The Price of Malice (27 page)

Neil had returned to his handiwork. “You take care, Ranger Randy, and don’t forget about George’s stash.”

“Allard called,” Lester told Willy as the latter entered the office late the next morning. “Looking for Joe again.”

“You didn’t throw him under the bus, did you?” Willy asked.

Les didn’t rise to the bait. “Just so we’re all on the same page, I told him the boss had been up half the night and was still out working an angle.”

Willy laughed. “That’s good—wish we knew what the hell that
was.” He paused before adding, “Sam probably does, but she’s not talking.”

He then updated Les on their midnight activities. “We met with Karen, Nick, Richard, and Becky at the ER last night. Becky was caught cutting herself and Mom wigged out.”

“You get anything out of it?” he asked.

“Sam got a nifty picture,” Willy said dismissively, just as she entered the room. “And I got to see Nick acting crazier than a rat in a box.”

Sam showed her cell-phone image to Lester, explaining, “Becky’s fingernails.”

Lester pegged the significance immediately. “Whoa. Expensive. How’d she swing that?”

Willy turned from dumping a file on his desk. “What the hell do you know about painting fingernails?”

Lester laughed. “You don’t have a daughter.”

Sam snapped the phone shut. “Wayne paid for it.”

“You don’t say so?” Willy asked.

“That’s where I’ve been,” she explained. “There’re only a couple of places in town to get this done. I got lucky first time. Flashed the photo, talked to the Asian guy who did it, and he ID’d both Becky and Wayne—didn’t blink an eye.”

“Pretty convenient,” Willy cautioned.

“Pretty memorable,” she countered. “Wayne grossed the guy out. He was all but sticking his tongue in her ear. The manicurist said it made him sick. He also said she was eating it up.”

“That would fit,” Lester commented. “Immature girl on the outs with her friends and family, falls for an older guy who flatters the hell out of her. I wouldn’t doubt he told her she was ten times the woman her mother is.”

“Gross,” Willy growled. “True, but gross.”

“That also explains her being shut down last night,” Sam ventured.

“It’s one explanation,” Willy said.

“What’s another?” Sam asked.

“She killed him,” he suggested. “He dissed her and she carved him up.”

“What about the drop of blood?” Lester asked. “It’s from a male related to Karen.”

Willy shrugged. “Maybe she had help.”

“Like Nick?” Les proposed. “You said he was crazy.”

Willy was dismissive. “Yeah, but crazy-loony; not homicidal. He walks in circles like a kicked dog.”

He crossed to his desk, suddenly reminded of something. “Hang on, hang on. Did I get a call or anything from Waterbury? A woman named Alice Plouff?”

“You’re kidding,” Sam said.

He wasn’t. “Damn. I knew she’d screw it up.”

He dialed a number on his phone and began speaking in a jarringly upbeat voice. “Alice, hey. How’re you doin’? . . . No, no, that’s okay. I know we all get busy, and it was a favor, right? Anything you could do would be a hell of a lot faster than going through channels. That’s why I called you first. I just forgot that I hadn’t followed up . . . So, you did it? It matched? No joke? I mean, you’re sure? Damn, girl. Dinner’s on me next time I’m up.”

He hung up, smiling, before raising an eyebrow at Sam. “She’s three hundred pounds. You’re safe.”

“Like I care. What was that?”

Willy was feeling good. “Since none of you has collected a DNA sample from Ryan Hatch yet, that was confirmation that Karen’s first-born has a sample on file in Waterbury that hasn’t gotten into the system yet. Also”—he held up his index finger—“my new best buddy
Alice just compared it to the six-loci sample collected off of Wayne’s body, and it’s a perfect match.”

“Given only six loci,” Lester cautioned.

Willy frowned at him. “Six is still a one-in-a-million match, especially since none of those boys has a father in common. I always liked Ryan for this.”

“How’d you think of checking?” Sam asked.

“Ryan’s rap sheet,” he explained. “He got nailed on a felony assault charge last month—some bar brawl involving a bunch of guys and a few pool cues—but in order to duck any inside time, the judge had him agree to a DNA sample.” Willy flipped his hand in the air. “Just took a little digging.”

“I guess we better have a talk with him,” Sammie said, letting him bask in his glory. She also remembered her impression of Ryan when she met him at the trailer. “He is the eldest,” she played along, “he’s hot tempered, and I bet he’s pissed about Todd coming back home from prison. If a guy like that found out his little sister was being boinged by a scuzzy bastard like Wayne, I’d lay odds he’d have an up-close-and-personal with him.”

Willy laughed. “I’d say what we got qualifies. I’m up for squeezing Ryan.”

Sam glanced at Lester, who lifted a shoulder, not so much agreeing as not offering any opposition. “He’s right about Karen being the only shared parent among them,” he said. “That pretty much guarantees a six-loci match being good enough, at least for our purposes—be different if two or more of them shared a father.”

“I’ll run it by Joe,” she said, opening her phone. “Grabbing Ryan might be a little premature, since he’s probably not going anywhere and we still haven’t done our homework yet.”

She punched in the number, held the phone to her ear, and then
almost immediately snapped it shut, visibly disappointed. “Out of cell range,” she announced.

Willy scowled. “Fuck him, then. Let’s do it.”

Joe closed his phone slowly, hanging on to the pole supporting the Zodiac’s small roof above the steering console Randy Coffin was manning.

“No service,” he announced in a loud voice, over the roar of the twin outboards.

“Maybe later,” she shouted back, keeping to her task and increasing speed. The boat could reach over forty knots—a rate that demanded she avoid even the smallest obstacle.

Joe kept watching the small island they’d just left, recalling when he’d first seen it, at night, weeks ago, when he’d had his one and only encounter with Wellman Beale.

Beale hadn’t been there this time, though. All they’d found was Dougie O’Hearn, his grizzled sternman, who’d allowed them to tour the place, and had obligingly told them—while he couldn’t swear to it—that he thought his boss might be in Lubec, where he owned some property.

Joe could still see the old man far behind them, a stick figure standing on the dock, studying them as they blended into the northern horizon. If Wellman Beale is in Lubec, Joe thought, then I’m the proverbial monkey’s uncle.

Lyn startled awake at the sound of a scrape overhead. She was sitting curled up against one wall of the cellar Beale had placed her in hours earlier, extracting the ladder as he left.

“Hello?” she called out toward the pale gray opening of the overhead trapdoor, barely visible in the thin daylight from the windows above.

A bulky shadow appeared in the frame. “That the best you can do?” Wellman Beale asked. “Not, ‘Hello, asshole,’ or something?”

“Would that get me out of here?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice strong and direct, hoping her fear couldn’t be heard.

“Nah. Probably not.”

A pinprick of bright red light suddenly leaped from the shadow’s midst—a laser beam, as from a gun sight—it began dancing cheerfully across her body, a Tinker Bell with lethal intent.

“What’re you going to do?” she asked, trying to ignore it, while transfixed by its erratic wanderings. “If you’re worried about a kidnap charge or anything, I’m happy to keep my mouth shut. Nobody needs to know about this.”

He laughed. “Right.” He sat on the edge of the square hole, dangling his feet into her cell, better to steady his aim. “We’ll just let bygones be bygones—until some fucking SWAT cops come kicking down my door.”

“Then what do you
want
?” she blurted out, instantly regretting the despair she heard echoing back off the enveloping concrete.

“I don’t know yet,” he said lightly, as if he’d just been asked what kind of sandwich he wanted at a picnic. The tiny red dot settled down between her legs. “Maybe I’m getting interested in seeing the color of your panties.”

She stared up at his shadow in muted terror, half expecting him to simply drop down on top of her. Please, Joe, she thought, wrestling with her panic,
find
me.

T
he Harmony parking lot is located in the heart of Brattleboro. It is as hemmed in by downtown’s shoulder-to-shoulder nineteenth-century buildings as a large castle courtyard, complete with only three entrances—a narrow, arched, one-way tunnel from High Street, a two-way gap about a quarter block wide, leading out to Elliot Street, and a driveway next to it by the bank. Over the years, the lot had been planted with small trees, to soften its appearance, and targeted by town leaders and police against making it a magnet for teens and euphemistically labeled “young adults”—both considered troublemakers. The trees were coming along; the population control efforts remained iffier.

Sam, Lester, and Willy arrived there in two cars from the Putnam trailer in West Bratt, where small Richard had told his friend Sam where he thought his oldest brother might be. Lester entered the lot from the north—High Street—while Sam and Willy came in from the south, parking illegally by the lot’s outlet. In that way, they were positioned like cowboys, hoping to head off any skittish horses that might choose to bolt from the corral.

They were connected by radio, discreetly accessed by sleeve mikes and earbuds.

“You all set?” Sam asked Lester after they’d exited their car.

“Yup. Looking around as we speak,” came the answer.

“Willy—you want to split up or work this together?” Sam asked over her shoulder. Hearing no response, she checked, and found him already gone.

“Gotcha,” she muttered to herself. “Glad we talked.”

The lot wasn’t overly crowded—a couple of small groups in odd corners, unsurprisingly near the few stores facing inward that either catered to the kids or simply ignored them. But visibility was still a challenge, what with the trees and the hundred or so parked cars.

This explained another reason for the location’s popularity among the less-than-desirable—while automobiles had limited access to it, pedestrians could pass through like water through a colander. A dozen stores facing out had rear entrances servicing the parking lot. Intended to address fire codes or simple convenience, this porosity afforded drug dealers and others seeking discretion multiple ways of transecting the block without drawing attention.

That alone made Sammie nervous—that they hadn’t done enough preparation only worsened it. With Willy’s DNA match, Ryan was no longer a mere interview subject; he was a murder suspect. That meant that you delved into his background thoroughly, scrutinized his personal habits, found out the best place to isolate and grab him, and only then took action. It didn’t mean you wandered around a parking lot, hoping to get lucky.

But Willy was Willy, and Joe wasn’t around—again. That put Sam in the position of dancing with the devil she knew all too well, versus holding off until Joe surfaced, knowing that Willy would be in motion on his own in the meantime.

At least this way, she might be able to run interference.

“I got Maura Scully,” Lester said quietly over Sam’s earpiece.

“Where?”

“She just left the bakery, east side.”

Sam walked in that direction, soon spotting the young girl’s hank of long blond hair.

“You want to tag her first?” Les asked.

“Yeah,” she answered. “I want this nice and quiet.”

Sam saw Lester idly leaning against his car, beyond where Scully was chatting with two other girls. He was pretending to be having a cell-phone conversation.

Sam approached the trio casually. “Hi,” she said, addressing them all before looking directly at Scully. “Are you Maura?”

“Who’s asking?” Scully wanted to know.

Sam smiled and stuck her hand out. “Oh, right—duh. I’m Sam. I work with HCRS. I just wondered if I could ask you a couple of questions.”

Predictably, and as Sam had hoped, Maura rolled her eyes. “God, what is it with you people?”

“I know, I know. This is just so I can fill out some paperwork and not get fired. I am sorry. I know what a hassle we can be.”

Maura put on a show of being peeved, mostly for her companions, but conceded in the end. “Whatever.”

Sam hesitated. “It’s kind of confidential.”

“I can’t leave,” Maura told her. “I’m waiting for somebody.”

“No, no. We can just move across the way a little.” Sam glanced at the other two. “That’s okay, isn’t it? Just two minutes of privacy? I’ll be as fast as I can.”

The other girls looked uncomfortable being asked permission. “Sure,” one of them barely murmured.

But it was enough. Scully followed Sam across the parking lot’s traffic lane, until they were standing out of earshot.

“Where’s Ryan?” Sam asked, out of the blue but for the sake of the microphone. “I thought he’d be with you.”

“In the bakery,” Maura told her without thought. “What do you want?”

From the corner of her eye, Sam saw Lester leave his post and stroll toward the bakery’s far entrance, so that Ryan would be boxed in.

“I guess you heard that Becky had a meltdown last night,” Sam said, watching over the girl’s shoulder to check on any activity at the store.

“So? What’s that got to do with me?”

“Well, you live at the same address, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, I was wondering what you could tell me about life in general there, specifically relating to Becky’s state of mind.”

Maura’s forehead wrinkled. “What?”

“How’s Becky been acting?”

“She’s a stuck-up bitch. I don’t have nothing to do with her.”

“Still, you must have some impressions.”

Sam saw Les enter the store. Almost immediately, she heard his surprised voice mutter, “Shit. Willy’s making his move.”

Sam stiffened, not listening to Maura anymore. So that’s where he went.