Bellows Falls

Chapter 2

FOUR WEEKS LATER, Jasper Morgan had all but slipped from my mind. The BOL had yielded nothing, the grapevine had remained silent, and Jasper, along with Pierre Lavoie’s gun, had been put on the back burner, “pending new developments.”

The spike in activity we get every spring-when the rowdier natives emerge from hibernation to wreak havoc-had subsided weeks ago, and life had returned to a predictable normalcy. As had my domestic life with Gail Zigman, my companion of many years, who had finally landed a cherished job as deputy to our local State’s Attorney.

In contrast to my schedule, Gail’s was awash in work, she being the lowest on the totem pole and the one with the most to learn. On the other hand, after countless months of juggling a clerkship, a correspondence course, cramming for the bar exam, and applying for jobs, even she was feeling comparatively sane. We still didn’t have enough time to ourselves, but we were at last enjoying what little we could get.

I was therefore in an unguarded mood when Chief Tony Brandt appeared in my office doorway and inquired, “You have much on your plate right now? Or anyone you can spare?”

I waved a hand at the paperwork before me. “My head’s above water. I don’t know about the others. Why?”

He entered and sat in my guest chair, wedged between the door and a filing cabinet. “I just got a call from Emile Latour. He needs a little digging done on one of his officers.”

Latour was Tony’s counterpart in Bellows Falls, a small industrial-era town a half-hour’s drive north of Brattleboro, just inside the northern reaches of Windham County. “Who’s the officer?”

“Brian Padget. Two-year man, good record, well liked. It’s a sexual harassment claim filed by some woman’s husband. Emile was wondering if we could lend him someone to conduct a quick internal on it.”

I made a face. The request was not unusual. If a grievance was filed against a department or one of its officers, and the outfit was too small to have its own Internal Affairs division, it was routine to ask another agency to supply an investigator. The task was usually mundane-often going through the motions to make everyone feel better. The majority were crank cases resulting in the officer involved being cleared, a happy circumstance that never helped the guy conducting the investigation-that poor bastard was always stamped a Judas before he even reached town.

I hedged my response. “I take it you’d like us to accept.”

“Latour’s a decent guy. It helps to be friendly.”

“Have they even looked into it? Sexual harassment’s a bit of a catchall. Maybe they could handle it themselves.”

Brandt shrugged. “I didn’t ask. Could be they’re just playing it safe.”

“You give him a deadline on how many days we can spend on it?”

“Not in so many words, but I’m guessing a couple.”

I flipped the pencil I was holding onto my desk. “All right, but I won’t saddle anyone else with it. I’ll do it myself.”

Bellows Falls is a troubled community. A village swallowed whole by a cantankerous township, developmentally stalled since the Great Depression, and, reduced to being the bedroom to almost every other town within a half-hour’s commute, it has a dour and pessimistic self-image out of all proportion to its size.

It is not big. The village covers a single square mile. It is also strikingly photogenic, as much for its glut of statuesque nineteenth century mansions as for its glumly quaint, abandoned factories. Seen from the air, Bellows Falls protrudes like a pregnant stomach into the Connecticut River, forming a tight half-circle, at the apex of which is the dramatic, rocky cascade that gives the town its name. It owes its existence to that water’s energy, which in the early years gave the upstart, industrially minded settlers an advantage over their more staid agrarian neighbors. For a succession of grist mills, rag-paper plants, and pulp mills, the ceaseless water became literal life blood, supplying power, spawning river, rail and road transportation, and creating other tangential manufacturing. Now, as if personifying the village’s current impotence, the Connecticut’s flow is controlled by a dam sluicing water down the remains of an old canal to feed the turbines of a local utility company.

Its picture postcard prettiness may in fact best represent Bellows Falls’ most paradoxical irony-that while most other places proudly point to a few older buildings as standard-bearers of an earlier time, the past is about all this town has left to brag about. It is a pantheon of long-vanished industrial might. Ancient red brick shells can find but a few new tenants, a once thriving railroad junction has been reduced to a single platform, and the elaborate mansions have mostly been diced up into apartments by out-of-state landlords who care little about upkeep and less about their welfare tenants.

Periodically, the village erupts with face-saving activity. Meetings are held and committees formed to identify and solve the place’s underlying problems. But whether it’s half-heartedness from within, or the sheer magnitude of the task, these groups never seem to last long and sink below the surface with little flotsam left behind: a few new benches on the square, a coat of paint on an old wall, a scattering of shrubs to eventually die of neglect or abuse. Another movement was afoot right now, in fact, dedicated to the usual renaissance. It seemed better organized than its predecessors, but no one I knew was placing any bets. A museum of glories past, the name Bellows Falls had become a statewide joke, solely equated with failure.

The police station, my intended first stop, was located north of the village in a modern building it shared with the fire department, and which local wags had dubbed the House of the Seven Gables for its tortured profile. But I took the southernmost of the two interstate exits servicing Bellows Falls so I could drive through downtown. I was one of those who genuinely liked the town, despite its pratfalls and ill fortune. Its mere existence spoke of the same perseverance that drove Vermont farmers to till soil that was more rock than dirt-and to dismiss it as merely “bony.”

The southern approach to the village, no enhancement to its self-image, features a nondescript cluster of filling stations, pizza joints, video arcades and one porno store; and the first building beyond the official historical marker is a bar. But the old village center, when it appears around a gentle corner, comes as a refreshing reward. A Y-shaped “square,” with the Y opening toward the north, it is defined by the weathered red brick that once symbolized New England as an industrial powerhouse. Among the bas-reliefs and the odd crenellation or granite molding, the clock tower of the town hall looks startlingly like a miniature version of the same structure in Florence, Italy.

There are gaps in this facade-empty asphalt lots or tiny bench-equipped parks-which testify to Bellows Falls’ most biblical of afflictions. Through the decades, with the regularity of mythic rite, fire has eaten at the village. Factories, retail buildings, homes, and a few bars have gone up in smoke, all from unrelated causes. Over time, bikers, dopers, and train-delivered New York misfits had all had their turns at stamping the town with their identities. The ceaseless fires, therefore, played in some people’s minds as an eerie form of divine retribution-a viewpoint that both irritated the hard-core village boosters and occasionally left them wondering.

Currently that reputation was less lurid, sadder, and looked much tougher to cure. Bellows Falls, during the go-go eighties, had been the place to live cheaply if you worked in Springfield, Brattleboro, Walpole, or Keene. The mansions of onetime magnates went for twenty thousand dollars and rentals were plentiful and affordable. But times had changed. Values climbed, taxes kept pace, and absentee landlords carved their holdings into ever smaller and shabbier tenements. Businesses increasingly moved out or shut down, and Bellows Falls became a welfare town, rife with domestic disputes, drinking and drug use, larceny, theft, and vandalism, and a pervading undercurrent of teenage parenthood and sexual abuse. At twenty percent, the school system had a higher percentage of “special ed” kids than any other in the state.

For a small, low-key police department, it sometimes became quite a handful.

I’d met the BFPD’s chief twice, both times only long enough to exchange greetings. Emile Latour had been described to me as a homegrown product who’d joined the force after impatiently treading water as a security guard for three years following high school. Now in his late fifties, he’d been chief for some fifteen years and was locally touted as an Eisenhower-era neighborhood cop-avuncular, available, compliant with his bosses, and maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed. Unlike most of the rest of us in Vermont law enforcement, Latour kept to himself, shunning the regional meetings and conferences we increasingly used to keep in touch, and staying outside the networking loop that had developed as a byproduct. There are only eleven hundred full-time cops in Vermont, servicing a population that barely tops half a million. Yet to the few who’d heard of him, Emile Latour, despite a lifetime in the business, had managed to remain little more than a name on his department’s letterhead.

The impression was only enhanced by his appearance. As I swung out of my car in the police department parking lot and paused to enjoy the view of the broad Connecticut River across the road, a short, burly, round-bellied man with thinning white hair, a flushed complexion, and a shy smile, walked out of the building to greet me. His regulation blues fit him as comfortably as a pair of pajamas. He was a vision from a forty-year-old recruitment poster.

“Joe Gunther? Good to see you again. I’m Chief Latour. Thanks for coming up so fast.”

I shook his hand, noting its blunt, dry, dormant strength, reminiscent of my long-dead father’s. A farmer’s hand. Despite the uniform, I instantly envisioned him on his knees in a large garden, enjoying the silky dampness of earth between his fingers.

“My pleasure,” I answered. “Hope I can be useful.”

He touched my elbow and gestured toward the building’s front door. “Oh, that won’t be a problem. I don’t think this’ll lead to anything.”

From the outside, the House of the Seven Gables was weighted toward the fire department’s needs, with a row of open bay doors revealing several gleaming trucks. Once over the threshold, I became all but convinced that the police department’s tenancy had been an afterthought at best. They had a nice if compact radio dispatch room, with windows facing both the parking lot and the lobby, but beyond the inner blue door, we were faced with a cramped, ill-fitting string of narrow, short hallways, tiny rooms, and a twisting staircase. Latour’s office on the second floor was tucked under the eaves, with two skylights angled so close to the one small conference table that I had to watch my head as I pulled out a chair to sit. Legend was that the building had been the first municipal project of a young architect fresh out of school, who had among other things omitted putting heat in the basement because, as he’d explained it patiently to his challengers, “Heat sinks.”

Chief Latour, shorter and more used to the precarious proximity of his ceiling, grabbed the chair facing me without concern. “Did Tony Brandt fill you in at all?” he asked.

“He said it was a sexual harassment case.”

The chief shook his head. “It’s got to be a bum rap. The officer’s name is Brian Padget. He’s been with us two years. He’s well liked, respected, a hard worker-probably end up going to the State Police, with my luck. The complaint is he’s been pestering a married woman.”

“And the husband brought the complaint?”

Latour quickly glanced at my face. I sensed that locking eyes with other people made him uncomfortable. “Right. Norman Bouch. Not one of our model citizens. That’s one reason I think this whole thing is bullshit.”

“He have a grudge against Padget?”

He paused while the room filled with the reverberating roar of an unseen passing truck. “I don’t know that they’ve ever met,” he said eventually.

“What makes Bouch not a model citizen?”

“Nothing we could ever prove. He pretends he’s an excavation contractor. He’s got a backhoe he digs holes with around town, but everybody knows he sells dope for most of his income.”

I was a little uneasy with the assumptions. “He lives beyond his apparent means?”

Latour was now staring at the polished tips of his shoes, and smiled at my careful phrasing. “He’s got a wife and kids, a decent house, a Harley with all the fixin’s and a late-model Firebird. You figure it out.”

The conviction in his voice was absolute. I shifted my approach slightly. “Tell me a little about Padget.”

There was a fleeting glance at the wall. “Best officer I ever had.”

Given such praise, I was surprised at its brevity. “Local boy? Married? Liked by the others?” I prompted.

Latour straightened in his seat, suddenly emphatic. “No, he’s not married. But he wouldn’t fool around. I told you, he’s respected and admired-by everybody.”

I finally sensed what was eating at him. “But you think there might be something to what Bouch is claiming.”

The chief stood up, crossed the room, and resettled behind the protection of his desk.

“Are you going to interview him?” he asked.

“Not until I’ve finished my investigation. If I dig up anything criminal, a statement by him prior to being Mirandized will be thrown out in court-the judge’ll say he was coerced into talking for fear of being fired.”

Latour flapped his hand as if to shoo me away, no doubt regretting his having called Brandt in the first place. “Criminal? Christ Almighty. Bouch is just trying to bust our chops.”

“Does Padget know about the allegation?”

“Sure he does. I told him. He denied it completely. I’ve put him on paid leave till this is cleared up.”

“And he knows I’ve been asked to check it out?”

Latour gave a rueful half-smile. “By now, I’d say the whole department does.”

“What’s the general consensus?”

“They all think like I do. Bouch is just doing a number. It happens a lot, especially in this town. Do you know what they call Bellows Falls at the police academy? ‘Dodge City’-I kid you not. Our crime stats are in the top four or five for the state year after year, and we’re a quarter Brattleboro’s size-thirty-eight hundred people, tops. Besides me, I got one sergeant, six officers, and a bunch of part-timers. My other sergeant’s with the drug task force for two more years. We’re sitting ducks.”

“Does Bouch get much of your business?” I asked, hoping to head off more complaining.

“We’ve gone to his house for disturbances-domestic abuse stuff, drunk and disorderly. We’ve held him overnight to dry out, but no one’s ever filed charges against him.”

I rose and prepared to leave, my mind chasing after a dozen diverging questions. I had my doubts, however, that Chief Latour was the unbiased source I needed for answers.

I left to get my bearings-drive around, clear my head, and see the town. Latour had grumpily given me Padget’s and Bouch’s addresses. I wanted to check out the latter’s first but took the scenic route to get there.

The geographical protuberance I thought of as Bellows Falls’ pregnant belly is called the Island, although it is only the canal that has made it such. Nevertheless, that barrier has led to a wholly separate identity, consisting largely of an empty railroad yard and station, a few half-abandoned factories and warehouses, a couple of businesses, and an impressive view of the cascade and Fall Mountain beyond. It is like a failing industrial park hogging the best real estate in the area.

The next longitudinal stratum to Bellows Falls, west of the canal, is the downtown corridor I’d driven through on Rockingham Street, resolutely turned in on itself around its oddly shaped square, and-as in Brattleboro and many other older New England towns-with its back turned against the natural scenery.

Prominent above downtown is Cherry Hill, an oblong rise bisecting the village, and jammed with an assortment of schools, churches, a cemetery, and some of the town’s famous and ubiquitous white clapboard housing-both pleasant Greek Revival single-family homes and several squalid three-deckers, bursting at the seams with down-and-out tenants.

Skirting Cherry Hill’s western slope, Atkinson parallels Rockingham Street but is overwhelmingly lined with residential buildings. It exposes the village’s social extremes most clearly, with some of its more spectacular mansions snuggling up to the seediest flophouses. Atkinson, and the side streets extending across a narrow flat section to its west, are where the vast majority of the town’s inhabitants live. It is a beehive-like neighborhood-rich, poor, elaborate, and plain-virtually crawling with people and stamped by their passage. Toys, bikes, cars abandoned and functional, swing sets, birdbaths, and assorted debris all lie scattered among the houses like yard sale rejects. More vivid than the dramatic setting, overwhelming the spectacular architecture, is the sense of people in this town. They appear to live everywhere, as on an overloaded riverboat.

Predictably, from what Latour had portrayed, Bouch had chosen this area to call home.

His house was easy to spot, being marked by a backhoe and a gravel truck, both looking the worse for wear. But it was the Harley that caught my eye-and the man working on it.

Dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and work boots, Norm Bouch at first glance looked like any other working-class male, his head buried in a motor and his hands covered with grease. But as I drove slowly by, I noticed the precision with which he handled his tools and the perfect balance he maintained as he moved. Like a relaxing predator, he showed confidence and grace and exuded an indefinable sense of menace.

That sensation was confirmed a moment later, when a ball came soaring over the garage roof from the backyard and bounced harmlessly against the motorcycle. A screwdriver still in his hand, Bouch picked up the ball and began circling the garage, just as a small boy appeared at its far corner, running full tilt. Both of them froze in their tracks as they caught sight of each other. I could no longer see Bouch’s face, but the boy’s paled with fright, and he began wringing his hands with practiced intensity.

I stopped the car and continued watching, seeing the boy speaking quickly, no doubt begging forgiveness for the ball’s sudden intrusion. Bouch held it up as if discovering it for the first time and turned it admiringly in his hand. Then in one fluid movement, he stuck it with his screwdriver and tossed it half-deflated at the boy’s feet. The child looked down forlornly and slowly stooped to pick it up. Bouch was already heading back to the Harley, a smile on his face.

I resumed driving down the street, unnoticed-and wishing to remain that way.

I didn’t want to interview Norm Bouch-not yet. Internal investigations are ticklish affairs. The cops tend to see you as a potential traitor, and the civilian complainants as a guaranteed whitewasher. So despite the pressure from both camps to come up with results, and a tradition that dictates interviewing the complainant and witnesses first before doing the peripheral homework, I tend to favor a more roundabout method. By approaching the problem from the outside, collecting knowledge on the way in, I often end up with a pretty complete picture before even meeting the primary players.

It’s unorthodox, slower, and it makes twitchy officials twitchier, but it gives me a better sense of what I’m getting into.

I therefore drove past to a nearby convenience store, parked in its lot, and sat like a bird-watcher taking notes from the bushes.

The Bouch home was a two-story, ramshackle, turn-of-the century clapboard pile, probably quite tidy and small when original, now a typical cob job of artless additions and alterations. New England is dotted with such buildings, where the amendments have all but swallowed the original. Norm’s was adorned with the mismatched roof lines, bare sheathing, and patched-on sagging porch exemplifying the least of such examples. The yard was a similar mess-cars, broken toys, a washing machine, and assorted jetsam all vied for space. From my vantage point, I could partially see into the backyard, where the small boy was still holding the flattened ball, but was now surrounded by several other unhappy children.

A quarter hour later, a pickup truck on testosterone pulled to the curb in a roar of doctored mufflers, and a heavyset man in a tight tank top swung out to join Bouch by the side of the Harley. Bouch greeted him with a laugh, handed him a beer from a nearby cooler, and engaged in animated conversation, still working on his bike. I didn’t doubt that in the heat of a summer afternoon, variations of this scene were being duplicated a millionfold across the country.

I have long passed the point of expecting people to look their parts. Emile Latour’s uniformed, round-bodied look of benevolent, innocuous authority hid an anger I’d sensed simmering just below the surface. What I was watching now, I knew, could be anything-two guys bonding over beer and the Harley mystique, or two drug dealers discussing business in a totally placid setting.

Brian Padget lived in Westminster, several miles south of Bellows Falls. But where most Vermont towns appear sprinkled across a picturesque and hilly topography, Westminster sits on a flat terrace of land, its rigidly placed buildings straddling a wide, straight, smooth stretch of road more conducive to speeding than to the leisurely enjoyment of a small, quaint village. The details of the latter are there, of course-the town predates the American Revolution. But the sturdy, classically built homes and businesses are dwarfed by the numbing, methodical way in which they were laid out, and the overall impression of Westminster remains an anonymous blur.

Padget’s house was a single-story converted trailer at the edge of town, tightly wedged between two similarly built neighbors. The tiny lawn was cut and trimmed, the one bush out front neatly pruned, and the vinyl clapboards of the house looked freshly washed. I knew from Latour that Padget wasn’t home-he was out of town visiting his folks for the day. As with the Bouch residence, all I was after here was a first impression of the people I was about to investigate.

Padget’s home was the precise opposite of Bouch’s-on the surface, it spoke of precision and attention to detail, but under that was a concern for appearances, a sense of others standing in judgment. It reflected an underlying insecurity typical of a young unmarried man, who was both relatively new on the job and eager to impress.

Bouch, on the other hand, had seemed more comfortable with himself. The self-confident blue-collar squalor of his home had been as eloquent as Padget’s cautious ambition. I sensed Norm was positioned to take advantage of the world around him, whereas Brian was more dependent on the blessings of those with clout.

It made me ponder the forces that had set these two people in opposition. “Sexual harassment,” like a foghorn in the night, covered a range of possibilities-from a mere disturbance to a warning of catastrophe. I didn’t have Emile Latour’s confidence that the former was preordained.