Archer Mayor: The Dark Root

“M-80, O-45.”

It was late, cold, and the streets had been quiet for hours, giving the tension in the caller’s voice a chilling element of dread. I paused on my way to the wall-mounted mail slots as the night dispatcher leaned forward and depressed the transmit button with his thumb.

“80.” Charley Davis kept his voice flat, only his narrowed eyes betraying his concentration. Every call was a potential crisis, and the police dispatcher was the crucial linchpin.

“I’m on a vehicle stop-for speeding-above mile-marker nine, northbound. Three adult males. Dark-blue Chevy Nova, Pennsylvania plates.” O-45-Marshall Smith-recited the registration slowly, so Charley could enter it into the terminal before him.

Waiting for the computer to respond, Charley keyed the mike again. “45 from 80. You want some company?”

The response was instantaneous. “10-4 on that.”

Immediately, the other two patrol units spoke up from where they’d been eavesdropping out in the cold winter darkness, eager after a long, slow day.

“M-80, O-32. I’m on Vernon near Cotton Mill.”

“M-80, O-60. It’ll take me about eight minutes from West B.”

I silently pointed to myself before Charley could answer either one. Mile-marker 9 was on Interstate 91, a few hundred feet above Exit 2-only two minutes away from where we were standing. He nodded and let everyone know simultaneously. “45 from M-80. O-3’s on his way. Two-minute ETA.”

It was cold enough to make the snow creak underfoot in the parking lot. The patrol car’s engine moaned before kicking over and the seat was hard as stone beneath me. As I swung onto Grove Street, heading quickly for the interstate, I fiddled with the small, cranky video camera mounted to the dash, slapping it once to make the image on the tiny screen settle down.

It was nearly midnight on a Wednesday in the middle of January. A few hours earlier, a snowstorm had been cleared from Brattleboro’s major roads. All of which made a speed stop of three males on the interstate more than a mere anomaly. It was sharply out of place-enough to put any cop’s suspicious nature on alert.

I didn’t play the lights or siren. For one thing, there was nobody around to warn off the streets; but I also knew what tactical mode Smith would be adopting. Blinding the occupants of the car ahead with both his “take-down” lights and spotlights, he would slam his door twice-making them think there were two of him-and he would circle around to the back of his cruiser, approaching the car from its right rear, away from his own lights and from an angle the occupants wouldn’t be expecting. While they were craning their necks to see him coming up on the left-and possibly hiding weapons or contraband out of his sight to their right-he would be watching them unobserved, in the dark, before finally knocking on the passenger window with his flashlight and lighting them up. It was a safer approach than the standard one, but it also could make everyone involved as jumpy as hell.

My role was to be discreet-available if needed, invisible if not-so that no overly sensitive motorist could later claim we’d been ganging up. I therefore cut my lights once I got on the interstate and coasted to a silent stop behind Smith’s cruiser a hundred yards farther up. As expected, he was crouching shy of the Nova’s right-rear window, talking to the passenger in the back, his eyes on all three occupants.

“O-3 is 10–23,” I muttered into the radio, letting everyone, including Smith, know I’d arrived. I adjusted the video camera’s lens to cover the whole scene, hit the record button, and got out of the car, being careful not to slam the door. I positioned myself between the guardrail and the cruiser, just shy of where the dazzling take-down lights blistered out ahead. All around us, the snow-smothered banks and trees and the wide, empty road shimmered in the phosphorescent blue and white flashes of the electronic strobes.

Marshall Smith, his head wreathed in the vapor from his breath, backed away from the stopped car and came toward me, a driver’s license in his gloved hand. “Thanks for coming, Lieutenant. You’re up late.”

I kept my eyes on the dark outlines of three heads furtively conferring. “Catching up on paperwork. What’ve you got?”

He stepped around me and opened his own passenger door, reaching in for the radio mike. “Nothing too bad yet-I clocked them going eighty-five-but they give me the creeps.” He paused to read the license to Dispatch.

“How so?” I asked.

“The rear passenger fits the profile to a T-talks too much, lots of body language, nervous as hell. They’re all pretty tense, and it’s not because of the ticket… They’re Asians,” he added as an afterthought, although I knew that detail had been at the top of his list.

Charley’s voice came over the radio, “Dark-blue Chevy Nova, 1990, registered to Diep, Edward.” He gave an address in Philadelphia that matched the one on the license in Smith’s hand. “Pennsylvania says it’s valid.”

Marshall frowned and lapsed from his usually strict radio protocol. “Thanks, Charley.” His eyes strayed uncertainly to the source of his concern.

“You want them out of the car?” I prompted.

He nodded and reached in for a clipboard. “Yeah-let’s see if they’ll play.”

He returned to the car and tapped on the rear window to make them roll it back down. I could hear him reciting the particulars of a “consent search”-that the registrant was being asked to agree to a search of the vehicle of his own free will, and that he had the right to refuse such a request, either now or at any time during said search.

I couldn’t hear the response, but the front passenger door opened.

It amazes me how many people go along with this procedure, knowing full well what they’re carrying in a car. Dozens of successful busts for drugs, guns, illegal aliens, or alcohol have sprung from consent searches, all of which would have been impossible except for the intimidating power of the uniform-an influence defense attorneys invariably strive to drive home in court later.

The cause of Smith’s uneasiness became obvious as the first man unfolded from the passenger side of the car. In the arrhythmic strobe lights, his face-smooth, emotionless, almost pretty-lacked any show of humanity. His features, though clearly Asian, paled against an aura of pure menace.

Maybe my shock was greater because of Marshall’s description of the chatty, high-strung rear passenger. The thin, mocking smile of the man before me, his look of utter contempt, reminded me of a spoiled child coolly torturing a small pet. His eyes, seemingly unaffected by the lights, took me in as if I were the one on center stage, and he the observer from the shadows.

Smith asked him with immaculate politeness if he’d mind being frisked for weapons.

Without removing his eyes from mine, the man unbuttoned his overcoat and disdainfully lifted his arms to the sides in what was obviously a practiced gesture. Instinctively, I made sure I wasn’t standing between him and the hidden camera behind me. Smith checked him quickly but thoroughly and sent him back to stand with me.

“How are you tonight?” I asked without introduction or apology.

The smile widened slightly and he nodded silently.

“What’s your name?”

“Truong Van Loc.” The voice was soft and smooth, like the face, and equally devoid of feeling.

“You have any identification, Mr. Loc?”

I expected the usual fumbling for a wallet, but this man knew he was under no such obligation, not legally. His hands stayed still by his sides. “No. And my last name is Truong. Loc is my first name. We do it the other way around.”