Chat - A Novel Part 12

He turned back toward the door, where the motel's manager was hovering nervously, still clutching his copy of the search warrant.

"Mr. Nelson," Spinney asked affably, "did you get a chance to check the records for the night in question?"

The manager, a short, round man with thinning hair and gla.s.ses, nodded energetically, eager to please. As well he might have been. Before coming over here, Lester had inquired into the Brattleboro police's knowledge of the place. His reward had been an outburst of laughter. This motel, especially, was a favorite stop-off for those wanting s.e.x, drugs, suicide, or all three. As one of the detectives on the munic.i.p.al building's ground floor had said, "They should charge a h.e.l.l of a lot more for all the services they provide."

Mr. Nelson was apparently the doorkeeper of a true den of iniquity, although Spinney couldn't help doubting that he benefited from any of it.

During this brief musing, the manager pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from the inner pocket of his jacket and adjusted his gla.s.ses.

"Let's see . . . The gentleman checked in at eight forty-eight p.m., pretty late. No car, paid cash . . ."

Lester could see where this was going, and interrupted, "You don't take a credit card imprint for security?"

Nelson chewed his lip once before admitting slowly, "No, sir. We found that sometimes made people nervous."

"I bet," Spinney said. "What name did he use?"

"N. Rockwell."

Lester grimaced. "Okay, that's weird. How did he get here if it wasn't by car?"

There again, the manager paused before admitting carefully, "I'm not sure he didn't have a car. He just said he didn't."

"And, of course, you never want to invade their privacy."

The manager allowed a small smile. "No, sir. Not sure I'd want to go there."

"How many key cards did he ask for?"

Nelson consulted his piece of paper. "Two," he answered.

"We heard the night clerk was Benjamin Grosbeak?"

"Benny-that's right."

"And the maid who cleaned up the next day?"

"Angela Lundy."

"Any chance we could get them here to interview?"

Nelson checked his watch. "It's midmorning. That shouldn't be too hard. They're usually up by now."

Spinney patted him on his bulky, soft shoulder. "That would be great, Mr. Nelson. If you could do that and report back to me, I'd appreciate it."

Nodding again and walking backward, Nelson began fading down the hallway. "Yes, sir, I'll get right on it."

Spinney watched him finally turn on his heel and walk away before he reentered the room to join w.i.l.l.y.

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir, if you please, sir," w.i.l.l.y growled from his position looking under the bed. "You know that little f.u.c.k is probably a pimp and a pusher both, right?"

"I'll be sure to ask him when he comes back," Lester agreed affably. "You find anything?"

w.i.l.l.y scowled. "What did he say the maid's name was?"

"Angela."

"Well, she sucks at her job. Looks like a toxic dump under here. If our boy did leave anything behind, it's mixed in with s.h.i.+t from half a dozen other people."

"I thought these beds were supposed to be built on platforms, so nothing got shoved underneath," Spinney said, getting to his knees beside his colleague and taking a glance at the strewn collection of a.s.sorted, albeit tiny, trash that gleamed in w.i.l.l.y's flashlight glare.

w.i.l.l.y cut him an incredulous look. "G.o.d, you live in a dream world. This is a dump. People're lucky the sheets are changed between customers."

Spinney got back up and crossed to what pa.s.sed for the room's desk-actually a table with a drawer supporting a lamp and a microwave, both bolted down. He opened the drawer.

"Like you said," he announced, "not as fancy. No folder or postcards, but there's an envelope and a few sheets of paper."

w.i.l.l.y sat back on his heels. "Did I hear Nelson say the guy got two key cards?"

"Yup."

w.i.l.l.y nodded, his thoughts paralleling Spinney's. "Something else to ask Angela." He got up. "Help me move this."

The two of them s.h.i.+fted the bed away from its wall-attached headboard and slid it across the carpeting until it was jammed up against the dresser. The contrast between the open floor and what they'd just exposed was startling-gray with dust and whatever else had filtered down from the mattress, and pocked with the debris that w.i.l.l.y had discovered earlier.

"Gross," Spinney murmured.

There was a gentle knock on the door. Spinney opened it to face Nelson, who looked apologetic. "Sorry to interrupt. You wanted to know about Benny and Angela?"

"Yeah," Lester said. "They coming?"

"Should be here in about ten minutes."

Nelson did his usual disappearing act. Spinney closed the door again.

"I might as well take Benny," w.i.l.l.y told him. "I made sure he was well treated last time."

"Works for me," Lester said vaguely, studying the ground again. "How do you want to process this?"

w.i.l.l.y shrugged. "Probably doesn't make a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of difference. The room's been used and abused Christ knows how many times since our guy was here. I think we're just looking for anything interesting."

Spinney got to his knees and pulled on a pair of latex gloves, as much for his sake as to preserve any evidence. "Okay," he said simply, and set to work.

They went slowly, using flashlights, and even a magnifying gla.s.s that w.i.l.l.y carried despite the Sherlock Holmes cracks he routinely gathered. The edge of their search area, mirroring the footprint of the bed frame, was the richest in findings. People either dropping things or simply kicking them under the bed had resulted in a three-sided swath of items ranging from rubber bands, to candy wrappers, to condom packs. There were, in addition, a straw, a dirty napkin, several pills, a desiccated french fry, and, of course, a single sock.

In the midst of this treasure hunt, where a muttered conversation played background to each discovery, first w.i.l.l.y and then Les was pulled away by the arrival of the two interviewees. Benny Grosbeak, who was happy to see w.i.l.l.y again, told him little new, beyond that N. Rockwell had seemed nervous and evasive, somewhat new to the skid row life, and made no calls using the phone in the room. Benny had found him so bland, in fact, that he'd become memorable, making his reappearance in the newspaper all the more startling.

Angela Lundy, the maid, told Lester that when she'd entered the room the following morning to clean it, she barely found anything to do. The bed was still made and the trash empty. The toilet and shower stall hadn't been touched. She conceded that, in general, she only cleaned or straightened what most obviously needed attention, and she stared at him blankly when he asked whether she ever went into the desk drawer to check on the stationery supplies. She did say that she found only one of the two issued key cards.

Les didn't bother asking about her technique for cleaning under the bed.

But, despite the time the two men spent in Rockwell's former quarters, neither of them had a single eureka moment. In fact, the more they collected, the less they thought they had anything of worth.

Until w.i.l.l.y, with his magnifying gla.s.s, suddenly hunched over, his nose two inches off the carpeting.

"What've you got?" Spinney asked.

"Hand me the tweezers," w.i.l.l.y answered him.

Les watched as his partner painstakingly extracted something minute and dropped it carefully into a small gla.s.sine envelope, which he then handed over for scrutiny.

"Can you figure it out?" he asked with a knowing smile.

Lester held it under the glare of his flashlight. Inside the envelope was a single brightly colored dot, much like a piece of confetti, looking as if it were made of plastic. Remarkably, however, it had numerals stamped across its miniature surface.

Lester straightened as if p.r.i.c.ked by a pin. He knew he was looking at a serial number, and he remembered seeing this kind of tiny item before.

"Holy cow."

w.i.l.l.y's smile broadened. "A Taser tag, right?"

Tasers, the well-known electrifying alternative to a baton or a shot of pepper spray, had a feature few people knew about. Along with the twin wire-trailing barbs that flew from the device upon being fired, each Taser cartridge contained a cl.u.s.ter of about forty tiny confettilike plastic flakes, or "tags," that were stamped with the cartridge's unique serial number. The logic was that every Taser could thus be traced to the person using it-a handy detail when and if it came to conducting a postshoot a.n.a.lysis.

The fact that every police officer knew that his or her Taser shot, like the bullets from a gun, could be traced back to the shooter was supposed to be a deterrent to reckless acts of abandon.

Or, as just possibly in this case, any acts of criminal mischief.

Lester stared at w.i.l.l.y in astonishment. "d.a.m.n. Here's hoping that where there's a number, there's a name." He waved the small envelope between his fingers. "This should be interesting."

w.i.l.l.y, however, in keeping with his darker outlook, had already gone beyond such a prize. He frowned and nodded slightly, before suggesting, "Yeah, and where there's a name, there might be a cop. 'Cause whoever shot it knew enough to pick up all but this one tag-and why."

Sammie Martens watched from her car as the teenage woman she was waiting for left the restaurant after closing, waving to her fellow employees and adjusting her coat against the cold winter breeze. It was almost midnight.

Beth Ann Agostini-Andy Griffis's former girlfriend-was on foot, despite the weather and the lack of sidewalks on Route 9 beyond West Brattleboro. She didn't live far away, true-in an affordable-housing complex only a mile down the road-but any pedestrian travel was quasi-suicidal, given the speed and accuracy of some of the late-night motorists out here. Still, Sam knew that Agostini took this route every night and was probably an expert at keeping an eye peeled for traffic.

Either way, it wasn't a relaxing walk, especially after a long day. Which was exactly what Sam hoped to have working to her advantage. She'd done her homework, as usual. Beth Ann didn't like the police much, had had her run-ins with them over the years, but, according to Sam's informant, had yet to become too hard-bitten.

If approached correctly.

As Beth Ann reached the halfway point across the restaurant's broad parking lot, Sam put her car into gear, turned on her headlights and casually drove up alongside the woman.

Agostini looked over her shoulder warily.

Sam had already rolled her window down. "Hey. Beth Ann?"

Agostini's response was guarded. "Yeah."

Sam stuck her hand out the window for a shake. "Samantha Martens. I'm with the Vermont Bureau of Investigation."

Reluctantly, Beth Ann took the hand in her mitten and gave it a limp tug before letting it drop.

Sam stopped the car and got out, still talking. "I'm sorry to bother you. I was just hoping you might be able to help me out with something."

"What?"

"I want to learn a little about Andy Griffis."

"He's dead."

As was the tone of her voice.

"I know," Sam admitted regretfully. "I was sad to hear about that. Would you mind if we talked a bit? I'd be happy to buy you a cup of coffee, or at least drive you home."

A sudden gust of cold wind made the girl hesitate. "What's to talk about?"

"I was wondering what was happening in his life towards the end. You two were close. It must've been a real shock when he died."

Beth Ann shook her head, staring at the ground.

"You still miss him, I bet," Sam suggested.

"He was a nice man," Beth Ann said simply.

Sam reached out and touched her arm gently. "Let me drive you home."

Beth Ann looked into her face, saw nothing but sympathy, and finally nodded. "Okay."

Sam waited until they were both settled in the front seat of the warm car before she asked, "Would you like me to treat you to a coffee somewhere? Or a piece of pie?"

That drew a tired smile. "Ugh. Food doesn't do much for me right now. Not after all day in there." She gestured toward the restaurant.

Sam laughed. "Good point. I hadn't thought of that. You probably just want to take a load off. I'll drive you home and get out of your hair as fast as I can."

"Thanks."

Sam pulled out of the parking lot and headed west. "How long had you and Andy known each other?" she asked, wondering if the ice had been successfully broken between them. She was struck once more by her companion's lack of curiosity. Sam had long ago found that most people of Agostini's background were used to being questioned by authority figures and were generally, even if listlessly, compliant.

Beth Ann was looking out the side window. "A few months. We met at a bar. The only two people who didn't want to be there."

"You were with friends?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Him, too. We joked about that later, how it was like we had a radar for each other. He said we should form a group called Loners Anonymous, except that n.o.body would show up for meetings."

Sam laughed. "That's good. He sounds like a funny guy."

Beth Ann turned toward her, and Sam feared she might have put her foot in it. But the girl had understood her intent. "He was sometimes, when he was feeling up. But it was hard to tell. He could be real uneven."

Sam paused before suggesting, "That must've been tough."