Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

4

I hadn't forgotten what Mary Wallis had told us about Jason Ryan. Upon returning to the Municipal Building, I went to find Billy Manierre in his well-tended cubbyhole built into a corner of the patrol officers’ room.

Billy had been with the department longer than any of us. White-haired, avuncular, and no more capable of passing the department’s physical fitness test than I would be of surviving a fall off a high cliff, he had evolved into more than the mere head of the patrol division. Over the decades, he’d achieved the rank of confessor and blue-collar guru. Always in uniform, and always even-natured-the calm in the midst of the proverbial storm-he generally held court from an office with the most used and most comfortable guest chair in the department, supposedly lifted from the new courthouse across the street.

He was sitting at a typewriter parked on the edge of his desk when I poked my head around the door. There was a form rolled onto the platen, but Billy wasn’t filling it in; he was staring at the keyboard with the stolid indifference of a frog in a pond, seemingly willing it to do his work for him.

“Not inspired?” I asked.

He sat back and smiled at me wistfully. “It’s hard doing things you don’t see any point to. Have a seat. Tell me how you’re holding up.”

“I’m all right. Focusing on the job helps.”

“And Gail?”

I sat down slowly, wondering when my answer to that would begin to hold more promise. “I don’t know. Not a hell of lot’s ever happened that we haven’t been able to talk about… sooner or later… ” I left it hanging. It hadn’t been my intention to use him as a sounding board, but stimulating that kind of impulse in people was part of Billy’s talent. When he’d been in his prime and on the street a lot more, it had made him a very good cop.

He smiled now and folded his hands across his ample belly. “Give it time. She knows you’re there. Sooner or later she’ll let it all out-not that you came here to listen to any words of wisdom from me.”

“Who knows?” I answered truthfully, “I could’ve gone elsewhere to dig up what I’m after. Don’t sell your talents short.”

He looked pleased. “So what do you need?”

“I heard Jason Ryan got a little carried away at the last selectmen’s meeting, and that they called on us to escort him out. Nothing’s in the files-you know anything about it?”

He was still for a moment, mulling it over. I knew he knew-one of the other secrets to his success was that nothing happened in the department, or the building for that matter, that he didn’t know about. The question he had to be pondering, therefore, was how much trouble this little oversight could cost one of his people.

“Problems?” he finally asked.

“Probably not. I just want to talk to whoever did the escorting. Ryan’s been presented as a suspect.”

Billy’s eyes grew round. “On the rape? Ryan? Jesus, I don’t see that.”

“Maybe not.”

He nodded solemnly. “Talk to Al Santos.”

I pushed myself out of the chair. “He out on patrol now?”

“Yeah-Maxine’ll find him.”

I moved to the doorway and looked back at him, giving in to an irresistible urge. “Why wasn’t anything filed on Ryan?”

He gave me a sorrowful face. “Oh, Joe-all that paperwork for nothing. He was just doing what he always does.”

I smiled and waved good-bye to him, crossing the officers’ room to get to Dispatch and Maxine Paroddy next door, but in fact I wasn’t all that amused. I wouldn’t have traded Billy Manierre for the best that New York or Boston or L.A. might have to offer, but I also knew that sometimes innocuous events-like Jason Ryan’s little outburst against a woman who was raped a few days later-should damned well be in a file somewhere, paperwork or not. It was always possible that a warning sign like that might be noticed before it was too late.

Maxine Paroddy-ax-handle thin and highly efficient-was perched on her rolling secretary’s stool, gliding across the dispatch room’s polished floor to answer the radio, a phone nestled in the crook of her neck. She acknowledged the short message on her microphone, gave me a wink and a be-with-you-in-a-second gesture. Then she rolled back across the room, pulled a file from a drawer, and read from its contents into the phone, all with the grace of a dancer.

“What’s up?” she asked, after she’d hung up. You did not sit down to chat with Maxine. It was a waste of her time.

“Al Santos?”

She gave me a quick smile and pointed to the radio. “That was him checking in. He should be pulling into the parking lot right about now.”

Santos was our New York City Police Department transplant, on the payroll for years by now but still boasting a trenchant Bronx accent and a big-city union man’s ingrained prejudice that rank, like class, should have strictly defined boundaries. I didn’t give him the chance to get out of his cruiser once he’d cut the engine, but slid into the passenger seat next to him.

“Hey, Lieutenant. How’s it goin’?” His grin looked disarmingly bright beneath his thick black mustache, but his eyes watched me carefully. “I was sorry to hear about your girlfriend.”

I didn’t bother responding, both because I was tiring of it and because I knew he didn’t much care one way or the other. While we’d always been cordial to one another and had never crossed swords, his approach to me over the years had made it clear I was a “suit” first and foremost, and where he came from, suits were annoying, baffling, highly capricious creatures.

“I heard you threw Jason Ryan out of a selectmen’s meeting the other day.”

Santos chuckled easily, his eyes unchanged. “Yeah-and he was somethin’ pissed about it, too. Kept bitching about his constitutional rights; called me a Nazi.” His voice darkened suddenly, the suspicion briefly rising within view. “He suing us or somethin’?”

“Not that I know of. What was he so worked up about?”

He relaxed slightly, one potential bomb defused. “Dunno-they just called me once they got sick of him.”

“Was he angry at anyone in particular?”

Santos thought back a moment, and then he looked at me with his eyes wide, abruptly comprehending. “Holy shit-he was laying it on your old lady pretty… I mean, he was real mad at Gail Zigman. You thinking he did it to her?”

“I don’t know, Al. I’m just fishing around. What did you actually hear him say?”

He looked at me silently for a moment, and I was surprised by the renewed look of distaste on his face. It occurred to me that something in my tone had pushed one of his rank-conscious buttons-as if I were looking for answers without divulging my reasons-a typical “suit” stunt.

“You know the mouth he has on him,” he finally replied evenly.

I was impressed how irritated I was by that answer, and his attitude in general. I expected better from a fellow officer, especially during a major investigation, and the passing references to “girlfriend” and “old lady” returned to me with less innocence.

“Did he say anything threatening, either in their presence or when you were alone with him?”

“Nothing he hasn’t said before-called her a ‘flatlander dyke,’ and said the board was pussy-whipped.” He hesitated, perhaps worried that he’d overplayed his nonchalance, and tried for a shortcut, “Well, you know.”

I smiled good-naturedly, disguising my growing anger. “Yeah-nothing new there. And I suppose Gail handed it right back to him?”

He took my reaction at face value and smiled back. “Hey-you know how it gets sometimes.”

It was a neutral enough response, but I had my suspicions. My interest in Ryan temporarily faded. “Give a woman a title and a gavel, right?”

He rose to my expectations of him. “Yeah, right.”

“So Ryan was just blowing off steam?”

“Pretty much; I mean, he was disrupting the place. They did right to call me.”

“But what he was saying didn’t amount to much-in your book?”

“Not really.” Santos stole a glance at his watch.

“Just out of curiosity, did he suggest taking her down a few pegs while you were escorting him outside?”

Santos shifted slightly in his seat, perhaps sensing something unusual in my persistence. “Don’t take this personally, Lieutenant, but he did say something about a good fuck setting her right.”

I could feel the pressure building on my temples, but I kept my voice level. “You didn’t fill out a report on it, did you?”

“Didn’t see the point,” he admitted. I turned to face him, feeling free at last to vent some of my rage.

“How about now that she got her good fuck? Were you thinking about filing a report now?”

He looked both surprised and angry that he’d been set up, predictably missing the point. “It was the local nut case shooting his mouth off, Lieutenant-it didn’t mean anything.”

I threw the door open and swung out, welcoming the fresh air on my face. I leaned back inside the car where Santos was sitting stiffly, his eyes straight ahead like an adolescent wishing all adults would vanish. “You know that for a fact, do you?”

“Yes, I do.” His voice was barely audible.

“You better hope you’re right, Al, or we’ll talk again with more company. Don’t ever pull this kind of shit again.”

My fury grew exponentially as I walked back to the office-not just at Santos, whose error had been no worse than Billy’s laxity, but as much at myself. Instead of immediately seizing Al’s information as the possible lead it was, I’d used his procedural sloppiness, and his predictable sexism, as a target for my own frustration. Knowing what Santos and his buddies would later make of this episode made me feel exposed and did nothing for the professional demeanor I was struggling to maintain.

I headed back to the squad room reluctantly, wishing I could invent some excuse that would keep me on the street, at least for the rest of the day. What had happened to Gail was just a few hours old-a fresh crime with fresh leads. Statistically, that gave it “quick to solve” potential. People’s memories would be sharp; any covering up would be either ongoing or slipshod; and the combination of Gail’s status and the SA’s political needs would allow for a no-expenses-spared, all-out investigation. That was the good news.

The downside was all inside me and had been building steam since Tony had pulled up to my place this morning. That part of me didn’t want to work around the clock, finding the man who’d turned Gail’s life upside down. It just wanted to spend time with her, helping her to rebuild her equilibrium. I could rationalize that one role fulfilled the other-I was on the case, after all, at Gail’s insistence. And I knew that giving her psychological “space” was not only sound, it was out of my hands. But none of that addressed my own emotional needs.

Nevertheless, as I reentered the Municipal Building, I began feeling slightly better-or at least more in control.

Harriet Fritter, not surprisingly, seemed to sense some of what was chewing at me. The even-tempered matriarch of an enormous gaggle of children, grandchildren, and at least one great-grandchild, she was a veteran observer of us all, and her sympathetic smile as I walked in was enough to move me up a few more notches.

“I got hold of Lou Biddle at Probation-he’s calling a special intelligence meeting at Rescue, Inc. in forty-five minutes. He thought it might be more efficient for you to brief the whole group, instead of relying on phone calls or faxes.”

The intelligence meeting was normally a monthly arrangement-a gathering of law-enforcement representatives from all the surrounding jurisdictions. It had operated discreetly for years, meeting on neutral ground, and served as an informational conduit that both cut the red tape and made for less formal relations among the participating agencies. That Lou had called them together-and in no time flat-was testimony to the support we could expect on this case. Brandt had been right about how Gail was being viewed, at least by those who wore a badge-she might as well have been my wife.

I thanked Harriet and asked her if either Sammie Martens or Willy Kunkle had reported back in from their respective sweeps of the town’s nether reaches.

Sammie’s head popped up from behind one of the soundproof panels that separated the four desks set up in the middle of the room. “I’m here.”

I went around the corner to find her climbing off her chair. Slim, dark, and almost overly intense, she was also as small as a teenage girl, with a similarly impulsive style. Over the years, I’d had to pour oil on occasionally troubled waters between her and her colleagues. Whether it was being the first and only woman to have been made detective in our department, or just a natural competitiveness that bordered on the cutthroat, her drive could make her difficult to deal with. Only Willy Kunkle, infamous in his own right, seemed totally unaffected by her.

Her expression was not encouraging. “I chased down almost every connection I have, Joe. There’s nothing stirring out there. And there’s a lot of interest-everyone knows who the victim was, and they’re all dying to be on the inside. If any of them knew, I’m pretty sure I would’ve heard about it. I’m real sorry.”

I shrugged it off. My conversations with J.P. Tyler had already braced me for bad news. The meticulousness of Gail’s attacker-the preplanning, the caution he’d taken to conceal himself-had persuaded me we wouldn’t find him hanging out in a bar, bragging about his latest score.

“I don’t think this was a spontaneous assault anyway. Did you compare notes with Willy?”

She nodded. “He didn’t find anything either. He’s getting coffee in the officers’ room, if you want to talk to him.”

The door to the hallway opened and Ron Klesczewski walked in, purposeful and obviously full of news. I turned back to Sammie. “I’d like to talk to both of you, actually. Round him up and bring him back over here, will you?”

Sammie left, and I shepherded Ron into my office cubicle, parking myself on the corner of my desk. “What’ve you got?”

“I’m setting up a command post in the extra room-bulletin boards, a dedicated phone line. Billy’s given me one guy out of each of his shifts to man it. We’ve already started classifying those neighborhood witnesses by what they saw and at what time, and Dennis is chasing down the ones he missed at their work places instead of waiting for tonight. We figured the sooner the better. With any luck, we’ll construct a chronology of the whole night and then see what sticks out.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Does Tony know about this?”

Ron smiled. “He authorized it. I don’t know if it’s James Dunn or the board-or maybe both-but the chief ’s catching some serious heat on this.”

I remembered Tony’s pessimism about keeping Gail’s name under wraps, and what would probably happen once it got out. “I think he’s just preparing for the worst. You doing all right coordinating it all?”

Klesczewski nodded emphatically. “Oh, yeah. I like it-tips are already starting to come in. It’s interesting, separating the bullshit from the solid stuff.”

“Good. Keep at it. Run things from the command post, keep me and Brandt updated, and use the patrol division to chase down leads as you see fit. Get Dennis to help you out. If you see the need for a squad meeting before Brandt or I do, call it yourself. Before too long you’re going to be in a better position than any of us to know the overall picture, so throw your weight around a little.”

I was pleased to see the satisfaction in his eyes. His youthful insecurities were hardening with time, and while he’d always have problems with someone like Willy Kunkle, I no longer harbored Tony Brandt’s ebbing skepticism that I’d backed the wrong horse as my second-in-command.

Sammie Martens and the infamous Kunkle were loitering outside my door-she almost at attention, a note pad clutched in her hand, and he typically leaning against the wall, sipping his coffee, and gazing out the window, looking bored. I waved them in as Ron happily departed for his newly established nerve center.

There is a media-hyped misconception among many people that the only difference between most cops and the people they bust is the badge in their pockets. In my personal experience, that’s mostly bunk-except with Willy. He was a cynical, hardbitten, nasty-minded street cop with a withered, crippled left arm he kept from flopping around by anchoring its hand in his pants pocket. He had no friends that I knew of, no pleasures outside his job, and no discernibly pleasant characteristics. He’d had a wife once, whom he’d taken to beating and who’d left him years ago, and he’d once fallen so far into the dumps that I’d thought we’d have to fire him. Instead, a sniper’s bullet in the arm had retired him on permanent disability.

That should have marked the end of his career, except that I’d encouraged him to challenge the town under the Americans with Disabilities Act to get his job back. He’d never thanked me for that apparent folly, but he’d never given me cause to regret it, either. For as bitter and disagreeable as he could be, he understood the workings of Brattleboro’s least desirable social circles like no man I’d ever met. And while he talked like them, acted like them, and at times even appeared indistinguishable from them, Willy Kunkle was positively driven to putting the “bad guys” in jail. He was, like a highly motivated but disturbingly hostile attack dog, unbeatable at his job. I just never had him tour the schools upholding the department’s image.

“Sammie tells me you didn’t have any better luck than she did.”

“Nope.”

“Did either one of you hear Jason Ryan’s name come up while you were poking around, in any context at all?”

Kunkle’s cup froze halfway to his lips. “Ryan? Don’t you think it’s a little early to get that desperate?”

Sammie merely shook her head.

“He threatened Gail just a few days ago-got so unruly at a board meeting, Santos was called in to throw him out.”

Kunkle shrugged instead of responding.

“I’d like you two to check him out-discreetly-especially what he was up to all last night. Find out if he’s been mouthing off about Gail, and see if you can nail down exactly what was said at that meeting.”

Kunkle made a face, drained his Styrofoam cup, and tossed it into my trashcan. He easily-even gracefully-shoved himself out of my guest chair with his powerful right arm.

Sammie, more polite, was looking at me dubiously. “You want us both on this?”

“As far as it makes sense-I want it fast and thorough. There is one other item, though. J.P. thinks Gail’s attacker entered through one of the living-room windows, and that he knew which one to choose beforehand. She had several windows replaced about a year ago, by whom I don’t remember-some local outfit. We’re thinking one of the workmen might have scoped her place out back then.”

They both nodded at that one, knowing full well that similar patterns had proven out in the past, in both rape cases and robberies.

Kunkle headed out the door, but Sammie lingered a moment, looking a little uncomfortable. “I’m sorry about what happened to Gail. Must be tough when it’s someone you know.”

I didn’t argue the point.

The next several hours were spent at Lou Biddle’s emergency intelligence meeting-discreetly held in the back room of the local ambulance squad-where a dozen of us culled through reams of files from Vermont’s Department of Corrections and those of law enforcement agencies from most of the towns and counties around Brattleboro, including several from Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The mood was not encouraging, however. Stimulated already by Tyler’s faxed circulars, these people had already given their files a preliminary survey, all without a “hit.” Now, each of them discussed their second and third choices, mentioning the presence of a knife, the blindfolding of a victim, the use of physical restraints, the timing of an attack, or the fact that it had taken place in the victim’s home. And while I gratefully accepted even the most remote possibilities, I did so without much hope.

I was thanking all those around me for their help when the pager on my belt erupted with its familiar chirping. As the rest of the people in the room began gathering their things and filing out the door, I used a nearby wall phone to call my office.

Brandt answered immediately. “You finished there?”

“Just now.”

“You better get over to the Reformer. We just heard through the grapevine that Gail’s name is hitting the headlines tomorrow morning.”

I didn’t answer at first. Tony had predicted this would happen, and I’d even made a certain feeble mental effort to prepare for it. But now that it was becoming reality, I felt caught totally off guard.

“That information’s from the paper itself,” he added. “One of our friendlier contacts. Sorry.”

I smiled bitterly at that. “Does she know yet?”

“I have no idea.”

I weighed my options-to see Katz at the paper, to try to see Gail, or to do nothing-and tried not to let my feelings get the better of me.

I thanked Brandt for letting me know, gathered up the files, and gave them to Todd Lefevre. I told him I’d meet him at the office-that I wanted to quickly swing by the newspaper first. Whether it was a lack of concern, or a perceived look in my eye, he asked me no questions and didn’t insist on joining me.

I drove over to the Reformer offices in a simmering rage. The Brattleboro Reformer, once a reputable small-town blend of global and community news, had been going through rough times. Purchased a year ago by a Midwest news conglomerate, it had been reduced to a USA Today-style tabloid, its front-page banner changed from traditional black to sensationalist red, all its articles reduced to one-page news bites, and its old editor and much of his staff either encouraged to leave or downright fired.

One of the few holdovers, just barely, had been Stanley Katz, who’d actually already begun working for the Rutland Herald, in the western part of the state, before he was lured back. In the old days, as a writer, Stanley had delighted in making the police department miserable, motivated by a conviction that his efforts kept us honest. Now, rehired as editor-in-chief, he had loftier-and we thought more realistic-goals in mind, such as saving his paper from bankruptcy. Its brief and trendy foray into nouveau journalism-an unappealing package in a politically hard-nosed town-had been costing its owners a bundle, and everyone knew that Katz had his hands full.

Knowing all this convinced me that, in an effort to stem the tide, he’d reverted to the take-no-prisoners journalism of yore.

But there, it turned out, I was wrong. The first person I met at the Reformer building, exiting the front door, was Susan Raffner.

Of course, the sexual assault of a prominent citizen had taken place-name or no name-and Women for Women was a logical place for a paper to seek background and quotes. But there was something in Susan’s eyes as we approached one another, an odd look of challenge that made me stop in my tracks and rethink my notions about Katz.

My reaction startled her slightly and saved me from repeating the gaffe I’d just committed with Al Santos. “She knows what she’s doing, Joe.”

There was only one her between us, and only one thing she could have done that would have brought Susan and me together at the Reformer.

“You’re just the messenger.”

She flared at that. “She’s done an amazingly courageous thing, entirely on her own. She’s a strong woman-you know damned well the only reason I’m here is because she’s in too much pain to do this in person. I’m proud to have carried her message here. If every abused woman had her guts, and everybody else stopped tiptoeing around this issue, we might start putting an end to it. Day after day, I listen to women who’ve been beaten or raped or mentally tortured, and I try to give them support and counsel, and all the time I wish I could say, ‘Stand up for yourself-plaster the walls with this bastard’s name. Tell his boss and his co-workers and his drinking buddies and everybody else what he does in his spare time.’ But I can only murmur that kind of advice, and then be understanding when it’s ignored. Who gains the most through an abused woman’s silence? It sure isn’t other women.”

I was stunned at my own thick-headedness. I should have known Gail would honor her own philosophy with action, especially at this worst of times. It was testament to my own lack of balance that I’d totally overlooked the obvious.

But my speechlessness stood me in good stead. Susan Raffner, her face still pink from her impassioned outburst, gave me a sympathetic smile. “Sorry-I’m taking all this a little personally. You’re probably the only cop who doesn’t need that lecture.”

I smiled back weakly. “I wouldn’t bet on it. Do you know how Katz is going to handle it?”

“Front page, with a head shot of Gail. They’re going to run a statement from her, an interview with me, and an updated story-I guess about what your people are doing.” She suddenly looked embarrassed and passed her hand across her forehead. “Is that why you’re here? When I saw you, I just assumed you were going in to try to stop it.”

I shrugged, not wanting to justify her stereotype, and happy to leave her slightly off balance. “Don’t worry about it. Give my love to Gail.”

She called after me as I moved toward the building’s front door, “Do you have anything new to tell Katz?”

I stopped and faced her. “It sounds like a cliché, but we’re doing everything we can. I’ll tell him we’re following a variety of leads-some quite promising-just to make whoever is out there sweat a little. But I’ll tell you privately we don’t have squat yet. We will, though. We’ll find the guy.”

She merely nodded, accepting it at face value. I half turned away again and then paused. “Could you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Tell Gail I’m proud of what she did.”