Willy was unusually cheerful. “He’s fine, and getting VIP treatment, since he totally spilled his guts. He’s already in our lockup, waiting for arraignment.”
“He confessed?” Ron asked.
“Yup. Last night, after the docs let us at him. Described where he left the body, the knife he used, and where he threw it by the side of the road. J.P. and me checked his apartment and gave Judith the third degree—there’s a lovely woman, by the way—and she even handed over some bloody clothes she was going to get rid of.”
“Anything fitting the knee-print we found next to Brenda’s body?” I asked.
“Don’t know. J.P.’s hoarding it. All I saw was a jacket with a smeared cuff and a shoe with a couple of drops on it. Looked like Owen must’ve split before it got real messy.”
“The arraignment’s this afternoon?” Ron asked, always conscious of deadlines. “You been able to get the paperwork ready?”
Kunkle looked at him scornfully. “Scared you might be replaced, Ronnie? Actually, it was so easy I wonder why you make such a big deal out of it all the time. Job security, I guess.”
I cut him off as Ron’s face reddened. “Why did he do it?”
Willy perched on the edge of Sammie’s bed. “That part’s a little melodramatic, but then I think Owen’s a few bricks shy of a load. He says he had a girlfriend a couple of years back who died of some bad dope. He didn’t know it was Brenda then that supplied her, but when he found out, he got good and hopped up and went over to confront her. She told him to pound sand and he sliced-’n’-diced her—just like that.”
“Who told him it was Brenda?”
“No one. He said he discovered it for himself—that she’d poisoned the stuff.”
“He know about the kid in the back room?”
“Negative. Not that it matters. It’s a two-for-one sale, according to the SA—Felony Murder Rule.”
Thinking of the election later in the year, I asked, “The SA going to handle it himself?”
Willy smiled. “Nope. Your love-mate is, with him looking over her shoulder, of course.”
Gail?” I blurted out.
“Unless you switched partners. Derby wants to spend his quality time rallying votes. Rumor has it James Dunn wants the office back in November. Total bullshit, of course—everyone hates Dunn—but Derby’s got sweaty palms. Plus, he thinks if he lets one of his deputies handle it, it’ll show off the office’s depth—he’s fighting the image of being a headline hog as well as a micro-manager, just like Dunn used to be. Looks like the public defender’s office is going to assign Reggie McNeil from their side. Should be fun for Gail, given Reggie’s habits.”
McNeil had made a reputation of using anything and everything in defense of his clients—sometimes to the point of getting his wrist slapped by his boss, the defender general. This zeal did not endear him to anyone I knew in law enforcement.
“How do you know McNeil’s got it? Wouldn’t that happen at the arraignment?” I asked, surprised.
“Right after Owen fessed up”—Willy gave Ron a meaningful look—“which was right after we Mirandized him nice and legal—I guess he suddenly got cold feet. Maybe it was hearing himself out loud or something. Anyhow, he clammed up—a little late—and said he wanted a lawyer. Asked for McNeil personally. Not that that scum-bag isn’t a household name to every loser in town.”
“McNeil is such a jerk…” Sammie began joining in, but came to a full stop, her mouth half open and her eyes on the door.
We all followed her gaze and saw a tall, slim man with long dark hair, dressed in a thigh-length leather jacket. He had high cheekbones, a permanent five o’clock shadow, a strong chin, and penetrating eyes. To my jaundiced eye, he looked like a wannabe fashion model, touched by just enough cheapness to ruin the effect.
“Andy,” Sammie said in a slightly strangled voice.
Andy Padgett looked uncomfortably at the bunch of us, obviously caught unawares by our presence.
“Hey, babe,” he said cautiously, his voice muted.
Willy turned to Sammie in mock outrage. “You never let me call you that. How’s he get away with it?”
Sammie’s lips barely moved. “Fuck off, Willy.”
I got up and crossed over to shake Padgett’s hand, hoping to dilute the tension. Gail and Ron’s wife had dropped by to see us the night before, and we’d all had a good time. I felt badly now that Sammie’s chance at the same kind of comfort was being ruined. “Hi. I’m Joe Gunther. Glad to meet you. This is Ron Klesczewski. Willy Kunkle I think you already know.”
Padgett’s grip was brief. His eyes only briefly met mine. “Yeah. Hi.”
“Sammie’s said good things about you.”
He took a half step backward, still speaking in a murmur, obviously not buying my patter. “Great. She’s okay. Look, I don’t want to interrupt.” He raised his hand to her. “I’ll catch you later.”
Willy laughed. “Well, warm your hands up ahead of time. She’s a little frigid right now.” Sammie punched him in his bad shoulder. “You are such an asshole. I’ll see you at home, Andy. Thanks for coming.”
Padgett vanished as if a rope had yanked him clear of the doorway.
“Must’ve been late for another poker game,” Willy said, relentless to the end.
Sammie pushed him clear off the bed. “Get out, Willy. What the hell did he ever do to you?”
Willy moved to the door. Under the smirk, he was simmering. “Nothing yet. He better hope he doesn’t, either.”
“Jesus,” she exclaimed, but her target had already left.
A doctor filled the doorway instead, stopping dead in his tracks at the assembled hostile stares. He glanced at Kunkle’s departing back, invisible to us, and then asked generally, “Is everything all right?”
For some reason, we all looked at Sammie.
She was pale with rage. “Not hardly.”
“So—good news?” I asked him hopefully, my voice sounding loud in the quiet room.
He took my cue, ignoring the tension, and allowed that since we’d apparently survived the night with no obvious ill effects, we were free to go.
But back in the room I’d shared with Ron, changing into my clothes and preparing to leave, I found my thoughts weren’t on the weird three-way tug-of-war between Sam, Willy, and Andy Padgett. That, as I saw it, had been something they’d have to work out on their own. Instead, I was grappling with the abrupt end of an intense investigation, made all the more dramatic by Owen’s unexpected confession.
We’d still be involved in the case, of course. After the arraignment, both sides would retire to their corners, build up witness lists, read each other’s mail about evidence, and jockey around for advantage. And we’d be called to help in some of that—tying off the odd loose end. But as I tucked my few belongings under my arm and headed for the door, I still felt like I’d been left on the dock to wave a ship goodbye.
I should’ve known better.
· · ·
With Gail anointed the lead lawyer in the prosecution against Owen Tharp, it was deemed a bad idea to have too many of my fingerprints on the case. While not married, we were a well-known couple, a connection which had come up in court before. It was obvious baloney—the police and the state’s attorney’s office were supposed to work in tandem—but on high-profile cases like this, it was best not to give the defense any more than we had to.
And it wasn’t as if I had nothing else to do—a point driven home as soon as I’d sat down at my desk.
Harriet Fritter, after asking about my health and telling me to act my age, dumped a thick pile of paperwork before me and informed me Stan Katz had been in hot pursuit by phone.
I held off calling him back for a while, digging through the pile instead—half wondering if Harriet hadn’t subversively set me up to do just that—when Ron appeared in my doorway.
“I heard back from New Jersey on Phil Resnick—the guy we’re hoping was our dead truck driver?”
I nodded to keep him going.
“Well, it’s a definite hit. They sent me prints, and one of them not only matches the finger J.P. found, but Waterbury just confirmed it through their data bank. It wasn’t on AFIS, but they used some other method. That’s why it took so long—that and the fact it was only one finger.”
“Phil Resnick,” I mused. “What else did New Jersey tell you?”
“That he was Mob-connected. Not family himself—with that last name—but more of a freelancer.”
“Trucking haz mat?”
“Yup,” he confirmed, “throughout New England.”
He handed me a grainy black-and-white facsimile of a photograph of a round-faced, ugly man, apparently trying to melt the camera lens with his eyes.
I studied the face for a few moments. “Makes you wonder if any other department up around here ever had dealings with him.”
Ron smiled. “I just finished putting it on the wire—every PD from Maine to upper New York State, including Massachusetts. God knows what we’ll hear back, or when, but it can’t hurt. Sounds like the guy’d been doing this for quite a while.”
That rang two bells in my brain. “According to Bobby Miller, the only thing disturbed in Jim Reynolds’s office was a cabinet filled with old files. And Gail said a few days ago that she wouldn’t put it past one of Reynolds’s old clients to want to get even with him, especially if he’d lost their case.”
Ron just looked at me, his eyebrows arched.
“Do me a favor,” I asked him. “Dig through the court records, back to when Reynolds started working here, and pull anything dealing with hazardous materials, illegal trucking, Phil Resnick, environmental offenses, and anything else like it.” I checked my watch. “Who’s going to the intel meeting this morning? We might as well give them a heads up, too.”
“I was planning to go,” he admitted, “but I don’t have anything to present. Why don’t you give them this while I start on Reynolds’s court records?”
· · ·
Regional police intelligence meetings were held once a month in a conference room at Rescue, Inc., the area’s primary ambulance squad. They could have been held at our department, but the theory was to give all those attending a sense of neutral ground.
The principle behind the meetings was simple: to get as many representatives from as many diverse agencies as possible into one room every four weeks to present, update, and exchange information. Depending on the time of year, and the luck of the draw, attendees could number from as few as five to as many as twenty. They were sheriff’s deputies, federal agents, state police from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, municipal cops from any one of dozens of surrounding communities, parole and probation officers from the Department of Corrections, investigators from state’s attorney’s offices, and people from liquor enforcement, the Agency of Natural Resources, and even outfits like the National Guard. The organizations they represented ranged from departments with a few officers to the United States government, and the topics discussed from stolen tires to foreign terrorists threatening to poison whole cities. Nobody was treated differently from anybody else, and all information received equal attention. Sending a bulletin out to surrounding departments—as Ron had just done concerning Phil Resnick—was worthwhile and routine, but it was hard to beat a direct sell if you wanted to have your message clearly heard.
Pure chance had timed the monthly meeting for today. And by going, I could stave off talking to Stan Katz that much longer.
There were about ten of us by the time we settled down, having turned the parking lot into a convention of squad cars and suspiciously bland sedans, all sprouting antennae, and all precariously huddled next to towering eight-foot snowbanks.
Henry Roberts of the Windham County Sheriff’s Office—polite, precise in manner, and always immaculately turned out—ran the meeting, having each of us speak in a clockwise rotation around the table while desperately keeping notes on a laptop computer.
By the time my turn came, we’d all received Xeroxed mug shots of a check kiter, a car booster, and a welfare defrauder, had been asked to keep an eye out for a suspected coke dealer, a religious right-wing gunrunner, and a two-brother team of bunco artists, and had covered our notepads with lists of names, birth dates, known associates, license plate numbers, and vehicle descriptions.
“Sorry I don’t have anything quite as lively as everyone else,” I began. “My suspect’s not only dead but missing a head and both hands.”
“The railroad bum?” one of them asked.
“Yes and no,” I answered. “We had doubts he was a bum from the start. Now we’ve found out he was a New Jersey-based truck driver with Mob connections named Philip Resnick.” I passed around copies I’d made of Ron’s fuzzy photograph. “Date of birth 4/8/51. His past accomplishments are listed below the picture. We’re pretty sure he was transporting a haz mat cocktail that he dumped at Norm Blood’s farm just before his truck broke down and he had to abandon it near Bickford’s. My first question is: Has anyone here ever seen him or heard about him?”
There was a momentary pause around the room: “Any local connections other than Blood?” someone finally asked.
“Not really,” I answered. “The truck was leased from Timson Long Haul near Leverett, Massachusetts, but the guy we talked to there couldn’t find his paperwork and wasn’t inclined to look. Supposedly, Resnick was just one of several people who’d leased the same rig recently, so we’re thinking Timson might be a dead end. If the Mob is tied into this, it’s unlikely they’d make it that easy for us to find them.”
A plainclothes state trooper from Massachusetts named Peter Manning disagreed. “We’ve had dealings with Timson before,” he said. “He’s definitely crooked, but he’s also probably a pure freelancer—he’s never appeared on any of our Mafia watch lists. He makes a profit, though. Leverett’s hardly the place for a trucking company, and his place is a dump, but he keeps plugging along year after year, like he was located in downtown Boston. You want to give him a visit, I’d be happy to ride shotgun. The only thing we’ve caught him red-handed at over the years is either routine vehicle maintenance shit or some minor book cooking. But his name keeps coming up with this haz mat stuff, and I’d love to let him know we’re still watching.”
I nodded my thanks. “You got a deal. I’ll call you in a few days.”