“Male. Five-ten. Slim build. Dark blue maintenance uniform. Call Sergeant Carrier of the local PD and send backup.”
“Yes, sir.”
He reached the end of the hallway, recovered enough that anger had replaced astonishment. There was another corridor ahead-empty-with an EXIT sign above a door about halfway down. Reaching it quickly and yanking it open, he heard footsteps pounding down the stairs below him.
He exchanged his phone for his gun and took the steps four at a time, swinging from the steel tubular railing and kicking off the walls at each turn to give himself extra thrust. Below, he heard the bang of a fire door, suggesting that the man ahead had reached the outdoors and a broader choice of escape routes.
“Come on, come on,” he chanted to himself, hoping no misstep would result in a broken leg.
He reached the bottom and stopped abruptly at the door, listening intently over his own breathing. He was suddenly conscious of the possible consequences of crashing through that door-and maybe meeting a man with a gun.
He took two deep breaths, seized the door’s panic bar, and pushed slightly, keeping his body alongside the metal frame to one side.
It turned out to have been the wrong time for caution. When he finally exited the building, there was nobody in sight.
“Damn,” he said, and broke back into a run, heading toward the nearest parking area.
Coming over the top of the slope separating the building from the lot, however, the only signs of life visible were two cruisers with their lights flashing, entering from the highway at speed and splitting up to cover as much of the parking area as possible.
There were only a few empty cars scattered about, and nothing to be seen of a man on foot.
Lester stood panting on the crest of the small hill, his hands on his hips, scanning all that he could see for any motion, while four uniformed officers left their vehicles and spread out.
Spinney recognized Rick Carrier. “You see anyone driving away when you entered?” he shouted down to him.
Carrier shook his head and began walking uphill to meet him.
Lester checked the side of his head again, his adrenaline ebbing and his knees getting wobbly. He sat down on the close-cropped grass, pulling out his phone to issue an alert for an anonymous man of unremarkable stature wearing a maintenance uniform.
Right, he thought, as he pushed the CALL button. Good luck with that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stamford, Vermont, was one of the state’s original settlements, chartered in 1753, a fact about which Willy Kunkle couldn’t have cared less. One tidbit that he had picked up, though-in a state he found otherwise way too interested in its own history-concerned a Stamford man supposedly named Allen who’d hidden in a cave atop a mountain now named in his honor, in order to avoid fighting in the Revolutionary War. Willy liked the story in particular, since Vermonters so regularly touted Ethan Allen for his bravery as the head of the Green Mountain Boys.
Willy wondered-families being the curious things they often were-if the two men were related.
It wasn’t an entirely random thought. He was driving down Route 8, off the tapered southern end of the Green Mountains, along Stamford’s strung-out bottomland between the Hoosac and Taconic Ranges, in order to interview Eileen Rozanski Ranslow-the sister of the man whose only monument nowadays was a coffin full of rocks. Given his research to date, Willy had become convinced that the Rozanskis were another clan with a story they’d deemed worth hiding.
He slowed his car to note the addresses passing by. Years ago, the state-stipulated 911 regulation that all houses should be clearly numbered had for some reason been decreed voluntary. As a result, all too few of them were.
Happily, the Ranslows had heeded the rule, which Willy hoped was a good sign. If they were compliant enough to make that effort, who knew if they might not be willing to speak with the likes of him?
The house was set back from the road, clad in white clapboards, and about a hundred years old. Willy pulled into the gravel driveway, killed his engine, and in one fluid movement, swung out of the car, noticing the by-now routine detail of how the front yard’s grass had acquired a coat of plant-smothering river mud. He was longing for the first full day in which the subject of Irene-or any evidence of her destruction-wouldn’t come up in conversation.
Which was clearly going to be a long time from now. Luckily for the Ranslows, though, at first glance, it didn’t seem as if they’d lost more than their lawn.
The front door opened as he approached the house, and a small, somewhat squared-off woman wearing glasses and holding a dish towel stood before him with a questioning look.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Mrs. Ranslow?” he replied, pulling out his credentials. “I’m Special Agent Kunkle, of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time.”
She allowed the faintest of smiles as she said, “I don’t know. Are you about to make it a bad time?”
He laughed, taking note of how carefully she was watching him. “I hope not. I wanted to ask you a few questions about your brother Herb.”
She nodded several times. “Ah. I was wondering when somebody would come by.”
He kept smiling. “Well, I guess that’s me. Seems like you know what got me here.”
“The graveyard thing,” she confirmed. “Sure.”
“Right,” he confirmed, again struck by her self-constraint. “Could I come in?”
Instead of answering, she stepped aside to allow him passage.
The house reminded him of a thousand others he’d entered-furnished with hand-me-downs and Walmart sets, the walls bare aside from some family photos, the requisite huge flat-screen TV reducing the living room to a single function. It was at once neat enough and messy enough to support a family that-as Willy had researched-consisted of this woman, her truck driver husband, and their two teenage sons.
She led him into the living room, where the set was on but muted, pantomiming the world beyond like the flashing scenery outside a train window.
Eileen Ranslow did not offer Willy any amenities, nor the usual apologies for the home’s appearance. Preceding him, she sat on the edge of an upright chair facing the couch, the dish towel still in her hands, and waited for him to choose a seat.
He took the couch opposite.
“What do you want to know?” she asked him.
He took his cue on how to proceed from her-straight down the line, but with enough Big Brother to encourage her to be open from the start. “Are we alone?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Hank and Ted are where?” he inquired, using her sons’ names.
It worked. She hesitated and the hands holding the towel moved closer together. “They’re at school, at a work detail to help clean up after Irene.”
“And Phillip? Making deliveries?”
“Trying to,” she said.
“You’ve lived here about twenty years. Is that correct?”
“Twenty-one.”
“And you’re the only member of your immediate family, aside from your brother Nate, to have moved away from where you grew up.”
Her mouth tightened a fraction before she answered, “If you know this stuff, why’re you asking me?”
He fixed her with a severe look. “My information may not be accurate. Please answer the question, Mrs. Ranslow.”
“Yes, then.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’m the only one except Nate.”
“You don’t keep in touch with folks back home?”
“Not much.”
“Not much, or not at all?”
Another small flare crossed her features. “Is there something wrong with that?”
He stayed silent, watching her.
“Not at all,” she said, her eyes dropping to the towel, which she draped across her left knee.
“Why is that?”
“Family stuff. I made a new life here.”