“You check with anyone regularly traveling those roads?” I asked. “Maybe a delivery truck driver saw something.”
“Right,” Willy Kunkle said with a laugh. “UPS is up there all the time, delivering Brookstone nail clippers to their upper-class customers.”
Ron took note of my suggestion in his pad. Sammie just gave Willy a withering look which he ignored. Kunkle was the office renegade-surly, impatient, opinionated, but with a talent for police work bordering on pure instinct. His left arm totally crippled by a bullet years earlier, Kunkle had a quality I alone seemed to value. As impossible to categorize as he was to control, he was my best weapon against those regular customers who treated us with arrogant dismissiveness. When the crunch was on, and I truly needed answers, Willy was the one I sent out, although I often worried that his tactics-whatever they were-would eventually land us in court. Unfortunately, such redeeming opportunities were all too rare. The rest of the time, he seemed content to simply be a pain in the ass.
J.P. looked up from reading my addendum. “Are we assuming this John Doe was a Russian?”
“Not necessarily,” I answered. “It’s a strong possibility only. I’d love to have Interpol fly it by the Russian police, but until we get more on him, it would probably be a waste of time.”
Willy crumpled his Styrofoam coffee cup and tossed it into a nearby trash basket. “Waste of time anyhow. Those guys are too busy robbing banks.”
“I think,” I continued, ignoring him, “we ought to release a cleaned-up photo of him to the local papers, play the ‘have-you-seen-this-man’ angle, and hope we get lucky. In the meantime, maybe we can brainstorm a few other ideas. Any suggestions?”
“The killer lives in the area-we know that much,” Willy said.
J.P. nodded in agreement. “At least the person who dumped him does. He knew the terrain and he knew how and when to approach it so no one would notice him. Fish and Wildlife is still working the site this morning, but as of last night their tracker was pretty impressed.”
“So maybe an outdoorsman to boot,” I suggested.
“That local knowledge combined with the body’s lividity pattern suggests he was killed in the area,” Sammie said. “Is there any way to identify the gastric contents? Maybe we can tie it to a nearby restaurant.”
I shook my head. “I was told that’s a dead end.”
“He was probably driven to near where we found him,” J.P. said. “And given what the garrote did to his neck and the lack of any blood at the scene, we’re talking about a car or some absorbent material that’s pretty bloody.”
It was a statement of fact-something merely to remember, but it stimulated Willy to ask, “How did he get here in the first place?”
“Good point,” I said. “Ron, put out inquiries to train, bus, taxi, and rental car companies as soon as we get his photos.” I looked around the table. “What else? How ’bout motive?”
“Mob,” Sammie said immediately. “It looks like a hit-a strike from behind with no sign of a struggle-and we’ve all been reading bulletins about how the Russian Mafia’s on the move. Plus there’s that tetracycline/black market angle.”
“Implying a drug war, maybe?” I asked.
“I haven’t heard anything,” Willy stated flatly, which, given the circles he traveled in, meant something.
Tony Brandt spoke quietly for the first time. “The Canadians have.” He looked at Ron Klesczewski. “You better add RCMP, Quebec Provincial Police, and the larger urban agencies up there to your list. It wouldn’t be the first time their troubles began leaking south.”
There was a hesitation in the room as everyone groped for something to add. Getting to my feet, I finally let them off the hook. “All right. That’s probably enough for now. A couple of things, though: it’s early yet, so don’t let this take over your lives. Wait for our inquiries to generate something solid, and try to clear your desks of ongoing cases in preparation. Also, don’t let this Russian mob angle give you tunnel vision. For all we know, some benign foreign uncle was knocked off by his woodchuck nephew for the inheritance.”
Typically, Willy had the last word. “Sure,” he said, “an uncle equipped with a buckle knife.”
Two days later, we were stuck where we’d started. The papers had published the picture we’d supplied, which the state crime lab had made acceptably presentable, all our teletyped inquiries had been sitting on other people’s desks for well over twenty-four hours, and every officer in the department had talked to his or her snitches. Nothing had popped to the surface, including from the FBI, which had reported a “no match found” in record time.
Homicide cases have a limited shelf life, and I was beginning to fear our mysterious John Doe might melt away with as many questions as he’d stimulated.
Until I received a phone call from Beverly Hillstrom.
“Lieutenant, I hope you don’t mind my calling-I’m not even sure I’m not breaking a confidentiality of some sort-but I’ve had a couple of visitors I thought you should know about, unless, of course, you sent them yourself.”
I hesitated a moment, completely at a loss. “No,” I answered slowly, hoping that wouldn’t prompt her to retreat.
I needn’t have worried. She’d clearly made up her mind before dialing the phone. “Two rather frosty gentlemen in suits came by to look at your John Doe.”
I sat up straighter in my chair. “Who?”
“One was from the FBI-named Frazier. The other was introduced as ‘Philpot.’ The implication was that they were a team, but Philpot never showed any identification.”
“What did they want?”
“That’s why I called. They didn’t really want anything. Frazier presented the proper paperwork and asked to see the body, but when I did the honors myself, out of pure curiosity, all they did was glance at the man’s face, thank me, and take their leave. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.”
“I don’t either,” I admitted, “but I’ll try to find out.”
She sounded surprised. “You know Frazier? I’d never met him. He seemed pleasant enough-a bit formal.”
“Yeah. He heads the Burlington office. ‘Formal’ isn’t a description I would’ve used, to be honest. He never struck me that way.”
“I think it was Philpot. I got the impression Frazier was there purely as decoration-to get my door officially open. Maybe he was just feeling uncomfortable.”
I mulled that over for a moment. “Did you tell them we thought the body was Russian?”
“I wasn’t overly friendly.”
That was answer enough. I’d seen her in that mode. “Let me dig around a little. You want to hear the results?”
I could almost hear her smile over the phone. “Well… ”
“You got it,” I interpreted, laughing, and hung up.
My hand still on the receiver, I pondered what Hillstrom had told me, resisting the impulse to call Walter Frazier directly and ask him what the hell was going on. The unannounced presence of the FBI was curious enough, but nobody I knew named Philpot was assigned to either their Burlington or Rutland offices, and he, combined with the already mysterious John Doe, made me want to do some homework before confronting Frazier.
I picked up the phone and dialed an internal number. “What’s the latest news?” I asked Sammie once she’d answered.
“Nothing yet.”
“How ’bout the dailies. Anything there?”
The dailies were our own internal log-the official diary of everything the department did around the clock, whether it resulted in further action or not.
There was a pause as Sammie checked my request. “Nothing stands out,” she reported a moment later. “There was an inquiry from the sheriff’s office-it doesn’t say what they were after. Want me to chase it down?”
“Yeah. I’d like everything checked for the next few days. The FBI’s been sniffing around our pal with the Russian toes. I’d love to find out why.”
Sammie knew better than to suggest simply calling them up. Despite serious advances in interagency cooperation, skulduggery and exclusion remained time-honored practices. It often paid well to do a little spadework before holding that first conversation.