Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

18

I went downstairs, lost in thought, rationalizing how my problem and Gail’s might be mutually redressed. I wanted someone to help me untangle-or at least confirm-the questions I’d been struggling with all afternoon. And Gail, as I saw it, needed some mental handhold she could use to help pull herself out of her depression.

Perhaps mercifully, I never got to put my theory to the test. By the time I walked into the living room, all three of them had been pulled out of the kitchen by the evening news and were fanned out in front of the television in silence. I joined them quietly, standing to the rear, looking over the top of my mother’s head.

After a brief, noncommittal smile at the camera, the anchorwoman behind the curving desk fixed us all with a serious look. “Earlier today, in Thetford, Vermont, Brattleboro Police Lieutenant Joseph Gunther was presented the State’s Attorneys’ Association’s annual Outstanding Achievement Award. Last month Gunther was stabbed with a knife while apprehending the alleged rapist of Brattleboro Selectwoman Gail Zigman. Gunther spent three weeks in a coma at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and is currently recuperating at his mother’s home in Thetford. News at Six’s Tony Coven covered the ceremony.”

The anchorwoman was replaced by a young man in a ski parka standing in bright sunshine in front of our house, a microphone gripped in his hand like a relay-race baton. “The Outstanding Achievement Award was presented by State’s Attorney James Dunn to Lieutenant Gunther on the heels of one of the most publicized sexual-assault cases this state has seen in years-a case still awaiting trial, and which is of particular concern to James Dunn, who is currently in a neck-and-neck reelection bid against Brattleboro attorney Jack Derby.”

The camera cut to footage of me standing next to a tense James Dunn. My mother was seated between us, and to my other side, cut off by the camera’s tight framing, we could see one of Gail’s arms. Dunn all but speared me with the edge of the plaque and muttered a few words of congratulations before giving my hand a limp shake.

Coven’s voice continued in the background. “Ms. Zigman made headlines last month because of her insistence not to remain an anonymous victim of rape. Instead, immediately following the alleged assault, she organized and led a candlelight march on the courthouse to publicize her message that rape is only encouraged by the silence of its victims.”

The screen came alive with a phalanx of police officers escorting a manacled Bob Vogel from a heavily guarded van into an unidentified building, surrounded by a crowd waving placards and chanting.

“The missing figure in all this turmoil is the accused man himself. Robert Vogel, who was apprehended at the Harriman Reservoir immediately following the stabbing of Lieutenant Gunther-a bloody knife still in his hand-remains in high-security isolation at the Woodstock Correctional Facility, silent and defiant. Neither he nor his attorney, Thomas Kelly, have issued any statements to the press, nor have they responded to any inquiries made of them by News at Six

Tony Coven reappeared before us. “Off camera, State’s Attorney Dunn stressed that today’s ceremony honoring Joseph Gunther was a simple act of recognition for a public servant who came so close to paying the ultimate sacrifice. Dunn denied that his own tight political race, and the significant role this case might play in his reelection, had anything to do with the timing of the award. News at Six learned, however, that Gunther himself didn’t wish to be so honored and has asked that the presentation of his own department’s Medal of Honor be postponed until sometime after his return to work. For News at Six, I’m Tony Coven.”

Leo burst out laughing at my sudden celebrity status. “See that, Joey? You’re a hero.”

But my eyes were on Gail as she pushed herself violently out of her chair and marched out of the room, her back and shoulders stiff with anger.

I patted Leo gently on the back as I moved around him. “Be back in a sec.” I followed Gail into our bedroom. She’d already pulled her canvas bag out from under the bed and was filling it helter-skelter.

She didn’t look up as I entered. “I’m going back to Brattleboro.”

“Could we talk?” I asked, keeping my voice soft.

“What about? You’re doing fine, and I need to get back to work.”

“Neither one of us is fine, Gail. We need to sort this out.”

She packing and stared at me. “What are you doing with those files upstairs? And don’t give me that ‘I wanted to look it over again’ crap. I know you better than that.”

I could feel my face flush. “It was my case. There were some details I wanted to review.”

“What details? Are you having problems with what happened? Is it becoming an ‘alleged’ assault to you, too?”

Her anger was white-hot and all-encompassing, but instead of easing it as I should have, I bristled in turn, finally reacting to a stored-up critical mass of pain and self-denial. I ignored groping for an appropriately soothing response. “We both know you were raped, Gail. But it’s my job to make sure Vogel did it. I’ve got to make sure we go into that courtroom with a rock-solid case. You’re not the alleged victim-he’s the alleged rapist.”

“He stabbed you, for Christ’s sake, and he raped three other women,” she shouted, her fists clenched by her sides. “Isn’t that enough? Why do you have to pick at everything? That bastard is guilty, Joe-let the son of a bitch hang.”

“I’ll let him hang when I believe he did it.”

She stared at me for a moment and then returned to her packing. “Go away, leave me alone. Wrap yourself in your mother and Leo and your hero’s halo, and let me get on with my life.”

I caught my breath, stung by her reckless, damaging fury. Despite my sympathy for her plight, I was astonished at what it had suddenly unleashed-in both of us.

I left the room without comment.

Twelve hours later, I was in the hospital, back under the knife.

Reacting to both Gail’s blistering departure and my own growing reservations about the case, I’d pushed my training too hard. Consciously, the point had been to get better faster and return to the job; subconsciously, I wasn’t so sure, although the looks Leo gave me as I sat writhing in agony on the way to the hospital told me he wasn’t in any doubt.

My injury was not severe-a small internal tear, easily remedied. But it ensured a few more days in a hospital bed and took a few notches off the hard-won gains I’d made so far. More important, it put me out of action just when I most wanted to get moving. Tony Brandt’s call, a day later, made me regret my setback all the more.

“Dunn and Kelly had the status conference yesterday. Kelly asked for a speedy trial-standard enough-but it looks like he’s going to get it. They have a judge and an out-of-county jury all lined up. The trial’s set to begin in three days.”

It took me a moment to digest what he’d said. A criminal trial, especially a major one, never came up this soon after arraignment. It could in theory-assuming both the prosecution and the defense agreed-but it never actually happened in practice. Not only were delaying tactics so common they’d become routine, but judges and courtrooms were at a premium, booked for many months in advance.

Normally, as a beleaguered cop who constantly complained about a snail-paced system, I would have been elated for all concerned. Given my newfound qualms, however, this was lousy news. “How come?”

“There was another change-of-venue case scheduled for the end of the week, complete with judge and courtroom, but they settled out of court about an hour before the status conference on the Vogel case. When Kelly demanded a speedy trial, the clerk offered it as a possibility-almost as a joke. He took it.”

“So it’s definite?”

“Dunn couldn’t argue the point. He’d already said he was ready, and if he backed down now, he’d have a hell of a time explaining why. From what I heard, though, he went ballistic when he reached his office. He’s convinced Kelly’s got something up his sleeve.”

“What do you think?” I asked cautiously.

“I’m not sure anymore. I’ve never seen anything like this. One thing I do know is that the judge’ll be Waterston, from the old if-she-was-dressed-like-that-she-was-looking-for-it school. Maybe Kelly’s pinning his hopes on that.”

I didn’t buy it. The judge would probably be a factor in the defense theory, but I respected Tom Kelly’s abilities enough to know there must be more to it. “What about their witness list? Who do they have?”

Brandt’s voice rose a note. “That was another surprise. Vogel’s the only one on it, which means Dunn can’t depose him, since he’s also the defendant. But Dunn may not even get to cross-examine him, since Kelly isn’t obligated to put him on the stand, so the prosecution’s got no way of knowing what strategy they’ll be fighting. Kelly could claim his client’s innocent, or that he was insane at the time… He could even claim it was consensual sex that got too rough. Whatever he chooses, he’s got Dunn in a pickle, since he won’t be calling witnesses till after the prosecution’s shown its hand.”

“Has Kelly deposed anyone?”

“Gail’s the only one he’s listed. You might warn her that he’ll be calling her soon.”

“She’s gone back to Bratt.”

I could hear him evaluating the tone of my voice. “I’ll let her know,” was all he said finally. “How long are you going to be on your back?”

“A few days, maybe-it depends,” I answered vaguely. I was distracted by the sudden thought that Tom Kelly had more up his sleeve than just a mysterious strategy. It was possible that he had certain knowledge of his client’s innocence and needed only Vogel on the stand to prove it.

“Have you been able to get a reading on Vogel? Any rumors from cell mates or prison guards or anyone else?”

“Nope. Ever since he blew it with the oil-slick story, he’s been stone silent.” Tony’s voice became guarded. “What’re you after, Joe? Did you find something in those files I gave you?”

I sidestepped. “I’m just trying to figure Kelly’s strategy.”

Almost reluctantly, I thought, Tony admitted, “From what I’ve heard, Vogel is feeling no pain. I guess defiant is the word.”

“Like he expects to stick it to us in court?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be biting my nails.”

“Right,” I muttered.

Brandt tried once more. “I get this feeling you’re holding out on me.”

I gave in just a hair. “I don’t know, Tony-I’ve got a lot invested in all this. I’m worried I may have been sloppy.”

His voice was solicitous, but he sounded vaguely relieved. “You didn’t land this guy all by yourself, you know. We all did, and we got him on the evidence-better than a lot of other times. You just need to get back to work.”

“I guess so,” I agreed, but I knew we had different meanings in mind.

I returned to Brattleboro four days later, in the middle of the night, just as soon as I’d been able to get out of bed, use the bathroom, and put on my clothes, all without assistance. I knew there was going to be hell to pay from the hospital, whom I hadn’t informed of my departure, but getting back to work had by now become a visceral need. I had to confront theory with reality-doubts with concrete answers-and thus stand with everyone else in their conviction that we’d put the right man behind bars.

One major obstacle to all this, however-aside from the fact that the trial had begun the day before, and that nobody now wanted to hear from a last-minute Cassandra-was that legally I couldn’t return to work. Until the hospital officially released me, my doctors issued a clean bill of health, and the town’s insurer gave me the nod, I couldn’t be seen inside the Municipal Building in a professional capacity.

I was pondering how to get around this red tape, having slowly and painfully climbed the stairs to my third-floor apartment, when I fished my keys from my pocket and inadvertently inserted the wrong one into the lock.

I stood there for a moment, staring at the lock. I’d lived here for decades, always using the same key every day, and yet, after only a five-week absence, I’d goofed. It wasn’t me I was thinking about, however. In a totally different context, it was Bob Vogel.

I returned the keys to my pocket and slowly returned downstairs, the question of where to start my private quest suddenly answered.

It had been well over a month since Willy Kunkle and I had tailed Vogel along the back roads between Jamaica and West Brattleboro, but while the route we’d taken had been new to me then, it seemed intensely familiar as soon as I pulled off Route 30 forty minutes later and began retracing our trip.

This time I wasn’t following a distant pair of taillights with my own lights out, hoping to avoid notice and the ditch both; instead, I put myself in Vogel’s position-a recent arrival to the region, traveling on roads familiar only for where they led, watching not for any memorable landmarks, but rather for the roving sheriff ’s car that would mean the end of my license and the probable revocation of my probation.

It had come to me, when I’d inserted the wrong key in my lock, that perhaps Vogel had done much the same thing with his proffered alibi-identifying not the place where he’d broken down and lost a noticeable amount of oil, but where he’d assumed the breakdown had occurred.

According to the statement he’d given Willy Kunkle after I’d gone into a coma, his car had quit “maybe four miles out” between Wardsboro and Newfane, just beyond where a narrow road or driveway took off into the trees on the right. We’d already determined that his car’s odometer was on the blink, but Willy, who’d done the on-site investigation, had also discovered that there was only one place along that approximate stretch of road that fit the description.

I drove almost as fast as we had the other night, assuming that was the pace Vogel usually set for himself, and I made a pointed effort not to study the right side of the road with undue scrutiny. Nevertheless, the gap, when it came, was pretty evident, all by itself along an uninterrupted stretch of forest.

I stopped, delicately extricated myself from behind the driver’s wheel, grimacing at the pain in my still-sensitive gut, and walked along the side of the road. Even allowing for the passage of time, there was no sign of an oil slick, despite extensive sweeps with my flashlight. I’d told Brandt that five weeks of inaction had probably led to an overblown imagination, but I hadn’t actually believed that myself. I’d been dreading that, at first scratch, some overlooked truth would rear up and bite us all. Now that it hadn’t, I was paradoxically disappointed. I got back in the car and resumed my way home.

It was then that my suspicions were given a second wind. A half mile farther on, I came across a second road to the right. Puzzled that Willy had reported no such thing, I pulled over and stopped again.

The answer became obvious as soon as I played my flashlight across the opening in the trees. There was no road, but merely a sizeable equipment yard for logging skidders and trucks, thinly screened from passing vehicles by a spindly row of saplings.

The catch was, as soon as I killed my flashlight, all that remained in the peripheral glow from my head-lamps was the narrow dark gap and the presumption that it marked the opening of a side road. Willy, investigating during daylight hours, would have made no such mistake; for him, the yard had been as obvious as a parking lot.

In contrast to how I’d felt in the face of good news a few moments ago, I now felt a rush of excitement at this disturbing discovery. I quickly returned to where my car was parked and began scrutinizing the ground in front of it, concentrating-as per Vogel’s testimony-just beyond the “road” to the right. Sure enough, even some five admittedly dry weeks later, the soil was dark and greasy with motor oil.

I continued searching, trying not to fall into the same trap that had apparently enmeshed Willy. Unlike him, I didn’t want to stop at finding what I was after, but instead wanted to eliminate any possibility I might be wrong. Unfortunately, I was soon brought up short. Not surprisingly for an area opposite an equipment yard, I found several more oily patches, and with them the realization that all I’d done was to make the whole issue more muddled. Vogel might well have broken down just as he’d said, albeit confusing one site for another; but given the contaminated ground around me, there was no way I could prove it.

I stood in the cold night, reflecting on my growing ambivalence and the potentially dangerous game I was playing. If word got out that I was privately rattling the state’s ironclad case-which I’d largely built myself-the restless army of Dunn observers would ignite like gasoline.

I snapped out of my trance suddenly and peered into the surrounding frozen gloom, my senses alarmed by something out of place. It had been a metallic sound, and perhaps a glimmer of light, both so subtle they could have been imagined. A car door perhaps? I shot a beam of light up and down the silent dirt road but found nothing.

Fueled now more by instinct than by common sense, I got into my car, turned it around, and headed back to Jamaica-to Vogel’s former place of employment.

I parked in the dimly lit lot of New England Wood Products, pulled the file so labeled from the box Brandt had delivered to me, which I had stashed in my locked trunk, and headed for the supervisor’s office.

Directed by a couple of employees along the way, I discovered the supervisor near the loading docks, talking to a group of workers. I waited for them to break up and then quietly introduced myself.

I showed him the list that we’d compiled of Vogel’s co-workers, all of whom we’d interviewed previously, and explained that I was merely doing some last minute double-checking. “Did we miss anyone that Vogel might have worked with?”

He looked it over carefully, shaking his head, and then stopped, putting a finger on one name. “There’s Fran Gallo. He may’ve been out sick when your boys came by. He’s sick a lot.”

It was said without rancor, or with a poker player’s demeanor. I took the list back. “He here tonight?”

“Yeah. Area five.” He pointed toward a large opening in one of the galvanized-steel walls nearby. “Look for a skinny guy, ’bout six feet, lots of pimples, pale face. Always wears a purple cap, even under his hard hat.”

I passed into an enormous stacking yard, under the same roof as the rest of the building. It was lit by the same sodium lights, but with chain-link walls on two sides, open to the cold air-presumably a feature allowing both security and flexibility, if not worker comfort. I found Fran Gallo gingerly fitting the blades of a forklift under an enormous stack of lumber laid out on the cement floor. He may have been skinny underneath, but he’d been fattened in appearance by multiple layers of heavily patched quilted clothing. He cut his engine as he saw me approaching and gave me an incongruously affable, off-center grin. I guessed he couldn’t have been much over eighteen years old.

“Help you?” he asked, his breath floating before him in a misty cloud.

I showed him my badge and muttered my name as inaudibly as possible, sensitive of the thin ice I was treading. “You know Bob Vogel?”

His eyes grew wide, as befit the publicity Vogel had been getting. “Oh, wow. Sure I do. I mean, who doesn’t? Right?”

I looked at him closely, wondering if this was going to be worth the effort. “Do you know him personally? I gather you worked with him.”

“Sure I did.”

I waited for more, but Fran Gallo’s initial exuberance seemed to have abruptly lost wind. He finally raised his eyes to look at me, smiling apologetically. “I didn’t get along with him, that’s all.”

“Why not?”

“He landed on me pretty hard first time we met-called me a douche bag and told me to mind my own business. All I’d done was say hi and ask who he was-just being friendly. We didn’t talk much after that.”

“Did you ever work side by side?”

“I do with all of them, more or less, at least out here-’cause of this.” He patted the steering wheel of the forklift.

“How was he different from the others?”

Gallo pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Is this going to get out?”

“Why?”

“I just don’t want people to think I shot my mouth off.”

I addressed instead what I thought was the root of his problem. “Bob Vogel is going to jail for a long time, Fran, regardless of how the rape trial turns out. He’s never going to know we talked.”

He nodded, obviously relieved. “Okay. I thought Bob was a real asshole. He treated everybody like shit, sat on his butt every chance he got, and I smelled liquor on his breath a lot of times. I did everything I could to stay out of the guy’s way.”

“He had no friends that you know of?”

“Nobody would put up with him.”

“He ever talk about women? Or rape?”

“Not with me. I never saw him talk with anybody, except to insult them.”

I glanced down at the folder, in which Ron had included a sheet summarizing the questions that had been asked the other workers here. I was beginning to feel this entire outing had been a waste of time.

“Did he seem any different on the night of the rape?”

“Nope,” Gallo answered simply.

“Did you see what he was wearing that night-under his overalls?”

Gallo shook his head and opened his mouth to answer but then paused. “I guess I did-I almost forgot. We were in the men’s room at the same time. He came out of one of the stalls and got back into his winter gear near the sinks. We got to wear a lot of stuff to keep warm.”

I looked again at Ron’s notes. No one else had had this kind of opportunity. “What clothes was he wearing?”

Gallo thought back. “Jeans, work boots, one of those chamois shirts-”

“Anything under the shirt?”

“I don’t know-a T-shirt, I guess… it was something white.”

“What color was the chamois shirt?”

“Blue.” He smiled suddenly. “Sort of. He was real dirty, too-smelled awful.”

“What else?” I asked, as stimulated by the mention of the blue shirt as I’d been by the oil stain on the road.

“He put on a black insulated vest-one of those quilted things, like this.” He unzipped his own overalls to show me a dark green version of his own. “And then his overalls, cap, and work gloves. I think that’s it.”

“He wasn’t wearing anything red?”

“Nope.”

“How about at the end of the shift? Don’t you guys generally leave some gear in a locker?”

Gallo nodded. “Most of us do, but not Vogel. He came and left in his work clothes. I heard him tell a guy once he’d sooner give us all blow jobs than leave his stuff where we could rip him off. That’s just the way he was.”

I returned to the warmth of my car’s heater in a thoughtful mood. I’d known already that Vogel came and went to work in his insulated overalls-that much had been gleaned by earlier investigators. It had explained why no one had been found who’d seen what he’d been wearing underneath, until now.

Not that Fran Gallo’s testimony did any more to change the case than the oil slick I’d found. No one in his right mind would stealthily enter a woman’s house and sneak around wearing work boots and the equivalent of a ski-mobile suit. Vogel could have had the red shirt in the back seat of his car, along with a completely different set of clothes; or he might even have gone home and changed before going on to Gail’s.

But while none of what I’d found would be of any interest to James Dunn, it had made a believer out of me. I was not facing a jury, preparing to paint portraits in black and white only. I was much farther afield, circling like a trespasser seeking entrance to enlightenment. My goal was less to supply answers and more to address questions, and I’d already found more of them than an ironclad case should have.

But I was coming in late in the game, after all the whistles had been blown, and I knew that the news I’d be bearing would not be well received. It was the old story of the messenger better killed than heeded.