Archer Mayor - Three Can Keep a Secret

She then admitted tiredly, “You have to hand it to ’em. Scott and his cronies willfully risked looking bad, so that Democrats could end up mauling each other in a blame-game. And of course, they’ll hide behind the claim that LeMieur does have enough cash available-since no one can say, one way or the other-and was simply refused out of political spite. A pretty brilliant ploy in a state where the most conservative wing of the Republican Party has little to lose.”

Alice Drim raised her hand hesitantly.

“Yes, Alice?” Gail asked, unintentionally sounding like an interrupted schoolmarm.

“What does all this mean to us?”

“It means that if they’ve done their homework, I may become the first one-term governor in this state since Ray Keyser got booted out by Phil Hoff in the early ’60s.”

There was an audible shifting of bodies in the room as everyone adapted to her unexpected bluntness.

“I still don’t understand,” Alice persisted. “We were voted in because of our independence from this kind of trickery. Why wouldn’t our bringing it to light simply make it go away?”

Gail smiled sadly. “If it were only that easy.”

“You were just supposed to ignore an offer to lighten the burden on all those people out there?” Alice pressed on, her voice rising, gesturing out the window.

Gail quickly agreed with her. “It’s an excellent point, and it’ll be exactly what we’re going to say. Rob and I have been working out the details of our own statement, to be released within the hour.” She held up her hands, a preacher at her own hoped-for revival. “Look, folks, I’m not about to lie down and die because of this. I only wanted to tell you about it so you wouldn’t be blindsided when you heard it in the news. We’ve been screwed by some cynical assholes. And just as we taught them how idealism and virtue and independence can win an election, we’ll show them how this kind of totally fabricated bullshit can’t be pulled on an educated electorate.”

Rob Perkins watched Gail’s small audience, seeing a rebirth of optimism and determination. He didn’t fault any of them for their willingness to fight back. It was Gail’s mention of an educated electorate that had him worried. He’d been in the game for a long time, and never once had he been impressed by the clear-thinking and intellectual dispassion of the average voter. They did what they did for the damnedest of reasons, sometimes, but rarely because they’d been moved by a rational, cool-headed explanation of the facts.

He did agree with his governor on one thing, though: It was about to be one hell of a fight.

* * *

Joe was on his cell phone as he drove, having already lost his connection twice. Phone carriers protested that the mountains made coverage a bigger-than-average challenge in Vermont. But Joe knew too well that local resistance to the unsightly towers was as much an obstacle as the topography. And in his old traditionalist’s heart-despite inconveniences like the one dogging him now-he couldn’t say that he, too, didn’t prefer a pristine view over ready access to a phone signal.

He redialed Spinney and picked up where he’d left off. “I didn’t get a plate number. The busybody who told me about the car didn’t know it. It’s got to be the last one Barb Barber had before the Alzheimer’s took her off the road. Just have DMV dig it out of their computer files.”

“You want that BOL to go out to surrounding states, boss?” Lester asked.

“It can’t hurt,” Joe said. “But my instinct tells me this car is still in Vermont. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but it’s personal, and it goes back decades-to when Carolyn Barber was alive and well and in the middle of something I don’t think she understood. It’s my bet that when Irene knocked out the power at the hospital and allowed Carolyn to wander free, she became the first domino in a line of at least three dead people by now, and maybe more.”

“Okay,” Lester said. “I’ll get this out as soon as we hang up. Before you go, though, we got a hit on Travis Reynolds’s cell phone records.”

Joe paused to concentrate on passing an eighteen-wheeler, conscious of how talking on a phone undermines a driver’s attention. “You find out who hired him to ransack Marshall’s apartment?” he asked.

“Indirectly,” Lester explained. “The number traced back to a Dolores Oetjen, who lives in Calais, north of Montpelier. She makes no sense to me at all right now-sells real estate, no record, no involvements that I could find with any of our known players-but I definitely want to grill her about this. She’s either a wild card bad guy; has a pal who used her phone without her knowledge; or is the patsy of somebody sophisticated enough to have randomly routed a phone call through her number to put us off the scent.”

“Sounds like fiction,” Joe muttered.

“Still possible, though,” Spinney attested, who knew much more about such things than Joe ever wanted to.

“All right,” Joe said. “Chase her down. And bring someone with you. I’m getting an increasingly creepy sense about this case.”

“Got it, boss. I’ll grab Sammie. Willy’s gone AWOL again.”

* * *

Willy pulled over opposite the same address he’d visited earlier, in Burlington’s North End.

“You good?” he asked his passenger.

Nate Rozanski didn’t answer. He remained slumped in his seat, his hands in his lap, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Nate,” Willy spoke to him sharply.

He slowly turned his head.

Willy gestured to the warehouse across the street. “The brother you killed is in there. He’s alive if not well. He’s got a mangled arm like mine. He’s alone and cut off and heading nowhere fast, all because of you.”

Nate’s mouth tightened, and his eyes dropped to the console between them.

Willy smacked him in the chest with the back of his right hand, causing Nate to look up, startled and with a flicker of anger.

“Pissed you off a little there, didn’t I?” Willy challenged him. “Good. Fine. Well, turn some of that on yourself, for once. Instead of wallowing in guilt, get mad at yourself; get mad at your loser father; get mad at what you did and start fixing it. How many people have a chance to put things right? For years, you’ve been holed up with your self-pity for company. Well, guess what, you sorry woodchuck, you didn’t do it. You fucked up, but you didn’t kill him.”

He reached out suddenly and cupped Nate by the back of the neck, forcing their faces to be inches apart. “Get your ass in there, Nate. Fix this, ” he said.

Nate kept the gaze, absorbing the message, and then slowly nodded. “Who are you?” he asked wonderingly.

Willy felt a surge of emotion overtake him, welling up and prickling the backs of his eyes, born of a lifetime of asking himself the same question.

But he wasn’t going to let this idiot have the satisfaction.

“I’m the guy who’s gonna kill you if you don’t get out of my car.”

Nate gave him a small smile, and did as he’d been told.

* * *

Joe parked before a building that, from the outside, looked like a custom-made incubator for worker dysfunction. It was old, single-story, windowless, and located in a commercial no-man’s-land between Montpelier and Barre. It reminded him of a huge grave marker, lying flat on the ground.

He found the front door, looking lost and hopeless against the blank slab of the wall surrounding it, and entered to discover a receptionist behind a thick, scratched, cloudy Plexiglas partition with a large hole in its middle-through which, Joe thought disjointedly, anyone could have extended a hand holding a gun.

“Joe Gunther to see Jodi Hamer,” he announced.