He knocked on the open door and stuck his head in. Tim Giordi was sitting at his desk, scrutinizing his computer screen.
"Chief?"
Giordi looked over his reading glasses at his supply officer. "Yeah, Matt. Come in."
Aho waggled the pile he had clutched in his hand as he approached. "I've been researching the missing Taser cartridge situation."
Giordi raised his eyebrows. "And?"
"I think I have at least part of it figured out."
"Oh?"
He laid out some of his documentation, upside down, so Giordi could read it. "When this first came up, I consulted only the dispersal log, which showed that Officer Palmiter had been assigned three cartridges. He, of course, said he only got two and didn't think anything about it. That left me trying to figure out not only how it might've gone missing, but from where. The biggest flaw I've found so far is that after I've bar-coded what's headed out to the airport, the stuff's actually carried over there in bulk. It gets signed out by the individual officers who requested it, but the airport log and mine aren't connected electronically. I think I might've discovered this sooner or later the old-fashioned way, but that's why that one cartridge fell through the gaps."
Giordi, knowing his subordinate's meticulous style-one of the reasons he'd been given this job-nodded patiently.
Aho continued. "So I went over the outgoing transfer manifests and the airport receiving logs, totaled everything that I'd signed out against everything that everyone I interviewed claimed to have received, and I found that the missing cartridge never made it out of my office-at least not officially."
"Meaning somebody walked in, when you weren't there, and swiped it?" Giordi asked, thinking privately that was what he'd assumed from the beginning, even though he was sympathetic to Aho's resistance to the idea.
As if reading his mind, Aho flushed slightly. "It seems that way, yes."
"Yeah," Giordi mused. "That's not too surprising. Your office is off of a high-traffic corridor. What's your suggestion for a more secure setup?"
Aho brightened considerably at that. "I've already put in a requisition for a security Dutch door kind of arrangement, with a grilled upper half. It shouldn't be much more inconvenient than the present system, and it'll make things much tighter. But that's not actually where I was headed."
"I see." Giordi smiled. "And where was that, exactly?"
Aho didn't react to the question's wry tone. "Well, having narrowed down the where part of the puzzle, I now had to find out the when."
"Right," his boss coaxed.
Aho pointed to an entry on one of his logs. "As you know… Actually, maybe you don't… but I try to do things like receiving, unpacking, and cataloging at regular times, so that I have a routine I can follow. It helps keep me on track. As a result, I have a pretty good idea at what time of the day I probably set the cartridges out to be shipped to the airport division, putting them on the corner of my desk, as usual… well, as usual in the old days."
"Right," Giordi repeated.
"Not to make a big deal out of it," Aho continued without irony, "I pretty much identified a half-hour time slot when somebody could have taken that cartridge-right here, between eleven thirty and noon."
"Okay."
Aho straightened triumphantly. "Well, the rest was easy. We know what shifts were in the building then, and we have the visitors' log for people from the outside." He laid a final sheet before his chief. "So, there you have it-a complete listing, as best I can figure it, of everyone who had access."
Giordi glanced at the list-a significant number of people-and sat back in his chair. "Nice job, Matt. Above and beyond the call. I'll make sure to check this out and share it with Agent Gunther and his people, and I'll also make sure that your new door gets priority treatment."
Aho smiled nervously, gathered up his exhibits, and headed out the door. Giordi waited until he'd left before getting out his bottle of aspirin.
An hour later, Lester Spinney crossed the VBI office in Brattleboro and retrieved the fax that had just arrived.
"Who from?" Sam asked from her desk.
"Burlington PD," he answered vaguely, reading its cover sheet and contents. "It's a list of all the people who were in their building when that Taser cartridge went missing."
"Huh," she reacted. "I thought that was a lost cause."
Lester stopped in the middle of the floor, bringing the sheet closer to his eyes. "I'll be damned."
"What?"
"One of the visitors was John Leppman. Small world."
Chapter 23
Deputy Sheriff Ted Mumford drove his cruiser gingerly down the narrow lane. It was banked with walls of fresh snow, no doubt disguising parallel ditches that would strand him for sure, and it hadn't been plowed in hours or sanded at all. On top of that, it was late, he was tired, this was the middle of nowhere, and he was responding to his least favorite type of call-a noise complaint.
With the worst snowstorm of the season at last behind him, ten hours of accidents, traffic control, domestic disputes, a lost child, no time off, and God knows how many cups of coffee, Mumford was in no mood to deal with some barking dog or loud stereo. He'd done an uncountable number of these in his years as a deputy, and only a few times had the complainant actually deigned to call the source of the problem and simply ask them to stop it. "I won't call that son of a bitch" was the usual reply. "That's what you cops are for."
Ahead, Mumford made out the glimmering of two houses among the thick tangle of trees-one doubtless belonging to the complainant, the other to the subject. Now that he was near, he could imagine the scenario all too easily: the sole two neighbors inside a square mile of wilderness, hating each other and using every excuse to exchange mutual misery.
He rolled down his window as he drew abreast of the first driveway, or at least the car-size furrow of snow leading to the house, and listened. He would have to give the complainant that much, if nothing else-there was a dog barking down the road, loudly and nonstop, with the same dull rhythm as someone repeatedly thumping the side of your head with a finger.
On the other hand, if Ted were a dog chained outside in this weather, he might have done some barking of his own. Maybe he'd be able to slap an animal cruelty charge on top of the disturbance citation.
Often he would stop at the complainant's on such a call, both to placate and to work up a little departmental PR, but he was too tired and pissed off to bother this time. Instead, he kept crawling down the road, his snow-encrusted headlights doing their feeble best to lead him along, until he reached the second house's blanketed dooryard. Or what he could find of it-there were already three white-shrouded vehicles filling the space. Informing dispatch of his arrival before getting out of the car, Mumford figured he'd have to back all the way to the first driveway in order to turn around later. Great.
The dog, of course, had climbed to a new plateau, having discovered something real to complain about. Also, to be safe, Ted had shined his powerful flashlight right at it to make sure it couldn't suddenly break free and come at him from across the yard. That had done nothing to calm things down.
Holstering the light and relying on the glow from the house's windows to show him the way, Mumford shuffled through the thick and slippery snow, careful of any obstacles possibly lurking beneath it.
He reached the bottom of the front porch steps, and was two treads up when the door above and ahead of him abruptly flew open, revealing a man in a checked shirt, holding a beer in one hand and a joint between his lips. A handgun was shoved into his belt. Although only ten feet separated them, the man missed seeing Mumford entirely, swung on his heel, faced the length of the porch, and bellowed, "Rollo, you stupid mutt. Shut the fuck up."