Chat Read online

  “Richard Lloyd’s his name,” Sam resumed. “But he wasn’t there when we were, so I left a message that we’d like to have a chat.” She tapped her computer screen. “I just got an e-mail from him that he’s in the office right now if we want to talk to him.”

  She looked questioningly at Joe.

  “Go for it,” he urged, his frustration mounting.

  She reached for the phone, dialed the number, and hit the speaker button. In less than a minute, they all heard a young man’s voice fill the room.

  “Hello, this is Officer Lloyd.”

  “This is Special Agent Sam Martens of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, Officer Lloyd,” she said in her official voice. “You’re on speaker phone, just so you know, and you and I are not alone.”

  “Okay” was the hesitant reply.

  “A few weeks ago, you escorted a man named John Leppman while he was visiting your PD, is that correct?”

  “Sure,” said Lloyd, some of the tension easing in his voice. “He had to meet with a bunch of people, like the chief, somebody from accounting, and a couple of the detectives. I guess it was the deputy chief who didn’t want him to get lost in the building.”

  “And how did that go?” Sam asked leadingly.

  “Good. Fine. He met who he was supposed to meet, and then he left.”

  “You were with him the whole time?”

  “Yeah. Never left his side.”

  “What kinds of things did he do there?”

  “I didn’t get it all. It was computer stuff. He helps out catching people through the Internet, so some of it was case related, some of it was schmoozing—like with the chief—and the accounting part was so he could get paid back for something. I don’t really know what that was.”

  “How would you describe his demeanor during the visit?”

  “He was cool. A nice guy. Relaxed, friendly. I didn’t pick up on anything wrong.”

  “He never tried to ditch you, however subtly, like with a sudden trip to the bathroom?”

  Lloyd thought back for a moment before answering. “No. He was only there for a little over an hour. Guess he never got the urge.”

  “And you didn’t, either?”

  “Nope. Just his daughter.”

  There was a sudden silence in the room.

  “Hello?”

  “Yeah, hi,” Joe said, speaking for the first time. “This is Agent Gunther. Leppman had his daughter with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she did go to the bathroom?”

  “Right—once.”

  “She asked to do that shortly after you passed the supply room, is that correct?”

  Now, the pause was on Lloyd’s part, as he assimilated the question and its possible meanings. “Yeah—I think it was. How did you know that?”

  “It connects to something we’re looking into. What was she like? Wendy, right?”

  “Yeah—Wendy. Gee, I don’t know. Nice enough lady—a little older than me . . . kind of wired. She laughed a lot, talked too much. I remember her father asking if she was all right.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Just that she was in a really good mood. She seemed more nervous to me.”

  “And after she got back from the bathroom?” Sammie asked.

  “Kind of the same.”

  “She carrying a bag or purse?”

  “Purse.”

  “And she kept that with her at all times?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Officer Lloyd,” Joe continued. “This is important. Think back and tell us if her body language concerning the purse was any different after her trip to the bathroom.”

  There was a thoughtful hesitation before the young cop said, “She wore it slung across her body when she came back. And it was slid forward, so that it rested less to her side and more across her stomach.”

  “Great,” Joe told him. “You’re really good at this. One last question: Did anything at all happen when the three of you passed the supply room?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well,” Lloyd answered, “neither one of them did anything, but I noticed that the door was open and Aho was gone.”

  “Nothing was said?”

  “I might’ve said, ‘Huh—wonder where Matt is?’ or something like that. It surprised me, ’cause Matt’s a real stickler about keeping that area secure.”

  “The Leppmans didn’t say anything?”

  “He asked me what the room was, and I told him, but that was it.”

  “Could you see anything through the open door?” Sam asked him.

  They could almost hear him shrug over the phone. “Usual junk—ticket books, pads, a few Taser cartridges, bundles of those plastic envelopes they use for parking tickets, maybe some pens.” He thought some more. “I don’t know. There might’ve been a couple of those Cordura equipment pouches, like for cuffs or OC spray, for our duty belts. Guys are always asking for things like that.”

  Joe glanced around the room to see if anyone had any more questions. “Okay, Officer Lloyd. Appreciate your time. This has been a big help.”

  “Sure. My pleasure.”

  The line went dead and Sam hit the Disconnect button on the phone console.

  “No question Wendy swiped the cartridge,” she said before asking rhetorically, “but was Dad in on it?”

  Joe was staring at the floor, buried in thought. “We better find out,” he responded, adding, “and I’m not so sure I’m going to like the answer. Something’s making me think maybe Leppman’s used his daughter for more than just that Taser cartridge.”

  “What d’you mean?” Willy wanted to know.

  “Something Hillstrom discovered,” Joe answered him. “Remember? She said the chemicals that killed Nashman were mixed in with a cookie he’d just eaten.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, how does that fit? The guy checks in, takes his two key cards, goes to the room, sticks one of the keys to the outside of the door in an envelope, and waits for his date. Where’s the cookie come in?”

  “With the date,” Lester said simply.

  “I’m not gonna open my door to you, big fellah,” Willy told him, seeing Joe’s point. “Not if you’re carrying a goddamn cake with candles.”

  Sam and Lester looked at him.

  “He’s a guy,” Willy said with eyes wide. “I’m expecting a girl, for Christ’s sake.”

  “My point exactly,” Joe said with a smile. “But there’s more. He is expecting a girl—a young girl. And what he sees walking through the door—which is why there had to be a key outside, or he might not have let her in—is a woman in her twenties.”

  “Bummer number one,” Willy chimed in, playing Joe’s second fiddle.

  “Correct,” Joe resumed. “So, she’s got some seductive one-liner or something to stall him, and a cookie as a peace offering. He eats because that’s what you do for a pretty girl when she’s caught you off balance.”

  “And then you die,” Willy concluded. “Bummer number two.”

  “Which,” Sam suggested, dragging out the word for emphasis, “now means you have a one-hundred-and-ninety-pound body on your hands.”

  “So what?” Willy asked. “Nashman wasn’t moved.”

  Sam laughed. “Exactly. Metz was. Why? Same basic m.o., same motive, same people.”

  “Because with Metz, you had more than one person in on it,” Joe suggested.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “So, who was stuck alone with Nashman?”

  He looked up at them. “I think it’s time for that chat with the Leppmans.”

  Chapter 26

  The initial sound was slight to almost unnoticeable, making Joe look up from his paperwork for no reason he could fathom. Its source, once revealed, however, held no mystery whatsoever. A woman was standing like a wraith at the office door Joe had left open for circulation. Her features were indistinct, the only lighting coming from Joe’s desk lamp, but her inten
t seemed clear. She had a gun in her hand.

  Joe had seen only one photograph of this woman—from a brochure that Sam had collected while visiting her medical practice—and it was hardly reflective of the person standing before him now. But it seemed reasonable when he asked, “Dr. Gartner?”

  “Don’t move.” John Leppman’s wife’s voice was a taut monotone.

  “I’m not. What do you want?”

  “That you leave us alone.”

  “Am I bothering you?” Joe’s brain was working overtime, trying to bridge the gaps between what she knew, what he knew, and what she thought he might know. Incongruously, he also made a mental note to address the building’s lax security—the door downstairs had no metal detector, and a lock so flimsy, Joe himself had popped it open one night when he forgot his keys.

  At the time, that had been a good thing.

  “Spare me. You people have been digging into every corner of our lives.”

  “Are you surprised?” Joe switched to considering his own survival. No one rational walked into a cop’s office with a gun—not that someone hadn’t done precisely that in his home just twenty-four hours earlier. But what was this one hoping to gain? Joe doubted that it was her own self-preservation. Sandy Gartner was here for her sole surviving daughter.

  “Nothing wrong was done by anyone.”

  “Those two men deserved to die,” Joe suggested.

  “They were hoping to rape teenage girls—children.”

  “So, you wanted to be helpful.”

  After a moment’s pause, Gartner said, “Yes.”

  Joe was torn between the conversation and its context. The gun was no prop, and its eventual use depended on the depth of Gartner’s self-delusion. On the other hand, if he played this right, her very words could close the case, here and now.

  He decided to try inching her back toward reality, while fantasizing that if the movies were right, a sudden leap by him—as he whipped out his own gun in midair—would result in a full confession and his not lying dead on the floor.

  “And you did that by using the stolen Taser on the first man, and the chemical cookie on the second. You know, according to our lab, the DMSO probably wasn’t needed. The fentanyl would’ve worked on its own.”

  Sandy Gartner took a few paces toward him, revealing more of her face to the light. Joe could tell from the confusion in her eyes that his comment had hit home. The problem was that he was now approaching the very edge of his knowledge and had already taken a huge, albeit calculated, risk. He and his squad had assumed that those two drugs had materialized via the horse vet route, despite the vet clinic’s having told them that none had gone missing. But as Joe had uttered Gartner’s name out loud, it occurred to him for the first time that the easiest, least complicated source of both chemicals could have been a doctor’s office.

  But what about Wendy? Joe had convinced himself that she’d delivered the cookie to the second victim and stolen the Taser cartridge used on the first, both with her father’s involvement.

  The woman with the gun suggested otherwise.

  “Did you know their names?” Joe asked her, hoping her answer would start to clarify who had done what.

  Her eyebrows rose slightly. “They don’t have names.”

  “These two did. One of them even had a wife and child.”

  Gartner held out the gun and sighted along it. Joe watched her eye floating just above the black hole of the barrel as she aimed at his face. Her hand was trembling slightly.

  “They were monsters,” she said. “I saw them.”

  Maybe now’s the time to jump, he thought. I might get lucky.

  A soft male voice floated into the room. “Sandy? Sweetheart? Put the gun down.”

  She startled. Joe winced, surprised that, in fact, she didn’t fire and he didn’t jump.

  But the gun didn’t go off. Nor was it lowered.

  A second shadow entered and stood quietly by the door.

  Gartner shifted her weight. The gun wavered.

  “Go away, John,” she said. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “Of course it does,” he said gently.

  Joe slipped his oar into the water, hoping to normalize the mood. “Mr. Leppman? Your wife and I were starting to sort all this out. My name’s Joe Gunther.”

  Leppman picked up his cue. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Gunther. Sorry about the intrusion.”

  “That’s okay. I was planning to talk with you both anyhow.” He made the smallest of gestures with his hand. “Would you like to sit down?”

  That was too much. Sandy Gartner poked the gun at him. “Don’t move. I told you.”

  Joe remained silent. Leppman took two silent steps farther into the room. “Sandy? I wouldn’t mind sitting down. I’m very tired. I bet you are, too. There’re two chairs—one right beside you.”

  She glanced to her side, which Joe took as a good sign. Apparently, so did her husband, since he finished approaching, grabbed the other chair, and sat down. In a typical mental aside, so often rued later, Joe hoped this shrink knew his business and wasn’t acting without a single thought toward Joe’s survival.

  Gartner hesitated, seeing her husband unbutton his coat and get comfortable. She glanced at Joe, who did his best to appear the genial host, and finally folded at the knees, perching on the chair’s edge. The gun stayed pointed at Joe.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked Leppman.

  “I followed you,” he said simply. “I overheard the phone call you got from the stable, telling you the police had been asking questions, I heard you say the same had happened at your office, and I saw you take the gun.”

  “Where’s Wendy?”

  “She’s at home,” he reassured her. “She doesn’t know anything. She’s fine, Sandy. Like I want you to be.”

  Gartner looked down at the gun and watched it slowly lower to her lap as if it belonged to someone else.

  “What did you want to have happen here?” her husband asked her.

  With her left hand, she reached up and touched her forehead fleetingly. “I wanted some peace and quiet. I thought maybe we could talk this out.”

  Joe saw what he hoped was his opportunity. “I’m listening,” he said.

  “I am, too,” her husband echoed, which struck Joe with its implied ignorance.

  “You had your police consulting,” she said to him, her eyes fixed on the floor. “You had a way to channel losing Gwennie.”

  Joe saw her husband’s brow furrow. He imagined what was going on inside the man’s brain. The psychologist battling with the spouse and fellow mourner—one wishing to counsel and soothe, the other urging to argue and fight for turf.

  Joe was having some of the same problem. Intrigued as he was with the direction this was taking, his right arm, as slowly as a minute hand, was also moving to where he could casually drop it into his lap—and closer to his holstered gun.

  “You could get your revenge,” she was saying. “Putting all those men in jail. I had nothing. I had to put on a brave face for Wendy, keep running my office, listen to all my patients complaining, even encourage you as you bragged about how you nailed this guy or the other. I wanted to find some relief, too. But no one was listening.”

  The husband in Leppman slipped out for a moment. “You never told me.”

  “You never asked. You never looked. John, we left our home on your recommendation, to ‘leave it all behind us,’ you said. We were supposed to get a fresh start in Vermont. Well, I tried that, but you didn’t. You started right up with all this Internet police work. That wasn’t leaving it all behind. You were the only one of us who never even tried.”

  She suddenly straightened in her chair. “My God, John, you planted the seeds of all this. Remember that night you went riding around with your cop friends? You came home with a Taser—like it was a talisman you’d found on the edge of Gwennie’s grave, instead of something you’d stolen. What were you thinking? That damn thing took on a life of its own. You moved o
n—forgot all about it. But I kept thinking about it, wondering how a Taser had so cleverly worked its way into our home.”

  Leppman’s brow furrowed. “My God,” he said. “I didn’t know. I stole it from impulse, because of what it represented. I never thought . . .” He rubbed his eyes. “Maybe, subliminally . . .” He lapsed into silence.

  Joe watched them both—highly schooled, well spoken, respectfully mannered—their emotions muffled under the careful professional language of their analytical training. Still, what they were saying didn’t differ from what he’d heard between the down-and-out of his experience. People made assumptions, took one another for granted, behaved selfishly, maybe even acted to correct the wrongs the other refused to address.

  He wondered if, given the mood, that last point might not be broached, the half-forgotten gun notwithstanding.

  “Dr. Gartner,” he began, “what made you focus on these two? Were they like the man who went after Gwennie?”

  “I thought so,” she agreed. “They were so quick to assume . . .”

  She paused. He waited a couple of seconds and then tried a slightly different approach. “What made you go online in the first place?”

  That seemed to help. Her face became more animated, the latent researcher brought to life. “I wanted to find out what the appeal was. I wanted to understand what Gwennie was looking for. It was amazing. I only read the exchanges at first, people going back and forth. Some of it was like eavesdropping on any conversation—even most of it, I guess. But there was this undertone. Maybe I was looking for it, too, reading into the comments. But I began to see where a lot of the chats were leading. I could see how seductive so many of the men were, and how willing the girls were to follow them—the total anonymity breeding a lack of inhibition.”

  She stopped again, still staring at the floor, but neither man interrupted. They could instinctively tell she was gathering her memories, putting them in order to get them out at long last.

  “I began to get angry,” she continued. “All the sadness, the loss. Everything we’d gone through was brought together in my head. It was like a laser beam gathering light. I began to fantasize putting an end to it all. It made me feel better.”