Bellows Falls

Chapter 7

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING I PULLED into the Lawrence, Massachusetts, Police Department’s parking lot, and picked up a short, compact man with a thick head of hair and a bushy mustache.

He slid into my car’s passenger seat and stuck out a small, muscular hand. “Phil Marchese.”

“Joe Gunther. Thanks for riding shotgun on such short notice. Sammie says she’s sorry she couldn’t make it.”

“Good kid,” Marchese said. “Made half the guys in the unit look like wimps. Take a right out of the parking lot.”

Marchese was the old Army friend who had revealed Amy Sorvino as the link between Jasper Morgan and Norman Bouch. Protocol has it that whenever a police officer goes outside his bailiwick on business, he contacts the receiving PD out of courtesy and safety. It was a reflection of Sammie’s connection to this man that he’d volunteered to escort me personally rather than giving the job to some rookie. Sammie had told me that despite his youth, Marchese was in good position for a captaincy.

He guided me to a neighborhood of cookie-cutter wooden buildings, roughly World War Two vintage. Not quite down and out, it was teetering on the edge, utterly dependent on Lawrence’s rallying against hard times. This was a working-class section of town, and without work it would quickly lose the thin respectability it clung to.

We stopped in front of a house largely indistinguishable from its neighbors. “What’s her situation?” I asked my host.

“Single, living alone. After the shit hit the fan with Bouch, she and her husband both picked out lawyers and began circling each other. That’d been going on a few months when hubby suddenly kicked the bucket. Stupid bastard still hadn’t changed his will, so she got the inheritance, along with two life insurance payoffs, one personal, one from his job. Neither one was huge, but together they set her up pretty good, even after she settled with the state for the statutory rape of Jasper Morgan. Last five years or so, she’s been a party girl, more or less, I guess looking for Mr. Right.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Suspicion of prostitution. We got a file on her. Never caught her at it. I don’t think she’s a pro, to be honest-just an amazingly horny girl on the prowl who takes favors from men.”

Seeing that her car was in the driveway, we went up to the front door and knocked. The response was slow and noisy, punctuated by something heavy falling to the ground. Marchese looked at me and shrugged, and we both moved to opposite sides of the door, just in case something or someone came flying out.

There was nothing so dramatic, however. The door opened a crack and a bleary-eyed, blurry-faced woman peered out, squinting into the morning sun. “Who’re you? What d’ya want?”

Marchese showed his badge. “Police, ma’am. Are you Amy Sorvino?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. We’d just like to ask you some questions.”

“Do it later. I’m sleeping.”

“That’s not real convenient, Mrs. Sorvino,” I said. “I came from Vermont to talk to you. I’d appreciate if you could give me a few minutes. It won’t take long-I promise.”

She closed the one eye we could see through the crack and sighed. “All right. But wait a minute, okay? I’m a wreck. Don’t go away.”

She slammed the door. Marchese smiled at me. “Ah, that Vermont country charm.”

I pointed to his upper lip. “I say it’s the mustache.”

Ten minutes later she reappeared, this time opening the door wide. I had to admit, she looked good for having obviously come off an all-nighter. She was wearing a clingy, thin-fabric caftan, a quick touch of makeup, and had brushed her hair. I could smell the toothpaste on her breath as we crossed the threshold. I guessed her to be in her early thirties and figured she divided her time between living hard and keeping fit at the gym. I wondered how long the balance would tilt in her favor.

She ushered us into a pleasant, new-smelling living room, reminiscent of a colonial-style furniture catalogue-a startling contrast to the house’s working-class exterior, and a dead giveaway of how Amy Sorvino had spent some of her newfound cash. “You want coffee?”

“No, thank you,” I answered. Marchese merely shook his head.

She grimaced. “Well, I do. Grab a seat.”

She vanished for several more minutes, during which we heard a microwave being put into service. When she came back, a mug held in both hands, she settled into a wingback armchair, tucking her feet up under her. It made for a very attractive picture, as she no doubt realized.

“So-fire away,” she said with a small laugh. “If that’s not the wrong thing to say.”

I was impressed by her poise. With two cops in the house, their purpose unstated, I might’ve been at least slightly cowed. To this woman-now that she was awake-we were obviously only a source of curiosity. “Mrs. Sorvino-”

“Call me Amy. Who’re you?”

“Joe Gunther, and this is Phil Marchese. I’m from the Brattleboro Police Department. I was working on a case when your name came up-not in any bad way, but just as someone who might be able to tell me a few things.”

“What about?” She took a sip of coffee, still holding on with both hands. Over the rim of the mug, she batted her eyes at me. I couldn’t resist smiling. I liked this woman. She was a hard worker, if a little single-minded.

“Norm Bouch and Jasper Morgan.”

I expected the smile to fade and the conversation to get chilly. Those two names were not associated with the happiest events in Amy Sorvino’s life. But she merely rolled her eyes and laughed. “Oh, those two. What a pair they made.”

“How so?” I asked.

She rested her hand against her stomach, flattening the fabric of her caftan and pulling it tighter against her breasts. “You’re not pretending you don’t know what the three of us had going?”

Despite my best efforts, I flushed slightly. “No, but it’s more the relationship between the two of them that I want to know about, not so much what they were doing with you.”

She stuck her lower lip out. “Gee. That’s not too flattering. What kinds of things are you after?”

“Well, for starters, were they good friends? Some men wouldn’t be, in that kind of situation.”

“We were all friends. That was the point. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. Jasper found Norm and me one night. I guess we woke him up with all our noise. I could see he was interested-I mean it wasn’t like I was his real mother or anything. So I invited him in. And Norm was real cool about it. He told him stuff, made it a whole lot easier. It was perfect ’til old George showed up on the wrong night and screwed it all up. He was such a jerk.”

I didn’t have to ask if George was her husband. “Did Norm see Jasper at other times?”

The frown she’d put on disappeared. “Oh sure. That’s what I mean. They were pals. Norm was a much better foster father than old George, any day. They went to ball games, movies, hung out… Norm got him involved in all his schemes. It was great. Jasper loved it. He was sort of a brat when he first came, but me and Norm together settled him down pretty good.”

I thought back to how Jasper had established a false identity to separate his criminal and medical records. Norm looked like a good bet for that piece of inspiration. In those terms, “settled down” took on a distinctly subversive meaning-one that Jasper probably had found very appealing. “What were these schemes you mentioned?”

She laughed again. “Oh, Norm was going to be quite the big-time bad guy. He was going to set up a kind of family, where the kids brought him what they stole and he took care of them. I used to pull his leg and call him Fagin, after the old man in Oliver Twist. You ever see that movie? He didn’t see the humor… It was kind of the same thing, though. Anyway, he tried it out on Jasper.”

“How?” I pushed, smiling to encourage her.

“He was a cute kid-small, too-could do things and go places a man couldn’t, without looking suspicious. Plus if he got caught, he was a minor.”

“Were these muggings or burglaries or what?”

She waved a hand impatiently. “I don’t know. They conspired together like a couple of gangsters. I just had fun with them. Anyhow, what they did here wasn’t the point. Norm was going to Vermont. That’s where he’d been planning to do his Oliver Twist thing from the start, and where Jasper was going to be a part of it.”

A pattern was forming in my mind, and with it a growing excitement. I leaned forward in my seat. “Jasper ended up in Brattleboro, back with his folks, and Norm lives in Bellows Falls. Was that something they planned?”

She smiled broadly and shook her finger at me. “Oh, you’re good. Yeah, Norm wanted a bunch of people like Jasper-lieutenants, he called them-and they would run other kids in towns all over Vermont. When old George busted things up, Norm really pushed Jasper to clean up his act, get back with his parents if he could, but at least get up to Brattleboro fast so he could set up shop, recruit some people, and start going with this thing. Norm was hot to trot-I used to laugh at him about it, he got so serious sometimes.”

“And the idea was to start a burglary ring?” I tried again.

“You mean robbing people? Oh, hell no. There wasn’t enough money in that. Norm told me that was just boot camp for the kid. It was drugs he wanted to get into. That’s where the profits were, and he said Vermont was easy pickings-lots of yahoos hungry for dope. He kept saying, ‘I’m going to fill a need, just like Henry Ford’.”

“A history buff,” Marchese spoke for the first time.

She tilted her head back and glanced at the ceiling. “Yeah, he was something else.”

“Did Norm mention the towns he was going to use for his network?” I pressed her.

“The two of them studied maps all the time. They had to be on the interstates, and they had to have the right kind of people. I didn’t pay much attention to all that, but the ones they talked about most were Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Barre, and Burlington. I remember because of all the Bs.”

“Did you ever meet others that were supposed to work like Jasper-as lieutenants? People Norm sent to those towns?”

“No, but they talked about them. The real clever part of this thing was that only the lieutenants would know who their own people were-the kids wouldn’t know each other and the other lieutenants wouldn’t know them. Norm called them ‘cells,’ and said that that way, if one of them got blown, the others could keep on going. Smart, huh? That was about all I knew, though-stuff I heard when we were all at home. Mostly they talked where Norm worked at a garage. I never went there-I’m not even sure exactly where it was-but they had meetings all the time, with kids, just like in that movie.”

“Was Norm’s grand plan ready to go when George suddenly appeared?”

“I don’t think so, but who knows? Our little deal getting busted up, we kind of lost touch. I know Norm and Jasper kept seeing each other, so I guess they were still hot at it.”

For the first time, she appeared vaguely uncomfortable, staring at the floor and fingering the material of her caftan.

I took a wild guess. “Maybe the breakup wasn’t such bad news anyhow.”

She looked at me, surprised, but she took her time before answering and then said unexpectedly, “No. It was time.”

I thought back to the dynamics I’d seen in the Bouch kitchen. “Because of Norm?”

She nodded. “The more that grand plan of his grew, the worse he got-pushing me around, acting like he owned the place. There was something a little scary about it, too.”

I felt I knew what she meant and shared the sadness I saw in her eyes. For the first time in this case, the true impact of all I’d been collecting slipped under my defenses-and darkened my spirit.

The sexual harassment case against Brian Padget collapsed like a pierced balloon, as I’d thought it would. After leaving Lawrence and Phil Marchese, I continued playing hooky and spent the rest of the morning in Brattleboro with my squad, suggesting we contact the towns Amy Sorvino had mentioned, to see if Norman Bouch or Oliver Twist-style teenage gangs rang any bells. I had been planning to grill the Bouches later in the day, in far more detail than the day before, but around lunchtime a phone call from Emile Latour turned that idea inside out.

“The Bouches want to come in at two o’clock and make a clean breast about Brian.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Norm called me and said Brian was the innocent victim of a marital spat. He wants to make a formal statement to you and put the whole thing to rest.”

“Did he say the marital spat was because his wife and Brian were fooling around?”

“No-just that Brian had nothing to do with it.”

I frowned at the phone. “Making Norm the only guy in town not to know?”

Latour didn’t answer.

“How’s Brian feel about it?”

There was a telling pause at the other end of the line, from which I assumed Brian had not been informed. “If they do as they claim, we’re not going to pursue it.”

His tone of voice reminded me of when we’d both been in the town manager’s office.

“What’s going on?” I asked, irritated by the memory. “It’s not necessarily ‘we’ who have anything to say in this. If Brian wants to go after them civilly, that’s his right.”

“We’ve got another situation with Brian right now.”

He didn’t elaborate, but I could tell it wasn’t good. “What?”

“I got a call from your newspaper down there. They had a tip Brian is dirty-he’s been dealing and using drugs.”

I scowled at the phone. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. But they wouldn’t identify who tipped them, right?”

“No.”

“Come on, Emile. You use a paper to smear someone, because you know they won’t reveal their source. You’re not actually moving on this, are you? Give the kid a break.”

“I don’t have any choice. If I ignore it, they’ll start yelling about a cover-up. Besides, I think I got it licked. I told Brian about it, and he volunteered for a urine test and a polygraph, then and there. He’s already in Waterbury, doing both at the state lab. They said they’d let me know by late this afternoon, maybe sooner. With that in my hand, I can tell the paper to piss off, no pun intended.”

It was a hopefulness I distrusted. I didn’t believe for a moment that Norm Bouch’s conversion and Brian Padget’s latest hurdle weren’t connected, and I was tempted to call the paper myself to see if a little personal pressure might not yield better results. Using the press to bolster the us-versus-them mania Emily Doyle had demonstrated earlier made me furious. I didn’t know Brian Padget, but I knew for a certainty that if he wasn’t showing some of Emily’s attitude by now, he was missing some major vital functions.

I kept such thoughts to myself, however, and told Latour I’d be at his building at two.

I opted to use the Bellows Falls Police Department’s cramped, sterile interrogation room to interview the Bouches rather than Latour’s more spacious office, to help drive home my dissatisfaction with the latest turn of events. Not that my opinion carried any weight, of course. If the Bouches officially withdrew their accusation, my job was over, and since the insult was against the PD, they and Padget became the injured parties, and it was up to them to file the appropriate charges. But I was angry, and I wanted to show it the only way I was officially allowed. I didn’t believe in Norm’s contrition. His and Jan’s appearance today was to be another act, and his pretending not to know about her and Brian’s affair was at the heart of it. Unfortunately, I was now a bystander-a spectator to Norm’s next move.

Latour and I were already seated at the interrogation room’s bare table when an officer escorted in Jan and Norm Bouch. Unsmiling, I removed my recorder from my pocket, laid it on the smooth surface between us, and, as they settled into seats opposite, I pushed the Record button.

“Police officers Latour and Gunther interviewing Jan and Norman Bouch in the Bellows Falls Police Department, the latter two people being here of their own free will.” I checked my watch and added the time and date of the meeting.

I clasped the fingers of both hands before me and rested them lightly on the tabletop, watching our guests closely. Jan looked terrible-wan, tired, her eyes puffy and bloodshot, her hair dirty and uncombed. She sat slumped in her chair, staring into space. Norm, by contrast, was predictably pleased with himself, his head tilted back, a small smile working hard to lie still.

“It’s my understanding you are here for an official retraction of allegations you previously made against Officer Brian Padget of this department. Is that correct?” I asked.

Norm unleashed his smile now-failing at a look of embarrassed guilt. “Yeah. Jan and I feel terrible about what we done. I got mad at Brian and got my wife to say things that didn’t happen.”

I ignored the obvious bait. “So there was no conversation between Officer Padget and your wife in which Officer Padget made disparaging comments of a sexual nature?”

“Right-nothing happened. At least not that way. Brian’s been screwing around with my wife, but I guess that’s our problem, and we’re doing our best to sort it out. We shouldn’t have done what we did, and we’re real sorry we put Brian in a pickle.”

I sat back and crossed my arms, knowing my face was several shades redder than it had been moments earlier. Latour sat awkwardly still as a long silence filled the room, knowing the spotlight had unexpectedly put him on center stage.

Norm Bouch had made his move. He’d ended a cock-and-bull story he’d hoped would get Padget fired but which was falling apart fast, and had rendered moot the internal investigation that had put me in his face. With the same stroke, by seemingly letting slip what he had about Jan and Brian Padget, he’d also opened a can of worms which Latour, Padget, Shippee, and others would be forced to deal with in full public scrutiny.

And there was an additional bonus to this new strategy-if open humiliation seemed a step down from getting Padget fired, there was always that anonymous phone call the paper had asked Emile about.

Latour cleared his throat after a pause. “Mrs. Bouch, is this true, what your husband just said about you and Brian Padget?”

Still staring off into space, she barely nodded without comment.

“Speak up,” I ordered roughly. “We need this on tape.”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“What is the nature of your relationship with Officer Padget?” Latour continued, sounding as if he’d be far happier in a dentist’s chair.

“We were… Are lovers.”

“For how long?”

“A couple of months maybe.”

“And your husband was aware of it all that time?” I asked, hoping to dampen Norm’s moment of glory.

“I found out just before I accused Padget of harassment,” he said quickly, cutting off his wife as she opened her mouth.

“Why did you invent the harassment story?” I persisted, more for the record now.

“I wanted to hurt Padget for ruining my marriage. I thought that would do it. I know it was wrong, but I was real mad. Later, I realized what I’d done.”

“Because we were about to prove you’d made the whole thing up?”

“No, no. Because it was wrong. I’m an emotional guy, and I can fly off the handle. You seen me do that. I’m not proud of it, but that’s why we’re here-to set things right.”

Which brought Latour back to a concern of his from the start-and a major factor in determining Padget’s fate. “Mrs. Bouch, when you and Brian Padget were together, was he ever in uniform?”

I gave her that much. Jan Bouch knew the relevance of the question, just as her husband did, and she beat him to the punch. As he began to answer, she said, “No” in a strong, clear voice. Her husband’s look at her was like a promise of future pain.

Things followed predictably after that. Latour and I wrapped up the bureaucratic loose ends, asking a string of formulaic questions designed solely for the tape recorder, and brought the meeting to an end about ten minutes later. Through it all, I had one thought in mind, and as we all rose to our feet, the recorder back in my pocket, I circled the table and stopped Norm Bouch as he placed his hand on the doorknob.

“I’d like a moment alone with your wife.”

I was standing close to him, close enough to smell his breath, and close enough for him to feel my physical advantage over him. While older by far, I was bigger than he was, and better trained to put that advantage to use-an implication he obviously considered in making his decision.

After a telling pause, he forced a smile, stepped back, and said, “Sure. Fine with me.”

I escorted Jan Bouch upstairs to Latour’s office, about the only place that ensured any privacy, and sat her down in one of his guest chairs.

I hitched one leg on the edge of his desk. “Jan, is there anything you’d like to add to what was said down there-privately?”

She stared at her lap and shook her head.

“Look at me.”

She lifted her face, and I fixed her tired eyes with my own. “You are not in a good situation. You know that, right?”

“Yes.” Her voice was barely audible.

“How’re you going to deal with it?”

Her head tilted to one side. “I don’t know. Same as always… I got to get back to my husband.”

“Does he ever get rough with you?”

“No.”

“I don’t just mean physically, Jan. I mean mentally-emotionally.”

Her face remained placid, but tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s hard sometimes.”

“You can do something about it. There are women who do nothing but take care of other women in your situation. They’ll take you in, protect you, hide you if necessary, or at least guard your location from whoever’s making you miserable until something legal can be done. And they’ll do the same for your kids.”

“I been told,” she said in a near whisper.

“Don’t you think now might be a good time to do that?”

“I love Norm.”

“What about Brian?”

“He cares a lot.”

I tried a different approach. “Maybe a small break then, like a vacation. These women do that, too-give you shelter and enough time to think calmly about things. I’m not saying you should leave Norm necessarily, but things are pretty tense right now. A little distance might be good.”

She surprised me then. Instead of answering, she stood up and walked to the door, showing more resolve than I would have credited her with. “Thank you, Lieutenant. You’ve been very kind.”

It was like a line from a bad Civil War movie, and the irony of it hung in the air long after she’d left the room.

It was a long afternoon. I returned to my office and had Harriet Fritter, the detective squad administrative assistant, transcribe the tapes I’d been accumulating. In the meantime, I wrote a long and detailed report of the investigation, up to the one remaining detail to be addressed before I was officially rid of it-the interview with Brian Padget.

I had heard of instances in which the interview of the accused never took place-ones in which the charges were so easily dismissed, no one saw the point-but this situation was a little different. While the reason I’d been called into service had in fact disappeared, the coming public circus made following the regulations a must.

In the end I needn’t have worried. At four o’clock that afternoon, I received a call from Latour.

“Thought you’d like to hear Padget’s results,” he said immediately, his voice flat.

I didn’t admit it, but the test had totally slipped from my mind. “Yeah. What came up?”

“The polygraph was inconclusive, but the urine was positive for cocaine… I can’t believe it.”

Public embarrassment was going to be the least of Brian Padget’s problems. I glanced at the exonerating report on my desk. “You tell him yet?”

“I just found out.”

It wasn’t my problem, but I was in too deep by now to willingly let go. “You better head on down here. I’ll set up a meeting with the State’s Attorney.”