by Archer Mayor
“Bingo,” he said unnecessarily, as they were already staring at the pickup, careening over the rough ground ahead of them by about two hills, its skittery motion adding to the setting’s tempestuous maritime feeling.
Chapman accelerated. Joe flattened the palm of his hand against the roof to steady himself.
“They’re not gonna make it,” said a different voice over the radio.
“Why not?” Gunther asked.
“There’s a seasonal riverbed ahead of them, and it’s still got water.”
Chapman roared downhill, hit the bottom of the swale ahead with a bone-jarring thud, and flew up the opposing slope, as before. Joe began thinking that his final ocean-related metaphor might end up being seasickness.
“There they are,” Cathy called out, pointing between them from the backseat.
Not far in front, at the bottom of the hill they’d just topped, the pickup had reached the edge of a thin, sharp-edged stream, unbreachable at right angles. The truck driver, realizing the same thing, but too late and traveling too fast, cut to his left, either to find another way or hoping to flatten the angle. In any case, the height of the truck and his own momentum betrayed him, as his rear wheels slithered sideways, caught the downward edge of the embankment, and dragged the rest of the vehicle over.
Chapman finally slowed somewhat as they saw the truck first teeter—still driving fast with a forty-five-degree list—and then tumble onto its side and into the shallow water in an explosion of mud and debris.
“Jesus,” Spinney half whispered at the sight.
The Suburban skidded to a halt some fifty feet from the wreck, and all four occupants quickly got out, their eyes glued to whatever movement might emerge from the partially submerged truck.
“Slow, slow,” Chapman cautioned, his gun out, keeping near the hood in case he needed cover. “We don’t know if they’re armed.”
“We also don’t know if they’re drowning,” Cathy reasonably pointed out, nevertheless staying put.
But Joe knew Chapman was right. Officer safety came first, and Joe had acted precipitately once already.
There was movement from the truck at last. A head with long black hair appeared from under the water on the submerged passenger side.
“Federal agents,” Chapman shouted. “Move away from the truck and keep your hands where I can see them.”
On the wreck’s far side, something flashed, like the wave of an arm, and then another head appeared briefly, before ducking back down.
Chapman repeated his command.
Instinctively, Joe, Lester, and Cathy spread out along the riverbank, doubled over and guns drawn, taking advantage of whatever obstacles they could find for cover.
Jill Zachary stayed on her knees, perhaps partially pinned, her face now visibly looking in their direction. But her companion once more began moving on the far side of the truck, suddenly holding up something over his head.
A distant shot rang out and the arm vanished before any of them could figure out what the object had been.
Over the radio, a voice announced, “Suspect down, suspect down.”
Chapman and Joe exchanged glances from their respective places, before seeing—on top of the rise across the stream—a man in a state police uniform slowly stand up, a scope-equipped rifle in his hands.
“Shit,” Joe heard Lenny Chapman growl, before he broke cover and began moving cautiously toward the truck, his gun still pointed in its direction.
Joe and the others joined him as Jill Zachary began yelling, “What’ve you done? What’ve you bastards done to him?”
“Do not move, lady,” Chapman repeated, getting closer. “Or you will be shot.”
Joe stepped into the cold, rushing water and, with Cathy close behind him, peered carefully around the edge of the upturned truck’s rear bumper.
Splayed out in the stream, his face down and submerged, his arms outstretched and with a rifle in one hand, lay the driver of the truck.
Joe and Cathy picked their way slowly toward him, noting the bloodred ribbon of water emanating from the body’s head, bright at its source, but a pale pink some ten feet farther down.
“I get him?”
They both glanced at the young trooper, now standing on the bank, impressed by the comment’s inanity. The man’s expression told them nothing.
Lawless couldn’t resist. “Gee—what d’ya think?”
Joe, shielded from Jill Zachary’s protests by the bulk of the truck and the sound of running water, stooped by the body’s head and gingerly reached out for the rifle. He retrieved it without resistance, wedged it against the truck, and then felt for a carotid pulse. There was nothing.
“He’s dead,” he told Cathy, who passed along the news over her radio.
Joe then took up the rifle again—a bolt action, iron sights,.223 Remington—and checked the chamber. There was nothing there.
“I don’t dare ask,” Cathy said.
He looked over his shoulder. Lester was standing beside her.
“Empty” was all he said.
“Could you see what he was trying to do, just before he went down?” Lester asked.
They looked at each other, knowing the implications. Joe took in the trooper, out of earshot but still staring at the body, his face as pale and blank as before.
“I’d only be guessing,” Joe answered.
Cathy didn’t respond. Lester merely said, “Me, too.”
On the truck’s far side, though, they could hear Zachary’s voice even better, now that she’d been pulled from the wreckage, accusing them all of murdering her husband.
Joe leaned over and twisted the body’s head to one side, allowing Cathy to see its face. Black flies were already hovering close by. “That Bob?”
She nodded once, undeterred by the blood still leaking from the hole in his temple. “What’s left of him.”
Joe sighed. “Great.”
CHAPTER 18
Lenny Chapman, Cathy Lawless, and Joe Gunther stood side by side, looking through the one-way mirror into the interrogation room containing a bedraggled Jill Zachary Her long, matted, mud-streaked black hair contrasted starkly with the yellow blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
“Technically,” Lawless was saying to Joe, “you’re the reason we’re all here.” She jerked her chin at the woman in the other room and added, “Including her.”
“You sure?” Joe asked. “This is a federal case, on your turf. Seems a stretch to give me first shot.”
Chapman laughed softly. “Jesus, you are the diplomat. Both those agencies are standing right here, Joe, telling you to take a crack at her. Go for it.”
Joe conceded with a smile. “You just don’t want to keep hearing how we murdered Bob in cold blood.”
“Right,” Cathy agreed with a smile.
In fact, none of them was particularly worried about that. They were all veterans; they couldn’t swear what Bob had intended—suicide by cop was common enough; and they knew the trooper was likely to be found innocent by Internal Affairs, if overly enthusiastic. Plus, in the final analysis, they also shared the belief that Bob had made his own choices.
“We’ve got nothing so far, right?” he asked them. “From the house or the kid?”
“Not so far,” Cathy acknowledged.
He nodded finally. “All right, I’ll see what I can get.”
Zachary started violently at his entrance, as if she’d been dozing off, which she might have been, given her recent adrenaline rush.
“Ms. Zachary,” he said. “My name’s Gunther.”
“When am I getting out of here?” she demanded, twisting in her chair and glaring up at him.
He crossed to the other metal chair in the stark room and sat down.
“I have a child to take care of,” she persisted.
He didn’t show how that struck him, and didn’t plan to until he got a better handle on how to deal with her.
“I understand that,” he answered instead. “But you
have to know we’ve got a couple of questions for you. Your son is with Child Services for the moment, and being well taken care of. He seems like a nice guy.”
“You saw him?” she asked, which he should have expected.
He hedged his answer, since he hadn’t seen the boy since the car chase. “Yeah. He’s doing fine.”
Her face hardened, as if he’d just delivered an insult. “He can be a jackass.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “Can’t they all?”
She shook her head and added, “Just like his goddamn father.”
“He was a handful, too?” Joe asked.
Again, she flared up, fixing him with a baleful stare.
“He didn’t deserve what you people did to him. Fucking cops.”
“That was bad,” Joe conceded.
Her brow furrowed in confusion.
“People do the craziest things when they get in a jam,” he went on. “Turn a relatively small thing into a huge deal, all because they didn’t stop and think for a second.”
She tilted her head to one side slightly. “What’re you talking about?”
He smiled, sensing she knew all too well. “Grabbing that rifle; taking off, when all we wanted to do was ask him a few questions.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you shitting me? You were after him for shooting at that cop.”
Joe dropped his jaw in theatrical surprise, although he was embarrassed to have been taken off guard. Of course the Bobs of the world would tell a lie like that to look good. “He told you that?”
“You saying it’s not true?” she challenged.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Bob was just trying to score a deal. The guy he was with fired those shots.”
She seemed stunned by the news, staring off into some middle space, as if in consultation. “That asshole.”
“Like I said,” Joe resumed conversationally. “People do the craziest things.”
She focused back on him, struck by a sudden thought. “Then why were you all around the house? I saw you people when we drove out of there. You were everywhere.”
Joe looked back at her with an appealing expression. “Think of the company we last saw him keeping. We didn’t know if that other guy was still around. We were a lot less happy about running into him unprepared.”
“Such a creep,” she muttered.
“You met him?”
Her face darkened. “Yeah, I met him. Bob brought him to the house, the stupid jerk. A real cocky bastard, bragging about how tough he was, and all his prospects.”
“He offer to make Bob a partner?” Joe asked. “Maybe that explains why Bob invited him home.”
She pressed her lips together tightly before answering, “I don’t know. They didn’t talk much in front of us. It was all secret, secret shit, like they were boys in a special club or something. I figured it was more drug business, anyhow. I kept telling him that would get him screwed someday.”
“I heard you two had your troubles,” Joe commented sympathetically. “That must’ve been tough.”
“It was a pain in the butt,” she said angrily.
“What was he doing with that guy, anyway?” Joe asked. “What was his name?”
“Grega,” she said bitterly. “Luis.” She pronounced it “Lu-eece,” with a mocking flair, adding, “He thought he was a real lady’s man. Typical.”
Joe let the ethnic implication slide. “You think he was pitching a big deal to Bob?”
“All I know is that Bob was real hyper, talking about getting us out of the rut. That’s what he called it, as if what we had was so terrible.” She looked up at him accusingly, her eyes narrowed with anger. “What is it with guys? Always so worked up about hitting the big time. What the hell’s wrong with life the way it is?”
Joe shrugged, struck by a vaguely similar remark he’d heard from Lyn. “The culture, I guess. The American Dream.”
“Fuck the American Dream. That’s what I say.”
Joe returned to the reason they were here, “Still, you got into that truck with him when Bob ran for it.”
She looked away, thoughtful and a little lost. When she returned to him, there were tears in her eyes. “He was such a kid, you know? Our son was more grownup than him.”
Joe let a moment’s silence elapse before asking, “What happened to Luis?”
Her voice was distracted. “Who cares?”
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, as if sharing a confidence. “You might ought to,” he suggested quietly.
Zachary wiped her eyes with the palms of both hands. “What do you mean?”
He dropped his voice even lower. “I’m not one of the local cops. I was brought in from outside, but I know what they’re saying. With Bob dead and Luis missing, you’re about all they got.”
She looked stunned. “What’re you saying? I didn’t do anything.”
He held his finger to his lips, cautioning a lower tone. “You and I know that, but they better have something to show. Like you said, it was a big operation, cost a lot of money.”
Her face darkened as she hissed, “They killed my fucking husband. That cost me, too.”
“And who do you have left?” he asked her, all sympathy. “You don’t want to risk losing him, too.”
It was an old gag—a cynical manipulation. In fact, Joe had his doubts that mother and child would ever share a roof again, given what had happened. Of course, the flip side of his implication also failed the grade—Jill Zachary hadn’t even been charged with an offense. She was free to go whenever she chose.
Thankfully, she grasped neither reality. Instead, her eyes widened in alarm. “Risk losing him? What the hell are you talking about?”
Joe chanced reaching out and touching her damp, blue-jeaned knee, establishing friendly contact. “About throwing them a bone. Show them you’re the innocent bystander here. You’ve got a life to lead, Jill—you and your son, both. Hasn’t all this cost you enough already?”
She was looking genuinely perplexed. “I told you: I don’t know nuthin’. They didn’t talk in front of me, and I didn’t listen anyhow.”
“You knew about Luis. You knew his name.”
She straightened, surprised. “That’s what you’re talking about?”
He nodded. “Everything and anything. Names of people Bob brought by; descriptions of their cars; any dates you can remember; pieces of conversation you might’ve overheard. All of it.”
She rubbed her forehead. “Jesus H. Christ. Who gives a shit?”
“You hope they will,” he suggested.
She sat back and stared at the ceiling, visibly casting about for a solution. Finally, she fixed him with an intense look.
“Bernie,” she said. “They talked about Bernie.”
“Who’s Bernie?”
“How the hell do I know?” she exclaimed. “You wanted a name. There’s a name.”
“You ever see him?”
“No. They just mentioned him. I walked in to ask if they wanted dinner, once, and I heard Bob talking. He yelled at me because of it.”
“Did you get any feeling for who he might be?” Joe asked, keeping his tone just shy of bored, adding, “A dealer, maybe, or a big customer?”
But Jill was adamant, shaking her head. “No. That’s why Bob got pissed at me later. He asked me what I’d heard, and I told him. Same as you—it was just a name. Stupid part was, I only knew it was important ’cause he got all worked up. It still never meant anything to me.”
Joe absorbed that for a moment, and then got to his feet. “And you never heard Bernie mentioned again?”
“No.”
He went to move, as if he was done, and then stopped, pretending that he’d just remembered something—in fact, the biggest reason he was here at all.
“Jill,” he said, “when Luis was bragging and putting on a show for you, did he ever talk about having been to Vermont?”
“Vermont? No.”
“How ’bout something that might’ve happened t
here? A shooting?”
Her eyes widened slightly. “He shot somebody?”
Joe leaned toward her, sharing a secret. “It was a cop, Jill. That’s what I was talking about earlier, when I was telling you how important it is to play ball. These guys are serious—this is literally a federal case. They can throw away the key.”
He had her attention.
“Luis Grega mentioned nothing about shooting a cop in Vermont?” he repeated.
Her face turned sullen. “I told you.”
He crossed the small room and put his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll have somebody come in with a recorder, Jill. You’ll like her—she’s not one of the boys, in more ways than one. Tell her what you told me, with as many details as you can remember. I guarantee you it’ll help.”
He left the room, closed the door, and raised his eyebrows at Cathy Lawless. “You ready to sweet talk her out of some memories? I figured I’d use you since you’d probably know any names she might mention.”
The MDEA agent smiled broadly at him. “You are an evil man, Joe Gunther. I hope they know that in Vermont.”
He shook his head. “They think I’m a saint. Did Bernie ring any bells with you, by the way?”
But Cathy shook her head. “Not offhand—and definitely not as a major leaguer.”
Later that night, Joe was again on the phone with Lyn. As usual, he was lying flat on his back in the motel room, his head propped against a bunched-up pillow, the TV on but muted. Balanced on his chest was an open can of Vienna sausages and a Cheez Whiz dispenser. Dinner was consisting of a careful line of the latter being applied periodically along the abbreviated length of one of the former, all washed down with occasional swigs of Coke. A small bag of barbecue-flavored chips was by his side, ostensibly for roughage. The phone was cradled, hands free, against his ear. Lyn had called him in the middle of his meal. As was his habit when on the road—and whenever possible—he’d been watching a western.
“Not at the bar tonight?” he asked her.
“It’s Penny’s turn. I’m on tomorrow. You don’t want to know how we came up with this schedule. Very much a girl thing—lots of compromise and sacrifice and hidden resentment.”