Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

2

The lobby, as in some Alice-in-Wonderland dream, was totally empty again, aside from Elizabeth Pace, alone and behind her curvilinear counter, who was talking on the phone. She waved at me and smiled as I passed through the electronically triggered double doors that led to the ambulance loading dock outside.

The brittle air came as a relief, slightly stinging my cheeks and lungs as I drew in a deep breath. I stood there a moment, overlooking the parking lot, whose features were softly emerging as the harsh, unnatural sodium lights faded against the far gentler but more pervasive gray glow of the looming dawn.

I was so overwhelmed by the feelings inside me, I was having a difficult time making sense of them. Moreover, I felt an urgent need to do so-and get on with the job at hand.

Because that was the primary issue here-to do the job. I didn’t have the opportunity of escaping to the daylong demands of an accountant, or a backhoe operator, or a logger-of burying myself in something totally apart from what had happened to Gail and, through her, to me. My job was to eat, breathe, and live what she’d just been put through, not only because I was paid to do it, but because Gail had specifically requested it of me. That meant, despite Elizabeth Pace’s well-intentioned advice, that I was going to have to batten down some of the psychological hatches she’d urged me to throw open, and hope that the pressures behind them wouldn’t blow out at the wrong time or place.

There was, however, one nugget of solace in my awkward position. Of all the gremlins that conspire to torture the mind of a rape victim, the conviction that her attacker is still out there, waiting to attack her again, is one of the most terrifying. And my job was to bring that guy in.

Assuming they’d let me try.

“How’s she doing?” The voice was Tony Brandt’s, coming from the dark far corner of the loading dock.

I turned to see him leaning against the hospital wall, his hands buried in his trouser pockets, smoking his omnipresent pipe. “You still here? I thought you’d be at the scene by now, or updating the board.”

Gail had recently been made chair of the town’s board of selectmen, currently a group of notoriously fickle people-and not to be left outside the informational loop for long.

He smiled and pushed himself away from the wall to join me. “Already have-by phone. We’re meeting in a couple of hours so they can shovel on the outrage, and I can tell them I can’t tell them anything yet.” He paused a moment to launch a couple of pungent clouds into the atmosphere, and then rephrased his opening question. “So, how’re you doing?”

I hesitated before answering. We had been friends a long time and had been allied in some tough political wars. He was someone I greatly respected, and who’d consistently earned my trust. I knew his inquiry went beyond its simple wording.

“I was just asking myself the same question. I’m not sure yet-part of it’ll probably depend on Gail.”

“You get to talk to her?”

“A little. She’s pretty closed down. I don’t think I’m what she needs right now.”

“Ah,” he nodded. “The sisterhood.”

“Yeah.” I turned that over in my mind a couple of times, seeing both sides of it-understanding it in our terms. “Kind of like cops when they get in a jam.”

He chuckled. “Okay.”

“She wants me on the case, Tony.”

He worked on his pipe a bit, finally taking it out of his mouth and staring into the bowl for inspiration. “That’s not exactly kosher. The State’s Attorney might have problems with it.”

“Do you?”

He parked the pipe back in his mouth. “Not in theory. You’re the best investigator I’ve got, and given Gail’s prominence, and the SA being in a tight reelection bid, I’m going to need the best.”

“But… ”

He nodded slowly in agreement. “Right, ‘but…’ People could scream conflict of interest, and the SA’s opponent could make political hay out of it, especially if we don’t nail our man right off. Plus, if the case gets to court, as the last person who saw her before the attack, you’d be a prime witness. All a little awkward.”

He turned and looked straight at me. “And there’s the personal side to it. How’re you going to perform? I noticed you weren’t too eager to hear the details from Ron a while back. You and Gail have been together for years-might as well be married. Psychologically, it would be like investigating your own wife’s rape. How would you handle it, if our roles were reversed?”

I wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. “The same way you’re probably going to. You’ve been thinking about this since Ron first called you-I saw you checking me out in the car. So what’ve you decided?”

He shook his head and snorted gently, amused at my stubbornness. “I’m putting you in charge, but not alone. Everything you do, think, or even dream about has to be flown by me first. Nothing happens without my prior knowledge, and everything is shared with the SA and his investigator immediately.”

An indefinable part of me found its footing with those words, anchoring all my other mixed emotions, if only tenuously. I made myself believe that Tony Brandt had not only just helped me out, but Gail and the case’s outcome as well.

Still, I couldn’t ignore that he’d chosen the bolder of his options-something the State’s Attorney was likely to remind him of, and perhaps use against him if things went wrong. “James Dunn is going to love this.”

Brandt jumped off the loading dock and began walking toward his parked car. “I’ve already told him. He doesn’t, but he’ll survive.”

We drove to Gail’s house together. A converted apple barn, the house was the sole remnant of a farm that had once dominated a hill overlooking Meadowbrook Road in quasi-rural West Brattleboro. It stood alone now, the other buildings having long since been dismantled or moved, reminiscent of a frontier outpost of two hundred years ago-tall, weather-beaten, built of rough, dark wood. Gail had purchased it for near nothing over a decade ago and had turned it into a bright, soaring, multilevel cathedral of a home, filled with plants, ceiling fans, colorful art, and intimate lighting. It was a hidden showcase of prime real estate and went a long way in demonstrating why she was the town’s single most successful realtor.

At the moment, however, it looked more like the police department parking lot. Tony had to park halfway up the long driveway behind a string of patrol cars. We went the rest of the way on foot.

As we’d turned off the road, I’d noticed both WBRT’s and the Brattleboro Reformer’s cars perched by the edge of the ditch. “How’d you fare with them?” I asked, as we trudged up the steep slope.

“We played footsie a bit. They asked me if it was Gail, or if she’d been hurt, or if we’d caught the guy; I mostly said, ‘No comment.’ I also made it crystal clear I’d be pretty pissed if they divulged any names. They looked shocked I’d even suggested it.”

“You talk to Katz about it?”

Stanley Katz, once the Reformer’s cops-’n’-courts reporter, had recently been made editor-in-chief by his Midwest owners, right after he’d surprised them with his resignation-a true example, we thought, of the Peter Principle run wild. But Katz, despite his ambition, his cynicism, and his total lack of manners, had always showed integrity. I just hoped this sole virtue could withstand his bosses’ thirst for wider circulation.

Tony seemed to have been thinking along similar lines. “I didn’t see the point. He’ll be coming to me soon enough-he’s got too much bloodhound in him to leave it to some reporter. I did tell his boys-and BRT-that they are not allowed on Gail’s property, but they’ll probably try what they can.”

He suddenly stopped and put his hand on my shoulder, the fog from his breath shrouding his face in the chill morning air. “I’d prepare myself for the worst, though. This could turn into a three-ring circus before it’s done, and I’d be amazed if Gail’s anonymity survived. Which means she-and you-will be front-page news. You might want to consider that before we finish this climb.”

I nodded and started walking again. “My being involved depends on you and Dunn. I’m staying till one of you stops me.”

The front door of the building led out onto a broad deck, which in turn had a flight of steps connecting it to the driveway. We had just set foot on the deck and greeted the patrolman guarding the entrance when Ron Klesczewski stepped out through the sliding glass door, a nervous smile on his face.

“They let you on the case.”

I smiled back at his obvious relief, although he didn’t need me as much as he thought he did. I wouldn’t have made him my second-in-command if he didn’t have the wherewithal to do the job himself. But his lack of self-confidence, perhaps due to my constant presence, never allowed my belief in him to be put to the test. “You may regret that they did.”

Brandt interrupted the obvious denial already half formed on Ron’s lips. “He’s on it, but he’s not running it, at least not by himself; we’ll be co-leaders on this. Is Todd Lefevre here yet?”

Ron scrutinized our faces quickly, trying to gauge my view of this unorthodox command. Like most cops everywhere, he saw the chief as a bureaucrat only-not a street cop-despite the proof, given time and again over the years, that Tony functioned easily in either role. “He got here about five minutes ago-he’s inside.”

He stepped away from the door and ushered us across the threshold. Todd Lefevre-the State’s Attorney’s criminal investigator-was standing in the center of the building’s main room, admiring its huge, bright space extending high overhead, interlaced by enormous, ancient cross beams which supported, here and there, a varying assortment of staircases and lofts.

He turned as we entered-a small, round man with a pleasant, bookish look about him-and came over to shake my hand. “Hi, Joe, I was real sorry to hear about this.”

“Thanks, Todd.”

“J.P.’s set up in the bedroom,” Ron explained. “He asked we keep the traffic down to a minimum, and that everyone stay on the brown paper till he’s had the whole place checked out.”

Lefevre, as diplomatic as his boss James Dunn was not, bowed out. “You go ahead. I’ve already had a quick look around-I’ll talk to you when you’re done.”

Ron, Tony, and I followed the brown-paper runner that J.P. Tyler-the forensics member of the squad-had laid down across the floor and up a long, narrow staircase to the uppermost loft, tucked under the sloped ceiling some thirty feet up. This was where Gail had established her bedroom, in the walled-off equivalent of a tall ship’s crow’s nest.

As Ron had said, the house was essentially empty, in order to preserve J.P.’s sacrosanct “field of evidence.” Still, I felt the presence of strangers everywhere, something the butcher paper underfoot did little to dispel.

All three of us paused at the top of the stairs and surveyed the bedroom before us. Dominated by a king-sized bed awash in light from an enormous skylight, it looked like a war zone-the pictures askew on the walls, the dresser swept clean of its bric-a-brac, the closets and drawers disemboweled, their contents resting on the floor and furniture like freshly fallen snow. The only sign of any order in this mess was a perversely precise display of Gail’s more revealing underwear, hung neatly along the upper edge of a lamp shade.

A sudden flash from Tyler’s camera caught me unawares, startling me, and finalized the room’s transformation from intimate retreat to crime scene.

I stared at the bed he was photographing, its covers pulled all the way to the foot, exposing an unnaturally vast expanse of bottom sheet, wrinkled in the middle, stained here and there by minute spots of crimson. I remembered Ron’s comment about a knife-“Pinpricks, really, just to prove he had it.” The bed took on the vague aspect of a laboratory table.

“Any semen stains?” Tony asked, his tone a little brusque, as if the question were as much to challenge my objectivity as to get an answer.

“A few,” Tyler answered, still focusing. He then lowered the camera and turned to face us, seeing me for the first time. Normally, his scientific detachment at a scene rivaled his inanimate equipment’s, but he looked suddenly uncomfortable now, a reaction for which I silently thanked him. To his face, however, I merely nodded and said, “It’s okay.”

He looked at me clinically for another second and then nodded, satisfied. “What did she say about ejaculate?”

Ron cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed. “I didn’t ask. We didn’t talk for long-she was pretty upset-so I just stuck to the immediate stuff, like did she see the guy, or know him.”

I stepped away from the doorway, fighting my own growing discomfort. I nodded toward the stains on the sheet, “Some of those are probably mine. I was here last night. What else have you found?”

Tyler took my cue and moved on. “Nothing much so far, but I only got here a few minutes ago, just long enough to take a few overall shots.” He pointed along the bottom edge of the box spring. The rope slipknots Ron had mentioned at the hospital hung limply from the metal frame, two on each side, like a demented child’s preparations for a miniature mass hanging. “Looks like common clothesline-the more she pulled against them, the tighter they got.”

Ron added, “She told me she finally freed herself by shifting to one side as far as possible, cutting off the circulation to one hand until the rope loosened enough for her to slip the other hand out.”

“What else?” I asked, swallowing against the tightening in my throat.

J.P. looked contemplative. “It’s a messy scene, from a pretty angry guy. The underwear on the lamp shade might’ve been to taunt her, or us later on. Or it might’ve been to turn him on. Hard to tell. It’s all definitely a display of power and control, from the ropes to the knife to the destruction. Was her bedroom usually pretty neat?”

“Yes, she’s very tidy,” I said, nodding. “So what does it all tell you?”

Tyler, befitting his scientific bent, had taken several training courses in rape psychology, some on his own time, and therefore had a better knowledge of it than the rest of us, who tended to rely on our past experience alone. He shrugged slightly. “Fast attack, preplanned, with a specific goal in mind. I noticed before I came up here that the disturbance seems to be confined to this room only. She lock up at night?”

“Generally.” I looked to Ron. “How much did Gail give you?”

“She didn’t see him or recognize anything about him. He didn’t say much, and then only in a whisper, so she couldn’t identify his voice. He came out of nowhere and left right after he’d finished. She said she didn’t notice any damage to the house except for here.”

“You said she saw the clock before he bagged her. Did she look at it later?”

He nodded. “She freed herself at 3:37. She wrote it down ’cause she knew we’d need to know.”

Tyler whistled. “Did he beat her up?”

“Why do you ask?” I countered, cutting Ron off.

He pointed at our surroundings. “Big mess, took a long time, a little knife play, a lot of pent-up violence. They usually don’t stop at beating on the furniture.”

Ron spoke up then. “She’s actually not too bad physically-he nicked her a few times with a knife, but not enough to require stitches, and only whacked her hard a couple of times, just before he split.”

There was a slight pause in the room as we contemplated what had happened here just a few hours earlier. I was struck by the way the references to violence had been confined to fists and a knife. It seemed to me the biggest source of violence hadn’t even been mentioned.

J.P. frowned. “No knife here. I’ll check the kitchen, but if he brought it with him, that’s another indicator this was preplanned.”

“You think anything was stolen?” Ron asked of no one in particular.

J.P. looked at me. “I would doubt it-maybe a single article, kind of like a souvenir. What do you think?”

I shook my head. “Too hard to tell the way things are now. The TV and stereo are pretty fancy, and they haven’t been touched. She keeps her jewelry in that box over there.”

I pointed to a hinged cherry case with an inlaid maple design I’d bought her years ago. It was lying on the floor, unopened, half under one of the night tables. J.P. gingerly stepped over to it and opened it, his hands clad in ghost-white latex gloves. It was full of the things I’d grown used to seeing Gail wear.

Tyler replaced the box exactly. “Later, you might get her to do an inventory. If anything is missing, my bet’s on something personal.” He glanced at the lamp shade.

“Jesus,” Ron muttered to himself. Tony Brandt cleared his throat and spoke for the first time. “J.P., you set for what you need?”

Tyler nodded. “I’d like Ron to help me go through all this with tweezers, but that’s about it. Dennis is running the show outside, from the boundary line in toward the house. You might ask him if he needs more people. Otherwise, I’m okay. The fewer inside the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

Brandt had his hands in his jacket pocket, fidgeting with his pipe. I knew he was dying to fire it up, something he never did at one of Tyler’s scenes, for fear of leaving a shred of tobacco behind. He was obviously getting restless as a result. “Okay, then. We’ll get out of your hair.”

He turned on his heel and was about to work his way down the long staircase, with me behind him, when Tyler stopped us with a question: “You going to talk to her again soon?”

I answered. “We’ll try to-kind of depends on her. Why?”

“It’s a gut reaction so far, but I’d say the guy knew her-well enough that she’d recognize him if she’s given the chance.”

I nodded and went after Brandt, reflecting wistfully that no one in that room, including myself, had referred to Gail by name.

We found Todd Lefevre outside on the deck, chatting with the patrolman on guard. Lefevre’s was an unusual-and highly envied-job. A law-enforcement officer, he belonged to no department. His only boss was the State’s Attorney, and his jurisdiction extended as far as the SA’s. Lefevre could run his own investigations, delegate them to other officers, or cooperate as he was doing here. He worked with sheriffs, municipal departments, the state police, or any relevant federal agency, and could, if the job required it and the money was available, travel anywhere outside Vermont’s borders to do what he had to do. The only downside was that he existed on the SA’s say-so, and on the state legislature’s willingness to fund his position, both of which definitely blunted the appeal. Not only was James Dunn a weak excuse for a human being, but from a one-time high of eleven state investigators, there were now only three full-timers left.

Chances were good Windham County would be allowed to keep one of those, but for the first time in his career, all bets were off concerning Dunn’s future-and therefore Todd’s-at the polls. Dunn’s opponent, Jack Derby, was as low-key and appealing as the State’s Attorney was not, and he seemed to have all of Dunn’s ability, judging from a very respectable twenty-year career as a trial lawyer. Dunn’s acknowledgment of his own vulnerability was highlighted by a sudden newfound interest in popular opinion, complete with awkward appearances at Rotary lunches and Red Cross fundraisers.

Todd didn’t seem concerned by any of it, however, remaining as affable and easygoing as always, and he greeted us with none of the election-time heartburn I knew a major case like this ignited in his boss. Perhaps the prospect of Todd’s own potential unemployment was offset by a secret enjoyment in finally seeing “the gargoyle” sweat. In any case, I knew he was too discreet to tip his hand either way.

“Tyler working his magic?” he asked as we joined him.

Brandt nodded, crossing to the railing. “Yeah, with Ron. How’s Dennis doing?”

Lefevre chuckled. “He’s got ’em organized like a bunch of Boy Scouts on parade.”

Almost cut off from view by the far corner of the building, we could see a long line of patrolmen, traffic officers, auxiliary members, and even a few borrowed state troopers marching slowly across the field under the supervision of Dennis DeFlorio, the detective squad’s weakest link. A good-ol’-boy with a limited imagination, and ambition only for his pension, Dennis was never good enough to give me hope, or poor enough to give me cause to replace him. He did, however, have an unflagging sense of humor, never pretended he was better than we knew him to be, and always did what was asked of him. I was confident that if something could be found out in that field, he would probably come up with it.

“Where’re Sammie and Willy?” Lefevre asked conversationally.

I turned away from the distant search line and looked at him. We had worked together before, and with pleasure. For years he’d been both the liaison to Dunn’s office and the man who inherited our cases after arraignment, when the SA officially took over control. But things would be different this time. Without having discussed it with Brandt, I knew Todd would be nearby from the start-the price Dunn was exacting from Tony for allowing me on this case.

I smiled and accounted for the two missing members of my squad. “On the street, squeezing their snitches.”

He nodded. Brandt had hitched one leg up onto the railing and was stuffing his beloved pipe with tobacco, glancing at the two of us without a word.

“So what’s next?” Todd asked.

I appreciated his courtesy, granting me the illusion of leadership, but I waved a hand toward Tony. “I would guess a door-to-door inquiry’s being made right now.”

Brandt nodded, his cheeks puffing eagerly behind a balloon of smoke. “Then I guess it’s time to talk to Gail,” I quietly conceded.

Brattleboro is an unusually mixed bag of a town. An icon of the previous century’s industrial might, it has an imposing downtown of stolid red-brick buildings, a few obligatory tree-lined neighborhoods of impressive Victorian showpieces, and a vast number of standard, modest, updated nineteenth-century homes-in good or poor shape depending on the locale. The whole thing rests on a broken-backed, topsy-turvy, creek- and river-creased patch of land, and looks like some oversized historical plaster diorama that’s been dropped by mistake and abandoned. Its few modern touches-a Dunkin’ Donuts right at its heart, and a dreary commercial strip heading north out of town-barely make an impression. It remains a town that the architectural ravages of the optimistic, taste-free fifties and sixties essentially bypassed.

Sprinkled throughout, however, just off the well-traveled thoroughfares, Brattleboro has a contrasting scattering of neighborhoods unique unto themselves. They are poor or middle-class or shyly redolent of old money, but they all share a separateness from the whole, as if, during the town’s early evolution, hidden genetic strains of other far-distant communities were subversively introduced.

One of these enclaves clusters around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir-a football-field-sized, cement-lined pond with a potentially commanding view of the town in three directions. Curiously, the potential is all that’s there, since the surrounding trees have been allowed to slowly shut out the urban scenery, leaving only glimpses of what might be available. In the same vein, the standard trappings of an exclusive, remote, dead-end block have all been dressed down. The houses are muted to dullness, the street and lawns nondescript, and the reservoir itself, historically the town’s first private water supply, is almost ugly-concrete-wrapped and encircled by a rusty chain-link fence.

It was overlooking this dark, brooding, cold slab of water that Susan Raffner had her home, and it was there that Lefevre, Brandt, and I, in two separate cars, negotiated the narrow, potholed street-twisting up like an urban goat path-in order to speak with Gail.

The uncharacteristically chilly weather set the mood of the place-the low, gray sky leaching down into the tentacles of the trees all around. The foliage was still green and full, but in this light it all looked somber and cold; and our breath collected in vaporous clouds about our heads as we emerged from the warm cocoons of our cars.

Raffner’s house fit the tone set by its neighbors-large, dark, shingle-sided and unimposing-and like them, it murmured comfortably of a hundred and fifty years of generations spinning away through endless successive life cycles. It was through the echoes of those embracing ghosts that we made our way across the frost-dappled lawn, up the porch steps, and to the front door. It was still early, not even eight o’clock.

Raffner answered the doorbell, her face poised between suspicion and hope. “You catch him?”

“Not yet,” I answered. “Could we come in?”

The hopefulness died, but she opened the door wider and invited us to enter. “So what are you doing?”

“Everything possible. You know Todd Lefevre, from the State’s Attorney’s office?”

She shook her head, and I finished the introductions, which she just barely acknowledged. Except for a cursory glance at Todd, she kept her eyes locked on mine, her intention to get a fuller answer clear. We were still standing around the foyer, and Raffner made no move to extend her hospitality.

“Gail told the first officer she spoke to that she had no idea who this guy was. We have teams in the streets conducting interviews; we have a forensics unit going over Gail’s place with tweezers; and we’ve got people covering her grounds and neighborhood. Something like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum-for one thing, we’re already pretty sure he knew her-”

Raffner snorted. “I could have told you that-he raped her in her own bed, for Christ’s sake.”

I held up my hand. “I meant there’s a good chance she knows him, too, even though she didn’t recognize him. That’s probably the reason for all the cloak and dagger. If we can combine her memories of the attack with what we get from our investigation, it might be enough to come up with a name.”

She looked at all three of us doubtfully. This was hardly the first time she’d dealt with this kind of situation-part of Women for Women’s role was to escort rape victims through the legal system-and my request was certainly mundane enough. But Susan Raffner was used to dealing with “clients”-not members of her own board of directors. For her, as for us, this attack had become personal, and the trauma of it had cut through all our professional defenses.

“So you want to talk to her now? All three of you?” Tony Brandt answered for me. “No-just Todd and Joe. I have a selectmen’s meeting to make.”

Raffner was slightly mollified. “That might be a little less intimidating. Let me go upstairs and check if she’s up for it; then maybe you can see her.”

Todd and I stood in the entrance hall for some fifteen minutes, checking out the wall hangings, staring out the windows, and generally paying homage to whatever psychological mood Susan Raffner was establishing.

When she finally gestured to us from the top of the stairs, we discovered how thorough she had been.

Gail was located in a bedroom overlooking the reservoir, but she wasn’t in bed, which stood, fully made, to one side. Instead, she was sitting in an imposing wingback chair by one of the broad windows with the light to her back, dressed in a heavy, full-length caftan. Her feet were resting on a small ottoman, and she wore a shawl around her shoulders. Despite her pale and hollow face, the overall effect-while blatantly orchestrated-was one of security and peacefulness, almost of regality.

It may have bolstered Gail’s own psyche-I certainly hoped so-but it did nothing for me. My eyes locked onto hers from the moment I entered the room, and in them I saw only the pain, the exhaustion, and the despair of a woman in mourning. Once again, I felt a trembling at the center of my chest. I found myself yearning to embrace her and unwilling to speak-knowing I couldn’t do the first, and would have to do the second.

Todd Lefevre covered my initial paralysis by introducing himself, explaining what he was doing here, and asking permission to run a small tape recorder he’d pulled from his pocket, all while Susan Raffner and I found our seats-she comfortably by Gail’s side, and I next to Todd on one of two unstable-looking straight-backed chairs Raffner had placed in the middle of the room like penitents’ stools.

By the time he’d turned his machine on, I had found my voice. Leaning forward in my seat, elbows on my knees, getting as close to Gail as the staging allowed, I asked her, “Do you feel you can talk a little?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

It was said with determination, belying the circles under her eyes and the gauntness of her cheeks, but its brevity spoke also of a need to conserve energy. This interview had to be done, but it would cost her, and she knew it. It was then that I noticed, under the caftan’s long, roomy sleeves, that her hands were gripping the arms of her chair like a child’s on a wildly swinging Ferris wheel.

“Would you feel more or less comfortable with me asking the questions? Or even being in the room? I can wait downstairs if you want.”

Her face hardened, tight with impatience. “Come on, Joe.”

I stopped hanging back. “You told Ron you didn’t see your attacker-didn’t recognize anything about him. Now that a little time has passed, has anything come to mind? Some phrase maybe, some allusion he made that might place him in context?”

Her forehead furrowed in concentration. “He didn’t say much, and he whispered.”

“What kinds of things did he say?”

“Orders at first-telling me not to kick after he got off my legs to tie them down.”

“He’d already tied down your hands before you woke up, right? How could he have done that?”

Her face flushed abruptly. “I don’t know; I was asleep. Why don’t you catch him and ask him?”

I straightened in my chair, stung by her fury. I’d anticipated an awkwardness between us-not that she’d react completely out of character. It emphasized that our intimacy could be a real liability here, leading me to expect the even-keeled rationality I’d grown used to. The first rule in interviewing rape victims was to absolve them of any notion that the attack was their fault. I’d inadvertently cut a corner there, assuming Gail would understand where I was heading. Her failure to do so told me that the same love that had driven her to want me here could just as easily turn to resentment if I presumed too much.

“I’m sorry.” I pressed on, “He ordered you to cooperate while he tied down your legs. Is that when he used the knife? To persuade you?”

She nodded silently, her eyes downcast, the color draining back out of her cheeks.

“How did he use the knife, Gail?”

“He pricked my breasts; he said he’d cut off my nipples if I fought him.”

I paused a moment, steadying my voice. “What words did he use-exactly?”

“His voice was very calm-the whisper, I mean. He didn’t seem excited at all. He said-” She stopped, apparently thinking back. “He said, ‘I’m going to get off your legs now; if you move a muscle, I’ll cut your tits off.’ Then he pricked me with the knife and said, ‘With this.’”

“What happened then?”

“He tied me down. I didn’t move.” There was a tremor in her voice, and she looked-I thought almost apologetically-at her friend Susan.

Raffner squeezed her shoulder and kissed her forehead maternally. “You did the right thing. Your life was what mattered; you did it to save your life.”

“Did he ever use the knife again?” Todd asked in the brief lull.

Gail shook her head.

“But he did beat you,” I added.

“At the end, just before he finished. He seemed suddenly frustrated-angry for the first time. It was the only time his voice changed. He said, ‘You snotty goddamn bitch.’ And then he hit me.”

“Where?” Todd asked.

“In the stomach once; on the breasts a few times; and once across the face-hard.”

I focused again on the livid bruise that rested on her left cheek like an enormous birthmark, and tried not to play out the violence in my head. “Why do you think he became frustrated? Couldn’t he get hard?”

Her face underwent a subtle change, as if some deep-seated pain had just reasserted itself. It wasn’t a grimace but more a drawing out-a sudden thinning of her features, as if her entire soul was recoiling. “He was hard-the whole time.”

I decided to step away from the subject a bit, to give her time to get used to the idea that we would have to ask her for all the details-if not now, then eventually, and probably many times over. “Your room was a mess-drawers pulled out, closets emptied. When did he do that?”

“Sometime in the middle. He stopped and I could hear him going around the room.”

“After he’d completed the sex act?” Todd asked. All three of us looked at him, caught off guard by his choice of words. He didn’t seem fazed.

Gail finally shook her head. “If you mean ejaculate, he didn’t. He just stopped.”

Todd looked confused. “He didn’t ejaculate at all?”

“No.”

I was intrigued by that, wondering if it explained his flash of anger at the end. “Did he say anything before or while he was trashing the room?”

“No.”

“Did he seem violent-throwing things, breaking them?”

“No. I mean, yes, he threw things, but I don’t remember much breaking. Something broke-I think it was that plate I bought in Mexico I had hanging on the wall from a wire-and he said, ‘Shit’ when that happened, but that’s the only thing I remember. A lamp fell over, but I don’t know if it broke or not.”

“Gail,” Todd spoke up again, unburdened by my emotional caution, “I hate to have to do this, but I want to ask you some questions about the rape itself-what this guy did, how he did it, in what sequence, for how long-things like that. Not only to help nail him, but so we can build a legal case for my boss. Chances are good this man’s done this before, maybe even developed a style. If we can find a record of that, it might end up being just like a fingerprint.”

“He wore gloves,” Gail blurted out impulsively, influenced by Todd’s last image. “Through it all?” I asked, struck once again by her attacker’s peculiarities.

“Not when he touched me-mostly-but I could hear him putting them on before he tore the room apart.” She hesitated. “And just before he hit me.”

I put my hand on Todd’s arm to stop him from going on. “Gail, what did he do with his clothes? Did he have them on when you first woke up?”

She shook her head. “He was naked.”

“But you heard him getting dressed after he was finished?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“Where was he when he was doing that?”

“By the door.”

I nodded to Todd that I was finished, and he began his detailed questioning, prompting her to take all three of us through her ordeal step by step, virtually movement by movement. He paused occasionally to ask if she felt like taking a break, but every time she urged him to continue, although all of us could see the toll it was taking on her.

I was grateful he was there, to do the job I doubted I could have done alone. Watching Gail reliving the event, her body still sore and throbbing from its brutality, her voice quavering toward the end, was more than I would have allowed. And yet, the three of them knew better than I-knew that she had to partake in her own reconstruction, and perhaps play a hand in the capture of her tormentor-or forever remain his victim.

Finally, two hours and several tapes later, Todd punched the off button on his recorder, the sharp metallic click making Gail start with surprise, her nerves frayed and hypersensitive. “That’s it. You did a super job. I’m sorry we had to put you through it. And I’m afraid, as I said earlier, that this won’t be the last time, either. To be honest, especially if we get this guy to trial, there’s going to be times you wished you’d never called the police. But you did the right thing.”

He gathered his equipment together and turned to me. “Is there anything more you wanted to ask, Joe?”

I looked at his blandly pleasant face-an unsettling mix of everyone’s favorite Uncle Charley and an IRS auditor-with something approaching wonder. He’d been so perfect through it all-concise, polite, accommodating, solicitous, and efficient, to Gail and me both-that it almost challenged his sincerity. That viewpoint was mostly fueled by my own ambivalence, of course, but knowing it didn’t help any. I was feeling increasingly disenfranchised, unable to be either the grieving partner or a sisterly friend or even, I was beginning to think, an objective cop.

I turned to Gail, shoving all this to one side. “It’s a bit of a long shot, and I know you’ve got a lot on your mind-a lot to work through-but if you can take some time to think about who might have done this to you, it would help.”

Gail’s eyes took on a bewildered look, glistening with tears. “I’ve tried, Joe.”

The pain in her voice was saturated with despair and bafflement. Still, I persevered. “You’ve been looking for a monster. Think about normal people-men who struck you as just a little odd-too attentive, maybe, or too quiet, or who showed up at odd times with odd excuses. We’re looking for anything out of the ordinary.”

She shook her head at the vagueness of the suggestion, muttering, “So many people.”

I stood up, and Todd followed my example. I hesitated, then leaned forward and touched the back of her hand gently and briefly. It was cold and unresponsive, and after I straightened back up, she tucked both her hands into the opposing sleeves of her flowing robe as if she’d suddenly felt a chill.

I groped a moment for the proper platitude-“We’ll get him,” or “You’ll be all right,” or “At least you’re alive.” I’d already tried “I love you” at the hospital and had walked away feeling drained. I finally gave it up, said, “Take care. I’ll come back to see you soon,” as if I were addressing some octogenarian in a rest home, and took my leave.

Susan Raffner followed us downstairs and ushered us through the door. She grasped Todd’s forearm as he passed by her. “Thank you. That was the best interview I’ve ever seen.”

He nodded and smiled sadly. “Sorry I had to do it at all.” She stopped me too, as Todd made his way down the stairs and toward the car. “I’ve got a problem with you, though.”

I stared at her, my face rigid, the dormant rage in me giving a tiny lurch, like a tremor across a field of thinly crusted lava.

But she leavened her words by laying her hand gently on my arm. “I know what you’re going through, Joe, but you can’t expect her to hold your hand. She doesn’t need to worry about you.”

“I don’t expect her to.”

That was at best suspect, and Raffner knew enough to ignore it. “She also doesn’t need you to bottle it up inside. Find someone to talk to-someone professional. Don’t try to tough it out-it’ll only do you both dirt in the long run.”

I heard the echo of Nurse Pace’s counsel earlier-except that lurking within Raffner’s soothing tone I heard the subtle implication that she would be keeping a critical eye on me.

I nodded but didn’t respond directly. “Thanks for being there for her, Susan. Let me know if she comes up with any names.”

She frowned slightly, nodded without comment, and closed the door behind me. I turned away and walked to the edge of the porch. The smooth, black surface of the reservoir met my gaze-ugly, wrapped in concrete, awaiting winter’s frozen glaze. That’s what they all expected from me, I thought without blame, despite their conciliatory words: a quick, solid solution, delivered without screwups. And they were right.