The Company She Kept

by Archer Mayor

  Joe couldn’t find the appeal in any of this, and moved on. “Where else would Stuey go? He have family or contacts out of town? Or another place, like a hunting camp?”

  Buddy laughed. “Right—Stuey hunting. There’s a picture. I don’t know what he’d use on a deer. Maybe a hammer. That would fit.”

  “So that’s a no?”

  The other man hitched his shoulders. “I don’t know of any place. Doesn’t mean there’s not one. It’s not like we’re best pals.”

  “Could be a business associate,” Joe suggested. “He’s like mid-level, isn’t he? You’re the street guy, running the dope around town and collecting the cash, and Stuey passes it up the ladder to the higher-ups. Isn’t that how it works?”

  Buddy straightened in his chair, as if suddenly aware of his surroundings and his earlier concern about being a rat. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Joe’s expression darkened. “You and I aren’t pals, either, you son of a bitch,” he snarled, eager to keep Buddy defensive and off balance. “And that bullshit story about Stuey notwithstanding, you’re still the one we got who’s good for this murder. You understand that?”

  “I told you. I had nuthin to do with that. I told you everything that happened. That fucking broad left my place alive.”

  Joe thrust his face inches from Buddy’s and yelled, “Then where’s Stuey?”

  “I don’t know,” Buddy shouted back, his expression fearful.

  Satisfied, Joe resumed his seat, as calm as if a switch had been thrown. “Tell me about his operation. Who’s he work for?”

  Ames was sweating now, his face pale. “A guy in Holyoke. I don’t know names. I used to. We all did. But things’ve changed. The old gang’s pretty much out, and new people’ve come in. But they’re supercautious, probably ’cause of all the electronic snooping and the feds and drones and all the rest.”

  “They never come to Rutland to check things out?”

  “They do. I hear about it. They get the VIP treatment, you know? Place to crash, one or two women to entertain ’em, all the fixin’s. But like you said, us guys never get to play. We’re the grunts—put up and shut up. That’s us. I might meet one of them if I stepped outta line—first-time/last-time meeting, if you get what I’m sayin’. But that’s it. So I’m not too eager to get that goin’.”

  Joe stood up. “All right. That’s it for the moment. You have your cell on you?”

  Ames reached into his pocket and laid a phone on the table. “Knock yourself out.”

  Joe got his meaning. “Drop phone?”

  “Get a new one every few days.”

  “So there’s nothing on this dating back to when you saw Raffner that night?”

  “Nope,” Buddy confirmed. “Can I get outta here now?”

  “That what you want?”

  “I didn’t do nuthin.”

  Joe studied him for a moment. “Yeah. I heard that. Problem is, I’m not the one you have to convince anymore. Word’ll get out how you spent the night with us, and got off without a scratch. Those Holyoke folks probably won’t like that much. What did you call it? A first-time/last-time meeting?”

  Buddy was staring at him with his mouth open. “You bastards. What’ve you done to me?”

  “Not a thing,” Joe replied, and crossed to the door, where he turned and added, “But stay put. We’re bound to come up with something.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Great. Another fucking dead end.”

  Joe tilted his office chair back and crossed his ankles on his desk. “Damn, Willy. You are a good-news bear.”

  “How would you see this?” Willy asked him, making Sam and Lester look from one to the other like spectators at a tennis match. “We might as well be chasing the Invisible Man.”

  “That’s who we’ve been chasing up to now,” Joe countered patiently. “We didn’t have a name and a history and a complete background. How likely do you think it is that Stuey Nichols’ll be able to stay low, now that we have him in our sights? A BOL’s been sent out across the Northeast. You really believe there’s a hole deep enough to hide this loser? I don’t.”

  The phone rang and Joe picked it up. “Gunther. VBI.”

  “Allard,” said his boss. “We need to meet.”

  Joe took his feet down to better see the calendar on his computer screen. “Sure. When and where?”

  “Now and downstairs, in the PD’s detective unit. And keep this to yourself for right now.”

  Joe kept his voice light. “Nifty. Be there in a sec.”

  He hung up the phone and addressed his team. “I gotta go check on something, but to Willy’s point earlier, we ought to recheck everything we’ve got to make sure it fits Stuey to a T.”

  “You want to cut back on going through all of Raffner’s archives?” Sammie asked.

  Joe pondered that a moment. “Not yet. Let’s look at how we’re using our resources. We might want to do that, but let’s not get too carried away. Right now, we think we have a hot lead. We may be wrong. Be right back.”

  He took the old building’s broad stairs down one flight and used the key he’d never returned to enter the locked office area he used to run, years before. Curious but not particularly concerned by being summoned, he greeted the two women in the front room with a wave and a smile, and passed through unchallenged to the conference room. There he was met by Allard, Ron Klesczewski—the department’s chief of detectives—and a man in a suit he’d never set eyes on before.

  “Hey,” he said, approaching the stranger with an outstretched hand. “Joe Gunther.”

  The man stood and shook hands. “Peter LaBelle, Homeland Security.”

  Joe shot Allard a quick glance as he sat down opposite LaBelle. “This should be interesting,” he said.

  Allard spoke first. “Peter contacted me as a result of some inquiries he learned about, surrounding the Raffner investigation.”

  “Okay,” Joe said neutrally.

  “We heard through the grapevine that you were looking for Allan Nichols,” LaBelle explained.

  “Stuey?” Joe replied, noting LaBelle’s precise wording. “Yeah. You ever meet him?”

  “Can’t say I have. Why?”

  “Just that his mother maybe called him Allan,” Joe said. “The day he was born. It’s been Stuey ever since. Made me think you’d never met him. How’d you hear we wanted him—specifically?”

  “My God,” Allard answered. “It’s not like it’s a secret. The man’s name has been sent to every cop shop in the Northeast.”

  Joe kept his eyes on the newcomer. “I don’t think that’s what Peter meant. He said ‘through the grapevine,’ suggesting something less official.”

  LaBelle smiled politely. “Very observant. Actually, it was one of your people—who, I don’t know. He contacted someone in our Burlington office and asked about a couple of phone numbers that alerted us to your interest in Nichols.”

  “A couple of phone numbers…” Joe repeated, not finishing the sentence.

  In the awkward silence that followed, LaBelle said, “Yeah.”

  Joe was thinking hard, trying to put together what had probably happened, while not revealing that he’d known nothing about it. He addressed Allard. “That would’ve been Kunkle.”

  He turned back to LaBelle. “What’re you not telling us about how that inquiry went over at your end?”

  For the first time, the man from HSI looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well, you know how these things work. People who know each other, keep in touch, sometimes help each other out on cases. Happens all the time. It’s the old-boy network—your guy used it.”

  “And your guy ended up with his butt in a crack. You didn’t answer the question.”

  LaBelle stopped tiptoeing. He lapsed into a smile, looking relieved. “Yeah—our boss read him the riot act. He’s a by-the-book desk agent. Not super popular. When our man ran the numbers Kunkle … is that right?”

  “Willy Kunkle. Yup.”

  “… Kunkl
e gave him, he punched them into our system to see what came up. The catch is that those numbers—one of them, at least; the other went nowhere—once belonged to a person of interest in Holyoke. Nichols’s name was connected to it as someone who’d dialed it a lot.”

  “So what happened? Willy didn’t give me the blow-by-blow,” Joe said casually.

  “We gave him the owner of the phone number—Manuel Ruiz. That shouldn’t have happened.”

  Joe worked to control his reaction. Ruiz was a loaded name in the short history of the VBI, given Sammie’s history with him. He cast a look at Allard and said lightly, “There’s a blast from the past.”

  Bill Allard didn’t respond.

  “He’s moved up in the world,” Joe commented vaguely to LaBelle, wondering what he’d learn next—that Ruiz was connected to Raffner’s death?

  “More importantly, so has Nichols,” LaBelle countered. “He’s the reason I’m here, and the answer to your question. Turns out that by helping Kunkle do an under-the-table favor, his HSI contact stirred up a wasp’s nest, especially by referencing Nichols.”

  “Why?”

  LaBelle paused, choosing his words. “Stuey Nichols is of particular use to us right now, something we don’t want circulated.”

  Joe sat back as if pushed. “Of course he is. That slimy son of a bitch. You’ve turned him into an informant against Ruiz. You are dimly aware that Stuey put a cop in the hospital, and would’ve killed her if her partner hadn’t stopped him?”

  “We are,” LaBelle answered evenly. “And that he served his time for doing so. We also know that he is now willing to help us bring down a major player. Ruiz is huge, especially in light of what’s been happening with heroin in Vermont. He is organized, well-protected, heavily financed, and has a direct pipeline to some big operators south of the border, which is why he falls under our purview. You can see why we’re already unhappy with Nichols’s name floating around within law enforcement. We sure as hell don’t want that to spread further, or for it to be associated with Ruiz.”

  He pointed at Joe. “If we can bring Manny Ruiz down, it’ll give the whole state a shot in the arm. And appealing to your own self-interest, that’s something the governor should find very useful right now.”

  Joe studied him for a moment in silence, again struggling to not respond from feelings alone. It was a challenge. The reference to “the governor,” coupled with the high probability that LaBelle knew of Joe’s romantic past with her, implied a calculated and cynical gesture of monumental proportions.

  One he might have used himself, had the tables been turned.

  He therefore swallowed what Willy would have blurted out in his place, and asked instead, “With all that in mind—and I do wish you well, since we have no love for Mr. Ruiz, either—what happens if we establish that Stuey Nichols killed Susan Raffner and strung her up like a dead rabbit after mutilating her body with his pocketknife?”

  His choice of words chilled the atmosphere, as intended. LaBelle, however, was not easily cowed. “Everyone in this room knows a murder charge trumps all, so your ‘if you establish’ becomes the operative phrase, doesn’t it?” he countered. He shifted his glance to include the other two men in the room, and added, “What do you have that’s solid against Nichols?”

  Joe rapped his knuckles lightly on the table to regain his attention. “What I and my unit have is that just before she was murdered, Susan Raffner hung up the phone on Stuey and headed off to meet him, madder than a wet hen about having been ripped off in a dope deal.” Joe shifted in his seat for emphasis. “You know Stuey, Peter—or at least his history—and we locals sure as hell knew the late Senator Raffner. How likely do you think it is that a nice, calm, rational business meeting took place between them?”

  “And your source is good about this supposed phone call?”

  “Immaculate,” Joe said, his temper again rising.

  Bill Allard weighed in diplomatically, “Surely it would be in everyone’s best interest if Joe or someone of his choosing was allowed to have a sit-down with Nichols.”

  “It would certainly be in yours,” LaBelle agreed.

  “But not HSI’s?” Allard asked. “You were the one who said you didn’t want Nichols burned as a CI. How ’bout if he’s charged in the most sensational murder in the state’s history, and HSI is identified as having kept him under wraps?”

  LaBelle avoided answering directly. “Ours is a large and complicated organization,” he said unnecessarily. “I don’t have the autonomy you do. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  Joe controlled his frustration. “Can you give us a vague time frame?”

  LaBelle glanced around the table and rose to his feet. “I’ll move right on it.” He began heading for the door.

  “A phone call wouldn’t do the trick?” Joe asked.

  The HSI agent paused at the door. “Not in this instance, but we’ll be fast. I promise.”

  He was gone with that, leaving the remaining three to look at one another silently.

  Until Joe muttered, “I wish he hadn’t said that last word.”

  * * *

  “So,” Willy challenged him as he reappeared in the VBI office upstairs a few minutes later. “What secret clubhouse did you just disappear into?”

  Joe smiled grimly. “That obvious, huh?”

  “We have got to play poker together sometime soon. You don’t look happy, by the way, just in case you think you’re keeping that to yourself, too.”

  Joe stood in the middle of the small room and addressed them all. “HSI just told me they have Stuey on board as a CI, and that they’ll be getting back to us about how we can have a crack at him regarding the Raffner homicide.”

  “Wow,” Lester said quietly.

  “Fuck that,” Willy added more succinctly.

  Sammie was more directed. “Why’re they laying claim to him?” she asked. “Don’t they do border-related stuff?”

  “It’s Ruiz,” Joe said. “And it is border-related, as we found out when we pegged the marijuana to its Mexican roots.”

  “They’re using Stuey to get at Manny Ruiz?” Sam asked, almost incredulously.

  “They’re hoping to. They obviously weren’t going to give me details, but they’re clearly putting a lot of faith in the man.”

  “Have they met him?” Sam asked no one in particular.

  “That’s crazy,” Willy stated. “They can’t trump a murder investigation. One call to a paper would blow them right out of the water.”

  Joe gave him a severe look—and avoided repeating Allard’s threat. “Don’t even think about it. They’re not saying we can’t have access, or saying their case trumps ours—that much, they made clear. Right now, they’re just claiming chain-of-command problems. The guy I talked to wants a boss on board.”

  “That’s bogus and you know it.”

  “I don’t disagree,” Joe admitted. “And I’d love to know what they’re really up to, but our hands are tied.”

  “It’s not that complicated,” Willy said bitterly. “They don’t want to lose their case against Ruiz to our murder. It’s a time and money thing, and I bet they’ve spent a ton of each chasing Manny.”

  Lester was shaking his head, his sense of fair play shaken. “I know the feds can play hardball, but I’ve never heard of them screwing anyone over that bad. She was a state senator, for Christ’s sake.”

  “They don’t give a rat’s ass,” Willy maintained.

  “Okay, okay,” Joe intervened. “None of that reflects what they said to me, but let me see what I can find out. In their defense, it is a top-down bureaucracy—not the nimblest of outfits. I think we’re being a little paranoid.”

  “What do we do in the meantime?” Sam protested.

  Joe addressed all three of them. “What I said earlier: We keep going on all cylinders, but we also make sure that Stuey fits the details of the crime. If we stick enough of the evidence to him, we won’t need permission from HSI to talk to him. We’ll
get a judge to do that for us by issuing an arrest warrant. We owe it to the case to explore every possible avenue.”

  * * *

  “You heard the man,” Willy told her. “He said every possible avenue.”

  He and Sam were sitting together in his car in the municipal building’s parking lot, masked from view by a thin layer of snow across the windshield. Not that discretion was key for the moment—the TV trucks and earlier hordes of reporters had tired of standing around hearing “no comment.”

  “You know that’s not what he meant,” Sammie responded. “Like he was really going to give you a license to kill. After all these years?”

  “Whatever,” Willy replied. “The point is: We know who we want, and we need to go get him. The feds’re goin’ to push this around for as long as they can—like hiding a pea under a shell.” He stared at her to make his point. “This sorry fucker murdered somebody, Sam.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Maybe.”

  Predictably, he ignored her qualifier. “So, let’s track him down.”

  * * *

  Joe copied the Burlington phone number for HSI off his computer screen, in order to call and arrange a meeting with their head agent—a man he’d never met, but who he’d heard had been transferred to Vermont just recently.

  For a man like Joe, who’d only worked for two outfits during his entire career—both of them in the same building—the idea of being shuttled among and between federal bureaucracies and across the map was foreign and disorienting. Joe came from the soil whose residents he policed; he shared a culture with the people he worked with, learned from, and occasionally arrested; and he used that inner, instinctive knowledge to help resolve many of the problems he confronted daily—from knowing who to call when he needed a saw blade sharpened, to who to consult when a mutual acquaintance had decided he didn’t want to be found.

  As a result, reaching out to a newly appointed outsider in order to gain access to a local felon felt counterintuitive. On the other hand, he’d seen the expression on Willy’s face when he’d broken the news of HSI’s involvement, and he knew that he didn’t have much time before Kunkle—and probably Sam, who was visibly falling prey to Willy’s independence—took the same kind of initiative that had resulted in Stuey’s being identified in the first place. Those two—as they saw it—were on a roll.