Without Warning (11 page)

But I certainly found it annoying, because of what it might portend. If Matt, or any other media person, had a way of knowing what we were doing inside the investigation, then in the future something important could be compromised.

It was hard to know where the leak was. I had a reasonable trust in every member of our small department. That’s not to say that I was certain they were above sharing information with Matt or someone else, it’s just that there were no obvious suspects in my mind.

And it wasn’t even a certainty that the information had leaked from within. Tony Brus, or members of his department, could have been the culprit. I doubted it, but it was certainly possible.

There was also a chance that Matt was just doing good work. It was public knowledge who was killed in that fire, and Matt could have gone back over the media stories at the time, and noticed Price’s name. Maybe he then took a leap and added the fact that we were investigating, without having certain knowledge that we were.

Such a guess would have been logical, and the penalty for being wrong would not have been significant. So he might have written his educated guess, which happened to be right.

But whatever the impact that this story might or might not have, it was a situation that we’d have to deal with. There would likely be other situations, as the investigation wore on, in which secrecy would be essential.

“You think it came from our people?” Hank asked.

“Decent chance of it. I doubt it was Brus, and Matt is spending so much time being a star that it’s a long shot he came up with it on his own.”

There was one more aspect of it that bothered me, but I didn’t mention it to Hank. Matt’s story had referred to the frustration I had felt when Price walked for the killing, yet I had taken pains not to reveal that publicly at all. The few comments I had made at the time were professional, and mostly paid lip service to our justice system needing to be adhered to.

People in the department would no doubt have been aware of my attitude toward the murder charges being dropped, and my dislike of Price. While no one was aware that I had broken his ribs, I doubt if my people would have been surprised by it. That was the major reason that I thought this leak had come from within.

One thing was for sure: if I found out who the leaker was, he or she would no longer be “within” the department.

“Okay. Let me take care of it,” Hank said. “You can always come in with the hammer later, if it continues. But for now I think I should talk to people individually.”

So Hank went off to do that, and later in the day came back to report on his conversations. “I didn’t accuse anybody,” he said. “I just talked about the need to keep things in house, and not to have contact with the media.”

“What were the reactions?”

“Just what you’d think. Everyone agreed leaking was terrible, and vowed that they would never do it.”

“So you have any ideas who might have?”

He thought for a moment and then shook his head. “Nope. But I’ll keep on it.”

I turned on the television the next morning to get the weather, and saw Matt Higgins. He was talking to Matt Lauer on the
Today Show
about the capsule story, and the attempt on his life. He was doing well, expressing concern about the victims and modesty about the stories he was writing.

I had a number of different reactions to the interview, though, and none of them was positive.

For one thing, it would firmly make the story a national one, which meant that Wilton was about to be besieged by outside media people. This could only make my job more difficult, and it already seemed difficult enough.

The other problem about the interview was more worrisome. I was seriously concerned that the FBI was going to come in, as they often do when stories like this break out into the public consciousness. It’s not that I feel overly competitive with them, although there is some of that. I just didn’t think they’d have much to bring to the party right then; this was local, and involved local people.

But if they wanted to come in, there’d be no way to keep them out. They could trump up a reason for believing that the criminals had crossed state lines at some point in their conspiracy, or that the fire represented a terrorist attack. They could come in with impunity, because no one, least of all the town of Wilton, would have the power to keep them out.

What could we do? Sue them?

It was about seven hours later that my prediction proved right. Two guys came into my office who looked so much like FBI agents that I was surprised “FBI” wasn’t branded into their foreheads.

They introduced themselves as Special Agent Sean Bennett and Special Agent Steve Barone, showing me their badges as they spoke their names, in almost a synchronized movement.

“Are there any agents who are not special?” I asked.

I would have expected them to be annoyed by the question; most agents I’ve dealt with have had a real low annoyance threshold. But while Barone stayed stone-faced, Bennett, who seemed to be the leader of the duo, smiled. “None that I’ve run into,” he said.

“So you guys watch the
Today Show
?” I asked.

Bennett shook his head. “Not me …
Good Morning America
all the way. But somebody above me must be a Savannah Guthrie fan. I got the call at eight this morning.”

“So you were told to move in?”

“Not yet. Right now we just want to assess the situation and determine if there’s a role for us.”

“There isn’t,” I said.

He smiled again. “We might have to look a little deeper than that.”

There was no chance that I was going to dissuade him; he wouldn’t have been given the authority to be dissuaded. I wasn’t even sure that it was in our best interest to keep them out; they could bring resources to the situation that we couldn’t come close to matching.

I nodded. “I figured you would. How do you want to handle it?”

“Part of the reason we’re such special agents is that we’re good listeners. So tell us what’s going on.”

So that’s what I did. I told them an abbreviated version of everything that had happened to date, leaving out only the personal history between Katie and I, since it wasn’t really relevant.

Both Bennett and Barone interrupted occasionally to ask questions. It’s easy to tell whether people are smart by the type of questions they ask; these guys were smart.

I have to admit that I was pleased I was able to answer their questions to their apparent satisfaction; it made me feel that I was pursuing the case correctly.

“Sounds like you’ve got it pretty buttoned down,” Bennett said, when I finished.

“So you’ll head back to Special Agent Land and live happily ever after?”

He laughed. “This may not surprise you, but that’s not our call. My recommendation will be that we be available to you if you need us to come in.”

“Works for me,” I said. I called Hank in, introduced him and asked him to show the agents the forensic reports. They went off with him, leaving me alone to try to figure out what the hell I was going to do next. The smart thing would probably have been to toss the ball to Agent Bennett and tell him to run with it.

Instead I called Katie and asked her if she had time to talk.

“I’m just going into a meeting,” she said. “Should be over about seven.”

“Dinner?”

She hesitated and thought for a moment, just like I should have hesitated and thought before I asked her. “Okay,” was her delayed response. “Where?”

“I’ll pick you up at seven at the office.”

She finally came downstairs at ten after seven, and we again drove down to Damariscotta to King Eider’s. “You always conduct your interrogations over dinner?” she asked, once she got in the car.

“No. It’s pretty much limited to you.”

Katie was as direct as ever. “Why me?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, because I wasn’t. What we had to talk about could certainly have waited for the next day, in one of our offices.

“So let’s talk.”

“Now?”

“Since my feeling is that I’m not going to like the subject, let’s get it out of the way so we can have a nice dinner.”

Bill Norris loved his Mondays. His job caused him to work weekends, so Monday was the one day he took off. He had the routine down pat. His wife, Gale, let him sleep until eight, and had coffee waiting for him when he came downstairs. Then he sat on the TV chair and read the paper. Then he watched television all day and into the night, mostly ESPN and repeats of sitcoms.
Everybody Loves Raymond
and
Seinfeld
were his two favorites.

Gale woke him at eight, as he wanted, but it took him until at least eight ten to finally get up. Part of this was just that he was tired, and the other part was that his body was starting to let him down. Shrapnel will do that to you, and Bill still had a few pieces in him from Afghanistan.

The newspaper never came until eight thirty; paper boys seemed not to be as energetic or efficient as they were in the old days. So he sat in his chair and had his coffee, sipping it slowly and savoring it. Black, no sugar … the military way.

He couldn’t watch television and look at the lake at the same time; there just wasn’t a wall on the lake side that could accommodate his large-screen TV. He regretted it, but it was pretty much the only thing about the house that bothered him. And Gale was fine with it, since she never watched TV anyway.

So on this morning Bill opted to drink his coffee while looking at the lake, at least until the paper came. It was an incredibly peaceful scene, one that was duplicated all over New Hampshire. It seemed like every house within twenty miles had a waterfront view, and Bill thought that at one point he might have been in every one of them.

It was raining, which was pretty much Bill’s favorite kind of weather, even though it caused his leg pain to increase slightly. He just loved the way the lake surface reacted to receiving the liquid reinforcement.

Bill hadn’t read the paper from the day before, since he had gone to work early, so he picked it up and started reading. He noticed a story about some murders in Wilton, Maine, which had apparently been predicted in a time capsule. He believed about a third of anything he read in the paper, and half that of anything he saw on television news. But instead of just breezing past the article, he read it carefully, because he happened to see the name Jake Robbins.

Bill and Jake had served together in Afghanistan. They were together on that terrible day that the ambush happened. Bill was badly injured by an exploding ordinance and barely made it out alive. Jake got some of the others out as well and was honored for it.

Bill liked Jake and always had. But he had mixed feelings about Jake’s hero status. It wasn’t that he didn’t consider him a true hero, because he certainly did. It was more that the place was filled with heroes, some who made it out and some who didn’t, and individual honors seemed somehow out of place.

He read the story, and then reflected back on that time. It’s something he did often, and he could lose himself in it for hours. Afghanistan was always going to be with him; he had long ago come to that realization, and was fine with it.

“The paper is here early,” Gale said, bringing him back from the war zone. She was looking out the window at the front lawn.

“Any chance you’ll go out and get it?’

“In the rain?” Gale did not share Bill’s preference for inclement weather.

“No?”

“I believe ‘no’ accurately sums it up. ‘Not a chance in hell’ might make it a little clearer for you.”

He sighed and got up, tapping her lightly on the backside as he walked by her to the door. He and Gale had been married for fourteen years, and marrying her was easily the best and luckiest decision he had ever made.

Bill didn’t bother to take an umbrella with him; he never used one. He walked the twenty or so steps to the newspaper, lying wrapped in plastic on the ground.

When he leaned over to get it, he noticed it looked strange. He looked closer and saw that it was something he was very familiar with; it just wasn’t a newspaper.

He had time to register in his mind what it was; he had seen many of them halfway around the world. None had been painted to look like a newspaper, but then again none had been designed to specifically target him. This one might as well have had his name on it.

Bill had time to realize all this, but not enough time to react. The explosion blew him apart, badly damaged the front of the house, and blew out windows at least a block away.

It knocked Gale to the floor, and it was a few moments before she started to scream.

“Roger still loved her,” Katie said. “Right up until the end. And beyond.”

“But he lost her; she eventually rejected him. Couldn’t that have made him lose control?”

She shook her head. “Not enough to kill her. Roger was the least violent person I’ve ever met. It just wouldn’t be part of his character.”

“You never doubted him?” I asked.

“Not about that. He cheated on me, and he didn’t love me anymore. Our marriage was over either way. But he was a good person who made a terrible mistake. Murder was not the mistake.”

I just nodded, and she continued. “Why are we talking about this, Jake? You now know as well as I do that he didn’t do it.”

“But somebody did.”

“I wish I could help you with that,” she said.

“Maybe you can. Whoever killed Jenny also set up Roger to take the fall. It’s different than the other capsule murders; with Jenny he wanted us to arrest Roger. There was real evidence against him, and if he really was innocent, then somebody planted it to frame him.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“There’s more, Katie. I think it’s very possible that Roger was targeted in prison.”

“Why? If he knew anything, he would have come forward with it during the investigation, or the trial.”

“Unless he didn’t realize he knew something significant.”

“Well, if he didn’t, then I certainly had no idea.”

“So he didn’t have any enemies?” I asked. “Someone you could visualize doing something like this?”