The Price of Malice (32 page)

Joe rolled onto his back a moment and studied what he could see of the flooring overhead, finally reaching for his flashlight to better study its details.

“What’re you looking at?” Richard wanted to know, his voice still very low.

“Just wondering how I can take a peek up there, see what’s going on.”

“You could use my door,” he suggested simply.

Joe straightened and stared at him, feeling foolish. He’d just assumed Richard used the front entrance and then ducked under. “I sure could,” he conceded. “Where is it?”

The boy pointed farther down the length of the trailer. “It’s a trapdoor, over there.”

“You push it down, or up?”

“It opens up, into the hallway near the bathroom.”

“So, it’s on hinges,” Joe half mused aloud. “Which way do you see when your head’s sticking through it?”

Richard pointed toward the street.

“Meaning I could see Nicky talking on the special phone right now, if I did that?”

“Right.”

Overhead, Nick was speaking, his voice too muffled to be understood. Joe knew Ron was running through the standard hostage negotiator’s protocol, establishing rapport—a sometimes long and subtle process.

“Wait here,” Joe told his companion, and awkwardly but silently crawled back into the gloom, searching for the trapdoor.

He found it easily enough, positioned himself on his knees, and—with his forehead just touching the surface of the door—placed both palms flat against it and pushed very gently, hoping it wouldn’t stick and thus pop open under pressure.

It didn’t. No doubt due to Richard using it so regularly, it rose almost immediately, without a sound, and allowed Joe the thinnest of
cracks, through which he could see the same quasi-living-room area where Sam had interviewed Karen Putnam.

This time, however, Nicky King was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, the throw phone in one hand and a large knife in the other. Next to him, sulking on the couch, Becky sat with her arms hugging her legs.

Joe dropped back down, pulled out his radio, screwed its earpiece into place, and keyed the mike.

“Ron?”

Sammie answered, “He’s on the phone, boss, talking with Nick. What’ve you got?”

“Access to the central hallway from below. Richard showed me the trapdoor he uses to get in and out. I just took a peek and saw Nick on the phone.”

“Becky okay?”

“She’s fine. She may not even be in real danger, except that Nicky is holding a knife. We need a diversion of some kind—somehow to either get him walking in my direction or looking so hard out the window that I can climb in and sneak up behind him.”

Sammie sounded doubtful. “How big is that trapdoor?”

Joe smiled. “I’ll forget you asked that, but it ain’t huge. I’d prefer the first option.”

“Roger that,” she said. “I’ll call you right back.”

Joe returned to where Richard was staring through the latticework. In every direction, cops could be seen, tucked behind shelters of all types, dressed in black BDUs and helmets. It was like being on the wrong end of a war movie.

Joe slipped his hand over the boy’s shoulder. “I talked to Sam just now. We’re putting a plan together to end this peacefully.”

Richard pointed outside. “They don’t look like they heard it.”

“They only do what they’re told,” Joe tried reassuring him. “Right now, they’re supposed to sit tight and look scary. They doing a good job?”

Richard nodded silently. Above them, Nicky’s muffled voice continued as Ron kept him occupied. So far, it had been a near textbook recipe of time-tested procedure mixed with serendipitous opportunities, like the discovery of the trapdoor.

Ten minutes later, Sam’s voice came over Joe’s earpiece.

“Joe?”

He keyed the mike and spoke softly. “Right here.”

“You better get in position. We’re about to head him down your way.”

“Give me one full minute and then go,” he told her. “Don’t bother trying to get me on the radio. I’ll have my hands full.”

“Got it.”

He told Richard to stay put again, and resumed his post under the trapdoor. Unbeknownst to him, one of the Special Response Team stepped out into the street and, in full view of the trailer’s living-room window, gestured to two others to run down to the unit’s far end, presumably to attempt an entry from the back.

At the same time, Joe eased the door up, just in time to see Nick straighten suddenly—phone still in hand—stare out the window, and begin looking around in a near panic.

“
You lied to me
,” he shouted on the phone, before throwing it away and running down the hall, straight toward Joe, his eyes glued to the far end.

Joe waited until the last possible moment, the young man’s hurtling body growing to absurd dimensions, before he threw the trapdoor back on its hinges and stood up to his full height—a super-sized gopher abruptly leaping from its hole.

Nicky’s eyes popped wide just as Joe seized him around both knees and brought him down like a tree stump—hard and with a single resounding crash. The boy hit the floor with enough force to stun him momentarily, making Joe fear that he might have fallen on his knife.

But it wasn’t quite over—in the sudden, startling silence, Joe heard a motion over his shoulder, in time to turn and see Becky running toward him, brandishing the very same knife.

She never closed the gap. Through the trailer’s front door to her left, a member of Ron’s team appeared like a charging Ninja and simply catapulted her into the opposite wall like a human-sized rag doll.

In all, it took under ten seconds, leaving everyone—as Joe had promised Richard—alive.

S
he came at you with a knife?” Lyn asked him, her eyebrows high.

“I thought she was the victim.”

“She was,” Joe told her. “But in more ways than one.” They were in a car, driving toward Bangor, where they were to meet with Cathy Lawless and members of ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal cops whose jurisdiction included most crimes involving the nation’s borders.

Joe took his hand off the steering wheel to count off on his fingers. “First, by her own family dynamics, including two brothers acting as knee-jerk fathers; an all-but-invisible jailbird stepfather; a real father no one seems to remember; and a nearly totally dysfunctional mother. Second, by Wayne Castine, who was either sleeping with her mother to get to her, or just discovered her in the same house and decided on a two-for-one conquest. And third, by the head game Nicky played with her after he caught her with Wayne in that apartment, and forced her to watch him butcher the guy.”

“What
was
that all about?” Lyn asked.

“This comes from the HCRS shrinks, the SA’s office, and our own interviews, but it looks like Nicky figured out about Wayne and Becky, which not only offended his sense of order, but further diminished his place in the family pecking order by adding another male, as if there weren’t enough already. So, one night, he followed her to Babbitt’s apartment, waited until they got comfortable, and then pounded on the door, calling out Wayne’s name. That must’ve surprised the hell out of
him,
even if it didn’t catch the ear of a single one of the neighbors—at least supposedly. Of course, as soon as Wayne opened up, that was it—and the beginning of Nick and Becky’s strange trip.”

“What did he do to her?”

“Nick?” Joe asked. “As I see it, where Wayne won her over with flattery and painted nails, Nicky brainwashed her with how she was the one really responsible for Wayne’s death. Nicky had her believing that she’d seduced Wayne, and had forced Nicky to act as a result.”

“No wonder she was self-mutilating,” Lyn said quietly.

“In the end,” Joe continued, “she flew at me because I was threatening the last defender she had left—the only one of the whole bunch who’d sacrificed everything to protect her.”

“So, the hostage thing in the trailer was bogus?”

“On that level, yes,” he answered her. “Although, given Nicky’s thinking, who knows what he might’ve done if we hadn’t found that trapdoor. He could’ve rationalized killing her to guarantee protecting her virtue. Funny,” he added a moment later, “that we figured most of it out from a single drop of blood. Wayne hit Nicky in the nose as he was going down—barely, but just enough.”

Lyn stared out the window at the passing landscape. They’d been on I-95 for hours, and were nearing Bangor’s outskirts.

“How do people get so messed up?”

He glanced at her. “Are we talking about the Putnam clan, or yours?”

She gave him a faint smile. “Good point.”

“For what it’s worth, Lyn,” he told her, “and I know we haven’t gotten the whole story yet, I think your father was a straight arrow. I’m not saying he didn’t screw up. But I’ll almost guarantee you he was doing the best he could for his kids, right up to the end. People can be stupid, and it can cost them their lives. But I’m not a big believer that they change personalities just because the situation demands it. Keep your good memories of him alive. He deserves that.”

He returned to negotiating the thickening traffic as she went back to watching the scenery.

“Thanks, Joe,” she said after a couple of minutes.

They parked by the side of a large modern office building, overlooking the Kenduskeag Stream, which Lyn immediately recognized as being close to Dick Brandhorst’s place.

“What exactly’s going to happen here? They going to arrest him?” she asked, climbing stiffly out of the car.

“They already have,” Joe told her. He pointed to the building looming alongside. “He’s in an ICE holding cell in there. ICE and the MDEA are cooperating on this, since it involves both drugs and the border. They’re allowing us to watch as a courtesy.”

She considered that a moment before stating, “They’re allowing
you
.”

He circled the car and slid his arm across her shoulders, kissing her cheek. “There are too few of us north of Boston to not be friendly, Lyn. Everybody knows what this cost you, and what you mean to me.
I may be dead wrong, and if I am, I’ll apologize later, but I’m hoping that seeing this interview might help you out—and maybe answer a few of your questions.”

Joe escorted her inside, rode the elevator up, and was met by a thin, somewhat dour woman whom he introduced as Dede Miller, the ICE agent assigned to neighboring Washington County. She had been part of the same task force of weeks earlier.

Miller led them down a hallway, talking as she went. “We only picked him up a half hour ago. He waived his rights, of course, cocky bastard. Probably thinks we got nothing on him. Cathy and I were thinking of playing good-cop-bad-cop on him, hoping two women in the same room will mess him up.”

She opened an unlabeled door, using her security pass to get them deeper into the building, and waved them in without uttering another word.

The room was dark, lighted solely from a large glass window overlooking a similar space next door. It was a standard, if high-end, interrogation setup. Already there were two men, standing before the one-way window, who turned upon their entrance.

The older of the two stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Joe and Lyn, right? I’m John Ferraro—the SAC for this area.” He waved a hand at the other man. “And you’ve already met Dave Beaubien, Cathy’s partner.”

Silent Dave merely nodded his greeting. Beyond the glass, trying to look bored but with his eyes moving nonstop, sat Dick Brandhorst.

“He say anything yet?” Joe asked, joining the first two in a single line—like spectators at an execution.

“Just the usual innocent one-liners: Who me? This is an outrage, etcetera,” Ferraro said.

They heard, over the speaker mounted on the wall, the opposite door’s lock suddenly snap, and both Cathy Lawless and Dede Miller stepped in, the latter carrying a slim file, which she placed before her as she sat across from Brandhorst. Cathy remained standing, leaning against the wall beside the viewing window.

Brandhorst smiled affably. “How many others are hiding behind the mirror?” he asked. “They should come out and join the party.”

Miller merely opened the file and said, “Not sure I’d look at it that way, Dick. You’re in deep trouble. You know a man named Wellman Beale?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“Not good, Dick. When you avoid a direct answer, we call that a lie.”

His eyes flicked between the two of them, although Cathy hadn’t moved. The smile stayed in place. “I meet a lot of people. I don’t always catch their names.”

“Mr. Beale says he knows you.”

Brandhorst nodded agreeably. “I don’t doubt he does.”

“You don’t know the people who work for you?”

His eyes widened slightly. “I don’t know the people at the phone company or the people who pack my groceries. You could say they work for me, too. Tough question to answer.”

Dede Miller remained unperturbed. She slid a piece of paper across the table at him. “Speaking of the phone company, these are your office records, showing that you call Mr. Beale on a regular basis, and have for years.”

Brandhorst didn’t look at the record. “You sure he uses that name when he deals with me?”

Miller slid a photograph over, covering the phone bill. “That’s a picture of you and Beale. We’ve got others.”

This time, he glanced at it, if only briefly. “Oh, yeah. Okay. Maybe I do know him—as John Clark.”

Behind the mirror, Joe nodded approvingly. Dede Miller was starting well.

“Why did you say you didn’t?” she asked.

He considered his response before smiling and spreading his hands wide. “I guess he was protecting his identity for some reason. Wellman, you say? Weird. Yeah, I’ve known him forever. Bit of an asshole but a good fisherman—knows where to find the big ones.”

“You’re saying for the record that you only know him as a fishing guide?”

A tiny but telling hesitation was followed by, “Yeah.”

Without comment, Cathy Lawless left her position and moved to the opposite wall, just enough out of Brandhorst’s line of vision that he had to glance over his shoulder to see her.

“Remember,” she said softly, speaking for the first time, “we only need confirmation for what we already know, and that’s for your sake. The prosecutor will be looking at this video later, to see how straight you’ve been. Could be a jury’ll do the same thing, down the line.”