He started the already-warm engine and headed toward the street. The heater immediately began blowing hot air across our faces. “The manager at Bickford’s noticed it a few days ago,” he resumed. “People leave their vehicles there all the time, usually because they’re carpooling, but rarely more than overnight. And nobody leaves a truck for that long. There’s too much money wrapped up in it. They’re guessing it might’ve been there for almost a week.”
“This a company rig?” I asked as we gained speed up the Putney Road, which starts out as one of the high-class sections of town but then becomes, over the confluence of the West and Connecticut rivers, a commercial strip as uniquely Vermont as a Coca-Cola can.
“Not so you can tell. There’s nothing on the door, no papers inside the cab. Since there’re no license plates, I ran the vehicle identification number through the computer and found it was leased from Timson Long Haul outside Leverett, Mass, but the guy I talked to there wasn’t too helpful. Said he didn’t have his records handy, and that he’d have to dig around and call me back. He’s probably cooking up something bogus right now. I was doing an off-line search of the registration through NCIC, just to see what I could find, when Ron radioed in saying you were heading for the office.”
I mentally reviewed what he’d done so far, looking for something to add. As far as I could tell, there was no reason for me to be in this car. Some departments insisted on detectives running all investigations. We didn’t work that way. Brandt firmly believed that in order to hang on to our patrol officers-since the detective squad had no turnover to speak of-they should be given every opportunity to process cases on their own. Smith seemed to have been doing a good job of just that.
We’d swept by most of the malls, gas stations, and fast-food places on the strip and were nearing the town’s northernmost interstate exit when I felt obliged to admit as much. “Sounds like you’ve got everything pretty well locked down.”
Smith glanced at me and smiled. “That’s because I saved the best till last.”
He swung right at the traffic light, onto Route 9 heading for New Hampshire across the bridge, and then immediately pulled into the parking lot beyond Bickford’s Restaurant on the corner, a place I frequented as often as I could, but which Gail wouldn’t even enter, given her refined vegetarian palate.
The truck-an old Mack, stained and moth-eaten by rust-stood against the far bank, as if trying to disappear into the brush just beyond it. Smith rolled to a stop nearby and got out.
“Here’s the kicker,” he said and walked to the rear of the dump truck’s body. He pointed to a pool of dark liquid at his feet. “Don’t touch it, but give it a whiff.”
I did so gingerly, straightening back up immediately, my nostrils stinging despite the frigid air. “Jesus Christ. What is it?”
“Beats me, but I doubt it’s legal. That’s all that’s left, by the way-that and a few puddles in the back. They already got rid of whatever they were carrying.”
“I hope to hell you were careful crawling around this thing,” I told him.
“I was, believe me.”
I stepped away and surveyed the truck generally. As Smith had said, the plates were missing, front and rear, but otherwise it looked like any one of a thousand anonymous, battle-scarred units you see driving around every day. Which may have been exactly the point.
I opened the driver’s door and hoisted myself up level to the worn, cracked seat. Smith appeared below me.
“I’m guessing you searched in here?” I asked him.
“For the driver’s log, routing slips, or a bill of lading. I didn’t tear it apart when I didn’t hit pay dirt, though. Wasn’t sure if you’d want J.P. to check it out with his bag of tricks.”
Standing on the running board, I leaned in and looked around, simply taking in my surroundings. If the driver of this truck was like everyone else I knew, he’d made his vehicle an extension of his home, filled with creature comforts, accessories, and trash. But there were only a few items, and all curiously impersonal-a pack of gum, a few empty soda cans, several maps with nothing written or marked on them.
“Find anything?” Marshall asked after several minutes of this, either to stem his own boredom or take his mind off the cold.
I plucked one of the soda cans off the floor by its pop-top ring and held it up to the light. Its shiny surface was clean of fingerprints. “It’s what I’m not finding that’s interesting. This guy went to some effort not to leave anything we could trace.”
The sun visors yielded nothing, nor the door pockets, nor what passed for a glove box. I flattened out and checked the floor under the seat, finding it abnormally clean. Finally, I ran my fingers along the wedge where the seat met the back. I found some wrappers, a couple of never-used seat belt anchors, and a single scrap of paper with writing on it.
I read it and anticipated Smith’s question. “It’s a set of directions. You better call ANR.”
Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources is the third largest in the state. It includes the departments of Fish and Wildlife; Forests, Parks and Recreation; and Environmental Conservation, as well as a chemical analysis facility near but separate from the state forensics lab, and some eight hundred employees. Over the years, Vermont has laid claim to being one of the most environmentally aware states in the Union. The Legislature, prompted and/or supported by a variety of governors, has passed an enormous number of laws controlling what can and cannot be done to the Vermont countryside, hoping to maintain our deservedly famous rural appearance, and creating a chronic-and largely artificial-rift between tree-huggers and pro-business types. In the process, a few snags have surfaced, some of which have been unintended consequences. The truck Marshall Smith had introduced me to was a case in point. By making waste disposal such a complicated, expensive, strictly licensed enterprise, our vigilant environmentalists had inadvertently created a booming black market in illegal dumping.
And waste disposal wasn’t the sole focal point. Everything from water runoffs to backyard burn barrels to the appearance of new construction had also become regulated. By this point, the Agency of Natural Resources was being called upon to investigate up to fourteen hundred complaints every year-with only eight field agents to handle the load.
Not just beleaguered, these eight felt themselves estranged as well.
While they weren’t certified law enforcement officers, and thus had no powers of arrest, they were still seen as cops by the people they pursued-but as nit-picking, sandal-wearing bureaucrats by the cops. And they’d been shuttled around like orphans as well. Spurned by Fish and Wildlife-the very police force within their own agency-they’d been attached to the Attorney General’s office for a while, then to the newly formed Environmental Court, except, of course, when they could bring a case to the feds. It all went a good way in explaining why, if and when one of the ANR investigators finally did show up at a site, he tended to act a little wary, at least until he could gauge his reception.
It therefore struck me as a minor miracle, once Marshall Smith had phoned the agency, that he was told they’d send someone down later that afternoon. We’d either gotten lucky or we’d struck a nerve. I told Smith to set up some security for the truck and radioed for a patrol car to take me back to the office.
As interesting as this had been, it wasn’t as pressing as what was going on downtown.
Sammie Martens was small, slight, ambitious, and as high-strung as anyone I knew over eight years old. A survivor of a less than ideal upbringing, a successful and decorated veteran of some very rigorous military training-back when the brass was trying to prove women couldn’t cut it in combat-Sam had made short work of the patrol side of our department, being promoted to sergeant and transferred to the detective squad just a few years after hiring on. I didn’t doubt she aspired to more-my job, the chief’s, and probably beyond-but I also knew her to have a fierce loyalty to those she trusted and admired. She’d risked her job for me in the past, without expectation of reward, making it clear it was merely part of the package when it came to her brand of friendship.