FrostLine (30 page)

Chapter 29

Josh Wiggens was probably hoisting a celebratory Scotch.

Tim might not understand warriors, but the CIA man did, and I was willing to bet blood that he had arranged the “homeless vet buddy.” Set up to seize weapons, the old farmer would fight until the troopers gunned him down and ended, forever, the investigation that would expose Dicky Butler's murderer.

But Josh was in for a big surprise.

He hadn't heard Mr. Butler promise to blow Fox Trot off Morris Mountain.

And the old farmer could do it, or die trying. Thirty years since Special Forces didn't matter. More dangerous than creaky fighting skills was attitude.

Obstacles were opportunities.

To win was to survive.

Win by any means.

Thank God he had told me. It gave me a brief leg up over the troopers. Which made me the only person in Newbury with a hope in hell of saving the poor lunatic.

I threw gloves and a wire cutter into the car. Ollie Moody's gray cruiser screeched into the driveway, blocking me.

“You seen Butler?”

“I just got here.”

A rusty pickup roared in behind him, decanting a grizzled old woody, Frank LaFrance—father of Steve of failed-first-selectman-challenger fame—and Frank's eager bloodhound, Ike, who, hired out to the troopers, would follow DaNang's scent like an interstate highway.

“You don't mind if we search the house,” said Ollie, clearly intending to search it and give Ike a sniff whether I minded or not.

“Move your vehicles first, I'm going to work.”

“You sit tight.”

Ollie ran in the kitchen door, trailed by the tracker and his dog. My father used to call Frank “Guns and Dogs” for proclaiming at town meetings, “What this country needs is more guns and dogs.” Frank was in his glory today, Ike slathering on the trail, gun rack loaded for bear.

I drove across my lawn and through a perennial border.

***

Shortcuts up Morris Mountain didn't help. The troopers had beat me to the Butler place anyway. A blue and yellow Crown Victoria straddled the driveway. The uniformed road cop sheltered behind it with a shotgun looked young and nervous. I didn't even slow down enough to make him wave me off, but kept going up the mountain, glimpsing, as I passed, another car and cop stationed at the house. But if they thought they had him covered, they were wrong.

Resident troopers like Ollie never would have made the mistake. But Plainfield Barracks, stretched thin, had been reinforced by suburban-bred road cops who couldn't know that farmers with winter time on their hands built roads. Three generations of Butlers had riddled their sprawling property with farm and lumber tracks, which were hidden in late summer by sumac and goldenrod.

They were ready for me when I raced back. The trooper had maneuvered his car broadside across the road, he and his partner behind it, sidearms drawn.

“Out of the car! Hands on the roof.”

One stayed under cover, the other patted me down after checking inside the car. “Open the trunk, sir.”

“Mind telling me what's the problem?”

“Escaped prisoner, sir. He's armed.” They leveled their weapons at the trunk, according me the honor of standing in the line of fire with the key.

When neither DaNang nor Mr. Butler jumped out, they sent me on my way. I drove all the way down to Fox Trot's gatehouse. The heavy, ornate iron gate was locked.

Albert Chevalley lumbered out of the gatehouse, yawning. “Hey Ben. You seen all the cops?”

I turned the car around and headed back up the mountain.

Mr. Butler had had long nights in the Plainfield jail to hatch his plan. There was no way he could breach Fox Trot's main gate. Even if he did somehow manage to blow it off its posts, the driveway spikes would shred his tires. Whereas, their adjoining woodlots formed a natural base for an attack on King's house. If he had any sense left at all, he would wait until dark.

After several false trails, I turned onto dirt ruts that veered between a couple of Mr. Butler's fields, then snaked around to parallel Fox Trot's deer fence.

I found a cow bar overgrown in blackberry, and backed the Olds into the briars. Then I put on my gloves, squeezed out of the car, and draped more briars around it. I climbed the stone wall which was topped with the deer fence and clipped the lower strands. The tension in the wire whipped them left and right, crackling where electricity pulsed in the grass. I slipped under, crossed the dirt perimeter road that paralleled the inside of the fence, and started jogging across a hayfield.

I was high above King's house. The distant woodlots blocked sight of all but the farthest corner of the lake, which the heavy rains had partially refilled muddy brown. I crossed another stone wall and another hayfield. The rain had settled dust and pollen, or I'd have been kicking up clouds and sneezing my head off.

Across a third field, steeper than the first, a final stone wall, and I was inside King's woodlot. I stopped to get my bearings. I was still high on the property, near the Butler boundary. The stream should be less than a quarter mile ahead. I headed for it, navigating by the sun glimpsed through the tree canopy and the slope of the land.

I thought I heard voices.

I stopped, listened intently. Wind sighed overhead. A cardinal was whistling. Woodpeckers drilled. Squirrels chattered. A flock of jays swooped by, screaming.

I glided forward again, slowly and quietly, eyes in the distance, looking for the flicker of movement through the trees.

I smelled the water.

Voices again.

I veered upland, to come at them down the stream. I reached the deer fence first, lifted a strand with my gloves, and slipped through, with only one stinging shock on my back. On Butler land now, I climbed a ways inside the fence, then continued toward the stream, certain I'd heard voices. Then, suddenly, my own voice—in a loud, startled yelp—as the ground collapsed under me and I pitched face forward into a hole deep enough to bury a coffin.

Chapter 30

I fell with King and Butler jungle-warfare bamboo spikes in mind. I crashed, instead, on plywood, crunching my kneecaps and skinning the heel of my hand.

The sides of the hole were plywood, too, forming a three-by-three-by-six-foot underground box, which was empty, except for me. I remembered I had yelled out loud when I lost my footing. I raised my head to see who'd heard me.

Thick brush had grown on three sides, thicker than the surrounding vegetation, which was stunted by tree shade. Whoever had dug the pit had transplanted wild mountain laurel onto the mounded diggings—not the easiest landscaping project, as the mountain laurel resists mightily attempts to separate it from the rocks and roots with which it has entwined.

How many lies had Mr. Butler told me in order to protect his secret dynamite stash? The fourth side, which faced up the slope, away from the King property, opened onto a long-unused lumber track. Long unused, that was, until a few hours ago when he had backed his truck right up to the rim of the hole. The tracks of bald tires were fresh in the mud, but there were no puddles in the ruts. They'd been laid after the rain had stopped.

Peering in the opposite direction, through the laurel, I could see the deer fence, thirty feet downslope. Beyond the fence, down on King's property, I sensed motion in the trees.

I climbed out onto the lumber track and crawled.

Somewhere to my left was my old friend the stream that emptied onto the King property and eventually fed Lake Vixen. I jinked left into the woods and headed for it.

I heard it roaring before I saw it. The rains had gorged the bed. Where I had crawled puddle to puddle last time, now several feet of water rampaged over the rocky bottom. Excellent. If Butler was down there he wouldn't hear me until I swarmed him. If it was King's guard, the brook would roar in Big Ears like Seventh Avenue expresses passing Columbus Circle.

The water was so cold it almost froze my heart. I had expected to sort of wade hunkered down chest deep. But it was deeper and moving a lot faster than I had estimated. I was plummeted from rock to rock like a woodchip, wishing I had a life vest and a motorcycle helmet.

In seconds, it sluiced me into Dicky's swimming hole. The dammed-up pool was brimful, the water lapping over the banks. Anyone looking my way would spot my head above the banks. I scrambled over Dicky's dam as fast as I could, scraping down the waterfall like a crippled otter, and crunched onto the rocks below.

King's deer fence loomed, plastered with threats of electrical shock and penalties for trespassing. Swept on the current, I saw the fence's logic: come late winter, when hunger made the deer more aggressive, the brook ran higher; the lowest strand over the stream wasn't low at all. It skimmed the rain-swollen surface at a point between my nose and neck.

I ducked my face in the water, but not fast or deep enough. My wet hair brushed the strand, I felt a sharp kick in the back of my head and a startling pain that snapped my mouth open with an involuntary gasp into which icy water poured. Coughing—drowning—I slammed rock to rock as the current accelerated down the steepening descent. A root I grabbed tore loose in my hand.

I seized another and clung for my life.

“What the hell are you doing on my land?”

And there was Henry King, shoving through the brush like a Cape Buffalo in a territorial mood.

The master of Fox Trot wore Eddie Bauer gardening trousers, a Ralph Lauren “British county flannel” shirt, and a jaunty Navy VIP visitor cap, which was embroidered
USS IOWA
in shiny gold and heaped with more scrambled eggs than the Church Hill diner served all weekend. His face was red.

“You're on my land!”

“I'm in your brook. You want to give me a hand out of here?”

“You're on my land!”

I climbed out on my own, gasping and shivering. “Get out of my face! This is not eighteenth-century Poland.”

King's trousers were soaked and mudstained to the knees.

I took a not-so-long-shot in the not-very-dark.

***

“Did you find the glove?”

“What?”

It had rained continuously since I had claimed to drop it. This afternoon was his first opportunity to conduct a thorough hunt.

“The glove I told you I dropped. The glove your security zealot shot holes in.”

“I've had the man fired. And I've already apologized to you for that incident.”

“The glove you asked for when I returned his helmet.
Dicky Butler's glove
—What are you doing in the woods?”

“They're my woods.”

“You're looking for the glove. It links someone in your woods to Dicky Butler.”

“It does not! It proves that Dicky Butler was trespassing on my land when he dropped his glove.”

“How badly do you want the glove?”

“What?”

“Assume I lied the other day. Assume I have it. Hidden, stashed away safely. What's it worth to you?”

Sheer hell across a poker table. Not a flicker, not a twitch of bushy brows, not even a change of light in his eye. And this time, he didn't bother fencing.

“Shop your blackmail elsewhere, Abbott. You surprise me. I read you wrong. I didn't think you were that sleazy.”

“I read you wrong, too,” I replied. “Maybe that's why I still can't figure out why you killed him.”

King laughed the way you laugh when a crazy corners you at a party. “Just out of curiosity, how'd you read me wrong?”

“You have a great motive—you want Mr. Butler's farm—but I can't see you killing him for it.”

“That's a relief.”

“And I also can't imagine you destroying your new lake to get rid of the body.”

“Another relief.”

“But everyone else who might have killed him, didn't.”

Henry King laughed again. “Good thing you're not a cop. It would cost me a fortune in attorney fees for a false arrest suit.”

“Trooper Moody didn't kill him. My lamebrain cousins didn't kill him. J.J. Topkis didn't kill him.”

“Who the hell is J.J. Topkis?”

“J.J.'s a biker with a hotshot criminal attorney who was hired by your man Secretary Bertram Wills.”

“Bert Wills is from a patrician Connecticut family known for helping the less advantaged.”

“J.J.'s become more advantaged since Josh Wiggens bought him a brand-new twenty-five-thousand-dollar factory-customized Harley-Davidson motorcycle—”

“How Josh spends his money is his business. I know he came into some recently when his mother died. As for the ‘company' Josh keeps—” he wiggled his hand in the gay slur gesture—“his young friends are his own business, too. He is always welcome in my house.”

“Your ‘houseguests' have been working real hard to use J.J. to hang Mr. Butler. Josh tipped Trooper Moody where to arrest J.J. Bert hired him a hotshot criminal attorney who cut a deal for ratting out Mr. Butler. Josh bribed him with a new Harley to keep his mouth shut. He even stopped J.J.'s gang from stomping me to death—against his fonder desires I am sure—in order to keep him out of jail on murder charges. My guess is next time J.J. steps out of line he's going to end up dead.”

“If you could prove this nonsense you'd have turned Josh into the police.”

“Except you're the one looking for Dicky's glove.”

“I'm not looking for the glove.”

“Your knees are all muddy. You've been crawling around looking for Dicky's glove.”

“I tripped and fell. I was enjoying a walk in my woods. It's very peaceful, here. Usually. I often stroll here, collecting my thoughts. I'm a city boy. Nature's new to me. I find it very relaxing. Don't you?”

“Not when I run into hostile neighbors.”

“That's because you're walking in someone else's woods. Try your own, sometime. You'll find them much safer.”

“Let me make you an offer,” I said.

“I'm not interested.”

“I'll give you the glove for free.”

“I don't want it,” he said.

The mud on his knees said he did.

“This whole thing is driving me crazy. I'm rooting around like a pig with a ring in his nose. I'll give you the glove in exchange for the answer to one simple question.”

King looked bored.

I asked, “Do you want to be the star attraction at the biggest glove trial since OJ? Is that why you are hunting the glove alone?”

“That's two questions.”

The plywood hole in the ground, Mr. Butler's balding tire tracks leading up it, and the motley collection of dynamite sticks the Chevalleys had stolen from Fox Trot, made it three.

“Is it true that your security people found dynamite in your dam the night before it blew up?”

King's smile turned reflective, his gaze opaque. He reflected for a long moment. Then he shrugged, still smiling. “May I frisk you, Ben?”

“I'm not armed.”

“For a tape recorder.”

“Be my guest.”

He patted me down, clumsily, but thoroughly.

“The glove is in my Olds. Nearby.”

“Do I have your word?”

“I will give you Dicky's glove,” I promised, but I was getting a queasy feeling that Henry King was playing more games with me than I was playing with him.

He rubbed his chin. He removed his
Iowa
cap, ran cooling fingers through his silvery hair, and put his cap back on. “The answer to your question is, yes.”

“Your people found dynamite in your dam the night before the party?”

“Yes. Now go get the glove and bring it to my house.”

“But they didn't tell the cops.”

“I was in London. The party was scheduled the next day. My staff made a decision to leave it there, disarmed.”

“Is that why you roped off the area?”

“Of course. And a good thing we did. The goddammed stuff went off.”

“With Dicky Butler under it.”

“He was drunk and fell asleep—Understand, Julia made a command decision based on all sorts of variables there's no point in going into. It wasn't her fault.”

“You mean the ceramic engine deal.”

King said, “You've been busy, Mr. Abbott. What a shame you didn't put such effort into the job I hired you to do. Yes. That fucking engine. Julia and I were in constant communication, of course, and when they found the explosives, it still looked like I was going to forge an agreement I could announce at the party. Julia decided we could not have a police bomb squad swarming over the grounds. A decision I support fully, regardless what went wrong.”

“How'd you know Dicky was drunk?”

“I assume—”

“You spoke like you saw him.”

“I assumed—”

“You said it like you knew it. You saw him drunk…”

King looked around the woods. Then down the stream.

I pushed him as hard as I knew how. “You got back from London late. Eight hours in a cramped aircraft with broken air conditioning. Julia picked you up in the helicopter. You were upset. You had botched the negotiations….”

“You're absolutely right. I had had a ghastly week in London. And a hellish flight home. No sleep. And I had two hundred people coming to a party where I had to pretend that Henry King was a winner. I had to restore my energy. So I walked up here and sat under a tree. That tree.”

He pointed out a pleasant-looking ash near the stream. “I have a Victorian walking stick that opens into a shooting stool. Quite comfortable. I had already discovered that Connecticut ground is cold and wet even in summer.” His voice trailed off.

“Your back to the fence?” I coaxed. “Looking downhill?”

“Everything I saw was mine. I could look downstream into my woods and listen to the water. Birds. Little animals I couldn't see at first. But I had learned that if I stayed still they'd come out.

“All of a sudden I heard glass break. I turned around and just across the fence was Dicky Butler. Drunk. He was trying to smash the neck off a new bottle.

“He saw me and he called out, ‘Hey, King. Got a corkscrew?'

“I could smell his sweat and breath twenty feet away. I tried to ignore him. I truly did. But he started taunting me. ‘Hey big man, you got a big party today? My dad's having a party, too, down in the pasture.'”

“The pig manure.”

“I must remember to hire you next time I need some ferreting.” His intelligent eyes probed mine. “Seriously, come up to the office. I'm going to put you on retainer. I've got projects all over the world you could help me with. Did you keep any decent suits?”

“They smell of mothballs.”

“I'll have Bert take you shopping—Of course I knew what Butler was threatening and I wasn't worried. I'd already dealt with the pig problem.”

“By bribing our resident trooper.”

Henry King said, “I enjoy negotiating with moralists; they're so inflexible that they're predictable.”

I didn't care if he meant Ollie or me. “Then what happened?”

“I folded up my stool and started to go. ‘Hey, big man!' He kept calling me that. Big man. ‘Hey! I'm warning you. No more helicopter. My old man's really hurting. Leave him alone.'

“I know you warned me not to get into it, but I couldn't stop myself. I went up to the fence. I said, ‘Tell your father I'll buy him any farm in Newbury he wants. Tell him he can have money, too. You can start over, no debts, modern equipment, new breed cows.'

“He just grinned at me. Filthy, yellow teeth. I felt helpless, like I was back in grade school. You know, when some slum kid leans on you because he has nothing else in his life but to make you hurt. And you can't do anything about it. And keep in mind, Abbott, I had just been informed that his father had tried to blow up my dam….

“But I stayed cool. I turned my back on him. I walked back to my house, took a shower, and dressed for my party. And just as I was easing into the swing of it, Dicky Butler blew up my dam, destroying my lake, and, since he blundered and killed himself in the process, turning a vicious act of vandalism into an ongoing annoyance.”