Bellows Falls

Chapter 20

“Why’d he kill him?” Duncan asked, of no one in particular.

Jonathon was sitting on the police boat’s gunwale, his feet planted on the bench running across the stern. “He probably represented a threat. He’s the only one who saw you and Joe meeting with Lenny.”

“And maybe because for every lieutenant you often have a sergeant,” I said. “Could be this kid knew more than was good for him. The duffel bag was packed for a long trip. Lenny might’ve been heading for someplace only he and the kid knew about.”

Jonathon, Duncan, and I formed a semicircle on the fantail. Audrey had stayed on the ferry to help the crime scene team. Lenny was under guard below deck, having refused to say a word since surrendering. The body bag containing the subject of our conversation lay at our feet like a misshapen ottoman.

“Either way,” Jonathon resumed, “it sure makes you think twice about old Norm Bouch. That is some fear to instill in a guy, to make him kill a kid just so he won’t be traced.”

The muffled bleating of a pager floated into the air among us. Instinctively, we all checked our own units, found nothing, and returned to staring out across the featureless water. It was Jonathon who finally asked, “So whose was that?”

We looked at one another and then, as if pulled by a common string, stared at the bag in our midst.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Duncan exclaimed, and fell to his knees. He pulled open the zipper, revealing a pale, wet, blue-tinted version of the young man we’d met that morning. He peeled back the flaps of the bag and slightly rolled the body to one side. Reaching under, he extracted a beeper and held it up.

Jonathon took it and checked the display. “This was it, all right.”

“You got your cell phone?” I asked him.

He pulled it out of his inside pocket and handed it to me. I gave it to Duncan. “Call your office, get an address on that number, and let’s see if we can get a search warrant.”

Duncan pushed the appropriate numbers, passed along the request, and waited. A minute later, he looked up at us, grinning broadly. “It’s Norm Bouch’s apartment on North Street.”

North Street looks like a transplant from another city. Unlike Burlington’s college-influenced, commercialized downtown, or the residential areas of old Greek Revival architecture with dime-sized backyards, North Street looks like something out of turn-of-the-century, down-at-the-heels Chicago. It is a gray, featureless, ruler-straight avenue filled with bland, worn, flat-faced buildings. The effect is of pure utility-cheap houses built to shelter, and nothing more. It is also pervasive-even the occasional exception seems tainted by the whole, as if all the fancy architecture in the world couldn’t alter the reality tucked behind those peeling wooden walls. Of the visible businesses, bars and junk food convenience stores predominate.

Norm Bouch’s apartment was located next to a lawyer’s office, its windows protected by Plexiglas since, as Duncan explained, every time the lawyer had lost a case, the client had paid him with a brick on the wing. The building was square, flat-roofed, wrapped in scalloped asbestos siding, with doors and windows so flush with the surface they looked painted on. Two patrol units were on guard by the time we arrived, a search warrant in hand.

“Any movement?” Audrey asked one of the uniformed officers.

He shook his head. “Not in or out. Someone’s pretty nervous at the window, though. Checks on us every five minutes.”

We entered the building by the front door, climbed a set of narrow, dingy steps, precariously equipped with a loose railing, and arrived at a door on the top landing with a shiny new peephole in its center. Jonathon pointed at it and raised his eyebrows before Duncan pounded on the door.

We heard soft footsteps approach the other side and hesitate. Duncan held his badge up to the peephole. “Knock, knock,” he said in a loud voice, “Police.”

The door opened slowly, revealing a pimply-faced teenager weighing ninety pounds fully clothed. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice cracking.

Fasca pushed the warrant at him. “To search this place. Belongs to Norm Bouch, right?”

“Who?” The boy stepped aside to let us enter.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Randy Haskins.”

“You live here, Randy?”

The others had spread throughout the small, dark, shabbily furnished apartment. Haskins eyed them nervously. “No. I come to visit.”

“Where do you live, then?”

“On Archibald.”

“And who do you visit when you come here?” I steered him over to a lumpy sofa covered with a dirty electric blanket with the wires hanging out. I took the armchair opposite.

“Lenny Markham. I thought he owned it.” He looked around nervously. “Are you sure you have the right place? I never heard of the other guy.”

“You used the phone to call a beeper number about two hours ago, didn’t you?”

His mouth opened. “How’d you know that?”

“Who were you calling?”

“Robbie Moore.”

“Why?”

“Just to hang out-you know.”

“What do you and Robbie and Lenny have in common?”

Randy Haskins swallowed hard. “Nothing. We’re just friends. We do stuff together.”

“Then why are you here and they’re not?”

“Lenny lets us use this as a crash pad. We all drop by when we want. It doesn’t have to be to meet anybody.”

“So there are more than just Robbie and yourself.”

His face reddened. “A few.” He began absent-mindedly picking at a dark rectangular patch sewn into the middle of the blanket.

“What are their names?”

He hesitated, chewing his lip.

I leaned forward. “Randy. Our being here should tell you it’s all gone up in smoke. A judge doesn’t sign a search warrant unless there’s a very good reason for it. You and I both know what that reason is, right?”

I gave him enough time to nod.

“Then you probably also know your best bet is to be as cooperative as you’ve been so far.”

He grimaced as if in pain. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“From Lenny? He can be nasty, can’t he?”

Again, he nodded.

“Well, here’s the deal, then. Lenny met with Robbie on the ferry earlier today, and before we could stop him, he stuck a knife into Robbie’s heart and threw him overboard. Robbie’s dead, and Lenny’s in jail, and he’s never getting out.”

Randy’s mouth opened and closed several times. “Robbie’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so. Why do you think Lenny killed him?”

He rubbed his forehead, shaking his head. “He was stupid. I told him to keep quiet. Lenny even warned him, but he didn’t take it seriously. I was scared of Lenny. I knew he didn’t kid around.”

“Keep quiet about what?” I asked gently.

“Running dope. That’s what we did so Lenny would take care of us. But it was supposed to be secret. That was the one big rule. Lenny said he’d kill anyone who squealed-that he’d done it before and would do it again.”

“And what was Robbie’s problem?”

The patch on the blanket was almost totally detached, what with Randy’s nagging it. “He liked to brag. Made him feel bigger. He did everything he could to suck up to Lenny, but then he’d shoot his mouth off to complete strangers-ask them if they wanted some dope, that he could put together a big score if they’d pay.”

“He was working behind Lenny’s back?”

Randy shook his head sharply. “No, no. That’s how Lenny found out about it. Robbie came to him and said he’d set up a deal-all Lenny had to do was produce the dope and collect the cash. Lenny almost took his head off, but he still didn’t get the message.”

“Why didn’t Lenny get rid of him? Wasn’t there a regular turnover of kids?”

At that Randy seemed genuinely baffled. “There was… But it didn’t affect Robbie. Even with all their fights, they really liked each other.”

I placed the list of names Randy Haskins had eventually given me on the conference table. “He didn’t know Norm Bouch, has never been to Bellows Falls, didn’t know if Lenny had either… There doesn’t seem to be any connection at all between Norm and Lenny, except for the use of the apartment.”

“Which was clean as a whistle,” Kathleen Bartlett said.

“Right.”

We were back at the Burlington Police Department’s headquarters-Bartlett, Jonathon, Audrey and myself-sitting around a small table near the coffee machine.

Kathy Bartlett sighed. “Well, maybe it’s just as well. It would’ve complicated things if you had found something. What about phone records?”

“We got ’em. The long distance numbers are being checked right now, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. There were none to Bellows Falls or Lawrence, Mass, or anywhere else connected to all this.” I slid the Randy Haskins list across the table to Audrey. “Maybe you can get something out of this, but my guess is Lenny played it pretty close to the vest.”

“Which is why we think he whacked Robbie Moore, by the way,” Jonathon added.

“Why did you say it was just as well we didn’t find anything in the apartment?” I asked Kathy, my spirits sinking still further. “Aren’t we going to deal on this?”

She shook her head. “I’ve spent the last four hours in the ring with the Chittenden County SA. There is no way in hell he’s going to piss away election-year bragging rights on a first-degree, premeditated murder of a minor, witnessed by a bunch of cops, just so we can get the goods on some penny-ante dope pusher in Bellows Falls. Those were his words, not mine.”

She cupped her cheek in one hand and looked at us mournfully. “We might get a crack at Lenny in a year or more, after the SA’s finished with him, and assuming his lawyer’ll go along with it, but I doubt even that. We wouldn’t have anything to offer him. He’d have to want to talk to us from the goodness of his heart.”

There was a long, telling silence while we pondered the likelihood of that scenario.

“Where’s that leave you?” Audrey asked, sensing her own involvement in the case was nearing an end.

“Up a creek,” Jonathon answered, reflecting the general mood. “Lenny was supposed to be our ticket to Norm Bouch.”

I’d been staring at the tabletop, running through every angle I could think of, struggling with the feeling that we’d never get anywhere on this case. I finally looked up at Jonathon. “You staying here to sew up the odds and ends?”

He nodded. “A day at most.”

“I’m heading back to Brattleboro,” I told them. “I need to find out how things’re going down there anyway, and maybe I can kick something loose that we missed.”

In the dark of night, the trip between Burlington and Brattleboro is smooth, monotonous, and fast-interstates all the way. Beyond the reach of the headlights, the mountain ranges, sloping fields, and glacier-carved valleys tug at the mind’s edge like half-forgotten memories, making the car’s closed interior a comforting cocoon. It was a time and place I preferred for thinking, and I was moodily indulging myself when the cell phone cut it short.

“My God,” Gail said, “You’re a hard man to find. I’ve been calling all over.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Greg Davis wants to see you. Brian Padget’s in some sort of pickle.”

“That’s all he said? When did he call?”

“Over two hours ago.” I let out a sigh. I’d been looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

“And I suppose he wants to see me ASAP.”

“You got it-at Padget’s house.”

I was forty-five minutes north of Westminster.

“There’s something else,” she added. “Remember I told you I knew Anne Murphy? After I cleared it with Derby, I called her up to see if she’d tell me more about Jan Bouch than she’d told you. What she said-unofficially of course-was that Jan suffers from dependent personality disorder. That’s a clinical diagnosis.”

“What’s it mean?”

“They’re like recipe titles, basically-this plus this plus this equals manic depression, or whatever. With Jan’s problem, there are eight ingredients total, and she’s got most of them: can’t make everyday decisions without advice, depends on others to assume responsibility, doesn’t argue out of fear of being rejected, can’t stand being alone, clings to the people she quote-unquote loves, and-this is the one I thought you’d like-is so needy of attention she’ll volunteer to do things she doesn’t like or knows are wrong.”

“Did Murphy go into specific details?”

Gail’s laugh was made tinny by the phone. “Not a chance. She’d cross the line only so far. She knows what I do for a living, and she knows who I sleep with.”

“Which probably won’t happen tonight,” I muttered sadly. “Did she say if Jan’s being treated, and if so, how successfully?”

“One of the aspects of this disorder is that the patient is often in an abusive relationship, and that when the therapist suggests getting out of it, the patient regresses. In fact, in order for any detachment to begin to work, Anne said the counselor first shouldn’t argue the contention that the abuser is a great guy. ’Course, Jan’s not even close to that stage. As soon as Anne mentioned Norm might be part of Jan’s problem, the discussion came to an end.”

“So she’s still under his thumb.”

Gail’s energy was pumping into my ear. “Right, which put me on another track. Anne also told me Jan’s super-connected to her kids. She’s not a great mother-you told me that much-but she’s incredibly attached to them. It probably ties into the dependency thing. Anyhow, I was thinking they might be the way to get her to turn on Norm.”

I furrowed my brow in the darkness. “How?”

“Use SRS to apply a little pressure. Let her think that unless she makes some serious changes-Norm above all-she could lose her kids.”

I could hardly believe this was Gail. The state’s Social and Rehabilitation Services were famously tough-minded when motivated and definitely had the power to do what she’d just suggested. “Jesus. That’s hardball.”

She picked up on the implied criticism. “Only if you don’t give a damn. I’m not doing this to nail Norm-he’s your problem. I want this woman and her kids free of him. She may have her kinks, but from what Anne told me, a little care and attention could get her straight. I don’t mind playing hardball for that.”

I smiled at the familiar passion. I should have known better. “All right. So what’s your plan?”

“I contacted an SRS investigator friend of mine. She’ll be visiting Jan tomorrow morning. Norm’s supposed to be at work then.”

“What if your friend finds the kids are doing fine?”

“It doesn’t matter. After the visit’s over, you can put whatever spin on it you want.”

Up to now, I’d been hoping for a break along evidentiary lines-some clue we’d overlooked. But with Gail’s strategy already underway, my horizons had been broadened, and with them possibilities I’d almost abandoned.

Slowly catching her enthusiasm, I muttered, “Since it looks like Norm used his wife to get to Padget, maybe we could pull the same scam in reverse.”

She didn’t respond, waiting for more.

But I didn’t want to jinx my luck. “Gail, could you do me a favor? Find out what town Jan and Norm were married in. Maybe Anne knows.”

She hesitated, obviously tempted to ask what I was up to. Instead, all she said was, “I’ll see what I can do.”

There were two cars parked in Brian Padget’s driveway when I pulled up, one of which I assumed was Greg Davis’s. Despite my initial disappointment on the phone with Gail, I was curious why I’d been summoned. I doubted, however, that it was because Padget had followed my advice and figured out how and why he’d landed in his present predicament. As promising as Latour thought him, Padget was also young and inexperienced, and more prone to wallow than to dig his way out.

Davis met me at the door, his weary expression confirming the worst. “Thanks for coming.”

He stood aside, ushering me into a dense atmosphere of stale, fetid air, tinged in equal parts with sweat, booze, and vomit. A faint but refreshing tang of coffee struggled feebly in the background.

“Great,” I commented. “When did this start?”

“I checked on him last night. He’d been drinking some, but I thought I’d shaken him out of it. A couple of hours ago was the first chance I had to drop by since. Looks like he’s been at it all day.”

I wandered past the small kitchen, down the hallway to the back bedroom, where the smell approached critical mass. In the dim light leaking in from behind me, I saw Padget lying face down on the bed.

“Brian. It’s Joe.”

“Fuck you.” His voice was muffled by a pillow.

“Hear you’ve been having a rough time.”

“Get the fuck outta here.”

I picked my way carefully across the room, noticing a dry pool of vomit on the rug near the night table. I sat in a small rocking chair. “You’ve probably had enough of people getting out of your hair.”

His head shifted. A pale half-moon of face appeared from out of the pillow. “What?”

“What’s been going on, Brian?”

“What the hell do you think? I’m the crooked cop-might as well be a leper. The paper calls me that, the guys at the station’re thinking it, that asshole Shippee wants me fired yesterday, and the chief’s letting me cook in it.”

“You talk to Emily?”

The face vanished back into the pillow.

“You’re not telling me she cut you off.”

Silence.

“So you did it for her, right? Won’t let her come by, won’t talk to her on the phone?”

I could barely hear him. “No.”

“She’s the best friend you got.”

“I messed her up enough already.”

“You were used, Brian. Somebody put water in your gas tank so your car would malfunction and Emily would have to drive you to work. It was a double setup to taint you both.”

“Then why’m I still going to court?”

It was a good question, and reflective of his thinking clearly despite the self-abuse. In fact, what I’d just said was speculative, absurdly optimistic, and procedurally inappropriate. Alleged dirty cops were supposed to stew on their own, not be comforted by the investigating officer.

But I didn’t care much about the rules of protocol anymore. “ ’Cause I can’t prove it yet,” I answered him. “I am getting closer, though. Did you do any thinking about how you got nailed, like I asked?”

He turned to face me again. “You think this is a crossword puzzle or something? Some bastard planted dope in my house-in my body, for Christ’s sake. How the hell’m I going to figure how that happened?”

“The dope in the toilet tank and the stuff in your system don’t match. They came from two different sources. You need to start thinking about that.”

He raised himself up on his elbows so he could shout at me. “Fuck you. What the hell you think I been doing?”

“Feeling sorry for yourself.”

He grabbed the pillow and tried to throw it at me, collapsing in the process and smacking his reading lamp, which I caught before it hit the floor. I heard Greg nervously shift his weight in the doorway.

“You know,” I said, “it would help if you were straight with me.”

“What’s that mean?”

“That in the middle of all this shit, and with people like me and Greg and Emily all pulling for you, you’ve been holding back on the truth.”

He didn’t answer. I let the silence last as long as was necessary. The response, when it came, was predictably feeble. “I have not.”

“You told me you’d first met Jan on a call to her house for a domestic dispute.”

“So?”

“That was a lie. You were never on any of those calls.”

He lapsed back into silence.

“Emily, on the other hand,” I continued, “was on almost every one.” I thought back to what I’d said about both of them having been framed, and wondered why they’d earned that much attention.

He rolled over and slowly began sitting up, swaying with the effort. I glanced at Greg. “Could you get a cold, wet towel?”

He disappeared without comment.

“You leave Emily alone,” Padget finally gasped, fighting nausea. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands, breathing hard and deep.

“Why should I? She’s the one who put you on to Norm Bouch in the first place.”

He continued trying to keep his stomach under control. Davis returned with the towel and soundlessly placed it in his hand. Padget buried his face in it, rubbing it around. Through the material, he asked, “She tell you that?”

The phrasing of the question gave me hope I’d gotten lucky. “She told me Norm Bouch was the scum of the earth-to be taken out like a tactical threat and held up as an example.”

Padget shook his head. “God, she hates his guts.”

“What did she do?”

Suddenly, giving in to all his penned-up emotions, Brian Padget began to weep. Starting with a slight shaking of the shoulders, his grief spread until his entire body was racked by sobs. I shifted over next to him on the bed, rubbing his back and shoulders. Greg Davis moved into the room and sat opposite us.

For fifteen minutes, we let him dredge himself out. Then gradually, I began coaxing him back, telling him to breathe deeply, straighten up, open his eyes and look at us. Eventually, he took a final, shuddering gulp of air and wiped his eyes with the towel.

“Tell us the truth now,” I urged.

His voice was barely audible. “Emily was running a covert investigation on Norm Bouch, but she refused to quit when I found out. I told her it could cost her her job-ruin everything she’d fought for her whole life-I finally said I’d do it instead, that if she didn’t let me, I’d turn her in. She knew I was serious. We fought like hell-that’s why we broke up-but she finally went along.”

Greg and I exchanged looks. As irony had it, this admission put Padget in hotter water than he already was. If he were cleared of the drug charges, he’d end up battered but still employed. Running a clandestine investigation, however, put his career in the same jeopardy he’d been trying to spare Emily. Police officials do not take kindly to cops becoming freelancers.

“What about Jan?” I asked. “How did you two get together?”

He shook his head with embarrassment. “I was staking out their house one night when she walked right up to me and asked me what I was doing. She’d noticed me hanging around. She wasn’t angry-just curious. And she was real sad. I could see it in her eyes-all the shit he pulls on her. She came to see me as someone who might help her and the kids to get free.”

I listened quietly, fighting the urge to tell him I thought he’d been worked like a trout by an expert angler. Norm’s fingerprints were all over this story, down to the unbelievable notion that Jan would notice someone hiding in the bushes and then go out to meet him without consulting her husband.

“You should’ve run the case by me,” Greg finally said. “I might’ve okayed a surveillance.”

Brian looked at him sadly. “We didn’t believe that. We were sure the chief would give it thumbs down, him not wanting to make waves and all.”

“Why not admit you and Emily wanted to score points,” I said harshly, irritated by their arrogance and naiveté both. “Bring in a bad guy on your own? Emily’s got a problem because Burlington wouldn’t have her, and you’re so hot to climb the ladder, you can barely stand it.”

Greg gave me a warning look, and I softened my tone. “Look, I know it got away from you, but how did you think it was going to end? Even if you got the goods on Norm, people were going to ask how you’d done it. Being successful wouldn’t have made you any less of a maverick. Why didn’t you follow your own advice to Emily?”

He shook his head tiredly. “We didn’t think it out. It was like a personal thing I got caught up in-first stopping Emily from getting fired, then trying to save Jan. I felt I could do it.”

I shook my head silently. Any chastising by me was gratuitous compared to what he was facing. I patted his back instead, told him to try to get some sleep, and that for the rest of the night I’d stick around in case he needed me.

Davis and I retired to the living room after tucking Padget in. We left the lights off and settled in opposite corners of the sofa. “You think he’ll get to keep his job if he’s cleared?” I asked quietly, already hearing the dull rumble of Padget’s snoring down the hall.

In the reflected glow from the street light outside, he shrugged. “The chief likes him, or used to. He might get a month or two without pay if he’s lucky. Politics could run him over-Shippee hates all this-and I doubt his career’ll have much oomph, at least in the short run.”

“Things improving any at the department?” I asked.

He sighed. “Not a whole lot. The job’s getting done, but no one’s heart is in it. This thing’s like a group headache none of us can shake.”

“Latour still seen as part of the problem?”

“He’s not helping any.”

“And you can’t talk to him?”

There was a pause. “We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

Silence fell between us for quite a while. I finally stuck out my foot and prodded his own in the dark. “You’ve done your time here. Go home to your family. I’ll bunk on the couch.”

After a moment’s thought, he rose to his feet. “Guess I will. Thanks.”

I walked him to the front door. “Why did you call me, by the way?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “This wasn’t anything you couldn’t have handled.”

He didn’t answer at first, rubbing his hand along the door frame instead, as if checking it for splinters. He spoke slowly at first. “That was a mistake. I didn’t know about Emily and him running a case on their own. That sort of changes things.”

I tried interpreting that. “Meaning you were pissed and wanted me to see the damage I’d done.”

He laughed softly, shaking his head. “That makes it sound mature. Guess I screwed that one up.”

“I don’t think so,” I disagreed. “You’re trying to take care of your people. I don’t have a problem with that.”

He nodded meditatively. “Silly impulse, though. I shouldn’t have done it.” He looked up then. “How do you think this’ll wind up?”

“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” I told him, at least guardedly optimistic. “By the way,” I added, “something happened in Burlington today that might make Norm a little antsy. Is there any way you could keep an eye on him-enough to let me know if he leaves town, or changes habits radically?”

“Sure,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

I watched him get into his car and drive off into the night. I hoped he was right. If Norm turned from puppet-master to loose cannon, there was no telling what might happen.