I snatched up his finger in my fist, watching his eyes widen slightly in alarm. “Mr. Chambers, you are entitled to do anything you want, under the law. Threatening me and denigrating my officers is not included in that. If you want to call your lawyer, go ahead. I don’t give a damn. But if you so much as think about getting in our way while we’re working here, I’ll bust you so fast you won’t know what hit you. Is that understood?”
He retrieved his hand and held it against his chest, as if giving it comfort. “You’re history,” he snarled and retreated to another room.
I took a deep breath and turned to see Kunkle looking at me from a doorway, a grin on his face.
Surprisingly to me, J.P. and his team found several items beyond the half-empty box of dark brown garbage bags I’d been hoping for. A small bonanza was located in the basement, where under a strong fluorescent light, and alongside a washer and an old-fashioned sink, a wooden worktable, scarred and worn, displayed a large oval pale spot in its center.
J.P. pointed at it. “Bleach-fresh, too. And there were animal hair shafts on the floor and stuck to this sheetrock knife.” He opened an evidence envelope to show me. “Found it hanging on the pegboard over there with the other tools. Trash has been picked up several times since this was done, so we didn’t find anything there, and the sink doing double duty for the washing machine means the trap’s been cleaned of any residue I could get. Still,” and here he held up a small plastic bag, “I did find a couple of additional hairs caught in the drain grate.”
He moved over to the far side of his large evidence-gathering case and picked up a small cardboard box. Inside was an old metal ricer, popular for making mashed potatoes. “Interesting, huh? The only kitchen tool down here. It’s been hit with bleach, too.”
I merely scowled in response.
“Here’s something else,” he said with satisfaction and pulled out an open box of coffee filters. I still didn’t say anything, so he prompted, “Filters and a press… The raccoon had its brain scooped out, remember?”
I finally reacted. “You saying he made cider out of the brain?”
“Seems reasonable. That’s where rabies resides-there and in the saliva. The other part of the coon that was scraped was the inside of its mouth and tongue. It’s not a scientific way to harvest a virus, but there’s no reason it couldn’t work… In fact, I guess we know it did.”
My memory returned to an earlier hypothesis I’d shared with Tony Brandt. “Hiding the injection site somewhere among all the sores, flea bites, and acne.”
Tyler finished the thought. “All he had to do was get Milo comatose on booze. By next morning, he never would’ve known.”
“You find a hypodermic?”
He shook his head sadly. “No-this is all pure conjecture. Except for the hair and the bags, we don’t have anything, and I doubt they’ll be able to match the hair to the specific dead animal. They’ll probably just confirm it came from a coon.”
“You checked everywhere?”
He raised his eyebrows equivocally. “We did a reasonable search-by the book. For all I know, we’re standing on enough evidence to put him away for life.” He tapped his foot on the earthen floor. “But we may never find out.” He hesitated a moment and then added, “We did bump into something upstairs, in the master bathroom, but it wasn’t on the warrant, so I didn’t even touch it-a prescription bottle of phenobarbital, made out to Thomas Chambers.”
At the top of the basement stairs, I found Connor O’Brian, NeverTom’s lawyer, waiting for me, fussily dressed as always and equipped with a superior smirk.
He tapped the folded warrant against the palm of his open hand. “I hope you had a good time touring the house, Joe, because a tour is all you’re going to get out of this blatant invasion of privacy. This,” he held up the warrant, “is a joke, as you probably know. If Judge Harrowsmith had been in town, instead of the twinky you hoodwinked, you never would’ve gotten it signed.”
“But I did get it signed, Connor.”
“A temporary inconvenience-worse for you, since I see you actually collected something. Now it’ll all be thrown out, along with the warrant. I thought you were more professional.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to know the difference.”
The smile flattened slightly, to my satisfaction. Connor O’Brian had always soured my stomach. “Joe, there is no weight of law behind the recommendations of how to dispose of dead animals, rabid or not.”
“Take me to your master, Connor,” I said, not bothering to debate.
Walking stiffly, he led the way to the door through which Chambers had vanished two hours earlier. It opened onto a truly magnificent library-wood-paneled, with leaded windows and leather furniture-straight out of My Fair Lady. Tom Chambers was standing by a large fireplace, lit, I noticed, by gas jets behind decorative ceramic logs. In a far corner, looking like a child in an oversized chair, Ben Chambers sat watching the three of us, pale, withdrawn, and nervous. I nodded silently in greeting, and he responded in kind.
“Have you finished?” Tom demanded petulantly.
“Yes, thank you. And collected some evidence.” I gave him a handwritten receipt. “I should warn you, Mr. Chambers, that despite what your lawyer may say, you are in trouble.”
He glanced down at the receipt, and to my disappointment a look of genuine amazement crossed his face. “What the hell? A ricer? What in Christ’s name is a ricer? And coffee filters? What do you people think you’re doing?”
I glanced at his brother, who was looking with baffled alarm at Tom. I began to feel slightly queasy, as if some vast and expensive structure of my own design had just begun to crack at the foundation.
Tom Chambers was advancing toward me, his face back to its familiar shade of purple. “Get out of my house. Now. I’ll see you in court, Gunther, and it won’t be over some fucking ricer. It’ll be to sue you for every penny you fucking own. This is the last time you’ll ever play the Gestapo in this town.”
O’Brian slid between us, placing his hand on Chambers’s chest, murmuring calmative phrases I couldn’t hear over his client’s bellowing. I left, closing the door behind me.
J.P. and Willy were waiting for me outside the house, stamping their feet against the cold.
“I guess Mr. Big took offense,” Willy said with standard grace.
“Yeah,” I agreed, heading for the car. But I was no longer sure Tom Chambers’s outrage was so misplaced.
26
“Bring the time line into my office,” I told Sammie as I passed her desk.
She did as requested, surprised at my tone of voice.
She sat down opposite me and opened a file folder on her lap. “This is as much as I have so far.”
“What’ve you got on Tom Chambers?”
“Specifically? Nothing. There are three dates we know for sure-when the PCB was dumped in Keene, when Mary Wallis disappeared, and when Adele Sawyer was murdered. Tom Chambers was in Montpelier on the first, at home on the second, and at an all-night poker game on the third.”
“Who’s vouching for him being at home? His brother?”
“Yeah.”
“So that one’s up in the air.”
Sammie continued. “We’re pretty sure Hennessy did the PCB. Neither his mistress nor his wife can give him an alibi, and the meeting he claimed he was at in Albany never took place. Also, just for the hell of it, we had Keene PD check their records for that night. Hennessy was given a ticket for burning a red light at two in the morning. He was driving a Carroll Construction pickup with an oil drum in the back. He was also so hyper they gave him a breath test. He passed.”
I thought a moment, my apprehension growing. “Did J.P. hear back on the raccoon carcass?”
“Ten minutes ago-there was too much damage to the brain to do a test, so we can’t categorically say it was rabid. Not only that, but he checked the ricer and the wood samples he removed from the worktable. He couldn’t find a trace of anything except bleach.”