Occam's razor

27

Sandy Corcoran’ssimple recipe for using Walter to find whoever had ordered Phil Resnick killed had one obvious, glaring flaw-and with our inability to locate Walter, our investigation finally rolled to a complete stop, despite a national distribution of his picture and description.

Happily, our misfortune wasn’t contagious. Gail and McNeil finally found enough common ground to work out a deal. Owen Tharp agreed to a fifteen-years-to-life sentence for second-degree murder, making him eligible for parole in twelve years, which Jack Derby spun into a bragging point as the summer campaigning began picking up speed. In the face of a few media grumbles about Walter-as with a cartoon showing Derby à la Teddy Roosevelt with his foot on a dead rabbit, and a grizzly escaping over the horizon-the candidate merely blamed us for not getting our man. The press wasn’t all that interested, in any case.

Tempers cooled between Gail and Derby also, allowing her to graciously serve notice that she’d be moving to the StayGreen job by summer’s end, and with sad predictability the flight of Walter Freund and the fate of his two lower-class victims slipped off the front page.

Our squad was left to pursue all the deferred day-to-day business that had piled up when things were hot and to deal with the fact that, posturing aside, Derby had been right-we hadn’t gotten our man. Not a week went by when we didn’t meet to discuss Walter’s open file-and to wonder what might be in it that we simply couldn’t see.

And that wasn’t our only aggravation, although it topped the list. As spring gave in to summer, the Reynolds Bill saga reached the level of comic opera, affecting every cop within the state along the way.

Mark Mullen’s strategy of disassembling the bill and remaking it in his own image reached a climax in late May, when his special committee finally reported to a restless and bored Legislature that-aided by many witnesses, much thought, and the application of old-fashioned pragmatism-it had taken Reynolds’s radical notion of replacing those sixty-eight agencies with a single cost-saving unit and had “amended” it by slapping on a sixty-ninth.

To be called the Vermont Bureau of Investigation-a dismissive nod to Reynolds that while his plan had been gutted, he’d come up with a great name-this new creation was to do what the Vermont State Police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations had been doing for years for those communities lacking full-service departments. A loosely structured, minimally bureaucratic entity, VBI was to handle all so-called major crimes, including, among others, murder, rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, and arson with death resulting. Operated by the Department of Public Safety’s now legislatively mandated and funded Criminal Justice Services, and reporting directly to the Attorney General-who could at his discretion dole out prosecutions to the state’s twelve state’s attorneys-VBI was to have full reign throughout the state, directed by statute to assume responsibility of all major crime investigations, regardless of which other agency was handling them to begin with. Thus, from the state police down to the lowliest constable, everyone was to give the big cases to VBI. Agencies could keep their detective squads-the lesser-ranked crimes, of which there were plenty, would still need local addressing-the state police would maintain its BCI, and all uniformed forces would pretty much keep their traditional roles, with a renewed emphasis on community policing. Commissioner Stanton would not become a cabinet secretary.

In short, it was the ideal political solution, designed to look good on paper, sound good on the stump, and drive the people it affected the most totally insane. Not a single cop I knew liked it.

Not that Reynolds gave in without a murmur. Although the House okayed Mullen’s compromise bill-largely because they were eager to get home to their jobs or start running for reelection-it still had to go to a conference committee, where Reynolds got to make his final pitch.

As his cherished bill had begun to unravel, he’d taken advantage of Mullen’s transparent maneuvers to wrap himself in a martyr’s cloak, decrying for weeks on end the death of common sense. So when the time came for three senators to meet with three representatives to hammer out the final bill, he offered himself for service. The Senate’s president-also the lieutenant governor and another contender for Governor Howell’s office-was the man whose job it was to make those three appointments. But while he couldn’t in all decorum deny a slot to the chair of the Judiciary Committee-and the author of the original bill-he could and did saddle him with two Senate colleagues who sided with Mark Mullen’s view of reality.

So, at five-against-one before the conference committee even met, the outcome was preordained. Reynolds was reduced to making one last speech to his colleagues in the Senate, mourning the loss of a potentially high-quality, well-trained, efficiently run organization to a disparate clutter of unevenly trained and experienced officers reporting to a crowd of over five dozen bosses. It was clear, brief, and delivered with great heart, and when he was finished, there was a genuine tang in the air of an opportunity missed despite all his listeners’ knowing it really hadn’t stood a chance from the start.

The new bill soon passed. VBI became law, the various bureaucrats in charge of it disappeared to turn it into reality, and all of us in law enforcement waited until January, when things were slated to come on line and our fates to be decided.

The press kicked it around for weeks, first siding with Reynolds, then trying to predict the future, and eventually-tentatively-conceding that maybe Mullen hadn’t been so self-serving after all. Echoing the speaker’s own mantra that Reynolds had been hunting flies with an untested, high-cost artillery piece, editorials began agreeing that Mullen’s proposal had cut to the root cause of the problem-the consolidation of resources and information for the purpose of solving major crimes. With time, the vision of a steely-eyed corps of bright, tough, statewide Untouchables began to take hold of the public’s consciousness, overriding all concerns about how such a unit could be gracefully blended into a profession famous for its inbred sense of turf.

In the end, along with everybody else in the department, I yielded to the resigned fatalism common to all military-style organizations. I remembered with irony that Jim Reynolds himself had told me early on that in the long run, the cops would do as they were told.

Acceptance of all this was made easier by improvements at home. With Gail coming to terms about her future, she seemed to slip free of the rape’s last tentacles. She was happier, felt freer to wander and quicker to laugh, and suddenly found time in the day to relax and have fun. Not wanting to miss any of this, I left work whenever I could, and Gail and I took advantage of the early warm weather to go for walks, drives, and hikes, and started-in leisurely fashion-looking for some bachelor digs for me. The whole experience-with a few minor stumbles along the way-brought both of us back emotionally to where we’d been years before.

It also made watching Sammie Martens that much harder.

She hadn’t had any choice but to break up with Andy Padgett. As she saw it, he’d violated a moral code she used as her primary guide. But her commitment to what he’d represented had been deep, and his betrayal had hit her hard. After returning from an accumulation of sick days and vacation time, she’d gone back to work like an automaton-regularly, predictably, and utterly without spirit. Willy, protectively out of earshot, if with no more sensitivity, complained it was like working with the living dead.

I began hoping either for a break in the Walter Freund case or another to replace it, just so I could give her something to sink her teeth into.

About halfway through the summer, I got my wish.

I was standing in my office, tidying up before day’s end. The windows were open, the warm air was steady and clear, and I was looking forward to renting a Sunfish and sailing with Gail on a nearby lake.

Until J.P. walked in, a broad smile on his face.

“What’re you so happy about?” I asked him.

“This.” He held up the semiautomatic we’d recovered from Billy Conyer the night he’d died. “I’ve been going over every scrap of evidence we have-checking fingerprints we hadn’t bothered with, running records of everybody we talked to, staring at witness statements till I was blue in the face. I knew there had to be something we hadn’t thought of.”

I pointed at the gun, all too familiar with what he’d been going through. “And?”

“Ballistics,” he said simply. “Ron figured it out. We checked the serial number at the time and got nowhere, so we figured the gun was a dead end. But we never did a ballistics check to see if any bullets from it were on file at the crime lab. They have hundreds of them up there, all dated and cross-referenced-a bunch without guns to fit. Turns out they had one for this.”

I slowly sat down, thoughts of summertime leisure quickly replaced by that familiar adrenaline. “Go on.”

“Three years ago, a gas station was held up off Interstate 89 south of Montpelier. A twenty-year-old named Richie West stuck a gun in the attendant’s face and told him to empty the till. Either the attendant didn’t move fast enough or he did something stupid he wouldn’t admit later, but a couple of shots were fired and he got whacked on the head before West took off into the night-just as an off-duty cop was pulling in for gas. The cop didn’t know what had happened till too late to give chase, but he remembered the getaway car, and the state cops had Richie in cuffs within forty-five minutes.”

“Don’t tell me,” I suggested, “the gun was missing and the bullets they dug out of the wall match what we got off Billy Conyer.”

“Right-one of them actually went through a bunch of lined-up motor-oil bottles and ended in perfect condition at the bottom of the last one. They grilled West for hours. He never fessed up about the gun. Said he tossed it out the window after the robbery. They looked, but it never showed up.”

I took the semiautomatic from him and weighed it in my hand. “Sound familiar? Young man clamming up for someone else? How often you think we run into that outside the movies?”

J.P. leaned against my doorframe. “Basically never-not once the deal’s on the table.”

I returned the gun. “Where’s Mr. West now?”

“St. Albans. I called up there to ask what kind of guy he was. They said he’s real quiet, almost repressed. A loner. I also talked to someone in the Washington County State’s Attorney’s office-they prosecuted him-and what they described sounded like something between Owen and Billy Conyer.”

“You ask them what he was like before he got caught? Past associates, criminal history, family?”

“Yeah. That part’s more predictable, and more like Conyer’s. But we’ll probably have to talk to some of those folks face-to-face if we want to find a connection to Walter Freund. His name doesn’t appear on the record.”

I smiled at him, the urge to grab hold of this case coming on strong. “Why not start at the source? Let’s talk to Richie himself.”

The Northwest State Correctional Facility outside St. Albans is located in a long, shallow valley, and as we approached it from a distance later the following morning, after a three-hour drive, the razor wire surrounding it gleamed and glittered in the sun, making it appear faintly otherworldly, as if some glimmering, ephemeral presence had set a halo around a collection of low red-brick buildings.

The halo is anything but that, of course. St. Albans is one of the more heavily guarded of Vermont’s prisons, and although not maximum security by federal standards, it is close enough to house some of the worst we have to offer it.

From the outside, though, it looks relatively benign, the wire notwithstanding. Surrounded by rolling green countryside, it is designed to look like a cross between a reform school and a nondescript housing project.

I’d chosen Sammie Martens to accompany me, hoping the trip would give us a chance to talk. So far, all I’d gotten had been monosyllabic responses punctuated by dead silence.

We were brought to an undersized room with a table in its middle and were soon introduced to a thin man with a shaved head and a single dark eyebrow running straight above hollowed-out, furtive eyes. He looked like his stay here had not been the best of therapies.

We sat opposite him. “Mr. West, I’m Lieutenant Gunther. This is Sergeant Martens of the Brattleboro Police Department. We’re facing a situation back home we thought you might help us with.”

“I never been to Brattleboro.”

“That may be, but one of your possessions has.”

He’d been staring at the table between us. That made him look up.

“The gun you used during the robbery,” I explained.

His single eyebrow dipped in the middle as he scowled in concentration.

I continued. “We had to kill a man who came out shooting at us. The gun in his hand was the same one you had that night at the gas station-the one you claimed you threw out the window.”

He sat back in his chair and allowed a half smile. “I guess those things happen.”

“Especially if the same man supplied the same gun to both of you. Where did you get that gun, Mr. West?”

“I don’t remember.”

“How’re they treating you in here?”

His eyes narrowed at the sudden change of subjects. “Like shit.”

“Reason I ask is that if the powers that be are told the right things, they might start thinking you supplied the weapon that was used in the attempted murder of a police officer.”

He looked outraged. “You can’t stick me with that. I threw it out the window.”

I pretended to check the contents of a folder I’d brought in with me. “So you said. You also said you didn’t commit the robbery, were nowhere near the gas station that night, and a bunch of other bullshit. You’ve got zero credibility here, Richie. Basically, if we hand this over to the prosecutor, you’re screwed, and your stay here gets extended God knows how much longer. Aiding and abetting an attempted murder.”

He scratched his forehead. “I didn’tdo anything.”

“You did, though,” I corrected him. “You gave the gun to Walter Freund after you ripped off that gas station, and he gave it to the guy we had to kill. It’s a direct link, Richie, A, B, C. Simple as that. You hear what happened to Walter, by the way?”

He fell for it, much to my relief. “What?”

“He’s on the lam. We nailed him on two homicides, and now the U.S. Marshals are hot on his heels. He’s going up for more time than he’s got years left in him. You might as well forget he ever existed.”

“You’re full of shit.”

I pulled a copy of the Reformer’s front page out of the folder. “Guess you don’t watch TV,” I said, having already been told of his habits, and slid the article across to him.

He picked it up, read the headline about Freund and stared at the picture, then let it drop back onto the tabletop. He looked crestfallen.

“It’s over, Richie. He won’t be there to help you when you get out-in fact, he used that gun to give you one last poke in the gut. Unless,” I said, “you start getting chatty. After all, the opposite can be true about my talking to someone. Help us out, and maybe life can be made a little better for you in here.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You gave the gun to Walter, right?”

“Yeah.” His voice was a monotone.

“You know, Richie, if it’s any comfort, you’re not alone. You might even be the lucky one. Walter set up two other people we know of. Now one of them’s dead and the other’s looking at worse time than you are, for helping kill a woman and her baby. Walter may have seemed like your only friend back then, but he was in it purely for himself.”

“You’re just seeing one side.”

I didn’t argue. He’d lost enough already. “I know. We don’t always have a choice. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry it got you in here, and I’ll make sure to tell the SA if you help us today. Parole comes up soon.”

He looked vaguely hopeful. “Thanks.”

“Tell me something,” I added conversationally. “Where were you and Walter hanging out when you got nabbed?”

“Around Barre. I was working at Thunder Road the summer we met. He had a job there, too.”

Thunder Road was Vermont’s only paved stock car track-a quarter-mile oval placed in a bowl on the side of a mountain with an incredible view-and a magnet to locals born to the car culture. My brother Leo had driven there years ago, with me cheering him on from the pits.

“Boy,” I said, “there’s a name from the past. I used to go up there all the time. Were you working with a crew?”

The first signs of life stirred as his eyes lit up. “Yeah. I drove, too-street stocks.”

“No shit? That’s great. Who’d you work for?”

“Danny Mullen. He was into late models, but he had a street stock he let us run-a Toyota pickup. Wasn’t much to look at, but moved like a raped ape.”

I fought to contain my own excitement and not let him see the importance of what he’d just said. “That’s great. They’re on today, aren’t they? Every Thursday? Wonder if Danny’s still involved.”

Richie West was by now almost totally relaxed. “You kidding? He’s like addicted to it. He’d have to be dead to miss a race.”

I got up, leaned over, and shook his hand, more grateful then he realized. “Maybe you can join him back up there before too long. I want to thank you for being straight with us, Rich. Try to keep your nose clean.”

Sammie Martens was prodded out of her silence as we walked down the hall, heading back toward the parking lot. “Danny Mullen-that any relation to the speaker of the House?”

I gave her a broad smile. “His brother.”