Occam's Razor

by Mayor, Archer

  Who-dun-its are much rarer. With them, we’re left on our own, interviewing people who don’t want to talk to us, conjuring up scenarios based on evidence and not wishful thinking. There’s also a sense of lost time, lost opportunity, and ever-vanishing prospects. Who-dun-its are like being adrift in a rowboat with the tide pulling you out to sea. Unless something turns up to reverse the trend, all that’s left is to watch the shore slowly sink into the horizon. In the movies, who-dun-its are action-packed, thrillingly progressive, and ultimately successful. In reality, they are slow, plodding, and often end up nowhere. If a bad guy in this country has the smarts to knock someone off with just a modicum of discretion, chances are pretty good he’ll never be caught. All the science, the networking, and the inspiration don’t come to much if you don’t have a name to begin with.

  Which was why we were comparing notes.

  It was routine in an interview especially—versus an interrogation, where you were usually pursuing a confession—to throw as broad a net of questions as possible. Who do you know, who did you see, who did you hear being talked about—were all questions designed to sift suspects like a colander. Sam, Willy, and I spent two hours sifting, formulating how each name connected to the rest, so we could get a better glimpse of the world Brenda Croteau inhabited before she died.

  It is usually pretty dry work, so I was encouraged when, at Willy’s mention of Frankie Harris, Sammie grew wide-eyed.

  “What is it?” I asked her.

  Willy, who’d continued reading aloud, paused, saw her face, and repeated, “Frankie Harris—yeah…that does ring a bell.”

  Sammie’s voice was strained. “He was at the poker party.”

  I watched them both closely as Willy momentarily froze. “Overlooking the railroad tracks? The night the bum got whacked?”

  “More than that,” he agreed, with none of his usual malice.

  It was the party where Sammie had met her current flame. “What’s your new friend’s name, Sam?”

  She flushed and said angrily, “It’s not Harris. It’s Andy Padgett.”

  The quiet in the room fell like a loud noise in church—everyone noticing it, and pretending they hadn’t. Frankie Harris, after all, was no longer just a name being mentioned in the context of one killing, but of two. We all had to wonder what Andy Padgett might have to say about that, especially given his sudden interest in a cop.

  I tried skirting the issue. “Tell me what we’ve got on Mr. Harris,” I told Willy.

  For once, he was happy to cooperate. “According to Jamie, Harris was one of Brenda’s johns, but one she liked. He was a regular. He’s also clean—I ran him through the computer.” He paused slightly, still watching Sammie, whose eyes were glued to her notes. “I remember him from when we did the first canvass. Quiet guy, maybe early fifties.” He pulled his pad from his back pocket and flipped through its pages. “Yeah. Here he is. Typesetter, fifty-one, unmarried, lives on Frost Street. He was the one who said he saw the car with no headlights through the window, on his way to take a leak.”

  “Sammie?” I asked. “Anything to add?”

  Her voice still showed her discomfort. “I remember him. Seemed legit.”

  “Have you and Andy discussed him at all?”

  “Only that night. I don’t think they know each other that well. It was one of the other guys’ birthday. He was the connection between Andy and Harris.”

  Willy referred back to his pad. “Donald Carter, age thirty-one, divorced, two DUIs, a disorderly stemming from a domestic dispute, and a disturbing the peace with loud music, all spanning the past eight years. Nothing within the past several months, when he got clipped for the second DUI. No jail time. Claimed he never saw or heard a thing, not even the train. It was his apartment, so he’s learned to tune it out, according to him. I think he’d tucked away enough that night to make him deaf anyway.”

  “Anything to add to Carter?” I asked Sammie.

  “Andy’s mentioned him,” she admitted reluctantly. “They work together at Naughton Lumber, in the mill.”

  Naughton Lumber was a huge operation north of town, turning felled trees into lumber, molding, plywood, and pulp. One of the town’s larger employers, it was notoriously unscrupulous about whom it hired.

  In the awkward pause following her statement, Sammie grew angry again. “So what? Willy’s probably related to half the people doing life in St. Albans. Doesn’t mean he’s crooked.”

  Willy laughed. “Don’t be so sure.”

  It was a typical crack, although once again I sensed him casting her a protective mantle. He and Sammie had always worked well together, while bitching like cats and dogs. He had a respect for her he’d never shown Ron, for example. But I’d never seen him shield her from anything—her or anyone else, for that matter.

  “No one’s saying anything against Andy,” I told her. “But we have to look into this, don’t you think?”

  “He doesn’t know Frankie Harris that well,” she repeated. “That’s all I’m saying. And I don’t know how Carter knows him. Maybe they went to school together or something.”

  “Harris is twenty years older than Carter,” I reminded her.

  She pushed away from the table and stood up suddenly. “For Christ’s sake. I knew this would happen. I didn’t expect it from you.”

  She stalked out of the room, leaving her notes behind. I rose, grabbed her pad, pointed a finger at Willy, said, “Stay put. I want to talk to you,” and gave chase.

  I caught up to her just shy of the front door, taking her by the elbow. “Sammie. Slow down.”

  She didn’t fight me off but turned and leaned back against the wall, her face contorted by fury, embarrassment, and frustration. “Damn,” she said.

  I gave her the pad, moving my hand from her elbow to her shoulder and looking her straight in the eyes. “Sam. What the hell’s going on?”

  She averted her gaze. “I don’t know. I’m tired. It’s a little confusing, is all.”

  “Being in love?”

  She looked at me then, checking for any mockery, finding none. “I don’t know what hit me. I barely know him, but I can’t stop thinking about him. It was like an electrical connection or something.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s perfectly normal. Maybe you got it worse than some, but you’re also overdue. And nobody’s dumping on you because of it, least of all me.”

  Her brow knitted. “That’s not the way it felt at the crime scene earlier.”

  I shook my head. “I was pissed at you for showing up healthy when you’d told me you were sick. It made you look devious, and I was already mad at Raymo for playing cowboy. I’m not angry you’ve finally found someone to fall in love with.”

  She pursed her lips and said quietly, “I don’t know if it is love.”

  I smiled at her. “Sex, then. I don’t care. Whatever it is, it’s good for the soul. It’s also nobody’s business but your own. I’m not going to tell you people won’t talk, or aren’t talking already. Not only did this happen pretty fast, and in an unusual context, but it’s also out of character for the Sammie we’re used to—a Sammie you trained us to be used to. You’ve got to expect some flak for that, just like anyone else would get.”

  She sighed once heavily and then nodded. “I suppose.”

  I let her go. “You want to pretend to be like one of the boys, they’re going to treat you that way—sophomoric as it sounds. It doesn’t mean they’re really going after you. On the contrary.”

  “I know, I know,” she agreed, calming down. “I’ve seen it enough times. It’s just hard being on the receiving end.”

  “It would’ve helped if you hadn’t been so coy about it, taking sick days.”

  She smiled ironically. “You really believe that?”

  I conceded the point. “Okay. You would’ve caught shit anyhow. But now the cat’s out of the bag. You can relax. All right?”

  “All right. Sorry I blew up.”

  “Don’t be. It’s
been a hell of a day, this thing came out of left field, and,” I added, raising my eyebrows suggestively, “I don’t imagine you’ve been getting much sleep lately.”

  She laughed and punched me in the arm. “Lay off. You want me back in there?”

  “No. Hit the sack, rest up, and I’ll see you later. Check in when you’re ready. I’ll finish with Willy and kick him loose, too. We’ve all done enough for tonight.”

  I watched her go and then returned to the conference room. Willy was tilting back in his chair and gave me a lewd smile. “Sort out her love life?”

  I ignored him, sat down, and asked, “Tell me about Andy Padgett.”

  He gave me an exasperated laugh. “What do I know? She met the guy, sparks went off, they been making like rabbits ever since.”

  “You telling me you didn’t run him through the computer?”

  His small notepad was still lying open before him, but I noticed that this time he didn’t bother consulting it. “Age twenty-eight, been working at Naughton for three years, drove a truck for Rugby before that, unloaded groceries at C&S right out of high school, which he attended here. Lives in a trailer in West Bratt. Never been married, no kids, one dog. Owns a pickup and a Harley. No record outside a disturbing the peace when he was in high school, and an equipment violation when he was driving rigs, which went back to the owner.”

  I was struck by Padgett’s having once been a truck driver. “What was your gut reaction when you met him, before he and Sam became an item?”

  “Just a regular guy. Nothing special.”

  I left it at that, sensing his discomfort. “What about the fourth member of this poker party. Who was he?”

  Willy reached for his pad. “James Lyon, married, three kids, age thirty, works at Span-Lastic. Plays on a softball team with Carter—that’s how they’re friends. He’s clean as a whistle. I wrote down ‘nervous’ in my notes, but I don’t know if it means much. We do that to people, especially virgins.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “What do you think about Frankie Harris being connected to both Brenda Croteau and the railroad killing?”

  “Could be a coincidence,” Willy equivocated, then added reluctantly, “but we’d be nuts to just assume it.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “You better really look into him—family, friends, co-workers, the works. Also, get together with Sam later and chase down the list of common denominators we compiled tonight—put them under the same microscope. If the law of averages has anything to do with this, Brenda got killed over drugs, money, or both. June Dutelle might be more helpful there, too, if we press her a little harder.”

  I paused, and Willy got up. “That it?”

  “Yeah. We’ll be crawling all over White Birch Avenue for evidence when it gets light. You’re good at that, so if you can make it, I’d appreciate it, but make sure you get some sleep first.”

  He gathered up his notes. “You got it.”

  I stayed where I was for a while, thinking. Not about Phil Resnick, who was maybe the dead trucker, or Brenda Croteau, or her cast of dubious friends. I found myself wondering about Willy and Sam. Something was cooking there, at least on Willy’s part. Not only had he ignored his notes while recalling Andy Padgett’s particulars, he’d also known he had a dog.

  That depth of knowledge wasn’t available through a criminal records computer.

  9

  GENERALLY, WINTER’S BRIEF DAYLIGHT HOURS only aggravate people’s moods in Vermont. The morning after my meeting with Willy and Sam, however, I was all too happy to get two hours of extra sleep before I knew J.P. and his crew—by dawn’s tardy light—would be out searching White Birch Avenue.

  I drove there straight from home and found them already setting up. Tyler had a team of ten people, including, I noticed, both Sam and Willy. He was equipping them out of the van he’d brought for the purpose, keeping track of his assignments in a three-ring binder.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked him during a lull, noticing he was wearing earmuffs and fingerless gloves, like one of Scrooge’s underpaid scribes.

  “Three teams: one inside the house to pick up where we stopped last night; another combing about a ten-yard perimeter around the outside walls; and the last working from one end of the street to the other. With this many people, it shouldn’t take too long—maybe most of the morning. I’ll let you know before then if we find anything interesting, though.”

  I smiled. “That your subtle way of telling me to buzz off?”

  He didn’t see the humor, looking at me with round, slightly surprised eyes. “No. Ron radioed here about five minutes ago. Said he just missed you at home. He’s got something at the office he wants you to see.”

  Anyone else would have tacked on a note of curiosity, especially in the midst of two felony cases. Not Tyler. He took most of life as a series of facts or events that could either be analyzed or tucked away for future reference. I’d watched his family grow over the years—a wife and two children, now both teenagers—fully expecting at least one of them to sprout green hair and go slightly bonkers. But so far, they all seemed content to emulate him, going through life doing good, doing well, and not making much of a fuss.

  I didn’t mind being dismissed. Poking through trash-strewn bushes or a frozen, blood-splattered house wasn’t my idea of fun. I preferred picking people’s brains to going through their leftovers, even though it was the latter that often clinched the case in court.

  I didn’t even reach the office before I discovered what was on Ron’s mind. He came running out into the parking lot without a coat and met me as I swung out of my car.

  “I got something you should hear,” he said, his rapid breathing encircling his head with fog.

  “You’ll freeze to death before you can tell me. Let’s go inside.”

  “I heard back from DMV on that plate number I’ve been trying to unscramble. I don’t know why they took so long, but the number is registered to Jim Reynolds.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “Reynolds? How’d they come up with that?”

  Ron was already beginning to shiver. “Ed Renaud said he saw a dark blue Ford Crown Victoria with a plate beginning with PCH. Reynolds owns that exact car, license number PDH-835. There are some with PCH which aren’t Crown Vics, and Crown Vics that don’t have PCH, but only Reynolds’s has anything even close to PCH.”

  I took pity on him and finished walking to the PD’s back door, quickly punching in the combination and ushering him through. “You talk to him yet?”

  “No. I only just got it.” He hesitated and then added, “Plus, I didn’t want to jump the gun, especially after this.” He pulled a newspaper from his pocket and unfolded it so I could read the headline.

  “REYNOLDS: NO MORE MAYBERRY RFD.” And in smaller type, “Senator Proposes Bill to Revamp Vermont Law Enforcement.”

  “Tell me what it says,” I said as I peeled off my coat, collected my mail and messages, and headed for our squad room on the other side of the building.

  He fell into step behind me. “It’s the same thing he’s been test-flying at those public hearings for the governor—to replace us with a single police force.”

  “The state police?” I asked, cutting through the Officers’ Room to grab a cup of coffee.

  “Not according to this. It would be a whole new entity.”

  I walked into the main corridor. “What about the sheriffs?”

  “It doesn’t say. None of that really matters anyway. All he’s done is refer the bill to his own Judiciary Committee. It doesn’t mean it’ll survive the week. The reason I brought it up is that it’s a hot potato, it’s anti-local law enforcement, and if we hit him on this railroad death without being damn sure of ourselves, we’ll get creamed by the press for smearing him to protect our turf.”

  We cut through the administrative office and the conference room and stepped into our own bailiwick. I looked around at the clustered desk cubicles, now all abandoned because of the White Birch Avenue search. “What do you propose?
” I asked him.

  “Big-time background check,” he answered unsurprisingly, computers and their paper trails being to him what forensics were to Tyler.

  I nodded by way of agreement. “Okay, but discreetly. He hired Win Johnston to watch his back, so Win’ll have his nose to the wind. Stick to either public records or closed police sources. No interviewing of family or friends. Okay?”

  He was pleased by my instant endorsement. “Sure. Okay. I’ll get right on it.”

  I went back across the way to bring the chief up to date.

  · · ·

  Tony Brandt recommended a different tack. After I updated him on Reynolds’s office break-in, his hiring of Winthrop Johnston, the sighting of his car at a probable murder scene, and the call I’d gotten about him from Stan Katz, Tony opted for the direct approach.

  “He’s running for the state’s top job, for Christ’s sake, or he will be as soon as he makes enough hay out of this bill. I think you should hit him with what we got, even vague as it is. That way, he can’t complain later he didn’t know of our suspicions from the get-go. It pulls the politics right out of it.”

  He leaned forward for emphasis. “Plus, if he is guilty, one brief chat with you will make him sweat bullets like nobody’s business, especially when you tell him you’re there because Katz pointed the way. He may even solve this thing for us—which also means you better assign people to watch his wife and secretary ahead of time, just in case that conversation leads to any sudden flurry of activity there. We don’t need a certain automobile to spontaneously catch fire by accident, do we?”

  I had to respect Tony’s zeal, especially since I knew he’d voted for the man. I rose to my feet. “Okay. I’ll keep you informed.”