Open Season (37 page)

“Yeah. Last radio report had it at almost two feet. Worst in years, they say.”

“Has anyone been in touch with the locals yet?” I knew the answer for DeFlorio and Klesczewski, but I thought I’d be polite. Among his peers at least, Tyler never failed to assume unofficial command.

“I talked to them after I heard the weather. They’ve been in touch with the Postal Service. Things will be delayed, but they’ll still come through. As far as the state police are concerned, the operation is on without changes.”

“They still headquartered at the school?”

He nodded. There was a large school building in the middle of Gorham, several blocks southeast of the post office. The assumption was that a small cluster of cars wouldn’t seem out of place there, even in this mess. Tyler added, “By the way, they managed to get a man inside the post office, posing as a mail sorter.”

“Has anyone seen Cioffi?” I asked.

“Nope.”

De Florio had by this time emerged from his blankets and was sitting with his back against the wall. “Are we sure we’re ever going to see him?”

“Yes. I called his broker yesterday. The deal’s still on. There was a bit of a problem with Express Mail because of the post office box delivery address. Cioffi is anxious to be there when they make the delivery, so we’ll probably see him loitering around the post office.”

“He’ll be a snowman unless he loiters inside.”

I checked my watch. “I’m going over to the school. I want to get the lay of the land. You guys meet me there as soon as you can.”

“You can’t see the lay of the land.”

Kunkle, Katz, and I trudged back out to the car. We slithered from the parking lot to the road in the gloomy half-light, Kunkle fighting to keep us from the ditch. The motel was on the north end of Gorham, a small, flat town tucked between the parallel curves of the Androscoggin River and the railroad tracks. There was one central street, predictably named Main, which served as a brief convergence for Route 2, running east to west, and Route 16, which cut from north to south.

We crawled down the deserted street, our eyes searching the white turmoil outside for the post office. We found it in the middle of town, on the right, situated like the hub of a three-spoke wheel amid Charlie’s Restaurant on one side, a small laundromat-supermarket complex on the other, and an abandoned greasy spoon across the street.

Katz spoke up for the first time in hours. “Well, that answers where he’ll probably be loitering.”

“I wonder if the state police have a plant in the supermarket, too,” Kunkle muttered.

The school was several short blocks farther down the street, set back in the middle of its own lot of land. It was a typical Victorian monstrosity, not unlike the Municipal Building back home. I noticed two Sno-Cats parked by the side, blending in with some town sand trucks and graders. If the weather kept up, they’d be the only way to get around. I hoped someone knew where the keys were.

We piled out of the car and stumbled up the broad steps toward the school’s large double doors. They swung back before we reached them and revealed a Marine Corps poster come alive—mean of eye, hard of belly, complete with a crew cut perched on a six-foot-four frame. I had to look twice to confirm he wasn’t in uniform.

He was Captain Kevin McNaughton of the New Hampshire State Police—the man with whom I had coordinated the fun and games ahead.

He looked icily at Kunkle and Katz. “More? That wasn’t what we discussed.” I shook his hand and stepped in past him. “I know, but this is it. We won’t get in your way.”

“How can you help it? You’ve got almost as many men as I have now.”

I sincerely hoped that wasn’t true. “Just consider us troops. Put us where you want us.”

He closed the door behind us and ushered us into a side office. “You’d think we were after John Dillinger.”

I took my coat off and laid it across the low counter that split the room down the middle. Two plainclothes troopers were sitting at the back drinking coffee. “It’s not getting Cioffi that worries me. It’s Stark getting him, like I told you in Brattleboro.”

McNaughton shook his head and all but sneered, “The mysterious masked avenger. He must really be something if you think he’s going to pop up today.”

“He’s a dedicated man.” I moved to a large table covered with a map of the region. “Any change of plans with the weather?”

McNaughton sauntered over. “If anything, I’d cut back, but I suppose I have to put your men somewhere.”

I looked at the map and thought again of what I might have missed. Since we didn’t know where Cioffi was hiding, we’d planned for four two-car roadblocks—two for Route 2, two for Route 16—to swing into place only after he was identified at the post office; we had to be sure he wouldn’t see us on his way in. McNaughton had one man in the post office—an extra we hadn’t counted on—plus one in the laundromat and one in the restaurant flanking the post office. It was good coverage but thin, which is why I’d brought so many of my own people. I was going to double what he had wherever I could.

“Do we have access to the greasy spoon?” I pointed at the small rectangle across Main Street from the post office.

“We can get it. I have the fire chief on call. Does it matter?”

“You don’t have anyone in there now?”

“No.”

“It can’t hurt. In fact, that’s where you and I could hang out—and him.” I nodded at Katz. “If that’s all right,” I added.

McNaughton sighed and nodded at one of his men. “Call DuBois and ask him for the keys.” He looked down at the map. “So, you want each of your guys to ride shotgun on the roadblocks?”

“All but one. I’d like Kunkle here in a nonblock car, just in case.”

McNaughton shrugged. “They been told who’s boss?”

“Yes.” I looked at my watch. “The post office opens in a half hour. We better get in position.”

The captain sighed and shook his head, but he reached for his jacket. For reasons I couldn’t figure, he’d insisted on downplaying all this from the start, as if the whole thing were a major inconvenience, best handled by a meter-maid unit.

The front door opened and Klesczewski, DeFlorio, and Tyler appeared in a gust of snow. The first two still looked half-asleep. I told them which roadblocks they were to share and sent them back out the door along with McNaughton’s troopers.

We pulled up to the greasy spoon five minutes later, just as the fire chief, looking like a great bundled tree trunk, was unlocking the front door. Kunkle left the motor running.

“Where are you going to position?” I asked him as Katz and McNaughton slid out of the car with one of the equipment bags.

Kunkle shook his head at the weather. “With this shit, I could park on the sidewalk and he wouldn’t see me.” He paused and looked around, more out of habit than for anything he might see. “I guess my best bet is to park in front of the supermarket. The snow’ll cover me fast enough.”

I opened my door. “Don’t forget to clear your tailpipe every once in a while.”

He gave me a withering look and remained silent. I didn’t care. More than one cop had inhaled too much monoxide during a winter stakeout.

I got out and thanked DuBois and entered the abandoned building. It was a standard diner—counter along one wall, booths and front door along the other. The windows were mostly boarded up, with a gap here and there. McNaughton and Katz were already settling at a booth next to one of the gaps. I slid in beside Katz and peered past him out the window.

Across the street, as in some half-developed photograph, I could just make out the vague pale outline of the one-story brick post office. To the left, even less visible, was the supermarket and laundromat; to the right was Charlie’s Restaurant.

McNaughton pulled out his radio. “Frequency check. All units report in.”

One by one, the men responded with their call names and the formal, “in position.” Kunkle merely muttered, “P-Five.”

McNaughton put the radio down and stretched his legs out. “That one’s a little different.”

“Kunkle? He’s all right.”

“Looks like a time bomb to me. We had a guy like that once. Stopped a motorist one day and asked the usual. The driver got ornery so our guy beat the shit out of him. Just snapped.”

Katz muttered. “Sounds like a good lawsuit.”

“Would have been, but we got lucky. The driver had some weed on him so we said we’d leave him alone if he’d do likewise, but it was the end of our boy. We got rid of him.”

I moved to a stool so I could lean against the counter and look straight out the cracked window. The diner was as cold and dark as a refrigerator. “Kunkle’s just a little tense.”

“So was the Boston Strangler.”

McNaughton unzipped the long equipment bag and exposed its contents: three Winchester pumps, ammunition, and three bulletproof vests. I leaned over, picked up one of the shotguns and loaded it.

“I thought you said this guy’s almost in a wheelchair.”

“I keep telling you, Stark’s my concern, not Cioffi.”

The state trooper handled the second Winchester but didn’t load it. “I think you’re a little paranoid about that guy. I mean, I know he’s caused you guys a lot of grief, but he’s not Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

“You don’t know him. He as cold-blooded as a nightmare, and I’m laying bets he’s already here.”

McNaughton didn’t answer, but after a couple of minutes he nonchalantly loaded the gun. Katz left the third one alone.

That was it for conversation. For the next several hours we sat and stared at the snow falling. It never varied in intensity. Untouched by any wind, it crossed our sight from top to bottom like a ragged white sheet on rollers. I began to feel I was seeing the same flakes go by. Every quarter hour, McNaughton conducted a radio check.

At about ten o’clock, sounding like an incongruous angry bee, a snowmobile bounced to a stop by the post office’s front door. The bundled figure on its back slowly detached itself from the saddle and awkwardly stood in the deep snow. He paused for a moment, looking around, and then bent over the snowmobile, working at something on its far side. When he straightened again, he held a long, thin object in his hand, hard to distinguish through the flurries.

“What the hell’s that?” McNaughton muttered.

The figure planted the object in the snow, leaned on it, and took his first step toward the post office.

“It’s a cane,” I said.

MCNAUGHTON PICKED UP HIS RADIO
, his nonchalance suddenly gone “All units from P-One. Heads up. Suspect’s entering post office.”

“I hope he is,” I muttered.

“Is what? Isn’t that Cioffi? You said he had a cane.”

“He does, supposedly. So do lots of other people. Do all your guys have those mugs I handed out?”

The furrow between his eyes deepened. “Of course.”

“Can your inside man make a match without getting himself in trouble?”

McNaughton didn’t answer. He jabbed the transmit button. “P-Six, this is P-One. Match the suspect with the mug shot, and let me know when you’re clear.”

We waited for several minutes before the radio hissed at us. “P-One from P-Six. Hard to say. Lots of facial hair and it’s the wrong color.”

“What about height and weight?”

“That fits.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“He asked if the Express Mail had come in yet. He’s just standing around.”

“Okay. Let me know when he moves.”

McNaughton put the radio down and was silent. It was the first time I’d seen him hesitate. I let him stew in it.

He finally gave me a sidelong glance. “You want to grab him?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?” His tone was neutral.

“Well, if you want to get complicated, until he signs for the envelope, we have no proof he’s our man. I don’t want to run the risk of spooking Cioffi.”

“That’s a little academic, isn’t it? Whoever he is, if we let him get on that snowmobile, we’ll lose him.”

I let a slow count of five pass by before I said, “We sure will.”

The fact that McNaughton had not anticipated a snowmobile hung in the room like a fat, fourth person. Despite that, I gave him high marks for composure. Of course, maybe he just didn’t give a damn, but I doubted that. More likely, the man’s ego had just been rushed into surgery and he was surviving on a stiff upper lip. Of course, I wasn’t in much better shape—the snowmobile had caught me by surprise too—but I wasn’t about to give him that comfort. Besides, I was counting on having enough time to grab Cioffi between when he received the package and when he headed for parts unknown.

McNaughton picked up the radio again. “All blocking units, this is P-One. Watch the roads but don’t close ’em up. And don’t show yourselves. Report all traffic.”

A voice came back. “P-One, this is P-Three. There is no traffic. These roads are closed to anything normal.”

I pulled out my own walkie-talkie and raised my eyebrows at McNaughton. He nodded.

“You there, Willy?”

“Where the hell else am I going to be?”

“You got the snowmobile in sight?”

“Yeah.”

“See if you can put it on the sick list.”

His voice lightened. “You got it.”

All three of us moved closer to the window.

“Do you have access to those Sno-Cats at the school?” I asked McNaughton.

He pleasantly surprised me. “I had ’em put there.” He followed that by picking up the radio again. “Base, this is P-One. Roll one of those Sno-Cats in our direction. Take it easy, though. No rush.”

In a couple of minutes, Kunkle’s blurry dark shape appeared slowly from the left, picking its way carefully through the soft, clinging snow. He crossed over into the post office’s parking lot and approached the snowmobile as if he was making for the door.

The radio made us jump. “All units from P-Six. Suspect’s going outside.”

We watched in utter stillness. Kunkle stopped dead in his tracks and then altered his course slightly away from the snowmobile. At the same time, the man with the cane came out of the post office. Kunkle raised his hand in greeting. The other man nodded in response as they passed. Kunkle entered the building and disappeared.

McNaughton muttered, “Jesus.” The man glanced at his vehicle and then looked around. He hunched his shoulders and began to cross over toward the restaurant. “What the hell’s he doing? The place is closed.”