The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [72]
Sam and Willy exchanged glances.
Half an hour later, they were back in their car.
“God bless busybodies,” Willy said. “What do you say we drop by the local PD and follow up on some of this?”
The Bennington police occupy the old post office building, just a block south of the town’s infamous major intersection. An enormous, hulking marble edifice, it looks like a leftover from a Hollywood sword-and-sand epic—a wannabe Greek Parthenon. For all that, however, it probably helps to endow this one department with more immediate awe and stature than any of its sister agencies across the state, including the federal field offices. And the impression doesn’t stop on the front stoop. The lobby is a vast, vaulting echo chamber, fronted on one wall by a row of bullet-resistant windows from which dispatchers and office personnel can peer out at any visitors.
Sam and Willy showed their badges and were soon ushered into the inner sanctum by a tall, affable plainclothes officer named Johnny Massucco.
“What can we do you for?” he asked after introductions had been exchanged.
“Got a computer, Johnny?” Willy asked, looking up and down the hallway they’d just entered.
Instinctively, Sam moved to soften Willy’s standard effect on people. “Sorry about him,” she said, drawing Massucco’s startled attention. “He gets a little overly focused. We’re in town doing homework—got a homicide outside Wilmington that’s touching on a few Bennington folks.”
Massucco nodded distractedly, still studying Kunkle. “I heard about you,” he finally said.
Willy turned at that. “Me? Nothing good, I bet.”
Johnny laughed. “Well, yes and no. Everybody hates you and everybody wants to be like you.”
Willy shrugged. “Everybody’s stupid. Got that computer?”
Massucco shook his head and began taking them down the corridor, saying, “I think I’m starting to get it.”
He led them into a small office with a couple of desks equipped with monitors. “Take mine. You use Spillman?”
“Yeah.” Willy sat before the computer and quickly entered his password, his one hand moving in a blur across the keyboard.
“Who’re you after?” Massucco asked Sam.
“Guy named Newell Morgan. Lives on Gage. That ring a bell?”
But the young man shook his head. “Nope, but it’s not a bad neighborhood—kind of the Joe Blow street. The average citizen.”
“The average jackass,” Willy said, studying the screen. “According to this, he either rats on his neighbors for noise and parking complaints or gets them to squeal on him for yelling at his wife.”
“Pretty much what we already knew,” Sam commented, watching Willy shift over to the vehicle table.
“You like working for VBI?” Johnny asked.
“Best job in the state,” Sam said without hesitation. “It’s major cases only, you work border to border, and you don’t have to belong to the state police.”
“I was thinking they might be my only option if I ever want to leave here.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“Not really, but if the state cops are the only way to go, I better start early—it’s hard to move through the ranks with them.”
“Screw ’em,” Willy said without turning around. “Stay where you are, bust your hump, and join us when you hit top of the class.”
Sam stared at the back of his head. Never before had she heard him say anything positive about any job he’d held or anyone he’d worked with.
“Got it,” he said, sitting back, cutting off anything she might have been tempted to say. “Newell sold that truck to Melvin Curtis Martin, who lives in one of the local trailer parks, at least according to this.”
“That he does,” Johnny agreed. “Him I do know. Go to the names table and I’ll fill you in.”
Willy did as suggested while Massucco continued, “Martin’s a New York import. Albany area. Came over a few years ago. He’s done federal and local time both, has a biker background, and is into drugs and stealing and beating the crap out of people.”
“Says he’s married,” Willy read, surprised.
“Wife’s name is Nancy,” Johnny confirmed.