Scent of Evil (39 page)

She stared at me, her eyes red and swollen, her face expressionless. I held her gaze a few moments longer, wondering if my words would have any effect later on when she’d need them most.

But there was no way to tell.

I rose and headed for the door, leaving her to soak in her newfound puddle of reality.

THE SMOKE IN BRANDT’S OFFICE
hung in the air like a veil, the still box-fan in his window a silent rebuke to the computer repairman’s recommendation. I’d been wording a warrant for Kenny Thomas’s apartment with the reunited Ron and Sammie when the chief’s summons had come through on the intercom. His tone of voice had left no room for delay.

Brandt was clearly irritated. “What the hell is going on? I spent half the afternoon getting my ass chewed off by Luman Jackson and Tom Wilson again. Not that I’m not getting used to it, but I don’t expect to be left in the dark by my own people. Why the hell are you hassling the goddamn building inspector? And apparently Tucker Wentworth has complained to Jackson that you accused him of improprieties regarding ABC Investments.”

I stared at him in stunned silence. My mind was too busy playing connect-the-dots to be offended by Brandt’s tone of voice. Besides, since I hadn’t updated him, he had a right to be pissed off. What worried me was that somehow every move we made, every lead we pursued, became public knowledge within hours. It was as if we were conducting an investigation under a microscope.

I parked myself on the low filing cabinet by the door. “I interviewed McDermott this morning. He’d been in Crawford’s building at the time of the killing, and poking around Toby’s hideaway just before he disappeared. It was a legitimate inquiry. McDermott claims he received anonymous phone calls luring him to both places. He may be telling the truth. On the other hand, it’s awfully convenient that both times the callers refused to identify themselves. As for Wentworth, I didn’t accuse him of anything, but I sure as hell asked him to explain his connection to Charlie Jardine and ABC Investments. It is true he got a little pissed off at me, but it sounds like you got the National Enquirer version of both stories.”

He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips until I thought he might do himself some damage. He finally slouched way back in his chair. He sounded exhausted. “Jackson blew in here, spitting nails about Wentworth. I guess they talked on the phone or something right after you left him.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t think he was in the mood to talk to anyone when I left him. How did he and Jackson become such pals?”

Brandt shrugged. “Beats me; small town. In any case, Jackson’s now convinced we’ve totally lost our minds, running around accusing prominent citizens of being horse thieves and ax murderers. He said we’re exposing the town to lawsuits that’ll bury us; he even dragged in Nadeau at one point to quote me some legal mumbo-jumbo.”

I could now understand why Brandt was upset. I knew Luman Jackson all too well and could read between the lines of Brandt’s abbreviated account. Jackson’s style was like that of a hell-bent bible thumper, full of spittle and rhetoric, shifting from accusation to innuendo. He also had a bloodthirsty appetite for other people’s throats. The few run-ins I’d had with him had left me breathless.

Brandt got up and paced around his office a bit. “Look, this may not be the end of it. Jackson said he was going to assemble the selectmen for a closed-door meeting, presumably to fry the police department. He has to get three out of the five selectmen to play along before it’ll happen, but it still might, so be prepared.”

I rose and opened the door. “I’m prepared now. They can kiss my ass anytime they want.”

Tony stopped me just as I was about to close the door behind me. “Joe?”

“What?”

“Sorry I jumped down your throat.”

I smiled at him. “Don’t worry about it. Occupational hazard.”

Our little chat had thoroughly shaken me. Increasingly, throughout this investigation, I’d felt control being wrested from our grasp, first by events and the lack of manpower, and then by the attending publicity. But the growing political pressure was making it difficult to maneuver at all.

Initially, my plan had been to refocus on Blaire Wentworth and Arthur Clyde, to see if the knowledge I’d acquired since my first chats with them might be used to further crack their shells.

Now, however, I had but one idea in mind. In the time-honored tradition of an attacking force trying to destroy a strong, largely unknown defensive position, I was going for a secret weapon. I was sick and tired of having everyone know what I was doing.

I left the Municipal Building by the front door and cut to the right along a walkway that led to the town library’s rear entrance, which, because of the steep slope down to Main Street, was also their top floor.

Inside the library, I traveled the length of the building, down one flight of stairs, and out onto the second-floor mezzanine. Standing slightly back of the railing to avoid attracting attention, I surveyed the large reading room below me, looking for the man I was after. From my vantage point, I could see the typing room, the microfilm tables, most of the first-floor stacks, and the reference desk. I didn’t see him anywhere.

I walked along the balcony to the glass door of the local-history room, normally kept locked to protect the archives shelved inside. There was no one at the reading table in the front room, but a light was on in the stacks beyond. I turned the door handle and entered.

The local-history “stacks” amounted to just one moderately sized, windowless room divided into rows by several floor-to-ceiling shelf units. The aisle directly opposite the door was empty, but I could hear sounds off to the left.

There was the sudden loud slap of a book hitting the floor, followed by an equally explosive, “Fuck.”

I knew I’d found my man.

Willy Kunkle was in his early forties, of medium height, with a muscular, barrel chest, a head of thick, black hair, and a permanent scowl. A tough New York-born Vietnam vet who’d brought with him more emotional baggage than he could civilly carry, he’d moved to Brattleboro, married a local girl, and joined the police department as a patrolman. The armed forces had trained him well; he rose quickly through the ranks to join the detective squad within two years and in the process had become one of the most difficult men to work with I’d ever known. Indeed, it had often occurred to me during his tenure that many of the people he busted were kinder and more compassionate than he was.

Nevertheless, despite his soured, cynical, and angry soul, and the spousal abuse that had quite properly cost him his marriage, he’d been a cop’s cop, a man with an unrivaled sense of the street.

Perhaps predictably, his career had come to a premature end. In helping me and several New Hampshire state troopers pursue a suspect in the ski-mask case, he’d caught a high-caliber rifle bullet in the left shoulder, shattering it beyond repair. Several operations later, his entire arm permanently disabled, he’d been given the option of retiring from municipal service or taking another town job at comparable pay. He’d stunned us all by choosing the latter, thereby beginning a minor reign of terror within the library.

I knew it wouldn’t last in the long run. His style had been tough enough on his fellow cops; its prolonged effects on a group of peaceable librarians was guaranteed to end catastrophically. But he’d been working here less than six months, and as far as I knew, his co-workers so far had managed to find him isolated nooks and crannies in which to work, far from them and from any potentially horrified member of the public.

I rounded the corner of the bookshelf and watched him heft a gigantic leather-bound tome off the floor with one hand and wrestle it onto a shelf. His left hand remained, as always, deep in the side pocket of his trousers, giving his body, if not his facial expression, an incongruously nonchalant appearance.

“Hey, Willy.”

He barely gave me a glance. “Well, if it isn’t Typhoid Joe. Come by to share some of the heat you been gettin’?”

“Only if they catch us.”

That got his attention. He glared at me. “Us? To hell with you. I got enough shit on my plate without that.”

“Working you hard, are they?”

“If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport.” He turned his back to me and began flipping through a card-catalog tray he’d placed on top of a cabinet lining the wall.

“What’ve you heard about the case?”

“I read the papers.”

“What’d you think?”

“I think you’re fucked. The SA’s IDed the watch as Jardine’s and nailed down the time and place that Rosie Woll bought it for him; plus, they found Jardine’s wallet in Woll’s car, under the mat in the trunk. I think you guys better prepare for Johnnie Boy’s going-away party.”

He riffled through the card catalog with his dexterous right hand. I had to smile at the pretense: Willy Kunkle was still so wired to the street he had information the State’s Attorney’s own staff probably didn’t know about, much less the newspapers.

I resisted pointing that fact out. If I were to reel him in, I’d have to pique his interest enough to make him bite. “That’s not enough to prosecute; they could’ve been planted.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Why did Cappelli pull a gun on us?”

“Guilty conscience.”

“He says he thought we were bad guys.”

“Bullshit; he thought you were about to fry him. It was only when you didn’t press charges that he started getting imaginative.”

“What was he up to?”

He still had his back to me. “Hey, what do I know? Rumor had it he was running dope for some new guy.”

“Milly Crawford?”

Now he turned to face me, his expression quizzical. “Did you guys really find that big a stash at Milly’s, or was that all smoke?”

“It was there, and he’d been playing with it; his prints were all over it. We’re pretty sure one baggie made it to Jardine’s house.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know who was running Cappelli, but it wasn’t Milly; the man was a jerk-off. And I never heard a peep about him on the street, not tying into that kind of action.”

“Who would have supplied him the money?”

Kunkle thought about that for a moment. “I know Cappelli. He and Milly wouldn’t mix.”

During his years at the department, as Ron had pointed out earlier, Willy Kunkle made the local drug trade his specialty, getting to know the players, the supply routes, the money sources. Little of his knowledge ever resulted in direct busts, but it was an invaluable tool when it came to leveraging information from people.

“We found out Cappelli and Hanson were handing money to two Putney Road bankers, apparently for laundering. You hear anything about that?”

Kunkle chuckled. “Found out about Jake, huh? He and Cappelli definitely connect. In fact, I think Cappelli used to be married to one of Jake’s daughters.”

“Did Hanson have a specialty?”

“You know about the warehouses?”

I nodded.

“That was it, pure and simple. Mark was the transporter, Jake the storage man.”

“Neither one of them sold?”

Willy shook his head. “That’s one of the reasons we never nailed ’em. There was nothing to be gained trying to sell that shit in this town. I mean, we nailed a few small-timers, but there was a whole lot more moving through here than we ever saw, heading upstate to Rutland, Burlington, and mostly to upper–New York State, where the big market was. We never got anywhere because it just passed through. By the time I heard about it, it was history.”

“So why the change?”

He gave a knowing smile. “New players. Plus more riffraff is beginning to stick to Vermont’s famous ‘Gateway.’ We’ve not only got the best welfare check around, we’re just a short piss away from the Mass border, where the economy’s going to hell in a handbasket. That all creates a market for dope.”

“It was a lot of dope all of a sudden.”

He chewed on that for a bit. “Yeah, that’s what makes me think new players. Had it been the old crowd, they would have penny-anted their way up and would have gotten nailed before long. How’d you tumble to Hanson and Cappelli?”

As usual, he’d identified the correct button to push. “We found their phone numbers on a list in Milly’s apartment, along with those of two employees of the Putney Road Bank—and John Woll.”

There was a slight break in the conversation, which caught us both looking at our feet. Kunkle snapped out of it first. “So why’re you here?”

I hesitated. “I was wondering if you could chase this down a little further.”

His eyes widened. “You mean Milly’s list of numbers? You’re shittin’ me.”

“Nope.”

He slapped his forehead with his hand. “You’ve got to be out of your friggin’ mind. You want me—a town librarian—to go poking around in official police business, right after you and Brandt have already had your asses fried for withholding evidence?”

“No one ever mentioned withholding evidence.”

He shook his head. “Oh, well, pardon the hell out of me. Why in Christ’s name should I put my butt on the line for you?”

“I need your help.”

He stared at me, his mouth half open. “This is bullshit. Klesczewski and your other Keystone Kops can chase down four stupid names. Why do you need me?”

“I’ve got a leak in the department. I can’t go to the bathroom without everyone in the building knowing about it. I need someone on the outside, to gather information only I get told about.”

He hesitated, looking doubtful. I glanced at my watch. It was close to quitting time for him. “Let me tell you what I’ve got so far. Then decide.”

It took over an hour, still standing in the stacks out of sight, to sketch in the convoluted cast of characters and the twisted strings that tied them all together. Much of it Kunkle obviously already knew, either by intuition or by reading the paper, but mostly he kept silent apart from an occasional question.

“You think McDermott’s your man?” he asked, when I was through.

I shook my head. “Call it a pecking order, with some names higher up than others, but none of them highlighted in neon. Look, the way I’m seeing it now, some son of a bitch has spent a lot of time and effort arranging his pile of rocks just right, so that when the first one—Charlie Jardine—fell into our laps, all the others began to follow, until now we’re getting buried in an avalanche. Maybe McDermott’s being targeted just to keep us off the scent, maybe he’s the guy orchestrating this entire thing and hiding in plain sight. I haven’t the slightest idea. All I do know is that I can’t move without being seen.”