St. Albans Fire

Chapter 11

“Newark?” Willy Kunkle reacted. “I’d sooner eat shit.”

Gunther laughed, unperturbed. Willy Kunkle was one of his own squad members, out of Brattleboro, in the opposite corner of the state from where the arsons had occurred. Joe had driven all the way here to ask Kunkle to join him on his trip to New Jersey.

“Have you ever been there?” Willy asked incredulously.

“I’ve driven by.”

“What? The airport, at eighty miles an hour? Hardly the same thing. You do know what their town symbol is, like New York has the Empire State Building and St. Louis has the arch? They have a thirty-foot rusty metal bottle perched on top of an abandoned brewery. People in Newark tell each other to ‘Meet me west of the bottle,’ like other people say, ‘Meet me at the Central Park Zoo,’ except that there’s an outside chance you won’t get shot at the zoo. Newark is a pit.”

Kunkle had been brought up in northern Manhattan and had first cut his teeth as a New York City cop. Joe didn’t doubt that he knew what he was talking about, even while he was sure that his viewpoint was as badly skewed as it was about most everything.

“Do you know anyone who works there?” Joe asked mildly.

They were in the VBI office on the top floor of Brattleboro’s Municipal Building, a single room as spare, unadorned, and poorly equipped as all the other Bureau offices scattered across Vermont. The VBI hadn’t been around long enough to accumulate much junk or, for that matter, much respect from other agencies, despite its lofty major crimes unit status.

“I know a few,” Kunkle conceded, adding, “Or I used to.”

“How ’bout on the arson task force?”

“The county prosecutor’s office?” Kunkle asked, demonstrating the precise insider’s knowledge Joe was after. In New Jersey, county prosecutors had police working directly for them in special units, unlike in Vermont, where the state’s attorneys no longer even had in-house investigators.

“Yeah,” Joe said.

Willy shook his head. “No. The guys I hung out with were city cops, mostly crooked, and I haven’t talked to any of them since. Probably dead or busted by now. Urban renewal.”

“But you know the town?” Joe persisted.

“Like the inside of a toilet, and that’s how much I want to go back. What’s this all about anyhow?”

“An arson case up north,” Joe explained. “It’s in the dailies, if you’d read them. For that matter, it was front-page news. Teenage kid died along with sixty cows.”

Willy was sitting behind his desk, his feet up and his chair tilted back against the wall. He’d placed the desk at a diagonal across a windowless corner so he could survey the room as from a machine-gun nest. It said much about the man.

“I heard about it,” he said dismissively.

“Well, that arson looks like it was one of two, maybe three, around St. Albans, so Jonathon Michael ran the torch’s signature by ATF and was told that the arson task force in Essex County had filed the same signature less than a year ago.”

“But with no name attached,” Willy suggested.

“Right-just to have it on record.”

Willy rolled his eyes and pulled on his ear with his powerful right hand. That, of course, was his own signature: He was a cop with only one functional arm. The left one, still attached but atrophied, useless, and generally pinned in place by its hand being shoved into Willy’s pants pocket, had been ruined by a sniper round some fifteen years earlier. He was still on the job thanks to the Disabilities Act, his own pugnacious ability to pass the agility tests, and Joe Gunther, who’d gone to bat for him despite unanimous suggestions that the crippling of Willy Kunkle was a clear sign from God that such men shouldn’t be allowed inside law enforcement.

What Joe continued to see in Willy had so thoroughly eluded everyone else that even Joe was no longer sure what it was, except that somewhere in the center of this irascible, infuriating, corrosively sarcastic person lay the heart of a man Joe could trust with his life.

“So,” Willy reflected, “based on that kind of airtight evidence, you figured you’d wander down to Newark and bring this torch to justice?”

Joe chose to play along. “Something like that.”

“Even though the guy might have burned a couple of buildings in Newark just like he did in Vermont, and maybe like he’s done in half a dozen other places, before returning home to Ames, Iowa, or Christ knows where?”

Gunther remained silent. In fact, with the myopia that often affects an investigator when he tumbles to an attractive notion, it hadn’t crossed his mind that his quarry might have no more attachment to Newark than he did to St. Albans, or even-to play devil’s advocate-that he could be a Vermonter who’d visited the city with evil intent, instead of the other way around.

Willy laughed at his boss’s expression. “Gotcha, didn’t I?” He then added with uncharacteristic generosity, “Been there, done that. It’s a bitch getting caught stupid.”

Not overly diplomatic, Joe mused painfully, but fair enough. “That mean I’m on my own?”

Still smiling, Willy considered him sadly. “Nah. You’d be a babe in the woods. I better go just so you don’t get killed.”

At approximately the same time, in Montpelier, Gail Zigman stepped out of the capitol building to get some lunch, using the huge front doors instead of the more convenient side entrance only because she loved the view off the columned portico, overlooking downtown. Instead, she was confronted with a large crowd of winter-clad protesters, many carrying signs in opposition to the very GMOs she’d been hearing about in committee. At her appearance, even though there was no indication that she wasn’t merely a tourist or a clerk, a surge of chants and shouted slogans rose to greet her.

If not downright irony, there was a certain poetry to the moment that Gail, the newly minted legislator, could appreciate. Not only had she been a protester herself throughout her adult life, holding various signs for various causes, but she’d even been a lobbyist for Vermont Green, the state’s most outspoken environmental group, an organizer of such protests, and a staunch critic of GMOs.

Without hesitation, she descended the broad marble steps, approached the front row of protesters, and introduced herself to a young woman who appeared to be a leader. Within five minutes, lunch long forgotten, Gail had organized a sidewalk symposium on the topic of genetically modified products and ended up taking down names and contact information of people she wanted her committee chairman to consider as witnesses for the hearings.

An hour later, checking her watch, she bade farewell and retreated back up the capitol steps, feeling faintly as though she’d just played a part in some romantic black-and-white movie about the benefits of democracy. She crossed the threshold absentmindedly, sorting through the wad of notes and business cards she’d had thrust upon her, some from people she hadn’t even noticed. Which is when she found a small folded note on an otherwise blank piece of paper.

Opening it, she read, “Be careful you’re not playing with fire.”

Newark, New Jersey, is one of the nation’s oldest cities. In what must now be classified as an irony of near cosmic proportions, it was founded in 1666 by Puritan zealots hoping to establish a theocracy of equally close-minded people dedicated to, among other things, repelling civil governance and banishing corruption. It goes without saying that these two particular ambitions failed to thrive. Indeed, in the heyday of its notoriety-now blessedly past-Newark could arguably have posed as the national poster child for municipal graft.

Joe and Willy approached the city as most everyone did, via crowded high-speed freeway, as unremarkable in their car as a single platelet coursing through an artery and, in Joe’s case, feeling about as irrelevant.

“We meeting with anybody specific down here?” Willy asked as Newark’s curiously old-fashioned skyline rose up like a postcard from World War II. “Or are we just showing up?”

“Special Deputy Attorney General Benjamin Silva,” Joe intoned. “Director of the arson task force.” He added the address he’d been given, on Glenwood.

Willy snorted. “Good location-in Orange. They don’t have to commute far to work that way. Orange is close to most of the old Mob hangouts. I love the guy’s title-sounds like something the Soviets would’ve come up with back when. He going to be of any use?”

Joe kept his eyes on the ever-changing traffic, cutting back and forth before him like a school of hyperactive fish. “He said he’d assign us a babysitter and make his resources available.”

“Babysitter?” Willy sounded incredulous.

“My word,” Joe corrected himself, “not his. I think he said liaison or something. Whatever he is, I’m hoping he’ll open a few doors for us.”

“Close ’em is more likely, from what I remember about the locals.”

“Not very welcoming?”

“Hardly,” Willy responded. He stared moodily out the window at the passing scenery, which by now had become a startling number of decrepit and/or abandoned buildings and vacant, weed-choked lots.

“Well, I’m not going to worry about it now,” Joe told him cheerfully. “Between you and the babysitter, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Willy turned to look at him sourly. “I wouldn’t count on it.” He pointed ahead. “You better take this exit if you don’t want to explore the rest of Jersey.”

Joe followed his subsequent directions, until Willy said twenty minutes later, “Glenwood’s right up ahead.”

Joe moved to the right lane. “How do you know this town so well?”

Kunkle’s answer was typically terse. “Like I said, I used to visit.”

The street Joe pulled into fit the overall neighborhood of nondescript one- and two-story buildings, until he came abreast of a glass and steel monstrosity-square, blockish, four floors tall-made of a mosaic of metal-framed rectangles, where every panel, if it wasn’t a window, was made of an equally shiny, bright green plastic. It was the worst of historical salutes to 1970s architecture.

“This is it,” he said, craning to see the number over the front door.

“Jesus,” Willy commented. “That’s some kind of ugly.”

They drove alongside the building and found a space in the parking lot to the rear. As Joe got out of the car, he noticed that each three-window cluster looming overhead was sealed with the exception of a tiny, centrally located drop-open enclosure, reminiscent of the tray doors mounted on prison cells in the movies, and presumably designed for access to fresh air. Here they also looked vaguely like naval gunports, row on row.

“Kind of makes you homesick for the Municipal Building,” he said softly, removing a briefcase from the back seat.

“Nah,” Willy countered. “I bet this has plumbing.”

They entered the front lobby, announced themselves to the guard at the desk, and were joined, minutes later, by a young man wearing a crew cut, jeans, a gun, and a T-shirt labeled “Arson Task Force” across the back. After the appropriate introductions, their escort led them into the elevator and up to the third floor.

“Pretty far from home, aren’t you?” he asked, holding open the doors.

“We’re not from Utah,” Willy growled.

“Yeah,” Joe said quickly, in response to their host’s startled expression. “Can’t get used to all the people. I like a little more elbow room.”

Giving Willy a covert second glance, the cop proceeded down a hallway to what looked like an apartment door, punched in a code on the combination lock, and ushered them into a suite of offices.

“The director’s office is right down here,” he told them, leading the way. “He’s expecting you.”

Benjamin Silva was short, compact, bald on top, and equipped with a thick black mustache that matched his bushy eyebrows. He came at them from behind his desk like a tiny linebacker and shook both their hands vigorously, waving them toward two chairs opposite the desk.

“Welcome to Newark. Have a seat. Want some coffee? How was the trip? I never been to Vermont. Hear it’s great.” Without pausing to await any response, he glanced at their guide and ordered, “Get Lil in here, would you, Phil? Thanks.”

Willy took him up on his offer. “Coffee would be good. Black.”

Silva crossed to a side table and poured a mug from a thermos. “You, Agent Gunther?”

“‘Joe’ is fine, and I’ll pass. Thanks.”

Silva handed the mug to Willy. “Great. I’m Ben. We’re far from the flagpole over here, so we run things a little looser, too.”

“I noticed the jeans,” Willy said.

Silva nodded. “For example. At the head office, they’re all bib-and-tuckered, but nobody likes it.”

“Why’re you in this building?” Joe asked.

“Dumb luck.” Silva smiled, adding, “Plus a little string-pulling. The Essex County prosecutor’s office actually has some five hundred people in it, including about a hundred and eighty investigators and a hundred and fifty lawyers. We have task forces like this one for homicide, child abuse, narcotics, rape, gangs, and internal affairs. That makes us the third largest law enforcement outfit in the county, behind the Newark PD and the sheriff, but by statute we’re on top of the heap. Which is why, the farther away from headquarters I can get, the better.”

“Politics?” Joe asked.

Silva laughed. “And how. Saying politics in Essex County is like saying snow in Vermont, I guess. It’s everywhere, and it gets into everything. One reason I wanted my squad out here in the boonies was to keep my people as free of it as I could.”

“How many do you have?” Joe asked.

Silva had by now returned behind his desk. He tilted his chair and linked his fingers behind his neck. “There are two attorneys, one lieutenant, and five investigators.”

“That’s all?” Willy blurted out. “Newark’s like the arson capital of the Northeast or something.”

Ben Silva smiled. “True. At its peak, just a few years ago, we had up to four hundred car arsons a year. There was one location off the McCarter Highway, where one off-ramp led to a short street named Riverside Avenue, which then hooked right back up to the highway. Arsons were so common there, cars were sometimes backed up waiting for service. The state finally closed the off-ramp. And that,” he added, “is just cars. We also have a ton of structure fires, since old-fashioned urban renewal is making a comeback. Either people who want to sell property torch the old factories and warehouses and abandoned buildings that sit on them, or they burn them to save money on demolition.”

“How do you handle it all?” Joe asked.

“We don’t,” Silva said almost cheerily. “We cherry-pick the worst ones and, if we have time, deal with some of the others. Otherwise, we train as many cops and firefighters as we can to keep their eyes open and apply the skills we teach them. That having been said, we don’t do too badly-the nation’s arson solve rate is fifteen percent at best. Ours is anywhere from twenty-five to forty, depending.”

Silva suddenly leaped to his feet again. “Lil. Glad you could join us. This is Willy Kunkle and Joe Gunther of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Lieutenant Lillian Farber, my second-in-command and the operational head of the squad.”

Silva dragged another chair over from the corner and offered it to the newcomer, a slim, middle-aged woman with a no-nonsense set to her face.

Silva resumed speaking as he sat back down. “I was just giving them an overview of the operation.”

“You want jobs?” she asked, smiling slightly. “I’ll swap you. I’d take Vermont any day.”

“That mean you’re not going to say we’re far from home?” Willy asked.

Lil Farber laughed outright. “Phil told me what you said. He thinks you’re a shit bird.”

Willy joined her laughing-much to Silva’s visible relief, Joe noted. He was a little surprised himself, if for another reason. Willy wasn’t usually the bantering sort, especially on first meeting.

“I suppose now I have to watch out for payback,” Willy said.

“In spades.” Farber pointed at his useless left arm, now squashed between his body and the arm of the chair he was occupying. “What’s the story there?”

Silva looked appalled at the bluntness, but Willy merely smiled. “Proof positive that anyone can be a cop in Vermont.”

“Rifle round,” Joe said briefly.

She nodded. “Tough break.” She then looked at her boss. “So what’s up?”

Silva in turn glanced at Gunther. “To be honest, I’m not sure. You two are after a torch you think has a Newark address?”

“Right,” Joe answered, extracting a sheet of paper from his inner pocket. “We don’t have a name, but after we ran his MO through the ATF database, they said you folks had filed a similar profile not long ago. This is what we have-what he used, how he used it.”

Farber took it from him. As she read, Silva commented, “Must be a big case to send two of you all this way, especially on something this thin.”

Joe heard Willy grunt his own skepticism softly as he answered, “It’s a homicide. A seventeen-year-old kid.”

“Sixty cows?” Lil Farber exclaimed, still reading. “That must’ve smelled good.”

“We’re looking at everything we can,” Joe continued, “checking motives and backgrounds, but it was clear from the start that we had a pro on our hands, along with the strong likelihood that he was hired. When this Newark connection came up, I thought an alternate way to get to whoever’s pulling the strings might be through the man he paid.”

Silva nodded agreeably. “Sounds reasonable enough.”

Farber handed the report back to Gunther. “The potassium chlorate and the potato chips sound like our guy. Also the way he pulled the fire downstairs from the hayloft with glue lines.”

“We figure he did that because he didn’t want overexposure to the cows,” Joe told her.

“Could be,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t know. I’m Newark-born-and-bred. I just eat cows. With our fire-a warehouse-it was convenience. He had more combustibles available on an upper floor.”

“Same with us,” Willy said, again surprising Joe.

“Well, there you have it, then,” she answered, “another similarity.”

“But you don’t have a name, either?” Joe asked.

She shook her head. “Nope. That’s one reason we posted the MO. You don’t have a description, maybe, or a car sighting?”

“We have sightings of a fedora,” Willy said, “and a dark sedan that looks like it came from the city.”

Both Farber and Silva stared at him.

“I know, I know,” he said. “Lame.”

“But not that lame,” Gunther added. “I got an e-mail as I was leaving the office with a little more. I had all the area motels and gas stations checked for the time periods of each of our three arsons. One of the motels reported a guy in the hat checking in under the name S. Corleone.”

Ben Silva laughed. “Sonny Corleone? A comedian.”

“The rest of the registration,” Joe continued, “was equally bogus, but the clerk picked up on the Godfather reference, too, and after Mr. Corleone had tucked himself in, the clerk went out to copy down the car license.” Joe extracted a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Lil Farber. “We traced it to a rental place at the Newark airport.”

Willy was clearly irritated at hearing this only now. “Fat lot of good that’ll be. Busiest rental desk in the Northeast, probably. Which was exactly the point.”

Joe was genuinely embarrassed by his oversight. This information had been so last second, he’d truly just shoved it into his pocket and forgotten about it. “I don’t doubt it,” he agreed soothingly.

But Farber wasn’t playing. “I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “Not necessarily. We have pretty good relations with these outfits, since a lot of the car arsons involve rentals as getaway vehicles. We can give it a try, at least.”

Ben Silva stood up again, making Joe wonder if perpetual motion was the man’s primary form of exercise. “Great,” he said, rubbing his hands like a pleased host. “Lil will be your official liaison during your stay. Anything you want, ask her. It goes without saying that we’d appreciate your doing all police work in her presence or with her knowledge, since you’re out of your jurisdiction.” He looked a little embarrassed by his own words. “Don’t want you boys to get into any jams in the big city.”

Willy gave him a predictably baleful look. “Right-goes without saying.”

Joe grabbed his elbow and steered him toward the door, saying cheerfully, “Got it, Ben. Appreciate the help. We’ll mind our manners. You want updates as we go?”

Silva seemed grateful for the fast exit. “Lil will keep me up to date, but come by any time.”