The Second Mouse (19 page)

Coven reached out tiredly and took it. The NRC in this alphabet-happy world was an old-timer—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—the watchdog for nuclear reactors, waste disposal, matters of security, and just about anything else having to do with awful stuff that made your balls drop off.

He read the missive slowly, deciphering its many parts—who and where it was from, its level of importance, the topic it discussed, the date at its top, and the nature of the threat it addressed. French stood patiently in place throughout, his irritation growing.

Coven finally laid the sheet down. “Bill,” he asked, “this got you cranked up for what reason?”

French hesitated. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“You got this off the screen, printed it out, hand delivered it to me, and now you’re standing there as if you expect me to order up a fleet of black helicopters. I just wanted to hear what you know that I don’t.”

French thought for a moment. “Well, it’s an event. It might be significant.”

Coven sat back in his chair and placed the sole of one shoe carefully against the edge of his desk. “It’s a report of a single garbage bag of incredibly low-level medical waste gone missing in Bennington, Vermont.”

French nodded. “That’s right—potential makings of a dirty bomb.”

“For about three days,” Coven agreed, “assuming someone was crazy enough to wrap a stick of dynamite with some old Band-Aids, underwear, a couple of pillowcases, and maybe a diaper or two.”

“I thought maybe JTTF might want to know,” French said, losing conviction.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force did admittedly handle a lot of wild-goose chases. They were made up of any number of participants, from fellow FBI agents to members of ATF, ICE, the state police, and anyone else deemed relevant.

In the silence that fell between them, Coven looked at French and eventually sighed, giving up. “Good thought, William. I’ll pass it along.”

As French left, Coven dropped the printout into his out-box, knowing full well that his young messenger was already mentally formulating the memo that would both cover his butt and put Coven’s in the hot seat. Not that the older man was worried. He knew all too well how items like this got lost in the system, follow-up memo or not.

Chapter 16

T
he VBI office in Brattleboro rarely contained all its occupants at once. Not only their assignments but their personalities dictated that they spend most of their time in the field.

It felt cramped and crowded to Joe, therefore, merely having everybody at their desks on the day he’d assembled them for a staff meeting.

“Okay,” he began, speaking over the exchanges and friendly insults that further filled the small room. “It took a long time to get here, but it’s pretty clear that Michelle Fisher is now officially a homicide.”

“Let’s hear it for the wheels of justice,” Kunkle said quietly.

“At least we caught it,” Spinney commented, forever striving for the upbeat.

“On the face of it,” Gunther continued, ignoring them, “it seems pretty straightforward. Man wants house back so he can sell it. He can’t do that because of a cranky tenant. He kills tenant.”

Kunkle merely laughed.

Joe nodded, smiling. “Right. Or maybe not. For one thing, given the mechanics employed, Newell Morgan, our suspect, is too fat.”

“Plus, he has an alibi,” Sam added.

“A suspiciously airtight one,” Willy threw in.

“Right again,” Joe agreed. “How many times have we met an otherwise total slob with such perfect recall, not to mention documentation, for the one recent event that’ll save his bacon? Not often.”

“Although not impossible,” Spinney said. “That trip was a big male-bonding moment. And according to what Willy and Sam got from the interviews, planned in advance.”

Willy rolled his eyes, but Joe conceded the point. “Granted. Although it seems the murder was planned as well. Still, we have to watch out for tunnel vision. Since we’re already thinking Morgan couldn’t have done this on his own, that means he either had help or is totally innocent.”

“God, I hope not,” Sam murmured, half to herself. “I’d love for him to go down for something.”

Joe used that as a cue. “Well, if we are going to focus on him initially, we should dig into two areas: the actual killing of Michelle Fisher, and what led up to it.”

“His wanting the house back?” Spinney asked.

“No,” Sammie corrected him, understanding what Joe was suggesting. “Why he wanted the house
all of a sudden,
after years of Archie and Michelle living in it. There’s the smell of revenge about it.”

“The fat bastard wanted a piece of his son’s honey,” Willy spelled out in predictable fashion.

“And we know that for sure?” Lester asked reasonably. “It could also be exactly what he’s claiming: His son died; the girlfriend became a nonpaying squatter with an attitude, leaving him no other option than to evict her. Could be he did need the money. Do we know anything about his finances?”

Sam laughed outright and Willy readied for a response when Joe cut him off. “Right now that’s as valid a position as any. We have to prove our case here, folks. We need to go into Michelle’s neighborhood and start interviewing people. Flash Newell’s photograph around, and his truck’s, and see if he was a regular visitor. I spoke with Michelle’s friend Linda and got nowhere there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Michelle might not have told her, for some reason, or Linda may have been coy with me.”

“I didn’t get anything out of the mother on that subject,” Lester added. “I asked her flat out if her daughter fessed up to Newell going after her sexually, and she said it never came up. She wondered but didn’t ask. And Michelle never said.”

“I wouldn’t’ve told my mother,” Sam said sympathetically.

“I wouldn’t have told your mother if a truck was headed at her,” Willy cracked.

“Fuck you,” she said without much emphasis, and threw a pad at him, which he swatted away.

Lester was still speaking, as used to their antics as Joe was. “She did say one funny thing—that she thought Newell probably hated his own life and wished it was more like Archie’s.”

There was a sudden stillness in the room. For all their casual interactions, every person here was a trained investigator, and phrases like what Lester had just quoted carried a telling weight.

“More like Archie’s, how?” Willy asked just as Joe inquired, “How did she know that about Newell?”

Spinney answered his boss first. “From what I could tell, everything she knew came from her daughter. Michelle told her Newell was fueled by envy. According to Adele, that meant that while Michelle and Archie had each other, all Newell had was anger.”

Lester turned to Willy. “Which means ‘I don’t know.’ What Archie
had,
quote-unquote, might’ve just been old-fashioned peace and quiet. It might’ve also been his sexual relationship with Michelle.”

“That’s my bet,” Willy answered. “Screw peace and quiet.”

“Don’t we know it,” Sam murmured, smiling.

“Which brings us back to finding out if he was a regular visitor after Archie died,” Joe commented, adding, “and when we do that canvass, let’s avoid Linda Rubinstein. I’d like her put on the shelf for the time being. Let’s concentrate on less involved people first.”

He glanced down at his notes before resuming on a slightly different tack. “Sam and Willy, you dug the most into Newell. The crime lab established he couldn’t have done in Michelle, at least not alone—not according to my description of him. How can you make him the bad guy?”

“Mel Martin,” Willy said simply. “He’s on top of my list.”

Joe frowned. “Sam mentioned him in her report. He bought a car from Newell?”

“Truck. He’d be perfect for this.”

Joe shrugged. “Educate us.”

Willy crossed his feet, which were already resting on his desk, his chair leaning against the wall behind him. “Ever since the Bennington PD tipped him to us, kind of by accident, I’ve been checking him out. Took all the state CAD records apart, ran him through NCIC, finally called a buddy with the New York State Police, who then put me together with a guy on the Albany PD. Turns out there’s as much against Martin off the record as there is on. He’s suspected of a ton of bad stuff, including murder.”

He waved vaguely at the jumble of paperwork strewn across his desk. “I’ve got printouts if you’re interested, but my guess is, he and Newell got together on the truck deal, and then like birds of a feather, one thing led to another and Newell popped him the question.”

Joe paused a moment, waiting for more. Hearing nothing, he asked, “And you’ve got them meeting together, building this friendship? Maybe even some kind of financial exchange?”

“Not yet,” Willy admitted affably. “But I will.”

Joe nodded. In another context, with another cop, he might have at least questioned the foundation of what was sounding like a wild guess. But with Willy, he knew better. Willy was holding back. Possibly nothing of enormous obvious merit—certainly something that wouldn’t stand Joe’s scrutiny. But his ego was such that he wouldn’t have said what he had without some basis. Willy didn’t like being caught making mistakes, and he was flagrantly sticking his neck out here.

Joe glanced at Sam for some form of confirming body language, but she was sitting stolidly at her desk, fiddling with a bent paper clip, her eyes down. Apparently, Willy was on his own.

“Okay,” he said, “then let’s divide and conquer. Lester, I’d like you to take a crack at Michelle Fisher’s neighborhood. Doug Matthews at VSP has some information from their preliminary canvass. That can be your starting point. We’re now not only looking for sightings of Newell Morgan, but Mel Martin, too. Willy will supply you with mug shots, vehicle descriptions, and the rest.

“Sam,” he continued, causing her to drop her paper clip and look up, “you and Willy go after Martin. Given his record and who you’re likely to meet, I’d like you to team up on this. Do not split up unless it’s totally safe to do so, right?”

“Yes, boss,” she said, while Willy merely looked at him.

“One other thing,” Joe added. “Do your best to tiptoe around this guy at first, okay? I don’t want him to know we’re checking him out until we know what he’s up to, if anything. Try to figure his action from the inside, maybe.”

“Undercover?” Sam asked, surprised.

“Not exactly,” he corrected her. “But you’ve both had experience in that line. I’m saying superlow profile for now.

“For my part,” he continued, already unhappy with the pleased look on Willy’s face, “I want to look at Newell beyond the field trip to Frankfort. I’ll meet with his wife, talk to his former coworkers, try to find out about his fi—”

Judy, their administrative assistant, opened the door from her small cubicle just off the hallway and peered around the corner. “Joe, I’ve been holding calls like you asked, but I thought you’d want this one. Milton Coven, from the Fusion Center?”

Joe nodded. Of the various ways the Fusion Center chose to communicate, direct phone calls were few and far between. In addition, Coven was a friend he hadn’t heard from in years. “Thanks, Judy.”

He picked up the phone. “Milt. The Fusion Center? They give you a double-O number to go with that?”

“Very funny,” Coven’s familiar voice said. “It’s more like they finally found me a chair to sit on instead of a cardboard box—I’m liaison here, probably until retirement next year. Your lady there said you were in a staff meeting, so I’ll cut this short. I promise I’ll call later so we can catch up.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I heard through the grapevine that some of your people were working in Bennington, on what I don’t know, but I got a few recent hits over there you might find interesting, just in case.”

Joe raised his eyebrows, impressed and a little startled at what he was hearing. He wondered just what and how Coven knew of their activities. They all shared the same law enforcement tent, but this had a quasi-creepy feeling to it.

“Milt,” he told his friend, with just a touch of perverseness, “your timing couldn’t be better. We were just discussing Bennington. Since you’ve been keeping an eye on us anyhow, I’m going to put you on speakerphone so you can tell all of us what you’ve got.”

“What? Joe . . .”

The last word filled the small room.

“Go ahead,” Joe said. “I’ll spare you introductions. Suffice it to say the squad’s all ears.”

There was a telling silence as Coven scrambled to think. “Okay, okay. Hey, everybody. I’m Milton Coven, FBI, assigned to the Vermont Fusion Center. As you probably know, we serve as a kind of clearinghouse for intel, hoping to avoid the black holes that preceded nine-eleven. Anyhow, a couple of days ago, one of our gatherers handed me some information about a bag of low-level hospital waste that went missing from the Bennington area—technically radioactive but with a short enough half-life to be harmless. I almost . . . Well, never mind. I thought I’d do a quick follow-up, just to be thorough, and found another Bennington blip. Like I was telling Joe, I knew some of you were in the area poking around, so I thought this might be helpful. Sort of kill two birds with one stone.”

Joe watched Willy slowly remove his feet from his desktop and sit up, scowling. Trained by years of exposure to such body language, Joe signaled to him to keep his mouth shut.

Coven’s voice went on, oblivious. “Keep in mind that all we do here is pass stuff along. We don’t know its value necessarily, and we don’t know how or if it connects to anything.”

“What’ve you got?” Willy cut in, irrepressible.

“What? Oh, right. It
may
be the mugging of a night guard at the armory. The guy actually doesn’t know if he fell or was pushed—he didn’t see—but he went down a flight of stairs. He survived, obviously—a concussion only—and nothing was stolen or otherwise disturbed. But since it happened at the armory, we and the locals took notice. The PD probably has some back-burner investigation going into the guard’s story, just to be sure.”

“That’s it?” Willy pressed him.

“Along those lines, yeah. I mean, Bennington’s like any other town—something happening all the time. But we look at things that might go bigger, like the missing bag. I mentioned the armory because it was offbeat and I thought you should know.”

Joe knew that Willy was cranked up because of the Big Brother implications, although he suspected that the outrage was more because Willy wasn’t the one working the microscope. But the possibilities of what Coven was telling them got Joe’s brain working along other lines.

“You filter everything, don’t you, Milt, to get to the good stuff?”

Coven’s voice was guarded. “What’re you after?”

Joe laughed. “I don’t know. That’s the point. Anything else that’s hanging around without a solution.”

Coven paused. They could hear him rustling through paperwork. “Well,” he eventually reported, “there’s the disappearance of a young dope seller and user named Conrad Sweet, street-named High Top.”

“What’ve you got on him?” Sam spoke out, caught by surprise, glancing at Lester Spinney, who was staring at the speakerphone. Their own research into High Top earlier had ended nowhere.

“That’s about it,” said Coven’s disembodied voice.

“Anything else?” Joe asked.

“Nope . . . No, hold it. There’s a mugging of a local firefighter, a little north of Bennington. Almost missed that, being out of town. He was robbed of their weekly bingo money, to the tune of a little over a thousand bucks. He has no idea who hit him.

“Like I said,” he repeated, sounding back on track, “I don’t know how or if there are any linkages, but it struck me as interesting that there were two unusual, so far unsolved events, in the same area and at the same time you guys were in the neighborhood. I know it’s unlikely, but that’s the kind of thinking that got us jammed up before nine-eleven. You stirring anything up?”

“You heard about that Wilmington homicide?” Joe asked.

“Michelle Fisher?” Coven responded immediately.

Joe knew this time that the response had little to do with high-grade intelligence gathering. There were so few homicides in Vermont that the average well-read newspaper subscriber might have come up with the same quick answer.

“Her case is looking like it may have ties to Bennington,” Joe explained, his eyes on Willy’s increasingly clouded face—not a man given to sharing information.