Bellows Falls

Chapter 22

Jonathon Michael found me at the women For Women shelter in Brattleboro, three hours after my conversation with Jan Bouch, and right after Gail and I had finally handed her and the kids over to the shelter’s staff. Those few hours had seemed without end, since as soon as I’d gotten Jan to agree to an inquest, I was sure Norm would come waltzing through the front door and ruin everything.

“I just hung up on Kathy,” Jonathon said, walking across the parking lot with me. “She’s arranged a date here in town with Judge Rachael Aumand, at eight tomorrow morning.”

I turned to stare at him. “Tomorrow morning? How the hell did she pull that off?”

He smiled. “The judge said she’d come to work ninety minutes early. Kathy can be very persuasive, especially after what happened in Burlington. ’Course, I don’t think it hurt that Aumand and she went to law school together. Lucky, too, ’cause there isn’t an opening in the court docket till next month.”

“Thank God for living in a pea-sized state,” I muttered.

“There’s something else,” Jon added. “I’m guessing you asked Greg Davis to keep an eye on Norm Bouch?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Last night and this morning both. I didn’t want Norm busting in on me.”

“Well, he’s been trying to get hold of you-left a message with Kathy. Norm’s disappeared. He didn’t show up at the site he’s been working on, and no one’s seen him around town.”

“He must’ve heard about Lenny,” I said.

“Maybe. I hope he didn’t hear about you snatching his wife, too.”

We reached my car and I pulled open the door. “You think we should issue a BOL?”

Jonathon shook his head emphatically. A BOL involved a lot of people all of a sudden, none of whom knew the details behind the request. It also had a way of leaking outside police circles, often to the press. “It might spook him more than we want,” he said. “Push him underground. Right now, he’s probably scrambling to make sure Lenny isn’t the start of a major hemorrhage. What might be better is a selective BOL, to every unit with a specific interest in the drug business. If Norm is running around checking for damage, it’s bound to cause a ripple somewhere.”

“Time to mend fences with Steve Kiley?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“Say what you will about the task force,” he answered, “they have better connections than anyone I know.”

I swung in behind the steering wheel and looked up at him. “Let’s meet up at the Municipal Building. We can call him from there.”

There were two messages waiting for me at the office-one from Beverly Hillstrom, the state’s medical examiner, the other from Brian Padget. After introducing Jonathon to Sammie, and asking her to show him what she had on our two homicides, I dialed Padget’s number first. Given the time I’d spent trying to straighten him out, I wasn’t about to let him dangle longer than necessary.

“Hi, Brian. It’s Joe,” I said after he’d picked up.

“I been doing what you asked, thinking back over everything. I thought of something that’s probably pretty dumb, but I can’t get it out of my head. You know how you got me to spruce up this morning? Shave, shower, and all that? Well, I use aftershave-always have. Could that be a way to get coke into my system?”

The simplicity of the idea was startling. “Do you feel any numbness after using it?”

“No. That’s why I think it’s probably wrong. But I bleed a little when I shave-my skin’s not all that great-and it just seemed possible. It’d be like I was giving myself a dozen miniature injections, sort of. But I didn’t feel anything, and I can’t see or smell anything wrong with the stuff.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said. “It’s mostly alcohol, perfume, and coloring. It would cover anything. Stay where you are. I’m sending someone up to take the aftershave to be tested. And keep your fingers crossed. I don’t think this sounds crazy at all.”

I dialed Isador Gramm in Burlington next, the only board-certified forensic toxicologist in the state, and a man I’d consulted in the past to great advantage.

“Is it possible?” I asked him after explaining Padget’s theory.

“I’ve never heard of it, but I suppose so. You say he bleeds as a result of shaving?”

“Yes.”

There was a thoughtful pause at the other end. “I can’t see where it wouldn’t work, Joe. Alcohol would not only completely dissolve the cocaine, but it would work as a carrier taking it into the system. It would be tough for whoever spiked the aftershave to come up with just the right amount-enough to appear in the urinalysis, but not so much that your victim would notice-but that could be dumb luck. I think the coke, by the way, would have to be pure. Any cutting agent would mess things up-either make the aftershave cloudy or inhibit the effect of the cocaine.”

“I know this is a little unusual, but if I had a courier hand-deliver this bottle to you in about three hours, could you run it through your machinery and bill it to the AG’s office?”

“Moving up in the world, are we? Sure, I don’t see why not. Send it on.”

I called over to the Patrol Division and arranged for a courier. Then I dialed Beverly Hillstrom’s number.

“You do send me the most curious packages,” she told me minutes later. “Although I’ll tell you right up front that I have nothing to report on the small skeletonized remains, other than it appears to have been a male Caucasian in his mid-teens. I found absolutely nothing on what might have killed him.”

I was disappointed with that, less because it implied an investigative dead end, and more because I truly hated the idea of taking someone so young, and dumping him into the bureaucratic equivalent of a pauper’s grave.

“What about Morgan?” I asked.

“There I can be more helpful. I’ll be faxing you my full report later, but I know how you like a sneak preview. Also, I found something you might find interesting, which I’ll tell about in a moment.

“Al Gould,” she continued, “was right on the mark concerning cause of death. The first bullet caught him through the body at a sharply oblique angle, a wound which if treated within an hour or so need not have been lethal, although it did stimulate significant blood loss. The second bullet was fatal, removing the right carotid and part of the jugular and causing massive exsanguination. Both bullets passed without measurable residue or noticeable fragmentation, and both appeared to me to have been shot from far enough away not to leave any powder marks. Of course, I’ve sent the clothing and samples to the lab, but my guess-which will not appear in the report-is that your shooter was not overly skillful. I think the first shot was intended for the heart, missing it posteriorly, and the second was probably aimed at the head-the standard coup de grâce between the eyes-ending up in the throat. So unless you’re dealing with someone very clever, you can eliminate any known crack shots.

“The body otherwise,” she went on, “was unremarkable in presentation, typical of a young male in good condition. Toxicology hasn’t reported back yet-they’ll be sending you separate findings in any case-but I wouldn’t be surprised to find both alcohol and drugs present. Mr. Morgan’s inner workings showed typical signs of both, albeit not to the extent they’re often present in older and/or more self-abusive people. I would say he got around without noticeable deficit.

“Now,” she finally said, to my relief, “for the interesting anomaly I mentioned. Inside Morgan’s body, along the path of the first bullet, I found a single, tiny filament of copper wire.”

I frowned at the phone. “Could it have come from the bullet’s jacketing?”

“No. I put it under the microscope. The size and shape of it suggest it was carried there by the bullet.”

I thanked her after a few closing comments and sat back in my chair, my eyes shut. In the darkness of my memory, I flipped through a catalogue of mental snapshots, looking for the one I recalled that featured small electrical wiring.

Satisfied at last, I left my office and circled the cluster of desks in the squad room to find Sammie and Jonathon poring over her reports.

“Jon,” I asked him, “did they find any prints belonging to Norm Bouch in that Burlington apartment, or anything else that proves without doubt he was ever there?”

“Yeah, along with three dozen other people’s, plus the neighbor’s statement who said he met him once.”

“I just hung up on Hillstrom. She found a tiny piece of electrical wire inside Jasper Morgan’s body. When I was interviewing Randy Haskins in that apartment, he was picking at a small patch sewn into an old electric blanket covering the sofa. I remember because I saw the wires dangling out one end of it.”

They both looked at me blankly.

“Bouch took the blanket off Morgan’s bed and brought it to Burlington?” Sammie asked incredulously.

“Did you find anything personal belonging to Morgan in that motel room?” I countered.

“No.”

“No pants or shirt or anything else, right? The place was cleaned out, just in case people like Marie Williams came snooping around later. Assuming Morgan ran for it right after he’d been shot, there probably wasn’t much blood on the blanket. So why waste it, when all it needed was a small repair?”

Jonathon was smiling. “Might be a question to ask Jan tomorrow morning. She was probably asked to patch it.”

“And in the meantime, we can get another search warrant and pick it up for a lab analysis.”

He began moving away. “I’ll call Kathy.”

“I’ve got a courier going to Burlington in a few minutes if she needs something signed by either one of us.”

He waved acknowledgement over his shoulder and vanished into my office.

“Even if Jan identifies it,” Sammie warned me, “it won’t take you far.”

I smiled at her, sensing at long last the first spidery signs of a real break developing. “Every bit counts, Sam, even the little ones.”

Early the following morning, Jonathon Michael and I were sitting on a bench in an inner hallway of the Windham County Courthouse, outside the spacious office of Judge Rachael Aumand. Inside were Jan Bouch, the judge, Kathy Bartlett, a stenographer, and the battered electric blanket we’d retrieved from the Burlington apartment.

When I’d picked her up just after sunrise, Jan had looked terrible-pale, nervous, teary, and obviously sleepless. She’d protested that she’d changed her mind, which I’d been expecting, and proclaimed Norm to be the victim of a miserable childhood. It had taken me an hour to turn her around, and I was by no means convinced the conversation would last three minutes into the inquest.

It had been over an hour, however, and we hadn’t heard a peep yet.

“If she does nail that blanket to Norm,” I said quietly, my voice echoing off the bright, pristine walls, “maybe we should issue that BOL on him.”

“Why?”

“Jasper’s dead, Lenny’s under wraps, Jan and the kids are in protective custody, Steve Kiley’s got every task force CI working to find out where Norm is and what he’s up to, and Greg Davis has the whole BFPD interviewing everyone who ever knew him. He’d have to be on another planet not to know we’re after him. And if he did pop Jasper, he’ll be twitchy as hell and prone to use a gun again. I don’t want anyone approaching him without knowing all that.”

“Works for me,” Jonathon said after a short pause. “What did your toxicologist friend come up with?”

I’d told Jonathon of Padget’s theory about the aftershave, but I hadn’t heard back from Isador Gramm until early this morning. “Brian was right. It was laced with pure coke-a perfect match to what they found in his system, and nowhere close to the stuff in the toilet tank.”

“Which makes it ‘Good news, bad news’?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “A plausible scenario for how it got inside him, but not proof he didn’t spike the aftershave later and pretend he suddenly had a bright idea. Still, it doesn’t hurt him any.”

A woman poked her head through a doorway halfway down the hall. “Phone for you, Joe.”

I followed her into a large room with several desks scattered about. She ushered me into a glass-walled cubicle along the wall, told me to push the blinking button on the phone, and closed the door as she left.

I picked up the receiver. “Gunther.”

“It’s Kiley. We put feelers out as soon as you called last night. The only thing we got so far is some guy who sounds like he pulled the same stunt Bouch did. He dropped out of sight yesterday-totally. His name’s Peter Neal, works mostly out of the Montpelier/Barre area. There’s a chance he’s one of Bouch’s lieutenants. We heard he runs kids like the others did.”

“Could he have left the state to make a buy or something?”

“That’s what I asked, but disappearing without warning doesn’t fit his routine. There’s a buzz about it in his social circle.”

“You think he might’ve been hit?” I asked.

“Things’ve been peaceful in that area. I called the local PDs to see what they had. They confirmed Neal’s a probable dealer, but he’s known to keep his cards to himself-neat and tidy. All I got is the coincidence of Bouch and this guy pulling a vanishing act at the same time.”

I thought for a couple of seconds. It was interesting information-it was also payback in the subtlest of forms. In Steve Kiley’s eyes, we’d run roughshod over his task force. His revenge had been to deliver the goods in a timely, effective manner. “Point taken,” I thought.

Out loud, however, I said, “It can’t be coincidence. He must’ve cut and run.”

“From us?”

“From us, from Bouch. From what we’ve found out, you don’t want to be near Norm when things go sour. I don’t guess the local PDs have bothered finding out where Neal might be.”

“Nope.”

“Could I ask you a big favor, then?”

I could almost hear him smiling at the phone. “You can try.”

“If we’re right about Neal, then he’s probably run to neutral ground where he hopes nobody can find him-from either side. I’d love to get this one. You think you could squeeze his contacts till one of them fesses up? He has to have left a forwarding address somewhere.”

“I think we can do that.”

“Thanks Steve. I owe you a big one.”

“Yes, you do.”

I returned to join Jonathon on the bench, filling him in on Kiley’s discovery, including the latter’s satisfied sense of irony.

Twenty minutes later, the door to Judge Aumand’s office opened, and Kathy emerged with a tear-stained Jan Bouch. Kathy caught my eye from behind Jan’s back and gave me a thumbs-up.

I rose and took Jan’s hands in my own. “You feeling okay?”

Looking at the floor, she merely shook her head.

“You’ve done a harder thing than most people will ever have to do. We all appreciate it. It’ll get easier from here on. You’re with good people-they’ll see you and the kids get what you need.”

One of the Women For Women staffers appeared at the far end of the corridor to take Jan back to the shelter, apparently summoned by Kathy from inside the judge’s chambers. I released Jan’s hands and patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t hesitate to call if you want, okay?”

She kept silent as the staffer gathered her up and escorted her back up the hallway. The three of us waited until she was gone.

“Arsene Gault. That name ring any bells?” Kathy asked immediately.

“It does with me,” Jonathon answered. “We’ve nailed him before for fraudulent business dealings. He’s a Realtor in Springfield.”

Kathy Bartlett explained. “Jan said his was the one name she heard time and again in connection to Norm, either when he’d mention it in passing, or when Gault would leave phone messages. As far as she knows, he never came by the house, and she never saw Norm meet him when they were out and about together. But the phone calls were frequent.”

“Money laundering?” I asked.

“It would fit,” Jonathon answered. “Gault deals mostly in dumps, selling to people with no sense and less money. He’s got the scruples of a cockroach.”

“Did Jan ever see Norm dealing drugs?” I asked Kathy.

She rolled her eyes. “Not that she told me. I must admit, I’ve had better witnesses. Most of the time, I was handing her Kleenexes. I didn’t get a hell of a lot more than what I just told you. The blanket was a home run, though. About the time Morgan disappeared, Norm dumped it in her lap and told her to wash and mend it. She said she didn’t notice any blood on it at the time and had no idea where it came from or ended up. Still, a jury loves that kind of thing.

“I think Gault’s the next domino to push over, in any case. I got the judge to grant an extension on this inquest, so the sooner you two can round him up-and all his paperwork-the better. My suggestion, Joe, since Jon and I do this all the time, is that he and I corral the legal forms and signatures, while you locate Gault so we can grab him when we want him. Is that agreeable?”

It was definitely that. With one amendment. “I think I might do more than just locate him,” I said.

Jonathon instantly took my meaning. “A surveillance?”

I shrugged. “Norm’s out there somewhere-maybe heading for Tijuana-but given what we think he did to Jasper, and how Lenny reacted to being exposed, chances are he’s nearby, sharpening his claws. If Gault’s as tied to Norm as we hope, he’s probably a walking target.”

Jonathon looked at me thoughtfully, too experienced to dismiss the idea. “Watch your back. We’ll be as fast as we can.”