Crosscut

by Archer Mayor

  He positioned the truck nearby but not too close, quietly got out, and began walking around—dressed completely in black—getting acquainted with the area. He looked for windows with lights on, checking for movement, the flickering of a TV screen. He tried determining any traffic rhythm at the end of the street, where it T-boned onto Main. He listened for voices, music, any barking dogs.

  But the absence of most of that had been one of the attractions of this spot. The old station, typical of most railroad installations, was off the beaten path, on Depot Avenue, which, for all intents and purposes, didn’t lead anywhere. There were no homes, no twenty-four-hour businesses, and no sidewalks attracting midnight strollers.

  It was also cold. It had snowed the night before, further encouraging people to stay indoors, keep their windows shut, and—just as important—their curtains closed against the chill.

  On the other hand, there was a full moon, with nary a cloud in the sky, which, when combined with the fresh snow, lent a bright, almost pale blue boldness to the night, similar to the hue at the base of a gas flame. A bomber’s moon, he’d heard an old juicer once call it, in midalcoholic stupor. A World War II term. Before lasers and radar and night vision were standard equipment on planes, night bombers ventured out over an enemy’s monochrome landscape, using only their eyesight to seek out targets, much as Alex was doing now.

  So far, so good, as the ancient drinker had commented, laughing. But beware what you wish for. “Whoever you target can target you in return,” he’d said with unexpected eloquence. Apparently, many were the nights when the old man had barely survived the truth of that statement.

  Alex had loved the allusion, being a nocturnal creature by instinct. He’d enjoyed its poetry and wisdom, and had certainly taken the latter to heart, which helped explain his covert appearance and the elaborate disguise of his truck.

  But, too, he’d understood the warning, which had almost startled him with its all-encompassing relevance, especially in his dual hunter/prey identity.

  Satisfied with his surveillance, he finally approached the oversize vehicle, as incongruous here with its chrome and gold accents as it might have looked on an African plain.

  Using a small flashlight, he carefully checked it over, inside and out, without touching it, since it went without saying that it had an alarm. Whether it did or not, he made the assumption, if only so it wouldn’t catch him by surprise.

  On TV, the thief always disables any sensors, picks the door lock, hotwires the ignition, and drives away, all in under a minute.

  In reality, Alex believed, his goal could be reached just as fast, if a little more crudely. After all, he wasn’t, in fact, stealing the car. And his flashlight had already revealed what he was seeking.

  He looked around one last time, withdrew a ball-peen hammer from inside his coat, and with practiced ease smacked the passenger’s side window.

  He’d mentally rehearsed his movements, planning on the yelping alarm to act as his starter pistol. He was therefore astonished when not a single sound followed the sharp crack of the hammer.

  “What the hell?” he wondered aloud, rooted in place for half a beat.

  But instincts took over, regardless of good fortune. Hopping in through the high window, balancing his torso on its sill, he reached out with one gloved hand for the garage-door opener above the steering wheel, while simultaneously opening the glove compartment. Again, he was in luck. The car’s registration lay right on top.

  Within seconds, both items in his possession, Alex was back in his truck, heading toward Main Street. At no point had he seen a light go on, a voice ring out, or any blue strobes.

  His adrenaline still pumping, he pulled to the side of the road several miles out of town and checked the address listed on the stolen registration, hoping it would be a street location and not a PO box. Again, he was rewarded.

  Punching the location into his portable GPS, he pulled back onto the road in hopeful pursuit.

  This was the process he lived for—the whole interconnected, fraught-with-peril smorgasbord of opportunity, chance, disappointment, surprise, and success. The rush he’d experienced using drugs as a teenager held nothing to this, and helped explain his evolution from that lifestyle to this. Here, he got all the spontaneity and excitement he craved, but with a payoff at the end, if everything worked out.

  And that was an additional attraction. This high could last for days, what with planning, execution, and redistribution of goods—unlike when he’d indulged in pills or dope to take him away for a few hours only.

  The house listed on the registration was on a dirt road, surprisingly almost sixty miles away from Windsor, south even of the Brattleboro station the car owners should have used to catch their train. It wasn’t buried in the woods, but, like so many in the state, not crowded by neighbors, either. Encouraged by the lack of an alarm in the car, Alex nosed his truck into the driveway and killed his engine and lights for a moment, rolling down his windows to repeat the cautious, thought-out survey he’d taken at the railroad station.

  As before, all was quiet and still. Through the trees, which also thankfully provided him cover from the moonlight, he could see a few distant house lights, left on for overnight security. Similarly, there was a light over the front door of this home, making it look both lived in and snug.

  He restarted his engine but kept the headlights off, and turned the truck around, so it was facing the street. Then, with the motor idling, he donned a pair of surgical booties, and left the truck to conduct a quick reconnaissance, waiting for dog barks, motion detectors, or even another dreaded alarm.

  But reflecting the state’s barely evolving concern about practitioners of Alex’s vocation, nothing happened. He even knocked on the door and rang its doorbell to make sure.

  He was now ready for his penultimate challenge. He reentered the truck, threw it into reverse, backed up to the attached garage, and hit the door opener. The door nearest to him trundled open, revealing a broad, empty space.

  He continued inside, activated the remote once more, and watched as the door slid shut, closing him in.

  Alex let out a breath, his brain on overload. Who might’ve seen him that he’d missed? How many silent alarms had he inadvertently tripped? Was there video footage of him now, wending its way across the Internet to the home owners or a security firm? And lastly—as he emerged into the garage, still lit from the overhead opener—was the connecting door to the house locked and/or wired?

  He wouldn’t be sure of some of these until much later, if he was lucky, but on the last topic at least, he was off the hook.

  He placed his hand on the inner door’s knob, twisted it, and stepped into the empty kitchen.

  Time for Alex to be robbin’.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sammie Martens turned from the window, where she’d been watching Rachel Reiling photograph police officers by their vehicles, and glanced at her boss. Joe Gunther was, as usual, the motionless one in the group, his chin tucked, his expression thoughtful, his hands in his pockets. There was a dead man on the floor of this rickety, evil-smelling wreck of an ancient tenement, with a knife in his chest and a drying pool of blood encircling him like an undeserved halo. That explained the Reformer coverage. Crime-scene techs dressed all in white were moving about, documenting everything, gathering evidence, keeping busy. It was a homicide in Bellows Falls, probably drug-related, called in by someone not instinctively wary of the police. Who might’ve come in earlier, only to quietly retreat, was anyone’s guess. “BF,” as locals called it, was a town where you didn’t volunteer much. Information was a commodity, to be traded to authorities as barter.

  Sam and Joe had been called in by the Bellows Falls PD, half as a courtesy and half as insurance. Their specialized agency, the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, or VBI, could be asked either to assist or to take over such time-intensive cases, especially if a ready solution appeared elusive. This one hadn’t announced itself one way or the other yet—the lieute
nant/detective in charge had people across town, checking on relatives, friends, and associates of the deceased. If they got lucky, VBI would know to fade away; if they didn’t, Joe and his team would inherit a new case, bringing in more special agents from across the state.

  Sam wouldn’t mind either way. She was in a good place in life—her child, Emma, was thriving. Her partner, Willy Kunkle, was on the longest streak of near-normal, mostly predictable behavior that she’d witnessed in years. And this job was the plum opportunity in Vermont law enforcement—a pick-of-the-litter organization with a narrowly focused mandate and immunity from the tangles and politics of other red-taped, top-heavy agencies, many of which had lost their best investigators to the VBI anyhow.

  And, finally, she got to work under Joe Gunther, a legend in the business. Considerate, consistent, protective, and righteous, he was neither permissive nor controlling, but more like a tribal elder. He had his faults and weaknesses. He made mistakes. But his atoning for them, when they rarely occurred, only enhanced his stature. He’d made families of the squads he’d led, from the Brattleboro PD to the VBI, and he’d never let them down.

  In fact, Gunther’s present ranking was as statewide field commander of all VBI operations. However, instead of flying a desk at headquarters in Waterbury, alongside the agency’s director, he’d insisted on also being agent in charge of the southeast office, one of five across Vermont. An unusual setup, it had been his only requirement for transferring to the VBI from the Brattleboro PD, where he’d been chief of detectives. He was among the longest-serving and most respected cops in Vermont. It hadn’t been a big concession by the VBI brass.

  The present scene Sam and Joe were occupying was looking at once sadly familiar, while missing a few pieces, which explained their still being held in limbo, despite having arrived an hour earlier. The rooming house was cheap, anonymous, and furnished—to Sam’s eye—with what most people would have committed to the local dump. The facts gathered thus far mirrored the room’s appearance: a drug deal gone bad, with one party, Lyall Johnson, wearing a cheap kitchen knife in his rib cage, and the other, Brandon Leggatt, having run for cover, probably within town limits. A nearby open drawer with a paltry collection of other utensils suggested the source of the knife and the spontaneous nature of its use.

  That it had taken place in Bellows Falls was not a big surprise. An often hard-luck community at odds with its picturesque setting—complete with waterfall and mountains—BF had suffered the fate of so many longretired New England industrial towns. But it was smaller, more compact, and with no backup employment options like a hospital or a prison—or even immediate proximity to an interstate exit to draw in drive-by spenders. It bravely fought the odds, and with increasing success lately. Still, the struggle seemed never-ending, with the scourge of easy drug money always lurking like a cancer.

  It was not a source of comfort to town leaders that their hardship was matched by dozens of other afflicted communities statewide.

  Vermont, for all its activism, beauty, and romantic appeal, remained at its core hardscrabble, tourist-dependent, thinly populated, and small in size. Which helped explain its frugality and historically fierce pride.

  Joe looked up and saw Sam watching him. “What’s up?” he asked.

  She left her post by the window to join him by the body. “Rachel’s outside, taking pictures.”

  “Wonder if she’s heard something we haven’t,” he mused.

  “You want to ask her, be my guest. I’m not doing it. She won’t know squat and she’ll bury me in questions.” Sam had fallen prey to the conventional law-enforcement attitude about newspeople, despite the fact that she and Rachel got along. Of course, most of that predated Rachel’s recent employment at the Reformer.

  Joe gazed back at the young man on the floor, whose dull, half-open eyes were staring up at the stained ceiling. “We and the press do tend to meet in the worst circumstances, expected to piece life stories back together, if for different reasons. Can’t say I fault people being curious. I know I’d like to know more about him.”

  His voice regained its familiar, less philosophical edge as he continued. “There may be more than what’s meeting the eye about Mr. Johnson, after all. We think we know what happened. We’ve got circumstances, past history, and even witnesses to lend it weight. But are we sure?”

  He pivoted slightly so that he could point from the body to the apartment’s doorway. “It could be supersimple: Brandon knifed Lyall over drugs. But why, when they were supposed to be pals? Did the knife come from the drawer, like it looks? Why no defense wounds? And why”—he pointed out a path to the front door—”does that part of the floor look cleaner than the rest, like someone wiped it up?”

  He crossed to a half-opened dresser drawer and peered inside, adding, “And there’s this: a bundle of standard wax paper heroin envelopes, all stamped with Pinocchio cartoons, and all empty. No heroin anywhere.”

  “Pinocchio was his brand,” Sam said. “Not that he was anything but a middleman. He pretended to be a big shot, but he just repackaged the stuff. I’d guess he was waiting for a resupply or whoever whacked him stole what he had.”

  They were interrupted by an officer arriving at the doorway, holding up a cell phone. “They found Brandon. LT just called. He’s holed up on North Oak.”

  The change in the room was immediate. Everyone looked up, like a herd of gazelles scenting danger, before training and procedure kicked in. The crime techs went back to work, the medical examiner’s man advised, “Call me if you kill him,” and the local cops filed out to render aid to their colleagues across town. Sam cautioned them as she and Joe followed. “Press is outside. Watch what you do and say.”

  Lyall and Brandon had been involved in the area’s steady rhythm of minor crime for years—petty theft, vandalism, public disturbances, underage drinking—and, of course, doing their best to hawk Lyall’s Pinocchio trademark product. Calling themselves “Batman and Robin”—the cops had dubbed them “Mutt and Jeff”—the duo had been seen entering Lyall’s threadbare apartment last night, and were overheard arguing by neighbors between two and three in the morning. Now, it appeared, imitating a timeworn film noir, Brandon was possibly preparing for a showdown worthy of movie legend.

  Except that Joe, for one, was going to do his best to see it didn’t end that way. He didn’t want theatrics interfering with what he hoped would be an enlightening conversation.

  Almost everything in the tightly packed central village of Bellows Falls was no more than a thousand feet away from anything else, and in this case, even less. The address they’d been given was a two-story residence, cut up into several apartments but sharing a living room and kitchen—essentially a one-family home where each bedroom extracted rent. Not a rarity in this or other towns of its ilk.

  When the small caravan of vehicles arrived without fanfare, the building had been unobtrusively surrounded, and Detective/Lieutenant Marc Cote—the previously mentioned “LT”—was almost casually standing on the sidewalk, awaiting their arrival. The overall illusion of calm was maintained by several distant cruisers, which had sealed off an outer perimeter, making the area invisible against the incursions of gawkers or the likes of Rachel and her camera.

  Cote directed a couple of his folks to the building in question before greeting his two colleagues from the VBI.

  “You sure it’s him?” Sam asked as they drew near.

  “Oh yeah,” he replied. “We were tipped off by a resident who owes us a favor.”

  “We sure Brandon killed Lyall?” Joe asked more pointedly.

  Cote caught his meaning. He barely ducked his chin, implying an ambivalence. “I don’t have a confession,” he stated. “It’s likely, but circumstantial.”

  “Is he armed?” asked Sam, thinking tactically.

  “Not that we know. But our CI couldn’t swear to it.”

  Joe was looking over Cote’s shoulder, getting a feel for the layout. “He know we’re here?”

&
nbsp; “No reason to think so. It sounded like he was negotiating with the residents about how long he could stay there, hiding out. I’m guessing he chose this place because he knows the people but doesn’t hang with them much, making it somewhere we wouldn’t normally check out.”

  “In other words, things could go blooey in a heartbeat,” Sam said. “I’m gonna rig up.” She broke away to fetch her ballistic vest and shotgun from the trunk of her car.

  Joe, whose eagerness to enter combat had waned through the years, asked Cote what he thought was a reasonable question, given the mounting tension. “Has anyone considered just knocking on the door?”

  Cote smiled—another pragmatist. “The old pizza delivery con?”

  “Something like that. Why not?”

  They both looked around. All their vehicles were safely out of sight. From inside the house, the residents shouldn’t have known anything was amiss—unless cell phones and Facebook had told them otherwise.

  It was Cote’s decision. This was still his scene. He nodded and said, “I don’t see the harm in giving it a try.”

  It wasn’t to be. As they stood there, weighing how best to proceed, the front door to the house opened and a squat, pasty-faced young man in a greasy hoodie stepped out onto the sagging porch.

  “Shoot,” Cote said. “That’s him. So much for lying low. Maybe they threw him out.”

  To his credit, the cop instinctively overrode the reasonable norms practiced by more protocol-driven counterparts. He walked into the middle of the slushy, ice-clogged dirt driveway and waved to Leggatt.

  “Hey, Brandon,” he called out as he approached, a smile on his face. “You got a minute?”