Archer Mayor - St. Albans Fire

“That was it?” Joe asked. “How big was the fine?”

“Not huge, and Billy’s got the money. He’s doing well. He takes advantage of every subsidy, every handout, and every financial incentive that comes down the pike, plus he sells off overpriced parcels of land to flatlanders looking for a piece of God’s country. He’s not a bad farmer, truth be told, but he’s a little shy on scruples.”

“He ever make an offer for your place?”

“No. If anything, he wants to get out.”

Gunther pulled on an earlobe, reviewing what he’d just heard. “You said this was another run-in. There were others?”

Cutts waved his hand tiredly. “All the time. Something like twenty years ago I sold Billy a truck that seized two months after he bought it, probably because he didn’t change the oil. He said I knew it was a lemon and that I should buy it back. I refused, and that was the start of it. He’s hated me ever since.”

“Has it escalated over time?” Joe asked.

Calvin shook his head. “Nope. It’s always piddly stuff, and it always comes up when he’s got nothing better to do.”

There was a knock on the door, and Jeff Padgett poked his head in. “Dad? The minister’s here. He was wondering if you’d like to see him.”

Calvin Cutts looked inquiringly at Joe, who immediately nodded. “Fine with me, Cal. I was pretty much done anyhow. You go ahead.”

Joe followed them both back into the front hall and, from there, saw a somber-suited man standing with Marie in the kitchen, speaking quietly. She looked thin and insubstantial next to him, her bony arms crossed tightly, her eyes glued to the floor. Joe couldn’t tell from this distance whether she was benefiting from the man’s words or simply waiting till he was done before tearing his head off. Her body language looked suitable for either option. For both their sakes, Joe wished for the former.

Without further ceremony, he let himself out, pausing on the front porch alongside the deputy sheriff standing guard-the same one he’d encouraged earlier to get a cup of coffee against the cold.

“Everything okay in there?” the man asked.

Surreptitiously, Joe noticed his name tag said “Davis.” “As okay as can be. Pretty hard knock to take. You find that coffee?”

The man smiled and nodded. “You bet. Felt good all the way down. ’Preciate it.”

“No problem.” Joe figured him to be in his mid-fifties, probably a lifelong cop like himself, but content to stay local and work the same patch he’d been born on. The way he was built conjured up a duffel bag wrapped in a coat.

“Guess you know the folks around here pretty well,” Joe suggested.

Davis chuckled. “If I don’t, I never will. The old-timers, that is. Lot of people coming in from away. Don’t know them so well.”

“Anything you can tell me about the Cuttses?”

The deputy made a face. “Not much to tell. They keep to themselves, like most farmers. None of them has any time to do much else.”

“No run-ins with you guys?”

Davis smiled. “Had a few with Jeff before he straightened out. That boy could drive like nobody I know. Old Calvin here saved his butt, sure as hell. But that’s ancient history-maybe fifteen years back, now.”

“What about Bobby?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Straight arrow. The girlfriend’s bad news, but I figured that was just a short walk on the wild side. Marie would’ve seen to that soon enough.”

Joe tilted his chin in the direction of the barn’s blackened skeleton. “Could she or her playmates have had anything to do with this?”

Davis mulled that over. “Anything’s possible, I guess, but nothing rings a bell. I’m talking sex, drugs, and booze with them. Nothing more violent than a domestic now and then-maybe disturbing the peace on a Friday night. The kind of stuff Jeff was getting into before Cal got hold of him. But Bobby wasn’t doin’ any of that. He just had the hots for Marianne. He didn’t hang with her crowd.” He gave a frown. “I can’t say I see this being connected to them. You could prove me a liar, though. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Joe patted his shoulder once before stepping off the porch onto the hard-packed snow. “Well, let’s hope we get lucky. I hate for this to drag on for too long.”

“Yeah,” Davis agreed. “Especially when they begin to pile up. People start getting antsy.”

Joe fixed him with a stare. “Pile up? What do you mean?”

The deputy looked surprised. “Barn fires. This is the third one in three weeks. You didn’t know?”

Joe found Jonathon Michael in the back of the crime lab van, labeling one of the shiny paint cans he used to collect evidence.

“How’s progress?” he asked, propping one foot up on the tailstep.

Michael looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Joe. Slow, but we’re gainin’. How ’bout you? You talk to the family?”

“Most of them. The daughter’s asleep. I also got a little local background from the deputy guarding the front door.”

The other man laughed. “Yeah-I saw him. Big as a bear.”

“Right,” Joe agreed affably, adding, “He told me this is the third barn fire in as many weeks.”

Michael paused to reflect, but wasn’t as surprised as Joe was expecting. “I know of two, counting this one, but that’s it.”

Joe worked to hide his irritation. “You knew about another one? Why didn’t you mention it?”

Jonathon straightened to work out a kink in his back. “It was an accidental electrical fire. Took out the milk room and half the stable. The farmer admitted to repairing an extension cord with duct tape. It overheated, and poof. ” He snapped his fingers.

“You were the investigator?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was pretty straightforward.”

“How come you don’t know about the third one?”

Jonathon smiled. “This is my first day back on the job. What with Diane’s surgery and all, I decided to take two weeks’ accrued time. One of the other guys must’ve handled it. I didn’t know about it because I haven’t even been to the office yet. I got paged for this at home at the crack of dawn.”

“Who should we talk to?” Joe asked, mollified. “Seems like we ought to compare notes at least.”

“Oh, yeah,” he readily agreed. “For sure. Tim Shafer’s the one you want. He was covering for me out of St. Johnsbury.”

St. Johnsbury was in the opposite corner of the state, in what was referred to as Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Shafer being based there and yet having covered a fire near St. Albans was a perfect demonstration of both the state’s small size and how a handful of people had to cover vast portions of it.

“I can bring Muhammad to the mountain and ask him to meet us over here with whatever he has on file,” Michael continued. “He loves getting out of the office.”

Tim Shafer was not a big fan of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. An ex-trooper like so many of his new colleagues, he’d made the switch for purely practical reasons. As he saw it, the Vermont State Police’s own investigative unit, the BCI, had been robbed of its eminence, the VSP brass had sold the agency out politically, and the troopers’ union had been either asleep at the wheel or in cahoots with someone.

His line of reasoning differed depending on who was listening, but the final leap remained the same: Shafer had joined the VBI because no one listed above had protected him from it.

He still had all his benefits, the same pay, and seniority, and was now lined up for a better pension. He also had the same statewide jurisdictional reach as before, if not slightly better, and from within a leaner, less bureaucratic, more autonomous organization. Nevertheless, his heart remained with the Green and the Gold of the state police, even as-it was hard to deny-he’d clearly thrown them over.