Bellows Falls

Chapter 24

I was standing at the second-floor window of the State’s Attorney’s reception area, my hands in my pockets, looking at Brattleboro’s rush-hour traffic. I was lost in thought.

An arm slipped through mine. “How’re you doing?”

I looked down into Gail’s face. “Hey, there. I was just thinking I should be in an incredibly upbeat mood.”

“Which you’re not.”

“I’m not complaining. Kathy Bartlett’s down the hall cutting a deal with Gault’s lawyer so he’ll spill his guts about Norm Bouch. I got an eyewitness to Norm killing Jasper Morgan, a gun with his prints on it, and an electric blanket from Bouch’s apartment with chemical traces of Morgan’s blood. And Bartlett told me that at the inquest, Jan Bouch admitted the whole case against Brian Padget was a frame. She said Norm not only broke into Padget’s place, spiked his aftershave, and dropped that bag of coke into the toilet tank, but that he watered Brian’s gas tank so Emily Doyle would get sucked into the mess with him.”

“Sounds Christmas wrapped.”

“Except the box is empty.” I pointed with my chin at the passing traffic. “I saw Bouch early this morning-I’m pretty sure it was him. He was staking out Gault’s office, probably getting ready to knock him off. An hour ago, I heard they’d found the van he was driving, abandoned on some logging trail… It’s hard to celebrate when the bad guy is still out there.”

“If there’s one thing I’m learning in this job,” Gail said gently, “it’s that you have to settle for what you can get. Brian’s off the hook, and Jan and her kids are headed for a better life. Those are real accomplishments. Bouch will get what he deserves, even if you aren’t the one to give it to him. That’s the way it works out sometimes.”

I smiled and kissed her.

Kathy Bartlett stepped into the corridor and joined us, speaking in a theatrical whisper. “I can’t believe I’m locked in a room with two slimy chiselers, while you two are necking out here.”

“Things going well, are they?” I asked.

Her voice returned to normal. “Actually, not too bad. We’ve gone from where Gault was going to take the fifth, to where he’s going to give us everything we want.”

I thought of the comments I’d just exchanged with Gail. “In return for…?”

Bartlett smiled. “Use and derivative use immunity, meaning we not only can’t use his own testimony against him, we can’t use anything we discover as a result of that testimony.”

“So he walks away clean as a baby,” I said unhappily.

Bartlett shrugged. “True, but about as poor, too. Steve Kiley’ll love this part. It turns out we’re talking about a lot of property-one to one-and-a-half million dollars’ worth-including Norm’s apartment in Burlington, since he was renting from himself. He’s got apartments, houses, and small businesses all over the state. Once I channel it through federal forfeiture proceedings, we should all be a whole lot richer. It’s been a particular pleasure reminding Mr. Gault of that fact, and that we’ll be watching him like a hawk from now on.”

“So you’re all set?” I asked her.

“We’ll still do the inquest, to formalize everything, but it looks pretty solid.”

There was a small, awkward pause after she finished, all three of us thinking the same thing.

“Except for Norm,” Kathy finally added.

“Right,” I agreed.

I found Jonathon Michael back at the police department, working with Sammie and Ron Klesczewski to transfer all they had on the murders of Jasper Morgan and the mysterious skeleton to the AG’s office. Peter Neal had only known the youngster as Billy and claimed he’d been beaten to death by Morgan and Bouch together, an accusation we all knew would probably never make it to court.

We were about an hour into this process when the phone rang and Ron handed it to me.

It was Gail. “I just got a call from Women For Women. Jan Bouch has disappeared.”

“Damn.” I waved my hand to catch Jonathon’s attention.

“I’ll meet you there,” Gail said, and hung up before I could protest.

We drove over in silence, dreading that Norm Bouch had been at work. Gail was already in the parking lot, talking with Susan Raffner, the director and an old friend of hers.

“How long do you think she’s been gone?” I asked Susan.

“It could be a couple of hours. We check on them periodically, but they aren’t under lock and key.”

“And you have no idea where she might’ve gone?”

Susan shook her head.

“Could she have been grabbed?” Jonathon asked.

“No,” Susan said emphatically. “Not being incarcerated doesn’t mean they wander around at will, and people don’t come on these grounds without being noticed. Every door is monitored around the clock. She had to have actually snuck off, taking pains not to be seen.”

“Are the kids still here?” I asked. “Maybe they can tell us something.”

Probably embarrassed by the turn of events, Raffner didn’t argue but urged that the interviewers be limited to Gail and me.

There were five children all told, of whom only two were actually Jan’s, and this was the first time I’d actually been introduced to them. During my visits to the house-aside from the boy with the deflated ball-they’d either been peripheral bodies in blurred motion, or not there. They ranged in age from three to about seven, and were as dissimilar from one another as a pack of street urchins.

Gail, Susan, and I sat next to each other on the floor of a small room, a hollow-eyed TV set in the corner, with the children grouped around us.

Gail started off. “My name is Gail. This is Joe.”

“I seen him,” said one of the older boys.

“Where?”

“At my house.”

“I remember you,” I said. “You were almost tall enough to grab a doughnut out of your mom’s hand, even though it was over her head.”

He smiled with pride. “I got it, too,” he lied, “two of ’em.”

“You did not,” the ball player said, punching him in the arm. “You got ’em after Dad threw ’em out the door, just like we all did.”

Gail interrupted by pretending to glance around. “Speaking of your mom, where is she? I had something I wanted to ask her.”

“She’s gone,” a little girl said.

The older boy cuffed the back of her head. “She’ll be back.”

Gail looked disappointed. “That’s too bad. Where do you think she went?”

“Home,” said one.

“To see the fireworks, I bet,” said another.

“The fireworks?” I blurted.

“Yeah,” the oldest answered, looking at me like I was brain dead. “It’s Old Home Days tonight.”

He didn’t need to elaborate. The Rockingham Old Home Days fireworks display was the largest in the state, running for forty minutes and drawing over ten thousand people to Bellows Falls from all over Vermont. They lined the river and jammed the bridges and railroad yard, since the rockets were fired from the riverbank north of town.

“Did she tell you that?” I asked.

The boy didn’t answer, having obviously supplanted his own desires with Jan’s.

“Why did you say, ‘home’?” Gail asked the small girl who’d spoken first.

“She told me, just before she climbed out the window.”

I could feel Susan stiffen beside me, no doubt wondering, as I was, why Jan had suddenly chosen to leave. Phone calls were screened here, but I suspected Norm had found a way to lure her out. He had been manipulating her for years, forcing her to do things she wouldn’t normally willingly do. It took no great stretch to imagine he’d used her guilt at betraying him to force her across a suicidal line.

Having seen the results of Norm’s ruthlessness, I had no doubts he was going to repay Jan for her transgressions as he had Jasper Morgan, young Billy, and who knows how many others. But where those others might have come under Norm’s concept of business expenses, Jan and his relationship was far more convoluted. She had climbed out that window as a martyr might journey to self-sacrifice, and he, rather than fleeing to parts unknown, had put domination above survival. They were like two halves of a pair of scissors about to snap shut.

I leaned forward slightly, my eyes on a level with that of the small child. “What exactly did she say?”

“She said, ‘Don’t worry, honey. Everything’ll be fine. I just have to go home for a while.’ ”

“She didn’t go home,” the other small girl said, speaking for the first time. “That’s not what she meant. She told me she was going to her thinking place.”

At last, I thought. “And where’s the thinking place?”

“The old milk plant. She took me there once. It’s neat.”

It was almost dusk, shortly before the fireworks were to begin. From all over the area, sheriff’s deputies, State Police, and the Bellows Falls and Walpole police were converging either on Bellows Falls or the old creamery itself. This was not, I had stressed to everyone, to be a high-profile approach. Assuming a small child’s guess was right, I didn’t want people spooked, least of all Norm Bouch.

But even if I’d asked for the National Guard, it wasn’t going to be an easy location to surround, much less contain. The plant, as I knew from Greg Davis’s tour of the town days earlier, was at the bend of the river, between the two bridges leading to New Hampshire, just above where the falls turned from neck-breaking rapids into a precipitous drop. That much was actually a tactical advantage-normally. The so-called Island had an unbreachable boundary on three sides, limited access, and was covered mostly with abandoned factories, warehouses, and the open railroad yard. Tonight alone, however, this no-man’s land became Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Fully half the expected crowd of ten to twelve thousand people would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the Island, lining the river just above the milk plant. A dozen more would be illegally camped on its roof.

Gail, Jonathon, and I were in my car, heading toward Bellows Falls from the south, using blue lights only to quietly warn of our approach. Well shy of the town line, however, we hit heavy traffic, and from there on, I edged along at a steady five miles an hour. It stayed that way through downtown and onto the Island, where I finally gave up, pulled over, and killed the engine.

“Let’s go on foot. Gail, I’ll leave the radio on channel two so you can hear what’s going on. If the need comes up, I might ask you to use the cell phone, so keep an ear out, okay?”

She slipped in behind the wheel, kissing me through the open window. “No heroics, please.”

I gave her a thumbs-up and went to the trunk of the car, where I extracted two armored vests and a couple of flashlights. I handed one of the vests to Jonathon. “Better put this on under your shirt.”

We jogged down the narrow dirt trail that followed the riverbank to the empty milk plant, looking, I hoped, like two latecomers heading for the show.

I keyed my portable radio. “This is Gunther, approaching from the south, along the river. Who’s in place and in command?”

To my surprise, Latour’s voice came back. “It’s Emile, Joe. The cordon’s still pretty thin. No one’s gone in yet.”

“Any signs of anything?”

“Nothing so far. I’m just ahead of you on the dirt road.”

We reached him a few minutes later. Aside from several genuine spectators circling the building to gain access to the railroad yards, we were largely alone.

Emile explained the layout. “The north side’s as crowded as this is empty, and there’re people on the roof and at some of the upper windows, like every year. So far, I’ve got four people positioned at all corners of the building, a couple more along the north wall, pretending they’re on crowd control, and Greg Davis and Emily Doyle standing by to go inside. I might be getting five or six more, but with the roads and bridges either closed or jammed with people, travel times’re going to be lousy. Do you want to take over command?”

I did, but I kept it to myself. Latour was finally in movement, showing he knew what to do. If this was redemption in the making, I wasn’t about to impede it. “No.”

He gave me a surprised, appreciative look. “Thanks. Then if you don’t mind the suggestion, I think we should just contain the building, wait till the crowd disperses after the show, and go at this nice and peaceful. The only problem is the people already inside-all potential hostages.” He hesitated and then added, “How good is your information that Bouch or his wife are actually in there?”

That wasn’t something I wanted to discuss. “Good enough. I also don’t think we can wait, as reasonable as that sounds. If we do, all we’re likely to find is Jan Bouch’s body. We may anyhow… But I agree with you about the potential hostages.”

Latour shook his head unhappily, and I immediately began reconsidering my decision to leave him in command. But he didn’t disappoint. “All right. How ’bout you and Jonathon go in with Greg and Emily, and I’ll send uniforms to cover the areas you clear as I get them.”

“And if we find spectators, we’ll herd them into secure rooms and post someone on the door,” I added. “It’ll be safer than escorting them through the building.”

“Okay.” He pointed to a far corner. “The entrance is around there. Davis and Doyle are already waiting. Good luck.”

We found them pacing nervously before the front door, both wearing civilian clothes. I told them of Latour’s plan.

Emily looked incredulous. “Jesus Christ. That place is huge. The four of us could be in there all week checking it out.”

I ignored her complaint. “That’s if we approached it conventionally, which we can’t do. Jan’s kid told us her hangout was a room on the top floor, facing the river. Jonathon and I will head there first, while you two and as many others that show up work the problem from below. Emile’ll give us what he can when he can.”

Greg Davis squatted down, picked up a thin stick, and drew an outline of the building’s interior in the dust. “Three floors, more or less.” He pointed at the double doors facing us. “The ground floor’s a mess. Lots of rooms, junk, storage vats, equipment, hallways-a ton of places for someone to hide. The good news is it’ll be totally empty-no windows facing the fireworks. There’s a central corridor right down the middle, with a staircase at the far end. Get there without being ambushed, and it’s almost home free.”

He shifted slightly to sketch a second plan. “Next floor is the creamery proper. Wide-open, high ceilings, lots of windows, none of them facing where the fireworks’ll be. The best viewing areas,” he added a rectangle to the north of the square he’d just drawn, “are in three big rooms separated from the main floor by three doors. That’s also where people are on the roof. Those rooms only have ten-foot ceilings, so from the outside, that whole part of the building’s kind of stepped-down from the rest. Access to the roof is by fire escape on the north wall. The third floor is more like a mezzanine or catwalk. It’s where the executive offices used to be, right over the factory floor, high against the ceiling. The corridor feeding the offices is only equipped with a railing, so from below, it’s like the bridge of a ship, overlooking the deck. All the offices are on the side facing the river, away from the show.”

I glanced at Jonathon. “That must be where we’re headed.”

Searches like this are always tense. No matter how many people you have keeping you company, the feeling is always one of total isolation. You become convinced that behind every door, lurking in every shadow, is the guy with the gun who’s about to take you out. For a moment only, all three of us gazed at the enormous building before us, no doubt sharing those very thoughts.

“Okay,” I finally murmured. “Let’s get it over with.”

Jon and I entered first, walking virtually back-to-back, a flashlight in one hand, a gun in the other, and our radios muted by earpieces. We walked slowly and quietly, pausing occasionally to listen and get our bearings. Greg’s directions had been schematically accurate, but they hadn’t prepared us for the mood of the place. Dark, cool, and crowded with industrial paraphernalia, to us it became a lethal house of horrors.

It was with considerable relief that we reached the stairs, gave our position on the radio, and headed up.

The next floor was in stark contrast to the threatening muddle of shadows below. As described, it was an enormous room, high-ceilinged, lined with ten-foot-tall windows, cluttered with old, dust-covered equipment clustered into regularly spaced workstations. Bundles of pipes and conduits shot up from each of these to the ceiling and spread out to all four corners like huge metal straws, crushed over against the inside cover of a too-small box. Bathed in the remnants of the departed day, and tinged by the glow of the town all around, the room looked like an abandoned movie set of some abstract, industrialist nightmare.

I immediately noticed the far wall with the three doors, behind which, even from where we stood, we could hear people talking and laughing, gathered together in excited anticipation.

Jon looked at me and pointed at the doors quizzically. I shook my head and indicated the gallery tucked up against the ceiling and running the length of one wall-the executive aerie Greg had likened to a ship’s bridge.

Jon nodded and followed me silently up the metal staircase attached to the far end.

Flashlights now off, we paused at the top landing, taking in the catwalk ahead, a railing on one side, offices on the other. Aside from the muffled sounds from below, we couldn’t hear a thing. The dull light seeping through the huge windows across the chasm made me feel I was in a tunnel instead of twenty feet in the air, and gave the whole setting a claustrophobic feeling.

We crept to the first office and found the door open. Normally, I would have had a long-handled mirror to safely check the room from around the corner. But circumstances were far from normal. Harking back to the old days, I stuck my head out into the doorway and instantly withdrew it, listening and waiting for any response. There was none. I repeated the gesture-more slowly this time-with similar results and finally did it again with my flashlight on. The room was bare-and empty.

Throughout this exercise, Jonathon stood back slightly, prepared for attack from either direction.

Room by room, we progressed in this stealthy manner, sometimes switching roles, but finding nothing until we reached our first closed door, three-quarters of the way down.

My back against the wall, I tried the doorknob gently. The door soundlessly loosened against the jamb. Switching on my light, I nodded to Jon opposite, who followed my example and prepared to enter low and fast. On a soundless count of three, I threw open the door. Jon barreled past me and rolled to the right, I half fell in after him and cut to the left. The halos from our lights dashed around the small room, desperately searching for a body in motion.

They found one who would move no longer. Confident the room was otherwise empty, Jonathon stepped back into the doorway to stand guard.

“That her?” he asked over his shoulder.

I was surprised he didn’t know and then realized they’d never met. “Yeah. Jan Bouch.”

She was lying sprawled on the floor, her torso propped against the wall under the window. Her eyes were half open, seemingly lost in a daydream, her face, so tense in life, was slack and hopeless in death. As I approached her, there was a sudden, frightening explosion from outside, and the room filled with violent, shimmering color. I glanced out the window and saw blazing streamers falling from the sky like stars, plunging toward the ghostly froth of the river below. The colors played dimly on Jan’s skin and hair as I turned my light away.

“Her son said she’d come here to watch the fireworks.”

Jonathon took a quick look in my direction. “What’s her status?” he asked, not having heard me.

I felt for a carotid. Her skin was soft and warm, but in memory only. “She’s dead.”

Jon updated the others.

I played the light on her again. She was disheveled, her lips cut and swollen, one eye puffy. I saw a small hole in the front of her blouse and unbuttoned it enough to confirm the dark puncture in the skin beneath. There was no blood.

I thought back to all I’d learned about this couple, and all the warning signs I’d heeded but could do nothing about.

Latour’s voice came over my earpiece. “Joe, do you advise changing tactics, now that she’s dead?”

“Hang on a sec,” I answered him. “Let’s finish checking this top section. She hasn’t been dead long, so if he is in the building, I don’t want to rush him. We still have a potential hostage situation here.”

Jon and I searched the rest of the gallery, room by room, the earlier quiet now replaced with raucous cracks, bangs, and strung-out screams from high overhead. The darkened, haunted corners flickered with garish rainbow colors.

When we returned to the top of the stairs, I radioed, “Top floor clear. Heading down.”

Extending beneath us, the vast plant floor glimmered eerily in the dying colors, each one of which brought muted outbursts of appreciation from behind the doors at the room’s north end, where the trespassers could see the fireworks we were missing.

“Emile?” I continued, “how many can you give us up here? We’re on the main floor.”

There was a pause. “How ’bout five?”

“That’s good. He probably made it out, but I want to corral the spectators before we call it quits.”

We descended the staircase and met Emily, another Bellows Falls officer, two state troopers, and, to my surprise, Emile himself.

I gave him a smile. “Couldn’t stay out of the action, huh?”

He looked slightly embarrassed. “Greg runs things better than I can anyway,” he muttered. “Besides, I won’t be able to do this too much longer.”

I glanced over his shoulder and saw Emily roll her eyes, forever unforgiving.

“Here’s the layout,” I said. “This room looks empty, but we haven’t checked around each of the workstations. There are seven of us, so let’s break into teams of two, and work in a row, walking from here to the far wall. That,” and I played my light on the distant doors, “is where our trespassers are enjoying the show.”

We set out like grouse hunters in a twilight landscape, our movements punctuated by the jittery beams from our lights. We proceeded quietly, the sound of our progress supplanted by the noise outside. The cavernous room around us shifted alternately from one garish color to another.

At the far end, I turned to Emily and Latour. “Is there any difference between one room and the next in terms of size or layout?” They both shook their heads. “Then we might as well use whichever one has the most people to hold them all.”

Using the same three teams, we entered the separate rooms without fanfare or noise, slipping inside like latecomers to a movie, our flashlights extinguished.

In my room, the center one, I could see the outline of almost ten people standing before a wide bank of multi-paned windows, gesturing and calling out excitedly with each new explosion. Occasionally, several of them would lift an arm and suck on what appeared to be a beer can.

I spoke quietly into my radio. “This is Joe. I’ve got close to ten.”

“Five for me,” answered Emily.

“I only got three,” said a voice I didn’t recognize.

Latour came on. “Round them up and bring them to where Joe is, then. Tell ’em they’re not in any trouble-just that we want ’em where we can find ’em.”

I opened my door and motioned the two groups to enter. Aside from a few startled looks, no one seemed to care much about the sudden appearance of so many cops, and merely moved to the window to resume their enjoyment. We all gathered together near the door to consider our next move.

Still uneasy, however, I kept watching the spectators, the lifelike warmth of Jan Bouch’s skin lingering on my fingertips-as palpable as a scent of Norm’s proximity.

It was then, barely registering the muted conversation around me, that I focused on one particular silhouette. Yielding to instinct over good sense, I took aim with my flashlight and hit the switch.

Bouch’s reaction was instantaneous. For a split second, I saw his pale face half turned toward us before it vanished like a ghost. In that same instant, I saw a familiar glimmer in his hand.

“Gun,” I shouted, and pushed at the others to scatter them.

But there was no redeeming a bad situation. Having overlooked the obvious possibility that Norm, finding his escape blocked, had hidden among the spectators, I’d exposed us all to lethal danger.

The room exploded in a terrifying travesty of the fireworks outside, slashing flashlight beams and wild shouting replacing rockets and starbursts. In the kaleidoscopic result, I saw people either diving for cover, or frozen in place with their hands up, all to an orchestra of, “Police-nobody move.”

In its midst, I saw Emily Doyle, half crouched, her gun and flashlight held in a classic shooter’s stance, scanning the room for a target.

But the target, largely concealed, had already found her. Momentarily revealed in a red flash from outside, protruding from behind a large piece of equipment by the window, was a hand holding a gun. Norm was taking a careful bead on one of the thorns in his side.

I shouted a warning, to no avail in all that noise, and simultaneously saw Emile Latour break from the tattered darkness, hitting Emily like a car broadsiding a small pet. Just as their bodies commingled, they were caught in the fiery muzzle-flash of Norm’s gun. I clearly heard Latour let out a surprised grunt of pain before they both vanished into the gloom that clung to the floor like fog.

In the split second in which this all took place, I aimed and fired quickly three times in Norm’s direction. There was a second shout of pain, the sound of a gun skittering across the floor, and a sudden stunned silence in the room, now sharp with the smell of cordite.

“Norm Bouch,” I shouted, “this is the police. Surrender immediately.”

The response was a shattering of glass and the blur of a balled-up human shadow hurtling through the window.

I dropped my flashlight and reached for the radio at my belt. “All units. Suspect’s left the building through a window-north wall. Shots have been fired. Possible officer down.”

I ran, stumbling over scattered bodies still squirming for safety, and leaned out the jagged hole, half expecting to see Norm Bouch sprawling face down on the ground. Instead, I found a fire escape attached to the building’s side.

I climbed gingerly out the window, hearing footsteps clanging on the metal steps below. Latour had said there were people on the roof, but I’d been so focused on finding Jan, and then Norm, that I’d not only forgotten about them but that Davis had specified the presence of the fire escape. My frustrated rage found new strength at my own continuing stupidity.

I began shouting again into the radio. “Suspect’s heading down the north fire escape. Close off the bottom. He may still be armed.”

The way down led to a small platform ten feet off the ground, from which a metal ladder had been lowered the rest of the way. As I began my own descent, I could feel the fire escape quivering under Bouch’s weight. I also saw that there were no officers below waiting for him. Human to a fault, they’d bolted from their posts to render aid when I’d announced the downing of one of their own.

I almost fell to the platform below, again calling for help on the radio, and reached it just as Bouch hit the ground. He stumbled once and took off hobbling toward the rear of the nearby crowd. As I swung my leg over the ladder’s top rung, I glimpsed the immensity of the scene before me, captured like an infrared photograph in the burst of a crimson rocket. There were thousands of people extending like an oil slick from within twenty yards of the creamery to the distant riverbank-a clotted mass of heads and shoulders as densely packed as commuters at a suburban train station. From the moment Bouch hit its outermost fringe, he became indistinguishable from his surroundings.

Of my two remaining hopes, one was that I could track him by the disturbance he’d leave in his wake, as I might a car driving through a corn field. The other was evidenced by the blood I found on every rung of the ladder. Norm Bouch was badly wounded, if only in the hand, so even if he got away this time, either the blood loss or the need for care would eventually force him to where we might find him.

My adrenaline, however, drove me to make the first option a reality. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I bolted for where I’d seen him disappear, telling the others the direction I was taking, and recommending that all exits from the Island be blocked immediately. Through my earpiece, I heard the tactical machinery switching gears; Greg Davis also thoughtfully let me know that Latour had received only a superficial wound. Emily Doyle, whose unprotected head had been in Norm’s sights, would be hard put to proclaim her chief’s uselessness in the future.

My pursuit through the crowd was like running underwater. As I’d hoped, I could track Bouch’s progress by the effects of his passage-people complaining of being shoved aside, a few still regaining their footing, others noticing to their horror the blood he’d smeared on their clothes. I didn’t endear myself to any of them with my barely gentler version of the same treatment, despite holding up my badge and muttering constant apologies. It became a chase made surreal by its molasses-slow movement, regularly pierced by strobe-like flashes of violent primary colors. My vision was reduced to a tight series of still pictures, each following the other by several seconds, and each tinged with a different hue.

Despite the pace, however, I could tell I was gaining, at times catching sight of people being jostled just a few dozen feet ahead of me. I also knew by now where we were headed. Steering up the middle of the jammed railroad yard, Norm had reduced his options to two, both of them train trestles. One was a short span over the mouth of the canal, leading directly into downtown Bellows Falls. The other, closer by, was the much longer bridge to North Walpole, parallel to and twenty feet downstream of the dam. It wasn’t until we were almost at the top of the yard that I saw Bouch cut right and head for the latter.

Still pushing through the crowd, I brought the radio once more to my mouth. “Suspect’s heading for North Walpole across the railroad br-”

I didn’t get to finish. Easing by a huge bearded man, I was seized by the shirtfront and almost lifted off my feet. His whiskers tickled my chin and his beer-soaked breath enveloped my head as he bellowed, “Goddamn it, you assholes, stop pushin’,” before tossing me away like a small discarded toy. He sent me piling up against a half dozen others, all of whom absorbed my fall with a chorus of angry yells. I lay sprawled on the ground as people milled about, trying not to step on me. Another man, smaller but just as irritated, finally bent over me and yelled, “What the fuck’s your problem?”

In response, I merely shoved my badge in his face. He backed up, said, “He’s a cop,” and a small clearing instantly formed around me. I regained my feet and took off toward the bridge.

The delay, though brief, had been crucial for Norm Bouch. By the time I reached the wooden police barricade blocking the bridge, all I could see was an empty steel trestle, its shiny metal rails glittering from the lights high above. I dropped my hand to the radio clipped to my belt and found it missing, a victim of my encounter with the bearded man.

I looked around frantically, seeing if Bouch could’ve taken another route. But the bridge, being just downstream of the dam, spanned a cauldron of lethally churning water, and the riverbank dropped straight into it.

I quickly turned to a woman sitting on the barricade. “I’m a police officer. Did you see a man go onto the bridge?”

She took her eyes off the fireworks to look at me angrily. “Sure I did. He almost knocked me over doing it. I told him he’d get busted.”

“Where did he go?”

She looked over my shoulder, her eyes blank with surprise.

Then her hand rose to her mouth. “Oh, my Lord. Did he fall in?”

It was a pertinent question. The recent rain had swollen the river almost to its crest, and the dam’s Tainter gates had been lifted to spare the canal upstream, and the hydroelectric plant it fed, from being totally overwhelmed. The tradeoff was that the bend around Bellows Falls’ man-made island-the peaceful midsummer stream I’d visited just days earlier-was now a rampaging, heaving, tumultuous torrent. Survival in its throes, and especially over the falls, seemed impossible.

I thanked the woman and stepped out onto the trestle, keenly aware of the water crashing over the dam a few yards to my left. The farther I got from shore, the more the sound of water all but eclipsed the loudest explosions overhead.

I stuck to the middle of the tracks, mindful of how the bridge’s intertwined superstructure afforded all too many hiding places, playing my flashlight into every dark corner I came to, my gun at the ready. Feeling increasingly exposed and isolated, I kept glancing ahead, hoping to see reinforcements approaching from the far shore.

But it didn’t happen. As inevitably as fate, Norm Bouch emerged as from the metal itself, an instant transformation from angular shadow to seething bundle of human rage-punching, scratching, kicking, and gouging with a fury I’d never before encountered. In my efforts to simply stay on my feet, both my gun and light went flying. Locked together like boxers in a clinch, suddenly caught in a blinding flash from the heavens, we tumbled off the bridge into the steaming waters.

We landed in a bubble bath, the water so aerated it was more foam than liquid. It drew us deep under, not supplying any resistance to swim against, and twisted us about like laundry. But while the notion of air surrounded us, it was water nevertheless, filling my nose and mouth and wrapping me in a cool, smooth, smothering cocoon.

Bouch was unaffected. His dark outline still blocking my blurred vision, he kept his hands clamped around my neck and began trying to hook my legs with his own, as if hoping to suck me into himself, oblivious to his own need to survive. He was all revenge now, the manipulator out of tricks, his only remaining goal to make sure that in death, as in life, he didn’t go alone or without making somebody pay. I ran my hands along the sides of his face and pressed both my thumbs as hard as I could into his eyes, feeling the heat expanding in my lungs as my oxygen neared depletion.

The effect of my efforts seemed negligible at first, and far, far too slow. Norm began to thrash, his head tossing from side to side, which only made me hang on tighter. The water was a swirling screen of whitewash, subtly highlighted by the muted colors of the fireworks display. But my vision began to dim as I ran out of air, and slowly I felt a numbness overtake me.

At which point, Bouch desperately released my throat to grab at my hands.

Stimulated by the sudden freedom, I placed one foot firmly against his chest and pushed with all my remaining strength, tearing myself loose of him.

The result was dramatic. From a crashing, twisting whirlwind of froth, I was thrust into solid fluid. The resistance all around me doubled, and I swam to the surface, searing my lungs with warm summer air. The noise of rushing water was overridden once more by the dizzying crash of exploding pyrotechnics.

The respite was short-lived. No sooner had I taken in one big restorative breath than I was dragged underwater again, this time by the weight of my waterlogged armored vest. Pulling at my shirt and fumbling with the clinging Velcro straps, I felt once more my brain closing down. With one final effort, I stripped the vest and pushed at the water around me with my hands. This time, when I broke to the surface, I stayed put.

I lay on my back for a few stunned seconds, the undulating stream rocking me gently, my vision-moments ago shot through with frantic pinpricks of fading neurons-now filled with wondrous flowers, star-bursts, and radiating wheels of light.

All riding on the growing thunder of the falls just ahead.

My mind clear at last, my heart pounding against the coming onslaught, I twisted about, looking for something to hang on to. But all around me, moving with ever growing speed, I could only see leaping, silky, multicolored water. Ahead, the twin portals of the bridge spanning the falls arched high overhead, doorways to oblivion. And above them, like marbles balanced on a wall, the shapes of spectators’ heads all craned away from me, their eyes fixed on the sky.

I stared at them, my last glimpse of humanity, until I was sucked down into the cataract.

I’d been told years before that survival in fast water often depends on one’s position-that if you keep flat on your back, with your arms spread out and your legs held before you, the descent of a rapids can approximate a sled run down a mountain.

It had seemed reasonable at the time-appealing to my human ego that helplessness could be defeated by mere proper positioning. The reality was I felt like a leaf in a torrent, and just as likely to be pulverized.

I was thrust about, tossed up, sucked under, and twisted around with no regard for my own efforts. The force controlling me was absolute. I breathed when I could, and otherwise gave in to whatever would decree my fate. I was aware of the rocks. They loomed enormously to all sides. I felt them gliding beneath and beside me, the slippery texture of them brushing my outstretched fingers. But the water, while trying to outlast the air I held tight, also buffered the blows and helped whisk me away from the sheer mass of solid granite. At one point, near the end, when I was thrown like a salmon from the water’s embrace, it gathered me again into a deep pool, softening a two-story free fall with the yield of a down pillow. From there, I bobbed into gentle rapids, beside the outwash from the hydroelectric plant, and, more by instinct than with any remaining energy, I slowly paddled into the gravel-strewn shallows.

There, my hands and feet touching bottom like branches protruding from a log, I floated, barely conscious, and watched a parade of firefly-sized flashlights snake their way down the distant shore to the river’s edge.