He listened for a minute before adding, “Not at all. I’ll place my bids along with everyone else. I’m not asking to subvert the system, but since fate has placed me so nearby, I just had to ask for a closer examination, especially given how much I might be willing to pay.”
He waited a little more and finally said, “Excellent. Isn’t that spiffy? I’ll come by in a few hours.”
He hung up with a smile. “That ought to give us time for a warrant.”
Sammie shook her head and stared at him in wonder. “Spiffy?”
Willy raised an eyebrow. “Whatever.”
· · ·
North of Putney village, Old Route 5 turns from a paved road to dirt and then vanishes altogether over a very short distance, a victim of Interstate 91, which was traced across the map in the 1960s with the subtlety of a broad-tipped magic marker, cutting off or obliterating dozens of ancient meandering country roads that had taken their cues from a host of preceding Indian trails, cow paths, and wagon tracks.
Old Route 5 also is just north of a settlement that future scientists will ponder at length, and about which—I dearly hope—they will reach some truly bizarre conclusions about Vermont’s overall placement on the national oddball scale.
Santa’s Land is a tiny petting zoo and theme park given over to a menagerie of approachable, photogenic beasts, corralled among a startling collection of Swiss huts, elves’ workshops, and cement igloos, some with paint jobs as garish as a punk rocker’s toenails.
Every time I drive by it, fantasizing about what those scholars will make of it, my pleasure is heightened because it also happens to be located in a village famous for its political correctness and artistic high breeding. Such jarring juxtapositions are one of the regular aspects of this state I find most appealing.
The residents of Old Route 5 occupy a standard sliding scale for rural Vermont, from houses plucked from a frugal and practical contractor’s imagination, to mobile homes that were rolled into place so many years ago that the trees now surrounding them make all notion of mobility inconceivable. That quixotic and contradictory sense of humanity’s imprint mingling with signs of its own impermanence is driven home by the steady rumble from the unseen interstate nearby: a siren call to progress and the restless.
Walter Skottick had staked out a middle ground between these extremes, living in a cobbled-together wooden house that had begun enthusiastically years ago, complete with siding and an asphalt roof, only to settle eventually for a series of plywood, barn wood, or plain tar paper extensions, all clearly designed for some specific purpose, and all stamped with the homeowner’s ever lessening standards.
Willy and I left my car and surrendered to the cold-nosed nuzzling of four friendly dogs, their combined nostrils producing a fog machine’s worth of condensed air.
The front door to the ramshackle house burst open, and a large, bearded, friendly man waved a meaty hand at us. “Hi, there. Sorry about the dogs—should’ve warned you.
Boys… Guys… Here.
”
The dogs totally ignored him and made our perilous trip from car to house even more challenging than it would have been otherwise. There are two ways of attacking a snow-clogged walkway in this country: The compulsive among us shovel diligently down to the frozen earth every time it’s called for, neatness and a sprinkling of salt counting for extra points. The more casual merely let their guests beat an ever thickening, increasingly slippery path to their doors. Mr. Skottick was one of the latter, making Willy and me, aided by the gamboling dogs, look like a couple of drunks.
Skottick stepped back as we drew nearer. “I really am sorry. Never got around to training them. Is one of you Mr. Morrison?”
Willy, having almost fallen three times, testily fished out his badge. “I lied. We’re cops.”
“Vermont Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Skottick,” I explained, irritated at having our cover blown prematurely. It would have been nice to at least see the watch before announcing ourselves. “We apologize for the subterfuge, but we need to talk to you about that watch.”
Of the various reactions available to him, Skottick took the one I was coming to dislike the most, exacerbating my mood. “The Vermont
what?
”
Willy shared my feelings. “Bureau of Investigation. It’s like the FBI, but with shit on their shoes. Where’s the watch?”
Skottick understandably took offense. “Just a minute. I don’t understand.”
I took the warrant from my pocket, giving Willy a hard look. “Mr. Skottick, we have reason to believe the watch you have for sale was recently stolen. We’re here to take possession of it and anything else that was stolen along with it, and we’d also like to hear your side of the story.”
His face above the beard went pale and then flushed red. “That son of bitch.”
“This oughta be good,” Willy muttered, ignoring me and entering the house uninvited.
“Who’re you talking about?” I asked as I followed suit, forcing Skottick to join us.
“Marty Gagnon. He’s the one who gave me the watch. I sold him a car, he didn’t have what he owed, so he gave me the watch. Told me it was a family heirloom.”
“And you swallowed that?” Willy asked from an interior room.
“Why would he need a car from you if he had a watch like that?”
“Better get it for us,” I said gently.
His shoulders slumped, Skottick eased past Willy into a cluttered workroom. “I didn’t know anything about this. I swear to God. Maybe I was stupid, but I knew I wouldn’t get the money out of him any other way.”
He rummaged around in a desk drawer and withdrew the watch, which glittered in the light through the window. “I thought it was fake, to be honest. I mean, it looks like a Christmas ornament. That’s why I put it on the Net instead of just selling it to a jeweler. I figured the diamonds were phony.”
“They’re not,” Willy said shortly, taking the watch and working it into an evidence envelope with one hand.
“What else did Marty Gagnon give you?” I asked.
“That was it. I promise. You can search the place, if you want.”
I turned to Willy. “You want to look around a little? I’ll talk to Mr. Skottick in the living room.”
Willy nodded and the two of us left him alone. Skottick sat heavily in an old armchair like a bear at the end of a long day, his paws dangling between his knees.
“Tell me about Gagnon,” I told him.
“Not much to tell. I advertised a car in the paper about a month ago. He came by right off, paid me half in cash and promised the rest later. Said he hadn’t gotten his paycheck yet. I trusted him. A couple of weeks later, I called him and he told me he got fired. He didn’t have the money but he’d get it soon. I was angry—threatened to put the cops on him—so he told me he’d take care of me some other way. It would just take a little more time. Finally, he called and said he had better than cash. He’d had a relative die and he’d inherited some stuff and had a watch that was worth a lot more than the balance he owed me. Maybe it was dumb, but I cut him some slack. I was getting sick of it. He came right over, gave me the watch, and that was that.”
“This all happened when?”
“He gave me the watch yesterday.”
“You moved pretty fast to put it on the Net.”
“I sell a lot of things that way. Been doing it for years.”
“You still have that phone number?” I asked.
He shifted his bulk to reach into his back pocket, pulled out a ratty wallet, and removed a small, soiled scrap of paper, which he handed over. “Am I under arrest?”
I looked at the number. It was a Brattleboro exchange. “No. Did he give you an address?”
He shook his head.
“How ’bout a bill of sale or the registration transfer info? That would have it.”
As if snapping out of a dream, he blinked once and dug into the wallet again, producing what I was after. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“If you’re telling the truth, nothing. This says it was an ’88 Subaru. What did it look like?”
“Dark blue where it wasn’t rust. I was asking five hundred for it. I’m really sorry about this. I didn’t mean any harm.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said reassuringly, all but convinced by now that he was telling the truth. “At worst, you’re out a car and some money, and if we get lucky—and you don’t hold your breath—maybe you’ll even get the car back.”
I took a business card from my pocket and gave it to him. “Now that you know what’s up, give it some more thought. Anything comes to mind, even something trivial, call me or leave a message.” I held up my index finger for emphasis. “Remember one thing, though, okay?”
After a pause, he asked, “What’s that?”
“I’ve cut you some serious slack here, taking you at your word. If I find out that was a mistake or that you’ve been spreading the word about our visit today, especially to Marty, I’ll be a lot less pleasant the next time. Understand?”
His eyes widened at the threat. “I won’t say nuthin’. Promise.”
There was a thud from the other room, followed by a curse.
“I’ll get him out of here,” I added.
“DAMN, BOSS, YOU COULD’VE GOTTEN US A HEATED LOOKOUT.”
Lester Spinney rose from the chair by the window and walked around the bare, shadowy room, thrashing his sides with his arms like a penguin doing aerobics.
I kept my eyes on the darkened apartment across the street. “I told you to dress warmly.”
“I am. I did—to cross the street or something, not stand around inside a freezer.”
“Oh-one from oh-two,” Sammie’s voice came over the portable radio.
I picked it up and keyed the mike. “Go ahead.”
“Anything?”
I sympathized with everyone’s boredom. We’d been there for six hours already. I only hoped Willy wouldn’t chime in from his position—I doubted he’d be so gentle. “Nope.”
She didn’t respond. I replaced the radio on the windowsill and resumed watching Marty Gagnon’s windows, curtainless and as blank as they’d been all night.
We were on Main Street, downtown Brattleboro, Spinney and I on the west side, above the pharmacy, Willy bundled up and dressed like a bum at the back of the alley, near the back door of Gagnon’s building, and Sammie, the only warm one among us, holding tight in an apartment directly above the suspect’s. And none of us with anything to look at.
We’d been like this since suppertime, hoping Marty Gagnon would reward us by coming home. Following our visit to Walter Skottick’s, we’d discreetly dropped by Gagnon’s place and found the rusty Subaru in a parking space by the railroad tracks nearby, but no Marty.
The choices after that had been several: a canvass of his neighbors, friends, and family; a sit-tight approach, waiting for a reaction to the bulletins we’d sent around; a combination of both; or—the most expensive alternative—a stakeout.
I’d opted for the last, to universal groans.
My explanation was that, according to Marty Gagnon’s records, we were dealing with a man as prone to flight as a cat in a dog fight. He had a history of running off worse than anyone I’d seen. He’d skipped on court appearances, parole meetings, counseling sessions, and everything else for which he’d ever been held accountable. It had therefore seemed more cost-effective to me to blow a single night’s overtime and nab him fast than to tip him off through routine inquiries and then waste days chasing him down.
What I hadn’t admitted to the others was the additional juvenile appeal of handing this case gift-wrapped back to Snuffy Dawson only forty-eight hours after inheriting it.
Which was just as well, since now it was looking as if I’d blown my budget solely to create three cranky colleagues and a skeptical boss at headquarters.
The cell phone in my breast pocket began vibrating silently against my ribs.
“Gunther.”
“This is Dispatch. We just got a call from a Walter Skottick. He was assaulted at his home by someone looking for Marty Gagnon.”
“He okay?”
“Didn’t sound it. I sent the ambulance to pick him up. They should be at the hospital in about half an hour. He wanted me to tell you specifically that he didn’t talk to anybody. That make sense?”
“Yeah.” I put the cell phone away and keyed the radio again. “It’s a wrap, everybody. I think our target’s already long gone.”
· · ·
Sammie Martens stood in the ER waiting room, her head tilted back, staring at the television set mounted high on the wall. On screen, a couple was visibly screaming at each other from opposing chairs, an interviewer with a microphone trying to walk a fine line between verbal abuse and furniture tossing—but the sound was off, making the whole drama a pantomime. A caption at the bottom of the screen read, “Men who slept with their sisters.”
“What do you think happened?” Sammie asked the TV.
I understood the oblique reference. “Skottick will have to confirm it, but my bet is whoever beat him up did what we did in reverse, looking for Marty Gagnon, asking a lot of questions, until he finally ended up at Skottick’s place, giving Marty the heads up in the process. That would explain why Marty never came home.”
She didn’t move. “Makes you wonder if this person is looking for him for the same reason we are.”
· · ·
Walter Skottick seemed in pretty rough shape when he was rolled into the ER on a backboard, his face bandaged, his neck in a brace, and two IVs running into his arms.
Sammie and I waited in the hallway while the nurses and technicians went through their routine and the on-call doc finally arrived to survey what was left.
Luckily, that doc turned out to be James Franklin, the hospital’s best general surgeon and a man I had known for years.
“Jim,” I asked him on one of his trips out of the treatment room. “He going to make it?”
Franklin stopped in his tracks and laughed. “If we don’t kill him. You read that article on how many people die in hospitals every year through negligence? It’s amazing. Hi, Sammie. Walk with me, I gotta get something to help out with his lung. How’ve you guys been? Haven’t seen you since that gunshot wound to the heart. Remember that, Joe? Hell of a deal. At least I didn’t do
that
guy in. Miracle I saw him at all. Shoulda been DOA. Still, you know, I keep thinking about that case, wondering if there mightn’t have been some way… Remember, Joe? I had my finger right in the hole… ”