There was a momentary pause around the room: “Any local connections other than Blood?” someone finally asked.
“Not really,” I answered. “The truck was leased from Timson Long Haul near Leverett, Massachusetts, but the guy we talked to there couldn’t find his paperwork and wasn’t inclined to look. Supposedly, Resnick was just one of several people who’d leased the same rig recently, so we’re thinking Timson might be a dead end. If the Mob is tied into this, it’s unlikely they’d make it that easy for us to find them.”
A plainclothes state trooper from Massachusetts named Peter Manning disagreed. “We’ve had dealings with Timson before,” he said. “He’s definitely crooked, but he’s also probably a pure freelancer-he’s never appeared on any of our Mafia watch lists. He makes a profit, though. Leverett’s hardly the place for a trucking company, and his place is a dump, but he keeps plugging along year after year, like he was located in downtown Boston. You want to give him a visit, I’d be happy to ride shotgun. The only thing we’ve caught him red-handed at over the years is either routine vehicle maintenance shit or some minor book cooking. But his name keeps coming up with this haz mat stuff, and I’d love to let him know we’re still watching.”
I nodded my thanks. “You got a deal. I’ll call you in a few days.”
Later, back in my office, I stared dolefully at yet another pink phone message from Katz, the latest in a stack of four. I didn’t know what he was after, but it didn’t really matter. It was the general predictability of our conversations I dreaded more than their actual content.
This time, however, he surprised me.
“You at your office?” he asked right after I’d identified myself.
“Yeah.”
“We have to meet-now-somewhere neutral.”
There was an edge to his voice I’d only rarely heard before. “If by neutral you mean private, how ’bout past where Corrections hang their hats? The snowplows have a turnaround just beyond their parking lot.”
“I’ll see you there.”
Katz was hyperactive by nature. It had helped make him the journalist he was, which, in all fairness, was honorable-if as irritating as a canker sore. But the level of energy I’d just heard on the phone was several notches above his norm, so I set out to meet him with some real curiosity.
The Corrections Department’s parole and probation offices occupied the basement of a flamboyantly pink office building that had once housed a chocolate factory. It was located on a flat strip of land between the high bank supporting the Putney Road and the same Retreat Meadows floodplain where Ed Renaud and I had shared our meditative chat in the fishing shanty.
The building is almost the last structure on a dead-end road, and as I’d pointed out to Katz, the snowplows have turned the area just past its parking lot into a round amphitheater of piled-up snow, visually isolated from any neighbors but with a view of the frozen Meadows.
As a result, when we met there ten minutes later, it looked oddly like a half-completed stage set-two cars parked in an empty, featureless half bowl of white space, faced with a seemingly flat picture-postcard image hanging before us like a drop.
I left my car to join Katz in his-a rusting, ten-year-old Japanese pickup with chained-together cinder blocks in the back to give it traction in the snow. As soon as I’d closed the door behind me, I regretted my manners. The tiny cab stank of rancid fast food and stale cigarettes, both aggravated by an overactive heater.
Despite the cold, I cracked my window a few inches and turned up my collar. “What’s on your mind, Stanley?”
He sat staring out at the view for a few seconds, as if collecting his thoughts. “We’ve known each other a long time, right?”
I didn’t bother answering.
“And we’ve helped each other out now and then. You’ve given me stuff under the counter. I’ve sat on a story or two. I mean, all the cops-versus-press bullshit aside, we’ve always gotten along pretty well, haven’t we?”
He expected an answer this time. And despite his being someone I’d never think of inviting over for supper, at least I couldn’t argue his basic point. “I suppose so.”
As anemic as it was, that seemed to settle his mind. “I’m in a bit of a jam. Not a legal one.” He quickly cut me a glance. “More like an ethical one. Remember when I asked you about Jim Reynolds?”
Again, I stayed silent, this time holding my breath. “Well, I got another anonymous call about him-a little more serious.”
“Same guy?”
“I couldn’t be sure. It was a man’s voice but muffled like the first one.”
He hesitated. I filled the gap. “What did he say?”
He twisted in his seat to look at me. “It’s pretty big, Joe, even without Reynolds being who he is and this being an election year. It’s big enough that I’m going to be digging into it like nobody’s business.”
“You want to know what we have on him?” I guessed. “Use me to see if you might be on to something?”
“I want to know where you stand with him first.”
I stared at him in surprise. “Stand with him? I barely know the guy. You asking if I’d shield him?”
My incredulity spoke for me. He looked slightly embarrassed. “I had to ask, Joe. You blew off the illegal dumping when I mentioned it. Gail does have close ties to him…”
“Tell me what you got,” I told him angrily, “or I’m out of here.” I put my hand on the door handle, impatient with his dancing around.
“The man on the phone said Reynolds was connected to the woman who was knifed to death.”
That stopped me. “How?”
“You know of no such connection?”
I hesitated before answering, suddenly wary of what might be lurking out of sight. I decided to play it straight. “None at all.”
“But you are checking him out?”
I sidestepped a bit, sticking to what was already in the public record.
There was no chance in hell I was going to tell him about the presumably bogus sighting of Reynolds’s car at the railroad tracks. “His office was broken into a while back. We are looking into that, although we have no suspects, no leads, and nothing reported stolen or missing.”
He understood I wanted him to read between the lines there. “That must be a little delicate, poking around where you’re not invited.” He paused and then muttered, as if to himself, “I don’t remember that item being in our police blotter column.”
“It was right up there with a barking dog complaint. The current theory is that one of our patrols scared off whoever it was before he even got inside. You said it yourself, Stan, it’s a political year-hotter’n most. Could be your caller is up to dirty tricks.”
“Tying a candidate to a murder?” he asked, his voice rising. “Suggesting I’m being used? Who says you’re not doing the same thing right now?”
I suddenly became resensitized to the heat and stench of the cab. I wanted to get out of this conversation. “Stan, I’m not sure what we’re doing here. I could’ve told you on the phone we have nothing linking Reynolds to Croteau’s murder.”
“Then why are you still poking into a burglary that wasn’t? Why were you checking out Reynolds’s car at his house?”
I rolled the window all the way down. So much for the buddy-buddy routine. “Who told you that?”
“Never mind. I know you were there, and that Willy brought J.P.’s bag of toys with him. What were you looking for?”
“Something that didn’t pan out.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I kept talking. “Stanley, we do a lot of things nobody ever hears about. People call us anonymously, too, you know? They tell us they saw a crime, or committed one, or know someone who did. We check ’em all out, no matter how bogus they sound-just like the one that brought us to Reynolds’s garage.”