The Dark Root (3 page)

Thomas Lee wordlessly introduced his family with a vague wave of one hand. I nodded formally to both women and introduced myself. The mother didn’t answer; the girl didn’t seem to know I was there.

I stepped closer to them, gently putting my hand on Mrs. Lee’s to interrupt her ministrations. “I need to ask you some questions.”

She shook her head. “No question.”

“Mrs. Lee,” I continued, intending my words more for her husband and daughter than for her, since I remembered hearing she understood little English. “I think I know what happened here. Your home was invaded and you were attacked. Your daughter may have been hurt in ways you don’t want to think about. Is that right?”

“No question.”

I stood in front of the daughter, forcing her to look at me. I kept my voice to just above a whisper. “I’m Joe Gunther. What’s your name?”

She took a long time answering, as if trying to separate me from a crowd of other pictures all shoved together in front of her. “Amy.”

“Amy, would you like to see a doctor?”

Her eyes flickered over to her father, who didn’t move a muscle. Nevertheless, I gestured to George, who immediately escorted Thomas Lee docilely into the other room. Before the door shut behind them, I could hear George starting a conversation, trying to get Lee to open up. I hoped one of us would get lucky, but I wasn’t counting on it.

“What do you say, Amy?”

She shook her head ever so slightly. “No,” she whispered.

“What happened here is wrong, but we can only help you if you help us.”

“No.”

“You realize this won’t just go away?”

Her eyes seemed to regain their focus slightly. She looked at me with more care.

Instead of answering my own question, I tried a tangent. “These people aren’t like vandals on a joy ride. You saw how fast they worked, how thorough they were. They’re professionals. Do you think there’s anything you can do against them on your own?”

Her voice was barely audible. “No.”

Reluctantly, I played on her fears. “What do you think will happen when they come back?”

Her mother was looking from one of us to the other, at least getting the gist of what I was saying. She put her hand flat on my chest. “No question.”

Her daughter said something conciliatory to her, but Mrs. Lee’s action seemed to have stiffened Amy’s resolve, I hoped to my advantage. I was immediately disappointed.

“My mother’s right. We have nothing to say.”

Knowing what she’d just gone through, I couldn’t keep the frustration from my voice. “Amy, please. I understand your parents’ reluctance. I’ve been to Asia. I know the distrust they have for most cops. But you’ve lived here most of your life. You know what we stand for. We’re the ones that can stop this from happening again, to you or someone else.”

But she shook her head. “Talk to my dad. I won’t go against him.”

“That’s what my partner’s doing right now. You wouldn’t be going against him, anyhow. Do you want these characters to kill your father next time? Or to assault your mother the way they did you?”

She winced at the image, and I was angry at having to use it, but the knowledge that I was about to leave here empty-handed was beginning to burn inside me.

As if in confirmation, she shook her head one last time. “I’m sorry. I cannot speak with you.”

I looked at both of them—their faces haggard, bruised, fearful, but set—and let out a sigh. “All right. I won’t add to your problems.” I pulled out my wallet and removed a business card. “If you want to talk to me for any reason at all, even if it’s unrelated to what happened tonight, please call. I really am here to help.”

I took out a different card and wrote Gail’s name on it. “You know about Women for Women? The women’s crisis organization? Gail Zigman is on their board. She’s also a rape survivor. You can call her or them and ask for help, too. They know what you’ve been through. They’re caring and supportive and they have nothing to do with us. Everything you tell them will be confidential. They will only be interested in your recovery. If you won’t talk to us, at least promise me you’ll give them a call.”

She gave me a small smile and nodded at last, taking both cards.

I reached out and gently touched her shoulder. “Good luck. Think about what I said. Get your folks to let us help.”

I left them to go into the other room—the remnants of a dining room—and found George and Thomas Lee standing against opposite walls, looking like they’d been the cause of the shambles between them. Lee’s expression was a sterner, darker version of his daughter’s determination; George merely rolled his eyes in frustration when I looked at him.

I crossed over to the restaurant owner. “My guess is these people told you to fall into line or be targeted again. Am I right?”

Predictably, he didn’t answer.

I pulled out another business card—one of my own. “You can reach me here, day or night. I’ll give the dispatcher your name and instructions to locate me, no matter when. Okay?”

He took the card and nodded.

There was an awkward silence. I rubbed the back of my neck and turned toward the front hallway. “Good luck. I hope all this is worth risking your family.”

Outside, I paused on the lawn to take in a deep breath of cold air.

George Capullo shook his head wonderingly—a lifetime small-town cop, whose experience ran deep but narrow, and didn’t include Asians. “I’m not real clear on what happened in there.”

“I’d say a home invasion—standard Chinatown extortion. Three or more creeps kick down a door, trash the place, rape and/or beat the occupants, rob them blind, and if there’s a business involved, apply a little pressure for future regular payments. Kind of like how Al Capone made gin joints subscribe to his ‘protection’ service during Prohibition. I’ll order some surveillance of the restaurant to see what comes up, but I doubt they’ll be that obvious.”

“I thought home invasions only happened in Boston and places like that. What’s to be gained here? We don’t have a Chinatown. You think one of the other Chinese restaurant owners worked him over—a little hard-nosed competition?”

Startled by the suggestion’s compelling simplicity, I turned and looked back at the house, as silent now as its occupants, and found my memory returning to the speed stop on the interstate back in January, and to three close-mouthed Asians whose presence had reeked of violence. In the weeks that followed, I’d discovered that Truong Van Loc, while never convicted, was suspected of having organized-crime connections in California, and that another man with the same family name—presumably the brother he’d mentioned—had been killed in a gang-related shooting years ago. Two days following that conversation by the roadside, the Montreal Police had reported finding one of their own Asian gang members killed execution-style, with a bullet in the back of his head.

I glanced at George and began walking back to the cars. “I don’t know, but my gut tells me we’re in for a lot worse than that.”

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER THE SNOW
vanished completely, replaced by the first crocuses poking up through the remnants of winter’s drab coat. The days became longer and warmer in fits and starts. The town of Brattleboro, sprinkled across a crazy quilt of hills, ravines, and twisting streams in Vermont’s southeastern corner, turned gradually leaf-green, hiding its two-century-old industrial grit under a brand-new flourish of spring-fresh foliage. Its residents, shut inside for months, began trickling out into the streets and playgrounds and parks, to look around at the world like newly awakened bears—a small segment of whom were eager for a first square meal.

In response to them, our business began its seasonal adjustment.

Petty vandalisms, car break-ins, graffiti rampages, parking-lot parties, back-street drag races—all the warm-weather crimes endemic to a large quasi-rural town of thirteen thousand people made their annual reappearances. The self-styled teenage homies came out feeling restless, and got busy venting the cabin fever they’d been storing up over the winter. All according to established routine.

And all of which made the phoned-in report of an explosive car fire in the middle of Route 30 enough to empty the office of almost everyone who didn’t have to stay there.

Especially since the driver was reportedly still in the car.

Route 30 is the main artery from town heading northwest into Vermont’s interior. It is a favorite route of skiers in winter, leaf-peepers in the fall, and kayakers and canoeists in the spring, the last of which are attracted by the broad, shallow, rock-strewn West River, which hugs the road along the valley floor for over twenty-five scenic miles, north of Brattleboro.

But this time, negotiating the breakdown lane alongside a growing line of stalled drivers, my attention wasn’t drawn to the rushing water. Violent deaths in this area were still rare enough to get the adrenaline pumping, and regardless of what had caused it, I knew this fire was going to be front-page news, and a number-one concern of the town manager, the selectmen, and the press, until we put it to rest.

About two miles out of town, pinched between a fifty-foot-high cliff to the west and the river to the east, I found a flattened, still-flaming, blackened hulk of a car, seemingly pinned in place by a tall, thick, tapering column of black, oily smoke.

Parked around it, looking paradoxically festive, stood a shiny collection of fire trucks, rescue vehicles, and police cars, all festooned with variously colored flashing lights. A few firefighters dressed in turn-out gear and breathing apparatus were casually hosing down the wreck from a safe distance. It was clear neither the car nor its driver would benefit from any more heroic effort.

The initial excitement over, the other responders were killing time, standing together near one of the trucks, waiting until things could be cleared away and the road reopened. A maintenance crew and a flatbed truck had already been requested, and traffic was being rerouted along the Upper Dummerston Road, which luckily paralleled Route 30 along this one stretch, above the cliff to my left.

I found an unobtrusive place to park and approached the group. Patrolman Sol Stennis, an enthusiastic one-year veteran of our force, was among them.

“Some mess,” he commented quietly.

I glanced over at the smoking car. In the few gaps the breeze created in the acrid cloud surrounding it, I could clearly see the charred skeletal remains of the driver, slumped over the blackened steel hoop of the steering wheel.

“You find out anything?” I asked him.

He removed his hat and rubbed his forehead. “I asked around when I first got here, but I couldn’t find any witnesses to the actual explosion. I talked to the people who called it in on their car phone—a couple from Williamsville—but they came up on it after it was already burning.”

“There was no other car?”

“Not that anyone knows of, and there’s no impact debris that I could find. I tried looking at the blacktop for skid marks, but by the time I got here, it looked pretty much like this.”

We were standing on a thin film of foul-colored water extending in all directions, obliterating anything that might have been underneath. The road was straight and flat along this section, well paved and wide-shouldered. It was the middle of the afternoon, the weather was clear, and there were no trees, telephone poles, or boulders nearby that the car might have struck. And yet, it looked like it had lost a fight with a freight train. Beyond the damage the flames had done, it was twisted and bent beyond all reason.

Stennis followed my gaze. “Think it might have been a car bomb?”

I shook my head. “It looks more pushed in than blown apart. I wish we could get close enough to read the plates.”

I looked up at the nearby cliff. It was a mix of beige rock and clinging vegetation, the latter of which thickened near the top, becoming a row of spindly trees that peered down at us like quiet, elderly onlookers.

Except for one of them. I crossed the road toward the river, glancing over my shoulder until I had a flatter angle.

Stennis tagged along. “What is it?”

I pointed to the cliff ’s distant edge. “See how that tree’s been torn up? Lower limbs ripped away on one side, bark stripped near the bottom? And a little below it, caught on that bush about halfway down. See that branch?”

“Damn,” Stennis muttered next to me. “The son of a bitch must’ve come off the Upper Dummerston Road.” He studied the otherwise unblemished cliff, visualizing the arc the car must have taken to end up where it was now. “Jesus. He must’ve been flying.”

I ignored the unintended pun. “Where’re you parked?”

He pointed to a patrol unit just north of the logjam of emergency vehicles.

“Good. We’ll take your car and circle around from the north.”

We were threading our way between trucks when I looked over my shoulder for one last glance at the scene. The
Brattleboro Reformer
’s Alice Sims, just leaving her own car, caught sight of me and came running, waving her note pad.

“Shit,” I muttered. “Hang on, Sol. I better make a no-comment.”

“Joe,” Sims called out as she caught up to us, “what happened?”

Alice Sims was the local newspaper’s “courts-’n’-cops” reporter, a job she’d inherited from Stanley Katz, who’d since been bumped upstairs to editor-in-chief. Like Katz, who in his prime had defined the word
shark
, Alice could be fiercely tenacious. Unlike him, she didn’t find it necessary to be personally offensive in the process. Dealing with her—especially with memories of him—was a comparative pleasure.

“Don’t know yet. I just got here.”

“Was it a bomb?”

I raised my eyebrows, feigning surprise at the very subject that had come up not two minutes earlier. “Whoa, Alice, this isn’t Detroit. We’re starting with the premise of a car accident. There is absolutely nothing to indicate a bomb at this point.”

She turned to face the still-crackling fire, her voice incredulous. “You saying that was a fender-bender?”

I shrugged and pointed to the fire chief standing by the largest of the trucks. “Ask him. He was here first. We’re just beginning our homework. I’ll let you know what we find out.”