Occam's razor

11

I found Gail in the tub, surrounded by music and soap bubbles, looking like a vision from a Doris Day movie. She was pink and hot and smelled as fresh as a baby.

“God, that looks nice,” I said as I leaned over to kiss her.

She smiled up at me. “There’s room for two.”

I began shaking my head.

“Why not?” she interrupted. “I’m not getting out till I’m good and pruny, and you look like you could use it.”

I considered her offer for three seconds and then loosened my tie.

The water was so hot it hurt to enter it. But as soon as I’d done so, I had no regrets.

“Tough day?” she asked, after I’d settled in with much groaning, sliding my thighs over hers and my toes just under her armpits, my skin burning with the slightest movement.

“More like a waste of time. What can you tell me about Jim and Laura Reynolds?”

I hadn’t shared our recent interest in Reynolds with her. I’d thought it might put her in an awkward position, since they were friends and political allies. But given how Ed Renaud had just cleared their car of being at the train tracks, I wasn’t so sure Jim Reynolds was in the hot seat I’d thought he was.

“They on your radarscope for some reason?” she asked.

“I think someone’s trying to put him there. One of their cars was reported seen at that railroad killing, but now it looks like it might’ve been a substitute look-alike equipped with his license plates. It’s smelling like some strange kind of frame-up.”

“I guess,” she agreed. “So what do you want to know?”

“General stuff. Gut reactions. Whatever you can tell me about both of them.”

“You met her?”

“Yeah-tonight. I’d seen her before, but this was the first time face-to-face. She’s very poised-to begin with.”

Gail laughed. “And then?”

“I got the feeling she was underwhelmed by his ambition.”

“She hates it,” Gail said flatly. “But he’s a hard man to push around. Very competitive. I’ve talked to her about it-she plays the doting wife well, and I was curious how and why she did it. She didn’t hold back once we got friendly. She loves him very much, and she’s willing to put up with the bullshit for now, hoping to get her turn later. I think she’s kidding herself, but that’s the plan.”

“A retirement in Santa Fe with concerts, tennis courts, and visits from the grandchildren?” I asked.

“Something like that. I don’t think she understands how committed he is.”

My chin was barely clear of the water by now, which meant that only half her face was visible above a field of billowing soap bubbles. My entire body was slowly relaxing.

“And how committed is he?” I asked.

“Very. Jim Reynolds’s altruism is the real McCoy. It’s not just ambition or insecurity or misplaced machismo that makes him both a politician and a defense lawyer. For one thing, he’s bright enough to have gone to Boston or New York and made a zillion bucks working for cigarette companies or something. He believes in what he says, no matter how corny the Willy Kunkles of the world think that sounds. It’s one reason he came up with this law enforcement bill, even if it means it’ll make his life tougher as a lawyer. Selfishly, he’d be better off leaving the system alone, since it allows him a whole variety of loopholes to jump through.”

“Except he won’t be working as a lawyer,” I commented. “If things work out for him, he’ll be governor and won’t have to give a damn.”

To her credit, Gail didn’t get defensive. “Okay,” she conceded, “I’ll admit he’s also a self-serving, conceited egomaniac who’s going to wind up disappointing his long-suffering wife. If he does pull off this miracle and become top dog, he’ll probably be aiming for something higher before he’s three terms into it. She’ll end up alone in Santa Fe and he’ll be in DC. He is a politician, after all. He needs the attention. He needs people to tell him they love him.”

“Could all that make him crooked if he got desperate enough? He hadn’t been making much of a statewide name for himself before this.”

Again, she avoided the expected denial, merely tilting her head reflectively and admitting, “Maybe.”

I laughed. “So much for Ivanhoe.”

She scowled at me, provoked at last. “I never said he was that. I said he backed his ideals with action. What idealist hasn’t run over a few people because he convinced himself it wasn’t too high a price? And who are you or I or anyone else to say they’re wrong? It’s a pretty blurry line between stepping on people’s toes for the right reason and running them over with ambition. I don’t see Jim Reynolds ever committing an immoral or illegal act for purely selfish reasons. I could see him doing it thinking the ends justified the means.”

“Sounds pretty arrogant,” I said.

“He is that,” she agreed. “He’s also a real believer, which is why Laura’s going to have to make up her mind to either make her peace or run for the hills.” She paused and then added, “Not that it’ll ever reach that stage-not with Mark Mullen standing ready to clip Jim’s wings.”

“The speaker?” I asked, surprised. I’d never heard Mullen’s and Reynolds’s names in the same sentence before. “What’s he got to do with it?”

“They’re eyeing the same gold ring. You watch. He’s not going to let Reynolds ride that bill to the governorship. Somehow or another, when it gets to the House, Mullen will take it over-kill it, amend it, abandon it in committee-‘let it hang on the wall,’ as they say up there. But he’ll remove Reynolds’s fingerprints from it. Mullen hasn’t spent thirty-plus years in the House without knowing how things work. And with Howell retiring, he feels he’s earned a promotion.”

I wiped the sweat from my face with a wet hand. “This may be more than I need to know right now.”

Gail smiled and returned to more immediate issues. “So you think Laura may be trying to hobble Jim’s horse?”

I laughed. “By framing her own husband? Interesting idea. I suppose she has the means to set it up-she said she was rich.”

“Very. All inherited. Believe it or not, they met on a ski slope. He was the rugged, handsome instructor, on vacation from law school. She was the wealthy snow bunny working hard to drive her father nuts. That part probably worked, but she hadn’t banked on Jim having dreams of his own.” She paused and then added, “I doubt she figured on falling in love with him like she did, either. She may hate the life, but she’s devoted to the man. That’s where your theory hits the rocks.”

I laughed. “My theory? This is your little movie. I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. I do know Stan Katz has his nose in the wind, though, so whatever it is, it’s not going to stay private for long.”

She made a disgusted face. “Great. That’ll really help clear things up.”

“He called me to ask if Reynolds had any ties to illegal dumping.”

She surprised me by not rejecting the notion out of hand. “As in hazardous materials?”

“Yeah. Why?”

She answered slowly-and enigmatically-“He’s represented a lot of people over the years. One of them might be thinking he didn’t get his money’s worth. That’s where I’d look.”

The thought had crossed my mind. As had the fact that Jim Reynolds-despite Gail’s opinion and his own wife’s support-might be a whole lot less pure than the driven snow.

Snow, as it turned out, was on everyone’s mind the next morning. Having held off entirely through a bitterly cold, bleak Christmas season, it seemed winter was trying to make amends all in one day. Looking out the window as I dressed, I couldn’t even see the garage. Slowly falling in thick, heavy flakes, it reminded me of a flurry of cherry blossoms torn suddenly from their stems. But a flurry without end.

I went downstairs and paused on the back doorstep, taking it in. This kind of snowstorm-dense, silent, and windless-has an effect unlike any other weather phenomenon. Rather than producing sound, it absorbs it; instead of displaying great havoc, it cuts off your sight. And yet it permeates every sense, less like an act of nature and more like a spiritual event. Most people walk around in such a snowfall as if blessed with new insight-or at least lost in childlike wonder.

Gail, on the other hand, was having none of it. Appearing next to me moments later, she merely glanced up, scowled, and said, “This’ll sure screw up traffic,” and disappeared into the whitewash like a thought fading from memory, heading for her car.

I followed her example a few minutes later, driving off without working my windshield wipers. The snow was dry, and the motion of the vehicle was enough to clear the glass, which allowed me to enjoy the snow-clad stillness unimpeded. I could almost imagine not being in a car at all, but traveling in a dreamlike state through some hopeless romantic’s version of utopia.

Except, of course, that Gail had been right. Not far from the house, I passed the first abandoned car in a ditch and after that was confronted by a series of traffic jams, confused drivers, and irritated plow operators. The scanner in my car murmured an endless stream of directives to ambulances, wreckers, and squad cars to aid those lost, hurt, and broken-down. The town I’d left the day before had been visited by a quiet, otherworldly, beatific disaster.

When I finally reached it, the office was a command center under siege, the dispatch room manned by a double shift, the hallways filled with milling, snow-dusted officers tracking muddy footprints behind them, and the air resonating with the sound of ringing phones and squawking radios. And yet, beneath it all, there was a lightheartedness. No one, it seems, can really take a storm like this too seriously, even in the midst of chaos and discomfort. Too many memories of sledding, snowballs, and the taste of it on your tongue get in the way.

Predictably, the detective squad was sparsely populated. Harriet was there, as was Ron. Willy, as expected, was not. Sammie, the sudden enigma, was also missing, no doubt bundled up with her newfound joy under a comforter.

My one concern was Tyler. “Where’s J.P.?” I asked Harriet.

“Returning from Waterbury. He radioed in a while ago. He’s on the interstate, not far north of here, but he’s having a tough time. Things are almost at a standstill. The weather report’s predicting three feet-a record-breaker.”

“He did say the lab came through big time,” Ron added from his desk. “’Course, he was up there all night bugging them.”

He looked it when he arrived an hour later-disheveled, in need of a shave, and with bloodshot eyes. But smiling.

He dumped an overstuffed briefcase on his desk and collapsed into a chair without removing his coat. “The print on the knife belongs to one Owen Tharp, aged nineteen. Last known address: Brookside Terrace. Supposedly lives there with an aunt, Judith Tharp Giroux. He’s unemployed, was being monitored by SRS until two years ago, and has been tested ADD, among other things. SRS told me his parents never married, his father’s unknown, and his mother died of alcoholism about eight years ago. He’s been in foster homes since he was three, never stayed in one for more than a few years, and didn’t finish high school.”

He paused to take a breath.

“Any criminal record?” I asked, saddened by the familiarity of this litany.

“You bet. Burglary, destruction of private property, criminal trespass, assault, possession of malt beverages, public disorderliness, and a shit-load of other stuff, mostly committed in Springfield and Bellows Falls, where he grew up. He did juvie time, too, but I couldn’t find out what for. My contact would only bend the rules so far.”

SRS was the state’s Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, largely designed to help those of Vermont’s children who were in peril. It was a swamped organization that was predictably either lauded or damned, depending on one’s viewpoint. I wouldn’t have worked there to save my life. They got my respect, though, even if their procedures sometimes drove me crazy.

“One other thing,” J.P. added with a broad smile. “Just in case you were thinking of an arrest warrant. The lab pegged that plaster cast I took of the tire impression to a cheap Taiwanese brand, sized to fit something small and equipped with the kind of knobby tread a teenager might put on a pickup. Aunt Judith is registered as owning an ’88 Chevy Luv pickup, pale blue.”

I turned to Ron Klesczewski. “The names Owen Tharp or Judith Giroux appear in any of those lists you been tabulating?”

He nodded, reaching for a thick folder. “Tharp’s does. I remembered it ’cause it sounded funny.” He started pawing through sheets of paper, pausing now and then to read. “Here it is,” he finally said. “Janice Litchfield mentioned him as a hanger-on. Nothing beyond that.”

“See if you can get her in here.”

Janice Litchfield had regained her composure since our last conversation. Now she was as brassy as the hardware puncturing what body parts I could see.

This time, I put her in the interrogation box.

“Why’d you pull me in again?” she demanded, sitting on a metal chair as if she’d been dropped from ten feet.

I was walking back and forth before her. “We were wondering if you’d thought of anything new that might help us nail Brenda’s killer.”

She began studying her bitten, flaking nails again. “I told you what I know.”

“You gave us some names. That was a start. You think of any others?”

“No.”

“You said you and Brenda were involved in some pretty risky things, any of which could’ve gone sour. Anything there that might’ve gotten her killed?”

“No.”

I stopped pacing. “You were also worried you might end up the same way.”

She flared up slightly. “She was stupid. I always had more brains than her. She was asking for it.”

“How?”

“Shootin’ her mouth off. Dissin’ the wrong people.”

I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and consulted it. “Which people?”

“Just people.” She was sullen.

“Like Jamie Good?”

“Sure. For one.”

I picked a name at random, although a familiar one. “Billy Conyer?”

“She liked Billy.”

“Walter Freund?”

“Yeah.”

“Frankie Harris?”

She looked up. “Frankie’s an old guy. He’s no threat.”

“They saw a lot of each other. Maybe she pissed him off somehow.”

She just shook her head.

“Owen Tharp?”

This time she laughed. “Owen? You gotta be kidding. Owen’s like a puppy dog, hanging around, diving for scraps. He wouldn’t scare nobody.”

“He know Brenda?”

She shrugged. “Everybody knows everybody.”

“They do drugs together? Have sex?”

“Owen’s always broke. That’s why he lives with that old bitch.”

“Judith Giroux?”

“Whatever.”

“You seen him around lately?”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Why’re you so interested in Owen? He’s like nowhere.”

“Maybe, but you’re not the only one being brought in for questioning, Janice. We’re talking to everybody, from the top dogs to the nobodies.”

“Well, you’re starting with a nobody there.”

“So when did you last see him?”

“I don’t know. A few days. He’s around, though. Ask Walter, if you’re so interested. He’s more Walter’s pet than anyone’s.”

I moved on. “You ever see Owen get mad?”

Janice’s nervous hands became still.

“You have, haven’t you?” I pressed.

“Sure.” But her surliness had lost its edge.

“Tell me about it.”

She looked up with something like wonder. “It was weird-like he flipped out. Walter was raggin’ him, like we all do. Owen invites it, the way he is. But this time he blew up. Came at Walter like he was going to kill him.”

“How?”

There was silence in the small bare room. I thought suddenly of the mantle of thick snow that was slowly enveloping the building, smothering everything beneath it.

“He grabbed a pen,” she finally said quietly. “Tried to use it like a knife.”

“What did Walter do?”

“He laughed.”

Brookside Terrace is a combination low-cost housing development/ condominium complex, which looks about as awkward as it sounds. Consisting of a scattering of brown-painted wooden structures reminiscent of either a run-down motel or a cheap ski-slope apartment building, it is tucked into a hillside and pinned there by the Whetstone Brook, which cuts across its front on its way through Brattleboro. Paralleling the water along the opposite bank is Route 9-variously called High Street, Western Avenue, and the Marlboro Road. As Vermont’s only southern, quasi-straight, horizontal traffic corridor, Route 9 is at the best of times crowded and, during rush hours, a nightmare. Thus the cheaper units at Brookside Terrace get the combined joys of little sunlight, limited access, long waits at the stop sign, and the pleasant, soothing, year-round sound of rushing water-punctuated by squealing tires and the roar of traffic.

Not that there was much of that when we approached the area in the early afternoon. The snow had continued unabated, and although the plows were beginning to catch up, at least on the primary thruways, traffic had pretty much called it quits. The snow’s one-dimensional whitewash had reduced visibility like an offshore fog bank, making distinguishing a car from the road beneath it a challenge.

There were three of us-Ron, myself, and Sammie, who had appeared at the office two hours late. I’d also arranged to have a patrol car with two uniformed officers stand by at the gas station down the road, despite the storm-related workload having gotten so bad that an extra shift had been called on duty.

Owen Tharp and his aunt lived in a long, low unit of apartments right by the edge of the brook-the first building to the left off the access bridge. I’d had Sammie telephone not fifteen minutes earlier, pretending she was from SRS, to talk to Owen about some made-up bureaucratic detail. Judith had answered first, confirming they were both at home, and Sammie had kept it brief and innocuous, closing with a comment about the weather. Owen had complained about the long-range buses being canceled that day.

Which had told us to either move fast or miss him altogether.

Ron and I took the front door of the apartment, sending Sam around back to keep an eye on the rear.

I knocked, standing to one side out of habit, Ron across from me. We didn’t have our guns out. Most arrests, especially of people with Owen’s largely meek reputation, are fairly dull affairs-low-key conversations ending with handcuffs and a depressing walk to the back of a car.

This one didn’t start out any differently. After a minute’s wait, the door handle turned, and we were greeted by a thin woman with her hair tied back, her face sharp and unpleasant, a cigarette between her fingers.

“What do you want?”

I let Ron do the talking. “Police, ma’am. Is Owen Tharp here?”

“Why?” she asked querulously, stepping more fully into the door.

That was all I needed. As Ron answered, “We have a warrant for his arrest,” I pushed by Judith Giroux and entered the dark apartment, closely followed by Ron.

“Hey,” Giroux yelled, grasping at the wall for balance, and knocking over a lamp. “You can’t do that.” And in a louder voice, “Run, Owen, run.”

We both heard a muffled crash from the back and charged in that direction, cautious at the doorways, guns now out. I keyed the mike of my portable radio and shouted at Sammie to watch out.

There was no response.

We entered a messy bedroom, slowly filling with freezing air from a wide-open window.

“Damn,” I muttered, and carefully poked my head outside.

Sammie was lying sprawled on her back, half in the water, nearby but barely visible in the unremitting snowfall.

“Sammie. You okay?”

She waved at me. “He went downstream. I slipped on a fucking rock.”

She fell again trying to stand.

I gave Ron a boost out the window and then joined him at the water’s edge. Whetstone Brook ran year-around, violently in spots and-especially downstream-sometimes between steep, ravine-like banks.

“Was he armed?” I asked Sammie as she joined us, soaked from the waist down.

“Not that I saw.” Her face was flushed with fury.

“All units,” I radioed. “Suspect has fled east along Whetstone Brook. Unknown whether he’s armed or not. Approach with extreme caution.”

Sammie was no longer interested in caution. Drenched and probably freezing already, she plunged off in pursuit down the middle of the stream bed, staggering on the uncertain footing.

Ron glanced at me quickly. I let out a sigh of frustration. “Guess we better keep her company.”

Our progress was predictably slow. Blinded by snow, deafened by the water’s roar, and confused by the hidden terrain, we tried keeping to the bank, stumbling every few feet, bruising our freezing hands on the slippery rocks. It quickly became impossible to differentiate between solid ground and water under the snow’s crust, and we both were soon wet to the knees, beginning a hypothermic descent that our bodies could only fight for so long. Sammie was probably already totally numb, but I wasn’t counting on that to slow her down.

As we went, I kept updating dispatch by radio, suggesting places where intercept teams could get to the water. But the weather, the traffic, and the number of accidents around town were limiting our stretched resources. The backup unit I’d had standing by had been notified too late to be of immediate use, and while they were now driving east to head off Owen farther downstream, I wasn’t sure they’d be successful, blue lights or not.

The terrain got worse. The banks steepened and the stream bed narrowed, forcing us deeper into the faster-running water. Now all three of us were soaked, and the initial sting of cold had become a violent throbbing, making numbness a blessing and frostbite a real possibility. I’d waited too long to call off what never should have started in the first place.

Complicating this, however, was Sammie. Barely visible ahead of us, making no pretense of fighting the rapids, she’d allowed herself finally to be simply swept along. Either because of the cold or her own hardheadedness, she’d gone beyond being rational.

“Ron,” I shouted over the water’s roar. “We got to get her out. To hell with Owen.”

Ron nodded and, to my utter astonishment, plunged headlong into the water, like a lifeguard into the summer surf.

We had struggled to just shy of the Williams Street bend in the stream, where an abrupt drop-off creates a quasi-chasm in the midst of a rocky, tree-choked glen. Although this spot is near the heart of one of the largest towns in Vermont, there was no evidence anywhere that we were within a hundred miles of civilization.

Except, just before the falls, for a narrow, low-slung metal trestle carrying a six-inch sewage pipe from one bank to the other.

As I gingerly drew within sight of it, unwilling to yield to the water’s rage as had my colleagues, I saw them both-along with Owen Tharp-draped or pinned against the overpass like bugs on a windshield wiper. Sammie had one arm hooked through the metalwork and the other arm around Owen’s neck, while Ron was keeping both of them from being carried over the edge to the rocks below. I updated the others by radio and, moving like an awkward, antiquated robot, tried to help Ron keep everyone alive.