Bellows Falls

Chapter 8

JACK DERBY WAS WINDHAM COUNTY’S State’s Attorney-and Gail’s boss. He was youthful for a man in his forties, slightly tweedy, favoring patches on his jacket elbows and horn-rimmed half-glasses he habitually shoved up on his forehead until they were needed for reading. He exuded a friendly warmth which had made mincemeat out of his frosty, domineering predecessor, whom he’d handily defeated in the last election.

But while pleasant to work with, cuddly he was not. Derby was practical, clear-sighted, and keenly aware of the prevailing winds. The latter were not currently forgiving of drug-tainted cops.

“Tell me about the phone call from the newspaper,” he said.

Latour, Tony Brandt, and I were sitting in Derby’s small office. Emile was staring at his hands, Tony was merely looking interested, since he was there at my suggestion but had no idea why.

Emile looked up at the question, his mouth slightly open. “Oh. It… I mean, I got a call from the editor, Stan Katz. He’s not going to run anything immediately. He was looking for confirmation.”

I kept my mouth shut. Stan Katz had entered journalism as a barracuda. The prior cops-’n’-courts reporter for the Brattleboro Reformer, he had become its editor after the employees bought the paper. The years had softened him somewhat, or at least taught him that a steady diet of other people’s throats was bad for business. We’d even cooperated now and then. But I’d never forgotten his roots, and I doubted he had either.

Derby smiled at Emile indulgently. “What did Katz actually say?”

“That his source claimed he and Brian did coke regularly at Brian’s house, up to night before last, and that if anyone wanted to confirm it, they’d find Brian’s stash in a waterproof bag in the toilet tank, where no dogs could sniff it out.”

“First place I’d look,” Tony commented. “You’d think a cop would know that.”

“Did the source say where Padget got the coke?” Derby asked.

“From him-that’s why he called the paper-’cause Brian stiffed him on the last delivery. Said he didn’t have the cash on him. Supposedly, that had happened once before, so now he was going to get even.”

“Anything else?”

Emile shook his head. “That was it.”

Derby sighed. “Our hands are tied on this. Normally, pissing hot could get him suspended or fired without charges or fanfare, but given how we heard about this, I don’t think we can tiptoe without getting clobbered. Katz wouldn’t stand for it. Also, the BFPD should stay out of this-some other agency better get the search warrant.”

Emile looked alarmed. “Will he be arrested?”

I spoke before Derby could. “Depends on what’s found, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you cite him for arraignment instead, it could leave him free for weeks, which might give us enough time to find out what happened. Otherwise, we get judges and lawyers and all the rest in our hair. Would that work politically?”

This last comment was aimed at Derby, who merely shrugged. “Like you said, it depends. In theory, I don’t have a problem with it.”

“Who did you see running the investigation, Jack?” I asked pointedly.

He looked surprised. “The State Police is the only option, isn’t it? Or the drug task force?”

I shook my head and addressed Latour, noticing Tony roll his eyes, suddenly aware of why he’d been invited here. “Emile, how tight are Brian Padget and the sergeant you have assigned to the task force?”

Latour looked up, as if startled anyone would be asking him anything. “They’re best friends.”

“Great,” Tony muttered. “I should’ve known.”

I turned back to Derby. “Given the sensitivity, wouldn’t that almost constitute a conflict of interest?”

“Close enough,” he agreed, “which leaves the State Police.”

“Who don’t know the players, much less what they’re up to.”

“Joe-” Tony began, but I cut him off, still addressing Derby. “I’d like to run this case. I’ve been in it from the start, our department has a vested interest, and I could hit the ground running, instead of wasting time briefing some other agency.”

Derby had picked up on Tony’s misgivings. “I don’t know. Cutting out the task force makes sense. A Brattleboro officer running a Bellows Falls criminal case is stretching it. The press would make it look like a bunch of local cops were bending the rules to hide something.”

“Not if that local cop was working for the attorney general’s office. That would make it look sanctified by God.”

A stunned silence met my proposal, allowing me to explain. “I haven’t just been running an internal on Brian Padget. Early on, I made a connection between Norm Bouch and Jasper Morgan, the young doper who mugged Lavoie and stole his gun early this summer. According to a woman I interviewed in Lawrence, who knew Morgan and Bouch a few years ago, Morgan is part of a drug network Bouch has established all across Vermont, mostly run by underage teenagers. Morgan was his local lieutenant, charged with establishing an organized local cell. Our own intelligence already knew about that part-we’d heard Morgan had made serious inroads into the regional market. That was the primary reason I wanted to talk to him the night he ran. The woman in Lawrence told me Bouch planned to establish similar cells all along both interstates, specifically in Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, where Bouch himself would presumably run the show, and in Barre and Burlington-all towns big enough to have a population of eager customers.”

Derby was shaking his head slightly but still hadn’t formulated a response. I headed him off with more. “If all that’s true, and I have no reason to doubt it, we’re talking about a case that touches down in at least three different counties, more if Bouch has reached beyond the towns I mentioned. That means a different State’s Attorney for each county, with different staffs, different courts, and a growing crowd of interested parties all muscling each other for room at the front, none of which would change if the State Police were running the case. The attorney general’s office, on the other hand, has jurisdiction over the whole state. It’s got a huge staff by comparison to yours and several full-time investigators to help build a case. Not only that, but it specializes in public corruption cases, which by definition fits what we got to a T.”

“And also shows off the biggest hole in your sales pitch,” Tony said, a veteran of such jurisdictional shell games. “Our case concerns Brian Padget not Norm Bouch. It’s Padget who pissed hot. All Bouch did was get angry at his wife’s philandering and try to get even-and that’s past history.”

Derby was about to add his two cents when I held up both hands. “Okay, okay. Bear with me here. It’s conjecture, but if we always had absolute proof from the start, we’d be out of business, right? First off, I messed up with the internal investigation. I went at it like I do with a regular case, with my eyes and ears working like vacuum cleaners. I should have gone in focusing only on whether the charges against Padget were true or not-period-but I didn’t. As a result, I learned a lot more about the Bouches than I might have, along with a few of Norm’s habits, the relevant one being his manipulation of women. The Lawrence woman I mentioned started out as Bouch’s lover. Jasper Morgan, then a wet-nosed teenager, walked in on them by mistake one night. The woman’s admittedly a little on the randy side, so she invited Jasper to jump in with them.”

I was interrupted by the expected snorts of derision. “The point is,” I pursued, “Bouch not only went along, he became Jasper’s teacher. That’s part of his appeal to these kids-there’re no taboos. He’s a natural at winning them over. He used this woman, who’s not complaining, to turn Jasper into a crony. My feeling is that he’s using his wife right now to compromise Padget, even though she’s not too happy about it.”

I paused a moment to let them protest, but to my surprise no one said a word. I was gaining, I hoped. “I’m not saying Padget and Jan Bouch maybe didn’t fall for each other initially. Those things happen-she’s young, pretty, unhappy; he’s the right age, a Dudley Do-Right, and probably given to every young cop’s urge to save the world. I think Norm’s first reaction-to squeal on the affair to get Padget in trouble-was straight from the gut. He was pissed off. But with this new wrinkle, with Padget’s urine coming up positive, especially after he volunteered for the test himself, I smell a rat, and I bet it’s Norm Bouch. I don’t know how, but I’d be willing to lay down money that Bouch is still involved in Padget’s problems.”

“Based on what?” Derby asked.

“Bouch’s attitude, mostly. First, he’s madder than hell-cheated on by his wife. He gets her to file a complaint against the boyfriend. The Bellows Falls sergeant who gets that call blows it off temporarily, already knowing what’s really going on and hoping it’ll take care of itself. That angers Norm even more. He calls Emile here and demands action, threatening God knows what. That’s when Emile calls Tony, and I get the nod to do the internal. But they flub their story-Jan blows her lines, Norm scrambles to cover up, and by the time I get the chance to corner her all alone, he knows he’s dropped the ball. Faced with a false accusation charge, he beats a fast retreat, says he invented the whole thing because he was angry, and begs forgiveness, which is granted.”

I leaned forward in my chair to emphasize the next point. “But it was the way he did it that got my attention. He should’ve been shitting bricks when he walked in to retract everything he’d said. He was the one in trouble now. The BFPD could file against him, Padget could sue him for civil damages, and maybe more important to a man like Bouch, he could lose face-which is something teenagers pay a lot of attention to. And yet he was cocky as hell, could barely keep from laughing. At the time, I thought it was because he was about to turn the tables on us, putting the affair between his wife and Padget officially on record-a maneuver that still left Padget humiliated and in trouble with his boss, and pretty much pulled the teeth on any reprisal the department might have threatened. That’s why I thought he was so pleased with himself. But as soon as I heard about the anonymous tip claiming Padget was a drug user, I knew Norm was still at work. The fact that the alleged corruption involved drugs, was aimed at Padget, and came right after Bouch’s retraction, convinced me that Norm had to be lurking somewhere behind Padget’s current problems.”

I sat back, almost done. “Every instinct I have tells me that the Padget case will lead us to Norm Bouch. It might even be the only shot we get at Bouch, who’s been clever and careful enough to operate without once getting his hands slapped, except,” I emphasized for effect, “when it comes to women. The only time Emile’s troops have ever gotten close to nailing Norm, it’s been over a woman. Padget fooling around with Jan opened a wound in Bouch’s pride, and Bouch has reacted accordingly. I’m hoping he’s also shown us the one weak spot in his armor.”

I fell silent, drained and slightly baffled at my own enthusiasm for a plan I had only half sketched out before sitting down at this meeting.

There was some shuffling by the others. Derby was the first to break the silence. “Tony? Could you spare him for this?”

“I don’t think I’ll have to. This ain’t gonna fly.”

“But if it did,” Derby pushed.

“I guess. But we’d have to play up the Brattleboro connection to satisfy the powers-that-be. Otherwise, they’re going to start saying I’ve got enough money to staff other departments.”

The SA nodded. “I could help you there.” He paused, still thinking hard. “I have to admit, I like the idea. Getting a bunch of SAs to cooperate on any case is like herding cats, and something like this could be even tougher, assuming the teenage cell concept is accurate. Also, having heard his pitch, I don’t know who besides Joe could pull it off. Giving this to another agency would be like asking a stranger to bring up someone else’s problem child. I’d have to sell the AG’s office on it, of course, but if this is as big as you think it is, they might like the smell of it. Everybody loves to make headlines.”

He hesitated and then asked as an afterthought, “Sound okay to you, Emile?”

Latour looked up, his face pale. “Sure. Great.”

Derby stood, forcing us all to join him. “All right, then. I’ll take care of that end of things. Joe, you own this for the moment. Get the warrant, find out what else Brian Padget might have leaning on him, and keep your fingers crossed that all these connections really exist. If they don’t, and all we end up with is a dirty cop, we’re going to have to start blowing one serious political smokescreen.”

Outside, in the SA’s reception area, the three of us huddled briefly like survivors of a storm. I was still slightly in shock. Despite my years on the job, I’m perpetually stunned at how often critical decisions, in a world where multiple legal systems constantly overlap, boil down to a sales pitch overwhelming either precedent or logic.

“You think he can do it?” Latour asked.

Tony looked down at him from his considerable height. “Con the AG’s office? Not without Joe’s help.” He jerked a thumb at me. “This is one grade-A bullshitter here.”

Although my little campaign would undoubtedly be causing him problems down the line, Tony was obviously pleased. He loved stirring things up and never seemed happier than in a stampede of scrambling bureaucrats and/or politicians. It was one of the contradictory things that I thought ranked him among the truly gifted police chiefs.

Latour, by contrast, wasn’t happy at all. “Bad enough I had Padget fooling around with a married woman. Now we’ll be the center of a statewide drug investigation. Just what Bellows Falls needs. Every newspaperman who knows how to dial will be ringing my phone.”

I patted him on the back. “Maybe not.” But I had a feeling he was right. “If it all comes together, you can just forward the calls to the AG.”

He shrugged and we dispersed, Tony and Emile heading for their respective offices, and I returning down the hallway to give Gail a quick visit. As I crossed her threshold, she was only half visible behind a row of paper columns, stacked side by side across her desk.

“You look like you’re preparing for an assault.”

She peered over the top and gave me a weary smile. “Or being buried alive. How’d things go with Jack?”

I didn’t bother asking how she knew about the meeting. In the essentially rural world of Vermont, you got used to people knowing what you were doing even before you did it. “Surprisingly well. He bought my proposal to turn a single cop’s positive urine test into an AG-sanctioned, statewide investigation, with me on board.”

She rolled her eyes. “God-has he got a lot to learn.”

I sat on her windowsill, enjoying the contrast of the sun on my back and the central air-conditioning on my face. “I thought maybe he’d grab this for himself.”

“Crooked cop cases are usually political land mines, and our boy is new yet,” she said, still sorting through her files. “He just needs to be consistent right now. Not that I’m complaining. The whole staff would’ve been sucked into this if it got messy.” She waved a hand at her workload. “This would’ve looked like peanuts in comparison.”

She sat back suddenly and looked at me thoughtfully. “I am curious, though. Why step over the drug task force, the Vermont State Police, and the Association of State’s Attorneys to go to the AG?”

For the next ten minutes, I repeated the pitch I’d just delivered up the hall.

She smiled at the end of it. “Nice snow job. It still doesn’t answer the real question.”

She didn’t elaborate, or need to. “Why me?”

I hesitated before continuing. It was a good point, one I’d rationalized to Derby in procedural terms, but which I hadn’t owned up to emotionally.

“I’m not exactly sure yet,” I answered slowly. “Something clicked when I saw Jan Bouch surrounded by those kids in their kitchen. It was cute on the face of it-all of them clamoring for doughnuts she was holding up high. But she wasn’t having fun. She was at a loss. She couldn’t sort out how to handle it. And then Norm came in, and grabbed the box and threw it outside like he was distracting a pack of dogs.”

I paused again, trying to string thoughts together so they made sense. “Jasper Morgan plays into this, too. When he escaped, raising all that ruckus for no apparent reason, it bugged the hell out of me. Now that he’s resurfaced, and in connection to Bouch, and there’s a cop in the middle who may or may not be dirty… I just don’t want to walk away from it. I want to find out what’s going on. There’s something inside me that needs this settled.”

I’d been staring at the carpet through all this, speaking as much to myself as to Gail, and now shook my head and looked up at her. “You glad you asked?”

Her answer surprised me. “You really think Bouch’s network extends that far?” she asked.

“Yes, but I better come up with some proof. The AG’ll take a couple of days making a decision-listening to Derby, reading through the files, brainstorming with his Criminal Division people. It would help if I dug up a small nugget in the meantime.”

I could tell I’d triggered some underlying notion with my ramblings, but apparently she wasn’t ready to share it. She leaned forward instead, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “We better get cracking, then.”

I didn’t ask, but I wondered what she meant by “we.”