Archer Mayor - The Disposable Man

Which sometimes left me feeling a little odd. Briefly married, a widower for decades thereafter, I’d been a cop my whole adult life. I’d lived in this town since my mid-twenties, most of that time on the third floor of an ancient Victorian pile, in a cheap apartment remarkable only for the shabbiness of its furniture and its excessive assortment of books-my only recreation. The son of a farmer who’d fathered me late in life, I knew nothing of the financial achievements that had marked Gail’s past. The house opposite me was ours in name, and represented a move I’d made without regret, but I had yet to form an attachment to it. It remained the home a rich person would own, and within its embrace I always felt slightly like an intruder.

I restarted the engine and pulled into the driveway, the night abruptly torn away by the blinding glare of two motion-detector spotlights. Walking from the car to the kitchen door, fumbling with the several keys I needed to gain entry, I squinted up in vain at the stars for a final farewell, defeated by the artificial brightness. Perhaps that was another cause for my uneasiness with this house: it had been purchased after the rape, which had occurred in Gail’s own home, where she’d been happily living alone. This substitute, while fancier by far, was like the memorial of an event that would never fade from memory.

I found Gail in bed upstairs, surrounded by folders, legal briefs, and sheets of yellow notepaper. She didn’t usually work in bed, having an office down the hall, which prompted me to ask, “You okay?”

She caught my meaning immediately, holding out her arms for an embrace. “Yeah. Just feeling lonely.”

I kissed her and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Tough day? I noticed no one from your office showed up at the scene this morning.”

She lay back against the pillows. “It was a zoo. Court appearances all day, one secretary out sick, Carol still on vacation. Once Jack heard it was probably a dumping, he didn’t see much value in sending anyone out for a drive in the countryside. What was it like?”

I smiled appreciatively. Jack Derby was her boss, the Windham County State’s Attorney. A relative newcomer on our political landscape, he was a natural pragmatist. “He had it right-pretty day for it, though.”

She began collecting her homework, dropping it on the floor. “Who was it?”

I rose and removed my jacket and shoes. “Don’t know. That’s why I went up to Burlington. We don’t often come across bodies so totally stripped of identifiers-it was like he’d been dry-cleaned. Even his clothing labels were missing.”

“Was Hillstrom any help?” Gail asked, settling back on a now-clean bed, killing the reading light beside her. She was wearing pajamas, and her hair was spread out on the pillows behind her. The only remaining light came from a small lamp on the dresser, which threw soft shadows on her face.

“A friend of hers was. Pegged some tattoos the guy had on his toes as Russian.”

“That’s pretty exotic.” I returned to her side, sat back down, and took her hand in mine.

“That may be all it is. So far, none of it amounts to a nibble, and it might stay that way. Still, I asked them to keep the tattoos to themselves, just in case we need them later.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Well, it’s good to have you back. I missed you all day for some reason. More than usual.”

I let go of her hand, reached up and unbuttoned the top of her pajamas. A smile slowly spread across her face. Her leg pressed against mine and her hand slid onto my thigh. I went down to the next button, and the one below that, until I could peel back one-half of the top.

“Welcome home,” she murmured.

The shouted warning appeared from nowhere as soon as I touched the doorknob. “Don’t open that.”

I froze in the police department’s short hall-like entranceway, and stared at the seated man signaling me from behind the bulletproof glass lining one wall. I leaned toward the speaking hole cut into its middle. “What’s going on?”

Barry Givens, the graveyard-shift dispatcher, explained, “They put down a new floor last night. It’s still drying. You have to go around.”

I waved and retreated to the public corridor splitting the Municipal Building in two-along with the police department’s offices-and walked farther up to an unmarked door generally used by the patrol division. We were undergoing yet another renovation, this one to accommodate an updated dispatch center to handle the town’s police, fire, and EMS simultaneously. A good idea in itself, it also conformed with the state’s ongoing effort to join the 911 emergency response system, something Vermont had avoided until it had become virtually the sole holdout in the entire country. One of the nation’s least populated states, Vermont was also chronically broke, two factors that had put 911 on the back burner for too long.

I let myself in using a key, walked through the quiet Patrol Room, and crossed over to the chief’s corner office next door. It was before seven in the morning, my people were just beginning to show up, Patrol was closing out the shift, hunched over their keyboards, and Chief Tony Brandt was already at work, sitting at an enormous, rough-hewn, cubbyhole-equipped pine desk he’d built himself.

All was as usual.

Brandt was an unorthodox mixture of the old and the new. A lifelong cop, a New Englander born to small-town habits, he had nevertheless evolved into a modern administrator/politician. He ran the department from his oversized desk, from lunches with Brattleboro’s movers and shakers, from meetings in offices of people who saw government as children see playgrounds. He cajoled and threw hardballs when necessary and draped a protective mantle over the department and all its employees. The rank and file sold him short for this sometimes, saying he’d lost his touch for the street, but he got them new equipment when other town departments were left wanting, and he was receptive to suggestions when he thought they had merit. No longer a good ol’ boy, perhaps, he’d become a damn good boss instead.

He had also once been an inveterate pipe smoker, something both his doctor and new town regs had finally curtailed. Still, I’d gotten used to forever seeing him through an aromatic haze, and-his health notwithstanding-I begrudged the new appearance of his office nowadays, with its crystal-clear atmosphere.

He peered up at me as I entered, the early morning sun glinting off his gold-rimmed glasses. “How was Burlington?”

I waggled my hand back and forth equivocally. “So-so. The guy might be a Russian, he might have been killed one to three days ago-or three years ago and then put in a deep freeze-and he probably had a meal the same day he died.”

Tony stared at me for a moment. “That’s it?”

“Basically. He might’ve had the clap once, too. The Russian part comes from some Cyrillic letters he’s got tattooed on his toes. That and he had bad dental work.”

Tony stared thoughtfully at his desktop. I remained silent. “You having a briefing about this soon?” he finally asked.

I checked my watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

“If it’s all right, I’d like to sit in.”

There were six of us around the table: Tony, Ron, J.P., myself, and the two remaining members of my crew-Sammie Martens, my second-in-command, and Willy Kunkle.

I began by passing out a sheaf of papers. “These are copies of the ME’s preliminary report, which basically says what we saw yesterday is what we got. The addendum about the tattooed toes is mine. I asked Hillstrom to keep that part of the autopsy under wraps, just in case. One additional tidbit: the dead man was apparently once treated with tetracycline. Hillstrom’s Russian expert said that access to that stuff over there is pretty much a black-market deal, which implies this guy had those kinds of connections. Ron, you handled the inquiries from here. What’s the status so far?”