Free The Dark Root by Archer Mayor Page A

taboos of closed doors and forbidden rooms, drummed into us from childhood, are removed. Armed with a search warrant, especially one worded as generally as what Sammie had secured, we were freer than thieves in the night.
    The initial pickings, however, didn’t generate much excitement. Befitting a house with no lock on the front door, the place at first didn’t offer any more than the junk-clotted field below it. Sparsely furnished, evil-smelling, choked with dust and mildew, it appeared totally deserted.
    Until Sammie appeared from around the kitchen door, pale and serious. “I think I got something.”
    I’d been combing the contents of a box-strewn dining room, finding nothing but old clothes and unpacked household items. Willy appeared from the neighboring living room, attracted by the tone of Sammie’s voice.
    We both joined her at the kitchen entrance. “I don’t think we should go much beyond here without calling Tyler,” she advised.
    Over her shoulder, we could see the remnants of a bag of chips and the famous pizza, part of it still in its box, along with one half-eaten piece, draped like a Salvador Dalì imitation over the edge of the counter, its red drippings hard and dry on the floor beneath it.
    As in some perverse parody, however, the floor and counter weren’t soiled only by old tomato sauce. There were large quantities of dry blood intermixed with it, extending far beyond the capabilities of a single pizza. A ragged trail of it led across the floor to a chair, which was daubed in enough dry blood to look sloppily painted with the stuff.
    “Far out,” Kunkle murmured admiringly.
    “What do you think?” Sammie asked. “Grabbed from behind as he stood at the counter, his back to this door, cut or hit hard enough to make him bleed, and then dragged to the chair?”
    “By at least two men,” Kunkle agreed. “Benny was a big boy.”
    Along the wall next to us there was a row of glass-doored cabinets over a second counter. Sammie pointed to shards of glass and more blood splayed across its surface, indicators of another wound. “He must’ve put up a fight.”
    But I was looking at the chair, less interested in how he’d been brought there than in what had happened to him once he’d been seated. Against Sammie’s good advice, I carefully picked my way across the room, studying the floor as I went, making sure my feet disturbed nothing. The others stayed put.
    The chair had been turned away from a small table shoved up against the far wall, to face the length of the room like a witness stand does a courtroom. From closer up, I could clearly see the chair’s two front legs were strapped with broken bands of blood-smeared duct tape, another length of which I found stuck horizontally across the chair’s back. There was a final, balled-up wad of tape lying under the table, presumably used to tie Travers’s hands behind his back, and a pair of blue jeans, blackened by old blood, slashed to ribbons. Across the top of the table were the oblong smears of a knife that had been repeatedly placed there—and obviously repeatedly used.
    I began to understand why Ben Travers had been in such a hurry when he’d flown off the Upper Dummerston Road.

6
    JACK DERBY, THE NEWLY ELECTED State’s Attorney for Windham County, was a startling contrast from his predecessor, James Dunn. Tall, slim, with bookish good looks set off by a pair of tortoiseshell bifocals, Derby was the kind of man Rotarians like to invite over for lunch. He favored sport jackets over suits, appeared easygoing and conversational, never hesitating to stop in a hallway or on the street to answer a question or respond to a comment, and generally came across as an approachable, regular kind of a guy—a man you could trust with your vote.
    But however engaging, Derby could also be as tough, demanding, and ruthless as Dunn.
    Sitting in Tony Brandt’s office, Derby was slouched down, relaxed, a ready and interested smile on his face, but with