The Company She Kept (28 page)

“But not HSI's?” Allard asked. “You were the one who said you didn't want Nichols burned as a CI. How 'bout if he's charged in the most sensational murder in the state's history, and HSI is identified as having kept him under wraps?”

LaBelle avoided answering directly. “Ours is a large and complicated organization,” he said unnecessarily. “I don't have the autonomy you do. I'll have to get back to you on that.”

Joe controlled his frustration. “Can you give us a vague time frame?”

LaBelle glanced around the table and rose to his feet. “I'll move right on it.” He began heading for the door.

“A phone call wouldn't do the trick?” Joe asked.

The HSI agent paused at the door. “Not in this instance, but we'll be fast. I promise.”

He was gone with that, leaving the remaining three to look at one another silently.

Until Joe muttered, “I wish he hadn't said that last word.”

*   *   *

“So,” Willy challenged him as he reappeared in the VBI office upstairs a few minutes later. “What secret clubhouse did you just disappear into?”

Joe smiled grimly. “That obvious, huh?”

“We have
got
to play poker together sometime soon. You don't look happy, by the way, just in case you think you're keeping that to yourself, too.”

Joe stood in the middle of the small room and addressed them all. “HSI just told me they have Stuey on board as a CI, and that they'll be getting back to us about how we can have a crack at him regarding the Raffner homicide.”

“Wow,” Lester said quietly.

“Fuck that,” Willy added more succinctly.

Sammie was more directed. “Why're they laying claim to him?” she asked. “Don't they do border-related stuff?”

“It's Ruiz,” Joe said. “And it is border-related, as we found out when we pegged the marijuana to its Mexican roots.”

“They're using Stuey to get at Manny Ruiz?” Sam asked, almost incredulously.

“They're hoping to. They obviously weren't going to give me details, but they're clearly putting a lot of faith in the man.”

“Have they met him?” Sam asked no one in particular.

“That's crazy,” Willy stated. “They can't trump a murder investigation. One call to a paper would blow them right out of the water.”

Joe gave him a severe look—and avoided repeating Allard's threat. “Don't even think about it. They're not saying we can't have access, or saying their case trumps ours—that much, they made clear. Right now, they're just claiming chain-of-command problems. The guy I talked to wants a boss on board.”

“That's bogus and you know it.”

“I don't disagree,” Joe admitted. “And I'd love to know what they're really up to, but our hands are tied.”

“It's not that complicated,” Willy said bitterly. “They don't want to lose their case against Ruiz to our murder. It's a time and money thing, and I bet they've spent a ton of each chasing Manny.”

Lester was shaking his head, his sense of fair play shaken. “I know the feds can play hardball, but I've never heard of them screwing anyone over that bad. She was a state senator, for Christ's sake.”

“They don't give a rat's ass,” Willy maintained.

“Okay, okay,” Joe intervened. “None of that reflects what they said to me, but let me see what I can find out. In their defense, it is a top-down bureaucracy—not the nimblest of outfits. I think we're being a little paranoid.”

“What do we do in the meantime?” Sam protested.

Joe addressed all three of them. “What I said earlier: We keep going on all cylinders, but we also make sure that Stuey fits the details of the crime. If we stick enough of the evidence to him, we won't need permission from HSI to talk to him. We'll get a judge to do that for us by issuing an arrest warrant. We owe it to the case to explore every possible avenue.”

*   *   *

“You heard the man,” Willy told her. “He said every possible avenue.”

He and Sam were sitting together in his car in the municipal building's parking lot, masked from view by a thin layer of snow across the windshield. Not that discretion was key for the moment—the TV trucks and earlier hordes of reporters had tired of standing around hearing “no comment.”

“You know that's not what he meant,” Sammie responded. “Like he was really going to give you a license to kill. After all these years?”

“Whatever,” Willy replied. “The point is: We know who we want, and we need to go get him. The feds're goin' to push this around for as long as they can—like hiding a pea under a shell.” He stared at her to make his point. “This sorry fucker murdered somebody, Sam.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “Maybe.”

Predictably, he ignored her qualifier. “So, let's track him down.”

*   *   *

Joe copied the Burlington phone number for HSI off his computer screen, in order to call and arrange a meeting with their head agent—a man he'd never met, but who he'd heard had been transferred to Vermont just recently.

For a man like Joe, who'd only worked for two outfits during his entire career—both of them in the same building—the idea of being shuttled among and between federal bureaucracies and across the map was foreign and disorienting. Joe came from the soil whose residents he policed; he shared a culture with the people he worked with, learned from, and occasionally arrested; and he used that inner, instinctive knowledge to help resolve many of the problems he confronted daily—from knowing who to call when he needed a saw blade sharpened, to who to consult when a mutual acquaintance had decided he didn't want to be found.

As a result, reaching out to a newly appointed outsider in order to gain access to a local felon felt counterintuitive. On the other hand, he'd seen the expression on Willy's face when he'd broken the news of HSI's involvement, and he knew that he didn't have much time before Kunkle—and probably Sam, who was visibly falling prey to Willy's independence—took the same kind of initiative that had resulted in Stuey's being identified in the first place. Those two—as they saw it—were on a roll.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Sam was not happy. Sitting alone in her car in the middle of the night, parked on a side street in downtown Holyoke, Massachusetts, she was adrift in her own misgivings.

Days ago, she'd been a happy mother and a respected cop, beset by no more than the usual self-doubts and challenges, and otherwise settled, well situated, and secure.

Now she was colluding in a rogue investigation, across state lines, in flagrant violation of her employer's wishes, all because she'd let an impulse born of an ancient embarrassment be hijacked by the one man who interpreted acting as a renegade as just thinking outside the box.

The cell phone in her lap spoke up, “You there?”

“Yeah,” she said, almost regretfully.

“We got movement by the front door.”

Willy was around the corner, crouching in an abandoned apartment opposite Manuel Ruiz's stronghold. Willy's old sniper-school training—not to mention his inborn paranoia—had served him well in taking several hours to identify how best to approach Ruiz's address unnoticed. This had turned out to be a worthwhile caution, since he'd discovered that Ruiz had posted sentries around the neighborhood. Some had been predictable, assigned to a few surrounding rooftops; others had been more inspired, such as the bum Willy had spotted, seemingly passed out in a doorway at street level, but with well-cared-for fingernails, a military unit ring, and a strategically thought-out sprawl that favored his ability to quickly produce a concealed weapon.

In an urban environment, however, one can only place so many outposts. There are simply more nooks and crannies than manpower to control them. Willy had found himself such an overlooked crow's nest.

Still, he was impressed. Despite what movie directors tried to make their fans believe, most crooks in this country do not and cannot set up a fortress as had Manny Ruiz. It is generally too complex, too expensive, and too visible. In this case, though—and in this town—Ruiz's discretion and Holyoke's economic limitations had combined to make it possible.

“Is it him?” Sam asked.

Willy had night-vision binoculars trained on the building's entrance, which was now flanked by a group of casually menacing men, who'd formed a human corridor between the front door and a large, presumably armored SUV parked by the curb.

“If it isn't,” Willy replied, “he's entertaining somebody with a serious hard-on for security.”

Sam didn't respond, entering combat-ready mode herself.

“Wait for it…” Willy's voice announced like a game show's master of ceremonies. “Bingo. One Manuel Ruiz, stepping out for a little tour around his kingdom. You got your motor running?”

“Roger that.”

“Pick me up at the corner in ninety seconds.” The phone went dead.

*   *   *

Joe stood by the window of Beverly's bedroom, gazing out sightlessly at the cold gray water of Lake Champlain.

Beverly came up behind him and looped her arms around his waist. “In an old movie, I'd offer, ‘Penny for your thoughts.'”

He chuckled despite himself and held her wrists affectionately. “Doubt you'd get your money's worth.”

“Seriously,” she prompted. “Is it the case?”

“That's what everything is now,” he admitted. “Although I won't deny that it's gotten a little more complicated with Homeland Security sticking their oar in the water.”

She peered around to study his face. “Homeland Security? Really? Did the senator's death become a terrorist attack when I wasn't looking?”

He brought her up close to him, so they were facing the broad window side-by-side. “No—that's just what the title ‘Homeland Security' does to people. Those guys chase after what the rest of us do. They just have a different jurisdiction—usually involving the border somehow, or at least what and who crosses it. Turns out the marijuana we found at Susan's was Mexican in origin.”

“Ah,” she said. “Ergo the border reference.”

“Anyhow,” he further explained, “it looks like they've already got some of the people we're interested in under a microscope, which means everybody's got to compare cards to see who's got the winning hand.”

She scowled. “You have a murder.”

“I know. Which is probably why this'll be ironed out in our favor. But somebody's got to say it in so many words, and maybe put it in writing, and we've got to agree how to inflict the least possible damage to each other's investigation. And last but certainly not least, there's the unwritten rule about who's got the bird in hand, which in this case is them.”

He gazed at her and waggled his eyebrows, adding, “I therefore called in for support—just before this morning's meeting.”

“Oh?”

“I did unto her as she's done unto me in the past,” he said. “I phoned the governor for a favor.”

Beverly laughed and dug her fingers into his side. “You wheeler-dealer. Do tell.”

“I owed her a call anyhow,” he began disingenuously. “Both to find out how she was faring and to explain how and why we had issued a BOL for Stuey Nichols.”

“How did she take it?” Beverly asked seriously.

“Better than I thought. She's actually sounding more like her old self. I think the coming out has helped, as has some of the advice she must be getting from outside experts. She told me she was no longer considering offers from people like Ellen DeGeneres and
The Daily Show,
so that Vermonters won't think she's stepping out on them, taking advantage to attract national attention. Smart.”

“Very,” Beverly agreed, “since she also let it leak out that she turned those offers down. I heard about it on the news last night. So what's the favor you asked for?”

“Just to drop a line to the local boss of Homeland Security Investigations—the fellow I'm seeing in an hour. I'm letting her choose the wording, but I asked her to pass along how much VBI would appreciate their timely cooperation in solving Susan's murder.”

Still smiling, Beverly was thoughtful as she said, “Just what you need to be worrying about. Politics. Why is that always such a factor in what we do? Still, it sounds like you're doing well.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “So why do I think something else is chewing at you?”

Joe paused before replying, “It's not the feds that have me worried. I feel like there's something out of whack, somehow—something I'm not seeing. I just can't put my finger on it.”

*   *   *

They'd opted for an underpowered rental, rather than anything smacking of police-issue. There were no high-speed chases anticipated, and, if any cropped up, he and Sam weren't going to join in. They were just another couple in the traffic heading toward Springfield.

“How many people're with him?” Sam asked, looking straight ahead.

“Three in the SUV, two more in the tail car.”

“Heavy artillery?”

“Probably under their coats. That's what I'd do. They are clearly a cut above the usual street mopes.”

He could tell she had more questions—where they were going, what they were about to do, why the hell she and Willy were doing this in the first place. But she didn't ask any of them, and he didn't make chitchat. He had his own coping mechanism during an operation, and it didn't involve getting increasingly wired. On the contrary, while he wouldn't have called it meditative, the end result was similar—Willy just became calmer as the action loomed nearer.

That helped her, as well, since she was no more capable of achieving Yogic tranquility under these circumstances than she might've been at suddenly speaking Chinese. As a result, his seeming calm was a good influence.