The man smiled and nodded. “You bet. Felt good all the way down. ’Preciate it.”
“No problem.” Joe figured him to be in his mid-fifties, probably a lifelong cop like himself, but content to stay local and work the same patch he’d been born on. The way he was built conjured up a duffel bag wrapped in a coat.
“Guess you know the folks around here pretty well,” Joe suggested.
Davis chuckled. “If I don’t, I never will. The old-timers, that is. Lot of people coming in from away. Don’t know them so well.”
“Anything you can tell me about the Cuttses?”
The deputy made a face. “Not much to tell. They keep to themselves, like most farmers. None of them has any time to do much else.”
“No run-ins with you guys?”
Davis smiled. “Had a few with Jeff before he straightened out. That boy could drive like nobody I know. Old Calvin here saved his butt, sure as hell. But that’s ancient history-maybe fifteen years back, now.”
“What about Bobby?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Straight arrow. The girlfriend’s bad news, but I figured that was just a short walk on the wild side. Marie would’ve seen to that soon enough.”
Joe tilted his chin in the direction of the barn’s blackened skeleton. “Could she or her playmates have had anything to do with this?”
Davis mulled that over. “Anything’s possible, I guess, but nothing rings a bell. I’m talking sex, drugs, and booze with them. Nothing more violent than a domestic now and then-maybe disturbing the peace on a Friday night. The kind of stuff Jeff was getting into before Cal got hold of him. But Bobby wasn’t doin’ any of that. He just had the hots for Marianne. He didn’t hang with her crowd.” He gave a frown. “I can’t say I see this being connected to them. You could prove me a liar, though. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Joe patted his shoulder once before stepping off the porch onto the hard-packed snow. “Well, let’s hope we get lucky. I hate for this to drag on for too long.”
“Yeah,” Davis agreed. “Especially when they begin to pile up. People start getting antsy.”
Joe fixed him with a stare. “Pile up? What do you mean?”
The deputy looked surprised. “Barn fires. This is the third one in three weeks. You didn’t know?”
Chapter 6
Joe found Jonathon Michael in the back of the crime lab van, labeling one of the shiny paint cans he used to collect evidence.
“How’s progress?” he asked, propping one foot up on the tailstep.
Michael looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Joe. Slow, but we’re gainin’. How ’bout you? You talk to the family?”
“Most of them. The daughter’s asleep. I also got a little local background from the deputy guarding the front door.”
The other man laughed. “Yeah-I saw him. Big as a bear.”
“Right,” Joe agreed affably, adding, “He told me this is the third barn fire in as many weeks.”
Michael paused to reflect, but wasn’t as surprised as Joe was expecting. “I know of two, counting this one, but that’s it.”
Joe worked to hide his irritation. “You knew about another one? Why didn’t you mention it?”
Jonathon straightened to work out a kink in his back. “It was an accidental electrical fire. Took out the milk room and half the stable. The farmer admitted to repairing an extension cord with duct tape. It overheated, and poof.” He snapped his fingers.
“You were the investigator?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was pretty straightforward.”
“How come you don’t know about the third one?”
Jonathon smiled. “This is my first day back on the job. What with Diane’s surgery and all, I decided to take two weeks’ accrued time. One of the other guys must’ve handled it. I didn’t know about it because I haven’t even been to the office yet. I got paged for this at home at the crack of dawn.”
“Who should we talk to?” Joe asked, mollified. “Seems like we ought to compare notes at least.”
“Oh, yeah,” he readily agreed. “For sure. Tim Shafer’s the one you want. He was covering for me out of St. Johnsbury.”
St. Johnsbury was in the opposite corner of the state, in what was referred to as Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Shafer being based there and yet having covered a fire near St. Albans was a perfect demonstration of both the state’s small size and how a handful of people had to cover vast portions of it.
“I can bring Muhammad to the mountain and ask him to meet us over here with whatever he has on file,” Michael continued. “He loves getting out of the office.”
Tim Shafer was not a big fan of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. An ex-trooper like so many of his new colleagues, he’d made the switch for purely practical reasons. As he saw it, the Vermont State Police’s own investigative unit, the BCI, had been robbed of its eminence, the VSP brass had sold the agency out politically, and the troopers’ union had been either asleep at the wheel or in cahoots with someone.
His line of reasoning differed depending on who was listening, but the final leap remained the same: Shafer had joined the VBI because no one listed above had protected him from it.
He still had all his benefits, the same pay, and seniority, and was now lined up for a better pension. He also had the same statewide jurisdictional reach as before, if not slightly better, and from within a leaner, less bureaucratic, more autonomous organization. Nevertheless, his heart remained with the Green and the Gold of the state police, even as-it was hard to deny-he’d clearly thrown them over.
Such contradictions aside, Shafer remained a generally personable sort, if a little overbearing when it came to debating certain topics. This was a good thing right now, as his upbeat nature had been tested by the apprehension of being summoned from afar by the VBI’s second-highest-ranking officer-and told to bring just one particular case file.
Not surprisingly, Joe Gunther knew all this, and thus greeted a suspicious Tim Shafer with the friendliness of a doting uncle as the latter entered the St. Albans restaurant specifically chosen for this meeting.
“Tim,” Joe exclaimed, getting to his feet and waving the younger man over to join them at a quiet booth far removed from both the front door and the kitchen. “Hope you don’t mind the setting-we were getting sick of the office. Meal’s on me if you’re hungry.”
Shafer was hungry, which, along with his opinions, was also a well-known given. He wasn’t a fat man, although he was solidly built, but he ate enough for a wrestling team.
Gunther had selected an environment at once disarming and seductive.
Jonathon Michael smiled wryly as he greeted his fellow arson investigator, the reason for Joe’s earlier suggestion of a restaurant now becoming clear. At the moment, Tim Shafer was a reluctant ally, which made this neutral and flattering way station part of a careful pitch, indicative of a meeting of equals. As Shafer slid his bulk along the smooth surface of the fake-leather bench, Jonathon could see him visibly relaxing.
“You want to see a menu?” Joe asked, summoning the waitress.
Shafer accepted the glossy card, studied its contents before ordering a Coke and a burger, and sat back to see what would happen.
Joe pointed to the thick accordion file Shafer had walked in with. “That the file?”
Shafer pushed it farther into the middle of the table. “As requested,” he said neutrally.
“Definitely an arson?” Joe asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
“You have anyone for it?”
“Not yet.” Shafer was watching both of them carefully.
Joe smiled and nodded to Jonathon. “We just picked up a case of our own. Thought we should compare notes, since they’re both barn fires.”
Shafer looked surprised, as much by the coincidence as by the implied confirmation that he was not in trouble. “Sure,” he said. “What’ve you got?”
Jonathon filled him in, pulling notes, sketches, and photographs from the briefcase by his side. Taking Joe’s diplomatic cue, he detailed everything without asking Shafer to divulge his own investigation, until the other man’s growing enthusiasm made the point moot. Shafer began regularly interrupting with “Just like mine” and “Same as me.”