The Catch

by Archer Mayor

  The crime scene tech, however, looked over his shoulder at the sound of so many feet behind him. “It’s a tight fit back there,” he warned.

  A state police lieutenant suggested, “How ’bout one rep from each agency?”

  Satisfied, Joe let them mutter through that one on their own, sliding up alongside the tech instead and sticking out his hand.

  “Never had the pleasure. Joe Gunther. VBI.”

  The tech’s eyes widened as he put his gloved hand into Joe’s. “This is an honor. I’ve heard a lot about you. Ed Needles. I just joined the lab about six months ago—from Natick, Mass.”

  “Welcome on board. How do you like it?”

  “Good bunch. The facility’s a little funky, compared to what I know, but I like the people. No politics; straightforward; well trained. I got no complaints.”

  They reached the back of the truck, equipped with a set of wooden steps, reminiscent of a ladder propped against a gypsy’s caravan wagon. It was immediate proof of the lab’s touch of practical funkiness. In single file, the chosen few tromped into the truck’s resonant box and marched toward the front, where the wall above a counter was festooned with a battery of rack-mounted electronic gadgets, including a TV screen and several computer monitors.

  Without ceremony, Needles slapped the cassette into a VCR and hit the Rewind button. After a couple of attempts to locate the beginning of Sleuter’s last stop on the tape, the tech hit Play and took a half step back so everyone could see.

  The confined space, claustrophobic and rapidly too warm, fell completely silent aside from the tinny voices emanating from the TV. They all watched, transfixed, as the cruiser’s camera revealed—in color and in surprisingly sharp detail—a dark Toyota pulling over to the side of the road. Brian Sleuter’s voice was heard talking to Dispatch, along with her response, as Joe noticed Mike Bradley beside him pulling his pad from his pocket and starting to take notes.

  “There are two of them,” a voice whispered toward the back of the tightly packed group.

  Sleuter approached the Solara from the right, staying out of the glare of his own take-down lights. In a gesture that sent a chill down Joe’s spine, the deputy quickly placed his handprint on the car’s back end.

  “Good work, Bri,” murmured his boss, the sheriff. “We’ll nail the bastard with that.”

  The conversation with Marano and Grega came over the speaker, and Bradley began writing in earnest. They’d get a copy of the tape eventually, but no one wanted to lose any time. Chances of solving a homicide fade almost exponentially with every hour that passes, and no one had known about Grega before now. Dispatch had never been told.

  The tension rose as Sleuter left the side of the car with the documents he’d collected. Once more, he circled his own vehicle, disappearing from view, reappearing only by proxy as the camera shook, announcing that he’d settled back behind the wheel.

  There was the sound of the mike being unclipped from its holder, followed by Sleuter’s routine inquiries about Marano, the driver.

  “Oh, shit. Look up,” urged a voice behind Joe. “Look in front of you.”

  Before them, unnoticed by the deputy, the back of Grega’s head slid down out of sight, followed by the Toyota’s passenger door opening just wide enough to let a body slip outside. Everyone leaned forward, as if entering the TV screen would afford a better view of what might be occurring. In the blink of an eye, they caught the briefest glimpse of Grega’s shoulder as he crawled across the very front of the cruiser, trying to avoid being seen, and then—almost immediately—a loud shot made them all jump in surprise.

  “Jesus,” someone exclaimed.

  There was another pause before Grega ran back across the screen, no longer concerned about discretion, the same documents visibly clutched in a red-stained right hand.

  “Son of a bitch took back the twenty-sevens,” Bradley said, no longer writing.

  Joe nodded, watching as the Toyota’s brake lights flared briefly, to be instantly fogged by twin spurts of gravel and dust as the front tires spun out, accelerating away from the road’s shoulder.

  “Not to worry, Mike,” he said quietly. “We’ll get them.” He pointed with his chin at the TV screen, adding, “And with this, we’ll make it stick.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “You hear about Matt Mroz?”

  Greg Joseph glanced across the front seat of the unmarked car at his passenger. “Roz? No. What about him?”

  “Somebody capped him last night—single round to the chest.”

  Joseph whistled softly. “I heard about a shooting—didn’t know it was him. Jeez. That’ll shake things up. That was a double, though, wasn’t it?”

  Kevin Delaney nodded. “Yeah. His bodyguard caught it, too. It’ll be in the papers later this morning.”

  “Damn. Who do we have working it?”

  “Stevens.”

  Joseph didn’t react, at least not so Delaney could see. But he was envious of Phil Stevens, with whom he’d graduated from the academy. The Maine State Police’s CID unit handled all homicides outside of Portland, Bangor, or Lewiston—city departments that investigated their own—and Phil had been with them for three years already, while Greg was still stuck in the boonies of Aroostook County, damn near inside Canada.

  He wasn’t underworked—no cop in Maine could claim that, the state being so huge and the number of cops so small—but there were definitely some assignments hotter than others.

  This one was a dud, even though Delaney was okay. As Northern Division commander of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, Delaney could’ve been a snotty jerk. But he was a regular guy. The MDEA was an elite outfit, which gave them the option of being a bunch of obnoxious hot dogs. And although they did have a cowboy now and then, they generally made an effort to not piss off too many people.

  Greg stared glumly out the window at the drizzly night, resigned to his fate. Maine was New England’s largest state by far, thinly populated with just over a million people, and so vast that cops like him, isolated in the northern reaches, could well be the only law enforcement for an area the size of a large township, depending on the time of day. Older veterans spoke of having had patrol areas of fourteen hundred square miles back in the day, which wasn’t so long ago.

  Delaney reached for the binoculars resting on the dash, fitted them to his eyes, as he had several times already during the two hours they’d been sitting here, and watched the border crossing ahead. It was like a scene from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. They were stationed in Fort Kent, pulled over by the edge of the U.S. side’s parking lot, waiting to find out if a tip Delaney had received would pay off, although Joseph didn’t actually know that for a fact. He’d been left in the dark, as usual.

  “They know who whacked Mroz?” he asked, returning from his ruminations.

  Delaney spoke while still holding the glasses. “Nope. Not a clue. Nobody heard anything, nobody saw anything, and nobody’s talking—at least not yet.”

  He sat forward slightly, and Joseph held off speaking, trying to interpret the other man’s body language before looking himself to see what was going on, half expecting to see an East German spy sprinting for freedom on a bike amid a hail of bullets. Of course, there was nothing aside from a van with U.S. plates, stopped at the entry gate for a routine interview. Joseph figured all this had something to do with drug smuggling—that much was a no-brainer—but it didn’t explain Delaney’s presence here in the middle of the night. The man was a supervisor—a nine-to-fiver—someone who normally came out for major cases only.

  “Anything?” he finally asked as the van rolled away without mishap, passing by them forty seconds later, carrying a woman with two sleeping kids in the back.

  Delaney replaced the binoculars. “Nah.”

  He didn’t look particularly disappointed—mostly thoughtful.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Joseph asked. “I was just told to keep you company watching the border. They didn’t seem to know why.�
�

  The MDEA man shifted in his seat so he could both look at Joseph and yet still be attentive to the checkpoint. “Yeah. Sorry about that, and I really appreciate the backup. None of us really knows what’s up. It’s too early yet.”

  “But it ties into Mroz getting killed? I thought you didn’t know who did that.”

  “We don’t, but like you said, it’s guaranteed to stir everything up. Roz was big on prescription drug imports, along with a lot of other stuff. With him gone, it’s open season on his organization, or on somebody coming up with something new.”

  Delaney pointed at the checkpoint in the distance. “We got information that Roz’s primary contact in Canada was coming over to find out what to do next.”

  “Who’s that?” Joseph asked reasonably enough.

  But his passenger shrugged. “Don’t know. Just that he was arriving tonight, through here. Supposed to be driving a van like that last one.”

  Joseph was nonplussed. It was a shot-in-the-dark—so, how to explain a supervisor riding shotgun?

  “Sounds a little skimpy,” he said diplomatically.

  Delaney laughed before displaying why he might have achieved his rank. “So, what’s a brass hat like me doing out here in the middle of the night, right?”

  “Well…”

  The other man waved Joseph’s embarrassment away. “Don’t worry about it. Greg, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Couple of reasons: On the type-A, gotta-get-out-and-play side, it’s been a while since I’ve done any field-work, my wife’s out of town with the kids, and I have a light load on my desk at the moment. On the more serious side, Roz’s killing is a big deal, and most of my guys are out right now trying to find out what’s going on. Maine’s filling up with prescription drugs, and we still don’t know how the product’s getting to market. I mean, yeah, there’re a few crooked docs and pharmacists out there, like everywhere else, and some pills getting diverted between point A and point B—wherever those happen to be. Also, a lot of mules’re crossing the border, either body packing or squirreling stuff into spare tires and car cavities.

  “In fact,” he interrupted himself with a broad smile, “we got one guy who was shooting pills across the St. Croix River in hollow aluminum arrows to a buddy on our side. Good thing he didn’t kill him—that would’ve made for an interesting autopsy.

  “Anyhow,” he resumed, “none of that explains the quantities we’re seeing, which’re big and getting bigger.”

  “Maybe the Hell’s Angels?” Joseph asked, referring to one of Canada’s largest reputed drug-handling organizations.

  But Delaney made a face. “They don’t fool with prescriptions much, and the geography is off. They’re stronger above New Hampshire, Vermont, and points west.”

  He stopped talking and reached for the glasses on the dash again. Joseph followed his scrutiny and saw another van, like the first, stopped at the checkpoint.

  “I like this one,” Delaney said, binoculars still in place.

  Joseph shifted slightly in his seat and rested his left hand on the steering wheel. “What’s your pleasure?”

  “We follow him,” Delaney answered. “At least till I can get a team to relieve us. That’s why I asked for your unmarked car, so we don’t spook him.”

  Keeping his lights off, Joseph started the engine. After another minute of observation, Delaney exchanged the binoculars for a cell phone. At the border booth, the van pulled away and began heading their way. As it passed by, Joseph saw a single, heavily bearded male at the wheel, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Joseph waited a few seconds before unobtrusively swinging in behind.

  Delaney held the phone up to his ear after speed dialing. “Cathy? Kevin. We picked him up … Uh-huh … Fort Kent … Hang on a sec.”

  He looked out the windshield for a moment as the van ahead turned onto Pleasant Street and, shortly thereafter, crossed the connector bridge onto Route 161.

  He returned the phone to his ear. “Yeah—161, to Caribou, I’d guess. Then, who knows?” He followed that by giving her a description of the van, its Quebec registration, and the driver, adding, “Call Customs and get the name this guy used at the border. Probably bogus, but it can’t hurt.” He wrapped up by arranging for a spot just north of Caribou where a substitute tail could replace them behind the van.

  “Who was that?” Joseph asked, comfortably situated among the thin traffic flow trailing the van.

  “Cathy Lawless,” Delaney told him. He’d always enjoyed that name for a cop. “My Number Two.”

  Joseph nodded, having heard of her. “And you really think this guy will lead you to something?”

  Delaney absentmindedly clipped his cell phone back onto his belt, his eyes straight ahead. “What I know,” he said, “is that whoever whacked Matt Mroz wasn’t screwing around. What I think is that we may all be in a knife fight to beat the band, if more like-minded people join in.”

  He sighed, paused to rub his cheeks with both hands, and added, “And given the stakes, that’s what I’d be betting.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Joe Gunther pulled into his driveway off of Green Street and killed the engine. He sat there for a minute, letting the gentle summer breeze carry the scent of newly cut grass into the car’s interior.

  He loved this house. He’d only lived here a couple of years, renting, in fact, and recognized that calling it a house at all was a stretch, since it was technically a carriage house attached to the rear of a monstrous Victorian pile. But within that latter aspect lay the charm he so enjoyed—it was small, tucked away, quiet, and faced only a small lawn and some trees, smack in the middle of Brattleboro.

  Given the world he was regularly exposed to, it truly qualified as a retreat.

  He got out quietly, careful not to slam his door, even though the town around him was already bustling, it being late morning by now. But he’d been up for twenty-eight hours and his brain was still functioning in middle-of-the-night mode.

  Not that he could take a break quite yet. He’d only dropped by to shower and change clothes before going to the office to meet with his team and discuss the case. Cop killings with two suspects still on the loose were not given the standard treatment—nor did they permit much sleep.

  He crossed the driveway, unlocked his front door, and let himself in, smiling as he read a Post-it note stuck to the hallway mirror at eye level.

  “Beware—naked woman in big bed.”

  His priorities shifted, ever so slightly.

  He slipped his shoes off, noticing for the first time Lyn’s own under the hall table, splashed some water on his face at the kitchen sink around the corner, and—drying off with a hand towel as he went—climbed the narrow, low-ceilinged staircase to the tiny bedroom that had been tucked under the hand-hewn roof rafters above.

  The note told no lies. The bed was big—or seemed that way in this setting—and its current occupant was certainly naked. In the gloom provided by an almost completely effective blackout curtain, Joe saw the slim, athletic shape of a woman stretched out diagonally across the mattress, her breasts and stomach exposed by a sheet half tossed aside in midslumber.

  This was Lyn Silva, whom he’d met a couple of years ago on a case in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and who’d since moved to Brattleboro, opened up a bar, and become his lover, his sounding board, and his best friend, all in one.

  He sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and admired her for a few moments. Her long hair was spread across both the pillow and half her face, reminding him of paintings he’d seen in museums. She looked serene and beautiful and almost unreal, at odds with what Joe knew of her biography, which was typically full of life’s mishaps and surprises.

  In those ways, Lyn was simply a variation of Joe himself—he, a lifelong cop and childless widower; she, a single, working mother of an adult daughter. She was neither extraordinary nor exotic, which was perhaps what made her a little of both in his eyes, he who had grown tired of extremes.

  “Hey,” s
he said in a near whisper.

  He smiled in surprise, not having noticed that she was studying him as well.

  He leaned forward and kissed her, his nostrils filling with her warmth.

  He pulled back just enough so that he could speak. “How long have you been asleep?”

  She smiled. “Trick question. What time is it?”

  “Eleven-thirty.”

  “About seven hours. Not bad. I wanted to see you when you got back, so I came here instead of my place.”

  He kissed her again. “I’m glad you did.”

  She reached up and touched his unshaven cheek. “Was it bad?”

  “Yes—a cop was killed. We don’t know who did it yet.”

  “Oh, Joe. I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  She kissed him gently before asking, “Did you get any rest at all?”

  “Not yet, and I’ve got to keep going. I just dropped by to freshen up and change my clothes.” He looked at her and added, “I am really glad you’re here.” He brushed one of her breasts with his fingertips—the hint of a caress.

  She smiled up at him and swept the rest of the sheet clear of her body. “Since you’ve got to take your clothes off anyhow, would you like to stretch out for a couple of minutes?”

  He laughed. “I would, in fact.”

  The southeast office of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation was located on the second floor of Brattleboro’s municipal building, one flight above the town’s police department, where Joe Gunther and two of his three-person team had worked before VBI’s creation. Those were Sammie Martens and Willy Kunkle, who, despite distinctly different temperaments and styles—and a history of having growled at each other for years back in the PD days—had since become among the unlikeliest of couples. The unit’s third member was Lester Spinney, a gangly ex-state trooper who commuted every day from Springfield, Vermont, where he lived with his wife and kids on Summer Street, an address that generally described his disposition. To say that Spinney and Kunkle were a study in contrasts was to put it lightly, meaning that every once in a while, Gunther had the urge to shelter the former from the latter’s excesses, although Spinney had never requested it. Spinney was the least flamboyant of them, but the best grounded and most thoughtful—qualities Joe valued highly, even if they were only rarely heeded by the other two.