“What about hiring Johnston?”
He hesitated. “That was for protection. I didn’t find anything missing after that break-in, but I wanted to know who did it and why.”
“One of our officers noticed a couple of file drawers were open, as if someone had been rifling through them.”
He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “Sloppy housekeeping on my part. I left them open by mistake.”
“Doesn’t your secretary tidy up before she leaves?”
He laughed. “I’m the one who usually closes up. She works regular hours. Believe me, mine’s no nine-to-five job.” He shook his head. “Look, nothing happened at the office-don’t waste your time. It’s the other thing that worries me-politics can get pretty dirty, even here, if the stakes are high enough. And they couldn’t get much higher.”
“Meaning seeing your car at the railroad tracks is a setup?”
“I don’t know what it means,” he answered carefully. “I know it didn’t happen, or if it did, it was without my knowledge. Assuming your witness actually did see my car-and you better check his reliability-it means someone’s very serious about getting me out of the way. The same goes for that rumor about me being involved in illegal dumping.”
He straightened slowly, almost imperceptibly, until I was fully and belatedly aware of his towering over me. “It would be a shame, given what I’m trying to do here, to have your department used as an instrument of libel. Once the truth came out, the fallout would be enormous.”
There was a long pause, during which I merely looked him in the eye. Then he turned on his heel and went back downstairs.
It had bordered on being a personal threat. I’d seen him in action before. It wasn’t a bluff.
10
I got back to Brattleboro by late afternoon and found Tony Brandt sitting in his office, talking on the phone. He waved me to a seat, quickly concluded his conversation, and put his feet up on his desk-his preferred position of contemplation.
“He confess?”
I laughed. “Right. No-I’ll give him that much. If he is guilty, he hides it well. He looked totally bowled over, then he got curious, then he pulled the I’ll-sue-your-ass card out of the deck. He says forces from the Dark Side are out to get him, and we better watch out we don’t become their unwitting handmaiden. He also told me he’s probably the best thing that’ll ever happen to us in our lifetime.”
“Us? You mean the cops?”
“And everyone else. Brave New World is right around the corner, assuming he gets that bill passed.”
“You tell him what his chances are?”
“I figured I was there to listen. He’s an impressive guy.”
Tony gazed at me thoughtfully. “So are a lot of bastards.”
“I thought you voted for him.”
“I did. But he’s a defense lawyer and a politician and he’s put everything on the table with this thing. Defining the Dark Side might depend on your point of view here. I know a lot of people who’d love for him to disappear.”
I’d already expressed how I thought some sort of streamlining of all these police agencies might make sense. I was curious to hear the educated other side, especially from someone I trusted.
“Like who?” I asked.
“Basically anyone who’s fought hard to get where they are. The state police at the top of the heap, the chiefs with their cherished turfs, the sheriffs with their town and state contracts, all the boards of selectmen fearing loss of local control, the right-wingers and the tree-huggers screaming socialism or fascism, depending. It’s almost hard to think of anyone who would be for this bill.”
“That include you?”
“Not necessarily. A bunch of other places have made it work-including small countries-and they’re bigger and busier than we are. But common sense doesn’t always apply-most people agree education should no longer be funded with property taxes. Doesn’t mean it’ll ever change. There are a few things in life we’re just plain stuck with, and in Vermont one of them’s the local cop, as redundant, expensive, and inefficient as that may be.”
“So Reynolds is screwed.”
He laughed softly and raised his eyebrows. “Who knows? A hundred years ago, nobody thought women would get the vote.”
I got up and moved to the door. “There are a lot more of them than there is of him-even with his ego. One thing I did get, by the way, was that this scares the hell out of him.”
“I don’t doubt it. You think he’s involved at all?”
I paused on the threshold. “His car being seen at the tracks seemed to hit him out of the blue. Hiring Win as a bird dog sounded reasonable to me. But he blew off the dumping accusation pretty fast-there may be something to it.”
“What’re you going to do now?” he asked me.
“Check in with Sammie and the others. See what they came up with today. Then I was planning to visit Mrs. Reynolds.”
Tony nodded his approval. “Good. How’s Sammie doing, by the way?”
I hesitated, surprised he knew anything was wrong. “Okay.”
He smiled conspiratorially. “I have my sources, Joe. She’s good people-we both know that. She’s also young.” He left it at that.
“I know,” I agreed. “I’m keeping an eye on it.”
“One last thing,” he added. “Let Kunkle and Sam handle the Croteau killing. I want you to keep on Reynolds. We need to know if your witness is all wet on pinning his car to the scene, or what really happened if he’s not. This one could do us damage, Joe. Okay? The press could have a field day.”
It was a rare request from a boss who usually let his department heads rule their roosts. But I sensed he was right. Despite the current popular appeal of the Croteau killing over the railroad death, Reynolds was a celebrity and could tilt that balance in a heartbeat.
J.P. Tyler was in his element, sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by paper evidence envelopes, videotapes, Polaroid photographs, a plaster casting, and several brown paper bags, with a clipboard balanced on his knees.
“Have a good day?” I asked him, careful to keep outside his circle of possessions.
He looked up and smiled broadly, a rare show of happiness. “Pretty good.”
“Find the murder weapon?” I guessed.
He tapped one of the bags by his side with a pencil. “Butcher knife-ten-inch blade. One of a set of five the victim had in her kitchen. It’s got prints on it. I checked by blowing iodine fumes across the handle, but I want to send it to Waterbury so they can do a complete job on it.” He rooted around through a pile of photographs and handed me a shot of the handle covered with purple fingerprints. Blowing iodine gas across a surface will often make prints briefly appear-usually long enough to take a picture. The remarkable thing was that these prints were clear. Hollywood notwithstanding, that was not usually the case.
I handed it back. “You been able to compare them to anyone yet?”
He was back to inventorying and didn’t look up. “Nope, except the victim, of course. They aren’t hers, or at least not all of them are. I’m driving up to the forensics lab tonight so I can get a clear copy of at least one of them and run it through their AFIS machine. Assuming that’s okay with you.”
“Sure.” AFIS stood for Automated Fingerprint Identification System and in simple terms consisted of a fancy copier hooked to a growing national computer database. You could put the image of a print or someone’s actual hand on the glass and have the digitally translated results compared to what an increasing number of agencies had on file, including the FBI. There was supposed to have been one of these “live scan stations” in every county of the state by now, and all across New Hampshire and Maine as well. But somewhere the works had been gummed up, and we were still waiting.
J.P. continued, “We found the knife about halfway up the street, in the bushes to the left. Placement suggests it was thrown from a car.”