She put her hand on mine, suddenly more conscious of my state of mind. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Talk about misplaced priorities. Was it bad?”
“We used shotguns—pretty ugly.”
“Did he shoot at you?”
I nodded. “Marshall caught one in the vest. He was the only one hit. He’s fine.”
Following a long silence, she murmured, “I can’t imagine what that would be like.”
God knows Gail had gotten her lumps over the years, either seeing me being patched up in the hospital or suffering herself at the hands of her own assailant. But she’d still always viewed my world as a bit of an abstraction, even now that she was a prosecutor. She didn’t share my knowledge of the streets, or of the people inhabiting them. It was an ignorance I had taken for granted so far, but which had lately begun to chafe on me, especially now that she was deciding which of my collars got deals and which went to jail.
Without being fully aware of it, I’d come to see her differently in her new job. From rape victim to fighter to law student to the present, she’d built herself over, with motivations and goals far different from those I’d known when we’d met. I’d done what I could to be supportive—moving into this house, in which I’d never felt fully at home, encouraging her when she’d given herself totally to her law studies. But I realized that the distance I was feeling between us wasn’t solely due to her gaining speed and my staying put. It also involved a discomfort on my part with living so close to so much constant energy.
She squeezed my hand to remind me that I hadn’t said a word for several minutes. “You okay?”
“I will be,” I said. “I’ve been through shootings before. I just have to give myself a little time to process it.”
“I’m sorry I mouthed off.”
It was a comment normally deserving of a dismissive, “It’s all right,” letting the trauma of the shooting act as a cover-up for unspoken feelings. But, paradoxically, I didn’t have the strength right now to take a quick and easy out.
“Maybe that’s become par for the course lately, on both our parts,” I said tentatively, unsure where I was heading, or even why.
Her hand slipped off of mine. “What do you mean?” Her voice was careful.
“That we’ve changed.”
I knew I should say more, but I couldn’t find the words.
She surprised me by simply saying, “I know.”
I turned from staring at the floor to meet her eyes, astonished that she might have been sharing what I’d thought were one-sided misgivings. “You feel the same way? What happened?”
She looked at me sadly. “Maybe more than we could handle, starting with who we are and where we came from.”
I understood what she meant. She was a child of privilege, and I the son of a make-do farmer. We’d come like travelers down separate roads and had found peace and joy on a common path. Our pasts, and the influences that had forged us, hadn’t much mattered in a shared but busily distracting life.
We’d even prided ourselves on surviving tests of fire—the stresses of my job and its dangers, the political wrangles Gail had been sucked into over the years. We’d seen those as the worst of hurdles, easily jumped.
Until we’d hit the rape.
I touched her cheek with my fingertips. “I love you, Gail.”
She smiled, barely. “So what do we do?”
I kissed her. “Go to sleep. Trust to instinct. This’ll work itself out. I don’t know how—I’m not even sure what the problem is, really—but we’re friends first and foremost, and I think that’ll see us through.”
We left it at that, but it was a restless night, filled with things left unsaid.
THE MORNING AFTER, I COULD STILL SMELL
the gunpowder in the stagnant air of the hallway. It was very quiet, the street sounds barely audible through the walls. Yellow police tape had been strung up to isolate the entire floor, adding to the museum-like quality of the place. Conyer’s blood had dried to a nondescript brown.
I paused on the landing and looked down the corridor, beyond the coagulated pool and the scars the buckshot had left along the walls, trying to put aside the memories for the job at hand. It was hard to forget the bright flashes from Conyer’s pistol, not knowing if I would suddenly feel the numbing impact of a bullet.
Ron Klesczewski stepped into my line of vision from a side door, snapping me out of my reverie. “Hi, Joe. Heard you were headed this way. You get any sleep?”
From the look in his eyes, it was obvious he knew I hadn’t. “No.”
He smiled sympathetically. “Well, we may have lost out on a chat with Billy Conyer, but he left enough behind to keep us busy for a while.”
I drew abreast of the door we’d forced open just eight hours earlier. Given the outcome of that visit, our search of Conyer’s digs had been delayed by the post-shoot team’s priorities.
I peered over Ron’s shoulder at the room beyond. “I just hope it’s enough. I want to get moving on this.”
Ron stepped aside and let me in. The room was what we’d come to expect from the neighborhood—dark, stuffy, unclean, stripped of all but the essentials, and filled with the debris of a human being with little care for himself or his environment. Enhancing the flavor, the building’s heating system was still in overdrive, making the whole place feel like a sauna perched over a garbage dump. There was a jagged two-foot by four-foot hole in the side wall, which Conyer had created as a back door.
Willy stuck his head through the hole and smiled at me. “Hey, there, boss. Decide to join us before noon?”
“Drop it.”
He laughed. “Oh-oh. Joe’s grumpy. Must’ve not gotten laid.”
He didn’t know how close that cut. “What’ve you found so far, Willy?”
“Mostly just the by-products of a disgusting lifestyle, but we haven’t been at it long.”
“What’s the story on the three rooms? How was he able to cut through the walls with nobody knowing?”
“I checked into that,” Ron said from behind me. “It wasn’t coincidence they were empty, like we thought last night. Conyer rented the other two under assumed names.”
I looked at him closely. “How long ago?”
He glanced at his notepad. “January eighth.”
“Two days after Resnick was killed,” I said. “Anyone check if he had a bank account?”
Willy laughed. “Yeah. I don’t think he was into banks. I got his assets in a suitcase here. Something under five grand.”
“We checked the local branches,” Ron elaborated, “and we put it out on the wire. But he could’ve used an alias, like he did for the other two rooms. We might never find out for sure.”
I turned back to Willy. “That money in new bills or old?”
“Bit of both.”
“New ones banded or loose?”
“Loose.”
“Check those for prints. If we get lucky, maybe Conyer’s contractor left a fat thumbprint on each as he shelled ’em out. Who’s working the friends and relatives angle?” I asked.
Willy’s voice took on a slight edge, no doubt matching my own. “Sam. She could probably use some help, if you’ve finished busting our chops.”
I got the hint.
· · ·
I tried clearing my mind on the short drive to the office, freeing it of last night’s shooting, of my conversation with Gail, and of my overall frustration. I knew I’d been overly terse with Ron and Willy. With all of us under pressure and in need of sleep, I was supposed to be setting an example of grace in the face of adversity.
Sammie was at her desk, poring over Ron’s notes. I sat in her guest chair, not bothering to remove my coat.
She glanced up. “You look beat.”
So much for that effort. “I’m okay. Willy told me you were chasing down Conyer’s family and associates.”
She pulled a sheet of paper from the file before her. “Yeah. He spent most of his time with the twenty-something crowd—big on bar-hopping, hell-raising, and recreational dope.”
“Looks like he was paid to do in Resnick. Willy found a suitcase full of cash.”
She stared with renewed interest at the contents of her file. “Huh—well, if he was the lead man, it sure doesn’t sound like the guy I’ve been reading about. One report describes him as a born underling—not a doer. According to his criminal records, he acted out now and then—assault and battery, aggravated assault, destruction of private property—but he never went over the top, and he always got busted in a group, as if he couldn’t be aggressive on his own, or needed someone else to lead the way.”
“So maybe he was at the bottom of a three-man totem pole.”
She sat back, looking thoughtful. “That’s what I was thinking. He could’ve stolen that hammer to qualify as one of the team—like a rite of passage.”
“Implying a big brother relationship somewhere,” I mused.
Sammie played the devil’s advocate. “On the flip side, he did a pretty good Rambo imitation last night. Could be he finally grew some balls and put a gang together—maybe the Mob paid him to hit one of their own.”
I shook my head. “I think he was being manipulated and felt he was in too deep to get out. That’s why he came out shooting. He must’ve been scared shitless—making holes in the walls, keeping his money in a suitcase, and sleeping three apartments over. When a small-timer becomes a murderer, he usually makes a mess of it—he doesn’t put together a complicated deal like what we’re trying to figure out. I think you’re right—someone was pulling his string.” I pointed my chin toward the paperwork. “So what’s your plan?”
“Check out the family—and his erstwhile playmates. He has two brothers who live in town. Another died of an overdose in Boston two years ago.”
“You want me to take them?”
She handed me one of her sheets. “Be my guest.”
· · ·
Brian Conyer worked at the C&S Grocers warehouse north of town, an enormous enterprise, one of the largest suppliers of groceries in the Northeast and, depending on the year, the biggest business in the state of Vermont. Trucks came and went from the warehouse around the clock, serviced by a small army of loaders, stackers, freezer personnel, hi-lo operators, forklift drivers, and dozens of others. Given the constant turnover, the lack of intense prehiring screening, and the low expectations from both management and employees that the floor jobs had any upward mobility, the whole setup was predisposed to attract a certain slice of the population. Several of our customers had lain low at C&S at one time or another, which made it, paradoxically, one of the police department’s bigger allies. By offering jobs to people who might otherwise go into business for themselves, the company helped keep a lid on the crime rate.
According to a computer check I made before driving to C&S, Billy’s brother didn’t fit that special category, however. He was like the majority of workers there: high-school-educated, locally based, low-income, and, in all probability, with few illusions that the future would ever look any different.
I found him stacking pallets in the three-story-tall freezer—big enough to fit several houses—dressed in overalls so heavily insulated he looked ready to attack the Antarctic. I made no apologies for escorting him outside the building into the winter cold and around a corner that shielded us from the explosive belches of a row of eighteen-wheelers. If anything, I figured it would be warmer than where I’d found him.
He took off a glove, revealing a large, muscular, scarred hand, dug into his overalls, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He didn’t offer me one. He was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and apparently not given to idle chitchat. “I guess this is about Billy.”
It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t phrased with any great interest.
“Yes,” I admitted. “When did you hear about it?”
“The radio—this morning. During coffee break.”
“When did you come on?”
“Midnight.” He inhaled deeply and then mixed smoke and cold breath vapor into a cloud before him. He answered my questioning look by adding, “I’m working overtime right now. ’Nother four hours.”
“You haven’t called any of your family?”
He didn’t answer at first, which I assumed was for my benefit. I sensed Brian prided himself on being tough. “My brother Tim phoned. To let me know.”
“How was he taking it?”
Conyer shrugged. “He wasn’t crying, if that’s what you mean.”
“Not a close-knit bunch?”
This time, he smiled ruefully. “My folks didn’t work real hard in that department. My dad beat my mom, and we four boys beat on each other. Pretty basic.”
“Did you know what Billy was up to lately?”
“Nothin’ good.”
“I mean for a fact.”
He inhaled again, held it a moment, and blew out a smoke ring.
“For a fact? I didn’t know and I didn’t care.”
· · ·
Timothy Conyer was in the employees’ break room at the back of Sam’s, once Brattleboro’s largest Army-Navy store, now its largest “outdoor outfitters”—a semantic concession to changing sensitivities. It was still a remarkable place, jammed with everything from wool shirts and dress slacks to ammunition and Swiss army knives. And it still had a section of surplus military goods. There had never been a time when I didn’t have something from Sam’s in my closet.
Tim Conyer was as slight as his brother Brian was massive, both in body size and demeanor. He rose nervously as I entered and immediately offered me a cup of coffee.
“Please. Have a seat.”
I accepted both offers, adding milk and sugar to my mug. “You know why I’m here?”
“I figured they’d be sending somebody.”
“Why’s that?”
He gave a quick, automatic smile. “Well, Billy… I don’t know. Isn’t that what you always do?”
I took a sip. It was hot and sweet and very good. “I suppose so. I heard you called Brian about it this morning.”
He allowed a small frown. “Yeah. Shouldn’t have bothered.”
“That’s basically what he said. According to him, there was no love lost between any of you.”
“He’s speaking for himself. We were a family, regardless how good we were at it. Brian just never made the effort.”
“Where’s he fit in terms of age?”
“The oldest. I’m the youngest. Maybe that has something to do with it. I didn’t see everything he did when we were growing up.”