Chat - Archer Mayor [34]
Suze: there assholes
RadMan: oh why
Suze: cause they r
RadMan: i drive
Suze: i cant no licens
RadMan: so wut do u like to chat about - do u have any wishes
Suze: yeah i wish i had a car
RadMan: why
Suze: so i could drive ya
RadMan: well i got a car
Suze: can i have it
RadMan: only gfs can use my car
Suze: so what does that mean
RadMan: u really want my car
Suze: for real
RadMan: what do i get then
Chapter 9
“Oh, please. Parole and Probation? You have got to be shitting me.”
Sammie Martens sat back in her chair and studied the ceiling without response, well used to her colleague’s harangues, which, for him, passed for humor.
“Those guys are such cowboys. Not even cops, for Chrissakes.”
Willy Kunkle looked across the small office they all shared, to see what effect he might be having. “Run around like they own the place,” he added for good measure.
She didn’t move, refusing his bait despite the temptation he was clearly counting on.
“Not to mention there’s not a rule they don’t break.”
He saw her face crinkle in pain, as she absorbed this last crack. She straightened, put her elbows on her desk, and studied him as if he’d just emerged from a test tube. “What did you just say?” she asked, caving in at last.
He smiled at her innocently. “Not that I have a problem with any of that. When do we leave?”
She groaned and got to her feet. “Now.” She pointed at his withered left arm, an appendage he usually kept anchored to his side by shoving its hand into his pants pocket. “Why didn’t you join them after you lost that thing, instead of coming back to the cops?”
He rose, too, and joined her at the coatrack near the door. “You and I weren’t an item back then,” he explained. “I had to come back to irritate you.”
“And that’s changed now that we are?”
He patted her butt on his way to grabbing his parka. “Yeah. ’Cause now you love it.”
She headed out the door. “You are such a jerk.”
He laughed and followed her into the overheated second-floor hallway of Brattleboro’s municipal building, where the VBI had a one-room office for its four regional agents. “So, what’s the deal?”
“With P and P?” she asked. “We gotta interview Dave Snyder about one of their ex-parolees—someone named Andy Griffis.”
“Griffis?” Willy commented, following her toward the stairs. “He’s dead. What do we care?”
She half turned to respond, “How did you know that?”
He poked her in the small of the back. “You gotta keep up, girl. Plug into the gossip.”
Say what you might about Willy Kunkle—that he was irascible, disrespectful, impolitic, and prone to cutting corners—he was still a cop’s cop and made an art form of knowing everything about everybody who’d ever had a run-in with the law. He had an encyclopedia in his head about the people you’d never want to invite home.
As if to prove the point, he added, as they headed down the stairwell, “He was Gunther’s case from when we all used to work downstairs. He hung himself.”
Downstairs meant the Brattleboro Police Department, where Willy had also once been a detective. Of their squad, only Spinney had come from outside.
“Hanged himself,” Sam corrected.
“Whatever, and you didn’t answer the question.”
“Joe asked me to look into Griffis because of the car crash that put Leo and his mom in the hospital.”
Willy reached out and grabbed her arm to slow her down. “Whoa. I thought that was an accident.”
“It is on paper,” she answered, still walking toward the door to the parking lot.
“Meaning what?”
She shrugged. “Not sure. He didn’t go into details. Just asked us to get what we could on Griffis.”
Which vagueness, of course, only appealed to Willy’s sense of balance. “Cool,” he said as they stepped outside.
In the town of Brattleboro, Parole and Probation was housed in what used to be a bright pink chocolate factory, adjacent to both a popular restaurant and a stunning view of the confluence of the West and Connecticut Rivers. It was wrapped in greenery and appointed with enough small architectural details to make it look like an Italian villa designed by someone