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  Praise for

  THE CATCH

  “The Catch [is] as authentic as it gets.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Superior…will leave fans feeling fully satisfied.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Mayor’s skills are equal to the vigor of his imagination, and we take his word for every twist, every turn, every thunderbolt.”

  —New Yorker

  “Elegant, even lyrical prose … a new Joe Gunther is always good news.”

  —Booklist

  “Suspenseful … Mayor’s New England eye mercilessly details what he sees without the ‘calendar nostalgia’ that usually clings to such villages and backwaters … The clever plot expands like a dark whirlpool and reveals the underbelly of Vermont and Maine.”

  —Providence Journal-Bulletin

  “As with all Mayor’s novels, the plot remains fresh and timely. Through his in-depth knowledge of police work, forensics and the medical field, combined with his ability to evoke the Vermont landscape, Mayor deftly brings the reader deep inside the story, taking us along the trail of meticulous detective work needed to bring out the truth.”

  —Brattleboro Reformer

  … and for

  ARCHER MAYOR

  and his other Joe Gunther novels

  “Mayor is a devil of a plotter.”

  —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

  “Superb…Mayor spins out parallel storylines and weaves the strands together with deft precision.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review) on

  The Second Mouse

  “An intricate, first-rate thriller…a riveting plot and exceptional writing.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review) on

  The Sniper’s Wife

  “The writing is strong, with sharp social observations throughout…Gunther grows on you from novel to novel.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Mayor keeps getting better with age…Few writers deliver such well-rounded novels of such consistently high quality.”

  —Arizona Daily Star

  “From first to last, [Mayor’s] novels are page-turners, and each page resonates with the author’s authority… His storytelling talents and his sheer craftsmanship combine to make his Joe Gunther books hard to put down.”

  —Tampa Tribune

  “Archer Mayor is one of today’s most reliable—and most underappreciated—crime writers. His low-key police procedurals, which utilize their off-the-beaten-track setting to great advantage, are always entertaining, and his protagonist and iconoclastic supporting cast are unfailingly good company.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  Other Books by Archer Mayor

  Chat

  The Second Mouse

  St. Albans Fire

  The Surrogate Thief

  Gatekeeper

  The Sniper’s Wife

  Tucker Peak

  The Marble Mask

  Occam’s Razor

  The Disposable Man

  Bellows Falls

  The Ragman’s Memory

  The Dark Root

  Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

  The Skeleton’s Knee

  Scent of Evil

  Borderlines

  Open Season

  THE CATCH

  A Joe Gunther Novel

  Archer Mayor

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE CATCH

  Copyright © 2008 by Archer Mayor.

  Excerpt from The Price of Malice copyright © 2009 by Archer Mayor.

  All rights reserved.

  For information address St. Martin’s Press. 175 Fifth Avenue. New York, NY 10010.

  EAN: 978-0-312-36515-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  Minotuar Books edition/October 2008

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition/September 2009

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press. 175 Fifth Avenue. New York. NY 10010.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Nancy, with love and thanks

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No Joe Gunther book would have ever come into existence without the advice and expertise of dozens of people, and The Catch is no exception. I always hope that I honor the time, effort, and input that such kind folks so willingly give me by reflecting with some accuracy their contributions. That having been said, I know I stumble regularly. With that in mind, I thank those below, and so many others, while accepting full responsibility for any gaffes my readers might encounter in the following tale. Mike McGonigle

  Mike McGonigle Julie Lavorgna

  Nancy Aichele Steven L. Waterman

  John Martin Phil Crossman

  Darrell Crandall Jim Acheson

  David Dent Ralph Bridges

  Bill Parker Brian Smith

  Marci Sorg Kathryn Tolbert

  Janet Champlin Phil and Sue Peverada and family

  Ed David Chris and Lisa Montagna

  Harry Bailey Ray Walker

  Castle Freeman Eric Caron

  Paco Aumand Paulina Essunger

  Brian Andersen

  Harold Polley

  Also:

  The Maine Drug Enforcement Agency

  The Maine Marine Patrol

  The Maine State Police

  Maine Public Radio

  The Vermont State Police

  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

  The Vermont Forensic Laboratory

  CHAPTER 1

  Deputy Sheriff Brian Sleuter was looking for a better country/western station when the Toyota flew by, spraying a few roadside pebbles against the front bumper of his cruiser.

  “Jesus Christ, Bud,” he said softly, turning on his headlights, putting the car into gear, and hitting his blue lights—all in a single, well-practiced gesture— “why don’t you flip me the bird while you’re at it?”

  He fishtailed into the road from his hiding place, his rear tires spinning before gaining purchase, and took off down Vermont Route 7 with a burst from the Impala’s built-up engine, the Toyota’s rear lights already fading fast into the late-night summer darkness. This stretch of road—straight, isolated, and well paved—was a magnet for speeders.

  It was long after midnight, and Sleuter had been waiting patiently for just such an opportunity. In the split second that his well-trained eye had glimpsed the interior of the car, illuminated only by its own dash lights, he’d caught sight of two people, both young males. That, combined with the Toyota being older, dark-colored, and nondescript in appearance—and that it was headed south from the direction of Burlington and possibly Canada—helped him think he might be about to tag his first drug runner in five weeks.

  That had been way too long for a certifiable, self-admitted
Type-A personality like Brian Sleuter. He saw himself as a man on the make, and the faster that he created a name for himself, the sooner he could move up to some outfit like ATF or DEA where he could really throw the book at the bad guys.

  The Toyota grew in size before him as he pushed the accelerator to the floor. Official police denials notwithstanding, high-speed rundowns had their thrills. The engine’s unleashed roar, the sudden blurring of scenery on both sides, pulsing to the strobe bar’s steady beat, heightened the defiant, indomitable sense of superiority that washed through Sleuter every time he put on his uniform. He’d been told that wasn’t a good thing—that it ran counter to the whole professional, courteous, protect-and-serve bullshit the boss spouted at monthly trainings—but he knew what he knew, which was that a gun and a badge made for a good argument in a fight, and that he had no interest in being a social worker.

  Call him a jackass if you had front teeth to spare, but at least he was no loser.

  The Toyota began slowing down, pulling over to the side of the narrow road. Ahead of them both, a pair of headlights crested a distant hill, aiming their way. Sleuter instinctively charted their progress, as he was simultaneously watching for any suspicious activity from the Toyota, but all the on-comer did was slow as they always did upon sight of the blue lights, before sliding by timidly as Sleuter angled his cruiser to a stop behind his quarry.

  He hit the spotlight switch by his left window, freezing the car before him in a blinding halo, and removed the radio mike from its cradle.

  “Fifty-one—Dispatch.”

  “Fifty-one. This is Dispatch.”

  “I’m Seventy-five Massachusetts passenger Romeo Foxtrot Zulu, Three Eight One, a mile or two north of the Route 17 crossroad on Route 7.”

  “Ten-Four, Fifty-one.”

  At least Dispatch was on the ball, Sleuter thought as he opened his door, not shooting the shit with someone or taking a leak, as usual. He glanced at the camera screen glowing high and near the center of his windshield, to make sure the icon representing his body recorder was on. He wasn’t a huge believer in high-tech gadgets—he hated computers, for example—but he’d won more than one case in court because of voice and image recordings.

  He emerged from his car and paused, studying what he could see of the two men caught in the harsh glare. Unfortunately, that only amounted to the backs of their heads. He needed to know what their hands were doing.

  He circled around to the rear of the cruiser, keeping out of his own lights, and closed in on the Toyota from its right side, thereby avoiding being seen in the driver’s outside left mirror—the place most operators checked to monitor an officer’s approach.

  When he came even with the car’s right-rear bumper, knowing he’d entered the cruiser’s camera frame, Sleuter did one more thing out of long habit: he reached out with his left hand and pressed it against the metal of the vehicle. This strict official protocol, a gesture born of painful past experience, reflected how many times cops had been shot and/or killed during a stop, and their evidentiary fingerprints later found on the suspect’s car.

  Each time Sleuter touched a vehicle this way, he did so consciously, as aware of the bet he was hedging as when he donned his ballistic vest before every shift.

  He stopped again to scrutinize what he could see of the interior of the car, and to add to the discomfort of its occupants. He also glanced around quickly. There weren’t any trees along this stretch—it was open, rolling countryside, cupped between the Green Mountains to the east, and the Adirondacks across Lake Champlain to the west. At night, that made it overwhelmingly black and vast and helped make Brian Sleuter feel like the most exposed object for miles around.

  Returning to the task at hand, and secure that he’d seen no obvious signs of danger from inside the passenger area, like the glint of a gun or a suspicious posture or movement, he turned on his small, powerful handlight and shined it directly into the car, starting with its rear seat.

  Again, he saw nothing untoward.

  Both heads swiveled in his direction as he walked up to the passenger window and tapped on it with his light, standing even with the back door to make of himself a harder target. The window whirred down.

  “Hey, there, officer,” the driver spoke across the chest of his companion, who merely stared ahead after the briefest glimpse in Sleuter’s direction—an immobility Brian found telling.

  “Evening,” he answered. “I’d like to see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.”

  The driver, a young man with a mustache and a silver post twinkling in the nest of his left eyebrow, smiled and nodded. “Sure thing, officer.” He reached over and opened the glove box before the Sphinx-like passenger.

  Sleuter followed the man’s hand with his flashlight beam and watched it fish among an assortment of documents and food wrappers, eventually finding a wrinkled envelope and pulling it out. The driver extracted the requested paperwork and handed it over.

  Sleuter glanced at the Massachusetts license he held in his left hand, having wedged his light under his left armpit—thereby keeping his gun hand free at all times. “This your current address, Mr. Marano?”

  “Nah. I moved. The right one’s on the registration. I’m still getting the license changed.”

  Sleuter nudged the passenger on the shoulder. “How ’bout you? You got any identification?”

  The passenger finally looked up at him fully, his expression tense. “I didn’t do nuthin’.”

  “Didn’t say you did. Got any identification?”

  The man hesitated. He, too, was young, like the driver, but sported a goatee and no piercings that Sleuter could see. He did, however, have the edge of a tattoo poking just over the top of his T-shirt. It looked like part of a snake. He was also sweating, which Sleuter found noteworthy. It was summer, fair enough, but that didn’t have the same meaning up here as it did farther south—the nights generally ran cool, just like now.

  “Sure. No problem,” the man said and reached for his back pocket, lifting himself off the seat in the process.

  Sleuter stepped back, watching them carefully. Every nerve in his body told him he had something cooking here, people with criminal records at least, and probably more.

  He took the other man’s driver’s license when it was handed to him and repeated his earlier question: “You still at this address, Mr.—” he paused to read, “Grega?”

  “Sure,” Grega answered, once more looking straight ahead.

  Sleuter paused a moment, considering his approach. What he was hoping for was a consent search. What he knew he should request was backup. But he was reluctant to pursue that. If this panned out the way he was hoping, he didn’t want to share the credit.

  “What happens when I run you two through the computer?” he asked. “I gonna find anything?”

  “Not me, officer,” Marano said with his quick smile. “You can check all you want.”

  “Yeah,” Grega answered more ambivalently. “Check all you want.”

  Sleuter nodded, mostly to himself. Those were pretty standard responses. And didn’t mean much. People either thought that out-of-state records didn’t cross the border, or that Vermont cops were too dumb to even operate a computer. Or both.

  “Okay,” he told them. “Stay put. I’ll be right back.”

  “Take your time, officer,” said Marano, his courtesy tinged with contempt.

  Sleuter backed away, keeping his eye on the car as he went, not fully turning away until he felt he was safe. As before, he circled the rear of his cruiser to regain his seat, still not wanting to give his suspects the slightest flash of his silhouette.

  “Fifty-one—Dispatch,” he radioed after closing his door behind him.

  “Dispatch.”

  “You have a twenty-eight? Twenty-seven, RO.”

  Dispatch gave him the registration first, as requested. “Massachusetts passenger Romeo Foxtrot Zulu, Three Eight One, is a 2004, two-door Toyota Solara, color black, regis
tered to James Marano and valid until 2009.” She gave him the address in Boston, on Dorchester Avenue—nicknamed “Dot Ave” among cops, and infamous as a drug and gang hotbed. It matched what appeared on Marano’s registration.

  “The twenty-seven,” she continued in the same flat voice, referring to the registered owner’s—or “RO’s”— operator’s license, “is valid in Massachusetts. No priors in Vermont.”

  That was the first layer, and usually the most useless. Sleuter opened his mouth to ask her to dig deeper when he simultaneously noticed two things that made him abruptly straighten in his seat—the passenger in the Toyota was no longer visible, and there was a sudden movement to his left.

  But that was all. The bullet entering his temple put an end to everything else.

  CHAPTER 2

  Matthew J. Mroz left the restaurant where he’d enjoyed dinner, stepped out into Rockland’s Main Street, and took in a deep lungful of warm evening air. His last name rhymed with “morose,” not inappropriately given his profession, but it had been chopped down to Roz by his associates, who were prone to catchy monikers.

  Mroz was a drug dealer—successful, ambitious, ruthless, and careful. Originally from Portland, Maine—the state’s largest city—he’d migrated down the coast to Rockland several years ago, recognizing the crowded nature of his birth town’s illegal marketplace, and also that the products being sold there—largely the cocaine and heroin so trendy in the states just south of them—were overlooking a far hungrier clientele.

  Early on, Matthew Mroz had come to understand that, on a per capita basis at least, Maine had one of the largest prescription drug abuse problems in the country.