by Archer Mayor
It took some doing, cutting through hedges, squeezing between rotting cars, and watching for rubbish piled behind buildings like trash caught in a river eddy, but eventually he tucked into the shade of a neighboring house and began studying the building as the rain dripped off the edge of his hat.
What he’d seen from the street was confirmed—the cops had walked away and the place looked unoccupied.
The question was: What had they left behind?
Nick took his time, slowed by his handicap. He lived in a world where people watched each other, anticipating weaknesses, looking for openings. It was not beyond possibility that these hayseed cops were up to something, despite their inability to locate him during the previous forty-eight hours.
As a result, he moved smoothly, soundlessly, his eyes on every window and car, careful to note anything even slightly untoward—an unexplained movement, one curtain drawn aside, an exhaust plume from a seemingly empty vehicle.
But everything checked out, and he eventually reached the building’s back entrance, his leg throbbing, but otherwise relatively comfortable about not having been seen.
Reinforcing the notion, as he removed his muddy shoes in the shared entryway, he heard the downstairs neighbors chatting softly against the background of a TV program, lending an air of returned normalcy to the scene.
Not unlike the first time he’d come here.
He moved slowly up the darkened staircase, still suspicious of a trap, using his good leg to pull the rest of him up, one step at a time. At the landing, however, after bypassing the front door lock as easily as before, he grew more confident. Ahead of him, the apartment loomed dark and silent, its very atmosphere bespeaking the loss it had suffered.
He was impressed by the mess the cops had created. He looked around, using the ambient glow of the surrounding city as an aid, and identified some of the damage he’d caused, directly or not.
Finally, he pulled out a small flashlight, cupped it in his hand, and turned it on, letting its beam leak into the room only gradually, between his fingers, so as not to attract attention from outside the nearby windows.
It took a while, which he found reassuring, but eventually, by progressing quadrant by quadrant, as if mapping an archeological site, he came to the armchair by the hallway and found the dark glasses almost completely wedged between the pillows.
Smiling, he pocketed the light, crossed the room, and took the glasses apart by the window, admiring the slight glimmer of the thumb drive’s silver tip.
“Gotcha, you son of a bitch,” he congratulated himself.
He added the glasses to the light in his pocket and, moving awkwardly but still silently, retreated the way he’d come. By the time he was back outside, shoes on and hat pulled low, it had been no more than twenty minutes.
After all the hassle, expense, time, misery, and pain, he could hardly believe this soap opera was finally about to end.
He was looking forward to a small vacation after this job.
* * *
“You get it all?” the one cop asked his partner.
The latter waited a moment for the man’s shadow across the street to fully disappear back into the nearby bushes, before he operated a few controls on his tripod-mounted video camera in order to check his night vision footage. “Yeah. Let ’em know he’s headed back to his car.”
The first observer dialed his phone to make the call.
* * *
On the other side of the state, Willy Kunkle, similarly dressed in black, was crouched beside a pile of ancient building debris, on the edge of what used to be the Goodyear plant in Windsor—now an enormous, rubble-strewn slab.
A slab with a view, however, which did not include the peaceful Connecticut River or the New Hampshire forestland beyond it—now cloaked in darkness, a slight fog, and the same light rain that had shrouded Nick Gargiulo. What Willy was intent on was an old factory building in the middle distance, at the dead end of National Street, where Chris Walker, still being babysat, had said Rob Haag kept his workshop.
Willy had put himself in an awkward position—hardly a novelty, given his methods. He had assembled, against the odds and in violation of several rules of engagement, what he thought of as evidence of a federal crime.
But because of the way he’d gone about it, he was now stuck on how to carry it home legally.
Always resourceful, however, he was hoping that one last bit of unconventional investigating would supply him the missing piece to convince the likes of Special Agent Dorman—if not him personally—and present a credible narrative of cause and effect.
Willy had discovered early in his career that because cops often collected clues on their own, it fell to them to choose how best to present them. Police officers are trained to walk the straight and narrow—to reflect the truth at all times, regardless of consequences. They also learn almost as quickly the value of “officer discretion,” with which they are supposed to act on that truth, depending on its context. Thus a little old lady with no prior speeding violations might be given a pass, despite having been caught driving too fast.
Willy had taken this practical, reasonable, occasionally used leeway and virtually made it his life’s work. He was the master of officer discretion, and an expert at pitching the essence of a case, regardless of how he’d acquired its facts.
Inside the dark, still, forbidding embrace of the decrepit building before him, therefore, he was hoping to find the missing connective tissue between one Pakistani importer, three teeth and a charcoaled battery, and the supplier of power cells to military drones.
Either that, or he was going to have to explain having recently wasted so much time, bent so many rules, and irritated so many people, especially Sam—not to mention broken a few laws.
He stepped away from his cover at last and walked stealthily toward his goal, which was built in the classic hundred-year-old, flat-roofed, New England industrial style of stained brick and multiple tall windows. Ubiquitous when the entire region was a manufacturing powerhouse—and Yankee ingenuity the envy of emerging nations globally—such structures were now commonly deemed as monumental perhaps, but also drafty, inefficient, and probably built on chemical waste.
This one had found a way to survive both the wrecker’s ball and being turned into condos by renting itself out piecemeal to entrepreneurs and small operators needing a little elbow room in which to function—sometimes discreetly.
The beauty of the architecture for Willy, however, lay not in its history but in its array of potential entry points—loading docks, equipment bays, garage doors, office entrances, and windows, to name a few. It didn’t take long for him to find an overlooked opening only half covered by a flimsy piece of plywood.
Once inside, dry and free of incidental scrutiny, he took his time to decode the building’s floor plan and pick his way toward what Walker had described as Haag’s second-floor shop.
He’d entered at the back of a wood furniture manufacturer, its atmosphere rich with sawdust, glue, and varnish. Around him, silhouetted against the town’s foggy lights through the windows, were spindly drill presses, vacuum hoses, overhead power cords, and robotic-looking band saws and lathes—a crowd of silent, powerful, seemingly watchful sentinels through which he slipped without a sound.
The neighboring business dealt with automotive body work. Here the odor was harsh and toxic, as industrial as the wood shop’s had been seductively artisanal. Willy made sure to stay clear of any counters, concerned that he might sideswipe a paint container or a precariously placed grinder. Where the first place had been meticulously clean and neat, this one was a mess, a potential obstacle course, all coated with a fine gray dust.
It did have access to a central hallway, however, which in turn contained a broad wooden staircase heading up. At its base, Willy could just make out the faint sound of distant music drifting down.
Curious, he stole his way up, pausing at each step and testing it for creaks and groans. But they were all as old
as the rest of the building, and as settled in place as boulders. The only sound he ended up making came from his own breathing.
On the second floor, the music louder, he found himself facing a matching hallway, this one featuring a single glass door, about halfway down its length. Light spilled out onto the worn wooden floor, reminding him that when he’d been studying the factory’s dark exterior, he noticed two boarded-over upper-floor windows. Now he knew why.
He moved to the door and peered inside. The room beyond was vast and high-ceilinged, but unlike its brethren below, it had few towering tools or draping air-filtration equipment. It was more of a waist-level assembly plant—a row of end-on tables snaking through the room’s center, each loaded with serious-looking boxy apparatuses, their applications arcane and oddly threatening in appearance. Articulated desk lamps accompanied most of them, creating a succession of lighted islands that marched off in a line into the distance, leaving the rest of the vaulting room in gloomy shadow.
Willy stayed put long enough to pinpoint the one human who was supposedly accountable for the light and music—a thin, distant figure wearing a lab coat and a circular fixture around his head equipped with magnifier lenses and a pair of powerful LED lights. He was intent on his labors, bent at the waist, his face inches from his work.
As confident as he could be that he and the mysterious lab tech were alone—Robb Haag, according to the employee photograph Al Summers had supplied earlier—Willy gingerly turned the doorknob and quietly stepped into the room, crouching low so that he was shielded by the first row of tables.
What he was seeking was simplicity itself—a single glimpse at Haag’s end product. But despite carefully looking around, he could see no pile of rectangular, battery-like objects anywhere nearby. There were some next to Haag, mostly near the far wall, since that was the terminus of this peculiar assembly line. But at Willy’s end, there were scant pickings. Significantly, also within Haag’s reach, hanging on the same wall, were several large-caliber weapons, both pistols and long guns, semi- and fully automatic.
Willy began to work his way forward, maintaining his cover by crawling beneath the line of tables. This was no easy feat. Not only did the tables’ underpinnings get in the way, but Willy’s useless arm threw him badly off balance besides, forcing him to proceed slowly, awkwardly, and at considerable risk of making a noisy mistake. As before, the music proved as useful to him as to the lonely battery maker.
About a quarter of the way along, yielding to his contorted approach, he paused for a breather and to ease his aching body, sitting on the floor to stretch out for a moment.
That is when a loud, persistent buzzer went off directly above his head, sounding like a neighborhood fire alarm.
Almost immediately, he heard Haag say something to himself, followed by his footsteps approaching. Willy ducked down farther to see the man’s legs headed his way, bathed in the halo of each successive pool of light.
Haag stopped two feet away, his toes pointed directly at Willy. Overhead, Willy heard him open what sounded like a microwave oven and extract something hard that rattled on the tabletop. There was some more noise, of a practiced and rhythmic nature, like a repetitive task, before Haag stepped back, placed something on the adjacent table—presumably whatever it was he’d removed from the microwave—and returned to his point of origin.
Willy took advantage of Haag’s retreat to roll soundlessly out into the aisle and move quickly, crouched over, along a parallel track, keeping well out of the other man’s sight line.
It worked. Haag never broke stride, and returned to his labors almost instantly, happily on task. From his new vantage point, Willy could not only see the production line better, but also was close enough now to the stacked finished products to crawl along the floor for a few more yards, reach up, and remove a sample to carefully examine it.
What he saw supplied the missing piece he’d been seeking. The object in his hand was indeed a lithium-ion battery, shrink-wrapped, pristine, and equipped with wires to be plugged into its receiving unit. Most tellingly, it was colored army green and stamped with the logo of Al-Tech Industries.
Willy took a photo of it with his phone, returned it to its place, and quietly left Robb Haag to enjoy his music.
* * *
Beverly’s expression blossomed as she looked up from her paperwork. “Joe,” she said. “You made it in one piece.”
She rose as he entered her office and they met beside her desk, folding around each other and kissing.
“You had doubts?” he teased, pulling back slightly.
“I only doubt the airlines,” she replied, kissing him again. “My God, it’s good to see you.”
“Me, too,” he told her. Holding her as close as he dared without cutting off her breathing. He could hardly believe how good she felt.
“You got a lot left to do?” he asked.
She looked up into his eyes. “And delay taking you to bed?” she asked with mock horror. “Not on your life. And I hope you ate earlier, ’cause you’re not getting dinner for a couple of hours yet. I am going to see to that.”
“I think I can cope,” he said, running his hands down her back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Joe sat on the edge of his desk and cast a fond look over his three investigators. “As hard as you may find this to believe, I have missed you guys something wicked.”
“Your trip west must’ve been tougher than we thought,” Willy cracked.
Sammie shook her head, as expected. “What he’s trying not to say, boss, is that we’re glad you’re back and we hope your mom’s in good shape.”
“She is,” Joe told them. He nodded toward Willy before adding, “Thank you for your touching concern.”
Willy smiled. “Don’t mention it. You gonna snap our leashes now that you’ve made nice?”
“So smooth,” Lester said softly, as if to himself.
“Actually, no,” Joe said good-naturedly. “I have been reading the dailies and talking with Sam throughout, so I know as much as you’ve been willing to admit.” He gazed at Willy pointedly before continuing. “That makes me knowledgeable about some things, less so about others. What I’d like to propose is a more measured reentry. You three keep going with your separate investigations, and I’ll play backup, catch any new cases, and take back the administrative duties Sam’s been juggling.” He looked directly at her. “Unless you’ve taken a liking to them, of course.”
She looked slightly horrified. “No, no. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but if I never have to do that again, I’ll be a happy woman.”
“Maybe so,” he said, “although from the Director’s report card, you did very well under tough circumstances.”
She looked slightly embarrassed, so he kept going. “Speaking of which, what’s the current status of the Robinson homicide?”
“Last night,” she responded, “the man we suspect killed Charlotte took the bait. He returned to the apartment and grabbed the USB-rigged glasses. The surveillance team Mike McReady put on it caught him on tape. They also recorded his vehicle registration and placed a GPS on the car. As we hoped, he made a beeline for Albany.”
“He contact your lawyer guy?” Lester asked. “What’s his name?”
“Wylie. Jared Wylie. No, that would’ve been too easy. He returned the car to a rental agency in Troy, and that’s where the tag team lost him. So right now, we’re waiting for some computer—Wylie’s, if there’s a God—to deliver the password after the drive’s been plugged in.”
“Which is presumably when we find out what cost Robinson her life,” Joe suggested.
“Right.”
“Is everyone sure the guy who took the glasses is the same one who killed the girl?” Willy asked.
Sam picked up a mug shot from her desk. “Yup. Name’s Dominic ‘Nick’ Gargiulo. Military background, impressive rap sheet, definite ties to Wylie. He lives and works in Albany. This photograph has gotten us three confirmations: from the tag tea
m last night, the car rental clerk when he turned in the vehicle he used in Burlington, and from UVM security, who ran his fake credentials before they helped him identify Charlotte as she was getting off the bus. Not to mention,” she added, “that he’s now walking with a serious limp, thanks to Rachel swatting him with that frying pan.”
Joe turned to Willy. “And the mystery of the missing teeth? That’s been a little underreported in the dailies.”
Willy actually laughed, his mood—unknown to the rest of them—lifted by the results of the previous night’s field trip. “This has turned out like a Sherlock Holmes story,” he reported. “As far as I can tell, I’ve got one last egg to crack before I can deliver the full omelet, but I finally got a good idea what’s goin’ on.”
“You want to share?” Sam asked sarcastically but with a smile, “or is this gonna be another rabbit out of the hat?”
Even Willy was a little sensitive about the toes he’d stepped on in Springfield, although he hadn’t heard a word from Alex Dorman about having bushwhacked Sunny Malik. As a result, he was less coy with his response than he might have been.
“If I’m interpreting everything right,” he said, “I think we stumbled over a plot to screw up a supply line of parts to the military.”
“The battery you wrote about?” Joe asked. “Sabotage? Really?”
“Yeah. I’m hanging it all on one source telling me that the bogus energy cells are being made faulty in order to discredit the manufacturer, but the story fits everything else I’ve found out, so I want to chase down one last missing piece to make sure. And before you ask, yes, I will then generously lay it out before the appropriate federal law enforcement agency so that they can carve another notch on their bedpost and totally ignore our contribution. I’ve already made a courtesy call to Homeland Security.”
“Okay,” Joe said slowly, used to Willy’s highly interpretive style. “But if you’re uncomfortable laying it out here and now, might you want some backup anyhow?”
