Murder at a Vineyard Mansion (17 page)

Our normal obligations do not cease simply because crime has intruded upon our lives. No matter what, as the poet noted, we're gonna come and we're gonna go and somebody's got to pay the rent.

So I took a bottle of Sam Adams outside under the warm early-summer sky and worked in the garden while I thought things over. There were enough pea pods to make a meal, so I picked those and then did some weeding and watering. Soon the lawn would need mowing, and I would be pushing around the perfectly good lawn mower I'd salvaged from the dump years before, when it was The Big D, the island's favorite secondhand store. In those golden days you could find lots of good stuff there and return whatever you didn't want to keep, no questions asked, and the environmentalists had not yet persuaded the authorities that dumps were bad and should be eliminated.

Maybe I should get some goats to keep the grass trim. How did people keep their lawns trimmed before they had lawn mowers? The owners of those stately mansions in England, for instance; how did they do it?

Or did they do it? Maybe they didn't have lawns, or maybe they didn't keep them trimmed. Maybe I could find out by looking up “lawns” on the Internet. Maybe somebody had written a History of Lawns in which were answers to all my questions and more.

Boldly I abandoned my garden and went to the computer, where, all alone, I reached the Web and looked up “lawns” and found out that, indeed, books had been written on the subject. In practically no time I learned that the word “lawn,” meaning maintained turf, had appeared in the 1500s, that grass lawns had become important in the 1700s and had been cut by scythes (three men could cut an acre a day), and that mechanized lawn mowers had been developed in the 1800s.

Amazing. Maybe having the computer was as good a thing as the rest of my family and the world thought it was! I now knew more about lawns than I'd ever known before.

Too bad the computer couldn't tell me if all my brooding and guessing were actually pointing me toward the killer who had coshed Ollie Mattes and Harold Hobbes.

Garbage in, garbage out. Wasn't that what the techie people said? If you put wrong information into your computer, you'll get wrong information out.

My problem was that I wasn't sure what was garbage and what wasn't, so even if I could feed my computer everything I knew or thought I knew, which I couldn't, it still wouldn't give me the answer I sought.

We live in an imperfect world.

Or maybe in a perfect one we just don't understand.

Such profundity. It was my specialty du jour.

I had another beer with lunch while listening to the noon news on our radio. Nothing had changed. If I went to Mars for ten years and came back and turned on the noon news, would anything have changed? Not a lot, probably. Was that heartening or disheartening?

I put on my tape of
La Traviata,
featuring fellow islander Beverly Sills as Violetta. Then, as I sipped a third Sam Adams and prepared chicken and snow peas for supper, I listened, eyes full of tears, as Violetta, doomed but worthy of immortal love, poured out her songs to me alone. Oh, Beverly, oh, Violetta, we could have had such a damned good time together!

When the preparations for the evening meal were complete and poor Violetta had, alas, expired once again, I studied the printouts I had taken from the Internet the evening before.

The only ones I could begin to understand were the papers written by experts for know-nothings like me. There were many such papers, evidence that there were a lot more know-nothings than experts in the world, but that the know-nothings, military ones in this case, had the money the experts needed to practice their expertise.

The microwave experts presenting these papers were explaining to the know-nothings what they were working on in the way of electronic weapons, and why. In order to do this, they used the jargon of their science, and I and the other know-nothings had to understand it. If I read slowly I could keep track of at least some of the explanations and the initials that referred to key terms.

Radio frequency (RF) weapons technology was the subject, and apparently a lot of countries, the Soviet Union especially, were or had been involved in developing such weapons. Many were experimenting with directed energy weapon systems, pulsed power technologies, high power microwave (HPM) technologies, particle beams, and related subjects I could not pretend to understand technically.

The significant point seemed to be that RF weapons might be used against all sorts of targets, including land mines, missiles, and communication systems, to say nothing of the plain human beings to whom Joshua had drawn my attention.

A paradox, duly noted by the experts, was that the USA, by dint of being a highly technically developed nation, was thus more vulnerable to RF attack than were less-developed nations. As always with science, yang was balanced by yin. I should probably hang on to my straight-blade knives, just in case.

One of the problems with RF weapons was their size and their need for a potent power source, but as research continued, the prospect of a portable HPM weapon was becoming more feasible. Experiments with solid-state pulsers and high-current electronic accelerators (What were they? Never mind) suggested that briefcase-sized devices weighing only a few pounds were feasible. All your RF shootist would need to blast his target would be a directional antenna to project his HPM.

Manny Fonseca, the Vineyard's foremost pistoleer and Zee's shooting instructor, would be fascinated.

The general point of the papers was that there was more and more RF equipment capable of disrupting electronic systems, and that the United States needed to develop such weapons and simultaneously develop defenses against them. I suspected that the military would find the money to do just that. More of my tax dollars at work.

I put my papers away and drove to the police station in Edgartown. There was a state police cruiser in the parking lot. Inside the station, Kit Goulart was again at the front desk, and the Chief's office door was closed.

“J.W., you should join the force,” she said. “That way you'd get paid for spending all your time here.”

“No thanks. I was a cop once and once was enough.” I jabbed a thumb toward the closed door. “I presume that the Chief and Dom Agganis are conferring. Any chance of breaking in on the cabal?”

“I can but inquire,” said Kit. “Do you have a good reason why the high priests should allow you to enter the inner sanctum?”

“The weed of crime and its bitter fruit.”

“Oh. I don't know if that will do it, but I'll pass your metaphor along.”

“It's all I have to offer, I'm afraid.”

She picked up a phone and spoke into it, listened, and hung up. “Have a seat. The Chief will be free in just a few minutes. How's the family?”

“The family has entered the computer age,” I said, and told her of our purchase. “Zee and the kids are all better at using it than I am, but I'm improving.”

“Well, someone had to be the last person in America to own one,” said Kit, “and it's no surprise that it was you.”

“I'm still getting used to internal combustion engines,” I said. “It's tough for me to deal with new-fangled stuff like electricity.”

The Chief opened the door of his office and waved me in. Dom Agganis was seated in one of the hard chairs in front of the Chief's desk. He nodded to me as the Chief sat down behind his desk. His chair was padded.

“What can I do for you, J.W.?”

“How about telling me who killed Ollie Mattes and Harold Hobbes.”

“No comment. Do you know?”

“Not yet. Do you have a list of the dates when the Silencer did his work?”

“Why do you want to know?” The Chief and Dom exchanged tired looks.

“It might help me figure out who he is. You gave me that job, remember?”

“I didn't give you the job. I just wanted you out from under our feet. My plan obviously didn't work.”

“Maybe not, but I think I know how the Silencer does his work, at least.”

“Oh? How?”

I told them about microwave weapons. “I think he fries sound systems with HPM radio frequencies,” I concluded.

Dom and the Chief again exchanged looks. “How'd you come up with this notion?” asked Dom.

I told them. They expressed amused amazement. “Sounds good,” said Dom to the Chief. “We can round up the usual suspects and eliminate everybody who doesn't own a microwave weapon.”

I said, “If I knew when the Silencer did his work, I might be able to narrow the list of candidates.”

The Chief studied me. “You know something you're not telling us. What is it?”

“Your suspicions injure me deeply. Can I have the list of dates?”

He thought about it, then went to a file cabinet and got out a folder. “Most of this information's been in the papers, so it's no secret,” he said. He went to the door and said, “Kit, will you make a copy of this file for me? Thanks.”

She did and brought it to him. He leafed through it and extracted a few pages he didn't think were any of my business then handed the others to me. They were reports about police responses to angry citizens complaining about disabled sound systems in their cars and homes.

“If you zero in on this guy, let me know,” said the Chief.

“You can trust me,” I said, heading for the door.

“Sure I can,” said the Chief.

At home I studied the papers the Chief had given me. Most of the dates meant nothing to me, but two did. I got on the phone and called Cheryl Bradford, figuring I had an even chance of getting her instead of her mother. I was wrong; I got their answering machine. I hung up without leaving a message.

Everybody in the world but me had an answering machine, and my friends and family had long thought that I should get one too. Maybe so. After all, we already had a cell phone, and now that I'd belatedly entered the computer age, maybe I should go another short step into the twenty-first century. Buck Rogers would be flying around with Wilma in only another four hundred years. Time was zipping by.

I considered and then rejected the idea of phoning Ethan Bradford, because I had just enough time to make another drive to his place and I wanted to have a look at his Jeep. I'd spent so much time up-island in the last few days that pretty soon Chilmark and West Tisbury were going to want me to pay residency taxes.

Were there such things as residency taxes? If not, there probably soon would be, and Chilmark, ever on the alert to the danger of poor people living there, would be among the first to impose them.

I was pleased to see Ethan's old Jeep parked in his yard. I parked beside it, got out, and studied the contraption in the passenger seat. It looked less like modern sculpture to me this time, and more like something Rube Goldberg might have built.

But it wasn't a piece of junk. Even though I had no idea about exactly what its wires and attached devices were intended to do, there was an unmistakable orderliness to its construction. It was the size of a suitcase, and down there on the floor was what looked to me like an antenna of some sort.

I heard the sound of Baroque music and looked up. Ethan Bradford, shotgun in hand, stood in the open door. His expression was, as usual, angry, but it was also wary and questioning.

“What do you want this time? Am I going to have to put up a locked gate to keep you away from here?”

“This may be my last visit,” I said. “Do you meet everyone with that shotgun in your hand?”

He looked at the gun, then leaned it against the wall. “It discourages most people. When I want company I invite it. I don't want it the rest of the time.”

“Do you have a lot of uninvited people coming down here?”

“Not a lot. You're the first one who's come back. What do you want?”

I pointed a finger at the machine in his Jeep. “Would you like to tell me what this gadget is?”

He rubbed his chin. “It's a pile of junk.”

“No, it isn't. You're an electrical engineer. It's a machine.”

His eyes became careful. “It's a pile of crap I'm taking to the dump. You want to come along?”

“Sure. I'd like to watch you throw this away.”

He stayed at the door, eyeing me. “You an electrician?”

“No, but I can read.”

“You a cop of some kind? You working for somebody?”

“Like who?”

“Like Connell Aerospace. Don't they have anything better to do than stay on my back? I've been gone from them for over a year.”

“I don't work for Connell, but I know something about you getting through there. This gadget left with you, they say.”

“To hell with them.”

I leaned against the Jeep and crossed my arms. “Let me tell you what I think. I think this machine is a portable HPM weapon. You were working on some kind of an RF weapon when you were at Connell, and when the prototype disappeared you got through. They thought you stole it, but couldn't prove it. I think they were right. I think you brought it here and that you use it to melt sound systems blasting music you don't like. I think you're the Silencer.”

There was a Silencer-worthy silence while we eyed each other.

I went on. “You don't like the way technology is being used these days and you're a Baroque music man. Vivaldi, Bach, Telemann, and those guys. You hate the crap that passes for modern music and the sound systems that fill the air with it. To you, it's noise pollution. So you drive around like Robin Hood and fry the electronic systems that boom it from cars and from houses where people are partying. You do it with microwaves or electronic pulses or whatever you call them.”

More silence.

“For what it's worth,” I said, “I agree with your view of that noise that passes for modern music. And I think the island's better off without those cars with the sound wound up and windows wound down, and houses bouncing off their foundations and neighbors being deafened.”

“I didn't steal anything from Connell,” said Bradford. “I designed this machine and if I don't own it, who does?”

“Connell thinks it does and they probably have a battalion of lawyers who can make their case.”

“Fuck them and their lawyers too. Their prototype didn't even work when I left Connell. I personally built this machine. Connell has other prototypes but I'll give you odds that they haven't solved the power problem yet. They're probably still fooling around with compact explosives. All the power I need I get from my car's cigarette lighter. That would raise a few eyebrows at Connell, you can be damned sure.”

There was pride in his voice.

“So it is an HPM weapon,” I said.

His smile was a sneer. “You'll never prove it. While you're off rounding up cops to arrest me, I can take it apart and you won't find anybody who can put it together again.”

“That would be quite a sacrifice,” I said. “You can probably patent this design and sell it back to Connell for a fortune. They'll do a lot of forgiving for a portable RF weapon that works.”

He shook his head. “A fortune won't do me any good if I sell this to Connell and then they decide to charge me with theft, or you convince the local cops that I'm the Silencer and I end up in jail. Besides, I already have a trust fund. I don't need any more money than I have.”

“I haven't said anything about talking with the cops, and I think you can have a contract written that'll keep Connell from double-crossing you. Brady Coyne is a smart lawyer up in Boston and he's a friend of mine. He can write a contract that God couldn't break. What did you do to get yourself fired from Connell?”

His voice grew hard. “Nothing! That bastard Ron Pierson found out I was working there and canned me. Didn't want his labs polluted by the likes of me. My side of the family is trash as far as he's concerned. The Piersons have a long memory for slights.”

“He hired Ollie Mattes to guard his house, and Ollie's kin of his, just like you.”

“I hear Ron's wife put the squeeze on him to hire Ollie. Nobody did that for me. Besides, Ollie was working a slave shift and I was an engineer. Ron probably figured I hate his family as much as he hates mine and that I'd sooner or later rip him off. So he fired me.”

“And he was right. You did rip him off.”

“Like hell. Like I said, I built this machine. It's mine.”

There are no feuds like family feuds. “Your mother is a Pierson,” I said. “Maybe it's more of that Pierson hate that accounts for her attitude toward men. Other women have had philandering husbands, but most of them don't become man-haters.”

“Maybe not, but you leave my mother out of this.”

I studied him, wondering if I was reading him right. Just because his shotgun had been unloaded before didn't mean it was unloaded today. I felt a little hollow spot in my belly when I spoke.

“You didn't like Harold Hobbes and after you got fired you had good reason not to like Ron Pierson. If the cops find that out, it'll put you pretty high on their list of murder suspects. They'll figure you knocked off Harold because you didn't want him hanging around with your sister and that you knocked off Ollie Mattes when he tried to stop you from maybe torching Pierson's house.”

He opened his mouth but I held up an open hand and stopped his voice. “When we talked before, you said you could prove you were someplace else the evening Harold Hobbes was killed. How about the night Ollie was killed? Can you prove you were somewhere else then, too?”

His eyes widened. “I didn't kill anybody! I didn't even know those guys were dead until they died. I was in Oak Bluffs both nights. I can prove it!”

“How?”

He hesitated, but the possibility of a murder charge was a far stronger threat than was a confession to lesser crimes. “Both times I was zapping boom boxes in OB! Both times! They can nail me for that, but they damned well can't nail me for murder!”

“The only way you can make that alibi stand up is to give the cops details that never got into the papers.”

“I can do that. I will do that. Jesus, you don't let up, do you? You can't nail me for one thing, you'll nail me for another. What is it with you?”

I was trying to decide what to believe. As usual there was no way of knowing absolutely, and I had to make a leap of faith one way or another. Leaps of faith, if made sincerely, can lead to total conviction, which is a nice feeling that I distrust. I made my leap anyway but subtracted the pleasure of complete faith in my decision.

“It's nothing to me,” I said. “I don't plan to tell the police anything. I already checked the dates the Silencer was active, and he was active in Oak Bluffs the nights of the two murders, just like you say you were. You couldn't have been in OB and on Chappy at the same time, so you're in the clear as far as I'm concerned.”

“I can prove that without any help from you.”

“Yeah, but then the cops can nail you for being the Silencer and that could put you away for a while, because you've burned out some very, very expensive equipment owned by some very, very mad people.”

A hard smile crossed his face. “If you don't tell'em, I won't.”

I returned the same sort of smile. “If I don't and you don't, the Silencer can just keep up his work until someday he makes a slip and gets caught. I don't like the idea of that happening, but I also don't like the idea of dropping a dime on him. So here's what I think should happen. I think the Silencer should retire undefeated, untied, and unscored upon. I think he should return to the darkness whence he came. It will be a while before the noisemakers realize he's gone, so we'll get at least one quiet summer because of him. What do you think?”

His smile warmed a degree or two. “I really hate that din that they call music. It wouldn't be so bad if they just kept it turned down and closed their windows, but—”

“I couldn't agree more, but—”

“I think I made the world better, and I had a lot of fun.”

“And you gave a lot of people peace and quiet. You were the Zorro of the island music scene.”

“All right,” he said. “The Silencer has retired.”

“He'll be missed, but I think it's for the best.”

“Maybe I
will
contact Connell.”

“Why don't you get in touch with Brady Coyne first? He can give you good advice about what to do and how to do it.”

I found a scrap of paper in my glove compartment and scribbled Brady's name and phone number on it. “Tell him I sent you to him,” I said, handing Ethan the paper. “Be absolutely straight with him, and he'll give you good advice. Take it.”

“Thanks.”

I pointed at the shotgun. “And don't wave that at people anymore. It's illegal and someone might call the cops.”

“It's not loaded.”

“It doesn't make any difference.”

He took a deep breath. “All right. No more shotgun.”

I drove away wondering if I'd made the right decisions regarding Ethan and if I was right in my near conviction about who had killed Harold Hobbes and Ollie Mattes, and why.