Occam's Razor (18 page)

· · ·

Later, back in my office, I stared dolefully at yet another pink phone message from Katz, the latest in a stack of four. I didn’t know what he was after, but it didn’t really matter. It was the general predictability of our conversations I dreaded more than their actual content.

This time, however, he surprised me.

“You at your office?” he asked right after I’d identified myself.

“Yeah.”

“We have to meet—now—somewhere neutral.”

There was an edge to his voice I’d only rarely heard before. “If by neutral you mean private, how ’bout past where Corrections hang their hats? The snowplows have a turnaround just beyond their parking lot.”

“I’ll see you there.”

Katz was hyperactive by nature. It had helped make him the journalist he was, which, in all fairness, was honorable—if as irritating as a canker sore. But the level of energy I’d just heard on the phone was several notches above his norm, so I set out to meet him with some real curiosity.

The Corrections Department’s parole and probation offices occupied the basement of a flamboyantly pink office building that had once housed a chocolate factory. It was located on a flat strip of land between the high bank supporting the Putney Road and the same Retreat Meadows floodplain where Ed Renaud and I had shared our meditative chat in the fishing shanty.

The building is almost the last structure on a dead-end road, and as I’d pointed out to Katz, the snowplows have turned the area just past its parking lot into a round amphitheater of piled-up snow, visually isolated from any neighbors but with a view of the frozen Meadows.

As a result, when we met there ten minutes later, it looked oddly like a half-completed stage set—two cars parked in an empty, featureless half bowl of white space, faced with a seemingly flat picture-postcard image hanging before us like a drop.

I left my car to join Katz in his—a rusting, ten-year-old Japanese pickup with chained-together cinder blocks in the back to give it traction in the snow. As soon as I’d closed the door behind me, I regretted my manners. The tiny cab stank of rancid fast food and stale cigarettes, both aggravated by an overactive heater.

Despite the cold, I cracked my window a few inches and turned up my collar. “What’s on your mind, Stanley?”

He sat staring out at the view for a few seconds, as if collecting his thoughts. “We’ve known each other a long time, right?”

I didn’t bother answering.

“And we’ve helped each other out now and then. You’ve given me stuff under the counter. I’ve sat on a story or two. I mean, all the cops-versus-press bullshit aside, we’ve always gotten along pretty well, haven’t we?”

He expected an answer this time. And despite his being someone I’d never think of inviting over for supper, at least I couldn’t argue his basic point. “I suppose so.”

As anemic as it was, that seemed to settle his mind. “I’m in a bit of a jam. Not a legal one.” He quickly cut me a glance. “More like an ethical one. Remember when I asked you about Jim Reynolds?”

Again, I stayed silent, this time holding my breath. “Well, I got another anonymous call about him—a little more serious.”

“Same guy?”

“I couldn’t be sure. It was a man’s voice but muffled like the first one.”

He hesitated. I filled the gap. “What did he say?”

He twisted in his seat to look at me. “It’s pretty big, Joe, even without Reynolds being who he is and this being an election year. It’s big enough that I’m going to be digging into it like nobody’s business.”

“You want to know what we have on him?” I guessed. “Use me to see if you might be on to something?”

“I want to know where you stand with him first.”

I stared at him in surprise. “
Stand
with him? I barely know the guy. You asking if I’d shield him?”

My incredulity spoke for me. He looked slightly embarrassed. “I had to ask, Joe. You blew off the illegal dumping when I mentioned it. Gail does have close ties to him…”

“Tell me what you got,” I told him angrily, “or I’m out of here.” I put my hand on the door handle, impatient with his dancing around.

“The man on the phone said Reynolds was connected to the woman who was knifed to death.”

That stopped me. “How?”

“You know of no such connection?”

I hesitated before answering, suddenly wary of what might be lurking out of sight. I decided to play it straight. “None at all.”

“But you are checking him out?”

I sidestepped a bit, sticking to what was already in the public record.

There was no chance in hell I was going to tell him about the presumably bogus sighting of Reynolds’s car at the railroad tracks. “His office was broken into a while back. We are looking into that, although we have no suspects, no leads, and nothing reported stolen or missing.”

He understood I wanted him to read between the lines there. “That must be a little delicate, poking around where you’re not invited.” He paused and then muttered, as if to himself, “I don’t remember that item being in our police blotter column.”

“It was right up there with a barking dog complaint. The current theory is that one of our patrols scared off whoever it was before he even got inside. You said it yourself, Stan, it’s a political year—hotter’n most. Could be your caller is up to dirty tricks.”

“Tying a candidate to a murder?” he asked, his voice rising. “Suggesting I’m being used? Who says you’re not doing the same thing right now?”

I suddenly became resensitized to the heat and stench of the cab. I wanted to get out of this conversation. “Stan, I’m not sure what we’re doing here. I could’ve told you on the phone we have nothing linking Reynolds to Croteau’s murder.”

“Then why are you still poking into a burglary that wasn’t? Why were you checking out Reynolds’s car at his house?”

I rolled the window all the way down. So much for the buddy-buddy routine. “Who told you that?”

“Never mind. I know you were there, and that Willy brought J.P.’s bag of toys with him. What were you looking for?”

“Something that didn’t pan out.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I kept talking. “Stanley, we do a lot of things nobody ever hears about. People call us anonymously, too, you know? They tell us they saw a crime, or committed one, or know someone who did. We check ’em all out, no matter how bogus they sound—just like the one that brought us to Reynolds’s garage.”

He pretended to look at something far out on the ice. “If it was a dead end, why don’t you tell me what it was?”

“Because it’s not news, Stan. It’s none of your business.”

He suddenly flared up and hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. “Bullshit. I get two separate calls that Reynolds is dirty, his office is broken into, I know you guys have been checking him out, and the whole town is in a tizzy with two homicides, one of which I’ve been told is linked to him. And I’m supposed to ignore that?”

“I wouldn’t be writing any stories about it.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed heavily, finally smiling at me wearily. “That’s why I’m here, Joe. I’m not writing any stories. I want to do the right thing, not play into some game his opponents are setting up. The press gets manipulated enough as it is. I want to write the truth.”

I opened the door to get out. “I’d help you if I could, Stan. Right now, the truth is we came up with nothing when we looked at his car, so the reasons why we did so in the first place are irrelevant. And we have absolutely nothing linking Reynolds to the Croteau killing. As Jack Derby already announced, we have a confessed suspect in custody for that, and we’re going to trial with it.”

He rolled his own window down as I circled his hood to return to my car. “You don’t put a man’s car through the forensics wringer for a fender-bender. If Reynolds is clean on the Croteau thing, then maybe you’re trying to tie him to the bum. Is that what’s happening?”

I considered leaving it at that, with an unstated “no comment.” But I knew Stan too well—it would have been like pouring gasoline on an ember.

Instead, I leaned against his door in a friendly gesture. “Look, I know you want some answers. And I know that, being who he is, Reynolds brings a lot of weight to all this. So I’m not trying to blow you off. I mean, you’re right about our scratching each other’s back now and then. It’s worked out for both of us. But we move slower than you do, Stan. We have to. You’ve got readers wanting sexy news, not state’s attorneys ready to kick your ass at the first mistake. It makes us more cautious.”

“I wouldn’t print anything I couldn’t stand behind,” he said stiffly. “That’s why I called you.”

“I know that. I also know you’re not going to end it here. You’re going to chase after every other source you can think of.”

“So?” he asked.

I held up my hand. “So great. I’m just telling you to watch out… Off the record?”

He raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“We are looking into Reynolds, for what I won’t tell you right now. But I am smelling a rat in motion somewhere, which is what’s making me extra careful. You’re going to do what you do—you always have—but I gotta tell you: On this one, watch your step. Don’t get used.”

I couldn’t read his expression and didn’t wait around for explanations.

· · ·

I stopped by Ron’s desk and waited for him to finish typing on his computer.

“What’s up?” he asked almost immediately.

“Remember I asked you a while back to look into Reynolds’s past?”

“The court cases? Yeah, I got that going…”

He was stopped by my shaking my head. “No, no. I meant earlier—anything on VIBRS or even our internal files. Any mention at all?”

He looked at me oddly. “Couldn’t find a thing. Maybe a parking ticket or two, but that was it. Why? You got something?”

I didn’t make a habit of withholding information from my officers, but I comforted myself this time that what I had didn’t even qualify as such—yet. “No. His name just keeps coming up. Have you had a chance to tear into Brenda’s journal—line by line?”

“Pretty much. It hasn’t been a high priority, what with her killer in jail. I thought I’d use it more as a future intel source than as ammo against Owen. He’s barely mentioned.”

“What about Reynolds? Does he come up?”

Ron shook his head, giving that look again. “Nope. Not a peep.”

“How ’bout code names or pseudonyms?”

His brow furrowed. “Nothing that obvious. She used a lot of first names, though. I suppose they could be codes.”

I got up, disappointed. “Okay. Thanks anyway.”

· · ·

“How’d the arraignment go?” I asked Gail that night.

She put her briefcase on the floor, kicked off her snow boots, dumped her coat on one kitchen chair, and collapsed into another. “Fine. McNeil whined about his client’s confused state, his ties to the community, his financial constraints. Judge Harrowsmith couldn’t have cared less. I asked for no bail, and that’s what we got. Good thing Owen called about bus schedules just before you grabbed him. I think that clinched it for Harrowsmith. We have any boiling water ready?”

I knew her well enough to have done just that. Without asking, I fixed her a steaming cup of green tea and set it on the table beside her. She took advantage of my proximity to kiss me as I leaned forward.

“Thanks,” she said. “You get a chance to talk with Owen?”

“No. By the time I got out of the hospital, he’d already been sucked into the pipeline. Why?”

She paused to sip her tea, wincing slightly at its heat. “God, that feels good. I don’t know—he looked pretty pathetic. Hardly the knife-wielding sort.”

A cold feeling entered my mind as I recalled Katz’s suspicions about Reynolds. “You had dinner yet?” I asked.

“We had a pizza brought up—again. That’s one reason this tastes so good. Cuts through the grease.”

“You seen the evidence we have against him?” I asked her cautiously.

She interrupted a second sip to answer quickly, “Oh, yeah. I don’t have any doubts he did it, and we have Janice Litchfield’s statement about him attacking someone with a pen a while back. He just looked a little incongruous, you know? Like the kind of kid always ignored by the in-crowd.”

I took my own cup of coffee and sat next to her, as we often did late at night. “You think that’s the line McNeil’s going to use? Diminished capacity or something?”

“Probably. Who knows? He’s only had about fifteen minutes with him so far. It’s too early to tell. He’ll start digging around and collecting witnesses and asking for delays, like he always does, hoping he can wait long enough for either the furor to die down or for us to drop the ball somehow. And sure as hell he’ll try to get that confession thrown out.”

“You think he can?” Again, I was wondering what Katz might be doing in the meantime, unwittingly or not, to undermine the process. Not to mention where those missing journal pages might be.

She shook her head. “I talked to Willy about it. I wish he hadn’t been the one to get it. He leaves such a lousy impression with juries. But he had J.P. with him, and it sounds like it was straight as a string. It should hold up. What worries me is that since it came after that chase, McNeil’ll argue Owen was too weak and disoriented to know what he was saying—and since he did ask for a lawyer right after he confessed, it shows he was confused.”

I smiled at her scrutiny of the angles. She hadn’t been a deputy SA for very long and had started out, as most of them did, in family court, where any potential mistakes occurred mostly behind closed doors. This was big-league stuff at last, and I could almost touch her enthusiasm.

“How’s Derby to work with on this?”

“Great. He’s giving me lots of leeway. He handed virtually my entire case load off to the others, so I can really keep focused. I think it’ll be fine.”

“Scuttlebutt has it he’ll be chasing votes most of the time anyway,” I said mildly. “James Dunn supposedly wants back in.”

But she saw through the veil. “Oh, I know what people think. I’m a woman, I have strong local connections and a useful political past, and this case is a no-brainer. I can live with that perception.” She drained her cup and smiled at me. “Because I also know Jack Derby owes me. He feels guilty for giving me the shaft when you got into trouble with the Attorney General’s office—treating me like a pariah just because he was worried about bad press. He knows I deserved better.” She paused and added, “He didn’t come up with the idea of using me entirely on his own, you know.”