Read Online The Second Mouse by Archer Mayor - Free Book Online

bypass? Their politicians live and die by whether they support an interstate traffic circle that’s supposed to go completely around the town? That is really bizarre.”
    Joe glanced at her. He wasn’t about to argue the point one way or the other. For years almost uncountable, Bennington had, in fact, had a huge bypass on the books that would ease the pressure from the all-important intersection of Routes 9 and 7 in the heart of downtown. One side of the debate called it financial suicide; the other touted it as economic salvation. Only one leg of it had been completed thus far—a beautiful quarter circle running from New York State to Route 7 due north of Bennington, complete with sweeping panoramas of the valley and bordering mountains. But since it didn’t accomplish the overall goal, most outsiders—and a few locals—were still hard pressed to figure out what it foretold.
    Joe only knew, as apparently did Sam, that unless you held an opinion on the matter, you were clearly overlooking one of the area’s touchstone topics.
    Without comment, he returned his attention to the road, although he found his thoughts focusing neither on the scenery nor on the condition of Bennington’s battered self-image.
    It didn’t take long for Sam to notice the change. “You all right, boss?” she eventually asked him. “You’re kinda quiet.”
    He turned briefly to glance at her. “Sorry. A little distracted. Something about this case has gotten under my skin. Don’t know why.”
    “She didn’t seem old enough to die of natural causes,” Sam ventured.
    Joe burst out laughing. Sam was the youngest of his squad, and an interesting clash of boldness and hesitation, ambition and self-doubt, experience and naïveté, which her taste in men helped exemplify. Currently, and for the past couple of years, she’d been discreetly but determinedly involved with Willy Kunkle, a hookup that boggled Joe’s mind, although he tried to show his support.
    “Very diplomatically put, Sam. Nicely done,” he finally said.
    Sam was looking flustered. “I didn’t mean
you
were at death’s door . . .”
    He waved her off. “I know, I know. I’m just pulling your leg—an old man’s prerogative. That is part of it, actually—she
was
young in my book—so you’re right. But there’s a whole element of pathos around this, plus a hint of something darker.”
    “Newell Morgan?” she asked, having already read the file.
    Joe pursed his lips before responding. “The ME sees nothing wrong, Matthews is happy to move on, and nothing jumped out at me at the scene, so I’m hardly planting a flag in the ground here. But Morgan is definitely a man I want to look at eye to eye.”
    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.