Maybe the woman was playing along, lending them comfort; or maybe she was scared, too.”