7
This time, I did bother to climb the stairs to the building’s upstairs bathroom. I stripped off my shirt, tied it around my waist so I wouldn’t get my pants too wet, and splashed as much cold water as I could on my face and torso to feel halfway revived. I then brushed my teeth, gargled some mouthwash, and put on a shirt I kept in reserve in one of my lower desk drawers. Gail had once commented that the Municipal Building had become a home away from home to me. She didn’t know the half of it.
Whatever lift my sink bath supplied me with evaporated before I was halfway to Brandt’s office. The cool water of moments ago was replaced by the day’s first prickly sheen of sweat. I didn’t need a forecast to know our heat wave was still entrenched.
Nor did I need a watch to know it was early in the day-the air in Brandt’s office, although as stale as a bar on a Sunday morning, was still smoke-free. The chief was remedying that by holding a lighter to his pipe as I walked into the room and dropped Woll’s file on his desk.
Gray clouds ballooned from his mouth as he glanced at the file, reading the name on the tab. I sat in the chair opposite his desk.
He blew some smoke toward the ceiling and leaned back, propping one foot on the rim of his wastebasket. “Billy mentioned the three of you had gotten together.”
It wasn’t a breach of confidentiality. Billy’s loyalty to the chief was similar to mine. I knew that what he told Brandt would be kept private between them. “Yeah. That was before I heard Rose Woll’s voice on Jardine’s telephone tape machine.”
A deep crease appeared between Brandt’s eyes. “They knew each other?”
“Apparently. The file didn’t tell me anything new; it did remind me that John’s had his rough times.”
Brandt was quiet for a few moments, gazing vacantly out the window and letting loose rhythmically spaced puffs of smoke. He didn’t even twitch when the circular saw outside awoke with a scream that sent me lurching to slam the door.
He waited until I’d sat back down. “You better fill me in.”
I did so, not only on John Woll, but also on our search of Charlie Jardine’s house. The mention of the bedroom setup and the cocaine deepened Brandt’s frown. During the “Ski-Mask Avenger” case of the year before, my best friend and predecessor as chief of detectives, Frank Murphy, had swept an apparently innocuous piece of evidence under the rug in an effort to streamline his investigation-a detail that had only loomed large after Murphy had lost his life and the department had been excoriated by the press and the selectmen. The specter of that mess was obviously beginning to stir in Brandt’s mind.
When I’d finished, he removed the pipe from his mouth and examined it carefully, as if curious to know how it had gotten there. “Do you think Woll’s involved?”
“I think it bears a careful look.”
“That’s not what the press will give it.”
Especially the newspaper, I thought. The Brattleboro Reformer had been bought by a large Midwestern media group, which had promptly fired the old editor and replaced him with a USA Today graduate with a passion for colorful, bite-sized news bits. His first executive decision had been to change the paper’s logo from black to bright red. The police department’s objections weren’t restricted to the esthetic, however. Stan Katz, whom the old editor had kept somewhat in check, had now been issued a license to kill.
“You want me to keep the double-Woll connection to Jardine under my hat for a while?”
“Yeah. No reports, no memos. If it blows, we’ll own up to it, but not until then.”
“Does that include the State’s Attorney?”
“Yeah.”
That sent a chill down my spine. I too remembered how the shit had hit the fan as a result of Murphy’s tidying up of the evidence. I couldn’t argue with Brandt’s short-term desire to simplify all of our lives, but I worried about the cost of such streamlining further down the road. For the second time in just a few hours, my concerns wandered from the strictly professional. I worried how a decision like this might play between Gail and me later on. “Is that wise?”
Brandt fixed me with his pale eyes. “You going to talk to the Wolls soon?”
“To her, certainly. Then it depends.”
“All right. Let’s keep it quiet, at least till we see what she says. Could be someone else has a voice just like hers. Maybe I’ll tell Dunn then. As for John, I want a pretty good idea of his role here before his name becomes public knowledge. So far, all we’ve caught him doing is his job.”
I got up. “It’s your call.” I thought he was being a little harsh on Dunn, and perhaps foolhardy. Odd as he was, I’d never known the SA to leak information-or to overlook a slight.
Brandt caught my tone of voice. “Think I’m being paranoid?”
I shrugged, still troubled, not wanting my personal concerns to cloud my judgment. “You know the stakes more than anyone. I won’t deny information leaks out of here like a sieve. Still… I’ll let you know what I find out.”
The detective squad does not hold to a regimented schedule. There is no roll call, no single hour at which all members punch in. Usually, they show up at half-hour intervals, a system which allows them to leave in the same order and thereby have the office staffed by at least one person until eight o’clock at night. As a result, on any given morning, I’m lucky to find even one of them in attendance when I usually come in at 7:30.
This morning, it was 7:10, and the entire squad was ready and waiting.
I led the way into the conference room and sat at the head of the long table, waiting until everyone had found chairs, arranged their coffee, doughnuts, and note pads, and had finished the last one-liners.
I gained their attention by tapping my pencil on the edge of the table. “You all did nice work yesterday. Starting cold, we got an identity, a residence, and some inroads on a possible witness. The medical examiner should be coming through with some more on the cause of death either today or tomorrow, and maybe J.P.’s dirt-sifting will add something.”
DeFlorio pretended to wipe some of that dirt off his pad. “It already has.”
“I spent a few hours going through Jardine’s papers last night. I’ve listed his various jobs and what years he held them, along with how much he made, who he banked with, and those places where he seemed to shop most often, at least according to his credit-card slips and canceled checks.”
Harriet Fritter handed out copies of a fact sheet I’d deposited on her desk earlier.
“Charlie Jardine left a pretty good paper trail but not much personal information. We didn’t find any letters, diaries, or tapes. It seems, however, that he did have at least one unusual kink to his personality.” I went on to describe what we’d found at his house, especially the upstairs, omitting only the fact that I’d tied a name to one of the voices on the answering machine.
“I didn’t ask you yesterday, but do any of you have anything on your case loads you cannot move to the back burners?”
I actually knew their case loads pretty well, so the question was largely rhetorical. Still, it seemed a friendly idea to let them decide for themselves. No one said a word.
“Okay.” I looked at each of them as I went around the table. “Sammie, I want you to stick to finding whoever was under that bridge. Ron, dig into Jardine’s background-what he was like at school, who he hung out with. You might want to get Lavoie to help you; he’s probably dying to get out of uniform. Dennis, expand the canvass to Jardine’s neighborhood; check for anyone who saw him the last day he was alive. His next-door neighbor, Ned Beaumont, might be a place to start. By the way, I’m going to hit his business partner, so I’ll tell you what I find there. J.P., just keep sifting, and let me know as soon as you get anything back on that cocaine. I’ll have Harriet photocopy whatever bits of Jardine’s paperwork you might find useful.