Archer Mayor - Bellows Falls

He did as I asked, tossing his white hair out of his face and staring at me belligerently. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

Jonathon Michael rounded the far corner of the distant barn and approached us. I waited until he was within earshot before answering. “We’re from the attorney general’s office, Peter, which is some of the worst news you’ve ever had.”

He gave us both a sneer. “I’m scared to death.”

“We know that. That’s why you’re here. ’Course, it’s not us you’re scared of. It’s Norm Bouch. And in your place, I would be, too.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Lenny Markham did,” I said. “So did Jasper Morgan. As you know, we found one, and Norm found the other. And Lenny’s not complaining. How long you been down on the farm, Peter? Twenty-four hours? Less? We got to you pretty quick, didn’t we? And we have no idea how close behind us Norm might be. We just know he’s out there, taking care of loose ends.”

Neal didn’t answer, but the anger had slipped from his face.

“I don’t think Mr. Neal’s interested,” Jonathon said softly. “We might as well pack up and leave-let this brave young man with his trademark looks fend for himself. Maybe he can dye his hair and go live in New York or something.”

I shrugged and pulled out my handcuff key. “Turn around.”

Peter twisted on the hay bale and I undid the cuffs, but he remained sitting there, meditatively rubbing his wrists. His expression reminded me of one of my uncles’, when he was deep in the middle of a late-night card game. “What do you have on Bouch?”

I feigned surprise. “You know him?”

“Up yours.”

“We’re taking his operation apart, piece by piece,” Jonathon answered.

I tried reading into Neal’s question, thinking he had something specific in mind, and remembering how J.P. Tyler had thought two people had moved Morgan’s corpse. “And we know you and he visited Jasper in that motel.”

“You have proof?”

He might as well have confessed. I smiled. “We have you.”

He stared at the ground for a moment, weighing the odds. “What would I get out of the deal?”

“Did you kill Jasper?” Jonathon asked.

“No, but I saw Norm do it.”

“Then,” I answered, “I’d recommend you get immunity. You’d also get to live.”

He paused a while longer. “You close to catching him?”

I understood his concern, having seen it mimicked by Arsene Gault. “We’ll put you under lock and key till we do-protective custody.”

He finally nodded and stood up. “Okay. It’s in the barn.”

He slid open the doors I’d had the deputy lock earlier and led us down the center feed passage. A couple of cows stood in their stanchions, noses shoved into troughs. Near the back wall was a wooden ladder leading up to the loft. Neal climbed it with practiced ease and returned us to the front of the barn, running a tall, dusty gauntlet of stacked bales. Just shy of the closed hay door, he stopped, reached above a thick overhead beam, and retrieved a manila envelope. He handed it to me without comment.

In a shaft of light from a small window tucked under the gable, I opened the envelope and peered inside. A nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol gleamed back at me.

“It’s that cop’s gun,” Neal explained. “I was supposed to get rid of it. It’s got Norm’s fingerprints on it.”

I was standing at the second-floor window of the State’s Attorney’s reception area, my hands in my pockets, looking at Brattleboro’s rush-hour traffic. I was lost in thought.

An arm slipped through mine. “How’re you doing?”

I looked down into Gail’s face. “Hey, there. I was just thinking I should be in an incredibly upbeat mood.”

“Which you’re not.”

“I’m not complaining. Kathy Bartlett’s down the hall cutting a deal with Gault’s lawyer so he’ll spill his guts about Norm Bouch. I got an eyewitness to Norm killing Jasper Morgan, a gun with his prints on it, and an electric blanket from Bouch’s apartment with chemical traces of Morgan’s blood. And Bartlett told me that at the inquest, Jan Bouch admitted the whole case against Brian Padget was a frame. She said Norm not only broke into Padget’s place, spiked his aftershave, and dropped that bag of coke into the toilet tank, but that he watered Brian’s gas tank so Emily Doyle would get sucked into the mess with him.”

“Sounds Christmas wrapped.”

“Except the box is empty.” I pointed with my chin at the passing traffic. “I saw Bouch early this morning-I’m pretty sure it was him. He was staking out Gault’s office, probably getting ready to knock him off. An hour ago, I heard they’d found the van he was driving, abandoned on some logging trail… It’s hard to celebrate when the bad guy is still out there.”

“If there’s one thing I’m learning in this job,” Gail said gently, “it’s that you have to settle for what you can get. Brian’s off the hook, and Jan and her kids are headed for a better life. Those are real accomplishments. Bouch will get what he deserves, even if you aren’t the one to give it to him. That’s the way it works out sometimes.”

I smiled and kissed her.

Kathy Bartlett stepped into the corridor and joined us, speaking in a theatrical whisper. “I can’t believe I’m locked in a room with two slimy chiselers, while you two are necking out here.”

“Things going well, are they?” I asked.

Her voice returned to normal. “Actually, not too bad. We’ve gone from where Gault was going to take the fifth, to where he’s going to give us everything we want.”

I thought of the comments I’d just exchanged with Gail. “In return for…?”

Bartlett smiled. “Use and derivative use immunity, meaning we not only can’t use his own testimony against him, we can’t use anything we discover as a result of that testimony.”

“So he walks away clean as a baby,” I said unhappily.

Bartlett shrugged. “True, but about as poor, too. Steve Kiley’ll love this part. It turns out we’re talking about a lot of property-one to one-and-a-half million dollars’ worth-including Norm’s apartment in Burlington, since he was renting from himself. He’s got apartments, houses, and small businesses all over the state. Once I channel it through federal forfeiture proceedings, we should all be a whole lot richer. It’s been a particular pleasure reminding Mr. Gault of that fact, and that we’ll be watching him like a hawk from now on.”

“So you’re all set?” I asked her.

“We’ll still do the inquest, to formalize everything, but it looks pretty solid.”

There was a small, awkward pause after she finished, all three of us thinking the same thing.

“Except for Norm,” Kathy finally added.

“Right,” I agreed.

I found Jonathon Michael back at the police department, working with Sammie and Ron Klesczewski to transfer all they had on the murders of Jasper Morgan and the mysterious skeleton to the AG’s office. Peter Neal had only known the youngster as Billy and claimed he’d been beaten to death by Morgan and Bouch together, an accusation we all knew would probably never make it to court.

We were about an hour into this process when the phone rang and Ron handed it to me.

It was Gail. “I just got a call from Women For Women. Jan Bouch has disappeared.”

“Damn.” I waved my hand to catch Jonathon’s attention.

“I’ll meet you there,” Gail said, and hung up before I could protest.

We drove over in silence, dreading that Norm Bouch had been at work. Gail was already in the parking lot, talking with Susan Raffner, the director and an old friend of hers.