Occam's razor

16

The morning after, I could still smell the gunpowder in the stagnant air of the hallway. It was very quiet, the street sounds barely audible through the walls. Yellow police tape had been strung up to isolate the entire floor, adding to the museum-like quality of the place. Conyer’s blood had dried to a nondescript brown.

I paused on the landing and looked down the corridor, beyond the coagulated pool and the scars the buckshot had left along the walls, trying to put aside the memories for the job at hand. It was hard to forget the bright flashes from Conyer’s pistol, not knowing if I would suddenly feel the numbing impact of a bullet.

Ron Klesczewski stepped into my line of vision from a side door, snapping me out of my reverie. “Hi, Joe. Heard you were headed this way. You get any sleep?”

From the look in his eyes, it was obvious he knew I hadn’t. “No.”

He smiled sympathetically. “Well, we may have lost out on a chat with Billy Conyer, but he left enough behind to keep us busy for a while.”

I drew abreast of the door we’d forced open just eight hours earlier. Given the outcome of that visit, our search of Conyer’s digs had been delayed by the post-shoot team’s priorities.

I peered over Ron’s shoulder at the room beyond. “I just hope it’s enough. I want to get moving on this.”

Ron stepped aside and let me in. The room was what we’d come to expect from the neighborhood-dark, stuffy, unclean, stripped of all but the essentials, and filled with the debris of a human being with little care for himself or his environment. Enhancing the flavor, the building’s heating system was still in overdrive, making the whole place feel like a sauna perched over a garbage dump. There was a jagged two-foot by four-foot hole in the side wall, which Conyer had created as a back door.

Willy stuck his head through the hole and smiled at me. “Hey, there, boss. Decide to join us before noon?”

“Drop it.”

He laughed. “Oh-oh. Joe’s grumpy. Must’ve not gotten laid.”

He didn’t know how close that cut. “What’ve you found so far, Willy?”

“Mostly just the by-products of a disgusting lifestyle, but we haven’t been at it long.”

“What’s the story on the three rooms? How was he able to cut through the walls with nobody knowing?”

“I checked into that,” Ron said from behind me. “It wasn’t coincidence they were empty, like we thought last night. Conyer rented the other two under assumed names.”

I looked at him closely. “How long ago?”

He glanced at his notepad. “January eighth.”

“Two days after Resnick was killed,” I said. “Anyone check if he had a bank account?”

Willy laughed. “Yeah. I don’t think he was into banks. I got his assets in a suitcase here. Something under five grand.”

“We checked the local branches,” Ron elaborated, “and we put it out on the wire. But he could’ve used an alias, like he did for the other two rooms. We might never find out for sure.”

I turned back to Willy. “That money in new bills or old?”

“Bit of both.”

“New ones banded or loose?”

“Loose.”

“Check those for prints. If we get lucky, maybe Conyer’s contractor left a fat thumbprint on each as he shelled ’em out. Who’s working the friends and relatives angle?” I asked.

Willy’s voice took on a slight edge, no doubt matching my own. “Sam. She could probably use some help, if you’ve finished busting our chops.”

I got the hint.

I tried clearing my mind on the short drive to the office, freeing it of last night’s shooting, of my conversation with Gail, and of my overall frustration. I knew I’d been overly terse with Ron and Willy. With all of us under pressure and in need of sleep, I was supposed to be setting an example of grace in the face of adversity.

Sammie was at her desk, poring over Ron’s notes. I sat in her guest chair, not bothering to remove my coat.

She glanced up. “You look beat.”

So much for that effort. “I’m okay. Willy told me you were chasing down Conyer’s family and associates.”

She pulled a sheet of paper from the file before her. “Yeah. He spent most of his time with the twenty-something crowd-big on bar-hopping, hell-raising, and recreational dope.”

“Looks like he was paid to do in Resnick. Willy found a suitcase full of cash.”

She stared with renewed interest at the contents of her file. “Huh-well, if he was the lead man, it sure doesn’t sound like the guy I’ve been reading about. One report describes him as a born underling-not a doer. According to his criminal records, he acted out now and then-assault and battery, aggravated assault, destruction of private property-but he never went over the top, and he always got busted in a group, as if he couldn’t be aggressive on his own, or needed someone else to lead the way.”

“So maybe he was at the bottom of a three-man totem pole.”

She sat back, looking thoughtful. “That’s what I was thinking. He could’ve stolen that hammer to qualify as one of the team-like a rite of passage.”

“Implying a big brother relationship somewhere,” I mused.

Sammie played the devil’s advocate. “On the flip side, he did a pretty good Rambo imitation last night. Could be he finally grew some balls and put a gang together-maybe the Mob paid him to hit one of their own.”

I shook my head. “I think he was being manipulated and felt he was in too deep to get out. That’s why he came out shooting. He must’ve been scared shitless-making holes in the walls, keeping his money in a suitcase, and sleeping three apartments over. When a small-timer becomes a murderer, he usually makes a mess of it-he doesn’t put together a complicated deal like what we’re trying to figure out. I think you’re right-someone was pulling his string.” I pointed my chin toward the paperwork. “So what’s your plan?”

“Check out the family-and his erstwhile playmates. He has two brothers who live in town. Another died of an overdose in Boston two years ago.”

“You want me to take them?”

She handed me one of her sheets. “Be my guest.”

Brian Conyer worked at the C amp;S Grocers warehouse north of town, an enormous enterprise, one of the largest suppliers of groceries in the Northeast and, depending on the year, the biggest business in the state of Vermont. Trucks came and went from the warehouse around the clock, serviced by a small army of loaders, stackers, freezer personnel, hi-lo operators, forklift drivers, and dozens of others. Given the constant turnover, the lack of intense prehiring screening, and the low expectations from both management and employees that the floor jobs had any upward mobility, the whole setup was predisposed to attract a certain slice of the population. Several of our customers had lain low at C amp;S at one time or another, which made it, paradoxically, one of the police department’s bigger allies. By offering jobs to people who might otherwise go into business for themselves, the company helped keep a lid on the crime rate.

According to a computer check I made before driving to C amp;S, Billy’s brother didn’t fit that special category, however. He was like the majority of workers there: high-school-educated, locally based, low-income, and, in all probability, with few illusions that the future would ever look any different.

I found him stacking pallets in the three-story-tall freezer-big enough to fit several houses-dressed in overalls so heavily insulated he looked ready to attack the Antarctic. I made no apologies for escorting him outside the building into the winter cold and around a corner that shielded us from the explosive belches of a row of eighteen-wheelers. If anything, I figured it would be warmer than where I’d found him.

He took off a glove, revealing a large, muscular, scarred hand, dug into his overalls, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He didn’t offer me one. He was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and apparently not given to idle chitchat. “I guess this is about Billy.”

It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t phrased with any great interest.

“Yes,” I admitted. “When did you hear about it?”

“The radio-this morning. During coffee break.”

“When did you come on?”

“Midnight.” He inhaled deeply and then mixed smoke and cold breath vapor into a cloud before him. He answered my questioning look by adding, “I’m working overtime right now. ’Nother four hours.”

“You haven’t called any of your family?”

He didn’t answer at first, which I assumed was for my benefit. I sensed Brian prided himself on being tough. “My brother Tim phoned. To let me know.”

“How was he taking it?”

Conyer shrugged. “He wasn’t crying, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not a close-knit bunch?”

This time, he smiled ruefully. “My folks didn’t work real hard in that department. My dad beat my mom, and we four boys beat on each other. Pretty basic.”

“Did you know what Billy was up to lately?”

“Nothin’ good.”

“I mean for a fact.”

He inhaled again, held it a moment, and blew out a smoke ring.

“For a fact? I didn’t know and I didn’t care.”

Timothy Conyer was in the employees’ break room at the back of Sam’s, once Brattleboro’s largest Army-Navy store, now its largest “outdoor outfitters”-a semantic concession to changing sensitivities. It was still a remarkable place, jammed with everything from wool shirts and dress slacks to ammunition and Swiss army knives. And it still had a section of surplus military goods. There had never been a time when I didn’t have something from Sam’s in my closet.

Tim Conyer was as slight as his brother Brian was massive, both in body size and demeanor. He rose nervously as I entered and immediately offered me a cup of coffee.

“Please. Have a seat.”

I accepted both offers, adding milk and sugar to my mug. “You know why I’m here?”

“I figured they’d be sending somebody.”

“Why’s that?”

He gave a quick, automatic smile. “Well, Billy… I don’t know. Isn’t that what you always do?”

I took a sip. It was hot and sweet and very good. “I suppose so. I heard you called Brian about it this morning.”

He allowed a small frown. “Yeah. Shouldn’t have bothered.”

“That’s basically what he said. According to him, there was no love lost between any of you.”

“He’s speaking for himself. We were a family, regardless how good we were at it. Brian just never made the effort.”

“Where’s he fit in terms of age?”

“The oldest. I’m the youngest. Maybe that has something to do with it. I didn’t see everything he did when we were growing up.”

“Your dad beating your mom?”

He smiled again, this time sadly. “He told you about that? I’m surprised. He usually writes it off as no big deal. I bet he didn’t tell you how it ended. Brian beat the crap out of him one night, and that was that. Dad split to find a different punching bag.”

“How did Billy fit into all this?”

Tim stared into the dark pool at the bottom of his own mug. “I always thought he and Robbie were the real victims-too young to defend themselves, too old to be oblivious like me. Bri and I were the lucky ones.”

“It was Robbie who died in Boston?”

He looked up at me sharply. “OD’d in Boston. Yeah. I had a nightmare once where I saw my mother and father swinging Robbie by his hands and feet and then throwing him onto an enormous needle-big as a spike-at the bottom of a ditch, skewering him like a butterfly to a corkboard. I didn’t need a shrink to explain that one to me.”

“But Billy stayed in town.”

“Yeah. His reaction was a little more complicated. He wanted to be a tough guy like Brian, but it didn’t come naturally. You could call his bluff pretty easily. For a while, all he did was hang out with younger kids-he could dominate them. But I guess that didn’t do it for him, ’cause later it was just the opposite. He’d spend all his time with older jerks who pretended they were God’s gift to cool.”

“Like who?”

He glanced around the room vaguely. “Oh, I don’t know. Jamie Good, Walter Freund, people like that.”

Both names had been mentioned by Janice Litchfield in connection with Brenda Croteau. The bridges between the Resnick homicide and Brenda’s were multiplying. “He hang around with Dwayne Matthews?” I asked, figuring I’d start with Croteau’s boyfriend.

But I drew a blank. “Who?”

“Janice Litchfield?”

“Oh, sure. He knew Janice. Everyone knows her. That wasn’t anything special, though. They were just friends.”

“Owen Tharp?”

His eyes widened at a name that was now headline news. “Owen? Is that what this was all about? Billy got killed because of Owen?”

I shook my head emphatically. “I didn’t say that. Owen comes from that circle-so did your brother. I just wondered if they knew each other.”

“Sure, they did. Owen was one of the younger kids Billy liked to push around.”

“Sounds like everyone pushed him around.”

Tim Conyer suddenly became pensive. “Yeah. He used to remind me of Robbie that way, sometimes-everybody’s punching bag, including his own.” He looked at me quizzically. “That’s what makes his killing that woman so weird. I never would’ve thought Owen had that in him.”

“Witnesses said he’d lash out sometimes-violently.”

Conyer nodded. “I suppose so. I saw it, too. But that was like when my brothers and I were kids. We’d slug it out-sometimes pretty good, too-but there was always a limit.”

I finished my coffee. “Tim, we have evidence Billy was involved in the killing of that man on the railroad tracks a while back. That’s why we went to see him last night-and why we think he decided to shoot it out. Do you know anything that might explain that? Did he talk recently about some money coming his way, or landing a big score, or maybe making some new friends?”

Tim was already shaking his head. “No. He was excited about something, but he never told me what it was. He probably knew I’d give him flak about it. I used to tell him he was headed for trouble, not that he ever listened.”

“How ’bout this last crowd of his-Good and the others? Any of them likely candidates for the railroad tracks killing? There might’ve been three people in on that.”

He looked at me helplessly. “Maybe. I don’t know. I have a hard time thinking of anybody killing somebody else. Billy’s friends aren’t nice people, but I always saw them more as show-offs, not killers.”

That night, as if by unspoken arrangement, Gail and I were at home at close to a normal hour. We set about making dinner as usual, dividing the labor, where I sliced and diced and she did arcane things at the stove. At first we spoke tentatively, generally touching on the day’s activities, acting as if this were a first date and we two people only vaguely acquainted. There was an oddly competitive feeling about it, as if each of us were daring the other to open an intriguing but ominous package placed between us.

“Gail,” I finally began, “I know some of this is probably just in my head. Maybe it’s a midlife crisis or something.”

We had finally settled down at the small breakfast table in the kitchen, in front of a meal neither one of us had the appetite to eat.

“Midlife crises don’t happen to two people simultaneously,” she argued. “This isn’t just your problem.”

I waved an empty fork at the roof over our heads. “Is it this? Living together? We were doing pretty well before.”

Her smile was forlorn. “Moving in together wasn’t what changed things, Joe.”

I was irritated she thought I’d belittle what she’d been through. “I know that. But it’s something we can do something about. I can’t take back the rape.”

Now she looked angry. “The rape isn’t yours to do anything about. It just happened. It wasn’t preventable. But it did happen to me. It affected both of us-I know that-and it cost you, too. But it cost me more.”

I replaced the fork carefully, struggling to choose correctly from a tangle of emotional options. “I’m not trying to take ownership of it, Gail. Or play it down. I just meant there has to be a way for us to move onwards-as a couple. It was a life-altering thing, but I don’t see why it has to destroy how we feel about each other.”

“Was it the rape that started you feeling differently?” she asked, still suspicious.

I knew most of my choices were charged with harm and hurt. We were like two glasses, filled to the brim, balancing on an unsteady tray held between the both of us.

“It was the rape,” I began slowly, “that changed the course of your life. I’d gotten used to the ways things were, and I had trouble keeping pace with the new direction you were taking.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but I held up my hand, suddenly clear on what I wanted to say. “Please, hang on. There’s no fault implied there. I was amazed at how you rallied-I still am. And even more amazed at how you grew from an event that’s ended other women’s lives. In fact, it made me feel like I was standing still in the middle of some road, while you were making tracks like there was no tomorrow. Your rebirth, if you want to call it that, left me wondering what I had done lately-stuck in the same job, the same town, the same routine. I began wondering what possible worth I could be to you.”

“Joe,” she began to interrupt, her voice softer, but I stopped her again.

“Let me get this out. I’m not playing for sympathy here. I’m trying to be realistic. For whatever reasons, you’ve been given a second shot at life, and you’re going at it hammer and tongs-as you should. It’s not all that different from before, after all-being a Realtor, a selectman, all those board positions you had-but now there’s an intensity that wasn’t there before. You used to do what you did because life just turned out that way. Now I don’t know if I can keep up with you, or if it’ll be any good if I try.”

One of the things I liked most about Gail was her reluctance to tell people what they wanted to hear. She didn’t say she was sorry when she wasn’t, didn’t offer condolences when she didn’t feel them, and didn’t dole out sentimental soothings just to make an issue go away.

She could have argued against what I’d just said, but I wasn’t surprised she didn’t.

“Does this tie into when the AG threw the book at you?” she asked.

I thought about that for a moment. The year before, I’d been framed by people who’d wanted me out of the way, and a Young Turk from the Attorney General’s office had wasted no time playing into their hands. Only a revelation of the truth and a last-minute pardon from the governor had saved my job. Part of the AG’s reasoning had been that my living with a younger, richer, upwardly mobile woman-with whom I could no longer keep pace-had made me open to corruption. He’d been wrong on the facts, but he’d cut close to the bone emotionally. I had been feeling outdistanced.

“Partly,” I admitted. “One of the reasons we always worked so well together was because we gave each other lots of space. We moved in together because you needed the company-you were wounded. Temporarily. But now that you’re healthy again, I’m feeling a little like the nurse who’s been allowed to stay on just for sentimental reasons. You’re so strong and so motivated and so wrapped up in the things you’re doing, I guess I’ve started to feel a little sorry for myself.”

“And you want your old life back,” she said.

I shook my head. “That’s oversimplifying it. I want to know what you’re feeling. I want us to find something that works for both of us. I’m not pretending we can just turn the clock back, and I sure as hell don’t want us to split up. What I used to feel being with you was an inner calm-a sense of completeness. I just want to know if that can be revived.”

There was more welling up inside me-all on the same theme. But I fell silent, knowing that to go on would be either futile or unnecessary-and fearing that I’d said too much already.

Gail got up and circled the small table and pulled me to my feet. She kissed me long and hard, her arms wrapped tightly around me. When she pulled back, her eyes were moist, as were mine, but her voice was recharged with purpose. “I’ll never meet another man like you-ever-and I don’t plan on losing you now. But I don’t want to talk anymore. I want to take you to bed. Okay?”

I nodded and followed her upstairs.