(1995) Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  Dart spun around, withdrew his weapon, and stretched into a prone position. He fired blindly into the dark. The shot echoed loudly. The red dot weaved across the open space toward him. Dart searched for the source of that light but saw nothing. He fired again. A wounded Zeller hurried on hands and knees into the woods, like a crippled dog.

  Dart’s attention divided between the red dot as it raced across the snow toward him, and the seething darkness that hid the shooter. If he rolled to his left, he would meet the laser. To roll to his right would only disorient him. He held his ground, his heart pounding, his finger begging to squeeze off another round.

  Zeller fired two consecutive shots, intentionally drawing the red dot away from Dart and back toward himself.

  The shooter was good. He knew that his targets had turned to face him, that his next shot, although silenced, would produce a muzzle flash identifying his location. The flash would give either Dart or Zeller—or both—a target to aim at. By challenging him, Dart and Zeller forced him to reconsider spraying bullets at them. The laser wandered across the snow, the full attention of both cops fixed to it. It moved toward Zeller, stopped, and headed back toward Dart. Zeller scrambled backward, still facing in the direction of the shooter, but moving toward, and finally reaching, the woods. He pulled himself to a position partially blocked by a tree.

  Dart lay prone, his weapon aimed in front of him, but his eyes on the lethal red dot sweeping the snow. It edged steadily closer: ten feet … five feet … three feet …

  Zeller, also tracking its progress, fired yet another round and then quickly rolled away, attempting to escape having made himself a target with his own muzzle flash.

  The dull red dot jerked wildly in Zeller’s direction. The sergeant fired again, buying time for Dart as he scrambled farther back into the woods. He lost sight of the small red dot, causing panic—his world had been reduced to this one small orb of red light; to misplace it could mean death.

  Red light flashed in his left eye. Dart jerked his head away as if from a burning match. The tree trunk that he was pressed against exploded, and wooden shrapnel splintered his face, clouding his vision and temporarily blinding him. He knew then that he was a dead man—couldn’t see, couldn’t flee the all-seeing laser. He would be targeted and killed. He pressed himself flat to the ground, reducing his profile while frantically trying to clear his eyes of the debris.

  Zeller, his eyesight adjusted to the darkness, saw Dart take a face full of bark and splinters. Zeller knew that the next sound he’d hear would be Dart’s last moment on earth.

  No time for him to find a better position. It had to be now.

  Like shooting fish in a barrel, using a scope like that. For himself, Zeller realized, it was over: He had tried to bring down Roxin and he had failed. The Davids didn’t always win out over the Goliaths—justice was something strived for, but not always won; as a cop, he had lived this truth for over twenty years. He pushed his back against the tree, pulled his knees into his chest, braced his arm, raised his weapon, and he fired. I will not be locked up, he thought. The report echoed through the woods, and the shot drew the respect of the shooter, who abandoned the electronic search in Dart’s direction, and he turned the laser onto Zeller.

  Zeller fired again, thinking, Show me that muzzle flash …

  The red dot crept across the snow, up a tree, and found Zeller’s knee. The sergeant braced himself. Give me a target, he mentally challenged.

  A yellow-white flash came from within the woods straight ahead.

  The woods echoed with a volley of reports as Zeller squeezed off a succession of shots, intentionally creating a wide pattern. His knee blew apart. His shoulder exploded. He managed one final shot. Run like hell Dartelli, he thought to himself. Go with God.

  Dart, pressed into the snow, cleared his eyes. Zeller had clearly emptied his magazine and had to be in the process of reloading, for the woods were absolutely silent. As his eyes cleared, he could discern the rigid symmetry of the black tree trunks rising from the white snow, and the surreal geometry of the power substation to his left. He lay perfectly still, waiting—expecting the red dot to find him.

  He came to his knees and scrambled wildly through the snow, stealing his way more deeply into the trees. He awaited a signal from Zeller but knew that with the shooter still out there, the sergeant too would lie low. He relived the events of the past few minutes once again—the sound of Zeller unloading, the ensuing silence.

  Zeller might have hit him, Dart realized.

  He crept forward, his eyes better now. He could make out the smooth white bark of the trees, the glowing ceiling of low clouds bouncing back the city light, the unbroken clarity of the snow, as sheer and smooth as a silk scarf.

  Minutes passed, and still nothing. Dart wormed through the trees, making his way back toward the small clearing by the substation where he had last seen Zeller. He moved carefully, stopping every few feet, his body protected by a tree, eyes alert for the laser’s searching red dot. He waited and listened, and then he moved on, cautiously. He couldn’t be sure of time, but it seemed that five or ten minutes passed. And still nothing. No human sounds. No movement. Fear gripped him.

  The hum of the power station grew louder. Again he paused, assessing the area, ever alert for the sharpshooter’s laser. The closer he came to the clearing, the more of a target he presented. At the start, Zeller had been in this approximate area. He looked for him left, and then right. He scanned the snow for tracks. The silence was frightening. It occurred to him that Zeller, believing he had hit the shooter, might have gone after him to confirm the kill. He realized that his best move might have been to remain relatively close to where he had been injured in case Zeller was himself now seeking out Dart, the two of them going around in circles. He moved forward, stopped, and waited. Nothing. Systematically, he moved forward again.

  When he looked left, he saw him: Zeller was about ten yards away, sitting up, still facing the area from which the shots had come. Dart hissed at him, but not loud enough to gain his attention—or else Zeller was simply refusing to acknowledge, his attention all on the shooter.

  It was bad form for Dart to approach the sergeant and increase the size of their target, so he hunkered down behind a pair of trees and waited. After another five minutes of absolute silence, of bone-numbing cold, he began resenting the man’s behavior. At a stakeout that had gone bad, Zeller had once kept him waiting like this for over forty-five minutes. When Zeller lit up a cigar, Dart would know the sergeant considered the area clear. Dart waited another three minutes and ran out of patience. He had seen Zeller take at least two shots—he might have passed out.

  Dart weaved his way through the standing tree trunks and hissed once more, this time close enough, loudly enough, to be heard. Again, Zeller refused to acknowledge him in any way. So typically arrogant. Dart felt angry at the man—he would go to any length to remind Dart of the hierarchy of their relationship. He would sit by a phone and allow it to ring until Dart answered it. It infuriated Dart. He finally reached the man—Zeller was leaning against a small evergreen that bent away from him with his weight, a pair of white-bark birches in front of him as a screen. He held his gun in both hands, resting on the ground between his legs. His knee looked badly hit.

  It was the position of Zeller’s gun that sent alarm shivering through Dart—the arm was slack, the barrel of the weapon planted into the wet snow and mud. Zeller revered his weapons, preached the code of proper care and handling. Treating the weapon like this was unthinkable.

  Dart took another few cautious steps, coming to within an arm’s reach. He smelled blood. He leaned forward in the dim light. “Sarge,” he whispered anxiously, glancing over his shoulder, all the while expecting the laser’s searching dot. “Sarge,” he repeated.

  The man didn’t move.

  Dart looked into Zeller’s face. The hole was quite small, immediately below the left eye. He gasped. “Sarge!” he blurted out, the knot tightening in his throat,
his chest burning, his eyes filling with tears. He didn’t reach out to touch him, to disturb him, only to check for a pulse. He gripped the man’s warm wrist, realizing in a flood of memory that the two had rarely touched, even to shake hands, realizing that, had Zeller had even a single heartbeat of life left within him, he would have broken Dart’s grip instantly and told him to keep his hands to himself.

  Walter Zeller was dead.

  Forgetting himself, forgetting all training, placing himself at serious jeopardy, Joe Dartelli raised his face to the sullen sky and shrieked, “No!” so loudly and for so long that to hear it from a suburban home one would have imagined a wounded animal. He stood then, weapon in hand, not thinking of lasers or semiautomatic weapons, but only of revenge. He ducked and moved deftly and quickly through the trees, as smoothly as water over rock. He ran across the clearing, his feet slipping on the wet snow, and entered the opposing woods. Tree by tree, he worked his way across the front of this copse, knowing the shooter could not have been too far into the trees during the attack.

  At his feet, brass casings lay scattered about. Warm when first ejected, they had melted small tunnels into the snow. The ground was scuffed and muddy from the shooter’s frantic movements.

  The path of mud indicated that the shooter may have dragged himself off into the woods, back toward Zeller’s former home. Whether he had followed one of them here, or had been keeping the place under surveillance and had overheard them, Dart couldn’t know.

  The prints were not clean, and the snow was discolored with either blood or mud or both.

  Neglecting concern for his own safety, Dart quickly cut his way through the trees and shrubs, leaving the hum of electricity behind him. The track left by the shooter grew heavier and more labored until it became apparent to Dart that the man had been wounded, had crawled his way through the trees. He pressed ahead, knowing that he must be gaining on the man.

  Through the woods came the plaintive cry of sirens—at least two, perhaps three or more. The shots had been heard and reported. Dart suddenly had to contend with the pressure of time—he could not afford to be brought downtown for an officer-involved shooting investigation. The key to dealing with Martinson would be speed, timing.

  He heard groaning before he saw the man. He passed the black shape of the man’s discarded weapon and kicked it aside. The shooter lay on his side, curled in a fetal position, clutching his bleeding stomach with both hands, ignoring his wounded shoulder. It was too dark to see much of his face, but his fingers were spread open, his hands clearly empty. He was a tall, lanky man—not the same build as the man in the laundry.

  Zeller had hit him twice—a serious gut shot and a minor bleeder in the shoulder. The gut shot was final. Even with an ambulance, he didn’t look as if he’d survive.

  The sirens quickly drew closer. Dart heard one of the cars come to a stop up on the highway rest area where Dart had parked.

  Dart leveled his handgun, sighting down the short barrel at the man’s head. The shooter cowered, curling up tighter. Dart’s arm began to shake. A voice from inside him demanded he pull the trigger. Do it! this voice pleaded. Dart’s finger found the trigger guard and then the trigger itself. His thumb tripped the safety, allowing the gun to be fired. He stared down the dark tube at the man’s head.

  The man shook with fear.

  He couldn’t do it. Dart lowered the weapon, securing the safety, and walked silently off into the woods.

  He knew well what hell Zeller’s murder would create—three, perhaps as many as five, investigators would be assigned. The forensics work would be exhaustive, the meetings endless. When the second dead man proved to be a hired killer from out of state, the governor and the FBI would be brought in. The press would get wind of it and the story would take off like wildfire, stealing headlines and news radio leads from Greenwich to Putnam, perhaps as far as Boston and Providence. And in the process, Dart knew, the opportunity to sink Roxin would disappear quickly. The cover-ups would begin, the fictitious stories welded in place, the connections quickly distanced. Within a few short hours following the first news leak of Zeller’s death, any and all hope of exposing Roxin could be lost, all Zeller’s efforts defeated.

  Zeller’s methods had ultimately killed him—Dart could not escape this thought. Despite his good intentions, the man had chosen the wrong solution. By violating the very laws he had once upheld, he had dug himself into isolation and desperation, convincing himself, no doubt, that he was engaged in noble self-sacrifice. The truth, it seemed to Dart, was more that Lucky’s death had pushed him over the edge. And it felt sad to Dart that such a man could become so lost. So maybe I am a Boy Scout, Dart thought.

  Dart went off, first at a walk, then at a run, in the opposite direction from the arriving police who were already crowding into the woods. As shouts raised behind him, he felt filled with an overwhelming wish that Zeller’s death would not be in vain.

  Martinson had not destroyed the files. Dart felt certain of it.

  CHAPTER 42

  Haite glanced up from his desk at the detective standing in his office doorway and said, “Jesus H. Christ.” Dart was all mud, blood, and wet clothes. “Shut the door,” were Haite’s next words, closely followed by, “You were there!” Dart nodded. “What the hell happened?”

  “I won’t be dragged into the investigation,” Dart said.

  “The hell you won’t.” Haite glanced over at the wall clock—it was one in the morning. “I’ve got a dozen patrol and four detectives out there.” The CAPers office area was empty. “What the hell happened?”

  “The shooter?”

  “Died in transit. DOA at HH,” he said, referring to Hartford Hospital.

  Dart looked Haite directly in the eyes and said, “I was wrong about the suicides. They weren’t murders.”

  “Is that right?” Haite asked, not believing Dart for a moment but not questioning him either. This was what Haite wanted to hear.

  “I misread the evidence, Sergeant. It’s my fault,” Dart said.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. I may be able to prove that Roxin Laboratories is involved in a cover-up concerning a gene therapy treatment they are testing. The drug apparently has severe psychological side effects, resulting, I assume, in some of these suicides. It’s a terrible thing.”

  “Where does Zeller fit in?” Haite asked bluntly.

  “I don’t believe I have ever mentioned Zeller’s name to you, sir. I’m not sure what you’re referring to.” The use of “sir” was certain to catch Haite’s attention. “His death,” Dart choked out, “is certainly a tragedy to us all.”

  “I want him to die a hero, not a criminal,” Haite hissed, openly honest. “How much of this is going to surface?”

  “How much of what?” Dart asked in his best innocent Boy Scout voice.

  “You can keep it that way?” Haite asked, sounding both surprised and impressed.

  “We’re under some time pressure, sir,” Dart said, making sure to repeat the formal address. He coughed and picked some mud out of his teeth. “If we’re going to prove Roxin’s involvement, we have to move quickly. We’ll need a variety of warrants, a full ERT, the surveillance van…. If we fail,” he said, maintaining his eye contact with Haite, “I fear that accusations may be made against Sergeant Zeller in an effort to discredit him and divert blame from where it belongs.”

  “You can really keep him out of this?” Haite asked again.

  “I wasn’t aware that he was ever implicated in anything,” Dart answered calmly, playing his part. “Has his name ever come up in regards to any of these investigations?”

  Haite dragged a hand across his mouth, contemplating Dart’s offer.

  Do this for Zeller! Dart’s eyes told the man.

  “Can you actually pull this off, Dartelli?” Haite understood that to commit the resources Dart was requesting would necessitate his own involvement, putting his ass on the line should Dart’s plan fail and the truth of Zeller’s criminal act
ivity be revealed. They would both be risking their careers to save Zeller’s reputation. “Can you?” Haite repeated, wanting an answer that they both knew Dart could not give.

  “I had a good teacher,” said Joe Dart.

  CHAPTER 43

  They needed Martinson’s password.

  Driving a department-confiscated Lexus, Dart approached the employee parking lot entrance to Roxin at 2:30 A.M. He wore jeans, a sweater, and a windbreaker.

  The lineman at the top of the phone pole, armed with a high-powered monocular, worked Narcotics but had done a good deal of undercover surveillance work. Across town, the worker down the manhole not far from the governor’s mansion was with SNET, and was awaiting court permission to tap into a high-speed data transmission line that serviced a remote computer terminal located in the study of Dr. Arielle Martinson’s home. Ginny had determined the existence of this remote terminal after questioning Dart thoroughly about the computers he had seen there. Bud Gorman’s check of SNET billing had confirmed it.

  The unmarked black ERT step van was parked half a mile down the hill from Roxin, the team ready with black ladders to assault the facility’s west wall if necessary.

  Haite was in the command van with two techies. Parked near Roxin’s main entrance, it had the rear left wheel jacked off the ground, and a number of tools lying nearby, as if abandoned with a flat tire. In fact, the all-wheel-drive vehicle could be driven right off the jack, if required.

  In Dart’s left ear, a small earpiece kept him in touch with the command van, and thereby, Ginny and the spotter atop the phone pole. He wore taped to his chest a fiber-optic camera no thicker than a fountain pen and curved on a piece of flex so as to capture Dart’s point of view—an interesting twist demanded by the judge issuing the warrants. There were few guidelines for a hostile raid on a computer network. They were improvising.