The Dark Root (2 page)

Refocusing on me, the sardonic smile returned. But I got him to react, which gave me a momentary advantage. “It wasn’t my country anymore,” he murmured.

“Was it hard getting out?”

The cold, blank eyes widened, and he further opened up. “They can make magazine stories and movies, but none of you will know.” It was the longest sentence I’d gotten out of him so far, and it betrayed a passion—and a hesitancy with the language—that he’d been keeping to himself.

“Did you leave your family behind?”

Smith finished with the last passenger and sent him back toward us—I could hear him muttering excitedly to Diep—but I had Truong on a small roll now, and I didn’t want to give him up.

“My brother come with me.”

“The others didn’t make it?”

He shook his head, his eyes straying off into the distance. “They stayed.”

“Is your brother in California?”

Again, I’d caught him off guard. His face hardened. “He is dead.”

“How?”

But I’d taken him further than he wanted to go. He blinked once, scowled at me, and growled something incomprehensible over my shoulder at his companions, who instantly ceased their chatter. I stepped away so I could see all three of them. The last one was the youngest—in his teens or early twenties—more excited and nervous than Diep, but with Truong’s shark-dead eyes. The backs of his hands had tattoos peeking out from under the cuffs of his coat—a frequent, if unreliable, sign of gang membership.

I spoke louder to include the other two. “You’re lucky you didn’t come through here a few hours ago—we had a pretty good storm.”

The young man gave me a dismissive look, his hands flitting about his waist, as if looking for someplace to rest. “You don’t know shit, man: We get worse snow than you all the time. This shit is nothing.”

Truong hissed a single word. The young man shook his head like a startled, angry horse, and clammed up.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“I already told the other guy.” His accent, unlike those of the other two, came straight from American television.

“Now you can tell me.”

“Henry Lam. And I don’t have no ID.”

“Lieutenant?”

I glanced over at Smith, who was backing out of the car. “Wait here,” I told the three men. “One of us will be right back.”

Keeping my eyes on them, I met Smith halfway to the Nova. “What’s up?”

“When I was looking around the back seat, a panel fell open under the bench. There’s nothing behind it, but it’s pretty obvious what it’s for.”

I borrowed his flashlight and traded places with him. Squatting down, I could clearly see what Smith had discovered. A hinged panel lay flat on the floorboards, revealing a cavity about two feet deep, running the entire length of the seat. I lay on my stomach and slid forward until my head was almost inside the compartment, but moving the flashlight around, I couldn’t find a trace of anything suspicious.

I finished Smith’s search of the interior for him, removed the keys from the ignition, and walked to the car’s trunk, pointedly not asking permission for this expansion of the search, as was standard. But the trunk, aside from the spare tire, was blatantly empty—no rags, no soda cans, no excess tools, none of the usual debris we all end up carrying around for no discernible reason. There was also no luggage. In fact, for a five-year-old private vehicle, this car was about as aseptic as a rental unit. Even the glove box had been meticulously emptied.

I closed the trunk, checked the engine compartment purely for the sake of thoroughness, and then returned to the now-shivering, sullen, and silent little group under Smith’s watchful eye.

I dropped the keys into Edward Diep’s hand. “If you’d return to your car and wait just a few minutes more, we’ll process your paperwork. Feel free to restart the engine and crank up the heater. Thanks for your cooperation.”

All three of them shuffled by. Truong Van Loc paused a moment to look me in the eye—the mocking, superior expression back in place. “No luck?”

I resisted the bait. “Have a nice evening.”

I turned off the video camera in my cruiser and sat next to Smith as he filled out the speeding ticket and sent the Nova on its way north. Finally, he slid back in behind the wheel, stored his clipboard, cleared with Dispatch, and let out a sigh.

“What did you get out of the kid?” I asked.

“Mostly a lot of ‘shit this’ and ‘shit that.’ But for a guy who talked like a bad movie, I had the feeling he’d cut my guts out for the thrill of it. Still, compared to the one you were talking to, he was a charmer. They gave me the creeps. Sorry I bothered you for nothing.”

“Don’t apologize. After you stopped them, did you talk much with the driver?”

“Diep? Yeah. I gave him the usual lines, and he fed me the usual ‘who, me?’”

“In fluent English?”

He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Fluent enough.”

I nodded, half to myself. “Figures. Where did Henry Lam say he was from?”

“Boston.”

“One from Boston, one from Philly, one from Oakland, California. Did Lam say they were headed for Montreal?”

“Yeah—for the day.”

“My guy said three or four days—with no luggage. Visiting friends?”

Smith shook his head. “Business.”

“So much for getting their stories straight. The nasty-looking one didn’t even know Diep’s name.”

We stared in silence at the blank road ahead of us. Smith had killed his lights, so now only the moon played off the tapering snow banks, pointing the way north like an arrow for three men with a mission.

“So what were they up to?”

“I don’t know. At least we got three names and a few details we can feed into the system. Maybe that’ll give us something.”

The brief pause that followed emphasized the slimness of such a chance.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” I finally added, “I bet somebody in Montreal’s going to be real sorry those three get there.”

THREE MONTHS LATER, WITH
the snow nestled only into those nooks and crannies where the sun couldn’t reach it, I got a call at home,
our
home, I was becoming used to saying, which Gail Zigman and I had recently bought on Orchard Street in the quasi-rural no-man’s-land between Brattleboro and smaller “West B,” to quote the locals.

The caller was Sergeant George Capullo, an experienced patrol veteran of many years. “Sorry to bother you, Joe.”

It was after midnight. I blinked at the jet-black skylight above the bed, trying to clear my brain. “What’s up, George?” Gail rolled over beside me, her eyes still shut, and slid a naked thigh across my legs.

“We got a call for a disturbance on Wantastiquet Drive about forty minutes ago. A neighbor reported a big commotion and people screaming next door. By the time we got there, everything was quiet and the homeowners wouldn’t let us in.”

“Who’re we talking about?”

“Thomas Lee and family. Owns the Blue Willow. He’s got a split lip and a bad cut on his forehead, but he won’t cooperate—doesn’t want an ambulance, won’t let us in, and claims he fell downstairs. If both he and the neighbor are telling the truth, I’m guessing he took a good half hour to hit the floor.”

“The neighbor see anything?”

“That’s why I phoned. She saw a dark-green sporty number with out-of-state plates peeling out right before we showed up. She didn’t get the registration, but she thought she saw several heads through the car’s back window. Normally, I would’ve forced the issue and demanded entry, to see if everybody was okay, but I really don’t smell a domestic here. I think something else is going on, and I thought you might like an early crack at it.”

I reluctantly slid free from Gail, still speaking softly on the phone. “Okay, George. I’m on my way.”

Wantastiquet Drive is not a neighborhood the police are called to visit much. A gentle, peaceful street, trailing off the heavily traveled Putney Road, its postwar, middle-class homes are the sort one typically associates with suburban New Jersey. The lawns are littered with swing sets and bicycles, and basketball backboards hang like recreational targets over cluttered two-car garages.

The address George had given me was on the Connecticut River side of the street, although the implication was misleading—any potential view of the river was blocked by several rows of tall, sound-absorbing trees, planted to block the noise from the train tracks at the foot of the steep embankment.

I parked my car behind George’s, a few houses down from the Lee residence. He was sitting alone with his lights out, the gentle country music from his radio occasionally drowned out by some terse murmuring on the scanner. I squatted down by his open window. From what I could see, every single light was on at the Lees’, in contrast to the tomb-like darkness of its neighbors. The effect told less of a nest of night owls, and more of a forlorn desire to ward off evil with artificial brightness.

“Any movement?”

George shifted the chew of tobacco he had stuck in his cheek. “Nope.”

“You said a neighbor heard people screaming. She understand any of it?”

“Not a word. And the car could’ve been from anywhere. She only knew it wasn’t Vermont because the numbers were dark on light, instead of the other way around.”

“Didn’t get the make of the car?”

He laughed softly. “It was dark green, low-slung, and had four wheels. She’d probably swear to that much on a Bible.”

I straightened back up. “Well, let’s give it another shot.”

We cut across the lawn to the house’s front door, taking advantage of the angle to peer through the windows as we went. But translucent curtains, while they let the light out, didn’t show much of what was going on inside. I paused for a moment before ringing the doorbell. All was quiet.

It took several attempts at the bell and my pounding on the door to finally rouse a response from the other side.

“Who is it?”

The voice was male, slightly high-pitched, and hesitant. “This is Lieutenant Joe Gunther, of the Brattleboro Police. Could I have a few words with you, Mr. Lee?”

“We already spoke to your men.”

“I realize that, sir, but you have to understand that this is an unusual situation. We need to talk.”

I guessed it was no more than the man’s innate sense of politeness that got him to reluctantly open the door, if only a crack. His injuries, to my unfortunately practiced eye, had all the earmarks of a classic beating.

“I fell down the stairs,” he said in careful English. “I am sorry I disturbed others, but I am all right—in perfect health.”

“Is the rest of your family here?”

“Yes. We are all here. Everyone is okay.”

“May I come in, Mr. Lee?”

There was a cry of pain from somewhere behind him. Lee whirled around, obviously near panic, and called out something in Chinese. A woman’s voice answered. Through the gap in the door, I caught a glimpse of a house in turmoil—two crooked pictures on the one wall I could see, a side table leaning drunkenly on a shattered leg, the hallway rug wadded up and shoved against the baseboard.

Apparently appeased by the unseen voice, Thomas Lee swung back to block my view again. “I have nothing more to say, Lieutenant. Thank you for your concern.” The door moved slightly.

I blocked it with my foot. “Mr. Lee, please. Your closing that door won’t make this situation go away. We know you didn’t fall down any stairs, unless you were pushed. We know several people in a car with out-of-state license plates were here before our first unit arrived. I can plainly see that your house has been ransacked and that someone inside is in pain. Based on all that, we cannot walk away from this.”

The stress on Lee’s face tightened into anger. “We have broken the laws?”

I adopted my most diplomatic tone of voice, hoping to avoid a show of force. “Mr. Lee, look at this from our side. You are a prominent and respected citizen of our town. You have a wife and daughter. It’s our job to protect all of you, if necessary from one another.”

His eyes widened in horror at the implication. “I didn’t do anything to my family. What are you meaning?”

I spread my hands. “How can I answer that? You won’t talk to me. Either your wife or child is hurt in there, it’s the middle of the night, and there was enough noise here to wake up the neighbors. Normally, that adds up to a domestic dispute. Considering the way you look, and the fact that you’re the strongest member of the family, I hate to think what shape the others might be in.”

“This is wrong. You are wrong,” he shouted.

“Then prove it. Let us in. Let me talk to them.”

His face jammed up with frustration. Thomas Lee was no stranger to us. The Blue Willow was a popular, highly profitable restaurant, and almost everyone I knew had at one time or another enjoyed at least one meal there. It also employed a huge and faceless staff of Asian workers, some of whom we suspected had bogus papers. One of the INS’s two Vermont-based investigators had dropped by the restaurant recently, but what he’d found—beside a suddenly diminished crew that day—hadn’t been enough to warrant any action. Nevertheless, it was a common law-enforcement assumption that the Blue Willow was one of dozens of way stations along the Montreal–Boston–New York illegal-alien pipeline.

Lee, of course, knew of our suspicions and no doubt guessed that our present interest fell a little shy of the altruism I’d just spouted. But he also knew we had him over a barrel. Slowly, as if yielding to a great weight, the door finally swung back.

Without a word, he stiffly led us back to the kitchen. Throughout the house, furniture was broken, pictures smashed, closets emptied and their contents ripped and torn, and spray paint had been used on the walls. If this attack had taken a half hour, it seemed a short time for such utter destruction. The people responsible had obviously been experienced.

The kitchen was in similar turmoil, its cabinets empty, the floor covered with a gritty, slippery mixture of food. The refrigerator stood wide open, there being nothing left inside to protect from room temperature.

At the counter separating the breakfast nook from the rest of the room, an exhausted and anguished middle-aged woman was daubing the face of a teenage girl with a wad of alcohol-dampened cotton. The girl, whom I guessed to be about sixteen, was strikingly pretty, despite the livid bruise on one cheek and the cut on her chin that her mother was trying to tend. The girl’s expression, however, was unmistakable. It was the same blank-eyed look of desolation and loss I’d seen haunting too many victims of sexual assault.