Fall Guy

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always with these tall tales, I am indebted to many others for at least trying to keep me on the straight and narrow when it comes to procedures, protocols, and processes. Those below did their best, I am sure. The results of my heeding their guidance, however, are all my responsibility.

Tom Andrews

Margot Mayor

Greg Davis

Castle Freeman

Tracy Shriver

Sean Eaton

Eric James

VSP Bomb Squad

Sarah Clark

Steven Brown

John Martin

Adam Belville

Ray Walker

Todd Faulkner

Jeremy Evans

Matt Sweitzer

NHSP

Jesse Bristol

CHAPTER ONE

Joe Gunther crested the hill overlooking a small cluster of flashing, multihued vehicles below. They made him think of a swarm of fireflies, settled untidily by the side of the road, but in fact were a group of cruisers and unmarked cars much like his own. They appeared randomly scattered, as if abruptly stopped by a startling event.

They had in fact been summoned here, in the looming twilight of a fading Vermont winter day, as they often were by mishap or catastrophe, to sort through another mess left in humanity’s wake. Their common dismissal of parking protocols was due mostly to this road having been closed to traffic. But, beneath it, Joe recognized a fondness for flouting convention, perhaps because police officers were so often called upon to enforce it. Cops could be rebels that way: trained to the rule of law, obedient to procedure, policy, and authority, they are also drawn by the occupation’s spontaneity, adrenaline, and the rewards it offers creative thinkers.

Anyone can mentally retire while still on the job and merely put in the hours. Police officers are no different. But older investigators tend to rise to a higher calling. They are the profession’s theorists, and when placed among the right peers, the best of them can be almost termed artists.

Joe was such a man, a veteran of decades of police work, and he was about to join a group of colleagues honed by experience to the same edge. He was the field force commander of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, and they were all about to lay open the inner workings of an untimely death.