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Chapter 23

Deputy Sheriff Ted Mumford drove his cruiser gingerly down the narrow lane. It was banked with walls of fresh snow, no doubt disguising parallel ditches that would strand him for sure, and it hadn't been plowed in hours or sanded at all. On top of that, it was late, he was tired, this was the middle of nowhere, and he was responding to his least favorite type of call-a noise complaint.

With the worst snowstorm of the season at last behind him, ten hours of accidents, traffic control, domestic disputes, a lost child, no time off, and God knows how many cups of coffee, Mumford was in no mood to deal with some barking dog or loud stereo. He'd done an uncountable number of these in his years as a deputy, and only a few times had the complainant actually deigned to call the source of the problem and simply ask them to stop it. "I won't call that son of a bitch" was the usual reply. "That's what you cops are for."

Ahead, Mumford made out the glimmering of two houses among the thick tangle of trees-one doubtless belonging to the complainant, the other to the subject. Now that he was near, he could imagine the scenario all too easily: the sole two neighbors inside a square mile of wilderness, hating each other and using every excuse to exchange mutual misery.

He rolled down his window as he drew abreast of the first driveway, or at least the car-size furrow of snow leading to the house, and listened. He would have to give the complainant that much, if nothing else-there was a dog barking down the road, loudly and nonstop, with the same dull rhythm as someone repeatedly thumping the side of your head with a finger.

On the other hand, if Ted were a dog chained outside in this weather, he might have done some barking of his own. Maybe he'd be able to slap an animal cruelty charge on top of the disturbance citation.

Often he would stop at the complainant's on such a call, both to placate and to work up a little departmental PR, but he was too tired and pissed off to bother this time. Instead, he kept crawling down the road, his snow-encrusted headlights doing their feeble best to lead him along, until he reached the second house's blanketed dooryard. Or what he could find of it-there were already three white-shrouded vehicles filling the space. Informing dispatch of his arrival before getting out of the car, Mumford figured he'd have to back all the way to the first driveway in order to turn around later. Great.

The dog, of course, had climbed to a new plateau, having discovered something real to complain about. Also, to be safe, Ted had shined his powerful flashlight right at it to make sure it couldn't suddenly break free and come at him from across the yard. That had done nothing to calm things down.

Holstering the light and relying on the glow from the house's windows to show him the way, Mumford shuffled through the thick and slippery snow, careful of any obstacles possibly lurking beneath it.

He reached the bottom of the front porch steps, and was two treads up when the door above and ahead of him abruptly flew open, revealing a man in a checked shirt, holding a beer in one hand and a joint between his lips. A handgun was shoved into his belt. Although only ten feet separated them, the man missed seeing Mumford entirely, swung on his heel, faced the length of the porch, and bellowed, "Rollo, you stupid mutt. Shut the fuck up."

Mumford stared through the gaping open door into the ramshackle log house-and directly at two more men who were sitting at a table, placing carefully measured amounts of white powder into small transparent glassine envelopes that they were holding up to the light.

One of them was Dan Griffis.

That's when the man on the porch saw Ted Mumford.

"Who the fuck're you?" he blurted, reaching for his gun and drawing the attention of the other two.

Mumford instantly inventoried the trouble he was in. His own gun was hard to reach, half hidden by his winter jacket, he was wearing nonregulation woolen gloves for their warmth, and he'd just found out how poor his footing was.

As a result, on pure instinct, and seeing the other man's gun starting to level in his direction, Mumford charged up the steps like a linebacker.

Checked Shirt was caught by surprise. Mumford tackled him around the middle, lifted him off his feet, and propelled him backward, flying into the cabin beyond. They both landed on the floor in a heap, with both of Mumford's gloved hands anchored around his opponent's gun.

As plans went, of course, it was short-term at best. Dan Griffis leaped to his feet at the violent intrusion, grabbed the back of his chair and swung it over his head in the same movement, and brought it crashing down onto the back of the deputy's head.

Mumford let out a groan and stopped struggling. Checked Shirt wrestled free, scrambled to his feet, readjusted the gun in his hand, and took aim. Griffis smacked him across the mouth with the back of his hand, sending him staggering.

"Hey, genius," Dan yelled at him, "why don't you blow your own brains out instead? And ours, too, for that matter. You wanna kill a cop? Get the fuck out there and find out who's with him. For all we know, he's got the DEA with him."

He then quickly knelt by Mumford's slowly stirring body, pulled the man's handcuffs from his belt case, and secured his wrists behind his back, commenting as he did so, "Always wanted to do that. Hope they're too goddamned tight."

Checked Shirt, for his part, angrily replaced his gun in his belt and sat in a chair in the far corner of the room, growling, "Up yours. I already been out there. There ain't no raid."

The third man in the room, sitting dumbfounded at the table, a glassine envelope still in his hand, finally spoke. "Jesus, Dan. What the fuck was that all about?"

Griffis looked up at him. "What was it about? What the fuck do I know, Charlie? How many times have you had a cop fly through the door and fall on your floor?"

Charlie seemed to consider the question seriously.

"We need to get out of here," Griffis said. "Mike," he ordered the man in the corner, "get your ass out of that chair and go outside. Humor me, okay?"

Without a word, Mike rose and stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

Griffis rolled the deputy over onto his back, removed his gun from its holster, and pointed it into Mumford's face. Mumford blinked a few times, slowly regaining his wits. A large knot was already growing on his forehead where the blow from the chair had driven his face into the floor.

"What's your name, cop?" Griffis asked.

"You know me," Mumford told him.

Dan straightened and looked at him more closely, trying to put him in context. "Mumford!" he finally exclaimed. "You sorry son of a bitch. I should've let Mike kill you. What the fuck were you doing out there? You're no drug cop."

"I wasn't here for drugs. Your stupid dog was barking."

The gun was lowered, already half forgotten. Griffis rubbed the back of his neck with his other hand. "You are shitting me. You came for a dog complaint? What? From the neighbors?"

Mumford merely gave him a wilting look.

Dan stared back at him, muttered, "Up yours," and got to his feet, adding, "Fucking Mike and his fucking mutt. I told him to shut it up. But, oh, no-he's a good guard dog." He began pacing. "Goddamned guard dog just about put us in jail."

"Are we going to jail?" Charlie asked.

Dan kept going in circles. "You can if you want, but I'm never getting out. No fucking way I'm sticking around for that."

Mike reentered the cabin. "Nothing," he reported. "He was alone, just like I said."

Griffis confronted him. "He was alone, Michael, because the neighbors called in a barking-dog complaint. I thought you should know that. Asshole."

Mike laid his hand on his gun butt but otherwise remained silent.

"What should we do?" Charlie asked, at last putting the small envelope down.

Griffis addressed them both. "I don't care. Me, I gotta get out of here, and I mean, way out. We need to put Deputy Mumford here back in his cruiser and squirrel it away somewhere where they won't find it for a while, but after that, it's every man for himself. You guys want to stick around, you can do that, too. They'll probably just slap you on the wrist. But I'm gone."

"You gonna go to Canada?" Charlie asked.

Griffis looked down at Mumford and shook his head. "Yeah, Charlie. To Canada, and I'll give you the address, too, just so the deputy here will remember it and have the Mounties drop by."

He tilted his head back and glanced at the ceiling meditatively. "Why am I surprised I ended up here?"

Joe was back at his favorite office contemplation spot, perched on his windowsill, overlooking the now snow-clotted parking lot. "John Leppman?"

They were all four there, including Willy, since the Dan Griffis situation had blown up and Dan was on the lam. Deputy Mumford's colleagues had taken about five hours to locate him, cuffed and stuffed into his own backseat, hidden inside an abandoned barn-time enough for Griffis to return home, clean out his effects, and vanish.

"Guess you never thought to check out the good guys," Willy gratuitously volunteered.

Joe took it in stride. "Never crossed my mind. He's worked with all sorts of agencies for years, got thumbs-up all around, is even part-time certified."

Sammie was less charitable, glaring at her companion. "Like you blew the whistle on him."

"He wasn't my assignment."

"Les," Joe asked, cutting in. "What do we know about him now?"

Lester, having worked the closest with Leppman, was understandably the most embarrassed. He kept his eyes on his paperwork as he reported. "Right now it's just background stuff, but it's bad enough. The whole family moved up here from Virginia about five years ago. Very successful-she, the doc; he, the big-name psychologist. They set down roots fast and wide, made lots of contacts. He started working with the police on computer crimes. Nobody gave it a second thought. But the reason they'd moved was that they used to have two daughters. I should've known that-I even saw family photos in his office showing two girls. Wendy is the older one. Her sister was named Gwen, Gwennie to them, and she was abducted, raped, and murdered by an Internet predator a little over a year before they pulled up roots. The killer was caught almost immediately, tried, convicted, and thrown in the hole, but the family couldn't stand living there, so it was off to Vermont to start over."

"Why wasn't any of that ever picked up?" Joe asked.

Spinney looked up for the first time. "It's not that rare, anymore, boss. And it was a fast case. I found local headlines, but not much else. These people were just victims. If you don't ask, and they don't tell…" He left the sentence unfinished.

"Okay," Joe conceded. "That goes under sad but true. What else?"

Lester's tone became more rueful still. "Turns out the choice of a Taser wasn't so random. When Gwennie was abducted and raped, a Taser, or at least a stun gun, was used by the rapist."

"Jesus," Sammie said softly.

"The connection to a stun gun doesn't stop there," Lester continued. "This may be a stretch, but soon after Leppman started helping out the Burlington PD, he was on a ride-along with a patrol unit when they responded to a burglary. It was a sporting goods store, but heavy into personal protection. Among the things missing was a Taser-the store owner's private property, taken from his office. Later, when they caught who did it, the Taser never reappeared."

"Did everything else?" Joe asked.

Les held up a hand. "Like I said, this is a stretch. No, a bunch of it was gone forever, sold for drugs."

"But our boy was at the scene," Willy commented.

"And according to the case narrative I read," Lester said, "the Taser was the only thing missing from the office. Everything else had been out front."

"Was Leppman ever suspected?" Sam asked.

"No," Lester told her. "They had no reason to."

"What's the Burlington PD doing about him now?" Joe wanted to know.

That brought Les up short. He hesitated before answering. "I don't think anything. They just sent me the list of people who were in the building when the Taser went missing. They didn't even comment on Leppman. He's in the building so much, he doesn't stand out."

"If he already had the Taser," Willy asked, "why did he need a cartridge?"

To Joe, the question didn't have much weight. Every cop has to take at least one practice shot with a stun gun before it's officially issued. He was therefore surprised that Spinney had an answer.

"When it was stolen, the Taser didn't have a cartridge. That's one of the reasons it caught my eye. And since, as we know, every cartridge of that brand has a traceable serial number, he didn't want to just go out and buy one-not considering the use he had in mind."

"All right," Joe said, getting up from the windowsill and walking over to the coffeemaker. "So much for the Taser. What about the chemicals that Hillstrom's tox screen dug up-the fentanyl and the DS… DM…"

"DMSO-dimethyl sulfoxide," Spinney finished for him. "Both it and fentanyl are used by vets, especially large-animal vets. The Leppmans have horses, and Leppman himself is the one who rides the most. I made a discreet call to their stable, pretending I was shopping around, and got chatty with some woman up there. I couldn't get a lot of details, but I dropped Leppman's name, and she told me he was like a groupie, hanging around, asking questions and learning how everything's done. I specifically asked about vet visits, and she said the same thing applied-he loved grilling the vet and learning the ropes. So he had access and probably had or got knowledge."

"Why hit both guys in Brattleboro?" Sam threw out.

"And why move one of the bodies and dump him out of town?" Willy added.

A silence filled the room momentarily.

"Because Brattleboro's not near Burlington and Shelburne?" Joe suggested without much conviction.

After another pause, Willy shrugged. "I can live with that," he conceded. "Why the river?"

"If the logic works for one, why not both?" Joe countered. "For all we know, the original plan wasn't to have either one of them found in a motel room. Could be Brattleboro was chosen because of its distance, and the river so that not even Bratt would be pinned down-it would also make it look like an accidental drowning."

"Meaning something went wrong?"

"Could be. We certainly know both crime scenes were almost antiseptically cleaned up," Joe said. "What was Leppman's office like?" he asked Lester.

Spinney leaned back in his chair, by now feeling much less self-conscious as someone who'd dropped the ball. "I almost hate to say this, since I really do like the guy, but it was spotless."

"I've got a question," Willy asked generally. "Whatever happened to Oliver Mueller? I been out of the loop for some of this, but weren't we all hot and bothered about him at some point?"

Sam answered that one. "I put him on the back burner. He was looking good for a while-same kind of profile as Leppman, maybe better, with a history of violence-but he had alibis for both killings, and witnesses, too. I haven't written the report yet, but I'll spell it out there."

Joe took a long swallow of his coffee before finally announcing, "All right. We need to see about a search warrant for Leppman's computer before we put him in a room for a talk. And before all that, let's track his past movements-where he was when Nashman and Metz were killed being the big ones. Bring in extra help if you need it. Put everything about him under the scope. When that conversation takes place, I want all questions already answered and that warrant ready to be used. He needs to know that the only reason he's there is to confirm what we already know. Everybody good with that?"

Predictably, Sammie answered for them all. "Good, boss."