The Dark Root

by Mayor, Archer

  “You saw the pendant from the door?” I asked, remembering he’d stated that he’d found it “right next” to the car in the search-warrant application.

  His confidence grew as he ran his story through his head. He moved closer to the threshold. “Yeah. Stand here. See? The light reaches the middle of the floor, and that’s where I saw it. The glimmer caught my eye, and I recognized it.”

  “From this distance,” I stated flatly, my tone of voice indicating what I was thinking.

  He crossed over to the spot he’d indicated and dropped the pendant onto the dirt. I’d told him an hour earlier to lock it up as evidence back at the office, but by this point, that was looking like a pretty minor breach of protocol. “You can see it, can’t you?”

  I did see the gold and the hot shimmer of jade reflecting the sun, enough to match it to what Amy Lee had drawn on my pad, but it had been smeared with dirt then and wiped off since. Even if Willy had found the pendant so near the door, it would have had to have been ground into the soil not to have been noticed by Chui during his last visit. Besides, early this morning, the sun had been on the far side of the building.

  But I consciously gave life to the lie, reacting in slow, burning anger that, after all our hard work and sacrifice, we were having to kowtow to—and cover up—a maverick’s careless enthusiasm. “That’s your story?”

  He took my meaning, eyeing me warily. “On a stack of Bibles.”

  Sammie sighed next to me.

  “It’ll probably come to that,” I muttered grimly. “Okay, come on out. We better seal it all off and treat it as a crime scene.”

  Kunkle stared at me incredulously. “For Christ’s sake. There’s nothing here except the car. I already checked. I’ve been through the whole place.”

  I stared at him speechlessly for a moment, amazed at his lack of care—and at my own complicity. “All right,” I murmured.

  “Having found the pendant—and recognized it,” he continued ponderously, “I looked around to see what else there might be in plain view from the same crime.” He stepped up to the dividing doorway. “That’s when I found the car.”

  We all trooped into the next stall. Willy crossed to the front door and wrenched it open. Amid the squealing of protesting hinges, the garage was suddenly soaked in bright light. Squinting, we all looked at the dusty, low-slung sports car that John Crocker had so carefully described.

  For no apparent reason, I glanced down at my feet, and saw imprinted in the moist dirt—as a ghostly confirmation—the distinct outline of a pendant-shaped object, roughly circled by the impression of a thin chain, right outside the passenger door of the car where it had obviously been stepped on after slipping there unobserved.

  I scowled at Willy Kunkle posing by the wide door in his moment of fabricated glory, and discreetly scuffed the dirt with my foot, engulfed in pure rage as I did so. We could have found this legally if he’d just taken note of Chui entering the garage and reported back his suspicions. But he hadn’t, and now I’d conspired with him, riding roughshod over deep-seated principles so as not to sacrifice crucial evidence to a fine point of law.

  “Did you touch the car at all?” J.P. asked.

  “Nope,” Willy answered from the door. “I’m not that dumb.”

  I withheld comment, and listened as J.P. told us what to do.

  · · ·

  Two and a half hours later, our backs aching from being scrunched up in awkward positions, our hands hot and sweaty inside latex gloves, we gathered outside the garage’s yawning door to examine what we’d found. Tyler had spread a clean tarp out on the ground, and placed our specimens across it like museum exhibits. He was crouching next to them, writing in a logbook, his camera nearby.

  As we peeled off the gloves and found places to rest, he ran down the list. “Lots of fingerprints, some partial, some pretty complete. Three sets of blood-stained surgical booties, and three sets of bloody gloves, one of which has been cut, presumably by glass, and which is filled with blood, presumably from the wearer.” He looked up at us, a satisfied expression on his face. “With any luck, we’ll be able to match that to the blood Sol got from the hospital, and to what we found at the Rivière residence. Along with this rag that was probably used to staunch the flow of blood from his wound, that ought to be enough to convince a jury that Nguyen was at the scene.

  “Not to mention this little sweetheart,” he continued. He speared a spent bullet cartridge with the blunt end of his pen and poured it into a white evidence envelope. “It came from a Glock. And those,” he gestured at a package of plastic trash bags, “which, according to a process I just read about in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, we should be able to match to the one they used over Benny’s head.”

  He sat back on his heels, his eyes coming up to meet the shattered car grille directly before him. “And, of course, there’s always that. I know I can match it to some of the debris you and Stennis picked up on the Upper Dummerston Road.”

  “What about these?” Willy asked, pointing with his foot at a small pile of documents.

  “They came out of the glove box,” Sammie told him. “Owner’s manual, map of New England with no marks on it, registration made out to Henry Lam. That’s about it, I think.”

  “A store receipt,” J.P. added.

  “Let me see that,” I said, squatting down next to Tyler.

  He extracted it from an envelope with a pair of tweezers, enough so that I could see what was printed on it. There was a short tally of several inexpensive items. More interesting was the convenience-store name printed at the top, along with the date and time of day.

  “Montreal,” I read. “A week before Benny died. Could you make me a copy of that?”

  “Sure.” Tyler made a note in his logbook.

  I rose to my feet again, satisfied despite the misgivings over how we’d acquired this small treasure. “Nice work, everybody. Maybe some of this will make Nguyen a little more talkative. It’ll sure as hell tickle Jack Derby. How soon on the DNA testing for the blood?” I asked J.P.

  “Couple of more weeks, give or take. I could lean on them, if you want.”

  “No, he’s not going anywhere. How’re you doing on the pipe bomb?”

  Tyler shrugged, obviously unhappy. “I sent what I could down to the ATF lab in Washington. I guess you heard we didn’t find any local source for the ingredients.”

  I nodded silently.

  “I guess the only thing I have any hope for is a print I found on one of the end caps. The chances of matching a single impression to somebody’s record aren’t all that great, but we might get lucky.”

  I turned to Willy. “By the way, what did you find out about Alfie Brewster? Or did you just blow that off?”

  Kunkle looked at me carefully, realizing by my tone that he’d stepped over the edge—and had been allowed to survive. “Sorry ’bout that—never got back to you. Not much. My hunch is that while he’s not sorry Vince is dead, he had nothing to do with the drug party or home invasion. He is taking full credit for it, of course, bragging to his buddies, but he messed up the few crucial details I quizzed him about.”

  “So it was either coincidence,” said Sammie, “or someone else aimed Vince at Vu.”

  I shook my head dubiously. “I’m not big on the first choice.”

  Sammie shrugged. “Too bad they’re all dead.”

  “That doesn’t mean some of them can’t still talk,” I muttered, half to myself.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I think I’ll go to Rutland for a couple of days—catch up on a little overdue homework.”

  · · ·

  Rutland is Vermont’s second-largest city, which isn’t saying much, considering the entire state has just over half a million people. And unlike Brattleboro, even its most dewy-eyed enthusiasts can’t claim it hasn’t suffered at modern hands. The original downtown section has a strong and handsome turn-of-the-century appeal—a collection of stalwartly elegant old buildings reminis
cent of the confident Yankee industrialism that put the town on the map in the first place. But Rutland’s fallen on hard times—a mass of railroad tracks slices through the city’s center, and a cheap, glitzy, traffic-choked business strip lining Route 7 on the hill east of downtown creates a feeling of disunity. Sticking to Route 7, a traveler could drive the entire north-south axis of town, numbed by its tasteless, endless string of malls, outlets, and fast-food joints, and never know that a few blocks to the west an entirely different city, complete with many old architectural gems, lies ignored.

  It was there, nevertheless, at City Hall, on the corner of Washington and Wales, that I met with Detective Sergeant Sandy Rawlings, who’d been assigned as my official liaison. Tall and thin, with the tidy dress and immaculate manners of an over-groomed Boy Scout, he was the kind of person I had a terrible time taking at face value. Our first encounter didn’t help. He grabbed my car’s door handle just as I was about to open up from inside, and dragged me half out into the parking lot as he pulled it open. I landed, one hand on the door, the other flat on the pavement, staring at his highly polished shoes.

  “I take it you’re Rawlings,” I said, struggling to get up.

  “Yes, sir. I am sorry.” He made an embarrassed and ineffectual effort to help me.

  “Don’t worry about it. And call me Joe. I hope you weren’t standing around waiting too long.”

  He either missed or ignored the mild irony. “No, no, Lieutenant. It was a pleasure. Would you like to come upstairs?”

  Given the conversation so far, I passed. “Why don’t you just take me to where Chu used to live? We can talk on the way.”

  Things improved on the short trip to the city’s west side, literally located beyond the railroad tracks. Having insisted on driving, I inadvertently robbed Rawlings of what he’d no doubt onerously seen as his primary official duty. As a result, after a bit more initial discomfort, he pragmatically opted to relax and enjoy the ride, his strained good manners ceding to something a little more approachable.

  He had little to tell me that I didn’t already know about Chu Nam An’s innocent encounter with the police, and his description of Rutland’s Asian population was not unlike our own. Although much smaller in size—“We don’t have one,” in his words—it was equally diffuse, ebbing and flowing according to its own private mechanisms. Whether it was the city’s depressed economic state, or the fact that it didn’t lie particularly close to any major interstate, it seemed at best a backwater for Asians—a stopover on the way to somewhere else. Or perhaps, as with Chu, I thought, an off-road holding station for someone with a job to do.

  The area Rawlings directed me to—Howe Street—was shoved up against an intersection formed by the railroad tracks and West Street, also known as Business Route 4. It was one block long, worn, nondescript, residential, and abandoned in appearance. Its west side was occupied by a row of weather-beaten wooden homes facing an overgrown field and an empty, gutted, salmon-colored factory building labeled with a barely legible wooden sign announcing the Green Mountain Work Shop. Its serried ranks of shattered windows made clear that, nowadays, its only function was as a target for every rock-wielding kid in the neighborhood. Howe was a carbon copy of the street Heather Dahlin had taken me to in Hartford, and that our own Asians had chosen in Brattleboro. There was a nomadic feeling to all three of them, as if their inhabitants, regardless of race, occupation, or prospects, knew they should only carry the basics, and never completely unpack.

  The building he pointed out looked a little worse off than its neighbors—stained, sagging, and covered with old scalloped asbestos shingles, half of which were cracked or missing. The windows were devoid of decorations or shades, and the yard was vacant and neglected.

  “Still empty?” I asked, not bothering to kill the engine.

  “Yeah. One day they were here. The next they were gone. A few worked at the local restaurants or grocery stores, but they were the exception.”

  “Nice cars with out-of-state plates every once in a while?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” He looked at me, a little surprised. “I was the one your office contacted to check this Chu out. According to the neighbors I interviewed, the people who came in the flashier cars were the only ones who caused any nervousness. They usually traveled in pairs or groups, dressed in showy clothes, and had a way of strutting around that made people feel uncomfortable. Our biggest problem here is with Hispanics, so the area’s already racially tense—adding a few Asians didn’t help. Not that they did anything—they were more like cruising sharks, you know? Swimming around all the other fish. ’Course, we’re only talking eight or so people at a time, max.”

  “And what about the others?” I asked.

  “They kept to themselves—maybe fifteen of them at any one time, all living in that one place. We always figured it was part of a pipeline, but that’s not our jurisdiction. Like I said, we got bigger problems.”

  That sounded familiar. I looked up and down the block and then checked my watch. It was getting near suppertime, and the sky just beginning to fade. “Where’s the nearest dive? Bar, dance club, whatever?”

  He gave me a quizzical look and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “A few blocks down west. Why?”

  “I was thinking if I drove a fancy car and strutted my stuff, I might want to unwind someplace with the boys.”

  Rawlings gave me the grin of a man suddenly catching the scent of something interesting—a pure cop’s reaction and totally at odds with his tweedy appearance.

  “Right,” he said slowly and appreciatively and began giving me directions.

  Unfortunately, that first stop came to nothing. The owner of what turned out to be a threadbare, pleasant, neighborhood bar not only didn’t recognize the picture of Chu I was carrying with me, he didn’t think a single Asian had ever crossed his threshold.

  The same held true for the next two places we visited. Rawlings shook his head as we got back into the car. “This could take a while, Lieutenant. If they didn’t frequent the local bars, then we’ve got a shitload to choose from. Rutland has no shortage of gin joints.”

  “How ’bout karaoke bars?” I asked, suddenly inspired.

  “Where you sing along with the music?” he asked dubiously. “Yeah, we got one of those.”

  We left the west side and went up the hill to the gaudy Route 7 strip, eventually pulling into the parking lot of a building so shoddily built under its camouflage of blinking neon it looked ready to fall apart. But by this time it was almost eight o’clock, and Mort’s, as it was called, was dressed to do some serious, if low-rent, business. Inside, the light was dim and bizarre, supplied mostly by blinking Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. The music was low and schmoozy. Unfortunately, the magic wasn’t working—the place was almost empty. The karaoke fad, it seemed, was on the skids, and I was pretty sure we were about to strike out again.

  The bartender greeted us with the traditional, “What’ll it be, gents?” as we selected two stools from among the twenty-some available.

  Rawlings did his tactful bit with the badge while I groped for the picture inside my jacket. “You ever cater to any Asians?” I asked in the meantime.

  The bartender was an amiable-looking bald man with a close-cropped beard, as perfectly suited physically to his job as if he’d come from central casting. He kept wiping a small glass he was holding with a damp rag, just like in the movies. “Sure. They like to do that sing-along crap. Terrible singers. Buy a lot, though.”

  “How ’bout this guy? Ever see him?”

  He looked at the photograph closely, even taking it under a small light suspended over the cash register. “He doesn’t look too healthy.”

  “He’s not.”

  He returned the picture gingerly. “Can’t say I have. I’m not too good with faces anyhow. You guys want anything?”

  I didn’t know later if it was inspiration or dumb luck, but I said yes, and ordered a tonic water with a twist. Rawlings merely
shook his head and swiveled around to look at the gloomy room.

  The bartender returned moments later with my drink and volunteered, “You know. You might try one of the girls. They spend every night staring into guys’ faces, making ’em feel good.”

  He indicated a corner table, far from the bar, where three shadows were hunched together over their drinks.

  With Rawlings in tow, I walked over to the table, noticing that the closer I got, the more the three women took notice and changed accordingly. Their bodies moved slightly away from the table, the better to be seen, legs were crossed, lips moistened. There was an inaudible comment followed by a shared dirty laugh just before we got within earshot.

  My glass still in hand, I smiled down at them. “Hi. Mind if we sit down?”

  Two of them were brunettes, the third in blonde disguise. They were all weighted down by an excess of makeup and cheap jewelry, but their enjoyment, perhaps lingering from the joke we hadn’t heard, seemed genuine. The blonde indicated the only empty chair at the table, while one of her friends pulled another one over from the next table. “Please do,” she said.

  “You from out of town?” asked the third. “I know we’ve never seen you in here before.”

  “I’m from Brattleboro,” I answered and pointed at Rawlings, “but he’s local.” Rawlings smiled tightly and nodded, distinctly uncomfortable, and unsure of my strategy.

  “What’re your names?”

  “I’m Joe. He’s Sandy and, to be honest with you, we’re both flying under false colors.”

  The three women quickly exchanged glances. “What’s that mean?” one of them asked.

  “We’re cops. I’m investigating a homicide and Sandy’s helping me out here in Rutland—what they call a liaison.”

  “You got badges?” the older of the two brunettes asked.

  “Sure.” I whipped my shield out and placed it on the table before them. Rawlings followed suit more slowly. The three of them bent over to read the fine print in the dim light.

  “Joe Gunther,” read the blonde, her voice warming back up. “You been in the papers?”