Scent of Evil

19

It took an endless thirty minutes to get Cappelli up onto the bridge, never knowing when the tangled cable around his leg might suddenly unravel. Finally, two members of the Special Reaction Team managed to rappel down to the hapless trucker, hook a harness to him, and have him pulled to safety. When he reached us, he was unconscious but alive, and for the second time in two days, I rode in the ambulance to babysit someone I hoped would wake up to answer my ever-growing questions.

It was not to be. Dr. Franklin met us at the emergency-room door, shaking his head and telling me his practice could survive without my supplying him extra patients. He assessed Cappelli’s condition, had several X-rays done, ordered a CT scan, and told me to take a hike. Cappelli would not be waking up anytime soon, and when he did, Franklin and his neurosurgeon pals would have first dibs. Only then would I get a call. I arranged to have a uniformed officer stay at the hospital to keep a discreet eye on him anyway.

Ron Klesczewski was waiting for me in the hospital parking lot.

“We kill anyone in that free-for-all?” I asked.

“Nope, not even a flesh wound, but the powers-that-be are still pretty pissed. The motorist who almost got clipped at the intersection is pounding the chief’s desk right now, unless he’s left to get his lawyer, and Wilson is walking up and down the hallway as if he’d like to put a chain saw to someone’s neck.”

“Mine, presumably.”

Klesczewski started the car engine. “Oh, I don’t know. He looked pretty undiscriminating to me; that’s why I’m here.”

It turned out Klesczewski had painted a rather rosy picture. When we pulled into the Municipal Center’s parking lot, I recognized not only Stan Katz’s car, but Ted McDonald’s, as well as a station wagon advertising the Keene Sentinel and one from the Greenfield Recorder. In a few hours, I didn’t doubt Channel 31’s broadcast truck and others would also be jockeying for space.

“Let me off at the back door.” I pointed to the police department’s private entrance, opened only by key and leading to the hallway around the corner from Brandt’s office. I wanted to talk with the chief first, to put together a coherent party line, always an improvement over “no comment.”

That, at least, was the plan.

“Hi, Joe.”

I turned, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding my key.

Stan Katz had been sitting in his car, waiting, typically bypassing the organized circus that was probably clogging the building’s main corridor.

He rose from his seat and slammed the door. “I guess you guys thought you were being pretty clever keeping John Woll out of the limelight.”

The shock was worse than I’d imagined. My heart skipped several beats, and a nervous sweat sprang out all over my body.

“What?” My voice sounded strangled to my own ears and was obviously no clarion of innocence to Katz, for he smiled broadly.

“John Woll-patrolman, husband, and drunk. The same John Woll who went to high school with Charlie Jardine, whose wife had an affair with Charlie Jardine, and whose squad car was seen at the Canal Street dam about the same time Charlie Jardine was planted there.”

I considered denying it, bluffing my way through the door and out of his reach, but I realized he’d quote me later as proof of a cover-up. I could talk to him about it; I’d had conversations with him in the past when I’d thought such honesty might serve to set him straight. But there too, he had me. I didn’t know who else in the department he’d challenged, or how they might have responded. I also doubted that whatever I told him, even if I confessed all my sins for the past eight years, would have the slightest impact. This was a man with a long-sought-after bone, and he was savoring the flavor.

“Come on, Joe. You going to deny it? Woll is dirty and you’ve all been scrambling for cover, hoping for a miracle.”

I stuck my key into the lock, more aware than ever of the crushing heat, and of the futility of trying to fight it. “No comment, Stanley.”

“Is that a quote?” I heard him laugh as the door slammed shut behind me.

I stood there in the hallway, overhearing the babble of the impromptu press conference in the main corridor. The chase after Cappelli was so fresh, and had taken so much out of me, that I had, for the moment, forgotten the time bomb Brandt and I had built through complicity. I had naturally assumed the media had gathered to catch the gore of a multiple-vehicle pursuit/smashup, and to ask some inane questions about how it tied into the current double-homicide investigation. I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands-obvious wishful thinking. Mundane, albeit attention-getting police action was no longer worthy of the spotlight. Now we had scandal. I could already envision how the headline would look under the Reformer’s scarlet banner.

What energy I had left from scrambling through the C amp;S warehouse drained away entirely, leaving me dour and depressed. The dance would begin in earnest now; the buffer between the Luman Jacksons of the board and the department would wither under the heat, and the entire investigation would likely become secondary to the defense of our jobs.

I turned the corner to Brandt’s office and nodded to the carpenters who had broken for lunch. He was sitting at his desk, with the computer’s large bluish eye keeping him company, but his attention was focused on the most distant window, in which a large box fan rattled noisily.

I entered the office and closed the door behind me. Only then did I notice the fan was sucking the air out, causing the door to push against my hand as I shut it. Although Brandt was smoking as usual, I realized the air was free of its perpetual smog.

“Goddamn computer. Couldn’t take the smoke,” he said around his pipe stem.

I sat gingerly in his guest chair. This was definitely an odd mood, perhaps classic denial, I thought. “Oh, yeah?”

“Repairman came this morning, said the pollution was gumming up the works. Said I should either quit or have air scrubbers installed.” He nodded toward the fan. “What d’you think?”

I decided I’d play along. “If all you keep is the fan, it’ll be a little tough in the winter.”

Brandt sighed, pushed his glasses up on his forehead, and rubbed his eyes. “So. I guess we fucked up on John Woll.”

I let his words float in the air a moment. It was so tempting to mention that he’d fucked up, and that I’d merely been following orders, but the disgust following that notion soured my gut. What really weighed me down wasn’t that we’d been caught in a stupid subterfuge, but that I’d ignored my own judgment and gone along with the idea. Brandt had fucked up because he’d been caught; I had disappointed myself three times over: I’d ducked my own moral instincts, had helped spawn a lousy alternative, and I’d been caught. Furthermore, my earlier qualms about being secretive with Gail were now guaranteed to blossom into an awkward debate about trust.

I tried putting it all to the back of my mind. “I wonder how Katz tumbled to it?”

Brandt readjusted his glasses, leaned way back in his chair, and looked at me through half-closed eyes. He seemed to be taking it in stride. “The background checks. Who did you have digging into the high-school link between Jardine, John, and Rose?”

I thought back. So much had been going on lately, with a few people doing so many different things, it was hard to keep track. “I told Ron to get Lavoie to help him locate people who knew all three in high school, but I also told him to do the actual interviews himself, for discretion’s sake.”

“Well, either something went wrong, or Katz is getting better. He apparently put the three names together and did some interviewing of his own. He also found out John was on patrol on Canal Street, no big secret, and that he’d had a problem with booze; again, common knowledge.”

He paused, took the pipe from his mouth and looked at it, as I’d seen him do a thousand times in the past. “I read once that you can make nitroglycerin, or something like it, from common household products; you just have to know which ones to choose and how to mix ’em. Katz probably knows the formula.”

A depressing silence settled in the room.

“So why aren’t you being drawn and quartered in the hallway?” I finally asked.

He chuckled. “My turn’ll come. Right now, James Dunn, Tom Wilson, and Gary Nadeau are standing in for me.”

I shook my head, momentarily confused. “What do they know about Woll?”

Brandt focused more sharply on me. “You don’t know what’s been going on, do you? John Woll is Katz’s private property for the moment; the other media boys don’t know about him. But Stanley didn’t want to play a story this big without official reactions, so he ran it by the three gentlemen in the hall for quotes, thinking they were all co-conspirators with us. Imagine the looks he got; he wound up giving them more information than they had to begin with. Tomorrow’s reading should be nothing if not entertaining.”

He suddenly grinned at the thought. “They were on their way down here to chew my ass when they ran into the microphones. So, right now, their brains boiling, they’re being grilled over a high-speed chase they couldn’t care less about. Now, that is irony.”

I stared at him, amazed at the workings of his mind. It was truly a revelation of why he was as comfortable in his job as I’d been miserable during my brief tenure as chief. While he may have forsaken the street for the office, he’d obviously come to grips with it with the same relish and dexterity. What I’d seen as a disaster, he saw as a change in tactics, and he was already thinking of how to make a profit from it. It now became clearer to me why the decision to keep Woll under wraps had come so easily to him. Sooner or later he’d known the shit would hit the fan; he’d just chosen to put it off, hoping it might miss him altogether. It had been a gambler’s call, with a gambler’s knowledge of the risks. The losses, as he apparently saw them now, were acceptable.

“So how many other people are in on our little secret?”

Brandt shrugged. “That’s it, I think.”

That was enough, I thought. Dunn, Wilson, and Nadeau were about as dissimilar as three personalities could get. Where normally a state’s attorney, a town manager, and a town attorney should have had no problems either ignoring or cooperating with one another, each of these three had established a sense of turf only a pit bull could envy.

That last point prompted my next question. “So why all three together? Whose idea was that?”

He was now smiling broadly, a man in his element. “Mine. I figure the best way to survive this shoot-out is to have everyone firing at the same time, and at different targets.”

That was all I wanted to hear. I pushed on the arms of my chair and stood up. “Well, I better make myself scarce. Don’t want to be the only private in a field of generals-you guys’ll kill me first, sure as hell.”

He waved me back down. “Stay. We might as well clean the slate with one swipe.”

The sudden swelling of voices from the hallway indicated the immediacy of my education. We both watched through Brandt’s interior window as three men carefully picked their way across the carpenters’ debris: Tom Wilson, small, enervated, and red-faced; James Dunn, his exterior as cool as ever, but with a hard set to his mouth this time; and hapless Gary Nadeau, naturally bringing up the rear, at the same time obsequious and officious, basking in the glory of reflected authority.

Brandt stood as they entered, smiling as the affable host. They remained grim, their eyes shifting from him to me to the two available chairs. Dunn showed no hesitation; this was more his arena than theirs, so he sat immediately. I had moved to lean against a filing cabinet, and Wilson took what had been my seat. Nadeau looked uncomfortable and ended up standing by the door, as if foreseeing his fate in this company.

Dunn played up his insider’s role by looking at me and ignoring the topic at the front of everyone’s mind. “Is Cappelli going to make it?”

I shrugged. Obviously Brandt had been doing his homework, passing along the tidbits to Dunn. “Can’t tell yet. He’s still unconscious. I did get the impression he’d come out of it, though.”

Nadeau nodded in a show of mock knowledge, but Wilson’s already high blood pressure was no longer interested in such face-saving games. Nor was he interested in side issues. “Who the hell is Cappelli?”

Brandt smiled again, as did I. Tom Wilson may not have been our town manager of choice, but he was fairly free of pretense. “The driver who went off the bridge.”

Wilson rolled his eyes, suddenly sidetracked. “Would someone mind telling me what the hell that was all about? And why did Dirty Harry here have to turn this place into a Hollywood back lot?” He glared at me.

I cleared my throat. “We went to interview him. He started shooting and ran for it.”

“Interview him about what?” Nadeau’s voice seemed out of place.

Dunn cut straight to the heart of Brandt’s strategy. “I would suggest that’s an inappropriate question. If we are all to remain in this room for this conversation, we’d better stick to general topics.”

“General topics?” Wilson choked, back on course. “Weren’t you aware of what was going on in that hallway? We’ve got two murders on our hands; our police force is so stretched out it can’t even issue parking tickets; we’ve got high-speed chases, a pissed off motorist who almost got killed by a hotshot cop, and I just got a call from the company that employs the bridge workers who almost went for a terminal swim in the river-they’re wondering if police negligence might have had anything to do with that. And that’s not the worst of it,” he added, holding up a hand to stop any interruptions, none of which I saw forthcoming. “The worst of it is that that bastard Katz is crawling around asking what we know about a Brattleboro policeman killing one of our bright young local businessmen.”

He fixed both Brandt and me with a baleful eye. “Do you two catch a certain theme going here? Did the word ‘police’ crop up a half-dozen times just then? We don’t have any general topics, James; we have problems, and most of them seem to be coming from here.”

Dunn stuck to his position. “Then I suggest we change the forum of this meeting. Tony should perhaps have separate conversations with each of us.”

“I didn’t ask for company here. I need some answers. Luman Jackson, as vice-chair of the selectmen-that means officially-has been blistering my ass. Christ, news of the car chase was still on the radio when he rang up last. I didn’t even know what the hell he was talking about. That made me look stupid, and I am goddamned well not going to look stupid to an asshole like him just because you guys aren’t talking. I don’t give a flying fuck if it’s appropriate or not; I want to know what’s going on. Do we suspect that one of our own cops is a murderer?”

His face was beet red at the end of this tirade, and the rest of us watched in silence for a moment, as if more interested in seeing a blood vessel explode than in addressing his question.

This time, Brandt cleared his throat, but Dunn stepped in again, as unperturbed as before. “Wait, Tony. Tom, I understand the pressures being brought to bear here, but it would be entirely wrong to cater to them. Perhaps we can hone our own focus a bit. Gary, why are you here?”

Nadeau looked as if he’d just been discovered eavesdropping on grownups. “Katz came by my office, too. John Woll is a town employee, and I’m legal counsel where town employees are concerned. My problems may look minor compared to Tom’s, but if Woll is seriously being considered as a murder suspect, I feel I should be intimately involved in the discussion.”

“I disagree,” Dunn stated flatly. “If there were charges pending against Woll, they would be criminal in nature. Your involvement in that case would be limited to writing the letter that suspends him from employment, and you would do that only once Chief Brandt and I had advised you to. Aside from Mr. Katz’s innuendos, however, I have heard nothing to indicate that any of that is germane.”

Now we could watch Nadeau turn fuchsia. He didn’t pull out a knife and stab James Dunn in the heart, as he understandably might have. Instead, he paused a moment to select his words. When they came out, I was impressed at their cogency, and at the restraint in his voice. “That may be true. It still remains that this high-speed pursuit has started talk of one lawsuit and might lead to another from the bridge people Tom mentioned. Both of those would land squarely in my lap, and both have their origins in the police investigation that led to that car chase.”

The State’s Attorney took it in full stride with a wide smile. “Excellent. Then we have no problem. As soon as the police department and my office have determined Officer Woll’s culpability in all this, we’ll let you know. And we’ll try to expedite matters quickly so you might have time to head off any lawsuits.”

There was a very long and awkward pause, during which Gary Nadeau let out a small breath of air through slightly flared nostrils. Finally, he put his hand on the doorknob. “All right. The sooner the better.”

Dunn smiled. “Absolutely. It’ll be among our highest priorities.”

But the door had slammed halfway through the sentence.

“You’re a prick,” Wilson said.

“Perhaps, but I’m also correct. We haven’t the slightest idea how much Katz has collected. To presume too much and allow Nadeau to take confidential information directly to the selectmen would be extremely ill-advised.”

“I talk to the selectmen, too.”

Dunn nodded. “That’s true, so part of what I said to Gary applies to you also. However, some of your concerns are legitimate, and I think we ought to give you credibility for your next encounter with the press.”

Wilson looked at him as if he wanted to scrape him off his shoe. “That’s very big of you, James. I didn’t see you looking too credible out there a few minutes ago.”

“They were interested in car chases. It wasn’t my concern. When Katz publishes what he knows about John Woll, we’ll be faced with an entirely different situation. In fact, we might consider beating him to the punch, holding an official press conference and blowing his exclusive.”

I was fascinated with what had transpired here. In some five minutes of razzle-dazzle, James Dunn had convinced both Wilson and Nadeau that he was the man with all the answers, and that Brandt, myself, and indeed the entire police department had been acting with both his knowledge and his blessing. That he might be just as ignorant as they were had never been allowed to cross their minds.

Brandt, probably having anticipated all this, played an equally cool and rational role in addressing Wilson. “Let me try to put it in terms you can use without offending James’s sense of legal propriety. John Woll is not under investigation as a murder suspect. His name has, however, come up in a few compromising places, which is precisely what got Katz all worked up.”

“Katz all but claimed Woll killed Jardine because Jardine and Woll’s wife were fooling around,” Tom protested.

Brandt passively downplayed it. “They were all in high school together. In fact, John Woll is one of the few on our force who was born and brought up in this town. There are people around here who probably saw his first bowel movement-that kind of intimacy can work against you in bad times.”

“So he’s clean and Katz is full of shit.”

For once, both Brandt and Dunn looked uncomfortable. Brandt answered, I thought because Dunn felt that once you’d strolled out onto the diving board, it was your responsibility to jump on your own.

“Not necessarily.”

Wilson leaned forward in his chair and held his head. “What the hell have you guys got us into this time?”

Brandt’s voice took on an edge. “We are conducting a homicide investigation, in the process of which we are uncovering leads and building a list of suspects-a long list-one of whom is John Woll. The others include an unidentified homeless bum, all the way up to one of this town’s top-drawer citizens. Right now, none of them is any more suspect than the others, but some make for better news copy. Am I communicating clearly enough who is getting who into what?”

Wilson straightened, conciliation in his voice. “All right, all right-poor choice of words. You might remember the last time we had a murder in this town, though; the press had a field day. I guess I’m a little gun-shy.”

Brandt stood up and leaned across his desk, staring into Wilson’s face. His voice was icy calm, but I had never before seen him so angry. “Let’s not forget who pulled whose fat from the fire that time, Tom. I went on a long vacation and let you and your pals upstairs make it look like I’d been suspended. That was a favor I didn’t have to do. I’d appreciate your remembering that, without having to be reminded in a less private forum.”

He sat back down in total silence. I, like most, had been a little vague on what exactly had happened a year ago, although I’d been the one tapped to be acting chief in Brandt’s place. This was the first time I’d heard the truth, and it left me stunned. Whatever Brandt’s motivations for taking the heat for Wilson and the selectmen, it had translated into a political debt of staggering proportions. Brandt could reveal the truth and publicly humiliate his “bosses” anytime. I could only think they’d been out of their minds to let him do it, just as he’d been equally nuts to propose it. It was hardball politics on a level I’d never imagined, especially in Brattleboro.

Wilson looked at us all as if he’d suddenly acquired some noxious odor he wished he could deny. His tone was utterly muted when he spoke. “Of course we all appreciate your position, Tony. No offense. Maybe you could give me a little more to dole out. I think James’s idea of a press conference before tomorrow might help us out a bit.”

Brandt smiled his most affable smile. “Sure. What’s your pleasure?”

“Well, I don’t know. How about enough on Woll to take the wind out of Katz’s sails, but not so much that it looks too important. We could make the car chase the lead item, and mention the Woll lead as an incidental, something only a rag like the Reformer would bother with.”

The chief looked at me. “What about the chase, Joe?”

I cleared my throat, feeling like the only amateur in the room. “We have no explanation for its cause. We went to ask Mr. Cappelli some routine questions related to the two major investigations we have going, and he responded by shooting at us and running away. We never actually spoke. So, until we can talk to him, the whole thing’s a mystery.”

Wilson nodded, but he didn’t sound happy. “Okay. See if you can dress it up a little.” He stood up, shaking his head. “I’m not casting aspersions here, but I do wish for the good old days sometimes, when a crime wave in this town was two kids stealing hubcaps on a Friday night.”

Brandt also rose, again the smiling host. “I know what you mean, Tom. Thanks for stopping by.”

Wilson, wrapped in his own misery, wandered out the door, closing it softly behind him.

Two down, one to go, I thought.

Dunn was obviously thinking the same thing, with different numbers. He fixed Brandt with his arctic eyes. “I hope you won’t put me in a position like that again any time soon.”

Brandt was unimpressed. “I thought you did very well.”

“Cute. How long were you two going to sit on John Woll? I take it, by the way, that until now, nobody else was in on this?”

“Just us and Klesczewski,” Brandt admitted. He went on to explain about the list of phone numbers found in Milly’s apartment, the one that included John Woll’s number. He also went into what we knew of the John-Rose-Charlie triangle.

Dunn digested it all without comment to the end and then let out a small grunt. “I hope Tom Wilson’s medical insurance covers strokes. I take it you’re going to interview Woll right away.”

Brandt surprised me with his answer. “We’ve already tried to set it up; I called right after Katz left my office. There’s no answer at his home, and a patrol unit reported his car isn’t in the driveway. Until Tom mentioned the press conference, I was going to wait until he showed up for duty tonight.”

“Unless he reacted like Cappelli did and is now long gone.”

Brandt shook his head. “He’s already been given a chance to do that.”

Dunn nodded, putting a temporary end to the business. “I take it that’s all of it? No more surprises?”

Brandt smiled. “Not yet.”

“Well, I may have one for you. Arthur Clyde is raising a stink about having his business records removed under warrant, and he’s petitioning the court for return of property, so if you haven’t already, you better read that material fast. I talked to Harrowsmith about Joe’s affidavit, and I think you’re on safe ground, but keep in mind that anything you find in that stuff might turn into smoke down the line.” He looked directly at me. “I tell you this so you can start looking elsewhere for corroborating evidence, and to remind you that we are the good guys here, trained in the law. I realize that Sue Davis of my office looked that affidavit over and gave it a lukewarm approval, but remember: Don’t be too independent, or you’ll end up looking stupid.

“Which reminds me.” He swiveled back to Brandt. “If you get so much as one more hiccup that incriminates or implicates John Woll, I suggest you hand the whole thing over to my office and my investigator, or the entire department, and possibly the town, will be criminally charged for protecting one of its own, and I might be the one filing the charge. If that makes you unhappy, then bring in the state police; but either way, don’t get your butts in a crack. It’ll hurt, and you won’t be able to play political footsie with Wilson to get out of it.”

He stood up and walked to the door. “By the way, what you pulled on Tom is the most cockamamie stunt I ever heard, Tony. I hope it gets you mileage, because you’re going to need it.”

As he left, one of the carpenters, his lunch break over, picked up a circular handsaw and pulled the trigger. The echoing scream sounded an appropriate grace note.