In the Evil Day by Richard Adams Carey

Author:Richard Adams Carey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of New England

10

KILL YOUR BLUES

STILLNESS REIGNED at Vickie’s house on the slope of Blue Mountain—no vehicle in the driveway, no sign of disturbance or forcible entry. Forest ranger Bert von Dohrmann, wielding a shotgun borrowed from Chief Sielicki, knocked on the front door. Deputy ranger Scott Owen provided cover.

Von Dohrmann had been using the restroom at the fire station on Pleasant Street when the scanner went off. He saw Scott Phillips’s cruiser coming the wrong way, saw in his mirror that its rear window was gone. He parked by the other cruiser in the IGA parking lot. EMT Margaret Smith had to tell him that this was all that was left of Les, that Scott lay over in the grass.

Von Dohrmann thought he was the only law officer on the scene. He hadn’t noticed Dan Couture taking the names of witnesses in his civvies. Others came: Sielicki and Jules Kennett, a part-time Colebrook cop; Troopers Scott Stepanian, who was Phillips’s best friend, and Tom Yorke; Border Patrol agent Dave Perry; and Scott Owen.

Someone—Stepanian?—said that Drega might be looking for Vickie Bunnell, that someone should get to her house ASAP, provide protection if she was there. Von Dohrmann was unarmed, and Sielicki gave him that shotgun. Owen climbed into the passenger seat of von Dohrmann’s cruiser, and they drove past some sort of commotion on Bridge Street. They heard nothing on the radio about trouble there, and for Vickie’s sake, they couldn’t stop. They turned left on Parsons Street and east on Route 26, to a northern access road to the Bungy Loop, a more likely route for Drega if he didn’t want to be noticed on the way to Vickie’s.

There was no answer to von Dohrmann’s knock. From here the sirens in Colebrook were barely audible. They walked to the back of the house, and from the fire pit von Dohrmann could see church spires and the southern spine of Monadnock. “Not unless you’ve got a shovel,” Les had told him, and that was why von Dohrmann was still alive to gaze at Monadnock. A telephone, a radio, a pile of papers, and some food wrappers—that was why Liz, whom von Dohrmann had called from the IGA pay phone, still had a husband.

How much sense did that make? Not enough.

Dick Marini and Steve Breton weren’t strangers to each other. Marini got around, and recently he had ridden as backup with Breton to some place he remembered only as a swamp somewhere around Colebrook. A woman had gone there to commit suicide, but Breton talked her out of it. The young cop did a good job, Marini thought.

Breton had a feeling Drega was headed straight home to Columbia, but just in case Drega was waiting in ambush instead, he had Marini edge the Plymouth slowly into each intersection on the way into the Colebrook business district—even Edwards Street, where Breton, his wife, Christine, and four-month-old Nicholas lived a few doors away from Audrey Noyes.

Past Clarkeie’s, they saw people walking the sidewalks as usual, going in or out of stores, in what struck Breton as some lewd imitation of normal life.

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