Beyond the Truth

by Bruce Robert Coffin

  “I’m on it, boss,” Tran said as he snapped his fingers and began typing furiously on the keyboard to the laptop in front of him.

  Detective Luke Gardiner entered the room.

  “Any leads sound promising?” Byron asked.

  Gardiner shook his head. The disappointment in his expression said it all. “A dozen calls so far. Mostly whack jobs.”

  Byron knew how badly Gardiner wanted to be out on the street where the action was, but handling the incoming leads was every bit as important. You never knew when the one tip you needed might come in, or how.

  The sound of a desk phone ringing drifted in from the other room. Gardiner hurried out to answer it.

  “Stay on it, Luke,” Byron called after him.

  Byron retreated to the plaza outside 109 in search of fresh air and privacy. The cold was invigorating, helping him to think more clearly. He was running down a mental checklist of things they had already done, searching for gaps, when his cell rang.

  “Byron.”

  “John. It’s Sam Collier.”

  Byron’s defenses kicked in immediately. “Tell me this isn’t connected to your case, Sam.”

  “I’m not sure, but I need to talk with you. Where are you?”

  Five minutes later Special Agent Collier’s unmarked pulled up in front of 109. Byron climbed in.

  “How is Officer Haggerty?” Collier asked as he put the car in gear and drove west on Middle Street.

  “I don’t know. Doc says he took two rounds. They were able to remove one, but the other—What haven’t you told me?”

  “John, you know I’m not calling the shots on this OC thing. I’m just a grunt, like you.”

  “I’ll be sure and mention that to Sean’s parents. I’m sure your burden will mean a lot to them.” Byron could see that his words had wounded Collier, but at the moment he was incapable of caring.

  They continued west past Temple Street where Middle turned into Spring Street. Collier pulled into a vacant space at the side of the road and parked.

  Collier turned in his seat to face Byron. “These are bad guys we’re dealing with, John. I can tell you that the family running this is an out-of-state syndicate. They are into everything. We’ve got cases that overlap in multiple field offices.”

  “Micky Cavallaro is some made guy?”

  Collier shook his head. “No. We don’t think so. He’s a boob with a functioning business and a gambling problem. We think he got into debt with these people and they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

  “So, they’re using his business as a front for moving drugs into the high school.”

  “Not just the high school. And his isn’t the only business.”

  “And you think Haggerty is involved?”

  Collier sighed. “He’s not involved the way you think.”

  “The way I think? Your buddy so much as said it.”

  “That was Lessard’s call, not mine. He wanted to throw you off the scent so you wouldn’t know Haggerty was working with us.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Sam?”

  It took ten minutes for Collier to lay out the background. They’d approached Haggerty as soon as he had been named the new school resource officer for Portland High. He’d been sworn in as a special deputy U.S. Marshall for the sole purpose of gathering intel for the FBI while acting as SRO.

  “Did the PPD command staff know about this?” Byron asked.

  “No. No one in your department knew.”

  “Did Sean know you were looking at the Bubble Up Laundromat?”

  “His case knowledge was limited. We informed him about the drugs coming into the school and the fact that there might be an inside man behind it, but that’s all. He reported directly to me.”

  Byron’s cell buzzed with an incoming text from Dustin Tran. Got the asset info.

  “I gotta go back, Sam. We may have a lead on the guy who shot Hags.”

  Collier pulled out of the parking space and made a U-turn back to 109. “I don’t know if it will help you at all, but Cavallaro paid a visit to the Windham Correctional Center on Monday.”

  “Who did he visit?”

  “I don’t know. We couldn’t risk blowing our surveillance detail to find out.”

  After Collier dropped him back at 109, Byron gathered his team in the conference room for a briefing.

  “The assets of the Marcotte Automotive business were sold at auction,” Tran said. “The name of the buyer was Derrick Vanos, DBA Vanos Automotive.”

  “Vanos—why do I know that name?” Byron asked as he navigated his way through a foggy memory.

  “Derrick Vanos,” Stevens said. “A real asshole. He was charged with and subsequently convicted of elevated aggravated assault after nearly beating to death a guy by the name of William Johnson, in the Old Port.”

  “Why don’t I remember this?” Byron asked as he racked his brain for details.

  “It was about five years ago. You were out of state at the time, Sarge,” Stevens said. “A training or something. Sergeant Peterson handled it. CID didn’t have much to do on that particular case anyway. The arresting officer witnessed the attack.”

  Facts of the case began to materialize inside Byron’s head. “A bar on Free Street, right?”

  Stevens nodded. “DaVinci’s.”

  “So Vanos is already out?”

  “No,” Tran said. “He’s still inside. Currently serving time at the correctional center in Windham.”

  Byron felt his insides roiling. Collier might not know who Cavallaro had met at the prison, but Byron was pretty sure he did.

  Nugent piped up. “We think the guy that the gas station jockey saw driving the Mitsubishi might be a wrecker operator for Vanos.”

  “Which might also explain what the sheriff saw,” Stevens said.

  “I still don’t see what any of this has to do with Hags,” Byron said.

  “Hags was the arresting officer on the Vanos case,” Nugent said.

  The Vanos lead generated a flurry of activity. The Portland Police Special Reaction Team was called out to be part of a joint detail with the York County Sheriff’s Department’s own SRT to apprehend Haggerty’s assailant, whoever he might be.

  Byron wasn’t surprised to see the extent of interagency cooperation. The shooting of a brother or sister officer tends to bring out the best of every agency. An attack on one officer is like an attack on the entire law enforcement family. The petty and childlike territoriality that often exists within the LE community simply vanishes. No longer worried about who will get the credit, or foot the bill, everyone wants to help. And it was likely the reason Collier had approached Byron again. Both the Buxton Police Department and the York County Sheriff’s Department were eager to assist. Buxton PD’s headquarters was chosen as the site of the command post, mainly due to its proximity to the Vanos property.

  As the two SWAT teams began to prep for the operation, Byron performed his own break-in to the PPD records on the second floor of 109. It wasn’t that detectives weren’t allowed access to the reports within Records; it was more that the manager of the division ruled her domain with an iron fist. If a report got misfiled, there would be hell to pay by the offending party.

  The Vanos attempted murder case file had already been relegated to the narrow storage area next to Records where the older reports were kept, which of course required a second surreptitious entry on Byron’s part. Five years might not seem like a long time, but in a city the size of Portland, five years’ worth of police reports took up a lot of space.

  Byron kept control of the investigation while LeRoyer and his command counterparts focused on the apprehension, which of course meant micromanaging the SRT. Byron almost felt sorry for the members of the team. Mike Nugent and Luke Gardiner headed to the Windham Correctional Center to follow up on any recent activity on the part of the elder Vanos while Byron remained in Buxton with Stevens and Tran, sifting through the reports and gathering intel on the entire Vanos cla
n.

  Another whiteboard, not unlike the one hanging in the CID conference room at 109, was utilized as the data display board for all relevant intel. Dustin Tran and Melissa Stevens were preparing to brief the members of the joint apprehension team when Byron walked into the conference room.

  “You ready?” Byron asked the detectives.

  “I think so,” Stevens said.

  “Born ready, Striped Dude,” Tran said.

  It was the first glimpse Byron had seen of his young computer virtuoso’s former arrogant self since the laundromat robbery. Byron imagined the change was largely due to Tran’s renewed potential to add something helpful to the case, or more specifically the attack on Haggerty. Seldom did the detectives stop and think about how much Tran and his abilities meant to their cases. Out of sight, out of mind. But often Dustin Tran was essential.

  Byron was anxiously awaiting word from Nugent. He checked his cell for text messages. Nothing. Nugent’s prison snitch had come through before, but this wasn’t just another case. This was the attempted murder of one of their own.

  Detectives Nugent and Gardiner sat across from Delbert Franklin, a squirrelly looking inmate with oily skin and a single clump of hair located at the top of his forehead, giving him the unmistakable comedic appearance of Charlie Brown.

  “Derrick Vanos,” Nugent said matter-of-factly. “Know him?”

  Franklin looked around the room before answering, as though someone might be watching them in the closed office. “Yeah, I know him.”

  “I understand he had a visitor the other day,” Nugent continued.

  “Some big old guy named Micky.”

  “You know who he is?”

  “Nope.”

  “Know what they talked about?”

  Franklin grinned, knowingly. “I mighta heard something.”

  Nugent had performed this dance with Franklin too many times to count. It was a part of their ritual. Nugent knew that if Franklin had information he would be fit to burst if he didn’t share it with someone. But Franklin loved to play the part of the apprehensive con, wanting to feel like he was in control. Nugent didn’t have the luxury of patience this time. The clock was ticking.

  “We go back a ways, don’t we, Del?”

  Franklin kept grinning even as he nodded.

  “You know I’d love nothing more than to sit here and bullshit with you about this, but I’m out of time. I need to know what you know about Vanos’s visit. And I need to know right now.”

  “Gonna get tough with me, Detective?”

  Nugent placed his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “You have no idea.”

  Franklin flinched. His grin vanished.

  The conference room inside Buxton PD looked suspiciously like a place from which the Buxton town hall meetings might have been broadcast. Byron stood leaning a shoulder against the far wall of the room as Lieutenant LeRoyer, Lieutenant Price, Damon Roberts, and a dozen or so other men dressed in black fatigues spilled in. Price was the commander of Portland’s SRT, Roberts the department hostage negotiator.

  After everyone was seated and the introductions had been made, Tran laid out the intel to the audience.

  “Some of you have been partially briefed already, but for the sake of those just getting here I will lay out the up to the moment info.” Tran pointed to the large color photograph hanging at the center of the whiteboard. “We have reason to believe that the attack on Officer Sean Haggerty was both deliberate and orchestrated by this man. Derrick Vanos. Derrick is currently serving his fifth year of a ten-year sentence for elevated aggravated assault after nearly beating a young man to death using brass knuckles in Portland’s Old Port. Vanos is affiliated with an outlaw biker gang that calls itself The Enforcers. I don’t have a lot of information on the group, only that they formed in the late ’90s and that they are based out of Harrison, Maine. As the name implies, they aren’t averse to using violence to get things done.”

  Byron noted that several members of the audience were familiar with the gang as evidenced by their exchanged glances and bobbing heads. He also noticed Tran’s voice cracking occasionally. Tran hated public speaking.

  Tran paused a moment for water before continuing. “We know that Derrick received a visitor at the prison in Windham earlier this week. The visit came just after Haggerty shot and killed a Portland High teenager named Tommy Plummer, who was fleeing an armed robbery.”

  One of the York County men, sporting a blond flattop, raised his hand. Byron didn’t recognize him.

  “You have a question?” Tran asked.

  “Two actually,” Flattop said. “Why would Vanos go after Haggerty for killing a Portland kid? Did he know Plummer?”

  Byron stepped in, answering the question for Tran. “We don’t have any reason to believe that Vanos knew Plummer. We think Vanos might be using the shooting and the community uprising that followed to his advantage. Much like the Dallas sniper who shot a dozen police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest, killing five, we think he wanted to use the discord as cover, enabling him to seek retribution on Haggerty. Haggerty was the officer who arrested Vanos after witnessing the assault.”

  “Tran said someone paid a visit to Vanos in prison,” Flattop said. “Is it possible that someone else put him up to this?”

  Before Byron could answer, the door opened and Nugent and Gardiner hurried into the briefing.

  “Vanos was probably hired to kill Haggerty,” Nugent said, turning every head in the room.

  “What?” LeRoyer asked. “How do you know that?”

  “We just came from the prison, Lieu. One of the inmates overheard Derrick Vanos talking during a visit the other day. He didn’t hear the entire conversation, but he heard enough to know they were planning a hit on a Portland officer. And Derrick specifically mentioned Haggerty.”

  “Jesus,” LeRoyer said.

  “And that’s not all,” Nugent said. “Vanos’s visitor was Micky Cavallaro.”

  “The laundromat owner?” LeRoyer asked.

  “None other.”

  “Let’s get some uniforms to pick that asshole up,” Byron said.

  “Already made the call, boss,” Gardiner said.

  Byron made a mental note to strangle Special Agent Sam Collier as soon as this was over.

  “So, who is the shooter?” Lieutenant Price asked.

  Tran pointed to Vanos’s photograph again. “We think the shooter might be a relative of Derrick’s. Possibly a nephew. We don’t have a name yet, only that he may at one time have been employed under the table by Derrick Vanos.”

  “What about the getaway car?” asked another man. “Have you found it?”

  “No,” Byron said. “We believe it may have been towed, then hidden inside the Vanos garage. Also, based on witnesses to the shooting at Hannaford, there’s a good chance that some of the rounds fired by Haggerty may have struck the shooter.”

  A dark-haired man with an air of intensity about him, seated directly behind Flattop, raised his hand. “Have you checked out all the hospitals?”

  “Yes,” Byron said, resisting the urge to be sarcastic. “We’ve contacted every hospital in Southern Maine. No one has been treated for bullet wounds, so far.”

  Lieutenant Price chimed in. “We’ve already got snipers and spotters set up on the perimeter of the Vanos property. No one has come in or gone out in the past hour.”

  Byron spoke up again. “We’re hoping that they’ll either leave the garage to seek medical attention or call someone to respond to the garage to treat the shooter.”

  Price’s cell chimed with an incoming text message. He read the message, then looked over at Byron. “Looks like they went with option number two. A pickup driven by a large white male just drove onto the grounds. The guy entered the garage carrying a duffle bag.”

  “Let’s get out there,” LeRoyer said.

  The drugs had lessened Vinnie’s pain, but he still felt weak as hell.

  “What do you think, Doc?” Vinnie
asked Buddy Dixon. Dixon was a former army medic, and a friend of Derrick Vanos.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Dixon said. “I’ve stopped the external bleeding, but you’ve probably got some internal stuff that I can’t fix.”

  Terry looked on nervously. “Jeez, you were a medic, right? Just take out the friggin’ bullets.”

  Dixon frowned. “If it was that simple, don’t you think I would have done it already? This guy’s got enough lead in him to start his own ammo business. I count at least five holes going in. Looks like only one made it out. He needs a surgeon. And he needs blood.”

  Vinnie looked up at Dixon. “I’m screwed, aren’t I?”

  “You are unless you go to a hospital,” Dixon said. He turned to Terry. “He’s also gonna need antibiotics to fight off infection.”

  “Fuck,” Terry said. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

  Micky Cavallaro flicked off the basement lights to the Bubble Up, then set the alarm. He stepped outside, then locked the dead bolt on the steel security door. He turned and scanned the darkened dooryard. With exception of his Cadillac, the small dirt employee lot was empty. He pressed a button on his key fob and saw the parking lights flash as the doors unlocked. Warily he walked the thirty feet across the lot to his car.

  He was reaching for the handle on the driver’s door when he smelled it. Smoke from a cigarette. Cavallaro spun around.

  “Hello, Mick,” Alexander Bruschi said, pointing a gun at him. “Nice night for a drive.”

  Before Cavallaro could respond, an expensive-looking SUV pulled up and blocked the entrance to the lot.

  Bruschi nodded in the direction of the SUV. “They’re with me.”

  Cavallaro’s mouth was dry. He tried to speak but only managed a croaking sound.

  Bruschi’s eyes narrowed. “Get in.”

  Chapter 22

  Friday, 8:35 p.m.,

  January 20, 2017