Occam's razor

13

Leverett, Massachusetts, is between Amherst and the Vermont border on one axis, and Interstate 91 and the Quabbin Reservoir on the other, which puts it neither in a popular recreational area nor along the highway’s heavily commercial corridor. Once home to the largest general store in the county-a hundred and fifty years ago-Leverett township covers some twenty square miles and contains four minute villages, almost no businesses at all, and just under two thousand commuters, retired hippies, stay-at-home workers, and a few retirees.

As Peter Manning had mentioned at the intel meeting the week before, it was an odd place to headquarter a trucking company.

Manning was with me now, riding shotgun as he’d promised he would, but outfitted in his absurdly resplendent state police uniform, complete with shiny black riding boots, peaked cap, and patent leather Sam Browne belt. If we’d been in his cruiser, I would have felt like a refugee being escorted out of the country. Since I was driving my car, however, it looked more like I’d kidnapped the lion tamer from a circus act.

The six-foot-four Manning obviously picked up on my quick fashion appraisal. He cast me a sideward glance as I negotiated the narrow, snowbanked roads leading into the heart of Leverett, and smiled. “I’m hoping,” he explained, “that the guy we’re about to visit shows more respect for the uniform than he has for anyone wearing it.”

“You shouldn’t have any problems, then. Who is he, anyway?”

“Charlie Timson. He’s actually a pretty good guy, for a sleazeball. Twenty or thirty years ago, he probably would’ve been just another good ol’ boy, playing cards with the sheriff every Saturday night. But what with trucking regs, insurance rates, and environmental laws, he either had to move to a more urban area or follow the line of least resistance.”

“You made it sound worse at the intel meeting,” I commented.

“It’s not good.” Manning sighed. “But we’ve just gotten used to it. No one’s as innocent as they used to be. This part of the state was once like Vermont. Not much of Boston’s shit ever reached us. Now we’re ankle-deep in it, and it’s getting deeper fast. Springfield’s where Boston used to be, and Holyoke, Northampton, Pittsfield, and the rest are all going down the tubes.” He waved a hand at the passing trees outside. “I mean, look around. This is Leverett, for Christ’s sake. The only income is from property taxes. And here we are, looking for a bad guy.”

He suddenly turned to look at me. “You ever been down here?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Old hippies on the north side, Amherst commuters to the south, divided by a row of hills. That’s Leverett in a nutshell.” He pointed ahead. “You want to take a left here.”

The roads were twisting and hemmed in by dense forest. Leverett seemed like a total wilderness.

“Timson operates just north of Rattlesnake Gutter. The Gutter’s like a deep ravine between two mountains, except there’s no stream bed. Nothing. I heard that fourteen thousand years ago, when the last ice age was wrapping up, hundreds of square miles of glacier water were backed up just north of here looking for a way out. It finally broke through and formed a miniature Grand Canyon. But when it was over, all that was left was a river chasm with no river-a gutter. Neat, huh?”

I smiled at his contagious enthusiasm. “We going to see it?” I asked.

But he shook his head sadly. “There’s a road down the middle of it, but they don’t clear it during winter. Probably worried some plow operator’ll take the Nestea plunge off one of the cliffs. Too bad we had that storm, or I could’ve showed it to you. Slow down here. Timson’s place is right around the corner.”

We came upon an old, rusting, corrugated building laden with snow, its dooryard haphazardly plowed so that only one of three truck bays was cleared. The place looked abandoned, with no vehicles or people in sight. I parked uncertainly near a snowbank and killed the engine.

“You sure he’s here?” I asked Manning. He opened his door to a blast of arctic air. “Oh, yeah. He holes up inside like a hibernating bear.”

I was only half out of the car when the bear in question appeared through a small door cut into the building’s side, dressed in an oil-smeared parka randomly hemmed with frayed duct tape. He looked like a creation gone missing somewhere between Jack London and John Steinbeck.

Charlie Timson was short, round, broad-shouldered, and stamped by a life of hard, rough work. But he was also graced by the thin polish of a working-class entrepreneur. The resentment I saw in his blunt face as he appraised Peter was almost instantly masked by the broad smile and proffered handshake of a man who had only slowly come to appreciate the advantages of a feigned friendly greeting over an extended middle finger.

“What can I do for you?” he asked in a consciously neutral voice. Peter and I had earlier decided that I’d take the lead, leaving him to play the implied muscle.

“Charlie Timson? I’m Lieutenant Joe Gunther, of the Brattleboro Police Department. This is Sergeant Peter Manning. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions.”

His small, careful eyes widened slightly. “Brattleboro? Haven’t been up there in a while.” He made no move to invite us inside, no doubt hoping to keep things short.

“This actually concerns one of your trucks.”

He acted out a lapse of memory, scratching his head. “Oh, right-the ten-wheeler. What a pain in the ass.”

“It may be a little more than that. You mind if we step inside?”

He checked his watch and sighed irritably. “I don’t have much time. You know I’m not responsible for whatever people do with those trucks, right? It’s in the lease. I don’t know anything about what happened up there, except that until I get it back, I’m out one truck. I told that to whoever called me from your office.”

“Things have developed since then,” I explained.

That was Manning’s unspecified cue. As Timson opened his mouth, presumably to stave us off in another way, Peter stepped up next to me, towering over both of us, and stared down at him. “Cut the crap, Charlie. It’s a murder now.”

Nothing came out of Timson’s open mouth for a moment. When it did, it had no punch left to it. “I’m not involved in that.”

“Then invite us in,” I suggested.

Without another word, he turned on his heel and led the way into the ramshackle building.

The interior was a huge metal cavern-dark, echoing, and inhabited by the enormous shadows of an assortment of trucks, backhoes, and service equipment. Parked against one wall, a trailer was incongruously perched on its wheels, as if ready for instant flight, its windows providing the only light.

The building was almost as cold as outside.

“Not doing much work these days?” Peter asked Timson’s back.

Marching toward the trailer, Timson didn’t bother turning to look at him. “I do just fine.”

The office beyond the trailer’s flimsy door looked like a gang of vandals had ripped it apart. The chairs were torn and stained, the carpeting was in shreds, there were holes in the wall paneling, and paper was strewn everywhere. Timson wandered through it unaffected, heading for a battered metal desk at the far end, behind which he barricaded himself in a squealing chair. Peter and I remained standing.

Timson’s voice regained its previous strength. “So what’s this bullshit about a murder? I didn’t hear nothin’ about it.”

“The driver of your truck was killed,” I told him, “which naturally makes us a little curious about your role in the whole deal.”

His features contorted into a dark scowl, but again Manning interrupted him. “Charlie, think about what’s happening here. It’s not about poor maintenance, or sloppy records, or playing shell games with your trucks. A man’s head was crushed under a locomotive. The rig he’d been driving was loaded with haz mat, probably supplied by the Mob. I’m not saying you know anything about that, but if you don’t think we can’t use it to drag your butt in front of a judge, you’ve been living on another planet.”

“I don’t know anything,” he complained, spreading his arms wide. “I swear. You saw what I got in the shop. The leases I sign out sometimes don’t come back for years. The customers do the inspections, the maintenance, and everything else. I just send ’em a check, or deduct it from their lease. Somebody wants a truck, and I got a lease running out, I send ’em to where it is and do the paperwork by mail. I got something like twenty rigs out there, and I lease over half of those myself, for Christ’s sake. I never see any of ’em till some shit like this comes down.”

“You’ve had enough time to check your records since one of my men called you,” I said. “Who did you contract that truck out to?”

Timson shook his head. “I told you then, I don’t got it to look up. I can’t find those records. I did try-looked all over the place, but you can see what…”

His voice trailed off as Peter grasped the edge of his desk, and pivoted it to one side as if he were opening a door, exposing Timson on his creaky chair as though he were a hedgehog perched on a stool.

“What the hell’re you doing?” he asked nervously, grasping the chair’s arms.

Manning stepped into the void the desk had filled and stood so close to Timson their knees were almost touching. Timson’s head cranked far backward to look up into Manning’s face.

“You can’t do this, you know?” His voice sounded strangled.

Manning ignored him. “I thought we had an understanding, Charlie. We’re investigating a homicide, and you’re a member of the public, eager to help us do our job.” He pulled a long legal document and laid it on the other man’s lap.

“That’s a duces tecum warrant to search these premises for any paperwork concerning that truck. It’ll give you all the cover you need to hide from the people you’re really worried about. We were just hoping you’d spare us stripping this place of every scrap of paper in it-including all licenses and operating permits-and taking the next six months to carefully go through it, looking for what you could hand over in two minutes.”

“I’d sooner lose some money than my life,” he said.

Manning was unsympathetic. “We issue the right press release, you won’t have that choice. Your playmates don’t like messes, Charlie, and you ain’t one of the family, so to speak.”

Timson’s face darkened. “Get out of my way, asshole,” he growled at Peter, trying to summon a few shreds of self-respect.

Manning stepped back. Timson got to his feet and then surprised us by lumbering up onto his desk and reaching for one of the acoustic tiles overhead. He popped it back with his fist, groped around its edges for a moment, and retrieved a single brown manila envelope.

He handed it to me before climbing back down. “There. That’s all of it. And you found it on your own.”

Manning smiled. “You got anything else interesting up there?”

“Fuck you.”

I opened the envelope and studied its contents.

“Could you do that someplace else?” he asked peevishly. “I got things to do.”

“It says here the truck was last leased to Katahdin Trucking of Portland, Maine. Any chance that even exists?”

His answer for once sounded reasonable. “I’m supposed to know that?”

Back in the car, Manning indicated the envelope. “That going to do you any good?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “Katahdin Trucking is probably only the second layer in God knows how many more, and I bet the deeper we dig, the harder it’ll be to find even this much.

“It’s not totally useless, though,” I added. “At least we know we’re dealing with something organized.” I paused and thought once more of Jim Reynolds’s open filing cabinet filled with old cases.

“And maybe something with history.”

My next meeting with Jim Reynolds didn’t come at my instigation, however. Shortly after my trip to Massachusetts, I was summoned to Tony Brandt’s office.

“Run down what we’ve got on the senator,” he requested after I’d settled into one of his chairs.

“Not much yet,” I admitted. “But suspicions are growing. His name comes up every time we turn around. Somebody’s calling Katz, too, trying to link Reynolds to both illegal dumping-and by inference Phil Resnick’s death-and to Brenda Croteau.”

Brandt raised his eyebrows. “Anything to it?”

“Don’t know. It might be the same people who got us all excited about the Crown Vic-playing political hardball. I have Ron looking into Reynolds’s past, but so far he’s come up empty. I’ll keep at it, though.”

Brandt studied me a moment. “You sound like there might be something there.”

I gave him an equivocating wobble of the hand, tilting it back and forth. “It’s more like an itch I can’t reach. You heard about the one solid connection we did find between the two cases, right?”

Brandt thought a moment. “Yeah-what’s his name? The poker player who was also one of Brenda’s customers.”

“Frankie Harris. I’m just thinking that if there’s one, there could be others. After all, we still don’t know what we’re dealing with here. The Owen Tharp case looks simple enough, but with Resnick I have no idea. Three men execute a Mob-connected illegal dumper from New Jersey on the railroad tracks in the middle of the night, using a dummied-up copy of a car belonging to one of our state senators. What the hell’s that all about? And I can’t get that office break-in out of my head, either. Unfortunately, about all I’ve got are questions,” I paused a moment, watching his face. “Why do you ask?”

“Reynolds’s Judiciary Committee is about to vote out his bill-they’re taking testimony from supporters and giving it as much armor as they can before sending it out into the world. I wanted to know if we were sitting on some smoking bomb that would make that whole exercise a waste of time.”

“Not that I know of,” I answered carefully, adding, “Why would we care anyway?”

Brandt gave me an enigmatic smile. “Ah. Well, it’s not just what they’re doing in Montpelier-it’s what I’ve been asked to do for them, and where I’m hoping you’ll help me out. Reynolds is being pretty careful with this bill, despite all the ‘bold and radical’ crap in the press. For one, he made sure it was introduced by his committee and not by him alone-which gives it more clout-and now he wants to make sure the same committee gives it a dress rehearsal with as many tough questions as they can raise. Also, I think that by dragging that process out just a little, Reynolds is hoping to orchestrate it so that the other Senate committees that get to consider it won’t have much time to do so. My guess is he’s shooting to have the bill reach the House just before Town Meeting Day in March, so the speaker and his minions will get the message on the village level that the people are behind it.”

I appreciated the civics lesson but dreaded whatever was lurking behind it. I waited silently, not making it too easy for him, knowing I wouldn’t like what I was about to hear.

I didn’t. Brandt cleared his throat slightly and said, “Anyhow, long story short, they asked me-along with a bunch of other people-to be a committee witness. I was hoping you’d go in my place. I was told it would be pretty informal. More like a think-tank session.”

I sat stock-still for a moment, analyzing my emotions. It was a favor he was asking of me, not something I had to do. But it was coming from a man who’d stuck his neck out for me many times in the past, and whom I considered a good friend. Finally, much as I disliked most politics, I was also-like a lot of people-a little curious about its workings.

“You got something else going?” I asked gratuitously, mostly to increase his obvious discomfort.

He shifted in his chair. “No more than anyone else. To be honest, Joe, I’m asking you for two reasons-one pretty straightforward, the other a little more self-serving.” He held up his index finger. “One, you’ve been part of more task forces, special units, and out-of-department assignments than anyone. You know how the inter-jurisdictional system works, its strong and weak points, and you probably have your fair share of ideas about how to improve it.” He raised a second finger. “Two, I’ve been known to ride a little high in the saddle politically, now and then, and I’m worried if I go up there, they’ll start taking shots at me for ancient history and maybe lose track of what they should be doing. I think Reynolds has an interesting idea with this one-department-for-the-whole-state approach. I know it’s got problems and would never fly as such, but this state is long overdue for a change, and I don’t want to be a part of anything that screws that up.”

I couldn’t argue his points, or find cause to turn him down, and I’d satisfied my childish urge to make him squirm. Also, while he’d been talking, I’d realized that since Jim Reynolds was going to be in my sights for a while longer, it wouldn’t hurt to see him functioning on his own turf.

I finally nodded and stood up. “Okay, you got a deal. When do I go?”

The trip to Montpelier this time was completely unlike its predecessor, the passing countryside as draped in crystalline white as it had been brown and drab before. The contrast was more pronounced several miles east of town, at the interstate’s highest point crossing the Green Mountains, where a brief rain the previous night had coated every twig of every tree with a shimmering sheath of near-blinding clarity. Driving through this corridor of sparkling, glassy trees, with the deep blue, unsullied sky overhead pulsating with the sun’s cold energy, I felt transported far away from the often discouraging world I normally inhabited. It was with palpable regret that I reached the western downslope of this exposed bit of road and continued to my rendezvous with a room full of politicians.

Montpelier was busier than during my earlier visit and the parking that much worse, neither of which helped my darkening mood.

In contrast to the startlingly clear air, the ring of surrounding snowy hills, and the prominent gold dome of the capitol in their midst-as bright as a sparkler adorning a birthday cake-the town looked gritty and flattened this time, like some bit of soil ingrained in the palm of an enormous celestial hand.

Adding to my apprehension was the presence of several haphazardly parked cars and trucks, all stamped with the logos of various newspapers, radios, and television stations. I started thinking that Tony Brandt might have been a little coy with his reasons for staying home.

The first floor, under the two chambers and the governor’s ceremonial office, housed the Senate committee rooms and was as packed with people as a subway during rush hour. Shedding my coat in the sudden heat, I elbowed my way to the sergeant-at-arms’ office to announce my arrival. She made a brief phone call I couldn’t hear and told me in a loud voice to stand by the doorway-that someone would soon arrive to escort me to the committee room.

In the ten minutes that took, I watched some of the hurly-burly of a citizen-legislature in action.

In most states, the capitol is called the “people’s house,” or something close to it, although most visitors know there are limits to how much access they have to this purportedly open domain. A trip to these places is not unlike a tour of a museum-grand, quiet, a little stuffy and sterile, and yet imbued with the sense that something significant is occurring just out of sight.

In Vermont’s State House, the only museum quality in evidence is in the architecture and the artwork adorning it, which is all the more remarkable for being jammed into such a small building. Otherwise, the whole place was reminiscent of a high-class hotel during a wedding reception or a famous person’s wake. People milled all over, talking, laughing, arguing, shaking hands, and grabbing elbows. I recognized a few of them from pictures I saw in the papers, and many more by their attire as workmen, farmers, or well-paid lobbyists. But whether in overalls or three-piece suits, they all wandered the halls with comfortable familiarity, knowing that here there were almost no rooms they couldn’t enter with impunity. The crowd reinforced the feeling that while most governments exuded a sense of privacy, waste, and special privilege, Vermont’s was still small enough-at least in this picturesque, cluttered setting-to seem viable, real, and eminently approachable.

Eventually, a teenage page, dressed in an awkwardly fitting uniform of green blazer, gray slacks, and overlarge black running shoes, tugged on my sleeve and led me down a dark hall to a room marked “Judiciary.”

It was small enough-and with high enough walls-to make me feel I was standing at the bottom of a large can. A can so full of people, both sitting and standing, that at first it looked as if there were no possible way through them.

Excusing myself repeatedly, however, and choosing my steps with care, I made my way slowly to the large table in the middle and the one empty chair I was obviously supposed to occupy. Surrounding the table in concentric rings were several senators, their assistants, guests, lobbyists, and finally a row of journalists standing against the walls and windows, holding pads, tape recorders, cameras, or light-equipped camcorders. It was my first glimpse of just how big the so-called “Reynolds Bill” was playing.

The man himself sat opposite me, flanked by his Senate colleagues. Even sitting he looked oversized, his unruly hair crowning a head more proportioned for statuary than for human anatomy. He identified me, introduced me to the others, and ran down a small list of my achievements. He did not mention that I was here substituting for my boss.

Over the next hour and a half, against a steady background of people shuffling in and out of the undersized, stuffy room-and to the accompaniment of the occasional camera click or whir-I answered questions about law enforcement in Vermont from my personal perspective. It was easier than I’d thought it would be back home, where for the past several days I’d been boning up on practices and protocols. I discovered that these lawmakers were remarkably ignorant of what I did for a living, asking me questions so simple at times that I suspected I was being tested less for my knowledge than for my kindness to the mentally challenged.

This was not true of Jim Reynolds, of course. Being one of the few elected lawyers in the State House, he was used to navigating the waters I traveled. But he was careful not to show that off and spent most of his time encouraging his colleagues to follow me through an elementary primer of police procedure, using me as his foil in describing a system often redundant, wasteful, inefficient, and costly. It was masterfully done, I had to admit, as I slowly watched my interrogators become increasingly confused by what I was trying to keep simple. Reynolds had a point to make, and he was manipulating everyone but himself into making it.

I had worried that at some point I’d be asked my personal opinion of the bill and its ramifications, but here again, Reynolds showed a subtle control. While those kinds of questions did occasionally come up, he always swooped in and convincingly urged that at this early stage such prejudices be put aside. Toward the end, like a well-intentioned trail boss watching his herd simply wandering away, I heard my bland and placid testimony sounding more like a resounding condemnation-all due to Reynolds’s carefully worded guidance.

As I picked my way toward the room’s exit at last, having been solicitously thanked for my appearance, I could already visualize the next day’s headlines, touting me as a clarion for change.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to wait that long. I hadn’t placed one foot into the hallway before I was confronted by a short, square state trooper I knew to be big in their labor union-a strong organization within the state’s most powerful police force and, as such, a two-headed entity that constantly caught heat from almost every other agency in Vermont. The Vermont state police endured the same barbs suffered by all dominant organizations. Some were deserved, others generated from pure envy, but the value of either was usually lost in prejudicial rhetoric. It no longer mattered who was right anymore, or even that the VSP had recently been making great strides in an effort to be more inclusive. The division had been drawn long ago, and although both the VSP and the rest of us talked constantly about being one big happy family, both also took pride in celebrating one side of that line at the expense of the other. It was but one of the obstacles Reynolds was confronting, and as the short state trooper fell into step beside me, it was the one I was going to have to deal with. “Jesus, Joe. You trashed us pretty good in there,” he said in a low voice.

“If I trashed anyone, it was the whole kit-and-caboodle. You guys run a better ship than most.”

“Oh, come on. All those comments about how we work. You made us look like the Pentagon or something, and you’re not even one of us.”

I stopped and looked at him. “I’m a cop just like you are. The whole point of this exercise is to try to make that the only relevant distinction-not the uniform, not the town, not the budget or the turf battles. I wasn’t picking on the VSP-I’m not even sure I mentioned your name. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to deny how much waste and redundancy there is across the board.”

He looked like I’d slapped him for paying me a compliment. “What about the efforts we been making to open communications? The computer link-ups, the advisory boards, user groups, task forces, the exchange programs, and all the rest?”

“I told them about that. I even stressed what a positive development it was.”

“You made it sound like it wasn’t working.”

“It’s not-not so long as we treat each other like competing rivals.”

His eyes widened. “Jesus Christ. It’s positive but it’s not working? No wonder they had you in there. You sound like one of them.”

I half opened my mouth to answer and then gave it up, saying only, “I gotta go.”

It had been a jarring conclusion to a confusing experience, and it left me resenting Tony Brandt for sending me here, and respecting Jim Reynolds for having orchestrated the outcome he’d sought-a conflict of loyalties that galled me instinctively, and one I tried sorting out all the way home.