The Dark Root

22

Unfortunately, Edward Diep didn't appear in any of Jean-Paul Lacoste’s reference files. He cross-checked with RCMP and the Québec Provincial Police, and even with the American NCIC, as we had done that night so long ago. But now, as then, all we got for our efforts was the record of a Pennsylvania driver’s license and an address in Philadelphia.

Using my hard-won new connections as a federal agent, I called Walter Frazier on Lacoste’s phone and asked him to have the address checked by someone in the Philadelphia office. I also requested a thorough background search of Wang Chien-kuo, alias Da Wang. In exchange, Walter asked me to stop by his office on our way back through Burlington. He had some new information on Truong Van Loc.

After that, Spinney and I took advantage of our freshly minted alliance with the MUC to introduce Lacoste to our entire rogues’ gallery, from the largely unlabeled photo album my squad had assembled of Brattleboro’s transient Asian population, to the mug shots, fingerprints, and arrest file of Nguyen Van Hai, the only man we had under arrest, who was awaiting trial for the torture-murder of Benny Travers.

Running them all through his own data bank, Lacoste came up with several cross-references. Nguyen, Henry Lam, Chu Nam An. At this early stage, all we could easily locate was some basic information on each man, but it was enough to transform Lacoste from an amiable and generous host into a committed participant. The possibility that we might have handed him something his department could use to its own benefit was enough to guarantee their continuing cooperation, long after Spinney and I had headed back over the border.

We parted company much later that day, with promises to keep in close touch. There, I was not just being polite. I had high hopes that the more he dug, the more connections Lacoste would uncover-connections that might prove crucial to the whole case.

An hour later, we were back among the flat fields of southern Québec, heading home.

“What do you make of Diep on that video?”

I paused before answering. “When we stopped them on I-91 last winter, none of those three seemed to know each other. I played the what’s-your-buddy’s-name routine on Truong, and he flunked-called Diep ‘Jimmy.’ Normally, that would actually make sense. From what I’ve researched, when a hit is ordered, the contract goes out to a jobber-like a middleman. He calls on his usual people, or others who’ve been recommended to him, and he names the rate-five thousand, fifteen thousand… I read a cop can go for fifty. Once he selects the team he wants-each member of which comes from a different part of the country-the deal’s done. The team comes together once, the target’s whacked, and the team disperses. They do not trade names or addresses, they keep the small talk to a minimum, and they’re only in contact for a few hours.”

“Except that this time Truong was contractor, jobber, and hit man rolled into one, so he should’ve known who everyone was,” Spinney concluded.

“Not only that, but Lam and Diep both have links to Montreal, and Truong and Lam originally lived in California…”

“And Diep and Lam also lived on the East Coast, and Truong and Lam showed up in Brattleboro to aggravate the hell out of you. In every case, Lam is the common denominator.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “But if Diep was the newest member, introduced to Truong by Lam, what was he doing in Montreal with Truong, for what we assume was a hit on Da Wang’s snakehead? And why was that receipt Diep collected found in a Canadian car that was used to kill Benny Travers?”

Spinney turned both his hands up in resignation. “All right, so the hit team couldn’t have been made up of people who didn’t know each other.”

“Then why didn’t Truong know who Diep was when I asked him?”

Spinney didn’t answer.

Walt Frazier dimmed the lights and hit a button on his remote. The VCR across the room stirred awake, and the television set above it lit up with a ragged nighttime camera shot of a decrepit one-story bungalow, glistening in the reflected glare of several bright lights. Police in bulletproof vests scurried back and forth, getting into position. After a moment’s telling pause, they rushed the building’s front door, the cameraman in hot pursuit. There was no sound track.

“This is a drug raid in Berkeley, California, eighteen years ago,” Frazier explained. “The occupants had been ordered to come out. One shot had already been fired from inside.”

The first officers at the door swung a two-man metal battering ram against the doorknob, busting it open at the first crack. They then flattened themselves against the outside wall and let the others, assault rifles ready, scramble by them. The cameraman followed and led us through a central hallway, the image jittery, bouncing badly, sweeping to either side as the operator went by open doorways through which officers could be seen fanning out. The camera was moving too fast for me to focus on any of the occupants’ faces, but I could clearly see they were all Oriental.

“The cameraman’s a cop,” Frazier went on. “They were experimenting using videos on raids for training films, and maybe in court. I don’t know that it’s any improvement. This gives me a headache.”

Finally, the lead cops reached the kitchen at the back of the house, joining the team that had entered through the rear. They all stood around a small group of shirtless young men with their arms over their heads, crouching in a corner. The camera lens calmed down enough at this point to pan the group so we could actually see who was being videotaped.

Frazier hit the pause button. “Recognize anyone?”

I leaned forward in my chair, squinting. The tape quality wasn’t great, and being in pause mode didn’t help, but in the upturned face of one of these young men, I could clearly recognize the hard-eyed malevolence of Truong Van Loc.

“What was his role in this?” I asked, sitting back.

“Just one of the boys. He was arraigned with the rest of them, treated as a minor, kicked loose in short order. But this wasn’t his first arrest. Our office in San Francisco dug up quite a bit on him-the DEA was a big help, too. Interesting story, actually. Truong’s an unusual guy. Came out of Vietnam when we closed shop in ’75, age around ten or twelve-birth date’s a little vague, along with his family history. He arrived here with a little brother and was absorbed by the Vietnamese community. The brother was taken on by a family named Phan, while Truong got sucked under by the gangs. Difference was, he kept coming back to the brother-visiting him, getting after him on his homework, arranging for private tutors. He paid the Phans for his upkeep, and seemed bent on making sure the kid flew straight.”

“So he was in the gangs just to make ends meet?” asked Spinney.

“That’s the funny thing,” Frazier answered. “He was ambitious-a natural leader. Not that anyone had proof enough to ever make a case. But our intelligence has it that he was organizing smash-and-grabs right off the boat, extorting with the best of them, and hell-bent on climbing the ranks. By the time he was about twenty he was a wealthy man, running a small group of his own.”

“Then he quit. Paid off his soldiers so there were no ill feelings, made sure they got relocated with other gangs, and went into the import business.”

“Import, as in drugs?” I asked.

“No. Legitimate goods-rugs, fancy foods, yarn, the kind of crap you find in Pier One-hammered-brass spittoons from Burma-junk like that. Customs checked him out, IRS, DEA, Interpol, the Hong Kong Police-you name it. He went straight. But it wasn’t like some tear-jerker movie. He was just as ruthless as before. And it’s not like he got any closer to his brother, either. If anything, they saw less of each other as time went on. But On Ha kept to the straight and narrow, so I guess Van Loc’s efforts paid off.”

“Was Van Loc’s business a success?”

Frazier gave me another ambivalent expression. “Not particularly. Our sources suspect he probably socked away a pile from his gang activities. He certainly didn’t lose money as an importer, but considering the good life he was used to, the switch didn’t make much sense.”

“I was told,” I explained, “that On Ha’s death was seen as a reflection of Van Loc’s bad karma. Could Truong have gone straight because someone told him he had bad karma? Maybe he felt On Ha was at risk, and he was doing what he could to save him.”

Spinney looked doubtful. “I thought Lacoste told us that karma couldn’t be changed-if life is shitty, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

I thought back to a similar comment by Nicky Tai. “I’m just guessing, but if Van Loc was ambitious enough to make it to this country alive and become a kingpin as a snot-nosed teenager-supporting both his brother and the family that was raising him-he might be egotistical enough to think he could change his karma. People try to cheat their gods all the time.”

“So he went bonkers because the Chinatown Gang massacre proved him wrong?” Spinney asked.

Frazier killed the video and twisted open the narrow venetian blinds, letting in just enough light not to blind us. “All we know for sure is that he dropped out of sight after the funeral. The business was handed over to an associate, and he disappeared.”

The pager on my belt began vibrating soundlessly. I glanced at its miniature display and recognized Dan Flynn’s number. Frazier nodded toward his phone, giving me permission to use it.

Spinney was still asking questions. “No credit card trail? Phone calls?”

Frazier shook his head. “None that we know of. Credit card use is not a big item with these folks, at least not legitimately. They tend to like cash. My bet is that Truong had a serious nest egg tucked away somewhere.”

“And,” Spinney added, “if Joe’s right about Truong stealing business from Da Wang, he’s got a new money source in any case.”

Flynn picked up on the first ring.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“How fast can you get to Hartford? Heather Dahlin called. One of her people spotted Michael Vu in White River Junction. He disappeared before they were able to grab him, but he hasn’t been spooked. She’s put her entire department on the lookout for him, though, along with the Lebanon Police across the river.”

I told him we’d be there in under an hour, and explained the situation to the others.

Frazier looked slightly put out. “We haven’t really finished here.”

“I sure would like the first shot at Vu if they nail him,” I countered.

He conceded with a half smile. “All right. I’ll stay here and play with my paperwork."

I let Spinney drive. All the ribbing from municipal cops aside, it was true that state troopers-even ones who had been in plainclothes for years-had more experience driving at warp speed on the interstates than any of the rest of us. As if to prove the point, he made the ninety-minute trip from Burlington in half that time.

We found Heather Dahlin standing by her car in White River Junction, near the Route 4 bridge leading into New Hampshire.

“We think he might’ve gone across,” she said, gesturing to the far side of the river with her thumb. “Could be he’s rounding up some money.”

I introduced Spinney, and she stuck her arm in through the car window across my chest to shake hands. I could tell she was tense and frustrated. “We’ve had patrols out all over-haven’t seen a trace of him since that first sighting.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was on foot, entering a building. But by the time they figured out who he was, he’d disappeared.”

“But you’re pretty sure he didn’t spook.”

Her brow furrowed a bit more. “Pretty sure. But he’s got to know there’s a BOL out on him.”

The radio in her hand muttered unintelligibly. She lifted it to her mouth and answered. Spinney and I clearly heard what came back. “We might have something on your subject.”

I leaned back and opened the rear door for her. “Hop in.”

She did so without hesitation, parking both her elbows on the seat back between us. “Cross the bridge, take a right at the light.”

Spinney moved the car quickly into traffic and entered New Hampshire. I gestured to Dahlin’s radio. “Who’s on the other end?”

“Lebanon Police.”

Spinney took the right, drove through the village of West Lebanon, and bore right again to take Route 12A into the heart of the most heavily commercialized area along the entire Vermont-New Hampshire border. Almost a mile of plazas, malls, and megastores, this strip of 12A paralleled the Connecticut, crossed the Mascoma River-a small, fast-moving feeder-and went under the east-west bridge of Interstate 89. At the best of times, it was as jammed a spot as any good-sized urban downtown. At the worst, it virtually became gridlock. As we entered from the north, I could see things were about fifty-fifty.

“What’s your location?” Dahlin inquired on her radio.

The voice on the other end didn’t sound happy. “Below the interstate, east side. Chinese restaurant parking lot.”

Spinney found his way there, having gone beyond the lot, turned left onto the airport road, and then doubled back along a back street. Road planning had not kept up with development.

A Lebanon police cruiser was discreetly parked between two other cars, its clearly marked tail end facing a music-store window. One of the patrolmen had draped a jacket over the car’s roof light, further disguising it. All three of us got out and joined them.

The driver, a tall blond with mild acne, looked disgusted. “We figured we’d wait for you here. Find out what you wanted to do. He went in there”-he gestured to the Chinese restaurant far across the big parking lot-“but we don’t know what happened to him then. When he didn’t come out after half an hour, we went inside. Nobody. We showed his picture around. They all said they’d never laid eyes on him.”

Heather Dahlin kept her voice tightly under control. “You didn’t want to call for backup when you first saw him?”

The blond looked uncomfortable. “We weren’t even sure it was him. We only caught a glimpse, from across the street.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So maybe it wasn’t him?”

I moved to defuse things a bit. “Considering he’s vanished, it probably was. It sure as hell was somebody who didn’t want to stick around and chat. Did you check for a back exit?”

The patrolman nodded sadly and looked over at his partner. “Wayne here did a few minutes after the guy went in-that’s why we thought we had him bottled up tight-but I guess he’d already split. He must’ve cut through the place at a dead run.”

Spinney stretched and yawned, seemingly unconcerned that he’d driven at supersonic speed to come to this conclusion. “Well, if he wasn’t spooked before, he sure sounds it now.”

“Wrap it up?” Dahlin asked of me.

I nodded. “Might as well. A half-hour head start, he could be anywhere.” I shook hands with the patrolman. “Thanks, anyway. It was worth a shot.”

He merely shook his head, pulled the jacket from off the cruiser’s roof light, and got back behind the wheel.

The three of us returned to our car.

“What now?” Dahlin asked as we walked.

I checked my watch. “It’s getting late. We might as well bunk down at a motel here, and then head back to Waterbury tomorrow.”

Deflated by the anticlimax, no one spoke as Spinney nosed up to the line of traffic and waited for an opening. Heather sat back in her seat, staring out the side window, her radio ignored beside her. Although totally different in style, she reminded me then of Sammie Martens, which made me wonder how things were going back home in Brattleboro.

Spinney was finally waved into line by a courteous driver and drove up to the red light just south of the interstate overpass.

Reminiscing brought me to Gail, whom I hadn’t seen since the funeral. I had been hoping that tonight I could drive down from Waterbury to South Royalton-a short half-hour trip-and spend a little time with her, but that was obviously not to be. I’d call her anyway, even though the phone had become more of an irritant than a remedy to the isolation I was feeling.

Spinney moved forward on the green light, passed under the interstate, and slowed again at another traffic light on the far side. We were just shy of the bridge over the narrow Mascoma River, and stuck between two huge mall complexes, one on either side of us.

I glanced across Spinney, out his open side window, and onto the vast parking lot of the L-shaped Kmart Plaza. There was yet another Oriental restaurant about midway down the row of stores.

Suddenly, I leaned forward in surprise. “There.” I pointed toward the distant restaurant, now half blocked by the opposite flow of traffic.

Heather Dahlin sat up as if stung, her face glued to the window. Spinney kept trying to look to where I was pointing and watch for the light simultaneously. “What the hell is it?”

“Go left-into the parking lot. I think I saw him.”

“Damn.” Not daring to use his siren, in case Michael Vu thought the heat was off, Spinney switched on the blue lights mounted behind the car’s grille. Nobody seemed to notice. He inched into the line of traffic, now coming on quickly, jerking the car forward in stages.

“Come on,” Dahlin urged from behind. “Where was he, exactly?”

“Going into that restaurant.” Spinney swore and hit the gas, lurching in front of a small red Honda, which slammed on its brakes with a squeal. There was a howl of protest from a horn. Just feet away, I saw its driver contorting her face with a torrent of soundless invective. In a second she was gone, as Spinney sped forward, narrowly missing another collision in the next lane, and finally shot into the entrance of the shopping plaza.

“Stop,” I yelled, and opened the door, which was wrenched out of my hand by the sudden arrest of momentum. I leaped out onto the pavement.

“What’re you doing?” Spinney shouted at me.

I was thinking of the two cops we’d just left. “Going around back in case you chase him through.”

I ran across the end of the long line of shops and down a paved service road dotted with overflowing Dumpsters. To my right, noisy and tumultuous, the Mascoma River hurtled near, far, and near again as it passed through a long, sharp-angled S-curve between trash-strewn, muddy banks.

A hulking eighteen-wheeler appeared at the far end of the road and began trundling toward me, gathering speed, despite the road’s narrowness and clutter. I ran faster, hoping to reach the restaurant’s back door before the truck cut me off, but I was too late. I was forced to skid to a stop behind one of the Dumpsters, and wait until the behemoth went by, my hopes of beating the others to the restaurant defeated.

The outcome was predictable. Just as I began running again, Michael Vu exploded from one of the distant doors. He stopped for a moment in the middle of the road, saw me bearing down from his right, and bolted straight ahead.

Facing him, the Mascoma veered back to within fifteen yards of the rear of the buildings, its current and depth mellowed by the hairpin curves just upstream. At the foot of the gentle bank that Vu was running down, there was an eddy of sorts-a gently swirling radius of calm water, where it looked like someone might take a dip in warmer weather. Beyond it, the water flowed its fastest, pushed away from the far bank by a tree that lay anchored in the sandy mud. Overall, the width of the river was about twenty feet.

Vu didn’t hesitate. He reached the edge of the bank at full tilt and took off in a wild flat dive, landing with explosive force in mid-current. For a moment he floundered, his body twisting and rolling; then he grasped the far reaches of the small tree extending to the middle of the stream. He found his footing on the bottom, which was only some three to four feet deep, and dragged himself to the other bank.

Abreast of him now on the opposite shore, I stopped, my feet in the mud, deafened by the river’s tumble. I cleared my revolver, pointed it straight at him, and motioned with my other hand for him to lie down. He hesitated momentarily, suddenly broke into a grin, and began working frantically to pull the tree’s embedded trunk free of the mud. He’d realized-as I knew all along-the futility of both my command and my weapon. Vu was wanted, as they say in the movies, “for questioning.” And while Hollywood routinely makes that an offense deserving gunplay, we both knew it was not.

Swearing readily now, I started into the water.

As desperate as it had seemed, Vu’s flat dive had been the right approach. As soon as I’d waded to the outer edge of the shallow swimming hole, the water’s full power grabbed both my feet and pulled them out from under me. I landed on the rock bed, almost losing my gun, and made a wild grab for the tree just as Vu succeeded in freeing it. As both the tree and I were swept away, I saw Vu take to his heels again, across the gravel bank toward a thick stand of saplings.

My ride didn’t last long. At the next corner, I managed to catch a rock with the bottom of one foot, right myself, and pushing awkwardly on the bobbing trunk, stagger to dry land. From there, Vu was no longer visible, but I did see Spinney and Dahlin explode out the restaurant door on the other bank.

I gestured to them to head back toward 12A, while I began running for the trees. It was not easy going-the saplings stood in tight ranks, amid an undergrowth of strangling brush, and halfway through them I had to scramble up a six-foot sheer embankment, reminiscent of some marine-corps training course. On the far side of this thick band of trees, I found myself in a broad, flat field leading up to the paved access road of the town’s water-treatment plant. In the distance, almost out of sight behind some storage sheds, was Michael Vu, still going at a dead run.

I shoved the pistol back into my wet holster, and put all my efforts into catching a man who not only was obviously in great physical shape, but who was showing a pathological lack of interest in having a friendly chat.

He was almost back to 12A’s ubiquitous line of traffic by the time I reached the access road, and as I watched, he seemed to vanish within it like a stone dropping into a dark well. I ran full tilt, half thinking I might find him spread-eagled and squashed flat by a flood of single- minded commuters. Instead, all I could see was a blur of cars and trucks, and way off on the other side-moving fast-the diminishing outline of my quarry, about to escape for a second time that day.

Yielding to the same kind of passion I’d observed earlier in Heather Dahlin, and stimulated by a rush of adrenaline, I ran out into the traffic, hearing both her and Spinney’s shouted warnings in the distance behind me.

The effect was bone-jarringly cataclysmic. Horns, squealing rubber, screaming voices, and the deadening crunch of fenders accompanied my broken-field dash across the street. Only once did I have to actually slide across the hood of a car that didn’t stop in time, much to the astonishment of its white-haired driver. On the far side, however, Michael Vu was still in sight.

We were now coming abreast of what is called the Powerhouse Mall, a large, roughly C-shaped plaza expensively built in industrial-revolution style-heavy on red brick and large windows. Vu, steering away from the plaza’s trap-like embrace, skirted the parking lot’s open north face and ran alongside Glen Road, a narrow street into which it fed, aiming for the far end of the C, and the relative boondocks beyond it.

Knowing I had no chance of catching him, I jogged on, my energy waning, paying no attention to the shouting of the angry motorists behind me.

Partway across the front of the mall’s parking lot, however, Vu’s luck and mine suddenly changed.

Ahead of us, from farther up Glen Road, came the distant howl of a siren. Vu slowed abruptly, quickly looked back at me, and then cut to his right, directly into the dead end formed by the Powerhouse’s three-sided box. Just at that moment, I saw the Lebanon police cruiser come into view, obviously summoned by Heather Dahlin, hurtling at full speed toward the intersection with Route 12A. Apparently she’d caught them as they were heading east on I-89, and had asked them to take the next exit and double back.

Waving wildly to attract their attention, I began angling to cut Vu off at the mall’s central, southern entrance. I briefly saw the blond driver’s pale face turn toward me, and then the sounds of his brakes as he fishtailed into the parking lot just a hair too late, sideswiping the high granite curb and blowing a tire. As Michael Vu veered again and vanished into the mall’s easternmost entrance, my attention was diverted by a second burst of squealing tires to my back. Expecting Dahlin and Spinney, I saw instead a black sports car with tinted windows swerve to a stop at the parking lot’s other entrance, and inexplicably spin around to return to Route 12A at high speed.

Knowing the two patrolmen were now pursuing him on foot, I didn’t follow Michael Vu through the entrance he’d chosen, but instead continued toward the south door, in the middle of the mall’s C-shape, hoping to hell Dahlin had ordered all the support troops she could locate.

The Powerhouse Mall is two stories tall, elegantly appointed with lots of dark wood and brass, and a long, narrow, lofting central hallway, running east to west, which reaches up to the roof high above. The second floor is restricted to two parallel balconies along this main corridor, meeting at staircases at both ends. Given Vu’s speed and the lead he’d gained, it was possible he’d had time to reach the upstairs-or, for that matter, to hide out in any of the mall’s dozens of stores.

For the moment I stood motionless, watching, listening, and waiting for the others to catch up. What I wanted was a radio.

Dahlin and Spinney didn’t take long to reach me, red-faced and out of breath. With the growing puddle around my feet, the three of us made for quite an attraction, just as I hoped Michael Vu had, bursting through the other entrance.

“Ask the Lebanon boys if anyone saw him,” I told her. “Maybe then we can zero in on a general area.”

She keyed her radio and passed along my suggestion. Spinney took off for the staircase behind us to block it off. A couple of minutes later, the radio announced, “Someone saw him heading south toward the staircase. Don’t know if he took it or stuck to the main hallway.”

Dahlin turned to me. “Why don’t you join Spinney and work down both sides of the balcony? I’ll wait here for the backup. Shouldn’t be more’n three or four minutes. The patrolmen can either start working the east wing or stay put by their entrance. Your call. You’re running this show.”

That was a sensitive technicality that routinely gave feds their resented reputation. I started moving in Spinney’s direction, playing down her last comment. “Sounds good. They’re already inside-might as well keep ’em coming.”

I joined Spinney, climbing two steps at a time, and took the balcony across from his.

The two balconies were about ten feet wide, bordered by a waist-high, ornate railing to the inside, and a string of shops opposite, lined up like a row of fancy New Orleans apartments. I removed my gun from its holster and walked with my hand hidden under my jacket, as if protecting something from the rain-an image my soggy appearance made blatantly ludicrous. I tried to ignore the loud squelching from my shoes.

Each one of the shops had large interior windows, making them comparatively simple to check inside without actually entering. At every door, my badge displayed in my free hand, I inquired of each salesperson if they’d seen a soaking-wet Asian male recently. This process was less nerve-wracking than it could have been, because I was also checking for the same kind of wet footprints I was leaving behind me. It seemed reasonable that where there were no prints, there was also no Michael Vu. Assuming he hadn’t taken his shoes off.

Shop by shop, Spinney and I worked our way up the line, keeping track of each other visually, and of Heather Dahlin below.

Until I saw the glimmer of water on the floor.

I was standing opposite a clothing store filled with racks blocking my view of the interior. I stood quietly for a few moments, watching for movements, or reactions from the few shoppers inside. I couldn’t see a clerk at the register near the door.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Spinney looking over at me. I gestured at the store, and then at my feet and the trail I’d left. He nodded and moved up so he was facing the store’s front door, albeit across the chasm.

He didn’t quite make it. There was a sudden flurry of movement near the counter, and Michael Vu-his long black hair plastered to his face-appeared from a small storage closet just behind the register, his arm wrapped around the neck of a terrified young woman, whose hands gripped his forearm in a struggle for more air. He wrestled her out onto the balcony, staring for a moment at both Spinney and me. In his free hand was a switchblade.

I held my breath. Hostage situations were unpredictable, dangerous, and volatile and only rarely ended up as happily as on TV.

I showed my gun, as did Spinney. “Let her go, Michael,” I said, loudly enough to attract Dahlin’s attention from below. In the corner of my eye, I could see her bringing the radio up to her mouth.

“Fuck you,” Vu shouted back. “You go away or she dies.”

“We’re staying put, Michael, and more cops are on the way. Killing her will do nothing for you.”

He looked around wildly, as if expecting a marine division to appear out of the blue. “I won’t be killing her.You will.”

“Look,” I said. “We don’t even have a warrant for your arrest. We want to have a talk with you-that’s all.”

He began shaking, swinging the woman before him like a rag doll. “Oh, sure. Right. A little conversation. That’s bullshit, man. You think I’m a dumb fuck?”

Suddenly, he arched his back, lifting the girl’s feet off the ground, and shouted, “Well, I’m not.” He pushed her over the railing and bolted down the length of the balcony.

The girl screamed and grappled at thin air as her body cantilevered over the top of the railing. Only as she was dropping into free-fall did one leg instinctively hook onto the rail and leave her momentarily hanging like a clumsy acrobat. I got to her just as her leg slid free, and snagged her ankle with my left hand. Despite her small size, the sudden weight pulled me to my knees, hammering the railing into my armpit. I gasped in pain, focusing all my strength on not letting her go. I rose slowly to my feet and began hauling the girl toward me, using her leg like a rope. Moments later, several startled shoppers began helping me pull her to safety.

At the far end of the mall’s long corridor, with Spinney close on his heels, Vu reached the bottom of the steps. Seeing Dahlin sprinting toward him, he whirled around to his left and disappeared under the distant staircase.

Confused about where he’d gone, I too now gave chase, pounding down the stairs, slipping in my wet shoes, and swung around the same corner to discover a glass-door exit, discreetly placed next to the bathrooms. It was just swinging shut after Dahlin’s passage.

Outside, to my right, I could see the three of them sprinting toward the Mascoma River, whose waters here ran faster, deeper, and more dangerously than where I’d entered them below the S-curves.

I started after them, my eye on Michael Vu, who was sliding down the bank to the water’s edge, just ahead of the others. As he was about to plunge into the rapids and risk a ride toward the Connecticut River, he stopped abruptly and sat down hard. Beyond him, high on the opposite shore, I saw the familiar black shape of the car that had screeched to a stop in the mall’s parking lot earlier, now pulling away fast, tires smoking, the sounds of its departure masked by the roar of the water.

By the time I got to the river’s edge, both Dahlin and Spinney were on either side of Michael Vu, looking perplexed. Spinney had turned to face the vast parking lot across from us, looking at where the black car had just been.

Dahlin was crouching near Vu, blocking my sight of him. “What the hell happened?” I shouted over the sound of the rapids.

She moved aside, barking orders into her radio, and I saw that Michael Vu wasn’t really sitting on the bank-he was lying on it, flat on his back. And decorating his chest-right over his heart-was a large bullet hole.