“Yes, but read it now, in case you have any immediate questions.”
He smiled thinly. “Oh, I think that’s a guarantee.”
A silence settled on the office as he analyzed the proposal that Susan Raffner had outlined to Gail. He read it twice before placing it faceup on his lap.
He countermanded his teeming objections by asking, “What would you like me to do?”
“What do you think, for starters?”
“I’m very suspicious,” he answered. “But you probably already know that.”
“I counted on it. You’re not alone. That’s why we’re talking.”
Perkins nodded. “Okay.”
“In answer to your question,” Gail continued, “I’d like you to contact Sheldon Scott and arrange a meeting, as soon as you can. He’s not the one who approached Susan, so this would be a second foray into the LeMieur camp, coming from our direction and using different people. What I want to know from him speaks for itself.”
“In other words, is this legit?” Perkins suggested.
“Exactly. The best one to answer that will be LeMieur himself, of course, but at this stage, I just want to make sure this isn’t some huge con job that somebody totally unrelated to LeMieur might be pulling on Susan. And-through her-the rest of us. It wouldn’t be the first time a cat’s-paw was used underhandedly. Let’s find out if this is for real.”
Robert Perkins picked up the sheet of paper again and glanced at it, although he was no longer absorbing a single word. Having processed his own concerns about this risky offer, he couldn’t deny the elegance of the governor’s request. If he sat down with Scott and began a generalized conversation, it would take three sentences for him to discover if this offer was coming from LeMieur or not. It wouldn’t reveal what conniving might be behind it, but at least it would shine a light on the real cast of characters. It would be a start, along the lines of “know thine enemy.”
He stood up, folding the piece of paper and slipping it into his jacket pocket. “You got it, Governor. I’ll put out a feeler and report back, ASAP.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks, Rob. And the fact that you don’t like it gives me comfort.”
He nodded and left her office, lost in thought about this potential maze of mirrors, occurring amid a natural disaster, in a time of statewide financial instability and need. He knew politicians well. They reacted to events-sometimes wisely; often impulsively. The smart ones knew that when they were feeling comfortable, it usually meant that they hadn’t received the latest memo.
Rob Perkins couldn’t help wondering what kind of memo he’d be delivering at their next meeting. And he still didn’t know if his largely untested boss-while clearly and demonstrably smart-was in fact savvy, or had just been lucky so far.
* * *
Lester Spinney stood on the threshold between Gorden Marshall’s kitchen and his living room, as Joe had done a few days earlier. He was alone, Joe being up near Burlington, still chasing after the possible arson. Sam and Willy were down south-he on the Rozanski disappearance, she manning the fort in Brattleboro and helping to coordinate statewide resumption of day-to-day operations. The Vermont Bureau of Investigation was back up and running, now that the several flooded regional offices had been either cleaned up or transplanted, but Joe had felt that they should stick with what they’d begun, and let the other squads catch their collective breath. Normally, the Brattleboro branch wouldn’t have been so spread out, but that was part of how the VBI functioned-unhampered by local boundaries, and not necessarily tied to working with local police. The autonomy and responsibility that the organization gave its agents-all veterans of other agencies-had been one of the primary attractions for Lester when he’d signed up. Today’s assignment was a prime example of that. Joe had asked him to find out what he could from Marshall’s apartment, before it was returned to The Woods of Windsor and the inevitable next tenant.
Lester flexed his fingers inside his latex gloves and crossed into the bedroom. Most departments had either a specialized crime scene unit or called upon the state’s mobile forensic team to assist. The VBI could and often did do likewise. But this was a crime scene in the minds of but a few, and calling for the techs would have been difficult to justify. Lester knew, therefore, that he was less in pursuit of scientific forensic evidence, and more here to absorb a sense of the man who’d once called the place home.
That and maybe find out what had happened during the last hours of his life.
The stripped bed had been neatly covered with a coverlet. Instinctively, Lester dropped to the floor and laid his cheek against the carpeting, studying its nap between the door and the bed to check for the signs of a vacuum cleaner’s back-and-forth furrows. But it appeared as if they’d only addressed the bed following the removal of Marshall’s body. Les would have to double-check with Hannah Eastridge that such was standard protocol at The Woods, but he didn’t doubt it. His wife, Sue, had once worked at a far-less-upscale nursing home near Springfield, but she’d commented on how, even there, the staff was attentive to neatening up after a resident’s death, in part to make it easier on the family who’d come in later to remove personal effects. These places were production lines of sorts, after all-it wasn’t good for business to let a bed stay empty for long.
While he was on his hands and knees, Lester crawled along the floor, small flashlight in hand, sweeping his eyes to and fro, looking for any dropped or forgotten object that might prove useful. But the cleaning crew that came by weekly-and which Lester had already been told had last visited five days earlier-was apparently thorough. Aside from a single lost ballpoint pen that he found under the dresser, there was nothing.
Starting with the dresser, however, Les began working methodically from top drawer to bottom. He found a man’s jewelry box in the upper right-hand drawer alongside two watches, a Cross pencil, a plastic container of collar stays, and a stack of folded handkerchiefs. He slid the box to the fore, opened it, and discovered a jumbled assortment of cuff links, rings, association pins, and tie clips.
Grunting quietly, he turned to retrieve the camera that he’d placed on the floor by the bedroom door, and found himself staring at a man in a dark blue custodian’s uniform with a woman’s stocking pulled over his face. In the instant that it took him to register this, the man smacked him on the side of the head with something hard.
Lester felt his knees give out as he flinched against the explosive pain. He heard more than saw the shape of the man retreat, and lashed out to stop him, his hand flailing in the empty air.
“Stop,” he heard himself say, or thought he said, as he struggled in vain to stand, propping instead against the dresser. There was something happening in the room-what, he couldn’t tell-distinguished by a shadow falling across him, followed by the sound of running feet and the slamming of a distant door, which he knew to be the apartment’s entrance.
He finally lurched to his feet, smacking his shoulder against the open dresser drawer, and fell toward the bedpost, trying to reach the door while hanging on like the passenger of a ship about to capsize. He kept shaking his head, hoping to clear his vision.
His balance and eyesight improving, Les picked up speed as he cut through the kitchenette and tore open the front door. He ran out into the hallway, just in time to see the last of his assailant rounding a far corner.
“Jesus,” he muttered, touching his temple, and took off in pursuit, quickly glancing at his hand. There was some blood, but not much, which he took as a good sign. Running, he reached for his cell phone and auto-dialed the VBI dispatch number.
“This is Spinney,” he panted to the operator. “I’m in foot pursuit of a male inside The Woods of Windsor. Do you have my location?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, almost disturbingly calm. “Your GPS is coming through clear. Can you give me a description?”