head. A tall man in a pea jacket rose from his crouch by the body-Alfred Gould, the regional medical examiner.
Gould walked over to us. “Morning, Joe.”
I nodded to him. “Hi, Al. Anything to add to the obvious?”
Gould half smiled and shook his head. “I would like to talk to the old lady, if that’s all right.”
“Sure, be my guest.” I stepped out of the way and let him pass.
The snow all around the body had been trampled by a small army.
“Were there any prints before all this happened?”
“Nope, just his. I got shots of it all.” J.P. put his camera down, a pleased look on his face-a man in love with his work. “I’m wrapping up out here. I still have to check out the gun. Hit the lights when you’re through, okay?”
I nodded and he squeezed between us, heading inside.
“The head’s over here.” George pointed to a dark hole in the snow not three feet from where I was standing. I instinctively looked down and saw a half-shadowed face staring at me, its eyes enormously wide. My stomach turned over.
“You’re getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?”
George smiled and shrugged. “You’re a tough guy.”
I took the flashlight he had hanging from his belt and shone it on the head. The shock over, it looked like a plastic fake.
“Al said the blast ‘atomized’ the guy’s neck-his word, not mine. He said it was kind of like pulling a tablecloth out from under a bunch of plates-it just sort of fell off when the body went sailing into the wild blue yonder.”
I handed the flashlight back and went down the steps to check out the body.
There wasn’t much blood visible. The ragged chunk between the man’s shoulders lay at the edge of a small black hole of melted snow. The whole thing had an almost tidy air about it. I realized then I was probably standing over an aquifer of blood spread out between the snow and the earth below. I dropped a nearby blanket over the stump and hole. Then I crouched by the body’s side and began to search.
Whoever this had been, he was no pauper. The blood-spattered scarf was cashmere, the long coat camel hair, the pants fineigne pants wool. Layer by layer, his clothes never dropped below $50 per item, including the tailored pale blue shirt with the monogram “J.P.” Inside his jacket, I found a leather wallet with, among the usual documents, ten new $100 notes.
A shadow fell across the body and I looked up to see State’s Attorney James-never Jim-Dunn. Vermont state’s attorneys, elsewhere called district attorneys, have to be at the scene of any “unattended death.” James Dunn had two assistants with whom he rotated being on call, but he hardly missed showing up personally at the dramatic ones, regardless of time or weather. He wasn’t married, which must have helped, and he was good at his job, so we didn’t complain. He never said much, certainly never touched anything, and generally stayed out of the way. In a few instances, he had even been a help, pointing out the occasional legal pothole. Still, I didn’t like him. He was a cold and snotty man.
I nodded to him, he returned the silent greeting, and I read aloud from the dead man’s driver’s license. “James Phillips-Orchard Heights. Ring any bells with anybody?”
“From the address, I’d say we didn’t travel in the same circles,” George answered from the steps.
Another pocket yielded a long, thin metal chain. “Interesting tool for a break-in.”
George’s curiosity wore him down. He walked over and crouched next to me. “What is it?”
“A dog leash. Here’s something else.” It was a miniature leather photo album, about the size of a checkbook. Inside were ten pictures-seven of a prissy toy poodle standing alone; two of the poodle and a smiling man, who was on all fours next to the dog; and one of the man, the poodle, and a woman standing in front of a house. In the last shot, the woman was holding the dog. She looked like she’d rather have been elsewhere.
George tilted his hat back on his head. “Weird. You ever have a picture book of your pet?”
I pushed myself up off my knees and grunted to a standing position. Dunn was still standing there, silently watching. I continued to ignore him, as he once had asked me to. “I wonder what our Mr. Phillips was up to? What’s the old lady’s name?”
“Thelma Reitz.”
She was sitting in the kitchen, thin, frail, and beaten, her white head bowed and shimmering under the harsh fluorescent glare. The attendant from Rescue, Inc. was making notes at the table. I took a chair like the one lying in the hallway and sat facing her, elbows on knees, my legs slightly apart to allow for my gut. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Dunn enter the room and lean against the wall.
She stared at her lap, where her hands were slowly destroying a damp and wadded Kleenex. I noticed the thin gold band on her left ring finger had almost vanished into the flesh around it, as over the years something nailed to a tree becomes absorbed by the bark.
“Mrs. Reitz?” I let the fingertips of my hand brush hers. She looked up. Her face was so pale it blended imperceptibly with her hair.
“My name is Gunther. I’m another policeman. I know you’ve explained what happened, and I know you must be tired, but I was wondering if you could go ouyou cou over it again-just for me.” I paused a moment. “Do you have somewhere you can stay, by the way? A son or daughter, maybe?”
She shook her head. “My daughter doesn’t like me.” Her voice was high and thin-a piano string stretched as tight as it could go.
I called George in from the hallway. “Call Susan Henderson at the Retreat and ask her if Mrs. Reitz can spend a few days there until she gets her feet back on the ground.” I glanced at the Rescue guy. “Okay with you?”
He shrugged.
George nodded and left. Thelma Reitz watched him leave and gave me a wan smile. “Thank you.”
“No problem. I’m sorry about your daughter.”
She shook her head. “I lost her a long time ago. I don’t know why. I called her when all this started-I was so frightened-but she told me phone calls like that happen all the time. She said I should be flattered.”
“What were the calls like?”
That brought some color to her face. “I couldn’t repeat them. They were dirty. Very dirty.” She opened her mouth to say more but changed her mind. She was obviously deciding something and finally rose painfully to her feet and crossed the room. She handed me some index cards from a drawer. “He left these too. On my pillow, in my bathroom, in here-he came into my house any time he wanted. I found them every time I got home.”
The notes were short, brutal, and graphic ditties; a rhyming hodgepodge of sexual threats offensive enough to embarrass an Elks meeting. I wrapped them in my handkerchief and put them in my pocket. “Why didn’t you call us?”
I held her elbow as she sat back down. She smiled again and sighed. “I did.”
It was my turn to be embarrassed. “Did you tell them the notes were found in the house?”
“They weren’t. They were phone calls.” She closed her eyes and put her hand to her forehead. “I’m not making sense.”
I took her hand in mine. “My fault. You mean the notes didn’t start until after you called us?”
She nodded.
“And when you told us about the calls, you were told there was nothing much we could do about them.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry about that.” I let a few seconds go by. “So then he attacked your cat?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes. Poor Albert… What had he done? What had I done? Poor kitty. He was all I had.”
“When did you find him?”
“Tonight. I’d stayed out all day. I knew the notes would be there… I couldn’t stay inside-I was so scared. I went to the library, I went to the movies, to the store. I tried to stay out as long as I could, but it was cold, and places kept closing and then it snowed. I had to come home. I had nowhere else to go. That’s whenIhat’s I found Albert. And that’s when he called-right at the same time-as if he were standing there seeing everything I did. He said I wasn’t home when he’d visited, and that’s why Albert died. And then he said he’d come back later-tonight-to do the same thing to me. And when I didn’t say anything, he said, ‘What’s wrong, Thelma-the cat got your tongue?’”
She stared hard at me suddenly, the tears finally pouring down her face in earnest. The piano wire was
