The Catch

by Archer Mayor

  So, he was surprised when his brother kept staring into space and murmured, “I used to dream about that.”

  Alan smiled in the darkness. In truth, what he was about to suggest was but a fragment of his overall game plan, most of which was now already in place. He couldn’t have cared less about Pete’s welfare. He’d never much cared for the guy. As a kid, he’d been a pretty dull blade, and occasionally cruel to boot. But perhaps for those very reasons, Pete had always been their father’s favorite, which is truly what lay at the heart of this conversation.

  Alan Budney, despite his teenage ambitions and the encouragements he’d received, had always been resentful of those closest to him. He remembered every slight, bore grudges for every embarrassment, and held everyone accountable for each of his misfortunes. In the end, he’d come to despise even those like his mother and his teachers, whom he’d seen as getting their kicks vicariously by living their dreams through him.

  To Alan, the world was always out to mess with him, one way or the other.

  Well, no longer.

  He was about to turn the tables on all of them—to prove his mettle and his brains and his independence, in one fell swoop.

  And at the top of that list was Buddy. Alan was going to give that man the education of a lifetime—and humiliate him in the process. And he was going to use his dull-witted brother to tumble the king off his perch.

  He laid his hand lightly on Pete’s shoulder and suggested, “I may have a way to turn everything around.”

  And he wasn’t kidding.

  CHAPTER 11

  Joe stared out the window with increasing curiosity, wondering if he’d ever seen a bird and a squirrel occupying the same tree branch at the same time before. He’d walked in the woods a good deal, had done so as a boy with his mother time and again—she being keen on taking both her sons for regular instructive day trips. There’d been specific topics for these outings—trees, mushrooms, birds, animal tracks—and she’d always brought the appropriate teaching aids to help.

  But he couldn’t remember ever seeing a squirrel and a bird sharing a branch. Damndest thing. Probably happened all the time.

  There was a momentary stillness around him. He took his gaze off the scenery outside his boss’s conference room and raised his eyebrows at the Department of Public Safety’s press secretary.

  “So, you’re on board with this?” the latter asked.

  Joe pushed his lips out thoughtfully, piecing together the few fragments that had actually worked their way into his brain over the past few minutes despite his complete lack of interest.

  “Totally,” he said.

  The press secretary—a young man named Jeff—still looked uncertain. “I don’t mind working something out where I fly rough drafts by you first.”

  But Joe was shaking his head. “Nope. No need. You can coordinate with Bill or your boss. If they have questions, they can check with me. Otherwise, I’m more than happy to let you handle everything. I’d just as soon focus entirely on the case.”

  Jeff nodded slowly, as if allowing Joe to change his mind. Clearly, he couldn’t comprehend why anyone in his right mind wouldn’t want to control how and what information got to the media.

  In fact, Joe couldn’t have cared less. He’d been at this kind of thing long enough to know that all the bells and whistles in the world wouldn’t stop the press from doing whatever it pleased, regardless of what it was given.

  Bill Allard, the actual head of VBI, glanced down at the meeting agenda before him and cleared his throat quietly. “Okay,” he said. “That takes care of the information flowing out. What about news we might have to share among ourselves?”

  Joe looked around the room. The two of them and Jeff were joined by the Commissioner of Public Safety, Dave Stanton; the colonel of the state police, Neal Kirkland; the Addison County sheriff, Arvid Knowlton; and Harry Seeger, the state’s attorney general. It was a high power group, reflecting both how seriously Sleuter’s death was being considered, and how thoroughly the news people were beginning to address it. Already, there’d been calls that Joe had ducked, coming from New York and Boston TV stations, among others, inquiring about the investigation’s progress.

  The conference room was on the top floor of the Department of Public Safety’s building in Waterbury, geographically the most convenient for Allard, Kirkland, and Stanton, the last two of whom had offices just downstairs.

  Jeff’s boss caught the meaning of Joe’s hesitation and nodded to his press secretary. “Actually, Jeff, that probably does it for the time being. None of the rest of this will be for release right now.”

  Jeff rose a little too hastily and smiled awkwardly, the acknowledged outsider. “Of course. Right. Need-to-know and everything. Got it.” He collected his papers and stepped over to the door. “Well, just let me know as things develop.”

  Stanton smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Jeff. We’ll talk later.”

  A lingering silence lasted thirty seconds after the door closed. Kirkland—a muscular, gray-haired man, dressed in full uniform—broke it with, “I’d be happier if we could just flush the media down the crapper.”

  Allard, always the diplomat, merely said, “Better with us than not.” He turned to Joe, adding, “What’ve you got?”

  Joe paused before answering, mentally reviewing the previous two days. “After the shooting on Dot Ave,” he then said, “I think Lenny Chapman was embarrassed or pissed off or maybe just needed something to do, so he took Sam and me to jack up a CI of his named Flaco. Flaco knows Grega, did some smuggling across the Canadian border for him, and had a vague idea of what was being brought over, but he didn’t know names, and didn’t know anything about the setup.”

  “A dead end?” Stanton asked.

  “Not as it turned out,” Joe countered. “He told us that the whole organization had been shaken up by a recent killing. We thought he meant Sleuter, but that wasn’t it. He was talking about a double homicide in Maine—Rockland, specifically.”

  Harry Seeger looked up from the legal pad he’d been covering with notes. “Maine? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “We had no idea,” Joe explained. “Which is why Chapman put a little fear into Flaco before cutting him loose with a tail, just to see where he’d head and who he’d talk to.”

  “Which was where?” Stanton again.

  “That caught us by surprise,” Joe admitted. “He got into a car and drove to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Not what we were expecting. He made a beeline to a low-end housing development on the edge of town. We were half hoping we’d find Luis Grega, but the apartment belonged to someone named Daniel Wilson. Nothing had come up yet in Grega’s Dot Ave apartment, and forensics was still going over the cell phone we’d found there. So we had nothing to lose by driving up to Portsmouth and checking it out in the meantime.”

  “I take it you got nothing,” the colonel suggested.

  Joe didn’t react to the negative undertone. Kirkland was old school and saw the advent of VBI as a slap in the face of his own detective branch.

  But Gunther actually enjoyed the occasionally contrary viewpoint and valued the man’s opinion.

  “I’m not sure what we got, yet,” Joe admitted. “As soon as we reached Portsmouth, I called a friend of mine on the PD there, and she got her people onto Wilson’s background. He ended up having a pretty healthy rap sheet, the most interesting part to me being that he originally came from Maine.”

  “Rockland?” Allard asked.

  Joe smiled. “Bingo.”

  Kirkland was unimpressed. “Which still gives us nothing. Where’s Grega in all this?”

  “That’s where this got interesting,” Joe told them. “While we were trying to figure out what to do with this, we heard back from forensics on that cell unit from Grega’s apartment. It was the usual deal—a throwaway phone, good for a few calls only—but it did have Wilson’s number on it, which we used as probable cause to toss him after Flaco took off.”

 
; “Were there any other numbers retrieved?” Allard asked.

  “Two,” Joe said. “As far as I know, they haven’t been pinned to anyone yet—they were probably other disposables.”

  “What did Wilson give you?” Stanton wanted to know.

  “The connection between Grega and Maine,” Joe answered. “We grabbed Flaco again, too, to use as a control for anything Wilson might tell us. Of course, we didn’t tell Wilson that, but he was pretty straight about what passed between Flaco and him, which adds credibility to what he gave us on Grega.”

  “Why did Flaco go up there?” Seeger asked.

  “We’d told him in Boston that Grega was on the run and Marano had been shot,” Joe explained. “We didn’t go into details. Chapman just recommended that he better watch his back ’cause something was obviously stirring. The hope was that Flaco would go to the most dependable person he could think of who’d know what was going on.”

  “And did Wilson know?”

  Joe nodded. “The double killing Flaco thought we were talking about was a Maine drug dealer named Matthew Mroz and his bodyguard. Mroz was the one Grega—and sometimes Flaco—worked for.”

  Knowlton, the sheriff, a taciturn man and the dead deputy’s erstwhile boss, finally broke his silence. “And Grega was doing that when he killed Brian?”

  “We know Grega was a main man,” Joe answered him. “Maybe a lieutenant, certainly one of the regulars for the Canada-Boston run. Course, that’s just the part we figured out. Flaco described Grega as a ‘bad man, on the move.’ We have no idea what else he and Mroz might have had cooking between them.”

  “Is anyone saying Grega whacked his boss?” Allard asked.

  “No,” Joe said. “Again, according to Flaco, he was in Boston at the time.”

  “Mroz had a network?” Kirkland inquired, his interest at last stirring.

  “So says Wilson. Although,” Joe added, “as soon as we were fed Mroz’s name, we ran it through the computer and watched it light up. I’ve just started looking into him, but he may have either cornered or had a hand in almost fifty percent of the drug business in the state.”

  Kirkland leaned forward slightly. “Who did knock him off?”

  “Good question. Nobody has a clue.”

  “How reliable is Flaco about it not being Grega?” Harry Seeger asked, hoping for a slightly tidier legal case. Joe didn’t doubt that the AG was formulating how to piece together a capital crime whose reach in the last few minutes was already stretching across four states.

  Joe couldn’t help him out. “I have to bow to Chapman here—he says Flaco’s been solid for three years, so I guess that would mean pretty reliable.”

  “Could Grega be dead?”

  That came from quiet Arvid Knowlton and surprised Joe a little. “I have no reason to think so,” he answered.

  “But you are thinking he might be in Maine,” Allard suggested leadingly, presumably considering—like Seeger—the growing geographical aspects before them.

  Joe answered carefully, “I’m thinking Maine deserves some scrutiny.”

  “Why did Flaco go to Wilson?” Seeger pressed him, changing tacks. “How’s Wilson inside this loop? You said Grega or Marano might’ve called him on a cell.”

  “He’s been around a long time,” Joe reported. “Used to work for Mroz. Quit a couple of years ago to take care of his dying mother in Portsmouth. There were no hard feelings, so he kept in touch with the old crowd. He said Marano called him, asking about Roz, but that he had nothing to tell him. That tallies with Flaco telling us that Wilson was the only man in the business he really trusted—that being half in and half out made him everyone’s friend and nobody’s enemy.”

  “But he doesn’t know enough to put you directly on the scent?” Kirkland asked, his voice incredulous. “Grega’s a cop killer, for Christ’s sake. Wilson must know dozens of people who might know where he is. How’s playing coy with us going to win him any favors?”

  “I don’t think he cares,” Joe admitted. “We don’t have anything on him, we didn’t get him for anything when we tossed him, and he doesn’t want to burn any bridges.”

  Kirkland considered that before saying more calmly, “Technically, it’s an ICE case; not our call. What do they want to do?”

  “Chapman’s hot to trot,” Joe told him. “Of course, that’s easy for him. They’ve got offices in Maine, and I would bet he’s dying to get out of the office for some fieldwork.”

  “You pretty sure going there will take you to Grega?” Allard asked, ever mindful of his tight budget. The VBI had been created by the governor and was funded by the legislature, both of whom liked big headlines and small headaches. Sending the state’s elite investigative unit abroad on a whim—even if for a good cause—was potentially tricky territory.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” Joe answered honestly. “I was struck by the fact that Flaco headed north when he felt the heat. If I were Grega and I heard about a violent change in management, I’d either run for the hills if I felt I was next, or run back to the mansion to find out whose ass I should kiss.”

  “And you’re choosing the second option, why?” Stanton asked.

  Joe lifted one shoulder slightly. “Because it’s the one that makes the most sense at the moment. Grega’s described as upwardly mobile, and we know he’s a killer—therefore not a guy to run.”

  Kirkland was shaking his head. “You’re guessing. The old boss is dead; you don’t know who killed him or why; you don’t know who might’ve replaced him; and Wilson’s a dead end, so you don’t know what to do next.”

  Joe conceded the point with a smile but then tilted his chin toward the closed door. “All true. But if we’re going to help young Jeff out there with the media, we better feed him something, even if it’s that we’re chasing down a lead. And you have to admit that the Maine connection reaches that level, if nothing else.”

  Mike Bradley looked up at the sound of his office door opening and saw a man and a woman standing before him, the man with his left hand awkwardly stuffed into his trousers pocket.

  The woman he recognized—Sammie Martens. He’d coordinated with her on a case years ago, when he was still with the Burlington police and she with the Brattleboro PD.

  Bradley knew the man with her only by reputation, which was enough to make him think he might now be in for trouble.

  He rose with a smile, circled his desk, and stuck his hand out in greeting, his defenses on high alert.

  “Hey, there. Mike Bradley. Nice to have you on board. Good drive?”

  Sam was all smiles as well, returning the handshake and making pleasantries. Kunkle ignored their host, turned on his heel slightly, and began studying the hangings on Bradley’s walls—a younger man’s version of what Sam had seen in the Boston ICE SAC’s office two days previously.

  “You guys do all right up here, close to the money,” Willy cracked, shifting his gaze to the larger outer office, visible through Mike’s interior window. Burlington was but a half-hour drive from the capital, and the VBI office here, the largest in the state, had six agents and a three-room complex on the top floor of a modern downtown building. Bradley was the unit supervisor, one of four who worked directly under Gunther. As such, he knew of the Brattleboro facility, having visited it once while Willy was absent. It had struck him as a claustrophobic dump.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, his hackles nevertheless raised. “But you’ve got the boss.”

  Willy let out a sharp, derisive laugh. “Yeah. There’s a plus.”

  “He keeps you employed, Willy,” Sammie cracked to thaw the air slightly.

  Mike had heard that the two had become a couple. Involuntarily, he shook his head slightly, startled at the thought. She was attractive, too—if undoubtedly dysfunctional somehow.

  He waved a hand at the two guest chairs he had opposite his desk. “Sit, sit. You want any coffee?”

  Willy remained standing while Sam took a chair. “How ’bout a grande café espresso with a sho
t of hot milk?” he said.

  “Stuff it,” his companion cautioned him, smiling at Mike before adding, “It’s his colon—full of shit.”

  Mike nodded and sat behind his desk, too startled to comment, but assuming the coffee question could sort itself out.

  “So,” he segued, determined to keep up appearances, for her, at least. “What sends you up here? News from the front? Joe’s still in Massachusetts, right?”

  “Nope,” Sammie told him. “He is hooked up with ICE, but he’s back in Vermont for a day or two, meeting with the big bosses. You read about what happened down there?”

  “The shoot-out on Dot Ave?” Bradley answered, tapping a sheaf of papers before him on the desk. “Just got the report. Sounded like a cluster fuck.”

  “Would’ve been fun to be there, though,” Willy said, finally sitting.

  Ah, thought Bradley, remembering that Sam had accompanied Gunther. Maybe that was the problem—the guy was feeling left out.

  “We’re here,” Sam returned to Mike’s question, “purely as support troops—setting up or manning a command center, or just doing go-fer jobs that your guys are too busy to handle. We are not about looking over your shoulder or doing any second guessing.”

  Mike immediately considered sending Kunkle to Siberia for doughnuts. Instead, knowing both of Sam’s closeness to Joe and—thankfully—of her general competence, he answered instead, “No, no. That’s fine. We could use the help, to be honest. The press is all over this and constantly getting in the way.”

  “What’ve you got going so far?” Sam asked.

  Mike relaxed slightly, feeling himself on more familiar ground. Kunkle and Martens would in fact be useful, even if, as he suspected, they were here with more on their minds than they’d just admitted.

  “We do have a command post in place—or the start of one. I have reps from the sheriff’s office and the state police and the AG’s and even one liaison from the Vergennes PD, just to be totally PC. We have a hot line set up for anyone who may have witnessed Sleuter’s traffic stop; a direct link to the Mounties for what they can find on Marano and Grega; and several guys going through every record we can locate where either name might crop up, on both sides of the border. I’ve also got a man doing the normal follow-up on Sleuter, making sure he was aboveboard.”