The Dark Root Read online

  Cautiously, I brought up the rear, jogging along the footpath I was pretty sure they’d taken. As I cleared the woods and came into the parking lot of the fancy restaurant near the dome, I saw both of them ahead of me, Truong leading, limping, running incongruously toward the erstwhile American Pavilion.

  The dome had burned several years ago, the fire gutting its contents and removing its plastic skin. Gradually being rebuilt, it had been left open to the elements, its latticework of interlocking tetra- and octahedrons a visual wonder and a magnet for pigeons. An odd, space-age structure had been erected within its cocoon—an upended, ten-story-tall concrete, steel, and glass box, almost like a diving tower, with various appendages sticking out from its sides—observation booths, staircases, balconies—the most prominent of which was a long, wide platform, free floating on thin pillars, hovering some seventy feet above the ground like an enormous diving board.

  As I watched, Truong leaped through the dome’s dizzying latticework and staggered up a metal staircase that led—switchback on switchback—up to that celestial platform. He paused at several points to fire in Diep’s direction to keep him sufficiently at bay. Only when he was near the top did he wait too long. Diep took advantage of that one extra split second to step clear of his barricade and squeeze off a lucky shot that caught Truong in the back.

  Truong staggered on, finally gaining the protection of the winglike concrete projection.

  As I watched from the shelter of an empty information booth at the edge of the parking lot, Diep moved out into the open, looking back at me, trying to gauge how best to get at Truong, as cognizant as I was of the approaching sirens. But his nemesis had chosen well. As odd at it had seemed at first, the platform was an ideal defensive position, especially for a man no longer seeking to escape. Utterly protected, approachable from one highly exposed avenue only, it forced Diep to either commit or abandon.

  Perhaps responding at last to his own sense of fatalism, Diep committed. Turning his back on the reality around him, he began climbing the staircase.

  I ran to the south side of the dome, where the platform jutted out without seeming function or purpose. Stepping through the veil of interlocking steel triangles, craning my neck to look up, I could see only the lip of the concrete slab and, in the distance, to its rear, the small figure of Diep, climbing.

  Like a spectator at a movie in which I could not affect the outcome, I watched and waited for the inevitable.

  There was a movement above me, at the railing on the platform’s edge, as far from the stairs as possible. A hand gripped one of the tubular cross pieces, and I saw Truong pull himself with grim deliberation to a sitting position and wedge himself against one of the uprights. Instinctively, I knew he must be mortally hurt. Let Diep come on, his long crawl along the platform’s length said.

  But I was wrong, yet again. From high on his perch, with Diep cautiously advancing, Truong turned away and looked down at me, his gun in his hand.

  Curiously, I felt no danger. I looked up at him, as if responding to some incomprehensible communication, and I spread my empty hands wide, indicating I had no weapon.

  I thought I saw him smile then; he gestured with the gun, as if offering it. Although I made no response, he dropped it to me anyway. It landed in the gravel near my feet with a crunch. Reacting by reflex, I walked over and picked it up, popped out the clip, and saw it still had several rounds.

  I looked back up at him, noticing that Diep was no longer visible on the staircase. He had obviously made it to the platform. Only now did I understand. Take out this man in my name, Truong had implied, in my brother’s name, perhaps in your fellow slain officer’s name. Kill the man who would kill me, for I no longer have the strength.

  I stared up at him in wonder. He was right, of course. With his gun, now I had the advantage over Diep, who was cornered. But he was also wrong. While our roles might have appeared similar, our motivations couldn’t be. I didn’t share the passion, the beliefs, the cultural obligations that had brought him to this place. I wasn’t even sure I understood them—not as he did.

  Looking up at him, our eyes locked, the air around us now vibrating with sirens coming from all angles, I shook my head, and dropped the gun.

  There was a moment’s pause, before he turned away resignedly. Seconds later, several shots rang out, Truong’s body spasmed briefly, and one arm slipped out between the railing, dangling lifelessly in the air, its hand open.

  I turned at the sound of cars squealing to a stop behind me, and saw both uniformed and plainclothes officers spreading out in tactical positions, making me doubly glad I’d dropped Truong’s weapon. I recognized Lacoste among them and then saw Frazier, Spinney, and Lucas all stepping out of their van.

  Following their gaze, I looked back to the edge of the huge, floating platform. Standing next to Truong’s dead body, Lo placed both his hands on the railing’s top rung, still holding his gun. He looked down at the impressive display of vehicles and police officers fanned out below him.

  I heard Lacoste’s distinctive voice, slightly blurred by a loudspeaker, demanding Lo’s surrender. But predictably, almost anticlimactically, Lo exploited his other option, bringing this cataclysm to an end. He raised his gun, took aim at the crowd beneath him, and died in a last angry outburst of bullets.

  30

  GAIL PULLED OVER TO THE CURB and cut the engine. “He wanted to meet you here?”

  I looked past her at the gentle curve of Morningside Cemetery, the ragged rows of individual and sometimes idiosyncratic monuments, the hulking, dormant mass of Mount Wantastiquet beyond. The air was tinted with the perfume of spring in full flower. “I called Megan Goss about him yesterday, after he asked me here. I wanted to run his symptoms by her to see what she thought. She said it sounded like he was in mourning—for a loss of innocence, maybe, compounded by what had happened to Dennis, and exacerbated by having a new baby on the way. Her guess was he wants to tell me he’s quitting the department. I guess a cemetery’s as good a place as any to do that.”

  Gail studied my face for a moment and then reached across and squeezed my hand. “He’s not the only one in mourning, is he?”

  I smiled slightly. “I suppose not. I hadn’t allowed any time for it till now.” I paused and then added, “I’d hate to lose Ron as well.”

  Gail released my hand. “You better find out what he wants.”

  I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

  I found Ron Klesczewski crouching at the foot of Dennis’s grave, staring distractedly at the broad river far below. I sat down next to him, using a neighboring stone as a backrest. “Hey, there.”

  He didn’t turn his head. “Hi, Joe.”

  "Guess you heard we closed the case, shut down the task force. We found Amy Lee, too—scared, but all in one piece.”

  “I saw it in the paper,” he answered tonelessly.

  I didn’t know what else to say, and despite my gloomy prognostication to Gail, I had no idea how this was going to end. The last thing I wanted was to precipitate a gesture he hadn’t been intending.

  Groping for something benign in the silence, I finally said, “Willy put a donut in the coffin.”

  Ron slowly turned away from the view and stared at me. “What did you say?”

  “Willy said he put a donut into the casket when no one was looking at the funeral home, tucked just out of sight under the bottom lid panel. He thought Dennis would appreciate it.”

  Ron shook his head, puzzled. “I thought Kunkle hated Dennis.”

  “Dennis was a cop. Willy never dumped on him about that.”

  Ron’s anguished face cracked a smile. “A donut? Jesus Christ.”

  “Honey glazed—right on his chest, where he could reach it. And a napkin.”

  Laughing now, Ron sat down against the stone next to me and stretched his legs out before him.

  Seizing the moment, or maybe just wanting to get it over, I asked him, “You gonna’ quit the department?”

&n
bsp; The laughter stopped, but the smile lingered encouragingly. He shook his head, his eyes fixed before him. “I was going to this morning. Even told Wendy.”

  “What did she say?” I asked in the silence that followed.

  He looked up at me. “Not to do it. She said she’d never seen me happier than the day I made detective. That it wasn’t something to give up just because I was in the dumps.” He rubbed his forehead. “That surprised me. She was one of the reasons I was thinking of quitting—Wendy and the baby.”

  “Not bad reasons,” I murmured, thinking of Gail.

  He sighed. There was still something unaddressed—some issue we’d stepped over that I hadn’t noticed.

  “What is it?”

  “I feel guilty.” His words were barely audible above the soft breeze from the river.

  “Because you lived to worry that you almost got killed? You gotta see the irony in that.”

  He smiled again, but I knew I hadn’t quite hit it. I had picked Ron as my Number Two a few years ago, over Brandt’s reservations, and I’d worked hard to make him feel comfortable in the role—perhaps too hard. I thought back to Truong Van Loc, and his relationship to his brother, on whom he’d pegged so much. I realized I too had been selfish, albeit a little less dramatically. Ron’s anxiety was as much my fault as a result of his own insecurities. I hadn’t paid attention to the price he’d been paying for a decision all my own.

  “I’d be happy to switch things around a little, if you’d like—take you off as my second,” I told him.

  He turned to me, surprised—and I thought a little relieved. “You sure that would be okay?”

  “You’ve got a lot on your mind, especially with the baby due. Good time to step back a bit—not be so wrapped up in the job. Maybe Sammie’d be interested. You think she’d take it?”

  He laughed. “In a heartbeat.”

  I got up and walked to where the hillside fell off sharply to the railroad tracks and the near shore of the river, a hundred feet below. That was it, then. Life would resume for us all again, if in modified form.

  At least almost—for there was loss lingering still, and a few things left I had to set right.

  · · ·

  The Lee residence looked much as it had the last time I’d seen it—abandoned, neglected, in mourning, sitting among its tidy neighbors like a scream in the night no one wanted to acknowledge.

  Amy Lee sat next to me, tired and wan, her face reflecting the ethereal glow from the dashboard’s instrument lights. Unmolested and in good health, she’d been found in Da Wang’s stronghold in Montreal by Lacoste and his people. It had taken time for them to confirm her identity, and for me to get to her and vouch for her. The paperwork to bring her back had prolonged things further, forcing me to precede her back to Brattleboro. An INS agent had finally picked her up at the border and driven her here in his car, rather than having her ride a bus, as was standard.

  I’d intercepted her at that point, not wanting some anonymous federal employee delivering her home. My motives were also self-serving, of course. Having visited both Tony in the hospital, where he was fully recovering, and Dennis’s family at their home, I was engaging in a quest of sorts, taking an inventory of my world, making sure that what was left of it was secure and in place and on the road to recovery—reestablishing that the differences between me and Truong Van Loc were as broad as I’d once imagined them.

  Amy looked over at the still house, its few lights barely glimmering from behind tightly drawn curtains.

  “You okay?” I asked her, anxious that this reunion, of all things, should go right, and that this young voyager between cultures—a victim and a beneficiary of both—should recover. For all our sakes.

  “I think so,” she murmured.

  The door to the house opened, spilling light onto the shaggy lawn, and the outlines of two small, slightly bent people reached toward us. Amy, hesitant no longer, bolted from the car and ran to them, her own shadow melting into theirs. Slowly, as a group, weakened by exhaustion, happiness, and jittery relief, the three of them slumped to their knees in the grass, their arms intertwined, their heads buried in each others’ hair.

  I stood by the car, smiling inanely in the darkness, rewarded at last by some palpable measure of success. All the misery and loss that had led to this one, small embrace was by no means a total redemption, but what I was seeing at least gave it some meaning.

  I was getting ready to leave when Thomas Lee’s pale, oval face turned to look at me. He slowly disentangled himself, and came over.

  For a split second, I was apprehensive. The police had meant nothing but trouble for this man, whether here or in the country of his birth, and despite the joy of his daughter’s return, I was braced for the worst.

  He stopped short of me, his expression shaded and hard to read. Then abruptly he stuck out his hand. In the dim light, I could just see the glimmering of tears on his cheeks. “Thank you, Mr. Gunther, for keeping your word.”

  The handshake was warm, and firm, and brought with it the measure of peace I was seeking. “Thank you, Mr. Lee.”

  Excerpt

  If you enjoyed The Dark Root, look for The Ragman's Memory, the seventh in the Joe Gunther series.

  The Ragman’s Memory

  “JOE? YOU’VE GOT A VISITOR.”

  I looked up from the paperwork spread across my desk. Harriet Fritter, the squad’s administrative assistant, stood in the doorway with a half-smile on her face.

  I glanced at the calendar thumb-tacked to the wall before me, wondering what appointment I’d forgotten. There was nothing under today’s date.

  Harriet stepped aside and gestured to a small, skinny girl with large, thick, wire-rim glasses, looking very serious. I guessed her to be about twelve years old. Her shoulder-length, straight dark hair was still dusted with the snow that had been falling heavily outside for the past twenty-four hours. She was holding a small brown grocery bag tightly with both hands.

  “Lieutenant Joe Gunther, this is Norah Fletcher.”

  I half rose from my chair and shook the girl’s slim hand. She had a firm grip, which both surprised and pleased me. “Miss Fletcher. Please have a seat. Would you like to take your coat off?”

  I gestured to my guest chair as Harriet faded from view. Norah Fletcher declined to remove her overcoat, and sat nervously on the edge of the seat, the brown bag between her knees.

  “How can I help you?” I asked.

  Her dark eyes rose from her rubber boots, which were creating small puddles on the carpeting. She studied me with great intensity. “I know about you from newspaper stories, and I thought you should see this. My mom said I shouldn’t, but I think something’s wrong.” She thrust the paper bag out to me.

  I took it from her gingerly, noticing its light weight, and placed it on my desk. “What is it?”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly, with a child’s surprise at my not tearing into the package without pause. “It’s a bird nest, but I want you to look at it before I say any more.”

  I was impressed, both at her poise and her unusually mature strategy. Still, yielding to a cop’s instinct to control, I prolonged Norah Fletcher’s anticipation.

  “May I call you Norah?”

  She nodded without comment.

  “If your mother was against the idea, how did you get here? You live nearby?”

  “I walked from school. My mom thinks my lunch was in there.” She nodded toward the bag.

  It was mid-afternoon. “Doesn’t she expect you back home?”

  She hid any irritation at my delay, refusing to join the game I was only half-consciously playing. “I walk to the library every day. She picks me up there after work. She’s a secretary.”

  “Where’s home, Norah?”

  “Hillcrest Terrace-off the Guilford Street Extension.”

  “Just you and your mom?”

  She nodded, with the smallest flicker of a smile. “And Oreo. My cat.”

  Maybe it was this resurfaci
ng of the child from behind the serious face that made me abruptly cave in. I reached for the bag. “Let’s take a look.”

  I peered into the dim opening, saw a cluster of dry grass and twigs, and poured it out into the hollow of my hand.

  “It’s a chickadee nest,” Norah explained. “I have a birdbox on a post in my back yard, near the field. A couple of chickadees have been using it for years. I clean it out because they like to build a new one each year. That’s why it looks a little weird-kind of boxy.”

  I placed the nest on my desk and poked it with my finger, studying how the birds had woven their intricate home together. Its outer sides had retained the distinct shape of a surrounding small box.

  “Turn it around,” Norah urged, for the first time showing a little impatience.

  I did so gently, rotating it on the table top without picking it up. As its far side came into view, I better understood Norah’s interest in what I’d seen as a perfectly normal abandoned nest.

  The overhead fluorescent lighting caught it first, revealing among the scratchy, dull-colored hay a swatch of something smooth and reflective. I leaned forward to look at it more carefully.

  “It’s human hair,” she stated with certainty.

  I didn’t argue with her. It appeared she was right.

  I sat back, opened my desk drawer and withdrew a Tiger Milk bar, which I offered her. “You must be hungry.”

  She nodded and took the bar with another fleeting smile. As she peeled back the gold wrapper, I thought about her discovery, and what it might mean to us.

  The fact that human hair was intertwined within a nest didn’t come as a surprise. My own mother had cut my brother’s and my hair outdoors so the birds could use it during the spring, and my father had once had a hunk of hair painfully plucked out by a bird while he was working in one of our fields.