I stared at him, the final large piece falling into place with satisfying logic. “Did he order the hit on Chinatown Gang?”
“He was in a position to. Truong undoubtedly knows more about that than we do. We also found out that of the two known Dragon Boys shooters from San Francisco we thought were still alive, one was found badly decomposed two months ago in a Florida swamp-a confirmed drug killing. It took them till last week to match dental records. The last one hasn’t been seen in years-even his own family thinks he’s dead by now.”
I raised my eyebrows at Spinney. “Profit may be part of what’s driving Truong Van Loc, but revenge is starting to look pretty reasonable.”
24
Our first stop in Battleboro was the high school, and Amy Lee. Unfortunately, the hopeful enthusiasm that had fueled another long jaunt down the length of the state was met with sudden and ominous disappointment. According to the school’s principal, Amy had stopped coming to classes a week ago. Calls to her home had netted only a succession of excuses, from sickness to a trip to an ailing relative, all of which had suggested a call to us, something the principal had been planning to do the next day.
We assured him we would find out what had happened to her. Personally, however, I was nervous. Given the battle we knew was forming-and some of the techniques we’d already witnessed-the taking of hostages didn’t seem too farfetched.
We began by interviewing Amy’s friends, comparing the various explanations they’d received concerning her sudden absence. Stimulated by the inconsistencies we found there, we discreetly visited the neighbor who’d blown the whistle on the home invasion earlier, and discovered that Amy had not been seen or heard from for the past week. During that same period, however, strange cars had been stopping by the Lee house for brief visits, most of them sporting Canadian plates.
The Lee house itself, with its shaggy lawn, drawn curtains, and utter lack of life, looked like an abandoned property up for sale.
“Do we interview the other neighbors?” Spinney asked as we sat in my car. “If she was grabbed, maybe one of them saw something.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to tip any more people that we’re interested.” I moved to turn the key in the ignition and then stopped. “The one we do want to interview is Thomas Lee.”
“Thought he told you to pound sand.”
“That was before. He might’ve changed his mind. ’Course, chances are now he has a whole new reason not to be chatty.” I picked up the mobile phone, got the number for the Blue Willow Restaurant through Information, and called, asking for Thomas Lee.
“This is Lee,” the familiar voice answered eventually, sounding halting and tired. I disguised my voice by dropping it a few malevolent notes lower. “Thomas. We need to talk. About Amy.” There was a pause and a hint of panic in his response, which confirmed our suspicions. “Is she okay? Who is this, please?”
“Depends on you how she is, Thomas. You know the Old Guilford Road, out to Fort Dummer?”
“Yes.”
“Go there now-take it all the way to the end and wait.” I hung up. Spinney gave me an admiring smile, something I didn’t feel I deserved. “You oughta’ be in pictures.”
Fort Dummer was Vermont’s original white settlement, a blockhouse built in 1724 as a lookout against invaders from the north with designs on the more populated Massachusetts farmland to the south. Named after William Dummer, who with William Brattle and two Bostonians had bought a large chunk of what would become southeastern Vermont, the blockhouse stood as fitting, if symbolic, testimony to the vagaries of human enterprise. Left to stand forgotten in the woods for its first quarter century, the original site was now underwater, after the Vernon Dam drowned it in 1911. Still, sentiment being the historical apologist it can be, misty-eyed citizens eventually established both a monument to Fort Dummer and a small park in its name at the bottom of a dead-end road south of town. It was there that I’d instructed Thomas Lee to meet us.
The Old Guilford Road is long, sparsely populated, has no side roads beyond a certain point, and allowed us a perfect opportunity to see if Lee was being followed. We could also get there faster than he could, which is exactly what we did, parking unobtrusively among other cars in the lot of a converted farmhouse, now home to the Vermont Agricultural Business Education Center.
Ten minutes after our arrival, Thomas Lee drove by, alone, hunched over the steering wheel like an octogenarian trying to see the road.
“Jesus,” Spinney muttered, “he doesn’t look too healthy.”
We waited another quarter hour, during which no other car drove by, and then we pulled out of the lot to join Lee at the park.
“What’s our approach?” Spinney asked as we drove the extra half-mile along an ever-narrowing road, gradually getting squeezed between a ragged string of occasional modest homes and I-91, which ran like a broad river just to our right and slightly below us.
“Fast and hard. My bet is he’s only reacting now to whoever pushes the most.”
We passed the open wooden gate and the sign welcoming us to the park. It being early in the season, there was no one manning the small booth astride the dirt road that led to the small parking area beyond. The place was abandoned. Almost.
I spotted Lee’s car with its nose against a distant railing, and pulled up quickly on his passenger side, so he could get a clear view of me.
His eyes widened predictably, and he shouted, “You. Get away. Get away. You’ll kill her.”
He fumbled with his ignition, trying to start the engine so he could drive off. I piled out of our car, crossed over, and slid into his passenger seat. Spinney, more leisurely, came around and got into the back as I put my hand on top of Lee’s and switched the motor off again.
He pulled his hand away as if I’d burned him, which in a sense I knew I had. “What are you doing? I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Then listen instead,” I said quietly. “No one’s watching us. We made sure of that. I’m no longer working for the Brattleboro Police, Mr. Lee. I’m a federal agent on an FBI task force, and I’m going after the same people who grabbed your daughter.”
Lee was breathing fast, almost hyperventilating. His hands were back on the steering wheel, hanging on tight. “They will kill her if I talk to you. That is what they said.” His words were choppy, as if torn off and set adrift.
“They don’t know we’re talking, and it’s too late now anyway. If they were watching, she’s history. It’s not up to you, Mr. Lee. It never has been.”
I let those words sink in. Slowly, his breathing calmed, and his hands slid to the bottom of the wheel before finally dropping into his lap. He looked down at them, as if surprised they were there. “Why do you do this?”
“Because it’s the only thing to do. You’re caught between two big rocks, Mr. Lee, and the only way your family can survive is to have at least one of them removed. You don’t help us help you, you can pretty much forget about Amy. How’s your wife?”
He shook his head. “Not good.”
“Amy goes, she goes, too. You know that.” I looked at him, so lost in his woes he barely knew we were there any longer, and I decided to take a gamble. “Mr. Lee, when we first met, your house had been destroyed, your daughter raped, your wife beaten and traumatized, and you had been coerced into using your restaurant to break the law.”
His head lifted and he stared at me.
I kept going, encouraged. “Since then, one of the three men who did that has died. The others are feeling the heat. But you’re not being squeezed by those people anymore, are you? You’re back under the control of Da Wang. Only now, instead of just harboring illegal aliens now and then, or turning a blind eye to the occasional dope deal in the kitchen, you’re being turned into a full-fledged crook. They claimed you’d been disloyal. That they didn’t trust you anymore. That you’d have to do more for them. And that Amy would be their guarantee of your cooperation. Am I wrong, Mr. Lee?”