“They never said if they were Vietnamese or Chinese or something else?”
“No.”
“That’s all right. Did they say where they were from? Or what they did for a living? Places they’d been recently? Any kind of chitchat you can recall.”
“Bobby did all the talking, I remember. The other two just laughed or said stuff in Chinese or whatever. He said they traveled around a lot, but when I asked what they did, he just said they were traveling businessmen.” Her face became suddenly animated, and she leaned forward. “That’s how the gun came out. Bobby was talking about business, and how he was going to make a lot of money soon. I was getting scared and pretty drunk, so I don’t remember exactly how it all fit together, but there was a definite connection-the gun was going to make him a lot of money.”
I couldn’t suppress a pleased smile. Just like Henry Lam, Chu Nam An seemed to be playing a bigger role in death than the one that had cost him his life. We still had one missing player in Benny Travers’s death, and if Chu was him-and had been paid for his services-that made it murder for hire, which was a federal crime, and yet another tidbit I could use to interest the FBI.
“Okay. Can you remember exactly where you were when Bobby did his target practice? Did he hit anything?”
She broke into a smile. “That’s easy. After they threw me out, I remember actually laughing about it. He’d shot at the broad side of a barn.”
“Did he hit it?”
“He couldn’t miss-that was the joke. We were parked right next to it.”
The next morning, I steadied the ladder as J.P. Tyler carved away at a post in the dimness of an old broken-backed barn on the outskirts of Rutland. Sandy Rawlings watched from the side, along with the quizzical owner of the property.
Following Candy’s directions the night before, I’d driven Sandy out to the barn to confirm her story and had found that Chu Nam An had done much better than hit the “broad side of a barn.” Clearly visible in my headlights, we’d found a tight, ragged cluster of five bullet holes puncturing the old boards.
J.P. pocketed the chisel he’d been using and began descending the ladder. “Aside from the fact that it made for a hell of a lot of digging, you couldn’t have asked for a better target.” He paused halfway down and pointed to the opposite wall, where the group of bullet holes sparkled with the morning sun behind them. “First those boards slowed the bullets down, and then that beam was so rotten, it was like hitting cotton wool.”
He continued down and, at the bottom rung, held out his hand. Two slugs were nestled in his palm. “Almost perfect condition. The other three rounds missed the beam and went out the other side.”
“Can you tell what they’re from?” I asked, sure I already knew.
“A Glock-no two ways about it.”
19
Walter Frazier's voice was filled with mock incredulity. “I guess this proves how crazy they are at headquarters.”
“You’re kidding,” I burst out, tightening my grip on the phone. “They bit?”
“All the way to the sinker. ’Course, matching the Rutland bullet to the one from Travers’s body and faxing the news to DC was a nice piece of work. They loved it, and to be honest, losing one of your own men had a big impact.”
I didn’t miss the irony of Dennis’s newfound stature in death. “So what’s next? A background check from the U.S. Marshals?”
“That’s pretty much done. I asked them to get it started after you and Dan left my office. A little unorthodox, but I thought it would help you hit the ground running.”
“Jesus, Walt, I’m really grateful. I know this only worked because you pushed it.”
He laughed at the other end. “Don’t kid yourself. They’ll be dancing in the streets the day I retire. Anyhow, I thought you’d like to know. I’m generating the appropriate paperwork now, but you better call Dan and find out how their office is going to coordinate things as lead agency. Keep that in mind, by the way-if the state police don’t like you for some reason, either now or down the line, they’re higher in the pecking order than you are, and I’ll have to listen to them. So be nice.”
“Does that mean you’re running the task force personally?” I asked, reading into his choice of words.
He laughed again. “You think I’d risk putting one of my fresh young agents with you? Forget it-I have some loyalty to the flag.”
I thanked him again and hung up, finally feeling the white-hot anger born of Dennis’s death beginning to cool-if only a little. There were no guarantees this task force would end in success, but at least a failure now wouldn’t be for lack of trying. That realization alone bore an element of peace.
The Vermont State Police are headquartered on Route 2, between Montpelier and Burlington, in the village of Waterbury, about a mile from Exit 10 off Interstate 89. The most memorable detail about its location, however, is not that it’s part of one of the ugliest, antiquated state-office-building complexes I’ve ever seen, but that it shares a driveway with the state mental hospital-a geographical coincidence that has forced the VSP to put up with more than their fair share of bad jokes.
Dan Flynn came down to the locked reception area to escort me up to his miniature empire on the second floor-two rooms crammed with computers and filing cabinets, manned by Flynn and a gnomish, silent man named William Shirtsleeve-a statewide phenomenon known to everyone as “Digger.”
Digger was nearing retirement, after spending all but the last three years of his adult life as a patrolman. For decades, he’d driven the roads of Vermont, moving among the regional barracks as part of his organization’s standard rotation, but never moving up the ranks, never aspiring to, or even accepting, a single desk job.
Unmarried, rarely socializing, William Shirtsleeve had lived to do one thing-be a street cop. Wherever he was stationed, he spent every hour he could away from the barracks, visiting people at their homes, dropping in on businesses-legitimate and otherwise-and visiting kids in schools, taking a special interest in the ones who showed the potential of becoming future clients.
Without taking notes, or making a display of his intentions, Shirtsleeve slowly began to accumulate what keyboard operators now call data. He began linking names to families to places to events to organizations to trends, constantly soaking up knowledge, until he became a walking encyclopedia of Vermont’s less-than-genteel society. For this quiet prowess he was eventually nicknamed Digger, and relied upon by colleagues from around the state to come up with the answers they couldn’t discover on their own.
When Dan Flynn was given permission to set up VCIN, he had only one man in mind to assist him-the one man he was told would turn him down cold. But Dan had asked anyway, and Digger had said yes without hesitation or explanation. For the past three years, as taciturn as ever, he’d plied his computers with the same dogged zeal he’d once applied to the communities he’d patrolled. Dan’s own personal theory was that, knowing his retirement was near, Digger had felt the need to deposit his hard-won knowledge someplace useful, and that VCIN had appeared as if by prophecy.
Like some ancient elephant imparting wisdom to later generations, Digger was describing the world as he knew it to the memory chips of Dan Flynn’s electronic files.
Knowing all this, however, never helped me in dealing with the man himself, who now-as in the past-responded to my greeting by keeping his eyes firmly glued to the monitor’s screen, and muttering, “Uh-huh.”
Dan, the exact opposite in all ways, laughed, slapped me on the back, and steered me through to his inner office, a seven-by-nine-foot aggravated closet entirely decorated in Boston Bruins paraphernalia, from stuffed bears to pennants to magnetic hockey pucks to bumper stickers taped to the window.
“Quite the character, huh?” he stated, as always not expecting a response. “Don’t know what I’d do without him. Three years into this project, and half our information is still inside his head.”