I took her lead, leaving the fear and concern behind us. “They can only do that if Jack Derby says they can. But I’m worried he’ll feel politically exposed enough to try to find a buyer-based on the premise that we don’t have the manpower, the resources, or the ability to deal with it.”
“Do you?”
I smiled at her bluntness-and the return of a direct, clear-eyed manner I both cherished and needed. “No. But we have the self-interest.”
“Meaning what?”
“A few weeks ago, a bank security investigator-an ex-FBI agent, in fact-told me about an employee who’d wired sixteen thousand dollars of the bank’s money to a dummy address in another state, just before she blew town. The bank was local, with no branches in the other state, so the investigator had no jurisdiction. But interstate wire fraud is a federal offense-an FBI specialty-so this man called his former employers and tried to sell the case to them. They took down all the information, but they warned him not to expect anything-that it was too small. Not worth the overhead to pursue.”
Gail scowled. “That’s hardly the same thing. You’ve got a pile of dead bodies, for crying out loud. They can’t ignore that.”
“Except that most of those bodies were killed by us. Sensational maybe, but not a federal crime. The federal aspects of this whole mess involve things we haven’t been able to prove yet-organized crime, illegal aliens, money laundering, contraband weapons. If we had a longer reach, we could dig where we can’t now, in order to make a case. The feds have that reach, but they wouldn’t have the vested interest. In fairness to them, they’ve got enough on their plates without fooling around with a small local problem that may or may not grow bigger. Let’s face it, for all the noise this has generated, we don’t have much to go on.”
Gail straightened up, her expression quizzical. “I don’t understand. If that’s true, then how could Derby unload the case?”
“Because his problems are more political than legal right now. For him, there is no case-just a huge PR stink bomb. If he can get the U.S. Attorney’s office to assign it to an agency outside his jurisdiction-politely saying it’s more than us local flatfoots can handle-then he’s free and clear, especially since all the victims were either deadbeats or outsiders.”
“Even though that agency won’t do anything with it?”
“They might in the long run, but only if something else develops that makes it meaningful to them. Otherwise it’ll end up on a back burner.”
Years ago, when Gail and I first met, she was far readier to use outrage as a means of spurring action. That was no longer true. She was as idealistic as ever, but over two decades as a businesswoman and a local politician, she’d become craftier.
“Sounds like you and Derby need to get together. If he does want to kick the case loose, maybe there’s a way you could stay with it-keep everyone happy.”
I mulled that over in silence. It was technically possible, but only if an unreasonable number off actors fell into place in the right sequence.
“A sneakier approach,” she continued, sensing my skepticism, “would be to locate the kind of evidence that would attract federal attention. It might help you sell yourself as an integral part of the package.”
I stared at her in wonder. “I shudder to think what’ll happen when you pass the bar.”
She smiled.
Ron Klesczewski wasn’t in the next morning. Stimulated by my talk with Gail, I’d come into the office early to talk on the phone with Dan Flynn, and had watched Ron’s empty desk outside my door throughout our conversation, increasingly concerned about where he might be.
As soon as I hung up, I dialed Harriet Fritter on the intercom. “You hear from Ron this morning?”
She hesitated before answering. “He called in. He said he was taking the day off.”
I tried interpreting what she hadn’t said. “He okay?”
“He sounded terrible.”
I cast back to his state of mind the day before, and to his listless behavior at the post-stress meeting later on. “I’ll give him a buzz,” I told her and punched a button for an outside line.
The phone was answered almost immediately by a timid, hesitant, woman’s voice.
“Wendy?” I asked, suddenly unsure of who was on the line.
“Yes.”
“This is Joe Gunther. Is Ron there?”
There was a brief, telling hesitation before she said, “He’s not available right now. I’m sorry.”
“Harriet told me he sounded a little rough this morning. How’s he doing?”
Her silence made clear I’d unwittingly stepped through an open manhole. “Is everything okay?” I added.
Her voice cracked slightly. “Not really. I don’t know what’s happening. He won’t talk, won’t eat, won’t sleep. I was so happy he wasn’t badly hurt… I don’t understand.”
“Has he called the department counselor?”
She sounded more hopeful. “Yes, this morning. He didn’t tell me what they talked about.”
“That’s a good sign, though. Shows he knows he’s in trouble. I am sorry, Wendy. I totally misjudged how hard this hit him-people react so differently. Look, tell him I called, that I totally understand, and I think he’s doing the right thing. I’m putting him on administrative leave as of now. That way, he won’t have to worry about showing up at the office, and neither of you will have to worry about his paycheck. Okay?”
“Sure… I guess so.”
“I’ll tell the counselor what I’ve done, just so he knows. Do you think if I dropped by, that would be a good idea?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not right away.”
I quickly retreated. “Just an idea. If it’s better that we all stay away-”
“No, no. I think he should see you. But maybe after a couple of days.”
“Of course. I’ll let you call the shots. If there’s anything we can do, though, don’t hesitate. And let me know if he gets any worse.”
I added a little more forcefully, “And if he stops getting help, I need to know that, too.”
“I understand. Thank you, Joe.”
“Sure. And call any time-day or night.” She murmured something unintelligible and the line went dead. I hung up and stared at the phone for a moment, wondering about all the unacknowledged agonies I’d just glimpsed.
I looked directly at Jack Derby. “Are you going to hand this over to the feds?”
He looked from me to Tony Brandt and back. We were all three sitting in Tony’s office, and Tony was pretending to dig around inside his pipe bowl with a small scraping tool. “Seems like a reasonable option,” Derby admitted slowly, his political sensitivity heightened by the presence of no fewer than three television sound trucks in the parking lot outside. “It smacks of organized crime-that’s a Washington hot button right now. I thought the FBI might be interested.”
“All right,” I countered, “but if you make that call through conventional channels, it’ll be to the Bureau’s Rutland office-Brattleboro’s in their jurisdiction. That means their senior resident agent, a guy named Joshua Bishop, gets the case, which in turn means we never see it again, because Bishop doesn’t work with locals. He doesn’t trust their security, their integrity, or their ability-he was burned one too many times when he was working in New York.”
Derby was slightly confused. “So what’s your proposal?”
“We approach the FBI through its Burlington-based supervisor-that’s Bishop’s boss-using the VSP as a conduit. I talked to Dan Flynn this morning about it, and he’s interested in helping out-”
“Why?” Derby suddenly interrupted.
“Because he sees this-like I do-as being bigger than just Brattleboro-that it’s a statewide problem in the making and that it needs to be nipped in the bud. Also, he has a selfish interest in seeing VCIN shown in a good light. He still has some old-school superiors with strong reservations about his informational lending library.”
“All right,” Derby conceded, still probing for where I was heading, intrigued by now despite himself. “But why will the FBI’s Burlington supervisor be any better than Joshua Bishop?”