His face hardened. “You looked her up in the computer a few hours ago. You think she’s tied into Norm Bouch and put the screws to Brian. All that’s so full of shit it’s not funny.”
I remembered the quiet dispatcher hovering in the background when Davis and I had done exactly what Deets had described. Unless, of course, Davis himself had spilled the beans. The mere thought of that gave birth to a small headache. “I guess this means you’ve got a better idea about what’s going on,” I told him.
“I know you’re about to ruin two good reputations for nothing.”
I considered several responses to that, including trying to allay his fears. But I didn’t know the truth myself and was suspicious enough at his approach to question his motives. So far in this case, I’d found only surprises where I’d expected the mundane, and I didn’t feel like adding to the confusion by taking Bill Deets into my confidence.
I decided instead to feed him some of his own attitude. “Ruining reputations is something I’ll leave to the rumor mill. Talk to Kiley after we’re done. If he thinks it’s appropriate, he’ll tell you what’s going on. My advice either way would be to tell your colleagues on the PD to lighten up on Padget and give him their support. Right now, they’re the ones acting like he’s already been tried and convicted.”
I didn’t wait for him to answer but made my way quickly to the building’s front door.
The Rockingham barracks of the Vermont State Police was the same nondescript, single-story, brick and cement design that had been used for every barracks in the state. It was, like its clones, too small, unimaginatively designed, and oppressive to work in. It fit my mood perfectly.
I stepped into the small lobby and presented myself to the dispatcher behind the thick glass panel in the wall. A minute later, Kiley, tall and broad, in cowboy boots and a ponytail, threw open the door to the interior. His smile looked sutured in place at great cost.
“Joe. The others just got here. Glad you could make it.”
I bit my tongue and merely shook his hand.
He took me down the long central hallway to an office at the far end. “I heard what you were up to,” he said without looking back, “and asked Kathy Bartlett for an update. She thought it might be helpful if we all got together at one meeting to sort things out.”
Despite my irritation, I didn’t really fault his testiness. His job was among the more dangerous in law enforcement, much of it undercover, all of it dealing with people whose trustworthiness could be doubted by their own mothers. If I’d discovered that a statewide investigation involving my turf had been launched behind my back, I would’ve been irritable, too.
“Nice of you to pick a time we were all free,” was all I said under my breath.
Jonathon Michael and Kathy Bartlett were standing in the room we entered, Jon on his tiptoes, trying to peer out of one of those too-high windows at the gloominess beyond, Kathy in a sweatshirt and loose-fitting jeans, looking as if she’d just been tossed out of bed. Grim-faced, she merely nodded at me as I walked in.
“Grab some seats,” Kiley said like a genial host, pulling a chair from under the large central table and making himself comfortable. “We might be here a while.”
Bartlett gave him a deadly look. “All right. You’re pissed and I’m sorry. It’d be nice to progress beyond that.”
Kiley leaned forward and tapped the tabletop gently with his finger. “The task force reports to your office, Kathy. Was it so goddamn difficult to drop me a line?”
She sat, too, but in a chair against the wall, her hands buried in her pockets. “We’ve been over that. I screwed up. But we had good cause for not involving the task force in the first place, so none of what’s said tonight is going to change anything-except that I promise not to drop the ball again. I mean, Jesus, Steve, we’ve worked well together for years.”
But his concern, as we already knew, had little to do with bureaucratic mix-ups. “We were formed by general agreement,” he said, “so local PDs and the State Police could clear their books of exactly this kind of case. I’d like to know what good cause it was that made you go behind my back.” He looked hard at me and continued, “Joe’s got a criminal case against a cop. Is there something about my own squad I should know?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but Kathy cut me off. “No. Absolutely not. It was pure and simple a conflict of interest, as I already told you. Your Bill Deets is buddy-buddy with his old department, and in particular Brian Padget, and I personally didn’t want to put you in a tight spot. If things had worked out more smoothly, we would have talked about it calmly and at a more civilized hour and settled the matter then and there. I realize paranoia can be a life-saving instinct, but there is absolutely nothing else going on here.”
But Kiley was shaking his head like a disappointed father. “I have officers from half a dozen departments-”
Kathy interrupted. “You ever targeted one of those departments when one of their officers was working for you?” She’d done her homework, like the lawyer she was.
Kiley shrugged defensively. “It wouldn’t have caused a problem. I’ve got enough guys that I could’ve isolated the one to maintain the case’s integrity.”
I hadn’t planned on mentioning my meeting with Bill Deets. Allowing that his motives had been genuine, I’d been willing to forget his combative approach. But I owed him no favors, while I was beholden to Kathy Bartlett. Steve Kiley was no neophyte-he knew half of what he was saying was simple posturing. But he was also human, was feeling self-righteous, and had taken the opportunity to pound us on the head with our own transgressions.
Given the hour, therefore, I felt enough was enough. “I just had a chat with Deets outside in the parking lot.”
It had the desired effect. The tennis match between Bartlett and Kiley disintegrated into open stares.
“Now?” Kiley asked.
“Yeah. Just before I knocked on your door. I invited him to join us. He wasn’t interested.”
Kathy fought hard to suppress a smile. Kiley openly scowled.
“Look,” I continued, finally sitting down myself. “That doesn’t matter, either. He just wanted me to know Padget and Doyle are straight shooters and I was barking up the wrong tree.”
“Who’s Doyle?”
I waved that away. “One of Padget’s fellow officers. The point is, he not only knew I was looking into Doyle within hours after I started, but he knew where and when you were meeting with us. This is Vermont-everybody knows what everybody else is doing. That’s why I asked Jack Derby and then Kathy if we could bypass the task force, that and the fact that my department is becoming increasingly invested in whatever’s going on.”
“That homicide you found this afternoon?” he asked.
“Right-one of Bouch’s runners.”
Kiley was still looking unhappy. “I’m not going to argue the conflict of interest thing. You might even have a point. But have you done a lot of drug cases? It can be like wandering around a minefield without a map, and some of those mines might be cases we are working on, or at least snitches we’re using.”
Jonathon Michael spoke up for the first time, still leaning in the corner near the windows. “We’ll run the names by you, Steve, same as always. You can help keep our noses clean.”
“And if we get our hands on anything valuable after it’s all done,” Bartlett added, “cars, houses, cash, whatever, I’ll try for the federal forfeiture route so the government will cut us each a check for our good deeds.”
Kiley gave her a sour look. “Christ. That’s not what this was about, Kathy.”
She held up both her hands. “I know, I know. It’s also not what I meant-you know that, too.”
Mollified nevertheless-as Bartlett knew he would be-Kiley shrugged and stood up. “All right, what the hell. I guess I had my little temper tantrum. Getting sensitive in my old age.”
Kathy and I joined him and began herding toward the door. “No,” she said. “I had it coming. Lesson learned. Jon and Joe’ll keep in touch, and if you feel things are going off track again, let me know. Just do it between eight and five, okay?”