“Reynolds’s Judiciary Committee is about to vote out his bill—they’re taking testimony from supporters and giving it as much armor as they can before sending it out into the world. I wanted to know if we were sitting on some smoking bomb that would make that whole exercise a waste of time.”
“Not that I know of,” I answered carefully, adding, “Why would we care anyway?”
Brandt gave me an enigmatic smile. “Ah. Well, it’s not just what they’re doing in Montpelier—it’s what I’ve been asked to do for them, and where I’m hoping you’ll help me out. Reynolds is being pretty careful with this bill, despite all the ‘bold and radical’ crap in the press. For one, he made sure it was introduced by his committee and not by him alone—which gives it more clout—and now he wants to make sure the same committee gives it a dress rehearsal with as many tough questions as they can raise. Also, I think that by dragging that process out just a little, Reynolds is hoping to orchestrate it so that the other Senate committees that get to consider it won’t have much time to do so. My guess is he’s shooting to have the bill reach the House just before Town Meeting Day in March, so the speaker and his minions will get the message on the village level that the people are behind it.”
I appreciated the civics lesson but dreaded whatever was lurking behind it. I waited silently, not making it too easy for him, knowing I wouldn’t like what I was about to hear.
I didn’t. Brandt cleared his throat slightly and said, “Anyhow, long story short, they asked me—along with a bunch of other people—to be a committee witness. I was hoping you’d go in my place. I was told it would be pretty informal. More like a think-tank session.”
I sat stock-still for a moment, analyzing my emotions. It was a favor he was asking of me, not something I had to do. But it was coming from a man who’d stuck his neck out for me many times in the past, and whom I considered a good friend. Finally, much as I disliked most politics, I was also—like a lot of people—a little curious about its workings.
“You got something else going?” I asked gratuitously, mostly to increase his obvious discomfort.
He shifted in his chair. “No more than anyone else. To be honest, Joe, I’m asking you for two reasons—one pretty straightforward, the other a little more self-serving.” He held up his index finger. “One, you’ve been part of more task forces, special units, and out-of-department assignments than anyone. You know how the inter-jurisdictional system works, its strong and weak points, and you probably have your fair share of ideas about how to improve it.” He raised a second finger. “Two, I’ve been known to ride a little high in the saddle politically, now and then, and I’m worried if I go up there, they’ll start taking shots at me for ancient history and maybe lose track of what they should be doing. I think Reynolds has an interesting idea with this one-department-for-the-whole-state approach. I know it’s got problems and would never fly as such, but this state is long overdue for a change, and I don’t want to be a part of anything that screws that up.”
I couldn’t argue his points, or find cause to turn him down, and I’d satisfied my childish urge to make him squirm. Also, while he’d been talking, I’d realized that since Jim Reynolds was going to be in my sights for a while longer, it wouldn’t hurt to see him functioning on his own turf.
I finally nodded and stood up. “Okay, you got a deal. When do I go?”
· · ·
The trip to Montpelier this time was completely unlike its predecessor, the passing countryside as draped in crystalline white as it had been brown and drab before. The contrast was more pronounced several miles east of town, at the interstate’s highest point crossing the Green Mountains, where a brief rain the previous night had coated every twig of every tree with a shimmering sheath of near-blinding clarity. Driving through this corridor of sparkling, glassy trees, with the deep blue, unsullied sky overhead pulsating with the sun’s cold energy, I felt transported far away from the often discouraging world I normally inhabited. It was with palpable regret that I reached the western downslope of this exposed bit of road and continued to my rendezvous with a room full of politicians.
Montpelier was busier than during my earlier visit and the parking that much worse, neither of which helped my darkening mood.
In contrast to the startlingly clear air, the ring of surrounding snowy hills, and the prominent gold dome of the capitol in their midst—as bright as a sparkler adorning a birthday cake—the town looked gritty and flattened this time, like some bit of soil ingrained in the palm of an enormous celestial hand.
Adding to my apprehension was the presence of several haphazardly parked cars and trucks, all stamped with the logos of various newspapers, radios, and television stations. I started thinking that Tony Brandt might have been a little coy with his reasons for staying home.
The first floor, under the two chambers and the governor’s ceremonial office, housed the Senate committee rooms and was as packed with people as a subway during rush hour. Shedding my coat in the sudden heat, I elbowed my way to the sergeant-at-arms’ office to announce my arrival. She made a brief phone call I couldn’t hear and told me in a loud voice to stand by the doorway—that someone would soon arrive to escort me to the committee room.
In the ten minutes that took, I watched some of the hurly-burly of a citizen-legislature in action.
In most states, the capitol is called the “people’s house,” or something close to it, although most visitors know there are limits to how much access they have to this purportedly open domain. A trip to these places is not unlike a tour of a museum—grand, quiet, a little stuffy and sterile, and yet imbued with the sense that something significant is occurring just out of sight.
In Vermont’s State House, the only museum quality in evidence is in the architecture and the artwork adorning it, which is all the more remarkable for being jammed into such a small building. Otherwise, the whole place was reminiscent of a high-class hotel during a wedding reception or a famous person’s wake. People milled all over, talking, laughing, arguing, shaking hands, and grabbing elbows. I recognized a few of them from pictures I saw in the papers, and many more by their attire as workmen, farmers, or well-paid lobbyists. But whether in overalls or three-piece suits, they all wandered the halls with comfortable familiarity, knowing that here there were almost no rooms they couldn’t enter with impunity. The crowd reinforced the feeling that while most governments exuded a sense of privacy, waste, and special privilege, Vermont’s was still small enough—at least in this picturesque, cluttered setting—to seem viable, real, and eminently approachable.
Eventually, a teenage page, dressed in an awkwardly fitting uniform of green blazer, gray slacks, and overlarge black running shoes, tugged on my sleeve and led me down a dark hall to a room marked “Judiciary.”
It was small enough—and with high enough walls—to make me feel I was standing at the bottom of a large can. A can so full of people, both sitting and standing, that at first it looked as if there were no possible way through them.
Excusing myself repeatedly, however, and choosing my steps with care, I made my way slowly to the large table in the middle and the one empty chair I was obviously supposed to occupy. Surrounding the table in concentric rings were several senators, their assistants, guests, lobbyists, and finally a row of journalists standing against the walls and windows, holding pads, tape recorders, cameras, or light-equipped camcorders. It was my first glimpse of just how big the so-called “Reynolds Bill” was playing.
The man himself sat opposite me, flanked by his Senate colleagues. Even sitting he looked oversized, his unruly hair crowning a head more proportioned for statuary than for human anatomy. He identified me, introduced me to the others, and ran down a small list of my achievements. He did not mention that I was here substituting for my boss.
Over the next hour and a half, against a steady background of people shuffling in and out of the undersized, stuffy room—and to the accompaniment of the occasional camera click or whir�
�I answered questions about law enforcement in Vermont from my personal perspective. It was easier than I’d thought it would be back home, where for the past several days I’d been boning up on practices and protocols. I discovered that these lawmakers were remarkably ignorant of what I did for a living, asking me questions so simple at times that I suspected I was being tested less for my knowledge than for my kindness to the mentally challenged.
This was not true of Jim Reynolds, of course. Being one of the few elected lawyers in the State House, he was used to navigating the waters I traveled. But he was careful not to show that off and spent most of his time encouraging his colleagues to follow me through an elementary primer of police procedure, using me as his foil in describing a system often redundant, wasteful, inefficient, and costly. It was masterfully done, I had to admit, as I slowly watched my interrogators become increasingly confused by what I was trying to keep simple. Reynolds had a point to make, and he was manipulating everyone but himself into making it.
I had worried that at some point I’d be asked my personal opinion of the bill and its ramifications, but here again, Reynolds showed a subtle control. While those kinds of questions did occasionally come up, he always swooped in and convincingly urged that at this early stage such prejudices be put aside. Toward the end, like a well-intentioned trail boss watching his herd simply wandering away, I heard my bland and placid testimony sounding more like a resounding condemnation—all due to Reynolds’s carefully worded guidance.
As I picked my way toward the room’s exit at last, having been solicitously thanked for my appearance, I could already visualize the next day’s headlines, touting me as a clarion for change.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to wait that long. I hadn’t placed one foot into the hallway before I was confronted by a short, square state trooper I knew to be big in their labor union—a strong organization within the state’s most powerful police force and, as such, a two-headed entity that constantly caught heat from almost every other agency in Vermont. The Vermont state police endured the same barbs suffered by all dominant organizations. Some were deserved, others generated from pure envy, but the value of either was usually lost in prejudicial rhetoric. It no longer mattered who was right anymore, or even that the VSP had recently been making great strides in an effort to be more inclusive. The division had been drawn long ago, and although both the VSP and the rest of us talked constantly about being one big happy family, both also took pride in celebrating one side of that line at the expense of the other. It was but one of the obstacles Reynolds was confronting, and as the short state trooper fell into step beside me, it was the one I was going to have to deal with. “Jesus, Joe. You trashed us pretty good in there,” he said in a low voice.
“If I trashed anyone, it was the whole kit-and-caboodle. You guys run a better ship than most.”
“Oh, come on. All those comments about how we work. You made us look like the Pentagon or something, and you’re not even one of us.”
I stopped and looked at him. “I’m a cop just like you are. The whole point of this exercise is to try to make that the only relevant distinction—not the uniform, not the town, not the budget or the turf battles. I wasn’t picking on the VSP—I’m not even sure I mentioned your name. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to deny how much waste and redundancy there is across the board.”
He looked like I’d slapped him for paying me a compliment. “What about the efforts we been making to open communications? The computer link-ups, the advisory boards, user groups, task forces, the exchange programs, and all the rest?”
“I told them about that. I even stressed what a positive development it was.”
“You made it sound like it wasn’t working.”
“It’s not—not so long as we treat each other like competing rivals.”
His eyes widened. “Jesus Christ. It’s positive but it’s not working? No wonder they had you in there. You sound like one of them.”
I half opened my mouth to answer and then gave it up, saying only, “I gotta go.”
It had been a jarring conclusion to a confusing experience, and it left me resenting Tony Brandt for sending me here, and respecting Jim Reynolds for having orchestrated the outcome he’d sought—a conflict of loyalties that galled me instinctively, and one I tried sorting out all the way home.
14
GAIL WAS HUNKERED DOWN IN HER UPSTAIRS ARMCHAIR like a mole in a burrow, surrounded by pillows and paperwork. “I’m starting to wonder what you look like in daylight,” I told her.
“I’m starting to wonder what daylight looks like. How was Montpelier?”
I tried making light of the bitter aftertaste still lingering after hours in the car. “The usual circus. It was interesting seeing Reynolds at work. Very crafty.”
“You made it on the news tonight.”
I sat on the floor with my back against the wall. “Great. A colleague from the state police cornered me right after and accused me of fratricide.”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t worry. It was just background footage to the reporter’s voice-over. They didn’t even use your name.”
I took off my shoes and wriggled my toes into the thick carpeting, eager to change subjects. “Thank God for small favors. How’s it going with the Owen case?”
She made a face. “Could be better. Derby and I are starting to wrangle. He wants me to go hell for leather—Felony Murder Rule, double homicide, maximum sentence.”
“And you don’t?” I asked, remembering how Brenda’s head had barely been attached to her body.
“I’m not against it, necessarily. I just think we sometimes charge people like you’d hunt deer with a machine gun. It’s grandstanding and it’s sloppy. We don’t know yet what really went on in that house, and what led up to it. It’s at sentencing that the penalties should be meted out, once all the cards have been put on the table. That’s what separates Vermont from the feds—we have more latitude.”
I slid down to rest on my elbows. “Derby must love you, especially during an election year. I didn’t think it was the prosecutor’s job to worry about motive.”
She gave me a sour look. “Don’t you start, too. Any idiot knows the jury’ll want to hear a motive, whether it’s our quote-unquote job or not. If we don’t pay attention to that, McNeil will eat us for lunch. Besides, intent is part of our burden of proof, so whether we like it or not, we’re going to have to step onto that thin ice.”
“He said he went there to kill her. He’d been waiting for several years to find out who spiked his girlfriend’s dope with poison.”
“He didn’t bring a weapon, he killed her where she stood, and he drove his aunt’s truck there to do it. Hardly a plan born of deep thought.”
I was silent for a moment, thinking of how tense the situation must have become at her office. I felt a certain sympathy for her boss. Charging a perpetrator with everything and then compromising with a lesser sentence after trial—or better still, using those charges to cut a pretrial deal—was standard practice. I wondered if Gail’s social welfare past wasn’t getting in her way.
But she was still talking. “My God, Joe, if I’m asking these kinds of questions—first time on a murder trial—don’t you think McNeil’s been over the same ground thirty times by now? Derby’s so desperate to get something locked in by November, he’s not thinking straight. Besides, I doubt that confession will make it to trial. I already told you that. You ever read it?”
“Sure.”
“Then you saw where he said he first went there to get her to come clean, and only after a little prodding from Kunkle said he wanted to kill her for what she’d done. If McNeil doesn’t get it thrown out, it’ll only be so he can shove it up our noses in front of the jury and make it look like coercion.
“Plus,” she added, “that bloody knee-print never panned out. The stained clothes we got from Owen’s aunt didn’t include pants, and now she’s saying he never wore jeans anyhow.”
“That’
s pretty convenient,” I said. “Who says she’s telling the truth? The pants could’ve been jeans, and they might’ve vanished precisely because they were soaked in blood. It was Brenda’s DNA on what little the aunt did hand over, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Gail admitted without enthusiasm and then added more hopefully, “but not much. A bit on his jacket and a few drops on one shoe.”
“Boy,” I said softly after a long pause, “doesn’t sound like you and Derby are even working the same case. Could Owen get off?”
“Of course he could,” she answered angrily. “Just ask anyone who thinks O.J. Simpson was guilty. The point is, you enter a case like this with something other than blood in your eye. Jack basically wants to throw a rope over some tree branch and ride off into the sunset to general applause. It ain’t going to work that way unless he wakes up.”
I got to my feet, shoes in hand, and kissed her again—this was the second debate of the day I didn’t want to touch. “Sorry you’re having a tough time. He’ll probably settle down once McNeil begins showing what he’s up to. You haven’t even seen his witness list yet, have you?”
“No,” she admitted glumly. “But when we do, your squad better expect a phone call. I know in my gut we’re going to be digging into Owen’s past deeper than they will at the Pearly Gates.” She suddenly reached up and grabbed my wrist. “Speaking of which, could you do me a favor? Call Hillstrom’s office and find out if it actually was poison that killed Owen’s girlfriend—Lisa Wooten.”
“You got it,” I said. But mundane as it sounded, the request hit me as somehow wrong. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
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