The Catch

by Archer Mayor

  But Mroz had been lucky—he’d lasted for quite a while. Until Alan had taken him on.

  Now, things were ripe for an overhaul, where the product line would be streamlined for maximum profits, diminished loss, and minimal exposure to assault from the police.

  It was in this last category that Alan saw a role for Luis Grega.

  “Well,” he told him, “this leader’s big on recognizing hard work and loyalty. I’d like to talk to you about a role you may not have thought about before.”

  Grega nodded silently, not really understanding what this man was babbling about, but not much caring, either. In the short term, it meant more money—so much was becoming clear. Beyond that, it didn’t matter, since Luis had his own big plans.

  “Hey, there,” Joe said into the phone, shoving the motel’s thin pillow more comfortably behind his neck.

  “Hey, yourself,” Lyn answered him, her voice low and soft. “How’s my favorite cop?”

  “Not bad. It took us forever to get here. I always forget how big this state is.”

  She laughed. “I remember. We used to bug Dad about that every time he took us on those so-called vacations, asking him to pull over so we could eat, or stretch our legs, or have a pee—or do anything. He always held on to the wheel like Ahab at the tiller. What is it about you men that you can’t mix fun with business?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe told her honestly. “The hunter/gatherer instinct?”

  “Right,” she came back. “Blame the caveman. Any progress?”

  “Some,” he said. “We met the Maine team—good bunch. There’s a woman who reminds me a bit of Sammie, except she talks a lot more. Mostly, we just kicked around our options.”

  “You better have a better spiel before you come back to Vermont,” she warned him. “That’s not gonna wow ’em.”

  “Wow who?”

  “The press. They’re grumbling about an informational black hole. Who’s Stan Katz, by the way?”

  Joe’s eyebrows shot up. Opposite him, across the room, the muted TV tried informing him about the vagaries of dandruff.

  “He’s the editor of the Reformer. Why?”

  “He called me,” she said.

  “At your home?” he exclaimed, impressed by both his old nemesis’s lack of decorum and the accuracy of his information. Joe’s relationship with Lyn was not a secret, but he, like all cops, liked to keep his personal life private. “What did he want?”

  “He was looking for you. He was really nice.”

  Joe struggled to remember if he’d ever heard that adjective applied to Stan before. When Joe worked for the Brattleboro police, Katz was a constant source of irritation, his integrity and accuracy barely compensating for his holier-than-thou, voice-of-the-people arrogance. He was a reporter back then, of course, always hot on the scent. They’d eventually moved him up to editor, and the paper changed hands to become a corporate pawn of some midwestern behemoth. Finally, even Stanley had aged and slowed down a little. But, become nice?

  “He didn’t just hang up when you told him I wasn’t there, did he?” Joe asked, anticipating the answer.

  “Oh, no,” she answered cheerfully. “We had a great talk.”

  Joe rolled his eyes.

  “He got a little worked up toward the end, trying to get me to agree that the cops should be less close-mouthed, and that paranoia was a poor substitute for the—what did he call it? Oh, right—the responsible management of information.”

  “That sounds like him,” Joe murmured.

  “I didn’t disagree,” she added, “but I also told him squat. He ended up telling me that he thought we made a perfect couple.”

  Joe now understood what she’d meant by having had a great chat. Katz must have been ready to reach through the phone and kill her.

  “How is the news about the case?” he asked. “Have you gotten a sense of that?”

  “I’d have to be deaf and blind. It’s all over the place. Katz, I just told you about, and some guy named McDonald is on the local radio every day griping about it. TV has it on every night. It’s a big deal, a cop getting shot in the head.”

  Joe closed his eyes briefly. “Yeah—that it is.”

  When she spoke next, her voice was softer—more concerned. “You sound a little down. It’s not going well, is it?”

  “Not particularly. Everybody’s on board and helping, but we don’t have much to go on. Grega’s the proverbial needle in a haystack; the guy he was last seen with has vanished; we can’t seem to get a break, despite beating the bushes.”

  After a brief silence, Lyn softly asked, in part to herself, “I wonder if Steve might know anything.”

  Joe frowned at the phone. “Your brother? I thought you weren’t talking.”

  It came out too bluntly, and he regretted it immediately. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no,” she answered. “You’re totally right. We haven’t talked since he got out. But it wasn’t because we were mad at each other. Disappointed …” Her voice trailed off.

  “Anyhow,” she continued after a moment, “he used to know people up there. I suppose that kind of information changes all the time …” She added a small, ineffectual laugh. “God knows, it did for him. I certainly don’t mind asking.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a little awkward?” Joe asked.

  “Not like you’d think,” she told him. “Steve and I were always pretty straight with each other. That’s one of the reasons all this hurt so much. But the more I think about it, this may be exactly what I need to open things up again, or at least try … I’m not so sure what he’s like anymore.”

  Joe considered what she was offering. “Lyn, I really appreciate it, but think about this, and only do it if you believe it might help you get back together, okay? It’s a long shot—like you said—so it’s certainly not worth breaking your heart all over again.”

  “I love you, Joe Gunther” was all she said before hanging up.

  CHAPTER 17

  Lester slapped his face several times in succession. “Christ almighty. How can a place have so many bugs? I thought we were bad, but this is ridiculous. Aren’t they driving you nuts?”

  Joe glanced at him sympathetically, reached into his pocket, and handed over a small bottle of high-test repellent. “May shorten your life, but do you care?”

  “No,” his colleague said forcefully, reaching out. “Give me that.”

  He began lathering it onto his neck and into his ears.

  “Watch your eyes,” Joe cautioned. “It’ll sting like hell.”

  “Who’s this guy supposed to be?” Lester asked, keeping his voice low and daubing his cheeks and forehead. He’d just returned from an emergency trip back home, where his daughter had broken an ankle in a soccer game. They were lying side by side under a huge blue sky, the prickly, heatherlike undergrowth poking at them through their clothing, and the black flies forming clouds around their heads. They and several others—some of whom were wearing head nets—were positioned just shy of the crest of a low hill, overlooking a house that sat in the field before them like a toy left on a rough wool blanket by a giant child.

  “It’s a woman. Remember Bob? The dealer Cathy Lawless was trying to hustle when Grega popped up and started shooting? It’s his common-law wife.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Jill Zachary, according to Dave Beaubien.”

  Lester stared at him. “You got him to talk?”

  Joe smiled and shook his head. “Hardly—that’s all he said.”

  He cupped his chin in his hand, the stink of fly dope strong in his nostrils, and went back to studying the house. There was nothing extraordinary about it, aside from its setting. It was two-storied, with an attached garage, slowly losing its coat of pale blue paint. Its foundation was still girthed in plastic and hay bales against the winter chill, although such weather had long gone. But that detail, and the cheery color, had already struck Joe as a distinctly Maine attribute. Winters were long here, and bleak, es
pecially in those parts without either mountains or seascape to relieve the eye. The need for warmth spoke for itself, but the thirst for color was important. And while both may have seemed unnecessary during the summer months, they spoke to the inevitable forthcoming cold, along with this state’s admission that, like it or not, it would always be a grandchild of glaciers.

  But the condition of the building’s paint was as evocative as its isolation. Maine was a vast piece of real estate, some of it remote and difficult to reach, not to mention ill-suited to sustaining a living. Most Mainers admitted that the two southernmost counties, York and Cumberland, carried the financial load for the rest. These others tended to be thinly populated, economically depressed, and politically undermuscled.

  Jill Zachary’s home, peeling, worn, and looking as if it could be wiped from the earth with a sweep of the hand, was testimony of both grit and fragile impermanence.

  Joe took a moment to scan the bare horizon, realizing that some of his conclusions were being influenced by the starkness around him. Of course, this wasn’t typical—Maine encompassed almost every geographical trait natural to the continent. There were entire sections of swamps, fields, mountains, and forestland—areas where you would swear that all the land around you had to be exemplary of the whole.

  But none of it was. Maine evolved as it spread across the map, changing at an almost leisurely pace from one topography to the next. Vermont, by contrast, was known for being lumpy—big lumps for the Green Mountains; smaller ones for the rolling farmland edging Lake Champlain. Each of Maine’s characteristics, however, was distinct and placed far apart—the coastline was at odds with the peaks around Katahdin; the forests of the north country out of synch with the bracken fields farther south; the rushing white rapids inland belied the broad, lazy, watery boulevards pouring into the ocean.

  It was as if Maine had been created when both a lot of spare parts and the leisure to spread them out had been available.

  This very house, for example, was surrounded for as far as the eye could see by blueberry fields—low, curvilinear, painted rust red and ochre and dull green. It was too early for the berry harvest, so the scene merely looked wild, although it was a highly prized and much tended environment. But to Joe, it seemed like it would all make more sense located in Greenland, or near the Hudson Bay. Huge, extended, and billowy—a near-barren landscape better suited to the Wessex of Thomas Hardy seemed odd in a state whose symbol was a lobster.

  “We sure Bob’s in residence?” Lester asked, breaking into Joe’s reverie.

  “One of Cathy’s CIs told her he was here two days ago,” he said.

  Lenny Chapman, sporting his dark blue windbreaker with “ICE” stenciled across the back, sidled up to where they were lying, making sure not to show himself beyond the top of the rise. He carried a pair of binoculars and also smelled strongly of repellent.

  “Hey, G-man,” Lester greeted him, “got any skin left?”

  Chapman laughed. “Amazing, ain’t it? Worst bugs in New England. Everybody’s in place around the perimeter,” he told them both. “We got vehicles hidden and ready to block the road in case someone makes a run for it, and one of the MDEA people just got a movement sighting from inside the building.”

  “That movement attached to anyone like Bob or Zachary?” Joe asked.

  Chapman gave the hint of a shrug, still intent on the house. “One step at a time, Joe. At least we know the place is occupied.”

  It was certainly that, as was proven two seconds later when the front door banged open far below them and a young boy, ten or twelve, stepped out into the yard, a large plastic trash bag in his hand.

  The three men on the back side of the knoll instinctively hunkered down. Chapman muttered into his radio, “We have someone at the front door—pre-teen male in sneakers, jeans, and white T-shirt, holding a black garbage bag. Everyone hold their positions.”

  Instinctively, Lester twisted his dark baseball cap around so the bill faced the nape of his neck before he raised his head just enough to take a peek.

  “What do you see?” Joe asked him.

  Les ducked back down. “It ain’t good.”

  Chapman finished for him by saying over the radio, “Subject is heading uphill, toward the east, still carrying the bag.”

  “That’s us, right?” Joe asked softly.

  “Straight as an arrow,” Lester confirmed.

  “Shit,” Chapman muttered, sliding down and looking around quickly. He pointed at a pile of small plastic bags and debris, barely visible in a ditch far behind them. “I bet the little bastard is dumping the garbage. I shoulda caught that detail.”

  He addressed the radio again, “All units. We are assuming subject is on a garbage run. We will apprehend as he reaches our position. Stand by.”

  In the meantime, Lester had snatched another fast glance, only to look back at them, his eyes wide, to report, “You got three seconds. He’s at a dead run.”

  No sooner had he said this when the boy topped the low hill and came to an abrupt stop, the bag still swinging in his hand.

  “Who’re you guys?” he asked.

  Chapman didn’t bother answering. He lunged at the kid instead, hoping to gain control first, before any long-winded explanations.

  He missed. Exhibiting surprising grace, the boy nimbly leaped backward and smacked Chapman across the head with his bag, blinding him with a sudden shower of strewn garbage. Joe and Lester looked like geriatric gymnasts as they stumbled to their feet and tried to give chase.

  “Subject’s on the run, back to the house,” Chapman shouted into his mike, adding, “Hold your positions,” as the boy screamed, sprinting away at full tilt, “Mom. Cops.”

  Instinctively in pursuit, but trailing by several yards, Joe looked beyond the retreating boy to see the front door open and reveal a tall, skinny woman with long black hair. No doubt trained by past experience, she instantly assessed the scene, shouted something over her shoulder, and slammed the door against all comers, her son included. Even at a full run, Joe could appreciate her street smarts, if not her maternal instincts—the boy was in safer hands among cops than he might be inside that house.

  Behind them, Les and Joe heard Chapman yelling, “Hold it, hold it. Go to cover. They could have guns in there.”

  It was a good point—which Joe was embarrassed he hadn’t heeded. Abandoning the chase, he cut right and slid to a stop behind one of the boulders that dotted the landscape like oversized marbles.

  Les skidded in right behind him. “That would’ve been awkward.”

  “Yeah,” Joe growled, quoting the possible headline, “Idiot Vermonters Caught in Cross Fire; Local Police Baffled by Stupidity.”

  Lester laughed between panting. “Hey, you might’ve caught the brat.”

  But Joe was not to be comforted. “Did you see the distance he was putting between us? He deserves a track medal.”

  They peered out from behind their rock to see what had happened to the subject of their conversation. The boy was pounding fruitlessly on the door with both fists, screaming for entry.

  “Ouch,” Les said, “that’s not going to go down well at family counseling.”

  Lenny Chapman had come to rest behind a boulder some twenty feet away from them. Picking shreds of garbage off his jacket with a disgusted expression, he shouted across, “You two all right?”

  Les answered for them both, “Yeah—sorry ’bout that. Thought we could catch him.”

  Chapman waved his hand dismissively. “No sweat. Might’ve worked.” They saw him raise the mike to his mouth again to utter more commands they could no longer hear.

  But the day’s surprises had just begun. Lester pointed to the closed double doors of the slightly sagging attached garage and asked, “Hear that?”

  Before Joe could answer, there was a large cracking sound, and the doors blew apart under the weight of an oversized, much-battered pickup truck. A man was at the wheel; the dark-haired woman sitting beside him.

&
nbsp; “Jesus,” Les let out. “It’s Bonnie and Clyde.”

  Joe wasn’t watching them as the truck fishtailed out of the garage and tore down the dirt driveway. His eyes were on the boy, who, with equal disbelief, watched, rooted in place, as his mother chose her companion over him. Whatever family counseling there’d be would be taking place in jail—and only if everyone was lucky.

  Over the roar of the truck’s engine, Joe heard Chapman ordering up the roadblock. The ICE agent was running toward them as he spoke.

  “The house empty?” Joe asked.

  “We got people checking,” Chapman told him, pointing. “Better head for our car in the meantime.”

  They began jogging back over the hill that had once shielded them from the house, just as the truck abandoned the driveway and went lurching ’cross country, rendering moot the roadblock around the corner. They could see several people breaking cover over the open landscape—a cross section of ICE and MDEA agents, along with a couple of uniformed locals, perhaps ten people in all not counting the few on the roadblock. Joe saw Cathy Lawless heading their way at top speed, ludicrously tearing off a netted hat.

  “Smart boy, old Bob,” Lester gasped, picking up speed to keep up with Chapman, who was running at full tilt.

  The three of them, now joined by Cathy, piled into Chapman’s black Suburban, its interior alive with radio chatter, and, with Chapman driving, tore away, tires spinning, hoping to catch up to the pickup before it was swallowed whole by the Maine countryside. Fortunately, there were few if any trees for miles around, and the hilly terrain—as on a storm-tossed sea—afforded them occasional sweeping views of their surroundings.

  There was also the radio. Chapman passed it to Joe as he concentrated on his driving.

  “This is Gunther,” the latter announced. “We’re mobile in Chapman’s car. Any sightings or coordinates?”

  “They’re headed southwest,” said a voice. “Toward where the road loops back around.”

  Lawless glanced up at the electronic compass mounted to the Suburban’s roof. “Should be ahead of us somewhere.”

  Chapman powered up a hill, all four wheels tearing into the delicate ground cover, before bursting upon a sweeping view of the terrain to the southwest, to startling effect.