I smiled at the ceiling. The machinery was finally beginning to turn in our favor-or at least it wasn’t turning against us. We had the off chance of pinning a physical deformity to someone who’d had close ties to Kimberly-possibly along with a prescription naming that someone-we’d matched her with a man during her three-day weekends, and we’d given her a new name, possibly a real one. It was all pretty iffy, but it was developing. We were already combing the area looking for Ski Mask, we’d soon be asking the Connecticut local cops to locate any and all families named Stark, and my bright idea about tracing the drug sale-as unrealistic as it might seem-was making me beam. Things were happening. I felt like a man who was slowly slogging his way to the firmer ground at the edge of the swamp.
Gail kissed the inside of my ear. That always sent shivers down my spine. “My hero. You’re so smart.” She slid her thigh up between my legs. “I’m all awake now.”
“I can tell.” Her hand slipped down across my stomach and she giggled. “You’re all awake too.”
· · ·
I stopped by Maxine’s window early the next morning and picked up the daily report. Brandt had entered everything I’d dug up to date.
“You’ve certainly been busy.”
“Not having to write your own reports helps.” She rolled her eyes. “Friends in high places. He wants to see you, by the way.”
“Did he ever go home?”
“He was here when I came in.”
I thanked her and went back to Brandt’s office. He looked the same as always-no stubble on the chin or bags under the eyes. The man seemed immune to the common signs of wear and tear. “Thanks for this.” I waved the report.
“How was Boston?”
I laid a copy of Pam Stark’s arrest sheet on his desk and settled in a chair. “I think the address is bogus; I don’t know about the name.” He read it over quickly. “Pam Stark, huh?”
“Yeah. I looked at a map of Connecticut this morning. Assuming she didn’t tell a bald-faced lie, she might have picked the name of a town near hers, which would make it Norwalk or Bridgeport or Wilton, something like that. We could query the local cops on it, and if we come up dry, we could try the state police.”
Brandt nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’ll get on it.”
I stood to go and he leaned back in his chair to look up at me. “I thought you’d like to know that John Woll did a little investigating on his own yesterday.”
“Oh?”
“He thought our mysterious friend might have bought his ski mask in a local store, so he went to every outlet he could think of and asked about recent purchases-his was during his ti du always amp;me off.”
“And?”
“And nothing; he came up dry. But I thought you’d like to know.”
I smiled and shook my head, remembering Murphy’s wrath at the man. “Poor bastard; he’s going to be living that one down for years.”
“What’re your plans, by the way?”
“Mend fences with Willy Kunkle.”
I stopped by Maxine’s window again on my way to my cubbyhole office. “Has Willy come in yet?”
“Nope.”
“Give me a buzz when he does, will you?”
I had mixed feelings about dealing with Kunkle. He was so totally irascible I was half-inclined to let him self-destruct in private. But he was still a functioning cop and had once been a good one. He had also become my direct responsibility, now that I was acting captain, and in all conscience I couldn’t let him slide without at least offering a hand. My timing, though, was utterly self-serving. Kunkle, more than anyone on the force, was wired to Brattleboro’s small but intense narcotics trade.
The phone buzzed before I even sat down. “He’s hot on your heels.”
I stuck my head out into the hallway and caught him as he entered. “After you’ve read Brandt’s summary, could I see you for a minute?”
“What about?” His voice was neutral, which for him was probably a good sign.
“I’ll tell you when you’re finished; it’s related.”
He was in my doorway three minutes later, a sour look on his face. “Is this where I get my walking papers? Or do we go the ‘you’ve-been-under-a-lot-of-strain-lately-why-not-take-some-time-off ’ route?”
“No. We do the ‘why-don’t-you-put-your-butt-in-that-chair-and-can-the-crap’ bit. Is that acceptable?”
He didn’t answer, but he sat.
“I need your help on this thing, but I want to make something clear first. We all know you’re in some sort of personal bind. So far it hasn’t gotten in the way of you doing your job, although you seem hellbent on that happening. Maybe you want out and you don’t know how to do it-beats me. So I’m asking you-pure and simple, no strings attached-do you want to be a cop or not? Because if you do I’ve got some business I want help with.”
“What?”
“Answer the question, and think about it first.”
He thought, but not the way I wanted. “What are you after? What’s the game?”
“The game is I’m trying to get to the other side of your paranoia. I want to know if you, William Kunkle, want to be a cop. Yes or no.”
“And if I say yes, then I’ve got to go see a shrink, right?”
I shook my head and sighed. “I think you need a shrink in any case, but if you say yes, then I’ve got business on my mind.” I pointed at the summary in his hand. “Relating to that.”
“All right. Yes.”
“Thank God. Now promise you’ll try something for me, will you? Let’s just work together on this thing. I won’t ask what’s bugging you, and you stop assuming everything I say has a double meaning. Deal?”
“You’re really making me into a nut case.”
“The way I feel now, I’m the one headed for the rubber room.”
I took a deep breath. “Look, Willy, I think maybe we all let you down a little here. Cops have more stress than any professionals I know. It’s as common as the flu. We ought to help each other out more because of that, but maybe the macho thing gets in the way; I don’t know. In any case, it’s easier for cops to let a fellow cop slide, pretending he’s just eccentric, than to offer him help. And on the flip side, it’s normal for that cop to think he can deal with it himself-that if he asks for help, or shows he needs it, everyone’ll think he’s a weenie. So everyone loses. I think that’s what’s happening to you and I also think it stinks. For what it’s worth, I’d like to apologize for not having done something earlier.”
“And what are you going to do now?”
“Nothing you don’t want me to. I’d like to bring you into the Stark thing because I just thought of a drug angle and that’s where you’re hot. But I’d also like you to know that I’m approaching this as if it were a whole new case. The fuck-ups that landed Bill Davis in jail are past history, and we’ve all got to answer for them-you probably least of all, because you were lowest on the totem pole. If any heads roll, they’ll start at the top, among Brandt and Dunn and the board and Tom Wilson, and they’ll even dig up Frank Murphy and wave him around before they get to me and you, so I wouldn’t worry…You want to do business?”
“Yeah.”
As usual, it didn’t make him break into song, but this time-for the first time-I actually sensed I might have penetrated. I ran him through everything then, in chronological order, from the Jamie Phillips killing to my flash in the night a few hours ago; I also included Frank’s cover-up, an admission I could tell he appreciated. He sat and listened, looking carefully at the contents of the file I was building, item by item, without saying a word.
“So,” I ended up. “Who’s the local gossip in the trenches?”
“Ted Haffner. He’s not the gossip; he’s not even in the business much any more, but a couple of years ago, he was the number-one heroin man in town.”
“What happened?”
Kunkle gave a little smile. “These people aren’t much for job security. He got interested in other things, mainly sampling his wares.”