Scent of Evil

33

As things turned out, none of us got much sleep that night. I worked at home until midnight, writing instructions for the next day’s game plan, and hadn’t been asleep two hours before the phone jarred me back awake. Billy Manierre’s sad rumble filled my ear. “Joe, you better come on over to John Woll’s place. Been a shooting.”

In the moment it took for that information to sink in, Billy had hung up, leaving me in silence and despair.

I didn’t know who had shot whom, or if John or Rose Woll were even involved, but as I drove through the dark, abandoned streets, I didn’t have many doubts. Billy’s tone had told me more than his words. There had been a death, and I was all but certain that John’s problems had finally ground to a halt.

The familiar chaotic twinkling of emergency lights greeted me at the beginning of Brannen Street. I parked at the bottom of the short hill and climbed on foot, walking past a string of patrol cars. Everyone on the force was by now aware of this address. The mere mention of it by the dispatcher had been enough to gather us all, as if for a dress rehearsal of the funeral that would soon follow.

Billy was waiting for me at the top of the exterior staircase.

“John?” I asked him.

“In the bedroom.”

The tiny apartment was harsh with the squawks from police radio speakers and the shuffling of heavy, regulation shoes. I asked Billy to vacate his people, and I wended my way through the narrow hallway, watching the glum, almost embarrassed expressions on the downcast faces I passed. These were not hardened cops; where the sight of a fellow officer, bloodstained and lifeless, might have been a familiar enough sight to veterans in New York or Boston or Miami, it wasn’t to the Brattleboro force. The confusion on their faces was telling.

John was sitting in the rickety rocking chair opposite the bed, the one I had used when I’d last talked with him. He was dressed in his undershorts and a T-shirt, his bare feet slightly pigeon-toed. One arm hung like forgotten laundry, its fingers dangling just inches off the floor, reminding me of Kunkle; the other lay nestled in his lap, curled around the butt of a black and menacing semiautomatic pistol. He’d shot himself in the heart, the blood of which had turned his torso a dark, still-glistening red. The entrance wound appeared raven-black and jagged in the half-light, ringed by a charcoal halo of burned gunpowder.

I felt Billy standing beside me and was suddenly aware of both the tomblike silence inside the building and the muted noise of a large, shuffling crowd outside. I wondered, just for a moment, if that’s what a body could hear from the inside of its coffin, had its hearing not been silenced.

“How did it come in? Gunshot?”

“No. Rose called it in. She’d been trying to get hold of him, not getting an answer. She came over and found him.”

“She still here?”

“No. I sent her to the hospital with one of the boys. She was out of control; I thought for a while she might try to do herself in. She may yet.” He paused, looking at John as he might a troubled, sleeping child. “What a waste. I’ve never understood suicide.”

“Did the neighbors see or hear anything?”

“No, and there were several of them around.”

I frowned at that and looked again at the gun. “You’d think they would have heard something.”

Billy shrugged. “Maybe. Judging from the hole, though, it looks like he made a silencer of his own chest.”

It was true. The wound looked like it had burst from within, as would have happened when the explosive gases from the shot reflected off the shattered sternum, but that scenario snagged on something in my mind and made me look about the room.

“Who was the first one here, besides Rose?”

“I was. Couldn’t sleep, and I heard it over the radio. Only took me a couple of minutes to get here.”

“How’d it look?”

Billy frowned. “Like you see it, pretty much.”

“Nothing to make you think anything other than suicide?”

His expression didn’t change, but his eyes cooled and flattened. He, like I, was now wary of where we were headed. The element I’d introduced not only added to the pain he was already feeling, but it carried a sting along with it, an implication that assumptions had been made too quickly, and that a possible homicide scene had been altered by almost a dozen patrolmen tramping through the apartment. We both knew that we were balanced on opposite edges of a threatening pit: I, after all, had asked to have the premises vacated, while he, reaching back to more trusting, compassionate instincts, had taken what he’d seen at face value, which the rule books stridently warned against.

He didn’t answer my question immediately. “I made sure only a couple of us got this close. ’Course, I don’t know what Rose might have touched.”

I nodded, and allowed him his out. “Good. I’m sure everyone was careful. It’s a hard impulse to step on, rubbernecking.”

“Especially when you know the guy,” Billy agreed, but his voice betrayed him. He’d been at this too long not to know he’d committed a major blunder. Any forensics expert will attest that on a microscopic level, a scene as trespassed upon as this looks like Main Street after a parade. Any hope of separating and identifying hair samples, stray fibers, or shoe impressions vanishes.

We would do this by the numbers from now on, but my only real hope at this point was that John himself, through his autopsy, might tell us something of the few minutes preceding his own death.

I rubbed the side of my nose with my finger and turned toward the hallway. “Well, let’s put a lock on the place until the assistant ME and Tyler get through with it.”

Billy followed me out without saying a word.

The usual morning banter was lacking in the squad room a few hours later. The greetings were muted, questions about one another’s progress went unasked. I sat in my room, looking out the interoffice window, and watched my professional family coping with a combination of grief and anger. The newspaper had run the story with banner headlines, as expected, and while Katz had stuck to the facts as he knew them, keeping as neutral a voice as possible, the effect simulated the turning on of a bright, hot spotlight, aimed at people who had already been feeling the heat for too long. I was worried about the department’s ability to bear the load for much longer, and I wondered what form the first sign of their collapse might take.

On the other hand, their muffled demeanor would make my bit of planned theater that much easier to enact and would lend credibility to their reaction.

I went to my door and waved them into my office, an unusual but not unprecedented event. I wanted to be sure that what I was about to say would be picked up by the bug. There were just four of them: Tyler, Martens, DeFlorio, and Pierre Lavoie. Ron was under doctor’s orders to remain at home with his leg elevated and wrapped in ice packs.

“I got some news last night that might brighten your day a bit. I talked to a snitch who swears he’s got a witness to the Jardine burial.”

“Where’s he been hiding?” DeFlorio interrupted. “I thought I’d turned over every rock in this town.”

“Well, you missed this one. From what I heard, this guy may well have what we’re after. He’s not going to be an easy witness, though. He only wants to meet with me, alone, and only late tonight.”

“Where?” Sammie asked.

“I don’t know yet. I’m supposed to get a call later today-I guess so we can’t seal the area off.”

“Why’s he so nervous?”

“It seems we’ve been trying to put a roof over his head, courtesy of the state, for some time now. He’s also scared shitless that the same guy who came after Jardine and Milly may come after him.”

DeFlorio was shaking his head. “So why talk to us? Why not just lay low?”

“Because keeping out of our sights was getting difficult enough without worrying about getting his tail shot off. I think he’s looking for a deal-he’ll finger the bad guy if we drop what we’ve got against him. That way, he gets to walk around in plain sight again.”

“Can we figure out who it is by going over our fugitive warrants?”

“We could try, but he may be wanted under some other paperwork. Besides, we’d still be guessing. For all I know, the guy’s full of it and we’re just getting our chains yanked. I think we should wait for the call, give the meeting location a very loose net, if we have the time, and otherwise just wing it. There’s no indication of anything risky here; it’s just a meet with a snitch.” I stood up and moved to the door, the sheaf of papers I’d worked on the night before in my hand. “Given the events of last night, I’m going to give a pass to this morning’s usual meeting. Let’s just hit the streets and see if we can beat this snitch to the facts.”

I received several odd looks. If anything, an event like John’s death would guarantee a gathering of the minds, not the reverse. The looks got even odder as I handed out the sheets of paper, pausing each time to place my finger to my lips in a sign of silence. Only DeFlorio ignored me. “What’s this?”

Everyone stared at him, since the first line on the pages they were all now holding read, “Watch out-the office is bugged.”

I shook my head, but answered in a nonchalant tone. “Just a copy of the press release on John’s death, in case a reporter ambushes you.”

DeFlorio’s face reddened as he read the first line and the others beneath it. His embarrassment was such I could tell he was about to apologize, so I patted him on the shoulder and gave him a gentle shove out the door.

We reconvened two hours later in the medical director’s office overlooking the truck bay at the Rescue, Inc. ambulance service. I’d chosen it because it was remote, tucked under the high ceiling, and accessible only by a single wooden staircase leading down to the bay, and because it was as unlikely a meeting place for us as I could imagine. The legal occupant of the room had been only too willing to help me out for an hour by taking his paperwork elsewhere. I’d been here once before, to discuss some public awareness event in which the police and fire departments were to put on a show with Rescue, and it was the one place I’d thought of last night that would be well-nigh impossible to bug on short notice, unless one of the people entering it carried the bug in with him.

There was no chitchat from any of them as they filed noisily up the stairs. The note I’d given them had pointed out the need for discretion, both in the office and on any department phones. It had also dictated their times of departure from the Municipal Building to arrive here so that our eavesdropper wouldn’t become suspicious at our all leaving at once. Their silence was a testament to their understanding of how fragile a functioning unit we’d become.

I waited until the last of them had found a seat in the tiny crow’s-nest of an office. I stood by the long, rectangular window looking down onto the trucks below, noticing that the gleaming shininess of all four ambulances didn’t extend to their otherwise invisible flat roofs.

I nodded over to J.P. Tyler, who was holding his AM radio. “You all set?”

He nodded, switched it on, and began to play the antenna around the room, and the people in it, much as he had on the day before. I addressed the stunned expressions before me. “This is only to protect us all. If this bastard could bug my own office, he could sure as hell find a way to slip a bug into one of your pockets, so please bear with me.”

After some twenty minutes, he sat back down and turned off the quietly hissing radio. “Okay.”

I cleared my throat, relieved. “In case you haven’t figured it out by now, tonight’s meeting with a snitch is bogus. I’m hoping that when whoever’s at the other end of the bug in my office hears he’s about to be blown, he’ll try to cover his tracks, just as he did when he killed Milly Crawford.”

“And John Woll?” asked Tyler.

It was a legitimate question, if a bit theatrical. I’d spent all night watching Tyler work, and the State Police Mobile Crime Lab, which I’d insisted should join us. They had all examined the crime scene in detail and hadn’t found anything out of place, except, as the state boys were quick to point out, what Billy’s people had trampled. Hillstrom hadn’t contacted me yet about John’s autopsy, a fact Tyler knew, so I was curious what had prompted his rejoinder.

“John was murdered?” Sammie asked, an incredulous look on her face.

Tyler crossed his arms. “I think so.”

“Based on what?” I asked.

He let out a sigh. “Just before I came over here, I got a visit from Dunn’s investigator. The SA decided-a little late-to let me see John’s fingerprints. They don’t match what I lifted from the curare bottles.”

A general murmuring filled the room.

I raised both my hands. “Okay, hold it. Let’s talk about John a bit. I don’t argue that his death might have been a homicide; the state crime lab is looking into that, and so is Beverly Hillstrom. But I also don’t see where it would have benefited anyone to kill him. On the face of it, he was a prime candidate for suicide, and I think we all ought to admit that’s a strong possibility. None of us likes to think a friend, much less a colleague, could be pushed that far; maybe there’s an element of guilt here. I do know, though, that we can’t let it derail us. It’s just possible, at long last, that we’ve gained an advantage; sure as hell, the attempt to destroy those curare bottles proves we’re giving this guy a hotfoot.”

I held up my index and thumb and held them a half-inch apart. “We might be that close, folks. Let Hillstrom and the state boys do their job and report back to us. In the meantime, let’s see if we can nail the son of a bitch.”

I watched my small, grim audience. I understood the pressure they were under, and I shared their grief. Nevertheless, I fully believed what I’d told them; we had turned a corner, and we were getting closer to the end. To disintegrate now would be to literally let a killer slip between our fingers.

Tyler helped stabilize the boat he’d just rocked. “So where’s tonight’s meeting?”

I pulled a schematic map from my pocket. “This is a layout of the Brattleboro Union High School. From the viewpoint of our fictional snitch, it’s the perfect rabbit warren in which to disappear if things go wrong. It’s got dozens of exits and a million nooks and crannies.”

The map showed an almost random clustering of rectangles, surrounding two open-air courtyards. Some parts of the overall building, which had grown over the decades addition by addition, were two stories tall, others were one, and the auditorium was about two and a half. It was a huge, convoluted, labyrinthine structure, a classic case of pragmatism over form.

I poked my finger at one corner of it. “This is the main cafeteria. It’s got about seven exits, direct or roundabout. To a real-life informant it’s custom-made. Given short notice, we wouldn’t have the time or the manpower to adequately seal it off and trap anyone inside.”

“You’re not gonna have a real snitch?” DeFlorio interrupted.

I looked up at Pierre Lavoie and smiled. “I’m going to have a real person play one.” Everyone chuckled and he reddened slightly, obviously pleased. “Compared to the rest of us, Pierre has been pretty low-profile. Once we dress him up and slap a fake beard on him, he should do just fine.”

I returned to the map. “The point is, what looks to be a custom-made layout for escape will actually be a locked box. At night on the weekends, the school is divided into sections, either by heavy internal gates that come out of the walls or by padlocked chains run through the handles of interior double doors. It allows them to limit total access in case they’re broken into. The implication will be that the snitch has at least one passkey, and thus access to part of the building. In fact, we’ll use the gates to our advantage and surreptitiously guard the other supposedly open passages. The idea is to let our eavesdropper into the cafeteria, and then lock the place up behind him. And just to make sure we don’t end up on the wrong side of a locked door or gate should something go wrong, I’ve had passkeys made up for all of you.” I handed them out.

Even as I laid it out for them, it sounded a little slim. If Lavoie and I were playacting in the cafeteria, that left only Sammie, J.P., and Dennis to block all those potential exits. I added as an afterthought, “Of course, some of the doors will be jammed so they can’t be opened from either side; that’ll help slant the odds in our favor.”

Sammie was clearly underwhelmed. “We going to have backup on this?”

“I don’t think it’ll work if we do,” I told her.

I was not the only one aware of how information had been gushing out of the department. The hidden microphone in my office was one obvious explanation for that, but everyone in the room knew the problem was much larger. Where there was one mike, there were probably more, a fact we couldn’t risk exploring without showing our hand. And the strong possibility existed that the man pulling the strings had a backup system in place, maybe even a cop on the dole.

Involving our Special Reaction Team, normally the thing to do, would be inviting disaster, which brought up another question, this time from Tyler. “You’re setting yourselves up as sitting ducks. I mean, if this guy does take the bait, it’ll be to kill this supposed snitch, and you with him.”

“Pierre and I’ll be wearing armor, and we’ll be wired for sound. But the whole thing hangs on all of us working within very close tolerances. I also want to pull in the chief on this-give him a little street exercise-so we’ll have one extra body to put in place.”

I had an additional card to play, but I didn’t show it here, no more than I had since I’d first thought it up. Willy Kunkle, as irascible, deformed, and illegal as he was on paper for an operation like this, was the ace up my sleeve. Not to share my thoughts with my colleagues was a flagrant breach of faith and probably good grounds, if I was caught, for my dismissal. The risk of being caught and fired, however, was secondary to the shocked response I knew I’d get from my own squad. Pulling in Kunkle without telling them, especially after the stunt I’d pulled with Woll early on, would prove I didn’t trust them. And that would mean the end of my effectiveness as their lieutenant, now and forever.

Yet I was still going to attempt it, to try to entice Kunkle to join the operation. An obsessed and devil-driven paranoid, he had always been a trustworthy cop. I wanted him as my hidden floater in this game plan, the guy whose training and outlook wouldn’t allow for a last-minute screwup.

I’d tried to tell myself at first that I was keeping Kunkle to myself because he was an illegal in this, a handicapped civilian involved in an undercover police operation. But in my heart, I knew that, especially with John Woll’s death, I wasn’t sure I trusted my own people anymore. I didn’t want to believe that, but I had to consider it, and I wasn’t about to risk Pierre’s life and mine just to spare a few hurt feelings.

For now, Willy Kunkle would remain my little secret, one I planned to share only with Brandt. I did my best to shove the moral debate to the back of my mind as I spent the next ninety minutes going over our plan of attack again and again until everyone knew their roles by heart.

I was able to secure a warrant for Fred McDermott’s bank records, much to Sammie’s delight. The evidence against him had built up like the incoming tide, gradually, with little fanfare. It hadn’t been at all like the case against John Woll, complete with footprints, cigarette butts, incriminating personal ties, and a shiny gold watch in a sock drawer. McDermott was being painted into a corner almost by innuendo. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time; he wasn’t around when he needed an alibi the most; his office held the transmitter but not the receiver of a listening device; he had an unexplained bank account.

Cumulatively, it satisfied Judge Harrowsmith, especially when given the proper slant in the affidavit, but I was not as sanguine as Sammie Martens. I couldn’t overlook how many times we’d been led down the wrong path in this case, nor could I ignore the price John Woll had finally paid for that. I didn’t want another falsely accused man on my conscience-nor did I want a guilty one to get away because of my timidity.

I was about to invite Brandt out into the Municipal Building’s parking lot to discuss some of this, when Dispatch buzzed me on the intercom to inform me the state police had dug something up they thought we’d find interesting.

Their meaning was quite literal. With J.P. in tow, I followed directions to West Brattleboro, to a lonely field off Ames Hill Road, and to a well-dug grave containing the decomposing body of Tobias A. “Toby” Huntington. He had been shot in the head.

A good half of Brattleboro’s legally defined geography is unadulterated countryside: verdant hills, small lonely streams, and meadows grazed by horses and cows, all looking as remotely pastoral as their country cousins one hundred miles into the boondocks.

Toby’s last home emphasized that fact, tucked as it was under the shade of the first row of trees bordering the lower edge of a field. As a young and proper Vermont State Trooper explained that the body had been uncovered by a local farmer’s overly curious dog, I was intensely aware of the silent shimmering heat radiating off the burnt-blond grass beyond the shade. I could hear, above the insects and birds, the sound I’d been hearing all too often as of late: the squawk of walkie-talkies and the distant wail of sirens signaling yet another homicide. I began wondering what it was that had prompted me as a young man to pursue a line of business so dedicated to exposing society’s least attractive habits.

Tyler conferred with the trooper on how his own evidence gathering should coordinate with that of the state’s mobile crime lab. I moved to the edge of the scene and leaned against the burning metal of a parked patrol car.

“So this is the guy you’ve been looking for.” Tony Brandt had quietly crossed the field and stood before me.

“Yeah.” The enthusiasm I’d felt at my meeting this morning had evaporated with this latest discovery. Watching homicide-scene technicians yet again at work, measuring, photographing, collecting, I began to question whether we’d made any progress at all.

Although I’d never met him, Toby’s death hit me as hard as John Woll’s. I had been concerned for his safety, had considered the darker possibilities for his disappearance, but I had always hoped he’d be able to avoid the man stalking him as well as he had us. Four people were now dead, and I had no idea who might be next. That thought depressed me as few things had before.

Brandt seemed to know what was going on inside me. He, more than anyone on the force, had traveled the same path for as long as I had. And he, more than I, had done battle with politicians, press, and public, all opponents who were never easily satisfied. Who better could recognize in a fellow cop the telltale warnings of impending burnout?

He asked me the kind of deductive question that could bring me back to the scene before us: “Why was he buried here?”

It was said casually, and it took a few seconds to sink in, like a rock seeking the bottom of a well. But when it touched home, I began to play back the events leading to this grave, as well as to another I’d stood over just days before.

“Because he-unlike Charlie Jardine-wasn’t meant to be found.”

Charlie’s burial had been an arrogant challenge, put forth by a mind that believed itself in control. It had been the first overt move in a carefully thought-out campaign. Toby Huntington had been killed by a man scrambling to cover his tracks, just as when he’d attacked Ron and me in the parking lot, and even earlier, when he’d shot Milly Crawford. With Milly he had taken the time to salt the trail with red herrings. Lately, however, that subtlety had begun to evaporate, replaced, I realized, with a propensity to make mistakes.

As a living potential witness, Toby had been an elusive, uncooperative failure. Now, I became increasingly convinced, he might help us far more from his burial place.

I walked to the roped-off edge of the scene. “J.P.” Tyler, on his knees, his evidence kit beside him, looked up at me. “It’s just a feeling, but don’t get too lost in the details here. I think our man is running for cover, and I don’t think he’s taking time to be overly neat and tidy.”

“You mean, look for the killer’s wallet under the body?”

“You can dream if you want, but make sure you tell Hillstrom to compare any bullet fragments recovered here to what she dug out of John Woll.”

Tyler sat back on his heels and flashed a smile. “Wouldn’t that be sweet?”

I walked back to Tony Brandt, my earlier depression blown away as by the wind, the smell of the scent again fresh in my nostrils. I took him by the elbow and steered him away from the small crowd, out into the privacy of the open field. “I’ve got something cooking that should scare the hell out of whatever political ninth life you have left.”

Willy Kunkle had apparently organized the local-history room until it could stand no more. We were now on the first floor, in the back corner of the research section, in a twenty-by-five-foot room filled with racked back issues of magazines like Consumer Reports and Road amp; Track.

Kunkle was savagely jamming weatherworn issues back into their proper places after a day in which the periodicals had seen more than their fair share of use.

I was patiently waiting for his reaction to my invitation.

“Why the fuck should I help you guys?”

“You have so far.”

“I was curious; it was total self-interest.”

“It was also useful, and it’s beginning to flush this guy out.”

“You could’ve fooled Toby.”

“Toby may yet tell us things.”

He didn’t answer, and I watched him for several minutes at work, his muscular right hand working as fast and sure as a hawk talon. After he’d left the department, I’d heard he’d begun lifting weights and exercising with his usual obsessive drive. Indeed, aside from the withered arm, I’d never seen him fitter.

“I found out a little more on the drug angle.”

I went with his change of topic. “Oh yeah?”

“Turns out the guy I told you about, the one in Boston who had Hanson and Cappelli on the payroll, he’s been approached by someone else.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know; real secretive, but the base is supposed to be here in Bratt.”

“Same action, new players?”

“Looks that way. I’d say whoever you’re up against has both scores to settle and big ambitions.”

I watched him work some more in silence. “How much longer do you see yourself filing books?”

He stopped in mid-motion and glared at me, his face twisted. “Fuck you, Joey-boy. I want career counseling, I’ll hire it.”

“We might be able to get you back on the force.”

He became very angry, very suddenly. “Look, you bastard, you want me to cover your ass in some bullshit commando crock tonight, that’s fine with me. I’ll do it. With any luck, I’ll get a little action, and you and Brandt’ll get your asses handed to you on a platter-good for everybody. But don’t blow in my ear, okay? Don’t pretend you give a good goddamn what happens to me. I’m the biggest pain in the ass you ever had in the department, and it’s goddamn insulting that you think I’ll swallow your wanting me back.”

“I didn’t say I liked you, Willy-but you were the best at what you did. My only problem was I wished I could keep you under a rock until I needed you.”

He smiled slightly, perhaps with perverse pride. “So what the hell are you saying?”

“There’s a new federal handicap law, one of those anti-discrimination acts. You could use it to get back on, whether you help me tonight or not. It would be better than this, and you’d get the pleasure of making my life miserable again.”

He shook his head and turned away. But he didn’t resume filing magazines. Instead, he just stared at the shelves, lost in thought. Finally, he looked back at me and scratched his head. I thought for a split moment that he seemed faintly embarrassed. His voice, however, remained predictably hard-bitten. “I’ll think about it.”

He stuck his hand out. “You said you had some blueprints for tonight’s dog-and-pony show.”

I shook my head, doubting my own sanity, and pulled them out of my pocket.