Occam's Razor Read Free Page B

Building across the way.
    “So what’re we going to?” I asked as we aimed for one of several white patrol cars lined up in a neat row—a highly visible symbol of police spending that never failed to catch flak at the annual town meeting.
    Marshall swung in behind the wheel of one of them. “It’s an abandoned truck—a ten-wheeler dump unit.”
    He started the already-warm engine and headed toward the street. The heater immediately began blowing hot air across our faces. “The manager at Bickford’s noticed it a few days ago,” he resumed. “People leave their vehicles there all the time, usually because they’re carpooling, but rarely more than overnight. And nobody leaves a truck for that long. There’s too much money wrapped up in it. They’re guessing it might’ve been there for almost a week.”
    “This a company rig?” I asked as we gained speed up the Putney Road, which starts out as one of the high-class sections of town but then becomes, over the confluence of the West and Connecticut rivers, a commercial strip as uniquely Vermont as a Coca-Cola can.
    “Not so you can tell. There’s nothing on the door, no papers inside the cab. Since there’re no license plates, I ran the vehicle identification number through the computer and found it was leased from Timson Long Haul outside Leverett, Mass, but the guy I talked to there wasn’t too helpful. Said he didn’t have his records handy, and that he’d have to dig around and call me back. He’s probably cooking up something bogus right now. I was doing an off-line search of the registration through NCIC, just to see what I could find, when Ron radioed in saying you were heading for the office.”
    I mentally reviewed what he’d done so far, looking for something to add. As far as I could tell, there was no reason for me to be in this car. Some departments insisted on detectives running all investigations. We didn’t work that way. Brandt firmly believed that in order to hang on to our patrol officers—since the detective squad had no turnover to speak of—they should be given every opportunity to process cases on their own. Smith seemed to have been doing a good job of just that.
    We’d swept by most of the malls, gas stations, and fast-food places on the strip and were nearing the town’s northernmost interstate exit when I felt obliged to admit as much. “Sounds like you’ve got everything pretty well locked down.”
    Smith glanced at me and smiled. “That’s because I saved the best till last.”
    He swung right at the traffic light, onto Route 9 heading for New Hampshire across the bridge, and then immediately pulled into the parking lot beyond Bickford’s Restaurant on the corner, a place I frequented as often as I could, but which Gail wouldn’t even enter, given her refined vegetarian palate.
    The truck—an old Mack, stained and moth-eaten by rust—stood against the far bank, as if trying to disappear into the brush just beyond it. Smith rolled to a stop nearby and got out.
    “Here’s the kicker,” he said and walked to the rear of the dump truck’s body. He pointed to a pool of dark liquid at his feet. “Don’t touch it, but give it a whiff.”
    I did so gingerly, straightening back up immediately, my nostrils stinging despite the frigid air. “Jesus Christ. What is it?”
    “Beats me, but I doubt it’s legal. That’s all that’s left, by the way—that and a few puddles in the back. They already got rid of whatever they were carrying.”
    “I hope to hell you were careful crawling around this thing,” I told him.
    “I was, believe me.”
    I stepped away and surveyed the truck generally. As Smith had said, the plates were missing, front and rear, but otherwise it looked like any one of a thousand anonymous, battle-scarred units you see driving around every day. Which may have been exactly the point.
    I opened the driver’s door and hoisted myself up level to the worn, cracked seat. Smith appeared below