I was doubtful, but I kept it to myself. Whether she believed in her own plan or not, Sammie had bought us time, and right now that was good enough. If Padzhev was heading for the kind of fight he described, anything was possible, including our being able to get Gail and the others out of harm’s way.
It was still dark when we reached Brattleboro, and drizzling slightly-that predawn hour when, from my days as a young patrolman, I’d always envisioned the buildings and empty avenues as parts of an abandoned, life-size train set-an image enhanced by the traffic lights endlessly, quietly blinking, cautioning no one-blurry washes of red or yellow flashing dully on the scarred shiny surface of the streets.
Sammie headed toward Grove Street-and the entrance to the Municipal Building’s parking lot-but passed it by, pulling onto Williston just beyond-a rarely traveled, narrow, one-way street, which, after she’d killed our lights, turned as black as any urban back alley.
We moved silently on foot across the front of the intervening State Office Building to the edge of our parking lot, pausing in the gloom of the bordering trees to watch for any activity. Given the police department’s location on the ground floor, it seemed to me an enormous risk to use the rear entrance, even assuming the usual skeleton crew was hunkered down over coffee or filling out reports.
But that wasn’t Sammie’s intention. She led us not to the rear but to the side of the building and a broad metal fire escape leading up to a locked steel door on the second floor. There she paused, extracted a set of keys from her pocket, fitted one to the lock, and let us in.
She smiled at me as she quietly pulled the door to, explaining the unauthorized key. “Thought it might come in handy someday.”
The second floor was dimly lighted and as still as a tomb. The three of us walked halfway down its length before ducking into a dead-end alcove, stoppered by a glass-paned door marked “Cartographic Technologies.”
Sammie tried the knob, found it locked, and dug a wallet out of her back pocket. From it, she extracted a thin piece of rigid steel wire with a hook on the end. I wondered if she and Willy weren’t spending too much time together.
Instead of picking the lock, however-a movie stunt I’d never seen work in real life-she slipped the wire between the door and the jamb, searching for the lock’s button release mounted along the edge. There was a distinct snap; Sammie straightened, turned the knob, and ushered us across the threshold. Anatoly remained silent throughout, but I caught him giving Sammie an admiring glance.
We entered a single, large, high-ceilinged room, ghostly pale from the streetlights below filtering through a long wall of tall windows. The room’s center was occupied by a large table, strewn with dimly perceived papers, and all around the periphery, squatting like toadstools on every available flat surface, was a tight row of softly contoured, mismatched computers, monitors, printers, scanners, fax machines, and other things I couldn’t identify, all dark and silent except for a scattering of green and amber operational pilot lights that took us in like the eyes of patient beasts. There was a quiet, steady hum in the room and the faint odor of warm plastic.
“Now what?” I asked, still looking around.
“We wait till they show up,” Sammie answered. “There’s an old vault in the far corner there-they use it for storage-but it’d be a good place to stash ourselves, just in case someone else walks in.”
We carefully followed the direction she’d indicated, found the room-sized vault, and borrowed three office chairs to make ourselves comfortable, surrounded by piles of boxed documents and rank upon rank of rolled-up maps.
Three hours later, only Anatoly was left sitting in a chair. Sam and I had made beds of the boxes and were fast asleep when our silent companion shook us awake, his finger to his lips. We could hear outside the vault, now tainted with the pallor of early morning light, people entering the outer room, laughing, talking, and moving things around.
Sammie sat up, rubbed her eyes, and moved her tongue around the inside of her mouth. “Christ,” she whispered. “Wish I could brush my teeth.”
Yawning, she stood up, stretched, and added, “Let me go in first. Might cut down on the heart attacks.”
With her departure, Anatoly exhibited the first signs of nervousness I’d witnessed so far. He sidled up to the doorway, his face tense and his right hand under the flap of his jacket, resting, I was sure, on the butt of a gun.
After a small outburst of surprised chatter and a few laughs, Sammie stuck her head back into sight and invited us out.
Standing in the middle of the room were two very tall, slim women, both with bright red hair and freckles. I’d seen them before in the corridor-God knows they were hard to miss-but never realized they worked here.
Sammie made the introductions: “This is Abby and Judy Coven-the sister act of Cartographic Technologies. My boss, Joe Gunther, and our colleague Anatoly, who’s playing a little coy with his real identity.”
Abby, the one with the most hair-a flaming bush that almost engulfed her head-raised her eyebrows. “Ooh, that sounds interesting.”
Judy, a little shorter, and with straight hair in a pageboy, looked at me and added, “Especially in the company of the most wanted man in Windham County.” Her expression was considerably less appreciative than her sister’s.
Sammie scratched her cheek. “Yeah, well, that’s what we’d like to talk to you about. You expecting anybody this early? Any meetings or anything?”
Judy shook her head. “No, why?”
Sammie walked over to the front door, which was shielded from view by a freestanding room panel. “I was wondering if it would be all right to lock the door, just while we’re talking.”
Judy didn’t answer, but Abby was obviously intrigued. “Sure. We have a clean slate till eleven.”
We heard the lock snap shut, and Sammie reappeared, wearing her most affable smile. “Why don’t we all sit down?”
We ended up in a circle, parked on a variety of desk chairs, including the three we rescued from the vault. The arrangement reminded me of a therapy session.
Sammie cleared her throat. “The reason for all the cloak-and-dagger is that we’re working undercover-probably the biggest case any of us has ever been on. That’s why all the cock-and-bull about Joe. We had to make it look like he was on the run.”
“You did a pretty convincing job,” Judy said flatly.
“That was the point. If we hadn’t, he couldn’t’ve gotten in tight with the gang we’re after.”
Judy, like me, seemed to be trying to recall which television show this came from. “I hadn’t heard about any gangs,” she said.
“You wouldn’t have,” I spoke up. “We’re not talking about street thugs wearing colors. This is bigger, and more dangerous.” I jerked a thumb at Anatoly. “I don’t want to go into too many details, but since we’re asking for a favor, it’s the Russian Mafia. Anatoly brought it to our attention. Vermont isn’t great pickings for them, but it is a perfect place to lie low. And that’s something we want to stop.”
Judy still looked totally unconvinced. Her sister was smiling ear-to-ear. “This is great. What do you want from us?”
Sammie leaned forward in her chair. “Remember that GPS thing you showed me a while back-the satellite transmitter? We were hoping to use a few of those to track this gang’s cars.”
Judy surprised me by bursting out laughing. “This must be legit. Only the Brattleboro cops would think of bugging a car with a caribou collar. How in God’s name were you going to attach the thing? Wrap it around the bumper?”
Sammie was taken aback, but I took hope from Judy’s first show of interest. “Couldn’t we hide it in the trunk, or somehow attach it underneath?”