This time, the road out to Brook’s End didn’t seem so long. It was the next morning and Warren, freshly showered and full of his own strong coffee, Pinky next to him in the passenger seat, recognized a few of the landmarks, the first turn, the tree with a NO TRESPASSING sign on it. The old black dog came out to bark at the car, then slunk away when Warren and Pinky got out and started walking up to the porch. They knocked and it was a few minutes before Sawyer, dressed only in a bathrobe, tufts of gray hair protruding at the neck and mingling with his long beard, came out onto the porch, the door slamming hard behind him. His eyes were puffy and Warren thought they’d woken him up.
“What’s the meaning of this? You can’t just come onto my property anytime you want!”
“I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Sawyer. It won’t take long. I need your help.”
Sawyer smiled. “You need my help? That’s something, isn’t it? What makes you think I want to help you?”
Warren put his hands out. “Mr. Sawyer, I’m new here in town. I’m trying to do my job and make a good impression. A man, your friend, is dead. I need to find out how he died and all I’m asking is that you answer a few questions for me.”
Sawyer didn’t say anything, but his body language shifted and he inclined his head, telling Warren to ask his questions.
“We asked you if you knew anything about the fires and you never mentioned that you’d had a man living with you until recently and that the man left suddenly one night without an explanation. Why didn’t you say anything about him? Didn’t it occur to you that he might be relevant to our investigation?”
“Who are you talking about?” Sawyer asked, looking—to Warren’s mind anyway—genuinely surprised and confused. “What do you mean?”
“Isaac Rosen,” Warren said.
“Isaac? He’s back in New York by now, isn’t he?” The dog came up on the porch, sidling up to Sawyer to have its ears scratched.
Pinky took his green trooper’s hat off and said, “No, Mr. Sawyer. He’s been living in the woods on Agony Hill and it was Isaac Rosen who accidentally set the fire at the camp.”
Sawyer was genuinely confused. “What … Isaac? But he disappeared one night and I just assumed he’d gone back to New York.”
Warren leaned against the porch railing, trying to show he was relaxed and that he wasn’t going anywhere. “We just need to confirm some details of his story.”
Jeffrey rolled his eyes. “What was his story? I wouldn’t believe much of it if I was you. Isaac was full of talk but ultimately unable to commit to the routine here. He misrepresented his interest in our way of life.”
“So, he arrived sometime in February, is that right?”
“I don’t remember the exact time, but yes, around then,” Jeffrey said. The old dog yipped and Jeffrey reached down to caress its ears. “I think he thought it would be one big party and he was quite surprised about the level of work it actually takes to sustain ourselves here at Brook’s End.” The screen door banged open and Willow, also wearing a robe, came out onto the porch, trailed by another old dog, this one black with a white snout.
“What’s going on, Jeffrey?” she asked. Then she saw Warren and Pinky. “Oh, it’s you again.”
“These officers are just asking about Isaac.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “He went back to his rich daddy, didn’t he?”
“Isaac set the fire at that camp up on Agony Hill,” Jeffrey said quietly.
Willow’s face froze. “He killed Hugh? Why did he do that?”
“No,” Warren said. “The other fire. The fire at that camp.”
Willow just looked confused.
Warren tried to wrest back control of the interview. “Is Isaac the first man you’ve had here who didn’t want to go to war?”
“No comment,” Sawyer said, holding his chin up and looking out toward the trees.
“Mr. Sawyer, I don’t care who you have living here, but you and Hugh Weber didn’t like each other and it’s possible someone who was staying here picked up on that dislike and decided to go after him. Anyone stay here who might have decided to settle your score for you?”
Oddly, Jeffrey looked offended at that. “Of course not. We wouldn’t have anyone staying here like that. And besides … well, like I said, we wouldn’t. This is a place of peace, Mr. Warren.”
Warren looked around, taking in the details now. The homestead was neater than it had appeared at first. The large vegetable garden was well-weeded and the porch furniture, though old and shabby, seemed to have been recently mended; a new leg carved of pale wood made a fourth with older ones on a chair, their paint peeling. In the distance, he noticed a section of paler wood on the side of a barn, the new pieces fitted in seamlessly with the old. In a few years, no one would even notice the repair. And then there was the brand-new shed.
Isaac Rosen, Warren realized.
“You should have told us about him,” Pinky said sternly. “We’re carrying out an investigation here.”
“That’s no business of mine,” Sawyer said. “That’s your problem. Now, if there’s nothing else…” He started to turn away. Warren was seized with anger at the man’s smugness, at his contempt for Warren and Pinky and their errand.
“I’m not finished with you,” he said. “I want to know where you were the night of the fire at Webers’, the night Hugh Weber died. You said you were here, but I don’t think you were.”
Sawyer looked panicked, which told Warren he’d gotten it right.
He started to say something, then hesitated. Willow, who had been watching the exchange, swore under her breath and went into the house. Jeffrey watched her go.
“Where were you, Mr. Sawyer?”
“I don’t have to tell you,” Jeffrey said. “I know my rights! We still have some freedoms in this country, though they’re slipping away.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest.
The door slammed open again. “That’s where he was,” Willow said, handing Warren a piece of pale yellow paper printed with a large headline and words beneath. “At a meeting at the college.” Warren read the words on the paper: “Why U.S. Involvement in Vietnam is Immoral and How to Resist.”
Willow frowned. “You go ask the students who were there, they’ll tell you he was there until late.”
“Is this true, Mr. Sawyer?” Warren asked him. “Is that where you were?”
“I refuse to answer that question. You’ll use my answer to create a file so you can track me. I know Chief Longwell already has one. I know what he’s up to. Longwell’s a fascist. Have you discovered that yet, Mr. Warren?”
“I just need to know if you were at the college, Mr. Sawyer.”
“No comment!” Warren met Willow’s eyes and she nodded.
Warren sighed. “Mr. Sawyer, I don’t know anything about any file and I don’t care about your politics and I don’t want to track you. Is there anything you can tell me about Hugh Weber that might help in our investigation? Some people are saying he killed himself, like that farmer last year, Forrest Germond. You knew Weber well, at one time anyway. You think he had it in him to do that?”
Jeffrey looked out toward the vegetable garden. “His ego was too big,” he said finally. “When I heard he’d set that fire, I thought it must have been an accident. Hugh Weber thought he was a gift to the world. No way he’d take that gift away.”
Warren nodded and stood up. Pinky followed suit. “Thank you,” Warren said. “Did Isaac do that repair over there on the barn? And that barn there?”
Jeffrey Sawyer nodded. “He was a good carpenter,” he said. “Wasn’t good at much else, but he had a way with wood.”
“I believe him,” Warren said in the car. “Or her, I suppose. I want you to see if you can find any of the students who were at the meeting, though they may not want to talk. I bet he was there just like she said though. And they confirmed Isaac Rosen’s story. So where does that leave us?”
Pinky looked out the window. “Well, we had two unsolved fires and now we just have one.”
Warren laughed. “You’re right, Pinky. We’re right back where we started. And now that we know there wasn’t an arsonist loose on Agony Hill, it probably makes it more likely that Hugh Weber did set that fire.”
“But…” Pinky prompted him. Warren knew he hadn’t sounded very sure.
“But … there’s that skull fracture. And there’s Victor Weber getting attacked by someone. And there’s Isaac Rosen hearing Hugh Weber yelling angrily the night he died. Or,” he corrected himself, realizing what he’d said, “someone yelling angrily.”
“Someone might have visited him,” Pinky said.
“That’s right.” Warren braked at the stop sign at the end of Goodrich Hill and turned onto the state highway. “You heard anything around town, Pinky, about Sylvie Weber or anything else?”
“Not really,” Pinky said, as Warren pulled in at the barracks. “But I’ll go see my aunt Patty tomorrow and ask if she’s heard any gossip.”
They made some follow-up calls and worked on paperwork until it was time for lunch. By the time they’d checked on Isaac Rosen, eaten roast turkey sandwiches at Pete’s—no peach pie today, but the coconut cream was pretty good—and driven back to the barracks, it was midafternoon.
Tommy Johnson was inside when they got back, his feet up on a desk, talking to someone on the phone and taking notes on a pad. He waved when he saw Warren and after a few utterances of “Thanks, yup, I’ll tell him. That’s right,” he hung up the phone and waved them over. “So you found the arsonist,” he said cheerily. “Good work! You think he’s got anything to do with Hugh Weber?”
“He doesn’t have anything to do with that,” Warren said, explaining about Isaac Rosen and their visit out to Brook’s End. “But he says he heard a man yelling like he was mad about something, not long before the fire. Hey, any word on Victor Weber’s condition?”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “He’s up and talking and asking for a drink. Says he remembers going for a walk from the inn and that’s it. The next thing he remembers is waking up at the hospital. Between the booze and the knock on the head, I’d say he’s lost at least twenty-four hours.”
Warren felt his spirits sink. Whoever had attacked Victor Weber had been saved by the man’s lapse of memory.
Pinky headed out for road duty and Warren sat at his desk, thinking about warm summer nights and barns and Isaac Rosen, camping in the woods. The windows were open next to his desk and the cool air came through, washing pleasantly over his face. He thought about head wounds and bullet wounds and break-ins, and he thought about his father’s old friend Tommy Johnson, who at this very moment was laughing about something with Tricia at the dispatch desk.
He went over and stood there awkwardly for a moment, listening to Tricia tell a story about something she’d once heard on a party line while calling her sister. Warren still needed to get his phone installed. It had been so busy he’d forgotten all about it.
“Hey, Tommy,” he said quietly, when there was a break in their conversation. “I thought I’d go out and get some fresh air. You want to come with me?”
Tommy’s eyes snapped up, suddenly wary, and he seemed to try to read Warren for a moment before he smiled and said, “Sure thing. It’s nice out today, isn’t it?”
They went out the front door and by silent agreement, walked around to the parking lot, checking to make sure none of the troopers were out there before they stepped into the shade of a big willow tree at the edge of the small patch of lawn behind the barracks.
“What is it, Frankie?” Tommy asked. “Everything okay?”
Warren reached out to touch a trailing willow branch. It was starting to turn color, yellow from the bright green it had been only a few days before. “Samuel Armstrong,” he said finally.
Tommy’s body stiffened but he didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, looking down at the ground, where a line of ants was disappearing into an anthill, he said, “Yeah?”
“Fred Fielder asked me about it, caught me out actually. I just said, ‘No comment,’ but then when I looked, there was nothing in the case files. Nothing. I haven’t been here long, but I’ve been here long enough to know that a thing like that, a burglary and an execution-style shooting in the middle of the night on a quiet country road, well, that warrants a case file.”
“It’s not ours anymore, Frankie,” Tommy said after a long moment. “That’s why there’s no case file. Because it went to someplace else. Someplace I can’t tell you.”
“But it’s in our jurisdiction and if it has anything to do with Hugh Weber, then I need to see the reports. I’m stuck on this, Tommy. Someone shot that man and got away with it and someone may have killed Hugh Weber. I’m hamstrung if I can’t connect the dots here! I’m new, I want to do my job. You know how that feels, Tommy. I want to see justice done. That’s the job, it’s why I came up here!”
He was angrier at Tommy than he’d known and his voice had risen as he was talking. When he was done, Tommy’s eyes widened and Warren thought about how his elfin face must have been part of what made him a good investigator. You just couldn’t believe he was holding out on you. He looked too innocent.
Now, Tommy’s eyes were apologetic as he said, “It doesn’t have anything to do with Hugh Weber, so don’t worry about that. You can take my word for it, I’ve been doing this a long time.” Tommy, deeply uncomfortable, started to walk back to the barracks but Warren reached out and touched his arm.
“Who took it from you, Tommy? The guy was a State Department employee. Is that why? Who told you to bury that file?”
Tommy turned and gave Warren a sympathetic look. “Better if you don’t know, Frankie,” he said. “Now, I’ve got to get on the road.”
The Bethany white pages listed Roy Longwell’s address as 126 Church Street, just down the street from the police station. It was a medium-sized white Cape Cod–style house, new and neatly kept, and after he had parked the Galaxie down the street, Warren walked up the stone path and knocked on the front door. It was starting to get dark. The windows along the front of the house were open and through the screens, Warren could hear the Red Sox game on the radio.
The woman who answered the door was thin, gray-haired, austere-looking, not at all the wife he would have imagined for burly Roy Longwell. She stared at Warren and waited for him to speak, rather than offering a greeting. A smell of roasting meat wafted deliciously from the inside of the house.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Longwell, but I was wondering if I could talk to the chief,” Warren said, his voice squeaking a little. He was nervous, guilty about going behind Tommy’s back. “I’m Franklin Warren, with the state police.”
She must have been used to dinner-hour visitors because she called back over her shoulder, “Roy!” without acknowledging Warren or inviting him in.
Longwell came out quickly, muttering, “Follow me,” and leading Warren around the side of the house to a small backyard almost completely taken up by a large vegetable garden. Longwell, dressed in tan khaki workpants and a flannel shirt, unspooled a length of hose from the side of the house and bent to turn the spigot beneath it. When, after a few seconds, a stream of water came from the end of the hose, he directed it to a row of tall, prolific tomato plants at one end of the garden and said, “What can I do for you, Detective Warren?”
A cricket chirped from the bushes and Warren watched as the water soaked the soil underneath the plants. “I wanted to ask you about that shooting,” he said. “The guy from Washington.”
Longwell didn’t look at him. “I told you I don’t have anything about that. You should ask your friend Tommy Johnson.”
“Well, I wasn’t able to get what I wanted there, Chief Longwell. I’m trying to make a go of my new job and I want to find out what happened up at the Webers’ the night of that fire. I want to see justice done. It seems odd to me that there is an unsolved burglary and shooting not far from where Hugh Weber died and I want to know about it. I thought you were being deliberately unhelpful before, but I think I may have missed your meaning. You said you didn’t find anything. That there was nothing to find. You meant there really was nothing, didn’t you?”
Longwell moved the stream of water to the next plant before he said, “Cleanest crime scene I ever saw. The guy was dead on the ground and there was some blood on the floor, but there was nothing else. No prints, no mud, no dust, no hair.”
“Someone cleaned the scene,” Warren said.
Longwell nodded. “You ever heard of a burglary where the burglars cleaned house after they were done?”
“No, Chief Longwell, I haven’t.”
“Well, there you go. Tommy Johnson came down the next day, he looked around. At first, it seemed like a normal investigation. But then Tommy’s tune changed. He clammed up something good. I don’t know what he found because he didn’t tell me, but I’ll tell you something, no one wanted to talk about it after that.”
“Thank you,” Warren said. He wasn’t sure what he’d learned, but it seemed important to know it. “This Hugh Weber thing, what do you think is going on here, Chief Longwell? Someone attacked Victor Weber, almost killed him. Do you think the community is in danger?”
The cricket chirped again, joined by another one, and finally a third.
A tiny, smug smile touched Roy Longwell’s lips. “I’d say no. If you hadn’t stopped by tonight, you would have received a call from me, Detective Warren, just as soon as I’d finished my supper. I just heard from one of my guys that a young woman from Rutland called the station this evening. She was feeling guilty because she was in Bethany the other day and she was driving perhaps a bit too fast along Route 5. She wasn’t paying attention, warm day, the sun was in her eyes, you know how it goes, and she hit something. Thought it was a woodchuck or a cat, something like that, and she kept going. But then she saw an item in the newspaper, about a man found injured on the side of the road. She’s been stewing about it, feeling guilty, and finally she decided she ought to call us up and turn herself in.”
“Victor Weber.” Warren said. “He wasn’t attacked. He was hit by a car.”
“That’s right. The car knocked him against a tree on the side of the road and his head caught on a branch. Who knows where he was going, but he’d drunk himself into a stupor and probably stepped out in front of the car. I doubt charges will be filed.”
He moved on to the final tomato plant, directing the water to the roots and watching the soil darken, a satisfied expression on his face.
“So that’s it,” Warren said. “I’m right back where I started with Hugh Weber and a fire that may have been suicide or may not have been.”
“That’s right,” Longwell said. And then he looked up at Warren and said, “It’s tough, isn’t it, Detective, the ones you can’t solve? The ones where questions remain, even after you’ve done your best. Worst part of the job, isn’t it? I expect you know that all too well.”
He was talking about Maria’s murder. Warren was sure of it. He didn’t know what to say, so he just stammered out a thank-you and said he had to be getting home.
Longwell nodded and went to the side of the house where he replaced the hose and turned off the spigot. They walked around to the front and Longwell said something that Warren didn’t catch.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing, Detective Warren. Have a nice evening.”