Conspiracy

48

Amanda Rauci had no trouble finding the state police impound lot; she simply located the police barracks and then cruised the junkyards and ser vice stations in the area until she saw a lot with two Ford Crown Victorias parked near the fence. The Fords, unmarked police cars put out to pasture, stood guard before a small array of wrecks, a Mustang confiscated from a drug dealer, and Gerald Forester’s Impala, con ve niently located not far from the fence.

It was only just past five, but Amanda decided the place looked deserted enough that she could hop the chain-link fence from the back and not be noticed. But she hadn’t counted on the two large German shepherds, who bounded up on the other side of the fence as she approached.

Amanda backed away.

A supermarket about a mile and a half away was having a sale on hamburger meat; she bought four pounds. But as she checked out, she worried that it wouldn’t be enough of a diversion. She needed something to put them out, not just fill them up.

Amanda found a diner with a phone booth nearby. Setting the tattered phone book on the narrow metal ledge beneath the phone, she began calling vets until she found one willing to give her a mild tranquilizer to calm her dog’s motion sickness.

The office was several miles away, and Amanda got lost twice before she found it. By then it was just a few minutes before closing, and when she went in, the night assistant was walking toward the door with his keys in his hand, ready to lock up. She felt a flutter of panic but quickly pushed it away.

“I called a little while ago about my dog,” she said. “The pills?”

“Uh, pills?”

“Acepromazine,” said Amanda. “It’s for motion sickness, right?”

While generally given for motion sickness, acepromazine was actually a tranquilizer; it mainly calmed dogs down so they could make a long trip. But though the woman Amanda had spoken to on the phone had seemed easygoing and said getting the pills would be no problem, the kid now was suspicious.

“You were supposed to come earlier,” he said.

“I came as quickly as I could.”

“Well, where’s your dog?”

“I couldn’t take him in the car, right? He throws up.” Amanda tried to smile. “The nurse said there would be no problem.”

“That was just Sandy. She’s not like a nurse or anything.

Not even an assistant.”

The young man frowned. Amanda tried smiling again.

“I know it’s late.”

“Let me see if they left you anything,” said the kid finally.

He turned around and went back toward the front desk.

As two or three dogs being boarded started barking in the back, the vet’s assistant stooped under the front counter and retrieved a yellow Post-it.

“Um, what was your name again?” he asked, squinting at the note.

“Rauci.”

“They couldn’t find the file.”

He showed her the note. It explained that they couldn’t find the file and that the young man — Dave — was not to give her the pills without it.

Amanda noticed that the boy was staring at her chest. She wondered if she could somehow seduce him into giving her the tranquilizers.

“We haven’t been in in ages,” she said, taking a step toward him.

“See, usually, if they know you pretty well, it’s not a problem,” said the boy. “But I think Sandy got you confused with someone else.”

“I think I’ve gotten pills from the doctor before.”

“Could you spell your name.”

“R-a-u-c-i. Maybe they looked under R-o-s-s-i. A lot of people think that’s the only way to spell it.”

“Oh, that’s a funny way to spell it,” said the young man, turning toward the filing cabinets.

“It’s not funny if it’s your name.” The young man blushed. “I just meant, uh, she might have gotten it wrong.”

“No offense,” said Amanda, thinking she was making progress.

She stepped around the counter and joined the vet’s assistant at the lateral files. She’d never been very good at flirting, let alone seduction. She wished she’d been wearing a skirt.

Amanda touched the kid’s hand. His face reddened. But before she could go any further, his cell phone began playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

“Go ahead; you can answer the call,” she told him, stepping back. “I’m not really in a rush.”

“Just my girlfriend.”

“It’s OK.”

The young man grabbed the phone from his belt and stepped a few feet away. Amanda followed, eying the large set of keys on the counter. But he was too close for her to grab them.

“Do you mind if I use the restroom?” As she spoke, she touched his neck; he nearly jumped.

“Yeah, go ahead. Down the hall that way.” Amanda decided she would just leave the window to the restroom open, then come back later and sneak in. She stepped inside quickly. It took only a second for her to undo the lock at the window.

She looked but couldn’t find wiring for an alarm.

The dogs being boarded began barking in their pens down the hallway as soon as she stepped from the restroom.

Glancing toward the front, she walked quickly into the ken-nel area. There was a glass-faced cabinet near the door, stocked with medicines and things like ban dages and su-tures. The cabinet was locked, but she guessed that there would be a spare key somewhere in one of the offices.

The young man was still on the phone when she came back, talking plaintively to whoever was on the other line. Amanda walked quickly around the counter, hoping that the drugs had been left somewhere nearby. But she didn’t see them. So she bent over the files, looking for another name she could appro-priate.

“Look, I still have somebody here. I’ll call you back, all right?” said the young man. “No. I have to call you back.”

“Problems?” Amanda asked when the young man came around the counter.

“Really, like, you shouldn’t be back here.”

“I’m sorry, I was just going to help. I was thinking that the name might actually be under my ex-husband’s. We, uh, had a falling-out. Divorce, you know.” The kid smirked. “Yeah, I know how that goes.”

“You’re married?”

“No way.”

“Try Anthony Stevens.”

The young man retrieved the folder.

“The black Lab?”

“Fifer.”

Still kneeling in front of the cabinet, the young man examined the folder. Amanda put her hand on his shoulder.

Was it too much? she wondered.

Apparently not. The young man got up.

“All right,” said the young man. “Hold on.” He retreated to an office directly off the reception area, then returned with a bag and a small receipt tape.

“Here you go. How do you want to pay?” he asked.

“You could just send us a bill,” she said.

The young man frowned.

“Or I could pay in cash,” she volunteered, anxious now that she was so close to finally getting the pills.

“Great.”

But as she opened up her wallet, she realized she had only five dollars left.

If she used the credit card, anyone looking for her would be able to trace her to the area.

If she couldn’t talk him into billing her, could she just come back and break in? Glancing over at the keys on the counter, she saw there was a small alarm key on the chain.

Breaking in would be too risky.

“I guess I don’t have that cash. If you could bill—” The young man pointed at a sign on the side of the counter: “All bills must be paid at visit.”

“A check or a credit card will do,” said the kid.

“All right,” said Amanda, taking out her credit card.

After all the effort it took to get the tranquilizers, drugging the dogs was anticlimactic. The animals went straight for the hamburger, whimpering and begging, tails wagging, as she bent near the fence. They might have looked ferocious from a distance, but they were friendly enough if you gave them food. Within an hour, both animals lay down near the fence and drifted off to sleep.

Amanda used the spare key she’d taken the night of Forester’s death to open the door. She doused the interior light, then poked around with her hand under the passenger-side seat. A single stenographer’s notebook was folded up in the cushion between the springs.

Amanda stopped at a McDonald’s restaurant two miles down the road, bought herself a vanilla shake, and slid into one of the back booths to read the notebook. Her heart was pounding so loudly it nearly drowned out the giggles of the teenage girls huddled over a cell phone two booths away.

The first page was blank. The second page had part of a case number and two telephone numbers.

The notes started on the third page. The handwriting was hurried, abbreviated.

As she read, Amanda heard her dead lover’s voice in her head.

The threat had been made by e-mail, but as a matter of routine, Forester had suggested that the office monitor or record all calls. He’d also asked the phone company for a “call list”—in this case, a record of phone calls that had been received by the number, probably over the past two months. Amanda couldn’t tell exactly what the note meant — was he reminding himself to check the call list, indicating that he should look into it further, or simply recording someone else’s confusion?

The next pages had office hours and contact numbers for the senator’s campaign and Senate offices; Amanda guessed that Forester wrote them down so he’d have them while he was on the road.

Then came a note that read: “Mar 24 call.” March 24? That was at least a month before the threat had been received.

Ten or twelve blank pages separated that section from a fresh set of notes, written with a different pen.

Amanda skipped through ten or eleven blank pages, then found another.

There was a phone number and an address. At the side of the page were tick marks — Amanda knew that was Forester’s way of counting how many times he’d tried calling a phone number without connecting.

There were dates and times on the next page — this must be from the conversation with Gordon, Amanda thought.

A different pen:

The next page was headed by a carefully penciled notation: “FROM MEMORY”:

Then, on the last page of the notebook with any writing, the contact information for the police chief of Pine Plains.