The Ragman's memory

16

Ned Fallows had settled near Lunenburg, Vermont, almost three hours by car from Brattleboro. It was a tiny town east of St. Johnsbury, just shy of the New Hampshire border, about as remote a community as anything the state had to offer. Hanging off the bottom of a 550-square-mile timberland wilderness in the eastern reaches of the state’s Northeast Kingdom-so named for its nordic, barren beauty-the hamlet of Lunenburg is a spare collection of simple, elegant, buildings, sitting in an environment as hilly and wooded as any described by James Fenimore Cooper.

Standing in its midst, late at night, when all the lights have been extinguished, it feels little different from how it must have been two hundred years earlier. Ironically, this is not as soothing as it sounds. The mountain lions, marauding raiders, and disgruntled Indians of old may have faded from the scene, but the wild vastness that once contained them remains, and with it an eerie sense of threat.

The setting matched my mood, which had been significantly darkened by the day’s work. I ruefully recalled how the morning’s twin headlines about Satanism and rabies had struck a humorous chord, when the convention center project had still been a minor, albeit interesting detail. Now, following the meeting with NeverTom in Brandt’s office, with its threatening implications, and the looming possibility that the project just purchased by his brother may have been tainted at birth, I was longing for some glint of humor. Given my own friendship with Ned Fallows, and his close ties to Gail, the chance that he’d been corrupted threatened my professional detachment-and I worried that when NeverTom caught wind of where this investigation was heading, that aloofness would be sorely needed.

Although not very late, it was dark when I rolled through town on Route 2. Ned didn’t live in Lunenburg proper, but two miles east, on the banks of Turner Brook, off a dirt road that only he kept plowed in the winter. It was an isolated, dark, and lonely spot, which I’d visited just once before, shortly after he’d moved there. I’d wondered then about his explanation that as he’d gotten older, he’d been longing for a little privacy. Now, despite my assurances to Gail, I was frankly skeptical.

He lived in a log cabin he’d built himself with a local crew. It was snug and solid and very small. Its size made it manageable-and clear that any guests, family or not, would be underfoot from the moment they crossed the threshold.

In true Northeast Kingdom style, I hit the horn briefly as I came to a stop beside his pickup, and paused before getting out. It was a courtesy one learned quickly up here, where occasionally armed loners and their dogs took a dim view of surprises.

There was no response, however, although the lights inside cast a yellow veil on the deep snow by the roadside. I got out stiffly, stretched, and shivered in the raw night air. The Kingdom is more thrust up against the sky than the rest of Vermont and suffers more accordingly from its excesses. Winter starts early, digs in deep, and lasts far into early summer. The region’s record cold of minus fifty degrees was logged in Colebrook, New Hampshire, just twenty-five miles farther north.

I stepped carefully through the snow, stamped my feet loudly on the narrow porch laden with cordwood, and knocked on the front door. On the other side I could hear the knee-high snuffling of a dog rubbing its nose anxiously against the thin barrier between us. Ned had a Rottweiler-huge, handsome, and silent.

Eventually I heard footsteps approach and the quiet soothings of a man’s voice. The door opened to reveal a tall, white-haired, heavyset septuagenarian, his face still and harshly lined, his pale blue eyes almost lost in deeply shadowed sockets-a ghostly apparition, emphasized by the light behind him.

“Joe,” he said evenly, as if I was dropping by for a nightly card game, and then, to the dog, “Back, Hardy.”

The dog amiably put his nose to the back of my proffered hand, but the gentle command was a reminder that for all his peaceful manner, Hardy was trained to attack, without sound or warning.

Ned Fallows stepped away from the door. “Come in-it’s cold.”

I crossed into the cabin’s warm, glowing embrace. The lighting came from an open iron stove and several oil lamps, Ned having forgone electricity. The atmosphere enhanced the impression made by the nearby village and left me feeling all the more awkward about introducing the vagaries of the twentieth century, especially to a man so bent on letting them be.

It was not a concern I had to consider for long, however. “I figured you might be coming by,” he said.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

He pointed with his chin toward an easy chair by the stove. Draped over its arm was a copy of the Brattleboro Reformer.

“I thought you’d moved up here to get away from all that.”

“Old habits die hard-along with a lot of other things. You want something to eat? I got stew ready.”

“I’d appreciate that-drove up without stopping for supper.”

He indicated a single chair at the small, one-man dining table. “Sit.”

I smiled, expecting Hardy to comply along with me, but the dog was already curled up before the stove. I sat. “You been keeping up on our latest mysteries? Satan worshippers and a plague of rabies?”

He laughed gently, ladling stew from a large pot into a bowl.

I considered slowly circling the reason I’d come, but I sensed he already knew. Besides, Gail’s anxiety was pulling at me still, and I wanted to get to the point. “Why were you expecting me, Ned?”

He placed the bowl before me, along with a thick slice of dark bread, and settled onto a low bookcase opposite, leaning his back against the rough wooden wall. “I have my reasons. Why are you here?”

His coyness was like the confirmation I didn’t want to hear.

“Because there’s a lot the paper knows nothing about, some of which goes back to your time on the planning commission. Why did you leave, Ned? Gail and I both know it wasn’t because you were burned out.”

The small smile returned. “How is she?”

I let a little of my disappointment show. “You should find out for yourself. She’s tired and overworked and grimly determined to reinvent herself. She’s also heartbroken over what we both think you did.”

He shifted his gaze to the tips of his work boots but didn’t speak.

“We’ve been examining how Gene Lacaille got the permits for the convention center. One day, after weeks of waffling, you came down like a ton of bricks on his side-”

“Is something wrong with the project?” he interrupted, his face for the first time creased with concern.

“How do you mean?” I asked, startled.

“Are you investigating something about the project that might be wrong-dangerous?”

I considered my options. Instinctively, as a friend, I would have tried to set him at ease. But I was no longer sure where he stood in that light, and his attitude so far had only heightened my concerns. “You trying to soothe a guilty conscience?”

His eyebrows knitted together in a scowl. “Don’t.”

I rose from my seat angrily, Hardy’s eyes watching me carefully. “Don’t what, Ned? Don’t try to find out what happened, so you can martyr yourself in splendid isolation?” I stared at him. “Jesus Christ. Would you come clean if people were in danger? Is that the message? What if I told you your project was tied to murder?”

He seemed to shrink into himself but remained silent.

I sat back down, ignoring my meal, and spoke in a quiet, measured tone. “For decades you busted your butt for that town, preaching to others to get involved. You made it a point that integrity and politics were not contradictory. I can’t believe that was all a crock. You stumbled, Ned-that’s all. I don’t know who put the obstacle in place, but I damn well know that commission meeting was the payoff.”

“It was a good project,” he muttered.

“If it’ll help, I’m not debating that. I need to know why you voted the way you did.”

He raised those sorrowful eyes. “If the project’s sound, what does it matter?”

I played the only cards I had, weak as they were. “Because I think people have been killed in connection to it. If your actions were due to any pressure, then the same person who stuck it to you may’ve killed them.”

Ned rubbed his face with his hands, pressing his eyes against his palms. He crossed to the easy chair and sank into its embrace. Hardy lifted his nose and touched the fingers of his hand. “It can’t be the same man,” he finally said in a near whisper.

“How can you know that?” I asked.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

I almost laughed with frustration. “When does murder make sense?”

He was staring into the flames and spoke directly at them, as if wishing his words to be cremated. “I did what I did to maintain the belief people had in me-my family, my friends, the whole community… Not my reputation-that a man has to earn, and if he loses it, it’s because he deserved to. But for something bigger-other people’s faith in a system they came to personify in me. Like it or not-whether I encouraged it or not-it was no longer my own reputation, which meant it was no longer mine to throw away.”

As self-serving as it sounded, this might have been partly true. Ned Fallows had been a guiding light to many, Gail among them. Had he come clean and admitted his corruption at the time, it would have shaken a lot of people and turned a few into cynics.

But for me, to whom most idealism is suspect at best, his logic only made a mockery of the integrity he’d inspired. Gail had been shocked and saddened by the thought that her idol may have fallen, but she hadn’t been corrupted herself. The ideals that Ned Fallows had helped nurture in her were her own now, regardless of what happened to him.

But he’d obviously chosen to turn moral cowardice into a virtue, and no argument from me was going to reverse that choice. I gave up any pretense of debate and flatly asked him, “Who was it, Ned?”

He turned to look at me. “You think the man who fingered me could also be a murderer. Assuming you’re talking about the two people mentioned in the paper, can you say for a fact they were murdered?”

I hesitated, my flimsy theory exposed for what it was. “An analysis of the girl’s hair showed she’d been sedated with phenobarbital during the last week of her life. She was being kept in a coma.”

“She couldn’t have died of a heart attack?”

I was outraged by his rationalizations. “She was eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake.”

“But you have no proof she was killed.” He pushed on the arms of his chair and rose. “When you have proof and a suspect, I’ll tell you who was responsible for my actions.” He ushered me toward the door, barely giving me time to put on the coat I’d removed upon entering.

“I thought a person was responsible for his own actions,” I said bitterly, my sense of betrayal approaching Gail’s.

“That’s not a discussion I choose to have-with you or anyone else,” he said and closed the door.

It was almost three in the morning when I got back home. The moonlight slanting over the bed revealed Gail’s dormant shape, suspiciously still for someone who’d become a very light sleeper. Knowing she was awake, I nevertheless undressed quietly and slipped under the covers.

A few moments later, her hand folded over my wrist. “How did it go?”

I’d been debating how to answer her all the way back from Lunenburg and had finally settled on the honesty Ned Fallows had denied me. “Disappointing. He basically admitted he’d been compromised, although he’d thought the project was worthwhile, but he wouldn’t tell me why or by who. He said he cut and ran to protect the people who’d believed in him-that he didn’t care about his own reputation but was worried his downfall could damage the hope he’d spent his whole life nurturing in others.”

I’d tried to sound neutral, to allow Gail whatever leeway she might need to reach her own conclusions.

I needn’t have worried. After a long reflective pause, she curled one leg over mine and murmured into my shoulder with a sigh, “What bullshit.”

I didn’t have long to enjoy the peace of mind Gail had brought me. I had barely nodded off before the phone next to me began ringing.

“Joe? It’s Sammie. Patrol just called. I thought you’d want to know-Mary Wallis is missing. Her house is all lit up, the door’s wide open, but she’s disappeared.”

“You there yet?”

“No-I’m heading out now.”

“I’m on my way.”

Gail asked me what was up as I replaced the receiver. I repeated Sammie’s brief message. She slid out of bed, reaching for her clothes. “I’m coming, too.”

I didn’t argue. She wasn’t only Mary’s friend, she was-however marginally-one of the SA’s staffers. More to the point, I knew she needed to come. While the loss of Ned Fallows had been in spirit alone, it had been real all the same, and Gail had borne it stoically-perhaps overly so. The need for action now seemed healthy and reasonable, and I wasn’t about to interfere.

Most of the houses on Allerton Avenue were dark, except for a couple of Mary’s neighbors. The patrol car stationed opposite her address, and Sammie’s just beyond it, were shrouded by night, only the plumes from their exhaust pipes betraying their running engines.

I pulled over and Gail and I got out, closing our doors quietly. Sammie’s familiar slim shadow appeared in the yellow cutout of Mary’s front door and gestured to us.

“What happened?” I asked as we drew near.

Sammie stepped back over the threshold. “How’re you doing, Gail? Sol was on patrol, saw the door wide open when he drove by. He kept going to the end of the block, but when he came back and saw nothing had changed, he decided to check it out. The place was empty.”

“Where’s Sol now?” I asked.

Sol Stennis, only two years on the job, but a thoughtful, perceptive man, spoke up from the living room. “Here.” He appeared in the doorway. “I haven’t had a chance to interview the neighbors yet.” He noticed Gail standing behind me. “Hi, Ms. Zigman. I’m sorry about this-hope she’s okay.”

I looked at both Sammie and Sol. “No signs of disturbance?”

“Nothing,” Sol admitted. “The furnace was going full guns when I arrived, and the place was pretty cold, so the door’d been open a while. When I first drove by, I thought maybe she’d gone out to take care of a pet or get something from the garage, but obviously not.”

“Her car still here?” Gail asked suddenly.

“Yeah,” Sammie answered. “The engine’s cold.”

Gail crossed over to the hall closet and opened its door, extracting a dark blue quilted coat. “I think we can rule out a walk around the block. This is the only winter coat I’ve seen her wear the last three years.”

“Damn,” I murmured, dread seeping into me. I shut the front door. “Sammie, you better call in a team.”

In half an hour we’d divided into four teams-one checking the inside of the house, led by J.P. Tyler, the second covering the grounds, and the third conducting yet another neighborhood canvass of people who, especially at this hour, were probably ruing the day they’d chosen this street to live on. The fourth team, under Ron Klesczewski, was back at the office, phoning-and waking up-every person we could either think of or find in Mary’s address book and files, to ask when they’d last seen her. Additionally, all hotels, motels, rooming houses, hospitals, clinics, drop-in shelters, taxi and bus services were being checked. We also put a covert watch on Mary’s mother at the Retreat. If Mary was still operating under her own steam, I doubted her daily visits to her mother would be an easy habit to break.

I set up a command post in the kitchen, with a phone and a portable radio, and directed a wider search to cover both the town and its neighboring communities. Despite the total absence of any signs of foul play, not a single person questioned why an open door and an empty house should generate such a massive response. Such was the consensus that something was seriously wrong. And several fruitless hours later, with Gail looking increasingly haggard but refusing to go home, any concerns that we might have overreacted were quickly fading.

It was then that J.P. came into the kitchen, carrying one of his ubiquitous large white evidence envelopes. “I thought you better see this. Found it hidden in a closet.”

He poured the packet’s contents onto the tabletop and handed me a pair of latex gloves. It was a woman’s purse-inexpensive and gaudy-more a teenager’s fashion prop than a practical accessory.

Gail was watching me intently as I donned the gloves. “That’s not anything I’ve ever seen Mary use. She wouldn’t be caught dead with it.”

I gingerly opened the purse and peered inside, fishing out the two items I found-a wad of old bills held together with a rubber band and a cracked, beige, fake-leather wallet.

“You count the money?” I asked him, loath to disturb the evidence more than necessary.

“Thousand bucks even.”

I opened the wallet with two fingers. A driver’s license stared back at me from behind a cloudy plastic window.

“Oh, my God,” Gail murmured.

The license belonged to Shawna Susan Davis.