Bellows Falls

Chapter 13

THE MOTEL MARIE WILLIAMS HAD TOLD US about dated back to the early fifties, and marked the transition between the “motor courts” of old, with their small, separate buildings, and the motels we know today, with wings stretching off to either side of a central office. This one, whose name had long ago been removed from the marquee, was a series of flat, scaling, concrete boxes squatting side by side, as if uncertain which role to play. It had been abandoned-or had looked that way-for almost as long as I could remember and before that had been a repository for the truly down-and-out. Just finding the landlord of record and securing permission to search by waiver had taken half the next morning.

With me were J.P. Tyler, complete with bulky equipment cases, and Ron Klesczewski, the fourth and final member of my squad. Ron was the least demonstrative of the bunch-quiet, self-doubting, a man who brooded unless given direction. He was a wizard at tracing paperwork and keeping large operations organized. Ironically for a timid type, Ron had been with me most often when bullets were flying. This time, however, he was along to help Tyler, having, unlike Kunkle, two good hands and no propensity to argue with any course J.P. might propose.

The motel looked as boarded up as a packing crate, all doors and windows tightly sealed with plywood sheathing. As we circled it, Ron asked the obvious question. “How did they get inside? The roof?”

I shook my head, leading them to a small shed built into the hill behind and below the motel. As Marie had told us the night before, the padlock was closed but not locked. I seized on the door and wrenched it half open, revealing a small room filled with cobwebs, dust, and piles of junk. I pulled a flashlight from my pocket and played it against the walls. Opposite me, a rusted bed frame with a wood slat bottom sat tilted up on end. I crossed over to it and twisted it on its axis, swinging it back like a door. Behind it, disguised by a grimy blanket, was a narrow door.

“I’ll be damned,” Ron said, and helped shove the bed frame farther out of the way.

Behind the door was a steep set of wooden steps leading up to a third and final door, this one leading into the motel’s office. Except for our three flashlights, the place was as dark as a tomb, oven-hot, and smelled like a rotting septic tank.

“Now what?” Tyler asked, looking around, consciously breathing through his mouth.

“There’s a breezeway out back,” I explained, “running the length of the units.”

I located the rear exit and stepped onto the veranda, now a dark, shuttered, musty tunnel, clotted with debris. “Number Nine should be down here.”

Gingerly, still lugging J.P.’s baggage, we picked our way through the disemboweled mattresses, broken furniture, and shattered glass that littered the passageway like remnants of a battlefield. The scurrying complaints of escaping rodents were just audible above the sound of our footsteps.

The door to Number Nine was damaged but intact. Instinctively standing to one side, I turned the knob and pushed. Aside from the squealing hinges, there was nothing but silence from within.

Like a distant breeze, Ron nervously whispered, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

I looked around the corner and shined my light into the room. As far as I could see, there was no one to come out. I crossed the threshold, motioning the others to fan out behind me.

We stood three abreast, lighting the room like a battery of search lamps. The walls were smeared, discolored, and riddled with fist-sized holes, the ceiling stained and sagging, the rug only visible in odd patches over mildewed cement flooring. The sink in the alcove near the bathroom was shattered and hanging by one bolt. All that was left of the two mirrors was a single, lightning-shaped shard leaning against a dresser with no legs. And yet, the room had been maintained, however minimally. The bed had a bare mattress, the center of the floor had been cleared with a broom, still standing in one corner, and several candles were clustered on a chair passing for a bedside table.

“Check the bathroom,” I told Ron.

He carefully moved across the room and stuck his head through the door beyond the broken sink. “Clear.”

Tyler approached the bed. “Looks like a bullet hole in the mattress.”

“Any blood?”

He was already crouched down, opening one of his cases with a penlight held in his teeth. “Too dirty to tell in this light.”

“We could tear the plywood from the windows,” Ron suggested.

“No,” J.P. said enigmatically. “The darker the better for the moment.” From an insulated carrying case, he extracted a spray bottle much like a mister used on plants and poised it over the mattress. “Give me a little more light.”

We did as he asked and watched as he lightly dampened the entire surface of the bed.

“Okay. Kill the lights.”

It was like seeing a ghost take shape in the coal-black darkness. Glowing from the mattress’s fabric in an amber luminescence was the clearly identifiable pattern of a stain. “Jesus,” Ron said softly.

“Luminol mixed with sodium perborate and sodium carbonate,” J.P. explained. “Reacts with blood.” He quickly checked under the bed with his light. “From the angle connecting the hole in the mattress to the one in the floor, I’d say the shot came from there.” He pointed to where Ron was standing in front of the dresser, closer to the bathroom than to the front door.

He stepped back, spraying the luminol on the floor heading toward the door. At the entrance, he had us kill the lights again. We could clearly see glowing drops, their pattern indicating the direction of flight.

“Looks like he ran for it after he was shot,” J.P. said.

Ron played his flashlight across the floor. “Why can’t we see any of it?”

“It was absorbed in the filth. It’s still there, though. The lab’ll be able to analyze it once we collect it.” He glanced out to the hallway. “But let’s find out what happened first.”

We worked our way slowly down the closed-in passageway, away from the office, J.P. spraying, and Ron and I alternately turning our flashlights on and off. Section by section, we followed the grisly testament of pain and suffering until we reached the room at the dead end. Its door was missing and its contents a shambles, but there was another mattress tossed on top of all the debris, crumpled against the far corner facing the entrance. Inexorably, J.P. led us straight to it. Removing the mattress, we could see there was no further need for fancy chemicals. A huge, dry, black, clotted mass of blood covered the trash on the floor like an obscene doily.

“I guess I can’t complain about a lack of evidence,” J.P. said sadly. Positioning himself so as not to disturb anything, he leaned far over the coagulated mess and peered at a spot low on the wall, grunting softly as he discovered what he was after. “Second bullet hole. With any luck, one of ’em will yield something we can put under a microscope.”

For several hours, we stayed in that funereal location, picking through the chaos, collecting odds and ends, photographing everything. J.P. insisted on time-lapse photography to document the luminol, capturing on film the ghost of the victim’s useless flight for safety.

Although I only had Marie Williams’s word for it, I visualized Jasper Morgan in that role-all of twenty years old, leaving behind not a body, but only the putrid fluids he’d once contained. It was as pathetic a monument as I could imagine.

The plywood having at last been removed from the windows and doors for easier access and visibility, I finally left the motel through its lobby entrance and sat in the sun with my back against the disintegrating cement wall. Gail found me there ten minutes later.

“Don’t tell me you were just in the neighborhood,” I said with a smile, as she kissed me and settled down next to me.

“Hi to you, too,” she answered. “Actually, my spies told me you’d finally come up for air. I can still smell that place on you.”

I glanced down at my pants, dusty and streaked with God-knows what. “Sorry.”

“Did you find Jasper?”

I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. “The lab’ll tell us for sure. Whoever it was, we’re pretty sure of the weapon. J.P. keeps a reference binder in his evidence kit. He had an enlargement of Lavoie’s test-fired bullet. We have one made of every officer’s gun. He used a field microscope to compare what we dug out of the wall to Lavoie’s and he’s pretty sure it’s a match.”

“Which tells you what?”

“Nothing specific. We figure he was shot in bed-wounded-and ran to escape in the wrong direction. He was finished off in a far room and his body removed.”

“He couldn’t still be alive somewhere?”

“J.P. says not according to the amount of blood he left behind.”

She didn’t respond, no doubt taken by the same mood that was clinging to me.

“The angle of the first shot and the fact Morgan was on the bed are suggestive, though,” I added. “We entered this building the only way available and made a hell of a noise doing it, so whoever shot him was probably expected. Also, J.P. guesses the shooter was sitting on the edge of a busted dresser facing the foot of the bed. Not the standard pose of someone doing a hit-and-run.”

“But no footprints or fingerprints or anything else?”

I shook my head. “We found the cartridges from the gun, but they probably have Pierre’s prints on them, if that. Maybe Tyler’ll find something once he sorts it all out, but I’m not counting on it. The best we can do is link the DNA in the blood to Morgan’s parents and positively ID him as the victim.”

I sighed and stared out at the passing traffic. Gail took my hand in hers. “It’s not getting any better, is it?”

“No,” I admitted, thinking of my own tangled motives in becoming involved with the case. “And I think it’s just beginning.”

That short, ambivalent conversation with Gail, coupled with the phone call I’d had with Greg Davis earlier, stimulated a small change of plans from what I’d told Jonathon and Kathleen. Leaving Ron Klesczewski and Tyler to wrap things up at the motel, I drove to Westminster, south of Bellows Falls, and knocked on Brian Padget’s door.

As sorry as they were, it wasn’t the fates of Jasper Morgan, Jan Bouch, Marie Williams, or the hundreds that had preceded them that tugged at me like weights around a swimmer’s ankles. It was more general in scope than that. I was concerned with my own kind, too-Latour and Emily Doyle and Brian Padget and their ilk. The first because, after all these years, he’d run out of self-reliance and hope, the latter two because despite their best intentions, they were being blindsided by an increasingly cynical world, and by a support system lagging behind on its implied promises. A law enforcement career hinted at something exclusive to people who weren’t used to such offers. To a high school graduate with a dubious future, it suggested a secure and supportive enough family to withstand the buffeting of a baffling world. The tradeoff for low pay, social isolation, and the constant exposure to humanity’s dregs was supposed to be a sense of loyalty, faith, and security.

Unfortunately, the reality was less an ideal family and more an organization as creaky and prone to error as most. While admittedly elite and proud, it was also full of prejudice, ambition, and slight, of management and union struggles, of too many people scrambling for too few promotions. The public image was to appear always perfectly unruffled, which only forced those in trouble to sometimes twist on their own, suddenly discovering the famous clannishness as more hindrance than help. Workaholic that I was, I had Gail, my books, my stints in college and in battle, and even my age to help keep me steady-and even so, I was now nagged by doubt. In contrast, shunned by the people he’d assumed would rally around him, young Brian Padget had to be lonely, confused, and increasingly bitter. In all conscience, I couldn’t leave him dangling while we plotted strategy, especially since I feared Emily Doyle might soon be suffering the same fate.

Padget wasn’t happy to see me. “What do you want?”

“To talk, if you got a minute.”

He scowled, holding the front door as if bracing to slam it. “A minute? You’re shitting me. I got nothing but, thanks to you… ” He suddenly hesitated, momentarily confused. “Do I got to do this?”

“No. You can throw me off your property if you want to. I don’t know why you would, though.”

It was a small challenge, to test his anger, although I suspected it was early for him yet, that he was only in the confusing first stage of what would seem like an endless descent. In fact, he was still responsive to perceived authority. He stepped away from the door and muttered, “All right.”

I walked into the familiar living room and took a seat on the sofa. Padget remained by the door.

“More questions?” he asked.

“Some.” I waved at an armchair.

He perched on its edge, his elbows on his knees. He looked sleep-deprived. His skin was pasty, his eyes bloodshot and dark-rimmed. He didn’t smell like he’d washed recently.

“It’s been a few days since we found that dope in your toilet, Brian,” I began briskly. “You’ve had a lot of time to think about how it got there-and why your urine tested positive. What’ve you come up with?”

He shook his head, staring at the floor. “I’m the last guy to ask. I don’t know shit about this whole mess.”

“Think back to a week before it started, further if you can. What was your routine, from when you woke up to lights out?”

“I don’t know. I’m a cop. I go out on the streets. I make enemies. I’m a sitting duck.”

I spoke to him sharply. “That’s movie bullshit. Crooks don’t make enemies out of us. They work their side, and we try to put them in jail. It’s professional, not sandlot wrestling. You’re either in a jam because you screwed around with another man’s wife, or because you are a doper. Which is it?”

He stood, his face flushed with anger. “I’m not dirty. No matter what everyone thinks.”

“Fine,” I almost shouted to quiet him back down. “So what’s that leave?”

His lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line. He didn’t say a word, but his eyes betrayed his confusion.

“You were used,” I said gently, “by someone who went after you by turning the system against you. He knew we’d have to do what we did, and that the rest would naturally follow-the press drumming it up, the politicians covering their asses, the people you work with giving you a wide berth. You feel bad now, but it’ll get worse unless we can cut it off with the truth.”

“I’m not dirty,” he repeated in a barely perceptible voice, sitting back down.

“Maybe I believe that. It doesn’t make any difference. Not until you can help me find some proof. If you want a cliché that holds water, remember the one about cops being guilty until they’re proven innocent, ’cause that’s the way it is.”

Padget cupped his face in his palms and rubbed his eyes hard with his fingertips. “This supposed to make me feel good?”

I took hope at that glimmer of humor. “It’s supposed to get you off your ass. Right now, it looks like you committed a crime. But even though I’m the one who found the evidence, my job’s not near done. I still have to look under rocks-make sure what I got is solid. I’m hoping there’s something that proves what we have is bogus, and you’re one of the best people I know to help me with that.”

He stood up again in a frustrated lurch and stalked over to the window. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, staring out at the street. “That’s about all I do anymore. Jan was never in this place, and I know it wasn’t Emily. You guys are definitely wrong there.”

“Who says? You dumped her for Bouch’s wife. That’s been known to piss a few women off.”

“God damn it,” he shouted, glaring at me. “Is that how it works? Everything gets twisted to fit the picture? I didn’t dump Emily and I didn’t go straight from her to Jan. Emily and I are friends. We went to bed a couple of times, it didn’t work out, and we called it quits-nice but no cigar. Emily’s not out to get me. That’s total bullshit.”

“She was in this house. Was anyone else?”

He merely rolled his eyes.

“Did she ever use the bathroom, or have access to it when you couldn’t see her?”

He still didn’t answer.

“That’s how we have to think, Brian,” I said. “Not that Emily stuck it to you, but that she had the opportunity. Which means we can’t rule her out-same with Jan.”

He returned to his chair, suddenly eager to talk. “Look, Lieutenant. I know you’re a good guy. And I know you don’t screw other cops. But this is all crazy. I’m just starting out and I got a lot to learn, but I am pretty good. Ask Sergeant Davis. I can figure out when people’re pulling my chain. Emily Doyle is a nice kid. She’s got a chip on her shoulder and she comes on too strong, but that’s because she’s scared of screwing up. She wants to make it so bad as a cop it hurts. There is no way in hell she’d go after me because we didn’t have a good time in bed. I mean, Jesus, I’m about the only one in the department who can put up with her shit half the time.”

“Why the chip on the shoulder?”

He shook his head impatiently. “Family junk. Her father wanted a boy, gave her shit as a kid, said she’d never measure up. She overcompensates.”

“What about Jan Bouch?”

He hesitated at the sudden change in direction. “That’s different.”

I waited for more and finally had to prompt him. “Starting with the fact that you love her?”

His discomfort came off him like smoke.

“I love somebody, too,” I said. “It’s not something to be embarrassed about. Tell me what kind of person she is-objectively, as a cop.”

“She has her problems,” he admitted. “Her son-of-a-bitch husband for starters. He hooked her on coke to tie her to him. But she’s working on kicking that.” His voice became wistful. “She was, at least.”

“Is she a strong person?” I asked.

“She’s not Emily-God knows. She’s got strong feelings, though. But she’s no fighter.”

“What do you like about her?”

Padget shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “She makes me feel good. The things she says are kind of dumb, but they put me right on top… I guess that sounds stupid.”

Not stupid, I thought, but disarmingly flattering. “What kind of influence do you think Norm has on her, besides the drugs?”

He looked at me in wonder. “I hadn’t thought about it till just now, but he reminds me of Emily’s father-the two of them are real domineering.”

“But where Emily ended up fighting back… ” I left the thought dangling on purpose.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Maybe Jan does kind of cave in too much.”

“She pretty much do what you ask her to when you’re together?”

“Yeah.”

I let him think about the significance of that for a moment before continuing. To make him useful-to both of us-I wanted him to begin thinking analytically again. “Brian, how did you two meet?”

He blinked a couple of times, as if clearing away a lingering doubt. “Oh, it was just an accident. I guess I got called to their house for a disturbance. Things started rolling from that.”

“Norm was there, too?”

“We wouldn’t’ve been called otherwise.”

“You called her up afterwards?”

He sensed the inappropriateness of that. “No, no. I don’t know. I guess we bumped into each other around town, got to talking… ”

“And she started unloading her problems on you?”

Padget began fidgeting again. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. We just started talking, you know? Like people do. We connected.”

“Who stepped up the relationship to more than talking?”

That seemed safer to him. “She did. I knew it was wrong, or that people would think it was, but she made things pretty hard to resist. I thought I could help her out-get rid of Norm, maybe fix things so she could get her life straight.”

“Maybe be a part of that life?” I suggested.

He paused for a long time. “Maybe.”

I hesitated before asking my next question. “Remember what I said about thinking like a cop? Is it possible, putting your personal feelings aside, that Jan might’ve been manipulated by Norm, even while she was talking about a future with you?”

I was expecting a blowup, so I was surprised by his bland response. “The way things’re going now, I guess anything’s possible.”

It wasn’t lacking in fatalism, but at least he was open to suggestion. I rose and crossed to the front door. “I’ll get out of your hair. Did you follow my advice about seeing a counselor, by the way? I guarantee it’ll help.”

“No.”

I’d expected that. Cops tend to steer clear of analysts, not only because of a built-in reticence, but also out of fear their confessions will leak back to their superiors and be held against them. It had been known to happen.

I tried once more anyhow. “It doesn’t have to be the department-sanctioned shrink. See someone on your own.”

But he merely shook his head. “Thanks anyway, Lieutenant. I’m feeling better, knowing you’re out there working for me. I wasn’t so sure before.”

I kept my mouth shut. What did it hurt for him to think my job was that clear-cut? And wasn’t it to lend him support that I’d come here in the first place? What I said instead was, “Keep trying to remember what’s been going on recently. Maybe you’ll think of something helpful.”

Unfortunately, he already had mentioned something relevant, which I didn’t think was going to help him in the least. After I pulled out of his driveway, I didn’t head for home as I’d originally planned, but north toward the Bellows Falls police station to find out if I was right.

The evening shift was just coming on when I pulled into the parking lot. I could see their silhouettes gathered in the radio room, no doubt sampling the cookies I’d heard were regularly supplied by one of the officer’s wives. As I entered the building, however, all conversation died as if cut with an ax, and the small group filed out the door, eyes averted. Only the dispatcher remained, now buried in paperwork, and Greg Davis, looking embarrassed.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said softly. “Part of the turf.”

“Doesn’t make it any more pleasant. What’s up?”

“I was wondering if your call log indexed responding officers.”

He led me over to the same computer I’d used earlier. “Sure. What case?”

“Everything involving the Bouch residence.”

He cut me a look but remained silent, typing his instructions into the machine. Moments later, a list appeared on screen. I read it, nodded to him to scroll down, read again. I rubbed the back of my neck, disappointed.

“Get what you wanted?” he asked.

“That’s all of it, right? There’re no other records that might show Brian responding to at least one of those calls?” I thought further as he shook his head. “How ’bout if he was off-duty and just showed up to help?”

“It’d still be in here.”

So Brian had lied. I sighed with disappointment. “That’s what Emile remembered, too. First time we talked, he said he didn’t think Bouch and Padget had ever met.”

Davis glanced back at the screen. “He was right-officially at least. Looks like Emily Doyle showed up at the Bouches more’n anyone. Luck of the draw, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, but I didn’t believe it for a second.