Lie in Wait (12 page)

“Nice,” Sheila said, nodding to the notebook and pencil. “There's something about chicken scratch I like. Tactile. Real. It's funny, we store millions of files on these contraptions but then print them out and put them in the same old cluttered filing cabinets anyway. Somehow records and the like just don't seem real till they're in our hands. On paper. I figure that's why ­people chat so openly with total strangers online, about topics you would never speak of out of the blue, face to face. Doesn't seem real. That's the second mistake ­people make. Because it is very real.”

Sheila printed out the in-­box pages, then read each address aloud for Test to tally. “[email protected]: opened; [email protected]: opened; [email protected]: opened; [email protected]: unopened; [email protected]: opened; tothevictor@hotmail: opened; Humane: unopened; [email protected]: opened . . .”

Finished, she said, “What's the tally, Sonja?”

“Eleven from tothevictor: one unopened. Seven from Olivialuv: only one unopened. Three from the Humane Society: one opened; One from the VAA: opened; two from JillGirl: both opened; one from BenG: opened; one from KitKat85: opened; and one from StarGazer: unopened. That's it. I'm curious about StarGazer and tothevictor. Now what?” Test said.

“Let's read a few.”

Sheila and Test huddled at a table, the printouts spread before them as if they were treasure maps. Something had to be here. Test knew if she found a lead or, better, evidence, she'd put herself in a predicament with Detective North, and with her Chief Barrons.

Barrons would side with North. With this being Test's first major case, and only in a supportive role, Barrons, instead of loosening the reigns, would be more anal than usual about procedure. It was a thin line between being applauded for taking initiative and being reprimanded for going rogue. Test needed to take the risk. She hadn't chosen this career to stand on the sidelines.

She planted her elbows on the table, fingers buried in her hair. Sheila stood bent over her shoulder, a finger underscoring each line of each e-­mail as she read it aloud with a deliberate cadence, as though tutoring Test with a Dick and Jane reader.

There it is, in black-­and-­white
, Test thought. On paper that one could pick up in one's hands to smell the pulp, crease into a fan to cool yourself, or set afire to keep the dark and cold at bay; printed in black ink that smudged under your thumb and left your fingertips tattooed as if ready for the booking blotter.

Sheila was right.

What seemed unreal on a screen was made real on paper.

Test read an e-­mail:

Bonjour,

I wish we'd never fought. We should never fight again. Don't you think? Please talk to me. I'm sorry I even said anything about it and made you mad. But it's fun to make up! Right? Riiiiight? ;) If you're not at the Family Matters thing, maybe I could sneak over? I have to babysit 2nite, but Mr. M's been sick and they'll be home early. But. Do NOT come over. I'll call from the Ms' after the baby's down and I take care of some chores. You could tell me all the ways you want me to make up to you! I'm really really sorry I made you so mad. I didn't mean to. I hope you get this. Sorry.

Love, little lamb

This is it
, Test thought,
a real break
. She needed a list of local Family Matters members. She'd cross-­reference those names with any that had a teenage son.

Tomorrow, early, she'd get the autopsy report on the body. See if Jessica had been sexually assaulted, or when she'd last had sexual relations, if she had. Which seemed likely. Test wouldn't have guessed it from Jessica's pictures. Test's own mother had blown a fuse when she'd learned Test had lost her virginity on her sixteenth birthday, in her own backyard in a tent while she was supposed to have been enjoying an outdoor slumber party with her girlfriends who had themselves invited the two boys from school. The act had been clumsy, embarrassing, and, blessedly, brief. Four years had passed before Test had repeated the act.

The info, Test knew, was enough that she needed to call North.

“
D
AMN IT.
Y
OU
should have included me,” North said after she'd briefed him on the phone. His tone was barbed, but in his pause afterward she sensed he would not push. After all, he should have thought to come to the library himself. To torch her too much over not including him would put the spotlight on his own failing to make the leap that if Jessica had been coming to the library to use computers there might be valuable information to find on said computer.

“You don't want me calling you and dragging you into every cockamamie hunch I have, do you?” Test tried to strike a contrite and self-­deprecating tone. Neither tack was a strength.

North did not answer. She took that as a sign of his biting back unkind words.

“I'm calling you now,” she said. “Seconds after the hunch paid. We've just scratched the surface. I'm going to go over to the town hall before they shutter. Family Matters hold their meetings there and groups have to fill out a roll call. If I find anything—­”

“Anything
at all
,” North stressed.

“You can grab Sheila if you like, or have her send you everything.”

“You need a subpoena for access to that computer,” he said. “If you got info by ill-­gotten means—­”

“Trout granted me permission.”

“Who?”

“The librarian. It's library property, not Jessica's.” She did not know if that permitted her access to e-­mails or not. She supposed not. But it did make searching browsing history OK. In fact, anyone could check that. “Besides, her mom is not going to take issue with it. It's on behalf of her daughter. Like searching her bedroom.”

North again remained quiet.

“Did you come up with anything after Marigold's?” Test asked and wished she hadn't. Now she was acting as though they were partners, equals; they weren't. North didn't have to share info. It was a one way street. And if North had come up with any leads, he would not have been as miffed at the start of the call.

“Maybe,” North said.

Test could not tell if he was bluffing. “Good,” she said, having nothing else to say.

“I'd like to talk to you, in person, about what happened at King's,” North said.

In her enthusiasm Test had forgotten about it.

“Tomorrow,” North said.

“If you insist.”

“I do. Your station. Noon. I'd like to see Barrons while I'm there.”

Shit.

 

Chapter 23

T
EST WALKED THE
wet sidewalk along Maple Street at a clip. Night had fallen and a sharp November wind knifed through her jacket.

The sidewalk lay empty and dark.

Dark ghostly imprints of maple leaves appeared here and there on the damp sidewalk, where the leaves had fallen earlier in the season and stuck to the wet concrete. The images were detailed to the finest of veins. They reminded Test of grave rubbings. No two alike.

The whole world was damp. The dark trunks of the maple trees glistened with wetness and gave off a pungent earthen scent that mixed with the oily odor of the asphalt street. The trees' black calligraphic branches dripped rainwater.

Test enjoyed the tranquility of this second week of November.

Since moving to Vermont, she'd grown fond of November. Most everyone complained of its gray solemn skies. They faulted November because it was winter's prologue. Stick season.

Test looked forward to the winter to come. She enjoyed sledding with kids, making snowmen and coming in and stomping off snow before setting about making hot chocolate. Most of her friends groused about the dark evenings, but she loved nothing more than to hibernate with Claude, to nuzzle before the fireplace in a flannel robe and shearling slippers. To burrow deep beneath heavy blankets together, to feel their heat trapped in with them, to make love while the snow outside blasted sideways, blown by an arctic wind that shook the corners of the house and cried its lonesome accompaniment in the eaves. She liked knowing that she and Claude were inside, safe.

Except now all of this was tainted.

It should not have surprised her. Nothing should ever surprise a cop.

You just never knew. That was the only truth. You just never knew.

Test traipsed along. The rain had started again and the wind had risen, grown to a bitter and nasty gale. She wished now for the warmth and brightness of her home, the chaotic hilarity of her children, the steadfastness and good charm of her husband. This was not her case. She could go home now and call North and tell him to follow up her lead. In twenty minutes she could be welcomed home by the warm smiles of her children. She could go for a run; a long, demanding, blood-­thumping run of hills that would tax her, push her to the edge of her stamina, make her want to quit. A run to flush out the day's toxins. She could indulge in a bath afterward. Shed this horrific day.

All the things Jessica's mother could not do.

All the things Jessica would never be able to do again.

Detective Test put her head down and pushed straight into the storm.

 

Chapter 24

J
ED
K
ING SAT
at the card table in his sugar shack drinking beer. He studied the map of Canaan, the map peppered with X's of red pencil.

The heat from the woodstove warmed his face. Nothing like the roaring heat of an ash-­wood fire. Ash burned hot and clean. Its grain lay true and you could cleave it cleanly with a single blow of the axe. He refused to operate a hydraulic wood splitter. If a man used the correct wood, ash, and dried it right, it was no big yank to split ten cord to make a few bucks off those too lazy or too inept to do it themselves. A man only had problems when he used inferior wood, or he hurried to split the wood while it was still green and not seasoned properly. Doing things the right way, living right, made life easy, because you were always sure in what you were doing.

The woodstove sat in the center of the sugar shack, where the boiler pan used for reducing maple sap into maple syrup had been gutted a decade previous.

Jed had built the new shack up in the middle of his twelve-­hundred-­tree sugarbush. State-­of-­the-­art equipment, gravity and vacuum fed. Reverse osmosis. All its guts and components American made. Most sugaring operations used crap equipment out of Ontario, or worse: fucking Japan. King paid for the American-­made quality. Bet your ass. There were those who resented his treating a romantic tradition with such a business acumen, or spited him for not joining up with the co-­op. But running a tight ship didn't lessen his love for the feel of evaporator steam on his face, the faintest sweet taste of sap on the tongue. He boiled near to four hundred gallons of Grade A each spring. Seven hundred gallons of Grade B.

He made the finest maple butter and confections, too. Never use the tired mold shapes of a maple leaf or a mom-­and-­pop puritan ­couple other operations used, but crafted his candies in the shape of chainsaws and pickup trucks, bikini-­clad girls and sexpot milkmaids. His candies were the best, and his Kingdom Sugarworks operation had been written up in the
Boston Globe
,
New Yorker
,
Yankee
magazine, and
New York Times
.

The urbanites lapped up his old-­timer, salty act, bought into his gnarled wit as much as they gobbled up his maple products and shoved fistfuls of money at him. They'd heard about him and each spoke of him to other flatlanders as though they had discovered him themselves. They knew not to expect the usual homage to maple sugaring history at his operation. No old tin sap buckets hung out for posterity. No black-­and-­white photos of horse-­drawn wagons in heavy snows or old awls and taps and maple-­sugar canisters lining the window ledges. Just like in this old sugar shack, the new shack's walls were pasted with cheesecake calendars of big-­busted women in swimsuits stroking power tools and transmission shifters. Boy, did the flatlanders get a kick out of that stupid ass ploy.

King finished his beer and nodded to nobody.

Time.

It was time, again.

K
ING EASED HI
S
pickup behind the recreation park and killed the lights. He fished a pack of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket and punched the lighter into the dash. He'd paid an extra $220 to get that lighter, and had to get the truck out of fucking New Jersey. Never thought he'd see the day a lighter cost extra in a working man's truck. But there it was.

A phosphorescent lamp lit a bank of mist that crawled along the ball field. The cold November air poured into the cab and bit at him. The lighter clicked. King touched it to his cigarette, inhaled deeply and exhaled a thread of smoke out the window. He smoked slowly, savoring it. He stepped out of the truck. Mist curled around his work boots. He grabbed a small plastic grocery bag from the truck bed.

He sneaked across the lot and worked his way down a grassy bank to the baseball field. As he moved away, out of the range of the lamppost, he dissolved into inky blackness

He stood on the pitcher's mound. He'd never played sports. Never watched them. Neither had his old man. The old man never understood how a working man could sit around on weekend afternoons and
watch
other men
play
. From the age twelve on, King had spent his weekends operating chainsaws and brush hogs to improve the property. There was always work to be done.

King unzipped his pants and pissed on the pitcher's mound, then headed off through the dark cedar trees.

Not too far off, a dog barked.

 

Chapter 25

T
HE SCREAM OF
a woman startled Test who looked up from being lost in thought on the sidewalk.

Outside the town hall a crowd of ­people clamored to speak to television and newspaper reporters stationed on the sidewalk. A woman wailed: “Love the sinner, hate the sin!”

Picket signs read: Take Back Vermont and Take Your Hate to Another State.

To get to the office for the Family Matters roster records, Test needed to push through the throng occupying the public-­meeting section of the town hall.

Inside, every seat was taken. ­People stood with no space between them, from the front stage all the way back into the vestibule and outside onto the steps. As Test elbowed her way, she took note of faces. The body heat from the mob tamed the November cold coming from outside, but that heat compared little to the heat of emotion, hatred, and vitriol as the news-­camera lights set throughout the hall turned faces waxen.

At the podium, district representative Jasper Madock, owner of the local lumberyard empire, tapped the microphone at his podium at the front. A popping noise came from two car speakers wired into the corner of the place.

Test tried to push her way through the crowd, putting to memory faces as she did.

“This issue hits home,” Madock said. “But we must act with civility. Everyone has a right to be heard and everyone
will
be heard.” His persuasive tone explained some of his business success. That he was strikingly handsome perhaps did not hurt either.

“Each person who chooses to speak will have one minute of the floor. Janey there, my daughter,” Jasper nodded to a young girl with bad skin who blushed at her mention, “will come around with the microphone. Let's hear one another out, even if we disagree. My brother down at the Bee Hive is having a special Night Owl Breakfast. Two eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee for ninety-­nine cents,
if
we can get this done by six in the A.M.”

Laughter erupted.

Jasper cleared his throat, the phlegm in his lungs sounding like an old boat motor failing to start, and wiped sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his Carhartt jacket. He wasn't nervous. The lights caused the sweat. Not the crowd.

Test edged sideways between two women, one of whom smelled of beer.

“All right, raise a hand and I'll call on you in an orderly fashion,” Madock said.

Almost every hand shot up.

Test cut along the back wall, some ­people put out to have to make room for her. She wished she were wearing a uniform.

Madock's daughter handed the microphone to a woman.

“I know that these ­people,” the woman said, “and those supporting them, they believe this is right. That it hurts no one. But what do we tell our kids?”

Test had heard it all before.
Yes
, she thought,
what about our kids?
What shall we do if we can't mold them in the image of our bigotry?

Test was halfway to the door that would lead her to Public Records.

The sharp odor of drugstore perfume and noxious aftershave seared her throat.

“Do we tell our kids it's OK?” the woman said. “They are good ­people. I pray for them, but I cannot support this.”

“Moral rot!” a man shouted.

“That's once.” Jasper stared the man down, a man Test could not see in the crush of ­people.

A young man with muttonchops and a faded army surplus jacket not unlike the kind Test had worn in high school when she'd wanted come off as ironically anti-­establishment, took the microphone. “I'm a law student,” the young man said. Three middle-­aged men groaned.

The young man continued, “These instances are precisely what the law is for: to assure the rights of the minority are protected. We should be proud.”

A man shouted: “Let's not wrap this up in pretty PC BS! Call a spade a spade!”

“That's twice,” Madock said. “I must ask that you leave.”

“I won't!” the man shouted. He was close to Test. A big man with a roughhewn face. If he got physical, Test would have to intervene. She didn't want to. She was within sight of the door to Public Records.

“We'll have even more gays pouring into our state!” the man shouted.

­People clapped, others hissed.

“Enough,” Jasper said. “Please, leave. Or you will be escorted out.”

Test followed Jasper's eyes to see, to her surprise, officer Larkin in civvies and a camo Red Sox cap. He stood in the back wings, nondescript. Larkin approached the man through the crowd, showed the man his badge. The man scowled and left with Larkin at his side.

A woman shouted, “Take your hate to another state!”

Several other ­people joined: “Take your hate to another state!”

Jasper pounded the gavel until calm was restored.

Test made it to the door to Public Records.

“We are never going to get that ninety-­nine-­cent-­breakfast deal if we keep this up, ­people.”

The microphone squelched. “The Vermont Superior Court legislated from the bench and whatever comes of this should be considered a bastardization of the process itself,” a woman said. “Why is no one up in arms about this? Thank you.”

Test slipped into Public Records, and the voices from the main hall dulled as she leaned against the shut door and sighed.

“Exhausting, isn't it?” a voice said.

Test looked up to see the clerk, a tiny woman in her fifties or sixties, smiling at her from behind her desk. She held a spoon in one hand and a yogurt container in the other. She set them down and dabbed with a napkin at yogurt staining the front of her red sweater, which sported a big snowflake on the front. “Detective Test, right?” she said.

Test nodded, embarrassed she did not recall the woman's name. She'd interacted with her numerous times to pay for her dog's license and buy a beach sticker for Maidstone Lake.

“How can I help you?” the woman said. “Or are you just seeking refuge?”

A
FTER NEARLY AN
hour, Test found the roster she needed. In a small cone of light cast on the clerk's desk by a brass lamp, she worked her finger down the list of names. Many of the signatures required deciphering. She knew most of the names. Some surprised her.

The members were a disparate lot: farmers and store owners, plumbers, teachers, a family physician, a gas-­station attendant.

“V. Who was V?”

She looked down the list. Looking for a V.

It took her nearly a half hour to find a name that started with a V.

It smacked her in the face.

Victor Jenkins.

Test had seen him on local TV and in the paper, taking opposition to the gay marriage bill. But he was in his fifties. Test couldn't see any young girl being smitten with him. Was there a Victor junior? No. Jenkins had just the one son, Brad, who was in the paper regularly: The most gifted high-­school football player ever to hail from this tiny state, perhaps New England, excluding Flutie, of course.

What did Test know about Victor Jenkins? He coached at the high school Jessica had attended. He'd been a star athlete in his time, as Test understood it. Test could imagine a scenario where an older man might hold sway over a teenage student because of some leverage, but not a girl actually having affection for that man, as Jessica's e-­mails and letters clearly showed; though it did happen. Nothing good ever came of it.

Test set herself up at the lone computer made available to the public in a small cubicle.

She Googled Victor Jenkins, Canaan Vermont.

He had no Facebook page, no social media presence whatsoever.

The articles she found on him mentioned him by way of being father of Brad, star quarterback and pitcher for Lamoille Valley High School. There were plenty of such articles to mine; it seemed Brad was mentioned in every Sunday sports section of the
Lamoille Register
during football and baseball seasons. There were annual profiles on him too. And a profile on Victor, who had apparently made it to Syracuse University, a Division One program, with hopes of a possible NFL career waylaid by injury.

Test looked up.

The time had gotten away from her while searching online. It was nearly 10
P.M
.

She pulled the chain on the lamp at the cubicle desk, turning off the light so she sat in the opaque glow from the streetlamp outside the window, thinking for a good long time.

She needed to call North.

But didn't want to.

In the hall, she drank at the water fountain, sloshed water in her mouth and spat. Wet her hands and doused her face.

The outside office was dark. The clerk had gone home, either thinking Test had left or trusting Test to lock up after herself.

Test could hear voices beyond the door. The meeting was still going.

Test locked the door behind her.

Out in the old theater, she worked her way back through the crowd as a woman spoke softly into the microphone. “I represent Family Matters,” she said.

Test stepped up on her tiptoes to glimpse the woman who tucked the microphone close to her chin. “There's many here tonight,” the woman said, her voice so quiet it was hard to hear even with the microphone. “While we reach out to all God's children and we pray for those living in sin to come right with the Lord, we cannot stand aside while secular laws overrule the law of God. We therefore stand opposed to bill H eight forty-­seven. We pray for another solution that protects our children and our most holy of all traditions: holy matrimony. Amen.”

A murmur of Amen went up.

A young man beside Test muttered, “I guess she knows what God wants better than the rest of us.”

Test pushed her way outside and was glad for the cold fresh air. She felt soiled and sticky from the closeness of bodies in the town hall, and the noxious tenor of the place. She was exhausted and starving. Exhilarated too, by her find in the roster. She hadn't felt this bone-­tired and amped up at the same time since her Dartmouth days pulling all-­nighters.

She still did not want to call North, especially at this hour. But she needed to bring him in on it. Keep her word.

She brought out her cell phone and called him.

He did not berate her but thanked her for keeping him up to speed. He sounded tired, and something else, too. Preoccupied. Perhaps she'd wakened him. She asked him to meet her at her office at the station.

As she spoke, she noted that the windshield of a VW Bug was smashed and a message had been written in shaving cream along the hood:
Learn from tonight. Vote for what's right.

It was impossible to determine which side of the issue the messenger supported.

If Larkin was still inside, she'd tell him about the vandalism. Except, going back in there was the last thing she wanted to do.

She told North about the vandalism and he said he'd send a trooper out to look into it.

She called Claude next. He'd sent her several text messages and she saw now he had left a voice mail shortly after 9:00. Likely to tell her what the texts told her: he was going to bed. He hoped she was all right. Wake him if she wanted when she got into bed.