He looked me hard in the eye as I put the photo away. “Look, I do want to cooperate. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” I told him. But I hadn’t the slightest idea.
We’d been driving for five minutes in silence before I asked Tyler, “Tell me more about the broken branch.”
“It was around the back of the tree, near the trunk, out of sight of where we parked.”
“You think it could have caused Malik’s head injury?”
“It was the right height. And the stump had been trimmed with a knife-clumsily-and the broken piece removed. I checked the whole area. That could be innocent enough-we can ask whoever it is who takes care of the grounds if he found it and threw it away after trimming the stump. But it might mean the killer did it to hide any trace evidence on the wood. A tidy guest might’ve done it, too, I suppose,” he added after a pause. “So much time’s gone by.”
“What could you see from there?”
“A pretty good view of the inn. At night with the interior lights on, I’d guess you’d have a clear shot of the whole first floor, at least toward the front. And that’s where most of the activity takes place, what with the dining room taking up ninety percent of the back side. I checked how the night lighting’s rigged. From what I could see, a floodlight mounted across the walkway on the wall is aimed directly at the other side of the trunk, throwing a shadow where I was standing.”
“So-a nice, discreet observation spot.”
“I’d say so. I’d have to go back at night to make sure. There is something else,” he added after a pause. “If Malik was standing there, it would give us another explanation why his shoes were missing.”
“Maybe. What about Rarig?” I asked.
J.P. frowned thoughtfully. “He plays straight enough. I hope we don’t get any shit about the guest list.”
“We will. We also might be able to find out who some of them were through the employees. That list I think he’ll give us, to buy us off.”
“Meaning he does have something to hide?”
“Not necessarily. His concern’s legitimate-reputation’s a word of mouth thing. What sticks in my craw is that magazine article. Not only did Rarig appear in it just once, by accident, but he keeps the article tucked away.”
Tyler gave me a skeptical look. “It’s in a room where all the guests get together before dinner every night.”
I shook my head. “No, no. That’s not what I mean. A few million people’ve already read the thing, after all. It’s the body language. If you ran that place and got that kind of attention, wouldn’t you frame the article and put it where people could see it?”
“Maybe. I suppose so.”
“It’s the fact that he didn’t, and that he stayed out of the photos in the first place, that bugs me.”
Tyler slowly began to smile. “And that he originally came from DC.”
Chapter 7
John Rarig looked around my office early the next morning, no doubt struck by its small size and state of disarray. Brattleboro was once described as a champagne town with a beer income-a reference to its population’s affinity for catering to all causes while being hard-pressed to pay for them. The police department, along with all the other municipal services, was allowed no fat in its budget, as my office decor amply testified.
I gestured to a plastic guest chair. “Please, have a seat.”
He stayed standing in the doorway. “No, thanks.” He reached into his back pocket and extracted a folded sheet of paper, which he handed to me. “That’s a list of my employees. My lawyer wanted me to tell you to pound sand, but I disagreed. If someone who works for me has broken the law, I want to find out about it. The guests are another matter, at least until you can get a warrant, but this one’s on me. I did put out a memo, though, that I was cooperating with the police, so they know you’ll be coming. I thought that was only fair.”
I glanced over the sheet. “That’s fine, and I appreciate the cooperation. It’s not like we’re loaded for bear, anyhow. We’re just hoping to solve a puzzle. It could be your place had nothing to do with any of this.” I smiled and added, “That we’re barking up the wrong ginkgo tree.”
He smiled weakly. Turning to go, he paused. “Try to respect their privacy, okay? These are good people-at least I think they are. They’ve helped me enormously-kept a dream alive. I don’t want anyone to think I’ve abused their trust.”
I rose from my desk and escorted him down our small hallway to the building’s central corridor. “Mr. Rarig, we do this a lot. For every thirty or forty people we interview, only one ends up holding the bag. We’re not out to abuse people.”
He nodded and shook my hand. “Will you let me know how things are going?”
“I’ll keep you informed,” I said, solely to pacify him.
I stood in the doorway, watching him walk toward the exit where the parking lot’s located. His shoulders were slumped and his gait hesitant. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked his seventy-odd years.
Despite the circumstances that had led me to him, and the deep suspicions I had concerning him, I’d also been touched by his asking me to watch out for his employees. The reference to their helping him achieve his goal had struck a chord-at once poignant and lonely-the comment of a single man who’d made the best he could of the end of his life, to the point of calling it a dream come true.
We were in the conference room, just the three of us, making the table look larger than it was. My office would’ve worked also, but I’d wanted space enough for all of us to take notes comfortably.
I passed out copies of Rarig’s employee list, noting with amused satisfaction how it was received. Sammie picked it up in both hands and stared at it, as if willing it to confess. Ron aligned it squarely before him on the tabletop with his fingertips-a document worthy of preservation and respect.
“Twenty-six names,” I said, “including John Rarig’s, to be split between the three of us. The chief won’t give us any more manpower, since it doesn’t look like we’ve got a tiger by the tail. But chances are we can whittle the numbers down pretty fast. Start with the usual criminal record checks-NCIC, Vermont CIC, and the in-house criminal files of VSP and all bordering state police agencies. Check our own archives, and as soon as you peg a home address for each name, call any contacts you might have in other municipal departments to see what they have-you never know who might be on a snitch or suspect list. And don’t forget the sheriff’s office.”
Both of them were writing this down, so I paused briefly to let them catch up. “If we don’t get lucky with any of that,” I continued, “we can check out public records. Start with Motor Vehicles. They’ll give you a lot to go on-description, address, date of birth, what’s been registered, and so on. From there, you can go to the appropriate town clerks for more. Push comes to shove, and they don’t own a car, use the phone book to at least get an address. All we’re after at this point are the basics-name, rank, and serial number. As individuals begin standing out, we can dig a little deeper, just so we know more than they think we do when we talk to them. Right now, though, nobody gets the third degree,” I added, remembering Rarig’s plea. “If there’s a bad guy in the bunch, chances are he’ll pop up before the others even know we’ve been snooping around.”
“What’re we going to do about the guest list?” Ron asked.
I sat back in my chair. “Not much. When we get to talking with the employees, we should ask for any names, hometowns, and anything else they might remember. Maybe they’ll be a little less discreet than Rarig.”
“They’re going to know that’s against the rules,” Sammie cautioned.
“True,” I said, standing up. “But there’re all kinds of ways to extract information. They don’t have to see you coming.”
Around one that afternoon, by now immersed in the details of chasing down my nine allotted names-to little effect-I got a telephone call from Stan Katz, the editor of the Brattleboro Reformer. Katz and I went back many years, from when I was just a detective, and he was the paper’s distrustful cops-’n’-courts reporter. It had never been a friendship-far from it, on occasion-but we’d grown toward a mutual respect. When the paper had almost hit bottom a few years back, briefly becoming a sensationalist tabloid under the misguided management of an out-of-state owner, Katz had led the charge in an employee buyout. Now laden with a financial burden as well as his editorial responsibilities, he was a far more thoughtful and forgiving human being, which, given his start, made him just bearable-some of the time.