by Archer Mayor
Klesczewski punched a transmit button on his console, switching his line over to the incident command post. He slipped one of his earphones off so he could listen to Purvis and the ICP at the same time.
"Washburn."
"He just got a phone call from a reporter."
"What?"
"I think we should cut the trailer's phone line. It might be somebody from the Reformer, but whoever it is, is working him up all over again."
"Goddamn it, Ron, let's give Kazak and his guys a shot."
Ron grimaced at the last word. Wayne Kazak was Washburn's kind of action-oriented guy. "It's your call, but I'd like to hold off on that for a bit. Before the phone rang, I almost had him out the door."
He refrained from detailing that overly rosy bit of fiction.
As intended, his phrasing put Washburn on the spot. Were the incident commander to choose a possibly bloody assault over a negotiator making progress, heads would roll, especially in a town as prone to argument-and suspicious of its police department-as Brattleboro, a famous bastion of liberal debate.
"All right. We'll cut the line. How fast do you think you can get him out?"
"You know I can't answer that, Ward. But I'm making progress."
"Right." Washburn hung up.
Ron readjusted his headphones. Purvis was still talking on the other phone, but now Linda was throwing her oar in, yelling at him to stop jerking himself off and make up his mind, calling him a loser and a dickhead who couldn't even make a standoff with the cops work. Ron could almost feel the tension building in Matt's head as the latter's responses, to both reporter and estranged wife, became increasingly terse.
Come on, Ron began repeating to himself, cut the goddamn wire. He hesitated pushing the button triggering the throw phone's ringer, unsure whether he'd be giving Matt a calmer harbor that way or merely adding to the pressure.
Just before he was about to go ahead, a shot went off, sharp as a whip's crack, audible even through the van's wall.
All hell broke loose. The note taker whirled around at the whiteboard, dropping his marker, Linda let out a scream over the headphones, and Washburn's voice yelled through the van's override speaker, "What the Christ happened, Ron?"
Ron could hear Kazak outside, shouting orders over his radio to his team, preparing for an assault.
He first spoke on the intercom, "Hold everyone off. Let me find out," and then rang through on the throw phone.
From habit alone, Matthew Purvis picked up. "What?"
Ron struggled to control his voice, happy to hear Linda still complaining in a grating voice in the background. "I thought I heard a noise, Matt. Just wondered if you were all okay in there."
"Fuck no, we're not okay. What the hell do you think?"
"Is anyone hurt?"
Purvis was borderline hysterical. "I didn't shoot her, if that's what you mean. Wouldn't make any difference anyhow. I'd need fucking silver bullets to do any good."
Ron hesitated a split second and then laughed outright, in the meantime scribbling a note, "All's okay. Hold," and handing it to the liaison for transmission.
"What're you laughing at?"
"Did you hear what you just said, Matt? Jesus, man. That's one sense of humor."
Thankfully, Purvis laughed, too, dropping the tension a notch. "Yeah, well. What've you got left, right?"
"Right," Ron agreed. "I mean, things could be worse."
He grabbed his forehead at his own choice of words. What the hell was he thinking?
But again Purvis surprised him. After an excruciating pause, he commented, "You're pretty funny yourself. How worse could they get?"
"Okay, I know you've had a pisser of a day, Matt. You're in a world of hurt." Relieved to be back on track, Ron studied the board across from him. "Your job, your apartment, the restraining order, falling off the wagon… Pretty understandable that you feel shoved in a corner."
"You have no idea," Purvis muttered.
"You're right. I don't. But I've helped a lot of people who have. That's why I'm here now. I hear you have a son."
A silence followed this abrupt change of subject. "Yeah."
"What's he up to?" A note on the board read "Army."
"He's in the service."
"Sounds like you're real proud of him."
"Yeah. He's a good kid."
In the background, Linda called out, "You talkin' about Chris? A loser and a faggot, just like his old man."
Ron winced, wishing to hell she were in another room or unconscious. She sounded drunk. With any luck, eventually she'd pass out.
The phone rattled as Purvis dropped it again to scream at her, "You goddamn bitch. Don't you say that about Chris. You say one more thing about him and I'll blow your fucking brains out, you hear me?"
"Hear you? The whole town can hear you, Matthew." She drew out his name tauntingly.
The liaison presented a note reading "Tac team has a clear shot through curtain gap."
Ron winced and wrote "NO SHOOTING" in block letters before handing it back.
He called out over the phone, desperate to head off another blowup. "Matt. You there? Hey, Matt?"
"What?" he said finally.
Reacting to his own pressures, Ron decided to become more direct. "How does it make you feel, being in there with her?"
"Pissed off."
"You think there may be a solution to that?"
"Yeah. I could walk into a hail of bullets."
"From us?" Ron made his voice sound surprised, heartened that Purvis hadn't mentioned killing his wife first. "We're not going to shoot you. I want you out safe and sound, Matt. Nobody shoots somebody because they're having a shitty day."
"The place is surrounded by guys with guns. I'm not that stupid."
Ron tried steering him away from a conversation they'd had several times already. "What do you think of me? Personally?"
"I don't know you."
"Don't you?"
Ron let the silence drag on.
Finally, Purvis admitted, "I guess you're okay."
"Would you be willing to come outside if I was there to greet you? We could keep talking later, face-to-face, away from the guns."
"I've seen how that works on TV. You guys beat the shit out of me."
"You really think I'd do that?"
Purvis hesitated before admitting, "Maybe not you. I was thinking about those ninja bastards in black. I saw them out there."
"Well, I'm the one we're talking about. Let's get this done, Matt. You and me, at the front door. I'll walk up and call out, so you recognize my voice; you open the door and come out with your hands up. Then we can talk more in private over some coffee, without interruptions. You can tell me about Chris, and I can brag about my kid."
The silence was punctuated only by Linda's growled aspersions in the distance, sounding like a crow on amphetamines.
Matthew Purvis got the message. "Okay."
"All right," Ron said with relief. He reached out and pushed a button activating a parallel line to the command post, allowing Washburn and Kazak to listen in and understand what was about to happen. "I have to tell you how this works, so pay attention. I'm not the head guy here, so I have to coordinate with the ninjas you just mentioned. I'll be there, like I said, front and center at the door, but they'll be there, too, armed and scary-looking. That's their job and there's nothing I can do about that, okay?"
"I don't trust them."
"They're there to protect me, Matt. They don't know you like I do. To them you're just somebody who might try to hurt me. And my boss, who is probably just like yours was, he'll fire my ass if I don't follow procedure. But you'll be fine, okay? I promise you that. I'll be the first one you see when you open that door. I'll be wearing a bulletproof vest over a white shirt and brown slacks. You listen to my voice only, okay? Ignore everything else."
"They'll see the gun and shoot."
"Then slide it out first or leave it behind. Put it down on a table somewhere. Just m
ake sure when you come out that your hands are up and that we can see they're empty. You got that? Are we squared away on this?"
"Yeah. I guess." Purvis was sounding suddenly exhausted.
"Hang in there, buddy. I'll be there in three minutes. Put the gun down, go to the door, and wait for my voice."
"Okay."
Klesczewski made sure Matt had left the phone before leaping to his feet and throwing open the van's door.
Across the way, he saw both Washburn and Kazak emerging from the command post, actually an old converted ambulance. They'd heard everything he'd said.
"I don't like it," Kazak said predictably. "As soon as he turns that doorknob, we should go in hard and take him down."
Ron merely looked at Washburn as he slipped a black vest over his head and strapped it in place.
Thankfully, Ward Washburn understood. "We'll do it his way, Wayne."
Ron nodded. "Thanks." He began trotting toward the trailer around the corner as Kazak coordinated the surrender with his team over the radio.
Halfway up the driveway, a shot exploded from inside the trailer.
Moments later, the door opened, spilling light across the patchy grass, and a woman appeared, swaying on her feet, a gun in one hand and a bottle in the other. She was laughing.
"Come on in, you assholes," she shouted into the night. "I did your job for you. I shot the son of a bitch."
Chapter 3
Joe Gunther cupped his cheek in his hand and looked at his old friend. "Ron, you can't beat yourself up over this. You did it by the book-better, even. Who knew the wife would kill him? And don't say, 'I should have,'" he quickly added as Klesczewski opened his mouth to speak.
Ron spoke anyway. "I didn't do it by the book, Joe. I should never have told him to put the gun down. I knew that-especially the way she was acting. I might as well have told him to hand it to her direct. That exact scenario was in my training. I was just so relieved I was about to get him out safely, I forgot. And I got him killed."
Gunther shook his head sadly. He'd known Ron for years-had once been his boss as head of Brattleboro's detective squad-and had seen his younger colleague agonize over issues large and small. It was simply the nature of the man-what helped make him a decent human being, if maybe not the most forceful of leaders.
"Honestly?" Joe told him now. "I doubt it. I think in their own weird way, Mr. and Mrs. Purvis had it worked out long before you showed up. Some people are just built that way-the definition of a love-hate relationship. There's no getting between them. If you had saved him this time, like you say, they would've hooked up later to play it out for keeps."
Ron was still looking glum.
A knock on his office door caused them both to look up. Sheila Kelly, who'd been promoted to detective after Joe's departure, was standing there with a sheet of paper in her hand.
"Hi, Joe," she said with a wide smile, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek-a rarity among cops. "I haven't seen you in ages. You'd never know you worked upstairs. How are you?"
Joe acknowledged the gentle rebuke. He was employed by the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation nowadays, was in fact their field force commander, which meant he spent most of his time on the road. Logically, he should have moved to Waterbury, near the center of the state, but he'd worked in Brattleboro his whole career and was loath to leave. So far, his bosses had allowed the eccentricity.
"I'm fine, Sheila," he said. "Busy, but doing okay."
"And Gail?"
That called for a more measured response. Gail Zigman and he had been romantically linked for more years than most married couples, although they'd never tied the knot. So the question was reasonable enough. But there was also Gail's latest ambition to consider-a small hot potato, at least in the traditionally conservative environs of a police station.
"Now, there's busy," he answered. "I suppose you heard, she's going to run for state senate. Every night her place looks like headquarters for the Normandy invasion."
Sheila laughed. "Nope. I didn't have a clue. Guess that shows how politically involved I am. Well, if anyone can do it, she can. Tell her I wish her well, even if I won't vote for her."
Gail's liberal views were legendary in this corner of the state, where she'd already been a selectperson, a local prosecutor, and forever a standard-bearer of almost every left-leaning cause available, of which there were many. In short, not the typical cop's sort of politician, which often made Joe's colleagues wonder how he could keep her company. Actually, although he did agree with Gail on many points, politics was a topic they tended to avoid, if not always successfully. This made him less than thrilled with the hotter-than-ever partisan debate now surrounding her.
"I'll do that," he said simply.
Sheila Kelly handed the sheet of paper to Ron. "Fax just came in from the crime lab on that gun. Kind of interesting."
Ron took it from her, explaining as he did, "Purvis's gun was an old Ruger Blackhawk. The serial numbers had been ground off, so I thought the lab might like a look at it."
Sheila wandered back into the squad room just outside Ron's office. Joe watched her settling down at her desk as Ron read the contents of the fax, thinking back to when he used to head the unit. By now, Ron and their forensics expert, J. P. Tyler, were the only original members left. The other two, Sammie Martens and the infamously difficult Willy Kunkle, had moved with Joe to the VBI. Nobody here had ever admitted missing having Kunkle around.
His expression guarded, Ron handed his old boss the fax. "You might want to read this, Joe. The bullet they test-fired from Purvis's Ruger matches one you gave them thirty-two years ago."
Vermont is shaped like a broken wedge pointed south. It's barely over 40 miles across at the bottom, 90 across the top, and 160 in length. It has two interstates: I-91 running north-south, and I-89, which it inherits from New Hampshire in a diagonal jaunt from Boston to Montreal. The Green Mountains sew the state together like a protuberant spinal column, the vertebrae a series of picturesque, tree-topped peaks that slope down to the Connecticut River on the east, and Lake Champlain to the west.
It is tiny, rural, landlocked, unindustrialized, politically quirky, among the whitest states in the union, and the forty-ninth in population. Its capital, Montpelier, is the smallest of its ilk in the nation, and the only one not to have a McDonald's restaurant.
Ask anyone in the country about Vermont, and you are almost sure to be given some impression, however inaccurate. From the Green Mountain Boys to maple syrup, skiing, fall foliage, and cows-not to mention civil unions and some surprisingly high-profile, plain-speaking politicians-Vermont tends to stick in people's minds, if not always benignly.
It is a place with resonance beyond its modest statistics, and, for Joe, a world in itself.
He knew it better than most, too. Even when he worked at the Brattleboro PD, he made it a point to get out and visit other departments. There are only about a thousand full-time police officers in Vermont, and no jurisdictional boundaries-a cop is a cop anywhere in the state, fully certified and responsible to act as such if necessary. Gunther was keenly aware of that fact and saw the whole as a single tribe, if made up of different factions. His joining the VBI, in truth, had less to do with personal advancement, and more with easing the turf struggles he saw only slowly fading among many of the almost seventy law enforcement agencies across the state.
It was a great source of satisfaction to him, seeing how the growth in information sharing had resulted in a commensurate decline in unsolved crimes.
Which only added to the irony that he'd been the one involved in-and possibly responsible for-one of the more notorious of the state's still open cases.
Thirty-two years ago.
He watched the familiar countryside roll by as he drove toward Waterbury and the forensics lab along one of the most beautiful traffic corridors in the Northeast. It was a trip he never tired of, and one he'd come to use, in good weather and poor, as an opportunity for reflection. If meditation w
as best pursued in peaceful, supportive, nurturing environments, Joe could think of none better than this smoothly curving road through the mountainous heart of his home state.
And, in this instance, such solace was a blessing, for the long-dormant thoughts created by the discovery of Purvis's gun were a muddle of loss and mourning and lasting disappointment.
Thirty-two years ago, Gunther had been a fresh-faced detective on the Brattleboro force. A bright, hardworking patrolman, he'd made the transition to plainclothes quickly and had been in the unit about a year. He was good at what he did, made his bosses happy, and had a reputation around town for fairness and discretion.
The latter was crucial back then. The department had had no more than fourteen officers total, versus twice that today; the town was the same size then as now, and the crime rate had seemed rampant. Many a time Joe had to choose between arresting and processing someone and thereby leaving the street, and letting him go and hoping a lecture would suffice. Sometimes a phone call to an overworked but decent parent was enough; sometimes a little old-fashioned intimidation was called for. Miranda rights had just barely been introduced and were undergoing judicial adjustment. They certainly weren't yet routine. A police officer's discretion-and his knowledge of whom he was dealing with-was often the better guide than the rule book. Shoving a nightstick down someone's pants and frog-walking him across the bridge to Hinsdale, New Hampshire, to get rid of him for the evening had worked more than once.
But discretion could be pushed too far. On the night that Klaus Oberfeldt was found battered and unconscious on the floor of their store by his wife, the ambulance was called and the bare facts recorded. But it wasn't until the next day, when Joe came back on duty, that he first heard of it. No neighborhood canvass had been conducted, no evidence collected, no statements or photographs taken. The beat cops at the time had written it off as a mugging and had filed it for a detective follow-up.