Occam's razor

10

I got back to Brattleboro by late afternoon and found Tony Brandt sitting in his office, talking on the phone. He waved me to a seat, quickly concluded his conversation, and put his feet up on his desk-his preferred position of contemplation.

“He confess?”

I laughed. “Right. No-I’ll give him that much. If he is guilty, he hides it well. He looked totally bowled over, then he got curious, then he pulled the I’ll-sue-your-ass card out of the deck. He says forces from the Dark Side are out to get him, and we better watch out we don’t become their unwitting handmaiden. He also told me he’s probably the best thing that’ll ever happen to us in our lifetime.”

“Us? You mean the cops?”

“And everyone else. Brave New World is right around the corner, assuming he gets that bill passed.”

“You tell him what his chances are?”

“I figured I was there to listen. He’s an impressive guy.”

Tony gazed at me thoughtfully. “So are a lot of bastards.”

“I thought you voted for him.”

“I did. But he’s a defense lawyer and a politician and he’s put everything on the table with this thing. Defining the Dark Side might depend on your point of view here. I know a lot of people who’d love for him to disappear.”

I’d already expressed how I thought some sort of streamlining of all these police agencies might make sense. I was curious to hear the educated other side, especially from someone I trusted.

“Like who?” I asked.

“Basically anyone who’s fought hard to get where they are. The state police at the top of the heap, the chiefs with their cherished turfs, the sheriffs with their town and state contracts, all the boards of selectmen fearing loss of local control, the right-wingers and the tree-huggers screaming socialism or fascism, depending. It’s almost hard to think of anyone who would be for this bill.”

“That include you?”

“Not necessarily. A bunch of other places have made it work-including small countries-and they’re bigger and busier than we are. But common sense doesn’t always apply-most people agree education should no longer be funded with property taxes. Doesn’t mean it’ll ever change. There are a few things in life we’re just plain stuck with, and in Vermont one of them’s the local cop, as redundant, expensive, and inefficient as that may be.”

“So Reynolds is screwed.”

He laughed softly and raised his eyebrows. “Who knows? A hundred years ago, nobody thought women would get the vote.”

I got up and moved to the door. “There are a lot more of them than there is of him-even with his ego. One thing I did get, by the way, was that this scares the hell out of him.”

“I don’t doubt it. You think he’s involved at all?”

I paused on the threshold. “His car being seen at the tracks seemed to hit him out of the blue. Hiring Win as a bird dog sounded reasonable to me. But he blew off the dumping accusation pretty fast-there may be something to it.”

“What’re you going to do now?” he asked me.

“Check in with Sammie and the others. See what they came up with today. Then I was planning to visit Mrs. Reynolds.”

Tony nodded his approval. “Good. How’s Sammie doing, by the way?”

I hesitated, surprised he knew anything was wrong. “Okay.”

He smiled conspiratorially. “I have my sources, Joe. She’s good people-we both know that. She’s also young.” He left it at that.

“I know,” I agreed. “I’m keeping an eye on it.”

“One last thing,” he added. “Let Kunkle and Sam handle the Croteau killing. I want you to keep on Reynolds. We need to know if your witness is all wet on pinning his car to the scene, or what really happened if he’s not. This one could do us damage, Joe. Okay? The press could have a field day.”

It was a rare request from a boss who usually let his department heads rule their roosts. But I sensed he was right. Despite the current popular appeal of the Croteau killing over the railroad death, Reynolds was a celebrity and could tilt that balance in a heartbeat.

J.P. Tyler was in his element, sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by paper evidence envelopes, videotapes, Polaroid photographs, a plaster casting, and several brown paper bags, with a clipboard balanced on his knees.

“Have a good day?” I asked him, careful to keep outside his circle of possessions.

He looked up and smiled broadly, a rare show of happiness. “Pretty good.”

“Find the murder weapon?” I guessed.

He tapped one of the bags by his side with a pencil. “Butcher knife-ten-inch blade. One of a set of five the victim had in her kitchen. It’s got prints on it. I checked by blowing iodine fumes across the handle, but I want to send it to Waterbury so they can do a complete job on it.” He rooted around through a pile of photographs and handed me a shot of the handle covered with purple fingerprints. Blowing iodine gas across a surface will often make prints briefly appear-usually long enough to take a picture. The remarkable thing was that these prints were clear. Hollywood notwithstanding, that was not usually the case.

I handed it back. “You been able to compare them to anyone yet?”

He was back to inventorying and didn’t look up. “Nope, except the victim, of course. They aren’t hers, or at least not all of them are. I’m driving up to the forensics lab tonight so I can get a clear copy of at least one of them and run it through their AFIS machine. Assuming that’s okay with you.”

“Sure.” AFIS stood for Automated Fingerprint Identification System and in simple terms consisted of a fancy copier hooked to a growing national computer database. You could put the image of a print or someone’s actual hand on the glass and have the digitally translated results compared to what an increasing number of agencies had on file, including the FBI. There was supposed to have been one of these “live scan stations” in every county of the state by now, and all across New Hampshire and Maine as well. But somewhere the works had been gummed up, and we were still waiting.

J.P. continued, “We found the knife about halfway up the street, in the bushes to the left. Placement suggests it was thrown from a car.”

“The plaster mold?”

“Yup-tire track, opposite where the knife was. It was fresh, showed a little skidding, and it was off the edge of the road, in the dirt, as if the driver swerved over to throw something out.”

He looked up at my lack of response. “All right, all right-possibly. I know it may have nothing to do with it-might’ve even been the ambulance or one of us. Still, it looked interesting, and it would be sweet if it fit a pattern down the line.”

I granted him that. “True enough. How ’bout in the house?”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Ron’s handling that. I collected some hairs, fibers, and more prints than I know what to do with. I don’t think I’ll even run them unless I need to.”

“And what you thought might be the impression of the killer’s knee in her blood?”

He looked less pleased with that. “Denim blue jeans. The direction of the weave only tells me what it’s not-Levis, for instance-but that’s about it so far.”

I rounded one of the cubicle corners. Ron was at his desk, doing a tidier, more condensed job than J.P., poring over small stacks of letters, papers, and files.

He looked up as I appeared. “How was Montpeculiar?” The standard nickname for our capital, especially when the Legislature was in session.

“Crawling with people. Only got a denial from Reynolds about his car, though. He says it’s his wife’s, anyway. I’m going to talk with her later. What’ve you got?”

He sat back in his chair. “A gold mine-I think. Maybe not for this case, but a real who’s who of area dealers, users, hookers, johns, you name it. She kept a journal of sorts.” He reached out and tapped a fat ledger book with his fingertip. “She seemed to think she was a budding writer or something. This thing’s full of rambling notes, lists of names, pages that look like diary entries or flights of fancy. It’s hard to tell, it’s so jumbled up. Also, the handwriting’s so bad in places you can barely tell if it’s English, and it reads like she was on drugs. Other places, it’s like an accountant’s notes-listing johns and prices. I recognized a few names, but I’m not so sure some of this isn’t make-believe. Hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. Got blackmail material, if she was into that.”

“Find anything that points to her killer?”

“Not in so many words. But if she ever did put the squeeze on anyone, they might want her dead. Besides the criminal activity, there’re some pretty prominent guys here-married men Stan Katz would love to write about. To me, though, what’s interesting is what’s not here-several pages have been ripped out.”

“That what you think happened?”

“It fits-guy confronts her, kills her, turns on the lights and tears the place apart looking for this, rips out the incriminating pages, and splits. If he did a good job, though, finding him’ll be tough. We’d have to talk to everyone she knew, show them what names we can extract from the journal, and hope somebody can think of who’s missing. Could take a while, ruffle a whole lot of feathers, and end up nowhere.”

“Frankie Harris come up at all?”

Ron flipped open the file and pawed through several pages. “Yeah. The guy at the poker game. Sammie told me about that connection. There is an entry here someplace…” He extracted a single sheet covered with dense, cramped handwriting. “This is it. A whole section on him. It’s a little kinky-goes into some detail. But she liked him. Sort of a father figure from what I could tell, if you’re into screwing your father.”

I leaned forward and glanced at it. I could see why he was having trouble deciphering it. Sentences appeared as if cut from confetti, some long, convoluted, and grotesquely poetical, others with all the flair of an affidavit. But I saw what he meant-what wasn’t pornographic seemed dewy with sentiment. No sense of threat from Frankie Harris. In my mind’s eye, I could envision Brenda Croteau late at night, a bottle by her side and a joint between her lips, writing feverishly, at some times conjuring up a reality far different from her own, at others listing names and actions like a speed cop recording license plates.

I had no doubt her killer had once been among them, if only as a passing reference. But Ron was right-he had his work cut out for him.

I returned the sheet of paper. “Once you’ve figured out all the players, compare them with what Willy, Sam, and I got from Brenda’s playmates. Maybe we’ll get lucky somehow. Otherwise, it looks like we’re going to be talking to half of Brattleboro before we’re done.”

Ron sighed and stared at the pile before him. “You don’t think we’ll get a break here?”

I knew how he felt. “A lot depends on J.P. and that knife. You know where Willy is? I got a job for him.”

Jim and Laura Reynolds lived in a modern home on New England Drive, a dead-end street paralleling a very busy Western Avenue-just beyond where the interstate slices West Brattleboro off from Brattleboro. A few decades ago, New England Drive was conjured up by someone wanting to sell off several parcels of increasingly valuable, highly taxed woodland. It was an attractive street, within earshot of the heavy traffic but shielded by the thick pine trees that had once covered the whole area. I wondered how long it might be before whoever owned the intervening acreage decided to duplicate history and deprive these newcomers of their illusional privacy.

The Reynoldses had obviously considered that and had placed their house at the dead end of the road, strategically blocked in by both their own trees and some very careful landscaping. As soon as I entered the curved driveway, I felt removed from the rest of the neighborhood and almost embraced by the forest, as if in tasteful hibernation.

Willy saw it differently.

“Jesus,” he said sourly. “It’s like being in an upscale cemetery.”

I rolled down my window as a police officer appeared from the underbrush, dressed in heavily insulated camouflage.

“Anything?” I asked him.

“Nothing unusual,” he said. “The Crown Vic hasn’t moved once since we been posted here, and the family’s comings and goings have looked totally normal.”

I nodded. If Reynolds had told his wife or secretary to do any criminal housecleaning after I told him we were interested in him, they’d either ignored him or had been very subtle about it. That’s one thing we were hoping to find out tonight.

“Okay-thanks. You can call it quits now. We’ve got a warrant to dig through it.”

It was just getting dark by the time we parked in front of an enormous garage-gloomy enough so that the motion-detection lights on the house flickered feebly to life.

The front door opened as we emerged from my car, and a slim woman in expensive clothes poked her head out. “Lieutenant Gunther?”

I waved to her, impressed by how well she and her husband communicated. “Mrs. Reynolds?”

“Yes, yes. Jim told me you’d probably be dropping by. Do come in. It’s freezing out here.”

We climbed the steps and passed through into a mudroom as large and well-appointed as a living room. I introduced Willy, who looked around suspiciously, ignoring her proffered hand.

“Let me have your coats,” she said awkwardly, taking mine by the collar as I shrugged myself free. Standing close to her, I smelled something like bottled fresh air. It made me feel slightly unwashed. Willy kept his coat on.

She ushered us through another door and into a library/den that made the mudroom proportionally small. “Would you like some coffee or tea to take the chill off?”

As admired as I knew these manners should be, I was already tiring of them, and decided to leave the chill where it was. I ignored the chair she indicated and turned down her offer. “No, thanks. I guess the senator told you why we’d be coming?”

She smiled pleasantly, looking slightly vague. “He said my car was seen somewhere it wasn’t-a case of mistaken identity or something.”

Willy let out a small snort, no doubt imagining how that conversation really went. “You could say that,” I said. “Three men were seen dumping a body out of it in the middle of the night onto the railroad tracks.”

She crossed her arms across her chest. “I read about that in the paper. But I can assure you my car had nothing to do with it.”

“You were here that night? Alone?”

“Yes, I was, with the children, and we have an au pair living here, too. They’re all out getting a pizza right now, but you can ask them when they return. Nothing happened to the Crown Victoria that night. In fact, it’s been in the garage for almost a month. We have a third car-an Explorer. That’s what I drive this time of year. We use the Crown Victoria for long trips in the summer. It’s a good highway car.”

“Yeah. Mine, too,” Willy muttered.

“Could we take a look at it?” I asked, fearful he’d start building up steam.

“Of course.” She crossed the room toward the distant kitchen. “The garage is right through here. It’s heated, so you won’t need your coat.”

Willy headed back to the front door. “I’ll get the stuff. Meet you there.”

Laura Reynolds hesitated, momentarily confused.

I pulled an envelope from my pocket and handed it to her. “This is a search warrant for the car, just to keep things aboveboard. In case we find anything.”

She took it as if I’d handed her a dead squirrel and dropped it on the nearest counter. Her voice showed its first quiver of strain. “I’m sure you won’t.”

Now it was my turn to be well mannered, bowing slightly and indicating the door. “Please. Lead the way.”

The garage was an immaculate four-car unit, as big as a home, cleaner than a morgue. Its size was emphasized by there being only one vehicle in its midst-the gleaming dark sedan of interest. Willy pounded on a side door with his foot and I let him in, noticing as I did so that it was locked from the inside with a deadbolt. Willy was lugging one of J.P.’s evidence-collecting kits, which he deposited with a reverberating crash on the smooth concrete floor.

“And you’re sure you haven’t driven the car since the night in question?” I asked Laura Reynolds, who was staring at Willy, seemingly transfixed.

Her voice sounded small and frail in the sterile room. “No. I already told you. It’s a summer car.”

Willy snapped on a single latex glove with his teeth-moving as smoothly as if he’d been born with one arm-opened the kit and the car doors in turn, and set to work.

“What is he looking for?” she finally asked after a minute of silence.

“Anything helpful,” I answered. “Blood, hair, clothing fibers.”

Her hand touched her smooth forehead for an instant, as if making sure it was still there. I noticed she was shivering slightly. “You know,” she said, “this is just beginning to sink in. You actually believe we might have had something to do with this man’s death, don’t you?”

“Not necessarily.” I took her elbow and steered her back toward the main part of the house. “Why don’t we go back inside? It’s not all that warm in here, and Detective Kunkle will be a while.”

She complied without a word.

Back inside the house, she paused between the kitchen and the living room, seemingly at a loss. I kept quiet, wondering what might be building up inside her.

She finally turned to me and asked, almost shyly, “What does all this mean?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

A furrow appeared between her eyes, as if I’d said something totally off-color. “No. I mean, what does this mean for us-Jim and me?”

I purposefully played dumb. “If we find something?”

Her face tightened. “You won’t.”

“I’m sure you hope that, Mrs. Reynolds. But you may not know where that car’s been lately.”

“Of course I do,” she answered angrily. “I told you that. It’s been in that garage for weeks. It couldn’t have been anywhere else. The doors lock automatically, the garage is alarmed, and one or the other of us has been here most of the time anyhow.”

I just looked at her.

Her eyes widened slightly at the unstated possibility. “Jim? You can’t be serious. You people are out of your minds. This must be a political thing. That’s what it is. Some stupid story concocted by his enemies. It’s incredible-like something out of Kafka.”

I gestured to her to continue into the living room and take a seat. “Mrs. Reynolds, we don’t know what this is yet. We were told by several witnesses that your car was seen at the tracks and it’s our job to check that out. There’s no conspiracy on our part here. That’s not how we work. I would like you to tell me a few things, though.”

“Like what? I told you all I know.”

I sat opposite her, my elbows on my knees, trying to look as solicitous as possible. “This isn’t the only event that’s struck you as odd lately, is it? Like the recent break-in at your husband’s office.”

She looked confused. “A break-in? Jim told me it was teenagers trying to jimmy the door. They didn’t actually break in, did they?”

“When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Reynolds?”

“Last weekend. He has an apartment in Montpelier. At the start of the session, he can only get away on weekends. Why?”

“It was a break-in. He claims nothing was stolen, but we think his files were tampered with. It makes me wonder what else he might be shielding you from. I mean, he must work under a lot of pressure, given his two jobs. Is he pretty protective of you and the kids?”

Her eyes were darting between my face, my hands, the furniture, the distant window. Throwing her several loaded messages at once seemed to have generated some doubts.

“I don’t know. I suppose so.”

“Why do you think he didn’t tell you about the break-in? He got the call about the back door being forced open here at home, didn’t he?”

She nodded. “Yes.” Her voice had lost most of its perfect hostess lilt.

“I heard he was pretty upset.”

“He was. Very.”

“This is an important time for him, isn’t it? With this new bill?”

“Yes.”

“He been tense? Preoccupied?”

“Of course.”

“Mrs. Reynolds, do you ever worry about him? Some of the clients he’s had over the years, some of the people he has to deal with to get things done in Montpelier?”

“There have been a few unpleasant ones…” She stopped, seemed to clear her head, and then spoke again more forcefully. “Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here. Jim is a good man, who’s doing the best he can to help this state out. He’s risking a lot with this bill, and he’s doing it for people like you. I don’t know what this is all about, but I know Jim isn’t a part of it.”

I got up and moved to the window. The light from the house lay dimly on the driveway. Beyond, the darkness of the trees made it feel as if we were floating in outer space.

I spoke to my own reflection. “Mrs. Reynolds, I want to be perfectly honest with you. I like your husband. I voted for him, the woman I live with campaigned for him, and even though he’s a defense attorney, we have a lot of respect for him at the police department. He fights hard but fair.”

I turned toward her. “So don’t think I’m going after him because we’re political opposites. If anything, I’d like to lend him a hand. But I have to do my job, and what he’s been up to lately has raised some questions.”

“What do you think he has been up to?” she asked, her face coloring. “All I’ve heard is something about his office being broken into and our car being somewhere it wasn’t. This is crazy.”

I held up a finger. “He hired a private investigator to look into the break-in, and we have several witnesses to the car.”

Her mouth opened slightly. “A private investigator?”

“Yes. Winthrop Johnston. Good man. Very discreet.”

There was a long pause before she asked, “What are you saying?”

“Only that your husband has a lot of irons in the fire, that he hasn’t been entirely straight with you, for whatever reasons, and that I have some concerns about what may be going on.”

“Like what?”

I spread my hands out to both sides. “I don’t know. Maybe you can help me there. Have you had any worries about him recently?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “He’s been very tense. I thought it was because of the bill. He’s betting his political future on it.”

“What about at the office? He’s had to cut back on his practice. That must affect your income.”

She waved that away, her voice slightly bitter. “I have money. We don’t need the income. He works so he can feel he’s not a kept man. It’s not my choice we barely get to spend time together.”

There was a sudden flash of light in the window next to me, and the motion-detection lights exposed a big Ford Explorer angling into the driveway and pausing in front of the garage doors. Laura Reynolds stood up, the tension of an instant ago replaced by the perfect smile. She crossed the room to stand next to me. “It’s the children with supper.”

With obvious relief, she headed for the kitchen and the garage beyond. Then she stopped abruptly and looked back at me. “What are you going to tell them?”

I didn’t hesitate. “That we’re investigating an accident and wanted to make sure your car was okay.” Her smile warmed then, perhaps for the first time since we’d met. “Thank you.”

I waited until we were retreating down New England Drive, having met the kids, the au pair, and the two dogs, before asking Willy, “So what did you find?”

“Zilch. No blood, no scratches or tears, no signs of anything hinky. There was even some dust on the steering wheel, as well as on the garage floor behind the tires, and the license plate screws look like they’ve never been touched. That car hasn’t moved in weeks.”

“You take a picture of it?”

“A dozen of ’em.”

This time around, I met Ed Renaud at home-a far cry from the dark, cool sanctity of his fishing shanty. Reverberating with the blast of a television sitcom, and tinged with a sour blend of poverty, neglect, and lost hopes, his crowded walk-up apartment was ample enough justification for a fondness for outdoor recreation.

I didn’t ask to be let inside. The landing was close enough. I dug into my pocket and retrieved one of Willy’s Polaroids.

“Mr. Renaud, you told me last time you got a pretty good look at the car carrying those three men. You think you’d recognize it again from a photo?”

He thoughtfully dug at a tooth with a fingernail. “I guess so.”

I handed him the picture.

He glanced at it for no more than ten seconds and returned it. “That ain’t it. The license is right… Well, I guess I screwed that up a bit. I thought it looked like ‘PERCH,’ but now I see it again, I know that’s what I seen. But the car’s wrong.”

I watched his face carefully. “Mr. Renaud, you said it was a dark blue Ford Crown Victoria.”

“It was. But that thing’s got one of those fake ragtops.” He took the photo back and stabbed it with his finger. “See? The one I saw had a shiny roof. I remember the reflection coming off it. This ain’t it.”

He paused and pulled at his chin. “Don’t understand how that plate ended up on it, though, ’cause I’m sure it’s right.”

I returned the Polaroid to my pocket. “I guess that’s for us to find out.”