FrostLine (10 page)

Sergeant Marian turned to me. “Friend of yours?”

“I knew him.”

“Figures. What were you doing here?”

“I was a guest at Mr. King's party.”

“What were you doing down here in the mud?”

“Carrying the Newbury first selectman.”

Marian shot me a don't-screw-with-me look, and I added, “She cut her foot. I was carrying her when I noticed Dicky's boot.”

Marian looked out at the mud, then down at her running shoes. Plain clothes, this Saturday afternoon, included pleasingly snug blue jeans and a soft polo shirt. She was carrying a baseball cap and I suspected the call had interrupted a day with her little boy.

“The mud's not deep,” I said. “Except right below the dam.”

“Trooper, have you concluded your interview with Mr. Abbott?”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

“Is that Dr. Greenan down there?”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

“Would you please tell Dr. Greenan I'd like a word with him when it's convenient.”

Ollie saluted and hurried down there. Marian said to me, “What's this about?”

“Neighbor feud. King and Dicky's father were going at it.”

“About what?”

“Ostensibly a land thing. A lease dispute. But I think it was really about Vietnam.”

“Vietnam?”

“King helped run the war. Mr. Butler got shot in the war. Three times. Also, it was a money thing—rich guy versus farmer. And a country-city thing—rich
city
guy versus farmer.”

“I assume we're talking about
the
Dicky Butler.”

“The farmer's son. Though, he was calming down a little.”

“Oh that's quite obvious,” said Marian, with a nod at the devastation. “How do you happen to know all this?”

“King asked me to mediate.”

“Hope you got your fee up front.” She slipped on her baseball cap and said, “Thanks for the help. Stay available please, and out of the way.”

She walked me to the tape and lifted it so I could step under. We had a lot of history, much of it pleasant. Right now I wanted to cling to something pleasant.

“Detective-Sergeant Boyce, may I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Did you like the flowers?”

“What flowers?”

“The roses? From my garden. Flowers I left with my note.”

“The note breaking our date.”

“Apologizing….I hope you liked them.”

Marian's eyes roamed the bomb site as she answered me. “I figured the flowers were from a guy I'd been out with. That's how I usually get flowers. From guys who keep a date. They send them after the date. I guess it's their way of saying they had a good time. I mean, I wouldn't know, I'm not a guy, but do you think maybe that's why they send me flowers, because they kept a date with me and had a good time and maybe they're hoping we'll get it on again?”

“I had to go to New York.”

“Almost didn't make it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The road cop who wrote the ticket on 84 thought you were drunk, weaving like that.”

There were only about a thousand troopers and detectives on the entire state police force. Marian, in the vanguard of women officers, had made her share of enemies, but as her star had risen on merit she'd slowly become accepted as one of the boys. So dating her was like dating a woman with a lot of big brothers.

She gave me a moment to wonder what else the road cop had told her. Then, “Did your passenger find that contact lens she dropped in your lap?”

“My passenger was my old friend Rita Long, unexpectedly and very briefly in town. In fact, I was driving her to the airport. She was flying back to Hong Kong.”

“I'll bet the pilots couldn't wait.”

Marian went to work down at the dam and I walked over to the Newbury Ambulance where Vicky was sitting on the tailgate dangling a bandaged foot and surrounded by federal agents going out of their way to cooperate with local government. She regarded me coolly. “Are the state police grateful for your input?”

“How's your foot?”

“I need stitches.”

“Steve's tied up. I'll drive you to the hospital.”

“No way. These guys are giving me a ride in a helicopter.”

The various “guys” showed their teeth. I left before they got into a gun fight over whose helicopter would perform the rescue mission, and wandered in a daze, up toward the house.

“Real life” games with Marian hadn't helped at all. If anything, I felt worse, which surprised me. I had no claim to major grief for Dicky. We hardly knew each other. Maybe we had been drawn unexpectedly close, having re-connected at a turning point in his life. Maybe it was that we were mutual outsiders in our town—the “jailbirds” who flocked together in minds like Trooper Moody's. Bad apples. Trouble.

“Halt!”

My way was blocked by a humorless Secret Service with a plastic earpiece in his ear and a hand on a bulge in his windbreaker. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was go home. I told him that, explained my car was around the front of the house in the motor court, explained that I was the local real estate agent and a guest at the party and gave him my card and guaranteed that if anyone wanted to talk to me they could find me in the white Georgian on Main Street a couple of doors from the flagpole.

He repeated all this into his lapel mike. I noticed a full magnum of Veuve Clicquot going to waste in an ice bucket, took a very deep slug, and slipped the still-bubbly bottle under my arm.

The guy gave me a look. I ignored him. I don't generally loot parties, but the bottle was open, and I knew damned well I'd need help sleeping tonight.

Josh Wiggens, grim-faced and stone cold sober, came to escort me to the motor court. He didn't bother to hide the gun in his waistband.

“Do you know this man, sir?” the Secret Service guy asked.

“He's harmless.” The former CIA officer had the guest list on a clip board. “What kind of car, Mr. Abbott?”

“'85 Olds. Light green.”

“Mr. Abbott, there is no '85 light green Olds parked in the parking lot.”

“Dark green Fiat, sorry.”

They looked at me like a Nazi spy claiming Babe Ruth played for the Dodgers.

“It's my mom's car. I forgot, I borrowed my mom's car.”

Wiggens walked me to the Fiat, checked the registration, and radioed the gate to let me out. The bottle I propped in my lap drew a glance of patrician contempt. I gave him one back. If, as I suspected, his permanent houseguest rent included responsibility for Fox Trot security, Josh Wiggens had screwed up big time and we both knew it.

The Secret Service had taken over the gatehouse. The Chevalley boys were nowhere in sight. Nor was Julia Devlin.

I drove slowly down the mountain, wondering if I should call on Mr. Butler—grateful for his request not to—and marveling at how capricious was an explosion that blew one glove off a man's hand and left the other.

Chapter 9

Round numbers: Ten billion pounds of explosives are detonated every year, ninety percent in mining, leaving a hearty billion for construction use. ANFOs—ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixes of Oklahoma City notoriety—are by far the most common, being inexpensive and safe. But they don't do well in damp. So at Lake Vixen the honor had likely gone to a water gel: ammonium nitrate mixed with aluminum. Or TNT: sticks of good old-fashioned dynamite.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms chemists were determining which. If it was a “sold product,” then traces of the explosive might reveal “flags”: molecular bits added at the factory to track where the batch was sold and who bought it. That person could expect bad-tempered visitors in flak vests.

I learned all this shortly after I woke up Sunday morning to a ferocious champagne headache, the phone ringing and the doorbell chiming. The phone was closer. I located my watch before I picked it up. Business hours.

“Benjamin Abbott Realty.”

“Mr. Abbott.”

“Speaking.”

“Special Agent Cirillo, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Hold on, please. There's someone at the door.”

I climbed into jeans and slipped on a shirt and padded barefoot downstairs buttoning it, to the front door where two cop-looking guys announced they were from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and wanted a word with me.

I invited them in, told them I was making coffee before anyone got a word from me, led them into the kitchen, started a pot and picked up the extension and told the FBI the ATF had arrived first; as I couldn't let them roam the house unattended, I would talk to them first and call him back. Special Agent Cirillo said he would come by personally within the hour. And that pretty much set the pattern for the rest of Sunday.

Henry King had fingered me as the failed local peacemaker. So when the Feds got done at Fox Trot, they sent physical evidence to their bomb labs, ordered their first string agents back to Washington, and dispatched the junior agents down the mountain for confirmation of the feud and any additional light Benjamin Abbott III could throw on the subject of Dicky Butler.

Concerning the land feud, I told them what I had told Sergeant Marian, minus my speculations on the Vietnam source of anger. About Dicky Butler I had less to contribute. It didn't matter. The life Dicky had wasted was very much part of the public record. Besides, all they really wanted was proof that the attack was personal, not political, so they could report back to Washington that the former head of the National Security Council had not been attacked by foreign religious fanatics, right wing militia, or left wing radicals. Who could blame them?

The Secret Service popped in as the FBI was leaving, a couple of little guys as trim and hyperactive as Jack Russell terriers. We went over the same ground.

Then the Connecticut State Police arrived in the persons of Sergeant Marian and her partner Arnie Bender, a short, tough city-bred detective. He and I had clashed on occasion, as I had with Marian, but without the boy-girl interest to ease our grievances. Arnie looked like he wanted to toss the house on general principles.

Marian demanded to know why I hadn't stuck around Fox Trot yesterday as instructed. I apologized while reminding her that I had been extremely upset at the sight of Dicky Butler blown to smithereens. I got no sympathy. What could I add to what I had told her yesterday about the feud between diplomat King and farmer Butler?

I could honestly think of nothing.

“Tell you why I ask,” said Marian. “Arnie and I were looking over Dicky's record. We didn't find anything about him being a loving son. You know, Ben? This kid was trouble. From day one in the incubator.”

“So how come?” Arnie asked. “How come he's suddenly blowing up dams to please his father?”

“I can only guess,” I answered, belatedly alert to an unpleasant shift in the wind.

“Guess,” said Marian.

“As I informed Trooper Moody yesterday, Dicky was HIV-positive. He was scared of AIDS, scared of dying. Probably scared for the first time in his life. Plus, he was getting a little older, mid-thirties. And also, and I think this is important, for the first time in years he was out of prison and with no sentence hanging over his head. No parole. Free to take stock.”

“What are you talking about?” said Bender.

“Ben is suggesting that Dicky was becoming contemplative,” said Marian. “Right Ben?”

“Right. I think he was trying to patch things up with his dad. And from the way he talked to me, he was re-thinking their entire relationship. He painted the barn. Was painting the house. I don't know, it's just possible he was finally going to straighten out.”

“Think the old man put him up to it?”

So that's where they were going.

***

While the Feds were clearing the homeland security air, our local peace officers were looking to hang charges on poor Mr. Butler. Conspiracy, if “the old man put him up to it.” Accessory, if he helped. And, since Dicky was killed in the explosion, accessory meant accessory to murder.

I hoped that Marian and Arnie were only fishing, and weren't seriously bent on turning a stupid tragedy into a murder case. It wouldn't be easy to nail Mr. Butler on accessory to murder. They would have to prove that he had participated—either by walking Dicky through the process, purchasing the explosives, or showing him where to detonate them.

But I'd have felt a lot better for Mr. Butler if they weren't two of the brightest detectives in the state police with a conviction rate that would have impressed Spanish Inquisitors.

“Do you think that Dicky's father put him up to it?” she asked again.

I operate by two rules. I never lie. And I never rat. Gets confusing, on occasion, and this was one of those occasions. “How the hell would I know?”

“You might have overheard a threat.”

While neither a licensed detective, nor a lawyer, I felt obliged to extend client-attorney-detective privacy to Mr. Butler, who had trusted me to listen to his problems. Before he set his dog on me. “What kind of threat?”

Bender looked at Marian. “He's lying.”

“He hasn't said anything yet.”

“He's getting ready to lie.”

Marian sounded weary. “Yeah, you're right.”

I said, “The front door is this way. Let me show you out.”

Bender said to Marian, “I think he'd rather talk to us at the Plainfield Barracks.”

Marian said, “Why would he go to such trouble when he could just talk to us here in the comfort of his own home?”

I said, “You guys are missing the point of good cop, bad cop. One of you has to be the good cop.”

“You'll want an overnight bag, Ben,” said Bender.

“Toothbrush, razor, clean towel,” said Marian.

“Telephone number of my lawyer.”

“The threat you might have overheard, you might have overheard while attempting to mediate between Henry King and Butler, Senior. Butler, Senior, might have said something like, ‘If that son of a bitch doesn't stop bugging me I'll blow up his dam.'”

“Mr. Butler didn't blow up the dam.”

“Did Dicky do it for him, is what we're asking you.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Did his dad help him? Is the other thing we're asking you.”

“Every federal investigator I talked to—and it feels like I talked to them all—sounded convinced that Dicky did it all on his own.”

“That's their problem,” said Arnie. “Your problem is, if Mr. Butler turns around and confesses that you heard him threaten to blow up Mr. King's dam, you're going to look pretty foolish. And a lot worse when we hang a conspiracy charge on him. We might find room in it for someone else he shared his plans with….You're familiar with misprision of felony?”

“Refresh me.”

“It's when you fail to report a serious crime you know is going down.”

“Oh come on, Arnie.”

“Goes back to old English law,” said Marian. “They used to draw and quarter you. We'll just put you back in the slammer.”

“And maybe not just any slammer,” said Arnie, “because if the explosives make Federal charges, we could ask our pals in the Feds to send you back to Leavenworth.”

Marian said, “But you got worse problems than misprision, Ben. A man was killed while participating in the conspiracy. If Butler talked his plans with you, you too could be looking at accessory to murder. Unless you help us wrap this thing up right now.”

“I've got work to do. I might even get a customer if you'll move your car from in front of my house. Anybody sees that unmarked cruiser they'll make the mistaken assumption that the police had good reason to be here.”

Marian's big hands strayed toward the pocket where she kept her handcuffs. “Arnie,” she said after an ominous pause. “I'll meet you in the car.”

Bender left without a word.

I said, “There goes the good cop.”

“Listen, you. Answer me one question. Am I way off base thinking the father was mixed up in this? Honestly, Ben. I got a gut feeling. Am I crazy?”

She was very serious. What we occasionally enjoyed about each other rarely spilled over into the professional side of her life, and I knew it galled her to ask. I also knew that when she said, “Honestly, Ben,” I had better proceed very carefully.

“Marian, you got a great gut.
My
gut tells me Dicky did it alone.”

“Based on what?”

“Based on two things: Dicky's rep for destruction; and Mr. Butler's genuine shock when I told him Dicky was dead.”

“That's it?”

“It's enough for me. The man was stunned.”

“Grief or surprise?”

“Both. The man just lost his son. His only child.”

“How about fear?”

“Fear of what?”

“Prison, for killing his son.”

The doorbell interrupted whatever she intended to ask next. I stood up to answer it, saying, “I'll tell you one thing Mr. Butler told me.”

“What's that?”

“Dicky didn't know the first thing about explosives.”

“So?”

“It's one thing to shove a stick of dynamite under a stump and light the fuse. It's another to blow a dam. The ATF guy told me it was a real professional job.”

“Making a heck of a case against Butler,” Marian fired back. “Young Dicky had professional help from his old man. A professional. Special Forces Vietnam demolition, for God's sake.
And
a state licensed pyrotechnician.”

“I'm aware of that implication. The reason I mention it is the ATF wonders who
else
might have helped him?”

“Yeah, right, we're combing Newbury for Arabs.”

“How about right wing militia?” I asked, hoping she'd spill a little, and she did, shaking her head so that her short brown hair whisked her cheeks. “Our intelligence says no way.”

“No one drilling in the woods?”

“In Newbury's woods? You got Jervises too busy stealing everything not nailed down. And your Chevalley cousins conspiring to wipe out the beer and deer supply. No, Connecticut's organized crazies are street and prison gangs and mafia, none of which would get caught dead in the woods. Give me a break, Ben. This is local and you know it.”

“Local, yes. Father, no.” The doorbell chimed again. “Hold on, that might actually be business.”

It was a guy in blue denim and a cowboy hat. He was real friendly and gave me his card. An insurance investigator with World Wide Insurance. I invited him into the office. He leered appreciatively at Marian. Marian returned a look that could have fossilized a beetle.

“Detective-Sergeant Boyce, may I present Bud Smyth—that's Smyth with a ‘y'—from the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Smyth looked embarrassed. As well he should have.

Marian ignored his hand. “Call me if you think of anything else, Ben.”

I walked her to the door. On the front step I asked, quietly, “Do you really want to badger that poor old guy with a conspiracy charge?”

“Not if I can nail him for murder.”

***

Bud Smyth was lurking near my desk, reading my mail.

“So how you doing, Ben?”

“Mr. Smyth, until we have a proper introduction or become friends, consider me Mr. Abbott.”

“So how you doing, Mr. Abbott?”

“I've had about one too many conversations on the same subject today. And how are you doing, Mr. Smyth?”

“I was wondering what you could tell me about your Mr. Butler.”

“Junior or Senior?”

“The deceased.”

“Dicky Butler was a talented brawler. He had a fast left jab most of us would be proud to call our best punch. He had great footwork. And a lazy right—his worst flaw.”

“Weapons?”

“Not his style—I suppose he learned a shank in prison, but he was primarily a fist fighter.”

“Did
you
learn a shank in prison, Mr. Abbott?”

“Big difference between Dicky and me was I don't have a lazy right. Which I will demonstrate, outside, if you don't watch your mouth.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Yes.”

He said, “I should warn you I boxed in the Olympics.”

“You want to borrow gloves?”

Smyth looked like he wanted to change the subject. The telephone did it for him.

“Benjamin Abbott Realty.”

A soft and silky male voice I hadn't heard since I had served in the Office of Naval Intelligence said, without introduction, “There is a very annoying fellow in your house.”

I felt my shoulders stiffen. At ONI, he had been one of those bosses that try to teach you how to maintain overview and tight focus simultaneously; the ball-busting kind that about five years later you begin to realize how lucky you were to work for him. Today, more than ten years later, if he announced an assault on Hell I'd probably suit up in asbestos and ask questions later.