The Second Mouse (13 page)

The street address he’d been given was on the far end of town, past the school and the churches and the Playmobil downtown mall, just beyond what looked to be the place’s only gas station. He approached at a snail’s pace, searching for the right number, confused by every building’s looking exactly like its neighbors. In fact, if it hadn’t been for those numbers, he couldn’t have distinguished the address.

He pulled up at last opposite 346 and sat quietly for a moment, enjoying the warm breeze wafting through the open window. Joe, a Vermonter by birth, had a northerner’s innate sense of weather, and an appreciation for those few months every year when the ambient temperature wasn’t life threatening.

He got out and stretched, surveying the scene. The buildings all appeared to be narrow two-story apartments, their height supposedly compensating for what he imagined was tiny overall square footage. He walked up this one’s immaculate path and rang a doorbell labeled “Bedell.”

“Are you looking for me?” a voice asked him.

He stared at the still-closed door and turned to look at the empty street.

“Up here.”

He stepped back off the stoop and looked up. Directly above him was an open window framing the face and torso of a thin, white-haired woman with a pleasant expression.

“I am if you’re Susan Bedell,” he said, smiling. “I feel like I’m in a play.”

She laughed. “Right—Romeo, my Romeo, turn up your hearing aid.”

He told her his name, showing his badge.

“Come on in,” she said with no apparent surprise. “I’ll meet you downstairs. And don’t walk too fast or you’ll find yourself out back.”

He had been worried about the kind of person he’d be relying on for old memories. This, he thought hopefully, held some promise. He showed himself inside.

She hadn’t exaggerated by much. The place was minute. It was also tidy, wonderfully decorated, and smelled of the best that a summer day has to offer.

“Sorry about that,” said the woman, coming downstairs. “I was working on my computer and was too lazy to come down, in case you were a Bible thumper. I get a lot of them for some reason.”

She gave him a firm handshake and introduced herself. “I’m Susan Bedell.”

“Joe Gunther,” he repeated. “I really appreciate your seeing me.”

She slipped by him and headed into what was more a galley than a kitchen. “Believe me, I get so few guests that I’m even reconsidering the Bible folks. Coffee?”

He accepted and leaned against the doorjamb as she set about making two mugs’ worth.

“You said you were from Vermont,” she said, not looking up. “You hot on the trail of someone?”

He hadn’t been sure how to broach the subject. He’d gotten no idea from Hillstrom of the general mood of her old office, and had certainly never heard of Bedell before today. For all he knew, this woman and Hillstrom had hated each other.

“Something that dates way back,” he began carefully. “To when you worked with Medwed.”

She paused in midmotion to glance at him. “Wow, you’re not kidding. What are you working on?”

He hesitated, which was clearly all she needed. “Don’t worry about confidentialities. I have no one to tell. Of course, that might work both ways, depending on what you want.”

He nodded several times. “I realize that. I’m hoping the passage of time will make some of those issues moot.”

She’d gone back to fixing the coffee, pouring hot water into the mugs. “Either that or make me the most useless interview you’ve had in a long time. Go ahead. Shoot.”

“Do you remember someone named Beverly Hillstrom?”

To his relief, her face lit up. “Beverly? Good Lord, yes. Such a serious young woman, but one of the truly decent souls. I never saw such focus, before or since.” Her expression darkened. “Is she all right?”

“Fine, fine. At least physically. I’m actually trying to help her through some political trouble.”

Bedell looked relieved. “I had to ask. All those years hanging around the dead. It kind of gets under the skin—makes you morbid.”

She handed him his coffee, squeezed by again, and led the way through a perfectly appointed, if child-size, living room and out into a backyard just a little larger than a Ping-Pong table. They sat around a white-painted wrought-iron table and admired a carefully nurtured array of flowers and plants.

Bedell took a sip before resuming. “I always worried a little about Beverly. She never took half measures and never let herself off the hook. Actually, to be honest, I’m not surprised she’s in some political trouble. What’s she doing nowadays?”

“She heads up the OCME in Vermont.”

“Really? Good for her. I’m not surprised. Not surprised she’s a chief, and not surprised it’s in a little place like that. No offense.”

“None taken.” It was very good coffee. “How did she get along with Howard Medwed?”

“That was your classic master-student relationship. I sometimes felt that had it been with anyone else, it might have ended up wrong, but Medwed had no idea what power he held over her. He just duffed around, doing his thing, being a brilliant mess and letting us clean up after him.”

“I think that’s why I’m here, to be honest.”

“One of Medwed’s screwups? Which one?”

Gunther laughed at her attitude. “Flat-footed” was one word for it. He wondered if Medwed had ever fully appreciated her.

“I think it was actually a pretty big deal, at least locally. Hillstrom told me people got all worked up over it.”

Bedell’s eyes had grown big. “You’re not talking about the Morgenthau case, are you?”

“That’s it.”

“Good golly. Talk about an old ghost. That
was
a big deal. Almost got Medwed fired, and it did force Beverly out the door. I guess you already know that.”

“But not much more, I don’t. That’s what I’m looking for—the gory details.”

She laughed. “You would use that word.”

He shook his head apologetically. “Oh, right—sorry . . .”

“No, no,” she interrupted. “If I’m used to anything, it’s stuff like that. We got so good sounding respectful outside the office, while we were so completely not that way behind closed doors . . .” She waved it off. “Brings back memories, that’s all. Good ones, I might add. Okay, what did you want to know?”

“It’s not that difficult,” he admitted, “but a lot hangs on it: I need to know when Medwed found out Morgenthau was pregnant.”

“Right off the bat,” Susan said immediately. “He’s the one who did the autopsy. I was there when he made the discovery.” She saw the question forming on his face and answered, “And no, Beverly wasn’t in the room. I have an absolute memory of it, not only because of how it all ended up, but because I kept a daily journal and I put it all down.”

Joe couldn’t believe his luck. “You still have that?”

She smiled at him. “God knows why, but that’s what we diarists do—like we were Eudora Welty or somebody. I don’t even have kids to pass them on to. No,” she added after a brief pause, “Medwed and I were alone. I saw him straighten suddenly as he reached Judy’s lower abdomen, and he said something like ‘Oh, my dear,’ with real sadness, which was unusual for him. He was pretty much all business when he was working. And that’s when he told me.”

“She wasn’t far along, from what I hear,” Joe commented.

“Eight to ten weeks. You know she was fifty years old, right? They’d given up years ago.”

“So I heard.”

“It was a big emotional deal. Medwed was close friends with the Morgenthaus—that’s why he was doing the autopsy, in fact, as a favor to Mr. Morgenthau, which probably wasn’t appropriate. And then to find this out. Medwed just stood there for a while, staring down at the body, shaking his head and muttering to himself.”

“He’d just lost his own wife, hadn’t he?”

“Yes,” Bedell answered. “And been diagnosed with cancer. Loss was pretty much all he was thinking about in those days.”

“Including losing his job,” Joe said softly.

Susan raised her eyebrows. “Yes, that was the crux of the whole thing later. At the time, when we were both together in the autopsy room, he swore me to secrecy—said that Judy’s death was bad enough, but that news of her being pregnant would put the last nail in her husband’s coffin.”

“He was ill, too?” Joe asked.

Susan laughed. “No, but you have to consider Medwed’s state of mind. He could be very sentimental. Anyhow, whatever his reasons, that was the end of Mrs. Morgenthau’s pregnancy, at least officially.”

“But it got out,” Joe reminded her.

“Well, that was just stupid. I was going to type up the report from his taped narrative. It wasn’t really one of my jobs. I just did it now and then, to fill in for the secretary when she was out or on vacation. After I’d finished, though—avoiding all mention of the pregnancy—I left the original tape to be destroyed. Incredibly stupid. I even offered to resign over it later, except Medwed wouldn’t hear of it, nor would Beverly.”

“What happened?” Joe was confused, having read the autopsy report just that day. The pregnancy was quite clearly stated.

“I had the following day off,” she admitted sadly. “Like I said, I didn’t often do the reports. The regular girl came in, found the original tape, typed it up all neat and tidy, and only then discovered my doctored transcription, which hadn’t been filed according to her own system. Now she had a decision to make, and she went with her own report as the more complete one. She never even asked around. Surely, she must have been curious. But she just filed it. I never could prove it, but I always wondered if she was paid off by someone. Anyhow, that’s when the heat got turned onto Medwed, and when Beverly stepped up to sign the report in his place. In those days the notes were just that—they didn’t reflect the actual physician until they’d been typed and formalized. Not even the secretary knew at that point.” She took a meditative sip of her coffee and added, “I never liked that woman.”

“And Medwed died a few months later?” Joe asked.

“Yes,” she said sadly. “After Beverly had landed a new job elsewhere—I don’t remember where now. That’s why I never told anyone. There was no point to it, except to get me fired. I never got over it, though, since I held myself responsible for the truth getting out. I felt so guilty for years.”

She suddenly brightened. “Which is why I’ll do whatever I can to help Beverly any way I can. Would you like that diary?”

“A copy would do, along with a sworn statement. You could mail it to me.”

“No, no,” she said, rising and heading back inside. “It won’t take me a second. I’ll do the statement whenever and with whomever, but take the journal now. You can mail it back. It’s not only got the day of that autopsy, but everything else, too. It’s a real smoking gun. And they can test it for when it was written and anything else they want, too, if it comes to that. Like I said, if I can help Beverly all these years later, maybe I’ll get to rest easier when my time comes.”

She vanished into the house and went upstairs. Joe finished his coffee and returned to the front hallway to await her, pleased with how things had turned out. With the diary in hand and Bedell’s testimony available if needed, Floyd Freeman back in Vermont would suddenly discover he had no ammunition against Hillstrom.

That was probably enough to get Hillstrom back in fighting trim, not to mention have her run those additional tests on Michelle Fisher. But knowing, as he did, about Hillstrom’s marital and job security concerns, Joe began thinking that something more than just neutering Freeman might be a nice touch—perhaps even a little role reversal, giving Hillstrom his previous advantage.

And Joe had a good notion of just where to find it.

Susan Bedell returned downstairs and handed him a battered fake-leather notebook, labeled with the relevant year. “Here you go. Use it to good effect and tell Beverly I was tickled pink that I could help her out. No way is the ledger balanced. I’ll always feel bad about what happened. But maybe this’ll count for something.”

Gunther flipped through the pages of tight, careful handwriting. “Not to worry, Susan. I’ll make sure this makes her day.”

Bedell opened the front door to show him out. “You know the final irony?” she asked him as he stepped out onto the walkway.

“What’s that?”

“Morgenthau, the grieving widower. For all the pain that Medwed thought he’d feel by losing a wife and child both, he went out and married a young thirty-something within six months and had two kids just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “We could’ve ducked the whole mess just by being honest from the start.”

Joe nodded and thanked her again, pondering the truth of her last assumption. He’d simply gotten too old to believe that honesty would set you free. He’d seen too many people destroyed as a result, at least politically.

He was a fatalist nowadays, more burdened by what people did than by how and why they did it.

Chapter 10

M
el stared sourly at the shot glass he’d just smacked down onto the bar top. “You’re not much fun since you stopped drinking.”

Ellis glanced up from his Diet Coke and took in the rows of bottles across from them, his face suddenly flushed with guilt. “Feel better, though,” he said in a neutral tone, hoping the poor lighting would shadow his expression.

“I don’t give a shit about that,” Mel answered him, not moving. “You’re lousy company. That’s all I know. You and Nancy, both. Might as well be goddamned Holy Rollers.”

Ellis pursed his lips. He didn’t like Mel referring to Nancy. He felt he wore his feelings for her like a scent, available to anyone who took the time to notice. He found himself not mentioning her around Mel, and then worrying that the other man might pick up on the omission. Like the booze—he’d stopped taking it for her sake. This whole thing was driving him crazy.

They were at Piccolo’s, a bar near Benmont, Bennington’s old mill district and its perpetual low-income neighborhood. It was the kind of establishment that hard drinkers retired to after the polite bars had called it a night. Tellingly, the sheriff’s office was just around the corner. Ellis had resisted Mel’s invitation to join him, fearful of how the atmosphere might undermine his newborn abstinence. But now that he was here, he’d discovered that the old urge was less strong than in the past—something he ascribed solely to Nancy.

Not that there’d been much choice in the matter. Mel’s invitation had amounted to a command—at least as Ellis had treated it.

“There,” Mel said suddenly. “That’s the guy.”

Ellis looked up into the long mirror reflecting the dark room behind them. A young man with long, greasy hair and a soiled red baseball cap was walking among the decals of beer logos adorning the mirror’s surface.

“See him?” Mel insisted.

“Yeah,” Ellis acknowledged carefully.

“That’s High Top—the one I was telling you about.”

Ellis watched the man, dreading what might be coming next. “Dumb name.”

“It’s ’cause his brain’s fried. Too much dope. Doesn’t even need it anymore to get where he’s going. Not that
that
stops him.”

“What do we want with him?”

Ellis’s tone clearly lacked the enthusiasm he once might have shown. Mel straightened and gave him a painful jab in the arm. “What the fuck do you care? You his mother? You actually give a shit if he lives or dies?”

Ellis hesitated. There was a time when he might not have. But the past couple of weeks had felt like a rebirth. Not that he could admit any of that to this man. “No.”

“What we want with him, douche bag,” Mel continued, “is information. That’s the key to a good business deal. I told you that already. How many times?”

He expected an answer. Ellis rubbed his arm. “A bunch.”

“It’s like asking a food nut about the best place to eat,” Mel said. “This guy’s a drug nut. Guess what we’re going to ask him?”

Ellis covered the small lurch in his stomach by taking a sip of his Coke. Another job in the works. Not exactly a surprise, but it still struck home with a dreaded familiarity. He didn’t answer.

Mel didn’t notice. He was winding up, his eyes tracking High Top’s journey around the room as he glad-handed a collection of acquaintances. “What do you think about when you think about Bennington?”

Frankly, Ellis thought, it was Nancy. “I don’t know,” he answered.

“It’s a port of entry,” Mel told him. “Like a place where cargo ships have to enter and declare what’s on board. You know? Like a customs . . . whatever they call it.”

Ellis got the point. “Right.”

“And guess what’s entering?”

Gee, Ellis thought, the dread deepening. “Drugs?”

This time it was a slap on the back instead of a jab. “You got it. Now guess who they got to declare to?”

Ellis didn’t bother. Mel was already laughing. “That’s it, ol’ buddy—you and me. We’re going into the taxing business. Steal from the rich and give to the poor, and we’re the poor. Those guys wanna get off the interstate and avoid Brattleboro and the state cops and come sneaking in the back door, they gotta pay us a little off the top.”

Mel signaled to the barkeep to bring him another shot. Reluctantly, Ellis looked at High Top with more interest, now that he knew they would inevitably meet. He was scrawny, in his early to mid-twenties, unshaven and unwashed, with the bright eyes and nervous smile of a man with damaged synapses. Not much as a single target—below even the bingo guy they’d rolled a couple of weeks ago.

But Ellis was less sure of what he’d lead to. Mel’s hypothetical about what they would eventually ask this man had him worried. There were several key drug portals into Vermont, and Bennington, with major highways into both Massachusetts and New York, was one of them—all the more prized because it didn’t straddle a high-visibility interstate.

And where there was that kind of traffic, there also tended to be some very ruthless men. Not the kind of people they’d dealt with in the past.

“What’s High Top know?” he asked.

Mel laughed. “Not
what,
Ellis, my man—
who.
In his messed-up, brain-fried way, that pathetic little toad is the keeper of the keys—the guy who’ll lead us to the land of the pharaohs.”

Ellis didn’t comment. His view of how to reach the promised land was beginning to lie elsewhere, and for the first time in his life, he was pretty sure someone like Mel would not be his passport—with or without High Top.

But old habits die hard, and Ellis was having difficulty formulating how he could forge a new path. If he was lucky enough to end up with Nancy, he’d also have to be ambitious enough to get a full-time job, something he’d never done. In the meantime, while dreading the inevitability of the familiar, he found himself just going along.

“You been hearing about all those car radio rip-offs?” Mel was saying.

“Yeah,” Ellis answered vaguely, not sure that he had.

Mel motioned with his chin at the reflected scene in the mirror. “Well, he’s the guy doin’ it. I saw him. He’s actually pretty good. Real fast. Made me wonder, though, what he was up to. I mean, why so many, and why all of a sudden?”

Ellis was unsure if the question was rhetorical or demanded a response. Hedging his bets, he muttered, “Yeah.”

That seemed adequate. Mel nodded. “Right,” he said, and went back to watching his quarry. A few minutes later, he nudged Ellis in the arm again, this time less violently, and pushed a ten-dollar bill onto the bar top. “Let’s go.”

Ellis looked up, startled, and saw High Top in the mirror, angling toward the front door. He let out a small groan, unheard by his companion, who’d already shoved free of his stool and was taking off like a raptor.

They reached the sidewalk on Depot Street in time to see their angular prey doing a jittery march down County Street, heading away from Benmont.

“Where’s he going?” Ellis asked, regretting the question instantly.

Mel glared back at him. “The fuck do I know? Just keep your mouth shut and hang back.”

But it was Mel’s voice that made High Top glance for just a split second over his shoulder at them. Half fried, perhaps, but still clinging to self-preservation. Despite the two of them looking as if they’d merely left the bar at the same time, High Top nervously crossed the street to put some distance between them.

Mel cursed under his breath. He gestured to his younger colleague to come abreast of him. “Say something loud and give me a push,” he ordered quietly.

Ellis understood and began a playacting skit that made them look like a couple of drunks sorting through an argument as they staggered down the sidewalk. Across the way, they saw High Top give them a second look and noticed the tension fade from his gait.

Once more, as so often in the past, Ellis felt the adrenaline beginning to stir in him, along with the self-loathing that increasingly accompanied it.

The charade lasted as far as the intersection of County and the heavily traveled Route 7 corridor, one block up. There, whether because he was still pursuing his original destination or merely testing them again, High Top suddenly bolted across the still significant traffic to the far side.

“Little shit made us,” Mel swore, snapping out of his role and looking for a gap in the flow of cars before them. “Not as brain-dead as I thought. Come on.”

For a man of his build, Mel could move fast when he had to, and Ellis was hard put both to keep up and not get run over. In the latter effort, however, he caused an oncoming driver to lean on his horn, and like a bell at a horse race, that signal made High Top put his head down and take off.

They were in an unusual part of Bennington, given the burgeoning development on both sides of them. Here, just north of County Street, in a demilitarized zone separating where the malls were settling in and where the original town was located, there was an undulating spread of lawns and parkland bordering the banks of the Roaring Branch Brook—an offshoot of the Walloomsac that had once powered the area’s many mills. This was open land, a park dotted with a few trees and the scattered buildings of the veterans’ home and the State Office Complex, but it was dark and quiet and easy to get lost in.

Which was clearly High Top’s intention.

By the time they hit the other side of Route 7, Mel and Ellis were loping like lumbering hounds after their quarry’s flickering shadow, all subterfuge evaporated. Each was an unlikely choice for a footrace—where the prey appeared light and wiry, he’d been handicapped by self-abuse and poor health, and where the hunters should have been slowed by their bulk alone, their ambition more than compensated.

All three dove deeper into the park’s gloomy embrace, the latter two closing in.

A single slip finally ended it. High Top hesitated as he approached a small hedge by the water’s edge, cut right too late to get around it, and felt his feet go out from under him.

Mel pinned him to the ground like a mastiff on a hare.

“Jesus H. Christ, you little bastard,” Mel panted, spitting into the grass by the other man’s ear, “what the fuck you take off like that for?”

“What d’you think?” High Top coughed, squirming to get free. “You came after me. What d’you guys want?”

Ellis was standing bent over, breathless, his hands on his knees, watching the two of them, unable to speak.

Mel shifted around so that he sat astride High Top’s waist, his large hands keeping the other man’s shoulders pressed to the ground. The sound of the water nearby forced him to lean forward to be heard. Around them, barely visible between the screening trees and bushes, the town’s lights glimmered like cautious fireflies keeping their distance.

“We want to find out what you been up to.”

“I haven’t been up to nuthin’. I don’t even know you guys.”

“You didn’t need to,” Mel told him. “Now you do.”

High Top’s eyes moved from one to the other of them fearfully. He was clearly at a loss.

“Okay,” he said cautiously.

“Why you been stealing radios?” Mel asked.

A split second of calculation crossed High Top’s face, virtually unnoticeable, before he smiled and said, “For money, duh.”

But Mel had seen it clearly. His hands moved in, closer to the small man’s throat.

“You sure you want to stick with that?” he asked, adding, “Duh?”

“Maybe some drugs, too,” High Top conceded.

Mel swiveled his shaggy head toward Ellis. “Maybe some drugs, too, he says.”

Ellis didn’t respond, still watching. Waiting. Unsure of what was happening, as confused as their victim about exactly why they were doing this.

Mel returned to High Top. “Who’re you getting these drugs from, little man?”

Again that tiny crafty glimmer, instantly suppressed. “You know—people. Around.”

Mel’s thumbs caressed High Top’s carotids. “Let me tell you what I heard. How ’bout that?”

The smallest of nods, followed by an almost inaudible “Sure.”

“I heard there was a new pipeline in town. A coupla guys from New York—cousins. That they take in trade and money, both.”

High Top looked up at him, expecting more.

So did Ellis, surprised by this new intelligence, but Mel merely asked, “So?”

High Top hesitated. “So what? I don’t know.”

“They’re not why you’re stealing radios? A freak like you? How many radios you steal so far?”

The question caught the kid off guard. “Fifty, maybe.”

Mel laughed. “You’re a one-man crime wave. Jesus, man. What’re their names?”

High Top scowled. “Who?”

For the first time, Mel applied his thumbs where they’d been simply poised. High Top’s eyes snapped open, and he struggled under Mel’s considerable weight.

Mel let off and let the boy gasp for a few seconds before saying, “You get what’s going on here, you little shit? This is not a conversation. This is where you answer what I ask you. You got that?”

He was met with a silent nod, and Ellis saw in the addict’s face that his appreciation of the situation had sharpened.

As had Ellis’s. He looked around nervously, as if hoping a staircase might appear from the night sky to give him a way out.

“Okay,” Mel said. “Let’s try it again. Who’re the two guys?”

“What’re you gonna do?” was the response.

Mel straightened, his surprise obvious. “What d’you give a fuck what I’m gonna do?”

“You don’t wanna mess with them.”

Mel leaned forward again, applying pressure to High Top’s throat. “You stupid goofball, I don’t need a guardian angel. Give me the goddamn names.”

He held on longer than last time, until it looked as though his victim might pass out. Ellis was pacing back and forth, shoving his fists in and out of his pockets, gripped equally by panic and indecision.

Once more, Mel let go. High Top’s recovery was slower, more measured. His hands, which before had thrashed against Mel’s brawny forearms, merely fluttered to both sides, as if following commands radioed in from far away.

“I only know one,” he finally said in a whisper all but swept away by the passing water. “Name’s Bob.”

“Bob what?”

“Don’t know—funny last name . . . sounds like Nemo or something.”