The Dark Root

14

Dan Flynn picked up his phone on the first ring. “VCIN-Lieutenant Flynn.”

“It’s Joe-who’s your Asian crime contact in Montreal?” I asked him.

“Sounds like you’re in hot pursuit,” he said, laughing.

“Maybe. I’m trying to see if Sonny’s actually Truong Van Loc. I want to find out some more about the hit in Montreal a couple of days after we did that traffic stop down here.”

I could hear him tapping on the plastic keys of his ever-ready computer. “How ’bout Jean-Paul Lacoste? He ran a seminar on Asian crime last year at Rouse’s Point. Big turnout, and everybody gave him high marks. Speaks good English, too, which doesn’t hurt. Plus he shares information.” He gave me a phone number and an address on Hochelaga Street, which he had to spell out.

“You had any nibbles on the BOL you put out on Truong?” he asked me then.

“No, but I just got off the phone with Customs and the Border Patrol. I asked them to make sure his picture’s on top of their pile. You haven’t logged any stops or arrests of an Asian male with a bandage on the back of his right hand, have you? We think he might’ve helped knock off Benny Travers. As soon as we get more details, we’re going to circulate a flyer on him, too.”

Dan hesitated. “We did have an accident involving two Asians about four days ago. An old lady in Rutland pulled out of a parking space without looking, and the Asians’ car wiped out her fender. Everyone was pretty shook up, but that was about it. All the paperwork checked out, the PD didn’t issue any tickets, and none of the names they fed me fit any of yours, so I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“No, that’s fine,” I reassured him, although at this point almost anything concerning Asians in Vermont was interesting to me.

“There’s been some new activity in Burlington, though,” he added. “My contact at the PD there called me a few hours ago-told me there’d been a turf fight between an old gang and some newcomers.”

“Any names?”

“No, it was pure intelligence. No complaints or arrests, but the specialty involved was alien smuggling. Maybe Sonny-or Truong, if that’s who he is-is grabbing some of the market.”

“What was the upshot of the turf fight?”

“Rumor has it the newcomers won. How close are you folks to nailing something down?”

“We’re getting there, I hope. Some of the pieces are starting to fit, but I don’t think this is a typical gang. If I’m right, Truong Van Loc is more a man with a mission than just a hood on the make. Problem is, the people who work for him are hoods. It’d be pretty ironic if their screwups helped nail him.”

“What did Brandt say about the task-force idea?” Flynn asked.

“Thumbs down. I think Derby likes the idea, but then he’s got nothing to lose. We’re already one man short and Brandt’s not interested in losing me, so I guess we’re out of luck.”

“Too bad,” Dan murmured, and I could tell from his tone that he meant it. The prospect of officially involving VCIN in a specialized federal task force had obviously been appealing. “Well, keep me posted. By the way, did you fly that photo of Truong by Immigration?”

“No,” I answered expectantly. “Why?”

“I just remembered it was one of their customers who said Sonny had arranged his border crossing. If they still have the guy in custody, maybe he could identify Sonny. The INS agent who gave me that is a friend. If you’d like, I can chase it down.”

“Christ, yes. I’d appreciate it.”

“No problem. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“Thanks, Dan,” I said, hanging up as Sammie appeared in my doorway.

“Sol’s back from Keene.”

I rose and followed her across the squad room to the conference area beyond it-a more comfortable setting than my office for any meeting exceeding two people. Stennis was already laying a newly acquired Ident-i-kit portrait on the wide table.

I stood by him, looking down at yet another hard, arrogant young face, a blight on the reputations of a few million other Asians who had shared his troubled past and yet continued to peacefully strive for their dreams.

“That him?” I asked.

“Yup,” Stennis answered, “according to four witnesses. He left an impression, too. He and his buddies scared the hell out of the nurses in the ER.” He quickly held up his hand as I opened my mouth-“No, they didn’t do anything out of line. And, no, I couldn’t get descriptions of the others, except that there were four of them-all males, all young, all Asians. The other three escorted this guy in and then waited outside in the parking lot.”

“Anyone make the car they were in?” Sammie asked.

Stennis shook his head. “No, but I do have some good news.” He laid a couple of documents next to the picture. “This is a copy of the patient form he filled out-one of the nurses gave me that, sort of under the table-and this is a copy of the information concerning his blood sample-the cross-matching report, I guess they call it.”

“Damn,” I muttered, “they did draw blood.”

“Yup. Apparently, he’d lost quite a bit. There was a second cut on the wrist-nicked an artery. So, after they sewed him up, they gave him a pint of blood-couldn’t do that without identifying what type he already had in his system. If you ask me, the doc who worked on him was suspicious. Not that he’d admit it when I put it to him. Still,” he added, his eyes glowing with satisfaction, “he did hand the sample over.” With a slight flourish, he pulled a sealed packet from his coat pocket.

“That’s his blood?” I asked, understandably startled. “How did you get it?”

Stennis’s smile broadened. “Through channels, like you asked. Keene PD applied for the warrant, and a judge issued it, but the whole thing only took two hours-luck of the draw. Everyone was in the right place at the right time.”

“That’s great.” I picked up the patient-information form. “Nguyen Van Hai-he gives the Central Street house as a home address. You’ve both been taking surveillance pictures over there. His face ring any bells?”

They shook their heads, Stennis adding, “While you were on the phone, I passed it around to some of the others. Drew a blank with them, too.”

I stepped away from the table. “All right. Nice job. You might as well get that blood to J.P. so he can send it in for a fast preliminary look-see if we can put Mr. Nguyen with Mr. Truong. Then, if we can actually find either of them, maybe we’ll get a lead on the missing third man.”

“Any ideas how we are going to find them?” Sammie asked skeptically.

I put the patient-information sheet back on the table. “He gave us an address. We might as well shoot for a search warrant and see if we get lucky. Also, now that we have that sketch, and a name to go with it, I think we ought to publish both it and Truong’s photo in every newspaper that’ll run it, just to see what happens-but not until those stitches are due to be removed. Nguyen may go back to have them out, and I don’t want to discourage him. That’ll also give us a little time to run checks on him, get the warrant approved by a judge, and maybe figure out if he has any favorite hangouts.”

I turned to face Sammie. “We better send copies of that sketch to all the hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices we just alerted.”

She nodded and momentarily left the room to retrieve a folder from her desk. “I got something, too,” she said, extracting what I instantly recognized as an autopsy report. “It’s Hillstrom’s verdict on the John Doe without the tattoo-the one Mr. Leung said was called An.”

I opened the report and began scanning its pages-consisting largely of a running commentary on which bullets went where. An was the one Ron had shot several times.

Sammie, clearly impatient, reached over and turned to the page she wanted me to see. “She says he had a bruise running across his chest.”

I saw the reference. “‘Consistent with markings resulting from a rapid deceleration against a diagonally mounted, driver’s-side vehicle seat belt,’” I quoted. “I’ll be goddamned. Dan Flynn was just telling me about a two-car collision in Rutland four days ago that involved Asians.” I hunted through Sammie’s file and retrieved the portrait taken of An at the morgue. “Sol, find out which officer handled the complaint, fax him a copy of this photograph, and get all the information you can from him-everything on the driver, his passenger, the car… The works.”

Stennis snatched the picture from my hand and disappeared.

I could tell from Sammie’s expression that this was only half her good news. “Remember when Dennis came to you with the stats from California on Vu and Henry Lam, and you sent him to me? Well, I compared them to what I already had. The date of birth on Lam was different, and when I ran the new birth date through the computer, I got this.” She handed me a printout. “Henry Lam’s Massachusetts rap sheet as an adult. It didn’t click on the name alone earlier because the system is DOB-biased, and I didn’t think to challenge it.”

“So, the little turkey was operating nearby,” I murmured.

“Not only that,” she added, again directing me where to read. “But it says here: ‘Consult Montreal Urban Community Police for more info.’”

I smiled at her refreshing optimism. “Not bad, Sammie. If An did get sliced interrogating Benny, that gives us two of his killers, as well as two of the three who tried to kill Ron and me. Now we’re cooking.”

Our self-satisfaction was abruptly interrupted by Harriet’s voice, calling for me urgently. She was sitting at her desk, holding the phone out to me as I approached. “It’s the hospital ER. There’s an Asian male having stitches taken out of his hand right now.”

I ignored the phone. “They didn’t stall him?”

“They tried to, but one of the visiting doctors overheard them and made a big deal about rendering rapid service.”

“Shit. He’ll be out of there in no time.” I grabbed Sammie by the arm and propelled her toward the door, shouting to Harriet over my shoulder as I followed, “Mobilize what you can find of the SRT, and see if we can’t borrow Maxine’s van for a take-down team. Also, find out if this guy’s alone or with friends, and try to get a description of his car.” I paused at the door. “And make sure no patrol units stumble in there by mistake. I don’t want to lose control of this. Nobody’s to confront until I get to the scene.”

Sammie and I ran toward the parking lot to one of the department’s two unmarked cars. As Sammie slid in behind the wheel, I paused, noticing two people step out of one of the TV trucks, attracted by our obvious haste.

“Something up?” one of them asked.

“Ran out of donuts,” I shouted back. I made a big display of slowly taking my jacket off and draping it over my forearm before I leisurely opened the passenger door and got in, trying to ignore Sammie’s revving of the engine.

“Code three?” she asked testily before I’d even shut the door. “Not on your life-not till we clear the parking lot.” She looked over her shoulder to where I was staring. “Oh, Christ.”

“After we hit High Street, you can play all the sirens you want, but only to within a couple of blocks of the hospital. I don’t want Nguyen getting nervous.”

She did a credible job of starting out slowly, leaving our two spectators flatfooted, but once she reached Oak Street, she took off with tires squealing. I pulled the mike from its clip and began orchestrating a coordinated approach, occasionally holding onto the door frame to keep from falling into Sammie’s lap.

The setting outside Brattleboro Memorial Hospital’s emergency room had several advantages as a take-down spot, assuming we got there early enough to position ourselves.

The ER was tucked away around the east side of the building, its separate, dead-end parking lot perched between the hospital and the top of a steep grassy slope that fell away to Canal Street far below. To the lot’s south was the driveway connecting it to the main parking area around the corner; to its west was the ER’s ambulance loading dock, sliding glass doors, and the long window of the ER waiting room; and to its north was a short wing of the building, built mostly of windowless brick.

A few blocks from the hospital, Sammie slowed down and killed her lights and siren. I picked up the mobile phone lying on the seat between us and dialed the ER.

“ER-Elizabeth Pace.”

That helped. Nurse Pace, although a fairly recent arrival in town, was a friend. “Elizabeth, this is Joe Gunther.”

The relief in her voice was palpable. “Joe-thank God. Where are you?”

“About a block away. Is that man still with the doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Where-exactly?”

“Room 4, a little ways down the hall.”

“So there’s no way he can hear what you’re saying?”

“Yes. I mean, no, he can’t. I told the woman at the police department that, as far as I know, he is alone-at least he came in alone. But I don’t know what car he’s driving.”

Sammie pulled into Belmont Street, fronting the hospital.

“That’s okay. Is the ER full right now?”

“No. There’s a patient in room 2, and a couple of people in the waiting room. They just got here.”

“Fine. What’s this man wearing?”

“A bright-red windbreaker and a dark-blue baseball cap.”

“Great, thanks. Now, when he comes out, I don’t want you doing anything other than the usual. This is just a man we want to talk with, so I don’t want you all worked up. Just do whatever paperwork is necessary, and wish him a nice day, okay?”

“I don’t use that expression.”

“Give me a break, Elizabeth. Pat him on the ass, if that’s what you do, all right?”

She laughed, to my relief. “All right.”

“Talk to you later,” I said and disconnected.

Sammie had pulled into the main parking area by this time and now slowly drove around the gentle curve leading to the ER lot.

I unhooked the radio mike and held it below the window. “M-80 from O-3. Is the SRT rolling?”

“We’re rolling,” came the direct response. “We’re in Maxine’s van, coming up Estey Street. ETA about two minutes. Maxine says she’ll kill us if we put holes in this thing.”

“How many people do you have?”

“Three.”

“Okay-as far as we know, he’s alone.” I paused to check out the lot while Sammie, having parked, made a big show of pulling a map out and spreading it across the steering wheel. “I don’t see anyone in the ER parking area, either on foot or waiting in a vehicle. The subject is supposed to be wearing a bright-red windbreaker and a dark-blue baseball cap.”

“10-4. We’ll advise when we reach Belmont,” came the reply.

The reason for borrowing Maxine’s van, instead of grabbing our far more ostentatious emergency-services truck, was that my plan-such as it was-called for surprise and an overwhelming show of force. The anonymity of her vehicle, along with its darkly tinted windows, allowed for both.

“We’re coming up Belmont now,” came from the speaker under the dash.

I keyed the mike. “10-4. Come partway up the driveway and wait at the curve where you’re still out of sight of the ER door. When I give the signal, approach at normal speed, and try to place the subject between the van and the building’s north brick wall-that’s the best backstop we’ve got. No rifles, okay? Handguns and shotguns only. I don’t want any bullets reaching New Hampshire.”

“You got it,” Marshall Smith’s voice answered, taking advantage of the restricted frequency to both relax on radio protocol and cut the tension a bit.

We sat there a few minutes more, feeling the weight of each second. My brain was working in overdrive, sorting through every scenario I could imagine. I knew from experience almost anything could happen, from Nguyen suddenly rumbling to his exposed position and grabbing Elizabeth as a hostage, to a carful of his buddies arriving to pick him up.

Finally, almost mercifully, we saw the glass doors of the emergency room slide open.

“Get ready,” I said on the radio.

A man, his face slightly turned away, stepped out onto the ambulance loading dock and paused there, apparently surveying the distant rooftops to the east. He was wearing a white shirt and no cap.

“Damn,” Sammie murmured, her gun already resting in her lap.

Slowly, as if stringing us along, the man removed a rolled-up bundle from under his arm and shook it out, revealing a bright-red windbreaker, which he slipped on. As his hands came through the sleeves, I could see the flash of a bandage on one of them. He pulled a blue cap from one of his pockets, adjusted it neatly on his head, and began walking toward the wheelchair ramp leading off the dock.

“Here he comes, off the loading dock. Go at a normal speed and pinch him off. Good luck.”

Almost immediately, we both became aware of movement behind us. Maxine’s van slid silently around the curve of the driveway, entered the small parking lot, and headed straight at Nguyen Van Hai. Sammie pulled the latch back on her door and opened it just a crack.

Nguyen, now crossing the lot, looked up without much curiosity as the dark van gradually approached, running perpendicular to the row of parked cars. Then he slowed, noticing it was not pulling into one of the open slots. From a distance, I could see his expression change-from passivity, to surprise, to downright alarm. He stopped dead in his tracks and quickly glanced around.

“Come on, come on,” Sammie muttered under her breath.

Suddenly, the van twisted to the right, presenting a broadside to the man almost right next to it, and simultaneously all doors to the vehicle flew open. The van hadn’t rolled to a complete stop before three heavily armed men came flying out of it, screaming orders at the top of their lungs. Dressed in black body armor stenciled in gray letters spelling Police, they circled Nguyen like nightmarish Dobermans, two of them with their legs planted and their pistols drawn in the classic shooter’s stance, the third with his hands free to move in with terrifying speed and take the man down as fast and as hard as he could. In less than five seconds it was over. Nguyen Van Hai lay flat on his face, his wrists handcuffed behind his back.

“Clear,” Marshall Smith said into his portable radio, “clear and secure.”

Sammie and I got out of our car and walked over to the group. The officer with the handcuffs was carefully searching the suspect. Looking around, I saw a few faces appear at the nearby windows. Behind us, a patrol unit appeared from its hiding place down the street.

“Nice job, folks-picture perfect,” I said as I reached them. “Marshall, why don’t you and Pierre put him in the unit and escort him back to quarters. I’ll be right there.”

I jumped up onto the loading dock and headed into the ER. Elizabeth Pace was standing in the middle of the hall, looking anxious. “Is everyone all right?”

“Everyone’s fine. I just wanted to thank you and find out how you were.”

She gave me a lopsided smile and took my hand in hers, her eyes still glued to the scene outside. I turned slightly and watched with her as the take-down team pulled Nguyen to his feet and piled him into the back of the waiting patrol car. “It was so fast, after all that waiting. What did he do?”

“We have to determine that legally, but it isn’t nice. I can tell you that much.”

She shook her head slightly. “Thirty years working in Boston, I never saw anything like that. So much for country living.”

The police department’s interrogation room, complete with the obligatory one-way mirror mounted into the wall, was as miniaturized as the rest of the department, compared to a big-city force. The room itself was six feet by eight, and the observation cubicle was too narrow to hold a chair. The whole thing was tucked into a corner of the detective squad room.

I stood next to Tony Brandt, staring through the smoke-colored glass, watching Willy Kunkle trying to extract some information from our guest. So far, it had been an exercise in futility. Nguyen Van Hai hadn’t said a single word since uttering yes to whether he understood his rights.

“Does he speak English?” Tony asked.

“He spoke it fine to the doctor. I called and asked. We’re trying to locate a translator, but I doubt it’ll make any difference.”

“But he is the man we’re after, right?”

“Circumstantially, he is. If we’re lucky, we’ll have the preliminary blood analysis back by tomorrow or the next day. If that works out, then DNA will put his blood and Benny’s in the same place at the same time.”

“Maybe the same time,” Tony amended.

“That’s up to the lawyers. According to J.P., it’s a fact-the coagulation rates were the same on both samples.”

“You search his house yet?”

“I just came from there. J.P. and his crew are still at it, but I don’t expect much-mattresses on the floor, piles of clothing, smell of food and unwashed bodies. They were having a hard time telling this guy’s junk from everyone else’s.”

“Any help from the other residents?”

“Minimal.”

“I got a call from the governor this morning. Since the media’s been speculating about organized Asian crime, he was wondering if we might need some help. I lied. I told him we were right on top of things.”

I laughed softly. Twenty-four hours earlier, I thought, and we would’ve been handing Nguyen Van Hai over to the feds-with Tony’s blessing. I slid out of the narrow cubicle to appear at the door to the interrogation room. Willy glanced over his shoulder and gave me a grim smile. “He’s all yours.”

I took my time getting comfortable in the molded plastic chair, placing it just so at the small table between us. I finally sat back, crossed my legs, and put my hands in my lap-the perfect image, I hoped, of imperturbable permanence. “We were wondering if you’d like to have an interpreter.”

Nguyen just looked at me.

“We know you speak English. You were speaking it to the doctor not twenty minutes ago. But we thought we’d make it as convenient as possible. Would you like us to call you a lawyer?”

He remained silent, his eyes watching me closely, utterly without expression.

“I hope you understand that you’re not here just for an interview. We know what you’ve done. We know you tortured Benny Travers, we know you and your two buddies chased him down after he tried to escape, and forced him off the road and killed him. We know one of you shot at him during that chase, and who was driving the car. We even know the gun was a Glock. This is not a situation where we’re hoping you’ll slip up and say something incriminating.”

He didn’t speak, he didn’t move. I had to watch him closely to even see him breathing.

“You’re in serious trouble, whether you talk or not. You can keep quiet through the arraignment, through every conversation with your lawyer, through the trial, and even when they throw the book at you. The end result will be the same-you’ll be in jail, where you’ll stay for a very long time.”

He blinked-once-which made me wonder if that had been the first time his eyes had moved since I’d sat down, or just the first time I’d noticed it. The very question irritated me, and made me realize just who was psyching out whom.

I shifted in my seat lazily, recrossing my legs. “Of course, that’s the worst-case scenario. It doesn’t have to be that bad. Unlike in the old country, we tend to bargain with our prisoners… Something,” and here I pulled the rap sheet out of my pocket we’d just been wired from NCIC, “I see you already know about.”

I paused and reexamined the contents of the sheet-a complete listing of increasingly nasty activity in California, Florida, Massachusetts, and Canada, which was mentioned as his initial port of entry. He was thirty years old, and yet had already spent more than half his life as a gang member. My private frustration was that the pure data of the report gave me no inkling of where he might have hooked up with Truong, Vu, or Henry Lam.

I shook my head and whistled softly. “Boy, the State’s Attorney’s going to want to bury you alive. He’s a politician, after all, and putting you away’ll be like putting votes into the bank.”

All of us had been through practice interrogations before where the fake suspect essentially plays dead. It was a good way for us to examine the various ways of getting under a suspect’s skin. But in none of those sessions had I ever received as little feedback as now.

“Still,” I kept trying, “they say there’s always room to move, and we don’t have all the answers. For example, we’d like to take a look at the car you drove that day, and I wouldn’t mind having a chat with Truong Van Loc. Anything you could give us on him would help your case-perhaps a lot.”

I was looking directly into his eyes as I said that name and saw absolutely nothing. My mind went back over what we’d learned of Benny Travers’s death, and of the role the man before me must have played in it. Standing in that kitchen days ago, seeing all that blood, the cut pants, the crimson outline of the fillet knife on the table-used again and again on a man who must’ve been screaming his lungs out, his head trapped inside a plastic bag-I’d been shaken at the cool savagery of it all, and I’d wondered about the men who’d acted it out. Now, looking at Nguyen Van Hai’s silent, unrepentant face, I was left baffled and disappointed-as if I’d just unwrapped a gift box and found it empty.

I stood up. “Mr. Nguyen, welcome to the judicial process. I’ll get out of your way right now. But keep in mind, if you ever get the urge to make things a little easier on yourself, ask for me-the sooner the better.”

His eyes didn’t even follow me as I left the room.