He looked at me without comment for a moment, a doubtful half smile on his face. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning I’m going to ask you to stick your neck way out. One point Jack Derby made no bones about yesterday was that he didn’t want Kunkle messing things up for him. He was worried that since the Croteau and Resnick cases involved some of the same players, you’d go straight to work displaying all your usual lack of delicacy.”
He laughed.
“But what I want from you,” I continued, “isn’t good manners—it’s a little subtle subversion. You heard about the tensions between Derby and Gail?”
“Sure. I never thought she was cut out for that job anyhow.”
“Be that as it may, she’s asked me for a favor only you can help me grant.”
The smile widened. “Yeah?”
“Gail doesn’t think Owen Tharp acted entirely on his own. That given his personality, he had someone pushing him to kill Croteau.”
Willy’s reaction was fully expected, echoing the way I’d felt initially. “So what? He killed her anyway—and the baby.”
“I know the logic—that just because he’s got problems doesn’t mitigate his crime. She’s not looking to get him off the hook. But she does think he was used like a contract killer—by remote control—and that if all we do is nail Owen, the guy pulling his string will get off.”
He was beginning to look very doubtful. “She know something I don’t? I didn’t hear anything about Owen being used, and I’m the guy he confessed to, remember? He didn’t say anything about being under orders.”
“I know, I know,” I conceded. “This is where you’re going to have to cut me some slack. This whole hypothesis is just a gut feeling. Gail’s sense of it is that Owen was made so dependent on someone that he was willing to do anything that person told him to do, especially if it was phrased right and he was suitably under the influence, which his urine and blood tests say he was. Gail asked me a while ago to look up the autopsy of Lisa Wooten—the girlfriend he said he was avenging.”
“Because Croteau had spiked her dope,” he finished.
“Except,” I said, “that her dope wasn’t spiked. It was a straight overdose.”
He didn’t speak for a few seconds, digesting what I’d said. I knew this meant more to him than the sum of its parts, since he had been the one to receive Owen Tharp’s confession. Unlike the rest of us, he’d heard the inflection behind the words and studied the face of the man uttering them. Instinctively, he’d been burdened with more than mere content. He’d been witness to meaning as well.
I didn’t doubt such distinctions had gone unnoticed at the time. Now I was hoping I’d triggered their reconsideration.
One of Willy Kunkle’s saving graces—so few in a man in need of so many—was his grasp of human character. He was dismissive, offensive, and occasionally abusive, but largely, I thought, because he’d been saddled with insight so clear as to make life almost unbearable. He saw through cant and affectation and self-service and moral cowardice with ease, and yet—for a lack of training or experience or pure simple faith—could find little with which to fight it. Except rage.
And the anger had been all that most people had been able to see, including Jack Derby. Which was too bad, because Willy, as I think Sammie also understood, knew more about the human animal than almost anyone I’d met. It was his secret and his curse.
It was also what prompted him to finally say, “I hate to admit it, but old Gail may be on to something.”
“If you do this, and it leads where she thinks it will, we’ll undoubtedly catch unholy hell from her boss. He’ll say we were working for Reggie McNeil.”
You might be. I’ll just be trying to put another bastard in jail.”
· · ·
Over the next few weeks, life became an odd, slow, carefully paced minuet of assembling facts on several segregated levels. The detective squad—helped by the patrol division in dealing with the weekly menus of B and Es, bad check reports, and minor drug busts—constructed a paper trail of Billy Conyer’s last few months of life. Willy, while fulfilling his role in this effort, additionally wandered farther afield, examining the growing tentacles that linked Conyer’s world to Tharp’s, working discreetly, alone, and at odd hours of the day. He and I met occasionally to discuss what he’d discovered and wonder, like questioning chemists, whether any promising solutions were in the making. Meanwhile, Tony Brandt conducted his own investigation in pursuit of the department’s leak, fueling a paranoia that is never far from a police officer’s mind in the best of times.
In the background, Gail, who had no idea what Willy and I were up to, tried not to press me when we were at home, where we labored instead to bury our emotional concerns in a predictable domestic routine, using the pretense of overwork to stave off the inevitable reckoning.
The irony to this stage of a major investigation is that it looks so deliberately paced. The popular notion of a police department handling several homicides at once is that everyone works around the clock. In fact, it’s usually too much to ask—either of people’s passions or the department’s budget—to keep up an around-the-clock schedule.
So we all eventually became like workers on an assembly line, busy building parts of what we hoped would be an overall final product.
Ron, as usual, managed the information as it arrived, assigning it a roosting spot and keeping track of it on several oversized charts he’d rigged up in the conference room. On a daily basis, we met there and compared notes, watching the charts for changes as devoted stockbrokers might a ticker tape.
This scrutiny had an entertaining side effect. Many of the people we were watching led lives that defied the norm. We grew attached to favorite characters and either cheered or bemoaned their actions as we learned of them—as when, for example, we discovered that Billy Conyer’s brother Brian had at least once gone to bed with Brenda Croteau’s mother. Soap operas couldn’t compete.
Adding to this tangle of loyalties and associations were the moves and countermoves of Gail and Reggie McNeil, who were also involved in much the same research, racing one another to load up on their witness lists, ascertain competency, and determine who would depose whom and to what purpose.
Owen’s confession fell early to this maneuvering, when McNeil filed a motion to suppress on grounds that Owen had been too cold, exhausted, and scared by the likes of Willy Kunkle to know what he was doing.
And all of this played out to a steady drumbeat of newspaper articles, radio reports, and the occasional piece on the nightly TV news, alternating with an equally endless stream of updates on the progress of the Reynolds Bill through the state Senate.
Which was reasonable, given that the latter began taking on a life of its own, spreading in notoriety to the Boston media and beyond. Reynolds’s rugged likeness cropped up in magazines and TV programs far outside the region, and as the month of March slowly approached—and Vermont’s famed plethora of town meetings along with it—the name of Jim Reynolds became increasingly linked to the looming vacancy in the governor’s office. The early flurry of concern stimulated by Katz’s articles was slowly replaced by a naive overconfidence among Reynolds’s growing boosters that his idea might actually become reality—despite the ominous silence on the issue from both the speaker of the House and the various spokesmen from the law enforcement community. My personal feeling remained that, like the iceberg awaiting the Titanic, some pretty formidable forces were standing ready to stop Reynolds cold in his tracks.
On a brighter note, however, it looked like one of his early obstacles—and ours—would be melting to more manageable size. Stan Katz called me at my office one afternoon, more muted and abashed than I’d ever heard him be.
“What’s up?” I asked with real concern, thinking he’d been hit by some personal loss.
In a sense, he had. “I figured you’d like to know who’s been feeding me that false information.”
“About Reynolds?” I asked, struck
by his use of the word “false.”
“Yeah. It was one of your boys in blue, like you thought. Cary Bancroft. You might want to tell Brandt. I got him on tape, had one of our photographers take a shot of us meeting—the works.”
Bancroft hadn’t been with us long and had made little impression on me. I’d written him off as one of the young transients that traipse through our department virtually without leaving footprints. I sensed now I might have been right about the length of his tenure but certainly not about his invisibility. This one was going out with a bang.
“Why, Stan? He was making you headlines.”
“I did like you said,” he admitted, sounding even more depressed. “I looked a gift horse in the mouth. I’m not sure what I did was legal, so I won’t give you the details, but I found out his bank account’s been getting padded at my expense. He was paid to feed me stories.”
“Who by?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t know. It was the old voice-on-the-phone routine, along with anonymous cash deposits. You want to chase it down, I’d start with the anti-Reynolds crowd, but good luck finding the source. To save a little face, I tried like hell to find out—I’ve known about this for a few weeks now—but I got nowhere. So it’s all yours.”
His dark mood precluded my being able to needle him, much as I was tempted. Instead, I tried my best being sympathetic. “Jesus, Stan, I am sorry. You can still make a little hay out of it when Brandt shows him the door—maybe make it into a cautionary tale. It’d be a good story.”
But that wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Fuck you, Joe. And if you guys do make a big deal out of this, you’ll live to regret it. I’m handing him over ’cause he broke the rules and he made me look like a jerk, but don’t push your luck. I’m still as ready as ever to chap your butts if you screw up.”
“Very graciously put, Stanley,” I said with a laugh. “I’ll be sure to pass your compliments along to the chief.”
In fact, there was no big flurry surrounding Bancroft’s departure. Brandt and Derby both agreed with Katz that discretion was probably best suited to everyone this time, and ended the whole episode with barely a murmur.
As satisfying as it was to have this problem put to rest, however, I was the first to acknowledge that its importance had been diminished by recent events. Reynolds was on a roll, the rumors that had threatened him early on all but forgotten—a fate I feared our case might suffer unless something broke soon from the underbrush.
Like Willy walking into my office, looking fresh from a meal of proverbial canary.
It had been some time since I’d seen him so well disposed, for despite his efforts—or because he’d had to be uncharacteristically light handed—he’d been having a tough time getting the cooperation he was used to. Also, he hadn’t been alone. With the SA’s office, Reggie McNeil, and the media all out there digging, not to mention half the police department, Willy’s fondness for the shadows had been thoroughly put to the test.
None of which seemed to be bothering him now. He closed my office door, leaned up against it, and said, “I think I got a hot one. You want to join me?”
“We going somewhere?”
“I am. I think I found Lisa Wooten’s supplier, but he’s skipped town. He beat feet for the hills after the bodies started piling up, and I want to know why.”
“What’s his name?”
“Eric Meade. Lives out in the boonies on the Auger Hole Road, near the Marlboro end. I would’ve done him on my own, ’cept I knew you’d get pissed, not to mention he has a fondness for firearms.” He smiled broadly at the last line.
I raised my eyebrows. “Think we ought to bring in more people?”
“Not if we want to keep this private. Plus, once he knows all we want is a conversation, he shouldn’t be too hard to handle.”
“Assuming he hasn’t already shot one of us.”
Willy waved that off. “No sweat. He’s an ex-Marine, but I hear he’s pretty peaceful. Got kicked out of the Corps because he lied on his application, not that he’d admit it. Anyway, I’ve got something I think I can use as leverage. I’ve dug up a candidate for your number one rat in all this.”
It was clear this invitation was a one-time offer. The visit to Eric Meade would take place with or without me.
“Okay,” I told him. “Have a seat and tell me who’s the rat.”
His eyes were shining with pleasure. “Walter Freund—from what I’ve been hearing, he makes Jamie Good look like he deserves his last name.”
21
THE AUGER HOLE ROAD WAS FAIRLY SUBSTANTIAL by Vermont back roads standards. A perpendicular link running from Route 9, between Brattleboro and Bennington, to the Dover Road farther north, it wasn’t something that tourists readily used, but it was well-known and well traveled by many locals.
That notwithstanding, it remained a twisting, narrow, tree-crowded gravel scratch on the map. And at night, dark and lonely.
At both ends, it actually had some pretty impressive homes—large old farmhouses, complete with outbuildings and open fields. Toward the middle, however, far from the conveniences of any community or major thoroughfare, the population thinned out and didn’t advertise much excess income. Land-locked trailers and weary shacks were the norm, often placed back from the road, and barely visible in the best of light.
Which was hardly the condition now.
Willy drove silently, his eyes intent on the ice-smooth swath of road that wavered in our headlights. On either side of us, dirty snowbanks leaned against a thick palisade of trees, which flashed by like bars on a cage, thick and ominous. The night was so absolute as to feed the imagination, and the woods seemed like they were teeming with life, watching us go by.
I craned my neck over the dashboard to look up at the faint thin ribbon of sky directly overhead.
“Full moon,” Willy said quietly. “Not that it matters out here.”
“He live alone?” I asked.
“Supposedly. But you know how that can change.”
The car slowed, and Willy began studying the side of the road. “I think we’re close.” He killed the headlights, plunging us first into total darkness and then, as our eyes readjusted, into a thin penumbra between half-sight and blindness. The car kept rolling, the absence of light making the sound of its wheels on the frozen dirt seem much louder.
“If Meade’s as hinky as I think he is,” Willy explained, “he’s not going to like seeing any slow-moving cars.”
I mentally reviewed the briefing Willy had given me in my office. Born to an addict who’d killed herself when he was five, Eric Meade had grown up as the poster boy for every rehab organization known to the state, from Alcoholics Anonymous to the Department of Corrections. According to Willy’s sources, he had finally learned to cope by simply avoiding society, venturing into its treacherous currents only when strictly necessary.
Willy pulled as close to the bank as he could and killed the engine. “Okay. Foot patrol time.”
He reached into the back seat, retrieved a small canvas case, and handed me an electronic instrument about the size and weight of an instant camera. “The on switch is on the bottom.”
I found the small button he was referring to and slid it forward. A dim green glow emanated from one end of the device.
“Night-vision monocular,” he explained. “Bought ’em from a catalog two years ago for a couple of hundred bucks each. I got sick of waiting for the department to buy enough units to pass around—plus, I just like having my own.”
We exited the car, with me still fooling with the scope, holding it up to my eye and admiring how well it revealed everything around us, although in a universally sickly green wash. “You use these much?” I asked in a whisper.
“Now and then. I bought that one for Sammie. Better than a date any time.”
I lowered it and glanced to where he was bent over, tightening a shoelace. I imagined him and Sam prowling the streets late at night, peering into other people’s business just
to keep tabs. I had no idea if that bore any semblance to the truth, but I could suddenly understand what Sammie saw in Willy and how Willy must be missing her since she’d hooked up with Andy Padgett.
He straightened and began walking down the road ahead, as quietly as the shadows around us, his scope turned off by his side, navigating by the tepid moonlight. He was military-trained and combat-tested, experienced in traveling behind enemy lines for days on end. This kind of world—dark, still, and filled with unseen menace—was as comfortable to him as a walk in the park. It was an adaptation that went a long way in explaining his character.
I fell into step behind him.
We walked like that for several hundred yards, until we came to a barely discernible break in the snowbank, more like a deer path than a driveway. Here Willy paused and waited for me to catch up. I could hear the creaking of the frozen tree trunks and the rattling of bare branches in the light breeze high overhead.
“This is it,” Willy whispered, his voice as gentle as a sigh. “Runs about two hundred yards up to a trailer. Rumor has it he’s rigged trip wires, so keep your eyes glued to where I put my feet. He knows what he’s doing, remember.”
“What’re the wires attached to?” I asked, my curiosity unpleasantly piqued.
Willy shrugged. “You want to find out?”
He led the way down the middle of the path, night scope to his eye, moving like a careful cat, his body above the waist as smooth as a boat slipping through quiet water.
Once again, I followed, seriously rethinking all the decisions that had brought me here.
Willy stopped abruptly about one hundred feet along and fell gracefully to one knee. Then he looked over his shoulder and gestured to me with his one hand, still holding the scope. I came up next to him.
“See the wire?” He pointed just in front of him.
I squinted into my own scope, taking my time, and eventually saw a thin discoloration—like a razor cut across a photograph—about one foot off the ground. I nodded.
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