by Archer Mayor
“Do you remember anything?”
She turned to better look at him. “Do you know? You’re the first person to ask me that. Possibly a reflection of some of your own trials, from what Joe has told me. It can give you a less self-absorbed slant on life, regardless of what many people might say behind your back. I hope you don’t mind my saying that.”
Willy couldn’t help being impressed. “No, ma’am.”
“I do recall some things,” she continued, “to answer your question. It was like being at the end of a long hallway, where I could see and hear people, but they couldn’t do likewise. Or perhaps it was similar to being surrounded by a different culture and language. Neither image addresses the feeling of being awake and anesthetized at the same time. Hard to pin down, as you can see. But thank you for asking.”
“Sure.”
“How about yourself, if you don’t mind the question? How are you holding up, having to care for a wife and small child when you once weren’t sure you could care for yourself?”
If Willy had been given to such gestures, his jaw might’ve dropped open. Typical that it would take such an unlikely source to ask the very question that had been so plaguing him recently.
Instinctively, he tried sidestepping an answer—always one fond of smoke screens. “We’re not married.”
She laughed. “Well, of course you are. I wasn’t talking about some scrap of paper. You don’t know for a fact that I was married to the father of those two, do you?”
He smiled at the thought. “I guess I don’t.”
She kept studying him, awaiting a response. Despite her manners, she was one of the most direct people he’d met. And yet, he instinctively understood that she would either respect his confidences or accept his refusal to answer.
“It’s hard sometimes,” he admitted, surprised to be opening up to her. “I’m not sure I deserve them. I keep thinking they’d probably be better off without me.”
“You consider yourself a handful?” she asked.
He was touched by her persistent concern. “Your son must’ve told you.”
She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Actually, he counts himself lucky to have you around. In my experience—which would never come close to what you’ve gone through—things are usually much worse inside our heads than they are in fact. We are our own poorest counselors.”
They could both hear Joe and Leo approaching from the kitchen, laden with a tray and talking. She took advantage of their remaining few seconds of isolation to reach out and place her hand on Willy’s forearm and conclude, “For what it’s worth, I think you’re in the safest place you’ve ever been—right now—with all of them.”
He turned his hand around to squeeze hers, genuinely moved. “Thank you—more than you know.”
* * *
“You have a good chat with the old lady?” Joe asked him a half hour later, as they’d resumed their journey toward Burlington.
“Yeah. You lucked out with her.”
Joe cast him a sideways glance. “Yeah,” he acknowledged. “We all did.”
* * *
As the two of them approached South Burlington, Willy told Joe of the conversation he’d had with Alan Summers, which ended when Summers had prohibited Willy’s access to the factory floor—and thus to Robb Haag’s coworkers—because of the company’s restrictive contract with the military.
He also explained that Joe was here today less for backup than for the authority implied by his rank. Willy could readily admit that while he was perfectly happy intimidating people, playing toe-to-toe as a bureaucrat could be a challenge.
Joe listened, asked a few questions, and then nodded as they rolled into the parking lot, confirming, “I’ll give it my best bluster.”
He certainly began well enough once inside, striding up to the same receptionist Willy had seen on his last visit, presenting his credentials, and announcing, “My name is Joe Gunther. I’m the field force commander of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. You’ve already met Special Agent Kunkle. We’re working on a national security case and need to see Mr. Summers. Could you make that happen?”
The young woman stared in amazement before reaching for the phone. “Sure,” she said simply. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Joe sensed he probably could’ve achieved the same result by saying he and Willy were insurance salesmen, but he’d taken his assignment to heart—and with some amusement.
Almost as confirmation, Al Summers looked slightly befuddled when he stepped into the room to greet them, instantly recognizing Willy. “Did something happen?” he asked.
“We’ll tell you in your office,” Joe answered, reintroducing himself.
Summers ushered them inside, his curiosity plain, and addressed Willy directly. “I should’ve known you’d be back. It’s like everything Robb touches—an immediate problem. What’s he done now?”
Joe stayed in character. Without bothering to sit down, he told Summers, “We obviously have to be as circumspect as you about some of this, since it could easily segue into a federal investigation. As you know, Special Agent Kunkle has been in touch with HSI. The good news is, these things can be like isolated spot fires—if you contain them early and limit the damage, everyone gets to walk away happy. That’s where we’re hoping we are right now, but we still have a few missing pieces.”
Summers was unstinting. “What do you need?”
Joe indicated Willy. “You gave us an employee photo of Robb Haag. I understand that unless we get some form of military waiver, you’re not allowed to let us onto the factory floor. So here’s a compromise: Give us ID photos of everyone who was ever friendly with Haag—even slightly—and we’ll only watch the parking lot till those people come out. That should preserve your agreement with DOD and keep you up and running with minimum interference, while giving us what we want. You see any problems with that?”
Summers considered it before asking, “You wouldn’t do anything in the parking lot itself? You’d wait until you were off the property?”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
Summers studied the floor for a moment before crossing to his desk and sitting before his computer, as he had at the end of his earlier meeting with Willy, when he’d printed out Haag’s photograph. “There is one guy I thought about later,” he said as he typed in commands. “Keith Cory. Works in fulfillment.” He glanced up at Willy. “Basically, one of the box-tapers I mentioned when we met, although it’s a little fancier than that. He and Robb seemed to be friends, or at least friendly. I saw them eating together out back only a couple of times, but for a loner like Haag, it stuck in my memory. I’m not saying they were actually friends. But I asked around after I thought of him, and Cory’s the only one any of us can come up with.”
“You didn’t ask Cory as well, did you?” Willy asked.
“No.” Summers rolled over to where his printer was coming alive. “If the two of them were pals, that’s enough in my book to have as little to do with Cory as possible. He’s not a fireworks show like Haag, but he doesn’t need encouragement. I keep him because he does good work and keeps good records. He’s also been around from the start, so we’ve all gotten used to him.”
He swung around toward them, holding the printout of a sullen, fat-faced man with dull eyes. “Here he is. I’m still assuming you won’t tell me what’s going on?”
“Correct,” Willy said quickly, hoping to cut off any further conversation.
But Joe—his figurehead role completed—honored his prior position as backup and stayed silent.
“We’ll tell you after we’ve locked it in,” Willy told Summers to soothe him.
The CEO had to live with that, and gave them both a wave of the hand. “Have at him, then. I’ll prepare myself for the worst and hope for the best.”
“Good plan,” Willy said, leading the way out and smiling to himself.
* * *
Since his last visit to Al-Tech, Willy had considered how best
to approach any potential ally of Robb Haag’s. This was another reason why he’d asked for Joe’s help.
Initially—had Summers been agreeable—Willy would have followed his instincts and sailed onto the assembly floor, revealing his identity in the process. Now, with the benefit of having Joe along, he was in fact grateful for Summers’s request that they move on Keith Cory off campus. Not only would it distance them from any association with the plant, but it would also make their contact with Cory more private.
Willy’s thinking here was that if Haag’s plans did involve disrupting Al-Tech’s operation via those Windsor-produced counterfeit batteries, then a quietly enlisted inside operator might prove useful. Also if more than one insider was involved, then initial contact with Cory was better kept quiet, so as not to spook any such coconspirator.
In any case, with Cory’s photograph in hand, they waited within sight of the employee’s exit at end of shift, watching for their overweight person of interest.
He turned out to be hard to miss.
“Look at the man,” Willy commented, looking through his binoculars. “What a porker.”
They saw him slowly trudge over to a tired Ford pickup, fire it up after a couple of tries and a resulting plume of oily smoke, and head out. They followed him through downtown Burlington, heading toward the Old North End, where he pulled over opposite a neighborhood market, eased himself out of the truck, adjusted his sagging pants with an unconscious jerk, and headed inside.
Willy glanced at Joe as he also parked by the curb. “Wanna grab him here?”
Joe looked around. “Why not?”
They opted for the sidewalk, rather than approaching Cory inside. The advantage of the latter would have been that any aisle could have served as a corral, making the job of two cops that much easier. The downside was that it was a commercial space, with other people to complicate such a maneuver. It also didn’t account for the sheer size of their quarry, which guaranteed a massive amount of damage in case he resisted.
Resistance, however, turned out not to be a concern. As Cory stepped outside with a twelve-pack of beer under one massive arm, he saw the two cops approach from the flanks and stopped dead in his tracks.
“This about Robb?” he asked in a surprisingly high voice.
Willy took his advantage. “Yeah, big man. He fucked you over somethin’ royal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“We meet again, as promised,” Sam’s host greeted her pleasantly. “And I hear you’re bearing gifts.”
She was back in Ted McTaggart’s office in Albany—dark and wood-paneled, but like the storage room at a library, with no pretensions and lots of shelves. Before sitting down alongside Scott Gagne, who’d met her downstairs, she handed both men a thick file each. “Copies of what we’ve been up to. I sent Scott an email about Dominic Gargiulo and the thumb drive. Did he tell you about that?”
McTaggart nodded. “He mentioned it.” He tapped the file with his finger. “This is the first hard copy stuff I’ve received, which is fine by me, by the way. I usually don’t need to see much unless or until it really becomes a case for us, which I guess it has.”
“I hope so,” Sam said, pleased by his ready acceptance. “We put a tail on Gargiulo after he thought he’d successfully stolen the drive, and he brought us straight here. We lost him at the rental agency in Troy, but it’s a safe bet all the dots connect back to Jared Wylie.”
“In that email, you were waiting for Wylie to plug in the drive and enter his password,” McTaggart suggested.
“We were, and he did. The techie at the Burlington PD is right now watching every keystroke being made. That puts the drive into Wylie’s hands by default, and it ties Gargiulo to him as a result.”
“Unless somebody else has the password and is doing that typing,” Gagne suggested.
McTaggart looked at Sam questioningly as she laughed in agreement. “Great minds thinking alike,” she said. “As this was coming together, I even started wondering—is all this Wylie getting his USB back, regardless of risk, or one of his victims wanting to blackmail him at any cost?”
“And your answer?”
“My qualified answer,” she emphasized, “is Nick Gargiulo. He killed the girl, retrieved the drive, brought it back here, and works for Wylie. If we can muckle onto him and make him give us his boss—which is who I’m betting on—or, like Scott’s suggesting, somebody who’s gone to an amazing amount of effort to screw Wylie, we’ll be set either way.”
“I wasn’t really suggesting it,” Gagne clarified. “I just didn’t want the possibility ignored.”
“Well,” she continued, “whatever it is, I do remember you saying that Wylie’s been too slippery to catch until now. Maybe Gargiulo’s the guy to make that happen. In any case, he’s wanted for murder, so sooner or later, we’re gonna want to bring him in.”
“Agreed,” McTaggart said, finally opening up the file. “So, let’s talk about Wylie. What did your techie see when whoever it was opened up the drive?”
“We’re still analyzing it,” she said, her confidence growing with McTaggart’s acceptance of her. There had been previous alliances in Vermont, where the VBI was purportedly the top dog, but in which she’d been made to feel like a second-class intruder. The Albany cops had been generous and accommodating from the start. “So far? It looks like a straight blackmail operation. He’s got records, recordings, video footage, the works. You’re the locals, so the names’ll make sense to you, but the intel people in Burlington were saying that while several of them are Albany politicos—from top-ranking state senators to staffers and freshman assemblymen—there are a few D.C. representatives and some pure business types in there, too. It’s quite a crowd. From what I was told, it’s a prosecution task force’s dream come true.”
She turned to Gagne. “You said that once politicians start bubbling to the surface, this kind of thing usually goes to the state police, but I said task force just now ’cause it’s sounding like there could be enough for everybody. Our AG and yours are already in bed over the thumb drive. You guys could have Wylie charged with ordering Jayla’s homicide—depending on what Gargiulo has to say—and the troopers could have the rest. It would make lawyers on both sides happy for years.”
Sammie was feeling a bit like a sales rep, but the indicators were telling. The already eager Gagne and his more circumspect boss were looking enthusiastic enough to give her heart.
It remained McTaggart’s call, however, which he almost made now: “Okay. I want to read this through and phone a few people, but start setting things up. It’s a qualified go unless I need to put on the brakes later.” He held up the file. “Course, in this goddamn town, depending who’s got their balls in a vise, anything might happen—or not—so keep part of yourself prepared for disappointment. It’s been known to happen. I’ll also issue an observe-and-report-only BOLO for Nick Gargiulo.”
* * *
Sammie was heading back to Vermont when her cell phone came alive. She stuck it into the cradle on her dashboard so she could keep both hands on the wheel. “Hello?”
“Hi, Sam. It’s Beverly Hillstrom.”
Given the circumstances, Sam hadn’t checked her caller ID, as she usually did, and now pulled over to get off the speakerphone, which she knew could be irritating on the receiving end. Hillstrom would forever be someone whom she held in awe, and she didn’t want to commit any avoidable errors.
“Dr. Hillstrom,” she said, moving the phone to her ear. “I mean, Beverly. Hi. Is everything okay?”
“It is on my end. Joe’s back home and his mother’s fully restored. I was calling in part to find out how you were doing.”
Sammie felt her face flush. “Really? I’m good. I’m just driving back from Albany, where I had a super meeting with the PD. Things on Rachel’s case are really coming together. How’s she doing?”
“Much better, thanks. It’s nice to hear you sounding so surefooted.”
Sam laughed nervously. “Yeah
. I guess so. I’m sorry I bugged you back when. I was feeling a little out of my depths.”
“We all go there sometimes,” Hillstrom reassured her. “Even now, I have days where I’m quite sure I’ll be exposed as a child in disguise. I think that’s true of every honest adult. Joe would tell you the same thing, I’m sure. I am delighted you found your pace, though. Joe tells me that he’s been hearing from all sorts of people how impressive you were in his absence. I thought you should know that.”
“Thank you,” Sam said with feeling, truly touched by Hillstrom’s telling her this. “He’s actually mentioned it.”
“I also wanted to thank you personally for what you did for my daughter,” the older woman added. “You were far beyond professional with her. You hit all the right marks, and I wanted you to hear that clearly and directly. You are a terrific officer and a thoughtful, caring human being. I only rarely get to meet either, lately. You’re entitled to your self-doubts, but don’t think for a moment that they direct who you are.”
Sam was almost overcome with emotion. “I’m not sure what to say.”
Hillstrom laughed. “Don’t say anything. Hang up and go back to driving home—with my best wishes and deepest thanks. That was an assumption, of course. I hope you’re heading toward your family.”
That said, Hillstrom hung up, leaving Sammie staring into the fading daylight ahead, her head swimming with happy confusion. She wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t suspect a bit of supportive manipulation at work behind Hillstrom’s call. Not only was the medical examiner a good judge of character, but she’d also discussed Sammie’s recent activities with Joe.
But that didn’t mean Beverly had been obliged to make the call. That, Sam believed, went beyond old-fashioned good management.
“Neat,” she said to herself, and pulled back onto the road.
* * *
Lester rose eagerly as Tina Stackman entered the room, dressed in her lab coat and carrying a manila folder. He’d come to Waterbury at her summons and had been waiting for only five minutes, anxiously anticipating what she might tell him about his findings.