Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
Page 33
She shook her head. “No question.”
“Mrs. Lee,” I continued, intending my words more for her husband and daughter than for her, since I remembered hearing she understood little English. “I think I know what happened here. Your home was invaded and you were attacked. Your daughter may have been hurt in ways you don’t want to think about. Is that right?”
“No question.”
I stood in front of the daughter, forcing her to look at me. I kept my voice to just above a whisper. “I’m Joe Gunther. What’s your name?”
She took a long time answering, as if trying to separate me from a crowd of other pictures all shoved together in front of her. “Amy.”
“Amy, would you like to see a doctor?”
Her eyes flickered over to her father, who didn’t move a muscle. Nevertheless, I gestured to George, who immediately escorted Thomas Lee docilely into the other room. Before the door shut behind them, I could hear George starting a conversation, trying on to get Lee to open up. I hoped one of us would get lucky, but I wasn’t counting on it.
“What do you say, Amy?”
She shook her head ever so slightly. “No,” she whispered.
“What happened here is wrong, but we can only help you if you help us.”
“No.”
“You realize this won’t just go away?”
Her eyes seemed to regain their focus slightly. She looked at me with more care.
Instead of answering my own question, I tried a tangent. “These people aren’t like vandals on a joy ride. You saw how fast they worked, how thorough they were. They’re professionals. Do you think there’s anything you can do against them on your own?”
Her voice was barely audible. “No.”
Reluctantly, I played on her fears. “What do you think will happen when they come back?”
Her mother was looking from one of us to the other, at least getting the gist of what I was saying. She put her hand flat on my chest. “No question.”
Her daughter said something conciliatory to her, but Mrs. Lee’s action seemed to have stiffened Amy’s resolve, I hoped to my advantage. I was immediately disappointed.
“My mother’s right. We have nothing to say.”
Knowing what she’d just gone through, I couldn’t keep the frustration from my voice. “Amy, please. I understand your parents’ reluctance. I’ve been to Asia. I know the distrust they have for most cops. But you’ve lived here most of your life. You know what we stand for. We’re the ones that can stop this from happening again, to you or someone else.”
But she shook her head. “Talk to my dad. I won’t go against him.”
“That’s what my partner’s doing right now. You wouldn’t be going against him, anyhow. Do you want these characters to kill your father next time? Or to assault your mother the way they did you?”
She winced at the image, and I was angry at having to use it, but the knowledge that I was about to leave here empty-handed was beginning to burn inside me.
As if in confirmation, she shook her head one last time. “I’m sorry. I cannot speak with you.”
I looked at both of them—their faces haggard, bruised, fearful, but set—and let out a sigh. “All right. I won’t add to your problems.” I pulled out my wallet and removed a business card. “If you want to talk to me for any reason at all, even if it’s unrelated to what happened tonight—please call. I really am here to help.” I took out a different card and wrote Gail’s name on it. “You know about Women for Women? The women’s crisis organization? Gail Zigman is on their board. She’s also a rape survivor. You can call her or them and ask for help, too. They know what you’ve been through. They’re caring and supportive and they have nothing to do with us. Everything you tell them will be confidential. They will only be interested in your recovery. If you won’t talk to us, at least promise me you’ll give them a call.”
She gave me a small smile and nodded, at last, taking both cards.
I reached out and gently touched her shoulder. “Good luck. Think about what I said. Get your folks to let us help.”
I left them to go into the other room—the remnants of a dining room—and found George and Thomas Lee standing against opposite walls, looking like they’d been the cause of the shambles between them. Lee’s expression was a sterner, darker version of his daughter’s determination; George merely rolled his eyes in frustration when I looked at him.
I crossed over to the restaurant owner. “My guess is these people told you to fall into line or be targeted again. Am I right?”
Predictably, he didn’t answer.
I pulled out another business card—one of my own. “You can reach me here, day or night. I’ll give the dispatcher your name and instructions to locate me no matter when. Okay?”
He took the card and nodded.
There was an awkward silence. I rubbed the back of my neck and turned toward the front hallway. “Good luck. I hope all this is worth risking your family.”
Outside, I paused on the lawn to take in a deep breath of cold air.
George Capullo shook his head wonderingly, a lifetime small-town cop, whose experience ran deep but narrow, and didn’t include Asians. “I’m not real clear on what happened in there.”
“I’d say a home invasion—standard Chinatown extortion. Three or more creeps kick down a door, trash the place, rape and/or beat the occupants, rob them blind, and if there’s a business involved, apply a little pressure for future regular payments. Kind of like how Al Capone made gin-joints subscribe to his ‘protection’ service during Prohibition. I’ll order some surveillance of the restaurant to see what comes up, but I doubt they’ll be that obvious.”
“I thought home invasions only happened in Boston and places like that. What’s to be gained here? We don’t have a Chinatown. You think one of the other Chinese restaurant owners worked him over—a little hard-nosed competition?”
Startled by the suggestion’s compelling simplicity, I turned and looked back at the house, as silent now as its occupants, and found my memory returning to the speed stop on the interstate back in January, and to three close-mouthed Asians whose presence had reeked of violence. In the weeks that followed, I’d discovered that Truong Van Loc, while never convicted, was suspected of having organized crime connections in California, and that another man with the same family name—presumably the brother he’d mentioned—had been killed in a gang-related shooting years ago. Two days following that conversation by the road side, the Montreal Police had reported finding one of their own Asian gang members killed execution style, with a bullet in the back of his head.
I glanced at George and began walking back to the cars. “I don’t know, but my gut tells me we’re in for a lot worse than that.”
About the Author
Over the years, Archer Mayor has been photographer, teacher, historian, scholarly editor, feature writer, travel writer, lab technician, political advance man, medical illustrator, newspaper writer, history researcher, publications consultant, constable, and EMT/firefighter. He is also half Argentine, speaks two languages, and has lived in several countries on two continents.
All of which makes makes him restless, curious, unemployable, or all three. Whatever he is, it’s clearly not cured, since he’s currently a novelist, a death investigator for Vermont’s medical examiner, and a police officer.
Mayor has been producing the Joe Gunther novels since 1988, many of which have made “Ten Best” or “Most Notable” lists of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and many other publications. His latest book is a New York Times bestseller. He has received the New England Booksellers Association Award for fiction.
Find him on the web at www.ArcherMayor.com
Also by Archer Mayor
The Joe Gunther Mysteries
Open Season
Borderlines
Scent of Evil
The Skeleton’s Knee
Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
The Dark Root
Bellows Falls
The Disposable Man
Occam’s Razor
The Marble Mask
Tucker Peak
The Sniper’s Wife
Gatekeeper
The Surrogate Thief
St. Albans Fire
The Second Mouse
Chat
The Catch
The Price of Malice
Red Herring
Tag Man
Copyright
This digital edition (v1.01) of Fruits of the Poisonous Tree was published by MarchMedia in 2013.
If you downloaded this book from a filesharing network, either individually or as part of a larger torrent, the author has received no compensation. Please consider purchasing a legitimate copy—they are reasonably priced, and available from all major outlets. Your author thanks you.
Copyright © 2012 by Archer Mayor.
ISBN: 978-1-939767-05-9
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Errata
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Lt. Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont police force has a serious problem: in a community where a decade could pass without a single murder, the body count is suddenly mounting. Innocent citizens are being killed—and others set-up—seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but it’s a case that many in the department would prefer remained closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.
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Seconded to the State’s Attorney’s office, Lt. Joe Gunther is in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom investigating a minor embezzling case. It’s a pleasant distraction, and a chance to reconnect with old friends, but when a house fire reveals itself to be arson, compounded by murder, Gunther can’t help but investigate. Suddenly, he finds himself enmeshed in a web of animosity between put-upon townspeople, the state police, angry parents and members of a reclusive sect. Murder follows murder, yet no one seems to be telling Gunther the whole truth—not even his childhood friends—and truth is what he desperately needs if he’s to stop the killings.
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When the body of a fast-living young stockbroker is found in a shallow grave, suspicion first falls on a cuckolded policeman. Lt. Joe Gunther investigates the increasingly bizarre details of the crime, but finds that he’s too far behind events to prevent a second murder. Indeed, whoever is responsible always seems to be a few steps ahead, as if there’s a leak on the force. Sweltering August heat does nothing to calm the increasingly agitated town selectmen, who demand results.
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When a reclusive market gardener’s death proves to stem from a 20 year-old bullet wound, Lt. Joe Gunther is presented with a very cold homicide to solve. But who was the victim exactly? A deeply private man eking out an ascetic existence from a hardscrabble mountain field, Abraham Fuller was virtually unknown to his neighbors, in the manner of someone pursuing more than mere solitude. The discovery of a duffle of unmarked bills and a body buried in the garden patch suggests that Fuller had motives beyond misanthropy. Nor is it such a cold case either, as someone seems willing to kill to ensure that old secrets remain buried.
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Gail Zigman, town selectwoman and Joe Gunther’s companion of many years, is raped, and the detective finds himself caught between the media, local politicians, and a network of well-meaning victims’ rights advocates as he tries to put his own feelings aside and follow the trail of evidence.
Every lead seems to point to a single, obvious suspect, but is the evidence too perfect? Risking his friendship with Gail, the respect of his peers, and his own life, Lt. Gunther keeps digging, hoping to find out if the man they have in jail is rightly there, or if the evidence against him is tainted—"fruits of the poisonous tree."
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A brutal home invasion shocks Brattleboro’s small Asian community, but no one’s talking. Undeterred, Joe Gunther digs deeper and discovers a cross-border smuggling route carrying drugs, contraband, and illegal aliens into and out of Canada. Operating below the radar for years, competition between underworld rivals is bringing it into the light with deadly consequences. International jurisdiction is a complicated thing, and Gunther will have to collaborate with the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Mounties in the pursuit of justice.
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A small girl brings Joe Gunther a bird’s nest—made partially of human hair. In the search to put a body, and an identity, to the hair’s owner, Joe comes upon an unexplained death, a grisly murder, and a sudden disappearance. All seem to be entangled in a puzzling web of municipal corruption, blackmail, and industrial espionage. A shell-shocked World War II vet nicknamed “The Ragman” may hold the key to it all, if Joe can get him to talk before the murderer strikes again.
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Joe Gunther is seconded to the neighboring town of Bellows Falls to investigate harassment allegations against a fellow officer. What begins as a seemingly open-and-shut case comes to look more and more like a frame job as Gunther doggedly pursues the truth, and soon he finds himself feeling around the edges of a statewide drug distribution network. As always, Vermont itself is a major character in Mayor’s writing, with Bellows Falls standing in for any number of slowly decaying once-proud mill towns.
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When a local quarry yields up a garroted body with bad dental work and toes tattooed in Cyrillic, Joe Gunther figures it for a Russian mafia killing, rare as that might be in Vermont. But it’s so very… tidy. So very… professional. Then the CIA calls, inviting Gunther down to Washington for some friendly “assistance” with his case. Suddenly he’s caught up a shadowy game of cross and double-cross—manipulated by cynical cold warriors who seem not to have gotten the memo—and Gunther soon realizes that he’s a pawn that both sides are willing to sacrifice.
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The body was positioned so that the train neatly obliterated its head and hands. Dressed in a homeless man’s clothes with empty pockets, it might easily be passed-off as an unfortunate John Doe. And yet… Joe Gunther has a knack for knowing when things don’t quite add up, and the math in this case is all kinds of wrong. Add a toxic waste dumping scheme, a stabbing, and a whole lot of state politics… if Occam’s razor were applied to Gunther’s caseload, how many incisions would it make?
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There are old cases and there are cold cases, and then there are old, cold cases… Special Agent Joe Gunther, of the newly-formed Vermont Bureau of Investigation, didn’t expect the VBI’s first case to be a fifty year-old murder. Then again, the victim probably didn’t expect to get an icepick in the heart, spend half a century in a chest freezer, and be unceremoniously dumped on the slopes of a ski resort with his feet sawed-off. He was, after all, a man who commanded some respect.
Stirring up the past can be a dangerous business, and Gunther soon finds himself in a cross-border partnership with the Sûreté du Québec, investigating a Canadian mob family whose crimes date back to World War II, but who remain just as deadly
as ever.
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The tony ski town of Tucker Peak, Vermont is experiencing a rash of condo burglaries. Normally this wouldn’t be a case for Joe Gunther and the newly-formed VBI, but when high-profile people have their high-value possessions stolen, names get dropped and strings get pulled. Turns out it’s just as well they called in Joe, since once they begin investigating the case suddenly develops a body count. Between drug-dealing, burglary, financial shenanigans, ecoterrorism, sabotage and murder, there’s something deathly serious going on behind the resort’s pristine veneer.
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The heroin trade is making serious inroads into Vermont, spilling across the border from Massachusetts, destroying families and ruining lives. Governor Reynolds, with one eye on re-election, decides that the VBI should be waging its own War On Drugs. Of course, it falls to Joe Gunther to draw up the battle plans. Not everyone wants to follow Gunther’s lead, though — particularly detective Sammie Martens, who launches her own undercover operation and quickly finds herself enmeshed a very unpleasant underworld. Gatekeeper takes a sober look at the problems of drug crimes and enforcement efforts.
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