Gatekeeper (4 page)

"I . . . ," she stammered. "Who are you?"

He took a step toward her. In his hand, he held a small canvas bag. "None of your fucking business."

She suddenly wondered if she hadn't made a terrible mistake—had in fact just walked into this man's home. She looked around in confusion. "I'm sorry. I thought this was Laurie Davis's apartment. A small girl led me here. I just assumed . . ." Then she saw a framed photograph, leaning against the wall, of herself, Laurie, and Laurie's mother, linked arm in arm in happier days, laughing at the camera.

The sight of it cleared her head enough that she recognized other signs that this was a woman's bedroom.

"Tell me who you are or I'll call the police," she said more forcefully.

But he'd recognized the earlier fear, an expression he was apparently well acquainted with. He stepped up close to her, smiling, his eyes narrow and menacing. She could smell his breath when he spoke.

"I'm not gonna tell you shit, and you're not gonna call nobody."

"You're trespassing," she countered, hating the tremble in her voice.

He laughed. "And you're not?"

"No, I'm not. I'm family."

Their bodies were almost touching. She felt like a rope under tremendous strain, as if the slightest touch would be enough to make it burst apart.

But the man was as careful as he was threatening. He sidestepped around her and paused at the doorway. "I wouldn't brag about that, if I were you," he said, and disappeared.

Gail closed the door, locked it, leaned her back against its flimsy surface, and shut her eyes tight, fighting for calm.

* * *

Over a hundred miles away, Joe Gunther sat in a small conference room in the Department of Public Safety's headquarters in Waterbury Vermont, part of a large complex of old institutional brick buildings, the centerpiece of which had once been the sprawling state mental hospital—an association detractors still used with high humor.

The room was dark, dominated by a photographic slide that stuck to the far wall like a luminescent painting. It was the picture of a man hanging by his neck from a bridge, suspended like a sack of clothes over a tangle of gleaming railroad tracks.

"This was taken in Rutland this morning—the River Street Bridge," said a voice in the darkness. "The victim's name is James Hollowell, and the Rutland drug unit's ID'd him as a local street dealer, mostly crack and heroin."

"Any leads on who killed him?" Gunther asked.

The voice belonged to Bill Allard, Gunther's immediate boss and the chief of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. A career state trooper, he'd been tapped to head the VBI because of his people skills, his experience, and the fact that the Vermont State Police, housed just one floor below in this same building, hated the idea of the VBI—the brainchild of the current governor and a perceived threat to the VSP's preeminence in state law enforcement. It had been the commissioner of Public Safety's hope that appointing someone with Bill Allard's heritage and qualifications would soften the blow to his erstwhile agency's ego.

But the jury was still out.

Allard turned on a small light by his side to consult some notes. "Not specifically, but things have been brewing in Rutland long enough that this was basically waiting to happen."

Gunther thought back to last evening in Brattleboro, when Ron Klesczewski had said roughly the same thing about the storekeeper shooting Laurie Davis.

"A power struggle?" he asked.

"Nothing so clear-cut," Allard responded, hitting the key on his portable computer to bring up another slide of the same scene. "But the drug unit says things like this do happen, where a dealer tries screwing his supplier out of some product and gets reprimanded."

"I'd say that's being reprimanded," Gunther murmured, but he was beginning to wonder why he'd been asked up here. Dangling bodies from bridges was pretty exotic for Vermont, whose homicide rate usually hovered in or around single digits for a given year, but still, callously speaking, it did look like some lowlifes had merely done in one of their own.

"They must have some ideas," he suggested, extending his private musing.

"They have ideas, all right. Problem is, those ideas cross state lines."

"Holyoke?" Gunther asked. Holyoke, Massachusetts, had been a source of Vermont-bound drugs for several years, and he'd heard from the number crunchers that statistically Rutland had become a primary terminus, which was odd, given both its geographical isolation and its relatively small size when compared to Burlington. But the pipeline was undeniable and well known: Holyoke, Brattleboro, Rutland, with many small stops along the way.

As a result, Allard wasn't surprised by his insight. "Apparently, it's more than the usual scuttlebutt. Doesn't sound like much to me, but there's intel indicating someone's trying to organize the traffic way beyond its current level, which is pretty wide open. And I guess hanging someone from a bridge could qualify as a billboard advertisement. No one's tied it to Holyoke, of course, or to the Hollowell hanging, either, but that's the word from the street."

"Is the Rutland PD having problems handling this?" Gunther asked diplomatically. The commissioner and the governor notwithstanding, both Allard and Gunther saw the VBI as primarily a support service—a major-crimes team brought in only, when invited by the local law. The two politicians, naturally enough, had far grander visions of some look-alike, state-level FBI, but the two old cops knew the value of observing turf: You got ahead by getting along, and in the short, two-year history of their new agency, that philosophy had paid off handsomely. Even the state police were unofficially muttering that the VBI was courteous, competent, well manned, and so far, not headline hogs. Rumor had it that Governor Reynolds was most irritated by this self-effacement, which privately pleased Gunther very much.

And which therefore made Allard's response all the more disappointing.

"The PD's fine. It's Reynolds who's having a cow."

"Why?"

Allard hit the key on his computer again. This time the picture was of the inside of a dingy motel room and of a young girl's corpse lying on its side across a rumpled bed, a tourniquet around her arm and a needle on the floor near her dangling fingertips.

"Because of her. She's Sharon Lapierre, or was—granddaughter of Roger Lapierre, former Rutland Town selectman and party bigwig, who's also raised a pile of cash for Reynolds."

He stopped there, letting silence fill in the obvious.

"Ah," Gunther finally conceded, feeling suddenly tired. So much politics in this job—dealing with the public, the press, the municipal managers, and the statehouse folks, and with every fellow police agency in each and every investigation. This, however, was going to be above and beyond the usual. Jim Reynolds was running for reelection, as governors did every two years in this state, and he was facing a tough race. Through inference alone, Gunther already guessed the waters he was going to be asked to enter.

"He wants the VBI, his pet creation, to put things right," he suggested, "with appropriate press coverage."

Allard smiled humorlessly. "You're good. That's almost a direct quote. So far, the media's been so excited by the hanging that they haven't picked up on Sharon's death yet—we're sitting on it pretty tight—but it's not just about Miss Lapierre in any case. That would be too obvious, even for Reynolds. He's about to release a press statement saying the VBI will be tasked as of this week with eliminating the trafficking of heroin into the state of Vermont, so that he looks like he's doing more than just reacting to a pal's personal loss."

Gunther let out a short laugh. "God, I hope he didn't invoke the 'war' on drugs too. That would be way old news."

He pointed at the picture on the wall. "I suppose it goes without saying that she died of a heroin overdose."

"That's what it looks like. And the motel room was booked to James Hollowell."

That, Gunther found interesting, his brain instantly weighing what he'd heard so far about politicians, high-profit drugs, and the inkling of an organization making a grab for the local market. "No kidding? What's the story there?"

Allard leaned back in his chair and hit the lights, causing them both to blink in the sudden glare. "That's one of the things you're supposed to find out," he said.

Gunther made a face, despite his curiosity. "Rutland's not only got a good police department, but they share a building with an equally qualified sheriff. Not to mention that there's a state police barracks in town and an FBI substation. And isn't the Southern Vermont Drug Task Force already quote-unquote tasked with handling heroin traffic? Seems like all that would make our showing up a little redundant—at best. My guess is the reception would be frigid, and I'm not sure I'd fault any of them."

Allard shifted in his chair. "This isn't a debate, Joe. It's a done deal. I put in my two cents from the start, but basically we're screwed."

"You know we're about to flush two years' worth of good PR down the drain."

They both stared at the pale ghost of the slide that Allard hadn't yet extinguished.

"You said the governor was about to issue his statement," Gunther finally said, the company man not just yielding to the inevitable but transforming it instead into a challenge to be met. "How much time do we have?"

"Three days, maybe a little more. He's knee-deep in prior campaign commitments right now, he wants to be brought up to speed before he talks to the media, and like I said, he wants some time to elapse between her death and his announcement. So, we've got a little breathing room. But he is hot to trot and he's been known to shoot his mouth off prematurely. Plus, we don't know what'll happen when the press discovers Sharon. Why do you ask?"

Gunther drummed the tabletop with his fingertips. "Because the only way we can get this to work is if we lock something in before he makes it official. If by the time of the announcement we're seen by the other agencies as having something tangible to bring to the table, then we might be treated as something more than an uninvited guest. Right now both the Rutland PD drug unit and the task force have legitimate claim, a track record of working together and solid, preexisting intelligence sources. We'll need something to top all that, or we'll end up looking like the weird political creation we've worked so hard not to be. I'm not so worried about the other cops—they'll just ignore us if they want. It's the governor's opponents that could put the limelight on us. After all the effort we've put into this organization, I'd hate for us to be treated like a political football. Our people deserve better than that. And they should expect us to watch their backs."

Bill Allard looked a little taken aback by his vehemence. "I don't argue with you, Joe. But what can you do?"

Gunther stood up. "Scramble. And you can help. Get the governor to keep his mouth shut till I give the thumbs-up. Tell him he'll be sinking us before we leave shore and making himself look like a jerk otherwise. And make sure that when the time does come, he does two crucial things: One, he doesn't single us out like he's planning to. He can identify us at that press conference, but only in a laundry list that includes Rutland and the state police and whoever else I can think of by then. And two, he cannot say we or anyone else are going to stop heroin from coming into the state. If he does, he'll lose the election, and I'll be happy to explain to the media why. If he has to say something bombastic, have him stick to Rutland itself—as in 'a major effort will be made to curb the import of heroin there' . . . or something like that."

Bill Allard nodded once. "I'll do what I can." 

Chapter 4

Dick Allen lived outside Chester, Vermont, not far from the state police barracks he'd commanded toward the end of his career. A man of legendary stature within the law enforcement community, he'd gained much of his fame through his ability to get along with almost anyone, from the hardened criminals he routinely got to confess, to nitpicking statehouse committee members hoping to tighten his agency's purse strings. As he climbed through the ranks, always shunning desk jobs for field commands, he'd nevertheless been called on by the brass to represent the state police far and wide, garnering respect where ever he went. During his last five years on the job, his reputation had finally so evolved that when a reporter once referred to him jokingly as "Gandhi Allen," no one had thought it a stretch.

And as if to prove the point, as soon as he'd hit his maximum benefits level, Dick Allen had retired without fanfare or fuss—just another warhorse quietly going out to pasture, according to him.

Except that he hadn't severed any of his old ties. Ten years away from the job, he was as influential now as he'd ever been, keeping in touch, lending advice, helping out from behind the scenes—and discreetly wielding influence with the subtlety of an old Mafia don pretending to care only for his garden.

As soon as Joe was briefed by Bill Allard, he knew his first stop had better be Dick Allen.

Another aspect of Allen's fame was as a tinkerer. He built things, repaired things, took things home from the dump for mysterious and dimly defined future uses. When he'd been on the job, fellow officers had gone to great lengths not to tell him their computers or desk chairs or cars had fallen ill. It wasn't that he couldn't repair these objects, but he followed his own timetable, which could sometimes cover quite a period. And, of course, nobody had the heart to refuse him if he did offer his services. He was that highly regarded.

This habit, however, did make his house easy to separate from its neighbors. Located on a dirt road near the tiny village of Cambridgeport, in Rockingham Township, Dick Allen's residence came after a series of nondescript ranch-styles, tucked demurely among the trees and rolling hills that defined the general neighborhood. But his home was huge, made of logs, with a rusting metal roof, and was clearly the project that would never reach completion. Allen and his family had lived there for over twenty years, and it still looked as though the building contractor had just left for lunch. Tools, machinery, and hard-to-define equipment were scattered about the lawn and dooryard, and a half-built scaffold reached ineffectively up one exterior wall, groping toward a huge hole on the second floor that aspired to be a picture window There was a partially finished deck off to one side, several cars with their hoods up and their engines clutched by tendrils of weeds, and what looked to be an incomplete aboveground pool standing in the back lawn like a wooden boat that had been dropped from a crane with disastrous results.