Free The Dark Root by Archer Mayor

said
a
murder—not his.”
    Ellis gave a small shrug.
    “And don’t think,” Kunkle added, “that you’re still working part-time painting hot cars. That’s over. You’re on our shit list now, get it?”
    He nodded silently.
    “And don’t forget that we just did you a big favor. Right?”
    He began looking thoroughly depressed, realizing what this favor might cost him someday. “Okay.”
    We left him to contemplate life’s odd twists of fate.
    · · ·
    Sammie Martens was waiting in her car when we stepped outside the body shop. “I heard you guys were here. Didn’t want to barge in and catch Willy torturing another witness.”
    To my regret, Willy smiled with pride.
    “You got something?” I asked, slightly irritated.
    Sammie was looking pleased herself. “I found out where Travers ordered his last pizza, and where it was delivered.”
    My mood thus brightened, I bowed theatrically and gestured to the street. “Lead on. We’re right behind you.”
    We didn’t have far to go. We returned down Canal to Birge, along which the old Estey Organ warehouses stood side by side, clad entirely in dark slate—the latest in fire prevention well over a hundred years ago—and descended Baker Street to the bottom of a steep dead end.
    Where Sammie eventually pulled to a stop was typical of Brattleboro’s eccentric layout. From being in the middle of Vermont’s fourth-largest town at the top of the hill, we were now in the dooryard of a rambling, sagging, decrepit old farmhouse, perched on the edge of a large, weed-choked field. Blocked from our view by trees and brush, our urban surroundings might as well have been a figment of imagination. Even its sounds were muffled by the distant rushing of nearby Whetstone Brook.
    But the place held little charm. What some other town might have exploited as the sylvan setting for a condo project, or a pocket municipal park tucked away by the water’s edge, the powers here had left to rot. The building was deserving of an arsonist’s care, and the field had been scarred by a wide dirt road leading to a scattering of retired appliances, rusting car bodies, and assorted trash.
    We assembled in front of the silent, abandoned-looking building.
    “This is it?” Kunkle asked quizzically.
    Sammie merely crossed the hardscrabble front yard and hammered on the door with her fist. The sound echoed dully throughout the house.
    “When did the delivery take place?” I asked, joining her on the rickety porch.
    She was peering through one of the side windows. “A little over an hour before we found him in flames. I talked to the delivery boy and showed him Benny’s mug shot. No doubt about it.”
    I stood beside her, shading my eyes with my hands to see through one of the dusty panes. “You know who owns this?”
    “Gregory Rivière. He’s behind on his town taxes, and he comes up on our computer as a ‘known associate,’ but we’ve never actually nailed him for anything. From what I could find out, he’s originally from Wisconsin and did some drug time in New York. He’s supposed to be out of town right now.”
    “Well,” I said, straightening up and wiping the dust from my hands, “I guess we better round up a search warrant.”
    For the second time in a quarter hour, Sammie smiled with self-satisfaction, retrieving the very document from her back pocket and handing it to me. “Blessed by the Honorable Judge Harrowsmith himself.”
    Kunkle laughed behind me and turned the doorknob. The door swung open without protest.
    We crossed the threshold and paused. There is always a sense of trespass that accompanies an uninvited search, unabated by the knowledge that we are there by legal sanction. I can always feel the absent owner’s spirit cringing as we poke about, examining details unknown by even his or her most intimate friends. On the other hand, the uneasiness is counterbalanced by an intense curiosity, suddenly unleashed to run rampant to its heart’s content. All the