Lethal Guardian by M. William Phelps Page A

Ferguson?”
    “He has a bad temper…and, in my opinion, is capable of shooting someone.”

Chapter 6
    Christopher George, a twenty-four-year-old local man who worked at Foxwoods casino, was the person who had told Rob Ferguson there was a dead guy on the Rocky Neck connector on the night Buzz had been murdered. Chris had stopped at the Lyme Tavern for a beer and had run into Rob. As soon as Rob heard about the shooting, he drove over to Kim’s apartment and told her.
    There were a few things, however, Rob had said to Chris that led detectives to begin focusing not on Rob, but more on Charlie Snyder.
    For example, Rob had told Chris that Buzz was in debt for “a lot of money” to Charlie—which, of course, was one of the oldest motives in the world for murder.
    When Marty Graham and John Szamocki arrived at Blonders on Saturday, March 12, the front-desk clerk, Kevin Albrecht, told them that Charlie had left town.
    Szamocki and Graham were puzzled. “Where did he go?”
    “Skiing. He’s in New York. He left this morning. I don’t know exactly where.”
    “When will he be back?”
    “Monday maybe? I’m not too sure.”
    Kevin eventually, after a bit of prodding, told them that Buzz had owed Charlie a lot of money, in the neighborhood of $500 to $600. Then, “What I know of Buzz is that he’s a bullshitter!”
    “You have Charlie call us when he gets back,” Graham said, handing Kevin his business card.
     
    Reggie Wardell was a crack investigator. He had worked for the Organized Crime Unit of the state police for many years before joining the ED-MCS. With the help of his colleagues, Wardell had busted two of Connecticut’s most reputed mobsters after a long and tedious investigation. But the murder of Buzz Clinton, Wardell explained later, even in its early stage, was turning into a textbook whodunit case.
    “People can be temporarily eliminated as suspects,” Wardell recalled, “until they are brought back into the picture by some piece of evidence or witness.”
    Charlie Snyder was one of those people.
    Canvassing the neighborhood near Blonders on March 14, Wardell walked into Flanders’s Shell, in East Lyme, only miles down the road from Blonders. The manager, Mike Magliano, worked the day shift and had known Snyder as someone who came in every morning to get his daily dose of caffeine. The last time Mike had seen Charlie, he explained to Wardell, they had a conversation that he thought he ought to relay to the cops after reading about Buzz’s murder in the newspaper.
    According to Magliano, on March 10, Charlie had walked into the Shell station at about 9:00 A.M ., and Mike noticed almost immediately that he “looked a bit pissed” at something.
    “What’s wrong?” Mike said he asked Charlie when he saw how upset he looked.
    “Ah…someone called the DEP on me for dumping chemicals on the ground at Blonders.” Charlie was frowning. His teeth clenched. Not paying attention to what was going on around him.
    “Really,” Mike said.
    “Yeah. But I know who the motherfucker is! I caught him stealing once. Instead of calling the cops, I beat the shit out of him and fired him.”
    Charlie then collected his change and began walking toward the door.
    “What are you going to do?” Mike asked.
    “Now that fucker is dead!” Charlie said as he walked out.
    Laurence Myers was an employee at Blonders who had heard about Buzz’s murder and phoned the state police with information he thought might be useful. Myers, who had worked for Charlie since 1993, told a trooper he thought Buzz owed Charlie about $800 or $900. On Wednesday, March 9, Myers said he was standing next to Charlie when Charlie phoned Buzz and told him that “if he didn’t get his money, he was going to get taken out.”
    On Thursday morning, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) called Blonders at 8:30 A.M . and said that they would be showing up later that day.
    “Charlie was very upset,” Myers recalled to police. “He