The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [22]
Gunther began the miles-long curving descent off the western slope of the mountains, his softly playing car radio losing contact with all signals to the east and picking up instead the latest news from around Albany. They passed through a couple of vague hamlets, mostly made of nondescript one-story homes and winterized trailers, before he finally made one last gentle turn—down on the flats at last—and abruptly entered Bennington’s Main Street.
“You got that address?”
True to form, Sam didn’t need to check. She rattled it off without hesitation.
Newell Morgan lived nearby, off Gage Street, somewhere shy of the historic red-brick downtown—a street referenced by local politicians when invoking the area’s blue-collar bulwark. Joe, who knew Bennington well, took the first available right in pursuit of Gage.
It was an unremarkable neighborhood, neither old nor new, and not given to any style beyond functional. For all that, it was pleasantly shaded by trees, and each house seemed reasonably cared for. It was the sort of street that Gunther, long ago in his patrol beat days in Brattleboro, had traveled only to get from one part of town to another.
Not that everyone living in such a neighborhood was necessarily squeaky clean—such as, perhaps, Mr. Morgan. Unfortunately, the emphasis right now was on the “perhaps,” since Joe’s digging hadn’t revealed much about the man.
Armed with a name and a birth date, most cops in Vermont could search a single widely shared database called Spillman and find out if the individual sought had been even peripherally involved in any shenanigans. It was an advantage most other states lacked, since the majority of departments nationwide, although computerized, worked with closed systems. There were so-called national data banks, like the famous NCIC, but your information had to qualify in order to be inserted, and Newell Morgan didn’t reach that standard.
Which was the bad news, in terms of research—in Vermont, Morgan had surfaced in connection only with a few traffic stops, a check fraud case, and two neighbor disputes. He’d also been the complainant a half-dozen times in situations ranging from someone not cleaning up after their dog to a neighborhood teenager playing the radio too loudly. A pain in the ass, in other words, but not a Dillinger. As to what he might have done outside the state, nobody knew—and nobody would unless they could build a bigger case against him.
Gunther pulled up opposite the address Sam had recited, and waited while she radioed their arrival to dispatch. Over the few short years of the Bureau’s existence, niceties such as office space, basic equipment, and communications had been slow and cumbersome in coming, if they came at all. A smoothly working radio system had been a recent arrival only, obviating the need to rely on either the state police or a cell phone system that both Vermont’s topography and its cranky antitower regulations made spotty at best.
Not that Joe minded the deprivations as much as some. He got a perverse kick out of being considered among the profession’s elite while simultaneously being underfunded and ignored. There was a puritanical element lurking there that helped him feel he could keep pridefulness at a safe arm’s length.
“You want company?” Sam asked as he unlatched his door.
“Oh, you bet,” he said, smiling to himself at her predictable politesse. “That’s why you’re here.”
He had wanted her along as a witness and a possible sounding board later, but as their feet touched the lawn, he thought the additional role of backup might also come in handy. They hadn’t advanced two yards before the house’s front door banged open and a large man in a bulging T-shirt stepped out onto the porch with a querulous expression on his face.
“Who’re you?” he asked.
Not for the first time in such situations, Joe was instantly grateful he hadn’t asked Willy along. He pulled out his identification as he continued toward the porch steps.
“Joe Gunther. Vermont Bureau of Investigation. This is Agent Martens.”
The man sneered. “Big surprise.