Scent of Evil

20

Number 18 Brannen Street was a three-story, ramshackle, weather-beaten pile of functional, turn-of-the-century architecture, originally called a “three-decker” and designed to house three middle-class families, whose original breadwinners undoubtedly had been employed by the Estey Organ Works, at that time Brattleboro’s largest business and an instrument maker of international renown.

But the organ works had gone out of business in the mid-1950s, and by the looks of it, the life had gone out of this building long before then. It, and many others like it around town, had been cut up by landlords, abused by countless winters, and undermined by a mismanaged real-estate market. It was now a peeling, neglected, compartmentalized collection of six small, airless units, one of which was the home of Rose and John Woll.

I got out of my car and looked around. In the hot stillness of the early evening, with the sounds of birds and rushing water nearby, the locale was as pristine and charming as the building was not. Brannen, or Brennen, depending on which of the two street signs you read, is a short, two-hundred-foot loop off Williams, which meanders alongside the Whetstone Brook between a steep, verdant ravine wall on one side, and a small sylvan pasture on the other side of the water. It’s one of those typical Brattleboro settings where, surrounded by a city of twelve thousand people, you can imagine yourself in the isolated foothills of the Green Mountains.

I slammed the car door and walked toward the back of the building. The Wolls occupied a rear apartment on the second floor, accessible by an ancient roofed staircase that clung to the exterior wall like an afterthought. I climbed it gingerly, uncertain of how much more use it could bear.

I wasn’t here by invitation. As Brandt had mentioned, John Woll had not answered his phone all afternoon, and coming around the building, I could confirm his car wasn’t parked in the drive. On the other hand, I’d remembered his wife had dropped him off on the evening I’d recognized her voice, and I thought it possible that his car might be on the blink.

The impulse that had led me here had been triggered by more than that simple deduction, however. With Katz hot on the Wolls’ connection to Jardine, he had probably tried to confront the subject of this latest political whirlwind with what he knew. If he had, I understood why John Woll was no longer answering his phone.

For some cops, the uniform and the badge offer the security and social courage they lack as civilians; it gives them comfort, much as the military does. That’s where I fit John Woll. He’d stumbled once a few years back and had made the police department his lifeline. If I was right, and Katz had gotten to him, then, guilty or not, John Woll was now in free-fall.

I reached the second-floor landing and found the front door ajar. I knocked, the door widening slightly under my hand. “John? It’s Joe Gunther.”

There was no answer, but I thought I heard a small and distant sound, like protesting bed springs. I entered the apartment.

I was standing in a living room, brightly painted, neat as a pin, sparsely and inexpensively furnished. The windows were all open, and the dying light outside still caught the colorful hues of the thin cotton curtains. It was an unexpected, comforting cocoon, buried in a building with all the warmth of a rotting, beached ship.

“John?”

Again, there was that slight shifting sound. Someone was definitely in the back of the apartment. Despite the domestic tranquility of my surroundings, a growing apprehension seeped into my bones.

I didn’t unholster my gun, there being no tangible reason to do so, but I did rest my hand on its butt as I sidled up the narrow, short hallway toward the back. I paused beside the first door on the right and peered in around the corner. It was a bathroom, fresh-smelling, cheery, and empty.

I moved to the next and last door, also on the right. John Woll, flat on his back across a double bed, lay staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. His hands were wrapped around a tall glass of amber liquid and ice cubes which rested on his stomach. I took some comfort from that; if he was still sensitive enough to want ice cubes in his drink, he couldn’t be totally blitzed-not yet, at least.

“Hullo, John.”

He sighed without speaking.

I entered the room and moved over to a worn wooden rocking chair in the corner, a poor man’s antique, which creaked ominously under my weight. “You coming on duty tonight?”

That obviously struck him as an odd opener. He turned his head to look at me. “You gotta be kidding.”

His voice was soft but clear, with no hint of an alcoholic slur. It occurred to me then that the glass was still full, its exterior heavily beaded with droplets of condensation, its ice cubes small and few in number. He’d obviously been lying there, merely considering a dive off the wagon, for quite some time.

“You can, for tonight. We’ll keep you around the office for the shift, away from the press.” I hesitated, wondering how coy I should be. Not very, I finally decided. “It’ll spare you lying around here all night, playing Russian roulette with that glass.”

He gave me a long, impenetrable look, and then extended the glass out to me. “It’s ginger ale.”

My face reddening, I nevertheless took the glass and sipped from it. It was indeed ginger ale. I handed it back, not bothering to apologize. “The way things are piling up, Brandt’s going to have to call in the state’s attorney’s office to look into the allegations against you pretty soon. Dunn read him the riot act a half hour ago.”

He let out a half snort of derision.

A moment of silence elapsed while I pondered the timing of this conversation. Brandt, Klesczewski, and I had seen the evidence damning John Woll escalate over the last two and a half days. He, presumably, had suffered a different perspective, knowing from the start he had compromising ties to the victim of a homicide, and wondering when that fact would emerge to bring an end to his world as he knew it.

I was running out of time. James Dunn’s office was poised to drive a wedge between the department and John Woll that neither party would be allowed later to breach. If we didn’t talk now, we never would.

“John, when did you first find out about Rose and Charlie Jardine?”

After a brief pause he held up four fingers.

I took a guess. “Four years?”

“Yup.” It was a whisper, almost a sigh.

From past observations, I guessed that wouldn’t have been too long after the affair’s beginning. I’d never heard of an affair yet where the third party hadn’t pegged to the truth pretty quickly; I imagined it had a lot to do with body language, literally.

“What did you do about it?”

He shrugged, almost dumping some of the ginger ale onto his already damp shirt.

I came at it from another angle, looking for an opening I could widen. “How did Katz break the news?”

“He called.”

“And what did he say?”

“He knew about Charlie and Rose.” He gave a sudden half chuckle. “He asked if I killed Charlie-out of jealousy, I suppose.”

“He’s not the only one thinking that.”

There was a long silence. Then he said, “Yeah, I guess not.”

I leaned forward quickly and plucked the glass from between his fingers. He was startled at my speed and half sat up as I put the glass on the floor beside me.

“Sit up, John,” I ordered, standing over him.

“What d’you want from me?”

“I’m trying to talk to you. Sit up.”

He shifted over to the head of the bed, his back propped against the pillows, his legs crossed. He would have looked like a kid except for the face-pale, haggard, and as worn as an old man’s.

“What did Katz tell you?”

He rubbed his forehead with his palm, jarred out of his self-pity. “He said he knew my patrol car had been parked near where Charlie was found later, that Rose and Charlie were having an affair, that I’d lied about seeing a flare over the embankment. He said the department was covering for me-that they’d known all this from the start but that they were protecting their own.”

He paused.

“Anything else?”

“He knew about my drinking. Said he knew Rose had dated both of us in high school. That the department had hired me even though they knew I was a drunk.”

“Was there more to the high-school connection, something else besides Rose that connected you and Charlie?”

He made a face. “Charlie was a loser-long hair, did dope, jerked the teachers around, not serious about anything. He was everything I hated.”

“But Rose liked him.”

“Yeah.”

In the quiet following that half moan of a response, I noticed the room had darkened and cooled with the yielding sun, if only slightly. It lent a slightly confessional feeling to the setting. I played into it by sitting back down.

“I never could understand that,” John added. “I still don’t.”

“Rose told me you only admitted knowing about the affair a couple of days ago. Why’d you sit on it for four years, John?”

“Because now he was dead.”

“He wasn’t for four years.”

He stared at the middle distance between us, lost in thought for a moment. “I didn’t want to force her to choose.”

“And killing him solved that.”

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered and dropped his chin down on his chest.

A surge of genuine pity washed over me suddenly. I had always liked John Woll, had respected his quiet, conscientious manner over the years, and the courage he’d summoned to beat his drinking problem. Now his life was a shambles. It was partially his own fault, of course, but other factors had played a part. That I was one of those factors gave me no pleasure.

But my job now was to peer into the inky murk of his life, to distinguish not why things had happened to him and Rose, but what those things were. At this late date, with the pressure building under me, I couldn’t afford to worry about how ham-handed I was, or what damage I might do to what was left of their marriage. Besides, regardless of the other threads left dangling in this case, I couldn’t overlook the possibility that Katz was right about John Woll.

“Why’d you lie to Billy and me when we asked you how well you knew Jardine?”

John looked up at me, a new strength in his voice. “He was dead. It was over. I didn’t know who killed him, but I wasn’t surprised somebody had. I heard about his death and felt nothing but relief. With Charlie gone, Rose’s temptation was gone, too. That’s how I saw it. Charlie was Rose’s addiction, like booze is to me. And now that it was gone, I didn’t want to say anything that might mess that up.”

I didn’t mention that the removal of something tempting didn’t automatically cure an addiction.

“What about the flare over the embankment?” I asked, curious whether he would stick to that part of his story.

“There was a flare.” His fist clenched in emphasis. Despite his obvious distress, I far preferred it to the listlessness I’d encountered upon entering this room. But I also knew it was probably a mere passing gust of wind.

“We never found it. We did find one of your cigarettes, though; in Jardine’s grave, in fact.”

His mouth fell open, a reaction I found in his favor.

“Do you smoke while you’re on patrol?”

His face reddened. “Sure; sometimes.”

“Were you smoking when you got out to check on the flare?”

“I don’t know-Jesus-maybe.”

I leaned forward in the chair for emphasis. “Not maybe, John. People are sharpening their knives for you; I need answers. I said the cigarette was in the grave; that means under the soil, buried with the body, and the saliva on it matches your blood type. So concentrate.”

He closed his eyes, his legs still crossed, making him look vaguely meditative. I thought how much I’d hate to be in his shoes.

“I flicked it.”

“Where?”

His eyes opened. “As I got out of the car. I took it out of my mouth, flicked it into the street, and reached for my flashlight.”

“You’re sure you flicked it into the street?”

“Yeah, because I remember the smoke stinging my eye as I got out.”

“Did you see anyone while you were checking out the flare?”

He shook his head, a little mournfully.

“Did you go into Ed’s Diner afterwards?”

“No. I just drove on.”

I thought a moment. Something was wrong with all this; something I’d thought of while we’d been speaking of the cigarette. “If you only told Rose you knew about the affair two days ago, why did you assume they’d broken it off before then?”

He brought his fingers to his temples and held them there, as if staving off a migraine. “It was just a feeling; nothing specific. Jesus-I thought Charlie’s death was the best thing that could have happened to us. Now everyone thinks I killed him.”

“Did you know Milly Crawford?”

His hands dropped from his temples. “Crawford? No. Why?”

“You know about him?”

“I heard his name mentioned, you know, at work.”

“Do the names Mark Cappelli, Jake Hanson, Kenny Thomas, or Paula Atwater ring any bells?”

He looked totally baffled. “I’ve never heard of them.”

I hesitated a moment, doubtful of the wisdom of what I was about to suggest. Given the case’s dim prospects, however, I was getting desperate. “John, would you grant us a consent to search this apartment?”

“A consent… Holy Jesus, Lieutenant.” He knitted his brows in concentration, trying to fit my request into the context of our conversation. If what he claimed was true, he was the victim of a damn good frame, and sitting by passively hardly seemed constructive. So I hoped he’d decide to take part in his own fate. On the other hand, I couldn’t help wondering if now wasn’t exactly the wrong time for him to act. Sometimes, the best defense against a frame is immobility.

“All right,” he said finally.

I got up. “Come out to the car with me while I get the form.”

I kept a sampling of most of the paperwork we use in the field in my car. A Consent to Search is a warrantless, spur-of-the-moment device allowing a police officer to examine a house or car without the rigamarole of submitting an affidavit to a judge. It is granted by the owner of the property to be searched, can be withdrawn at any point during the search, and is viewed with distaste by any prosecutor or judge. The problem is that the grantor, at any time following the search, can claim he or she was coerced into cooperating. If that claim sticks, which it tends to in Vermont, then anything found under the consent is inadmissible in court.

But I felt myself guided by a strong sense of inevitability. John Woll was being painted, step-by-step, into a corner, either by his own devices or by outside manipulation. The question no longer was would he fall, but who would push him. I flattered myself by thinking that if we did, it would be on the basis of carefully evaluated evidence, not the kind of innuendo and inference that fueled Katz’s accounts.

Also, I wanted to search John’s place myself before James Dunn took over the investigation, which I feared he might do at any moment. Once that happened, not only would all contact with John be off limits, but so would any hopes of finding Woll-related clues that might apply to the Crawford and Jardine homicides.

I retrieved the single-sheet form from a battered briefcase in my back seat, filled in the blanks, and handed it to John as we walked back to his apartment in the half-light of sunset. He read it through several times, shaking his head. “This is so unreal.”

“I know. Right now you’ve got a few circumstantial things against you, enough to titillate the news crowd, but not enough for an indictment.” I patted his shoulder, conscious of my opposing desires. If he were being framed, by someone who knew all the tricks, chances were good this search would do him more harm than good. My motivations, I realized, were now almost entirely selfish, despite my liking for John, or my sorrow at his predicament. “You don’t have to sign that,” I added halfheartedly.

He shrugged, and signed it on the banister, taking matters into his own hands, or so I hoped.

It was awkward, having him stand around as I began poking through his belongings. I was used to being armed with judge-signed paperwork, accompanied by a complete search team and at least one uniformed man to escort the homeowner out the door and out of the way. With John watching, I felt more like a guest who’d suddenly been seized by an insane desire to ransack the place. I found myself gingerly shifting through the kitchen drawers and carefully replacing sofa cushions, so that any trace of my passage would be minimal.

My real interest was the bathroom and bedroom, where I’d found in the past most people tend to hide their secret pleasures. But I was holding them until last to make damn sure I covered the apartment thoroughly. Not that I had long to wait; the place was so small it wasn’t forty-five minutes later that I crossed the threshold into the bedroom.

Throughout this ordeal, John kept silent, standing away from me, watching me work without expression or comment. I checked occasionally, over my shoulder, to see if his demeanor had anything to tell me, but his face told me nothing.

I stood before the plain wooden dresser, noticing that here, as everywhere else in the apartment, gentle grace notes had been added to soften the plainness of the general surroundings. The dresser was draped with a colorful cotton runner that cascaded off either side of the top, and the shade of the light, which I switched on to chase away the gathering gloom, had a bright-red paper flower pinned to it, whose scarlet aura touched the near wall like a watercolorist’s diluted paintbrush.

I pulled open one of the top half-drawers and discovered a neat row of rolled men’s socks. This is where a search started yielding a mixed emotional bag, for while bedrooms were traditionally rich in compromising landmarks, you had to paw through condom packs, underwear, weird literature, and God knows what else, some of which one inhabitant of the room had been keeping secret from the other for years.

I sifted through the gathered socks and then reached in behind them, my fingers touching something smooth and metallic. Just then, the screen door in the front room opened and banged shut.

As I pulled out a large, very expensive-looking gold watch from the back of the drawer, Rose entered the room, a quizzical expression forming on her face at the sight of me. The shiny band of the watch caught the lamplight, scattering it in tiny flecks across the ceiling.

“This yours?” I asked John.

He shook his head, looking puzzled.

Rose, at his shoulder, went white, her mouth falling open in shock. She moistened her lips and blinked. “It’s Charlie’s.”