Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

25

Nurse Elizabeth Pace came into the hospital room, and seeing Gail sitting next to my bed, she checked the catheter in my forearm, closed off the line, and replaced the near-empty bag with a new one. “I heard tell you were unkillable, Lieutenant. You’re not trying to test that theory, are you?”

I smiled weakly. “Not willingly.”

She filled out something on a clipboard and then fixed us both with a clinical eye. “Good, because you almost flunked this time.” She reached over and squeezed Gail’s hand. “How about you? Over the worst of it?”

Gail nodded. “Getting there. Thank you.”

Pace nodded, smiled, and left us alone.

It was more than a week later-my first day out of ICU. Philip Duncan, crippled and in another part of the same hospital, had confessed to the rape, basking in his cleverness. We’d already located a court clerk in Greenfield who remembered him spending hours going over the public records there, exhibiting a keen interest in Bob Vogel-a man whose style he could copy, and whose fate he could seal. And now that we knew who to look for, we’d found other evidence of Duncan’s stalking of Vogel-a sighting of him near the yard man’s garage at the time of the fire; a screwdriver in the trunk of his car, smeared with the same motor oil Vogel used; a receipt for malleable molding wax. Still, a confession never hurts.

Of course, Duncan’s plan had called for Vogel to wind up back in prison, and when our case had begun to unravel, so had Duncan’s debatable grasp on reality. By the time Sammie Martens had provoked him in his home, the cold-blooded ruthlessness that had served him so well turned on itself and had sent him raging into the storm.

Goss had been right about the rapist’s penchant for collecting. When Tyler had led a team into Duncan’s house, they had found not coins or stamps or Early American milk bottles, but keys. Over the years, greatly aided by a profession which gave him access to hundreds of houses and dozens of other realtors, Duncan had copied, labeled, and collected keys. At night, recreationally, as some men go to bars or the movies, he would enter other people’s homes-usually those belonging to single women. What he did there still wasn’t clear; Megan suspected that he probably masturbated or walked around the places naked, establishing a bizarre, private ascendancy over the owners. But Duncan himself wasn’t talking about that yet. What mattered to us was that one of those keys had Gail’s name on it.

All of which made Stanley Katz a very happy editor. With the furor following Duncan’s arrest dying down, most of the out-of-town media had headed home. Tony Brandt had made a point of giving Katz everything he could on the case, and making the Reformer the news conduit to the rest of the world-or that part of it which still showed any interest. The effects of this on the Reformer’s future were yet to come, but in the meantime, press/police relations had never been cozier.

Things had not turned out as successfully for James Dunn. On the second Tuesday of a snow-free, balmy November, with the season’s first storm a mere freak of nature for future almanacs, Jack Derby had been elected the new State’s Attorney for Windham County by a considerable margin.

Gail had also made political news. She’d resigned from the board of selectmen and announced her intention to return to law school, resuming an educational path she’d interrupted twenty-five years ago to “drop out” and move to Brattleboro.

She’d been detailing her plans when Elizabeth Pace had come in to check on me. “There’s something else,” she added, once we were alone. “I think I’ll sell the house.”

It didn’t come as a surprise. Her persistent reluctance to do more than drop by and pick up the odd item or two had warned me of that. But it still caused a cool tremor to run through me. Combined with her school plans, the sale of her home didn’t bode well for her staying in the area.

I thought back over the past two months, at the limits to which we’d been pushed, individually and as a couple-at how much I’d come to see her as an integral part of my life.

But apparently those were my feelings alone, and since we’d never made any overt commitments to each other when we could-determinedly living apart and maintaining our “freedom”-I now felt the swelling grief of an opportunity lost forever, sacrificed to selfish notions of independence.

I nodded quietly, suppressing this private turmoil. “Makes sense.”

She reached over and took my hand. I felt a hesitancy on her part, and braced myself for the inevitable. “You may not think so in a minute, and maybe this isn’t the best time to hit you with this… ” She paused, searching for the right words.

I squeezed her fingers, spurred on by a sudden impatience. “Go ahead. We can sort it out afterward.”

She chuckled, throwing me off guard. “Okay. What do you say we move in together? Get a place of our own?”

I stared at her openmouthed.

She spoke quickly, as if trying to outrun my anticipated rejection. “I’m not talking about marriage, and I’d have to have my own space-a study or a couple of rooms-so we’d both still have lots of breathing room, like before… I realize it would mean giving up your apartment… ” Her voice trailed off.

I laid my head back on the pillow, slightly giddy at this emotional turnabout.

Gail watched me closely. “Would you be interested?” Her face was a mixture of hopefulness and doubt.

I smiled at her, sharing her feelings, willing to put my trust in the former. “Yes. I would.”