The Disposable Man (13 page)

I got to my feet. “Right now, though, we better hit the sack. Tomorrow’ll be a long day. But let’s keep each other updated as we go, okay? No dropped balls, and no idle chitchat. If anyone gets wind of what we’re up to, we’ll probably be left with nothing.”

Sam looked at me closely as we gathered by the door. “You really think the CIA is looking over our shoulder?”

I shook my head. “That’s overstating it. I actually meant don’t tip off Sopper or Rarig. The CIA’s obviously interested, but I don’t buy into the Hollywood hype about their being everywhere and knowing everything. I think Snowden’s curious about Boris, but he’s also probably as ignorant as we are.”

I ushered them out ahead of me, worried my own doubts could be read on my face.

· · ·

West Brattleboro is tenuously attached to downtown by Route 9, otherwise called Western Avenue. It is the only road crossing over the interstate that bisects our jurisdiction like a knife through a cake, and is predictably busy at most hours of the day, especially, like now, when the neighborhood ballpark empties out. It is also posted at a snail’s speed limit, which about one in every ten cars observes. However, on a road this narrow and congested, that one is usually enough to reduce traffic to a crawl.

I was therefore absentmindedly watching the taillights ahead, and my rearview mirror, when I was struck by the silhouette of the driver behind me.

It was no more than a flicker at first—a memory twinge similar to what I felt a dozen times every day. In a town this size, where I’d worked for well over thirty years, I knew hundreds of people. And given the rural Vermont habit of waving to every driver one knew, I’d trained myself to associate faces with names pretty quickly.

Of course, here I didn’t have a face to go on—merely a backlit outline seen in reverse through two layers of glass. It was exactly this odd lighting, however, that stimulated the notion I should know this person and put an ominous edge on my curiosity.

With time, it was all I could do to keep even one eye to the front. Finally, just shy of where I was planning to turn right onto Orchard Street, the car before me stopped completely, allowing somebody into line. At that point, the headlights of the mysterious vehicle came close enough to be blocked by my car trunk, just as some oncoming lights lit up the driver’s face, fully revealing his features. In that fraction of a moment, I recognized the man who’d tried to knife me in DC.

Without thought or hesitation, I threw my car into park, stepped into the street, and pulled out my gun. Aiming with both hands, I pointed it at the now darkened figure behind the wheel and shouted, “
Don’t move. Police
.”

A squeal of locked tires and a crash right behind me drowned me out, making me jump to one side to avoid being hit. Simultaneously, the man I’d been aiming at threw his car into reverse and slammed on the gas, sending up two putrid plumes of burning rubber between us.

I began running after him, saw his car collide with the one behind him and slither out into the opposite, now wide-open, lane. “
Stop
,” I yelled, still waving the gun. But he fishtailed into a noisy one-eighty and disappeared down the road, both taillights broken. I ran back to my car to give chase and radio in, realizing that by yielding to impulse, I’d forgotten to note either the vehicle make or its license number.

Angry now as well as alarmed, I reported in, asked all units for assistance, and hit the switch to my blue lights, all before noticing I had nowhere to go. The two cars I’d caused to collide were now blocking me in entirely. Defeated, I got back out to help direct traffic, hoping to hell the man they’d catch would be the same I’d met that night in DC.

· · ·

I hung up the phone and sat forward, my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands. Gail stretched across the bed and rubbed my back. “Was that Tony?”

“Yeah—still no hide nor hair of the guy. By now everyone’s thinking I’ve lost my mind.”

“What were your options, Joe? You reacted on instinct.”

“Instinct should have told me to radio it in and play bait until other units could corner the son of a bitch.”

“You might’ve done that if you hadn’t almost died of a knife wound a couple of years ago and relived that experience just last week. You made light of what happened in Washington, but it must’ve been like a nightmare come back to life. Seeing what you saw tonight—nobody should be surprised you did what you did.”

I laughed shortly and turned toward her. “I had my gun out in the middle of traffic, like in some stupid cop show. It’s lucky I didn’t shoot someone.”

She hesitated a second. “You were aiming at the man who attacked you, right?”

I went back to looking at the rug. “The man I
think
attacked me. I can’t swear it was him. Sammie, Ron, and I had been working late, talking over the case, and at the end, Sam said something about the CIA looking over our shoulder. I played it down, but driving home I kept thinking about it, and about the guy who mugged me—how unlikely that all was, and how Snowden seemed to know all the details right after. I might have projected my paranoia onto some innocent slob who just happened to be behind me. He’s probably on his fifth scotch at home right now.”

“Except that from what I just heard, he’s totally vanished, and nobody’s reported being attacked by a gunman in traffic.”

I got up and began removing my clothes, by habit dropping them into a laundry basket, and draping the next day’s selection over a chair by the door, something I did in case I was called out in the middle of the night.

“There could be a ton of reasons for that,” I explained. “Calling the cops is the last thing a lot of people do in a crisis, including the law-abiding ones.”

“That doesn’t explain why a dragnet couldn’t find the car. You called it in immediately.”

Naked, I pulled back the sheet and dropped back onto the bed, leaning against the headboard. “No… I just lost my cool—totally.”

Gail extinguished the light. Moonlight through the skylight bathed us both in a colorless wash. “Which only makes you human,” she said, sliding over next to me and interlacing my fingers with her own. “How is the case going? Have you found anything yet?”

“Nothing solid. We think we have a lead, but it’s pure conjecture right now. We’re basically flipping over every rock we can find, hoping there’ll be enough for a warrant under one of them.”

She slid her arm up and tugged at my shoulder. “Come on. Lie flat. Try to get some rest. You keep chewing on this all night, you really will go bonkers.”

I did as she asked, and eventually her deep, even breathing told me she’d followed her own advice. I had doubts I could do the same. The shock of what I’d done, the blindness with which I’d simply reacted without thought, would not be neatly tucked away for the sake of a good night’s sleep.

Exhaustion will have its way, however, no matter the impediments, and soon I found myself in a deep, dark, and threatening dream state, fighting ghosts from within and without, none of which made sense or gave solace.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter anyway. When the phone dragged me back awake, the room was still dark, the moonlight still obliquely on the wall, and I was just as tired.

“Yeah,” I muttered into the receiver.

“Joe.” It was Willy’s voice. “There’s been a smash-and-grab at Lord’s Jewelers. They’re talkin’ a bundle. I figured you’d want in on it.”

I blinked a couple of times, trying to clear my head. “Okay. You at home?”

“Headin’ out now.”

“That’ll give me time to dress. Pick me up on the way.”

LORD’S IS LOCATED DOWNTOWN,
not far from the Dunkin’ Donuts, where Western Avenue, here called High Street, T-bones into Main. It is in the heart of the nineteenth-century, red-brick canyon that gives Brattleboro its identity and, for all that, is the fanciest jewelry store in town.

It wasn’t looking too purebred when Kunkle and I pulled up to the curb across the street, however. Cut off by yellow police-line tape, decorated by two squad cars parked out front, and sporting a huge hole in its plate-glass window, the store resembled a riot scene.

The impression was enhanced by the crowd of people gathered around the outside of the yellow tape—a precaution usually reserved for homicide scenes.

We elbowed our way through the onlookers, ducking under the tape. An officer, standing on the edge of an apron of shattered glass, nodded to us as we passed by, heading for the front door.

“What’s with all the people?” I asked him.

He gestured to an alarm mounted to the wall above the door. “That thing went off. Woke the whole neighborhood up—it’s why we had to string the tape. People must be pretty bored.”

“Not too subtle,” Willy commented, surveying the mess. “Somebody had to’ve seen something.”

I cast a glance over my shoulder. The wall of old buildings opposite loomed up like a dam, studded with lit windows framing people lounging comfortably, taking in the action. Although it was the town’s commercial center, Main Street was also home to a largely financially challenged population. It added irony to the polish of all the ground-level stores that some of their closest neighbors couldn’t afford the clothes they’d need to come in to get interviewed. These people might’ve been bored. They also—many of them—didn’t have jobs to go to in the morning.

J.P. was already working the interior, instructing various Patrol personnel on how to set up the video camera and lights. Kunkle had been the detective on call, but J.P. hadn’t wasted time getting everything into motion.

“Whatcha got?” I asked him.

He looked up from his assortment of equipment, a man in the midst of doing what he loved best. “Seems like a smash-and-grab so far.” He waved his arm toward the broken window. “Whoever it was used a brick, both on the plate glass and the counter just inside, picked up what he could reach, and disappeared. I’ve already got canvass teams out looking for witnesses. The back door’s secure, and none of the rest of the store was disturbed. So far, it’s looking pretty straightforward.”

“We know what’s missing yet?”

“No. I couldn’t find the manager, but the alarm’s also hooked up to the owner’s house in Springfield, Vermont, and he’s already called us from the road on a cell phone. He should be here pretty soon. Maybe he knows the inventory. I think it was quite a haul, though. The store’s been running ads—had its best stuff out.”

I nodded to Willy. “See what you can find in the office.”

Willy disappeared toward the back as I wandered up to the front window, being careful where I stepped and keeping my hands by my sides. A display case with a tinted glass top had been placed parallel to the window, so that it was both visible from the sidewalk and accessible from inside. The breakage hadn’t been quite as random as Tyler had implied. The thief had actually punched three connected holes in a row in order to get at the entire case and had left his weapon of entry—an old red brick—almost as a calling card. It lay where jewelry and watches had once delicately gleamed, resting on a velour pad, surrounded by shards of sparkling glass like some negative-chic statement.

He hadn’t made a clean sweep—various items remained scattered in odd corners. One necklace was even draped over a jagged tooth along the bottom of the window, just shy of the outdoors.

“Pierre,” I called out to the officer guarding the front. He turned toward me, staying outside the debris on the sidewalk. “Yeah, Joe.”

I pointed at the necklace. “If this almost made it out, other pieces might have. They could be mixed in with the glass out there. Don’t disturb anything yet, but just keep it in mind.”

He looked at his feet as if expecting something to move. “Will do.”

A tense, disheveled man suddenly appeared out of the darkness, waving at me from the other side of the police tape. “I’m Henri Alonzo. I’m the owner.”

I knew that. I also knew him to be an officious snob. I nodded to Pierre to let him through and met him at the front door, offering my hand. “Joe Gunther, Mr. Alonzo. Good to see you again. I am sorry about this, though.”

He made to brush by me to approach the smashed case. I grabbed his arm to stop him. “Hang on. We haven’t dusted all that yet. Keep your hands in your pockets and watch where you step. And move slowly.”

I released him and accompanied him to the window, where J.P. was already taking pictures from the far end.

“Do you know what was on display?” I asked Alonzo.

He was shaking his head. “Where’s Richard? He would know better than I.”

“He the manager?”

“Yes. Richard Manners.”

“We haven’t been able to locate him yet,” J.P. answered.

Alonzo straightened and stared at me, ignoring Tyler entirely—superior to superior. “God damn the man,” he snarled. “He’s worse than a bitch in heat. Call his girlfriend’s home—Lisa somebody… What the hell is it? Goodfriend—that’s it. Christ, how do you forget a name like that?”

Willy Kunkle had reappeared from the back and was standing behind us. He nodded as I turned toward him. “I’ll call.”

“Was it a valuable display?” I asked Alonzo.

“Hell, yes, it was valuable. Over a hundred thousand all told—oh, my God.” He suddenly reached for the necklace hanging from the shard.

I caught his wrist in midair. “Remember.”

His face flushed. “Jesus Christ. You think that’ll have fingerprints on it? It’s just waiting for someone to walk off with it.”

I pointed to Pierre, standing six feet away, all by himself. “I don’t think so, Mr. Alonzo. If you don’t know what was in here specifically, maybe you can help us out in the office—find an inventory sheet or something. None of this will be going anywhere for a while. Have you called your insurance company? They’ll want to send somebody down here, too.”

Alonzo looked at me in disgust. “Of course I have… Jesus.” And he stormed off toward the back of the store.

· · ·

Two hours later, we were still hard at it, all of J.P.’s efforts completed, trying to determine the extent of Alonzo’s loss. Richard Manners, it seemed, was as disorganized a manager as he was attentive to Miss Goodfriend, and helping him sort through his paperwork was proving quite a job.