Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

7

I couldn't go home that night. For entirely different reasons, my place was no more appealing to me than Gail’s was now to her.

I returned to the department around midnight. I’d now been up for some twenty hours. The command post was ghostly in its emptiness, like a battlefield stripped of warriors-all except for a single policewoman from the graveyard shift, who presumably had been instructed on how to continue the sifting process that Ron had been overseeing all day. She was young and relatively new on the force, not an uncommon occurrence in a town the size of Brattleboro, whose police department was often used as a stepping stone to other, more lucrative jobs in law enforcement elsewhere. Particularly in the patrol section we had quite a few people who were inexperienced, underpaid, overworked, and yet were expected to have at least a passing knowledge of every aspect of a police officer’s duties.

But spreading our resources thin was the only way we could afford to maintain a “full-service” operation, and it usually, if sometimes just barely, fit the bill-as long as no major cases came along to throw us all into turmoil.

Which is what was worrying me now. Unless something broke soon, the personnel allotted to finding Gail’s attacker would begin dwindling in direct proportion to the growing pile of other cases.

I grabbed a chair and pulled it over to the bulletin board with the timetable that Sammie had shown me a few hours ago. Additions had been made since then. Actual names written under older labels, like “voices heard walking by” and “jogger headed south,” indicated that real people had been linked to events, and-because Ron had written them in black ink and not red-that they’d also been eliminated from the suspects list. The pickup with the cap, going by at 4:15, was still unidentified, however, and its status had been upgraded by an accompanying red question mark. Harry Murchison, window installer, was going to merit an interview soon.

I wearily got back to my feet and crossed over to Ron’s long file-covered table. The young patrolwoman looked up as I approached. “Hi, Lieutenant-how’re you doin’?”

“Hi, Patty-hanging in there. Found anything interesting?”

She made a small face. “I’m just cross-indexing witnesses with things they saw, to see if anything shows up hinky. I’m working on UPS trucks and garbage pickups and what-have-you. I guess they’re lookin’ for someone casing the place out, but so far I don’t see it.”

I went around the table and sat next to her, my interest pricked.

“I didn’t know we’d rounded up that kind of information yet.”

She paused in riffling through a folder, happy to be interrupted. “Oh, yeah. Billy turned half the afternoon shift over to this-we’ve had people all over town. Everyone’s really psyched, you know, because… Well, you know,” she finished lamely, knowing of my ties to Gail and suddenly embarrassed by her own enthusiasm.

“I appreciate it,” I said for her benefit and patted a pile of folders she’d put to one side. “These the ones you’re finished with?”

“Yeah.”

I pulled them over in front of me and opened the top file. Patty glanced at me, obviously disappointed at being left with no other option besides getting back to work.

Folder by folder, down through the pile, I began to reconstruct activities I’d known nothing about-all credits to Ron’s efficiency. Fanning out from the immediate canvass of Gail’s neighbors, the investigation had reached far afield to reconstruct a whole month’s prior activity on her street. There were interviews of rural-route postal carriers, utility-company employees sent out to remove a broken branch from the wires, a Federal Express driver from Keene, New Hampshire, who’d delivered a package two weeks ago. Residents had been queried about any parties they’d held recently, guests or visitors they might have had, or any unusual occurrences that might have caught their attention-from strangers lurking to dogs barking at odd hours. Wherever possible, names had been taken down to be checked against the computer networks available to us.

While I’d never panned for gold, it struck me as being a similar process-patiently washing through thin covering layers, watching for the tiniest glint.

I struck such a glint at 2:35 in the morning, long after Patty had abandoned me to find some company by the coffee machine across the hall.

I’d been going over files covering events over two weeks old, and I was by now pretty thoroughly immersed in the neighborhood’s residents and their habits. Like an overeager new arrival on the block, I’d made the effort to remember everyone’s name, whose pets and children belonged to whom, what their hobbies and interests were, and even which ones I tended to like or dislike, for whatever reason. Their voices, as reflected in the canvass transcripts and notes, took on individuality, and over the hours I grew familiar with the neighborhood’s daily cadence.

It stuck out, therefore, when cranky old Mrs. Wheeler hired a one-time yard man to give her lawn a final mowing before the frost settled in.

He hadn’t done anything to bring attention to himself, hadn’t gone up and down the street drumming up additional business, hadn’t sat in his car at lunch and watched people’s comings and goings. He’d merely appeared one day in a beaten-up, ancient station wagon, unloaded some hand tools and an old mower from the back, done the job, and left, never to be seen again.

And that’s what caught my eye. In a neighborhood with a regular, predictable rhythm, his appearance-as mundane and uneventful as it had been-was nevertheless unusual.

The interview with Mrs. Wheeler, neatly indexed in another of Ron’s folder boxes, revealed two other things: that Mrs. Wheeler’s regular yard man had suffered a garage fire a few weeks back, destroying much of his equipment and forcing all his customers to fend for themselves until the insurance came through; and that the temporary, one-time replacement had been named Bob Vogel. The tantalizing possibility that the fire, Vogel’s appearance, and Gail’s rape were interrelated was inescapable, if as yet totally unfounded. Unfortunately, the name of the regular yard man, seemingly incidental at the time of the interview, had not been recorded.

I crossed the room to where Ron had set up a computer terminal and unleashed the machine onto Bob Vogel’s scent. I began with a quick name search of our own criminal files, although I was pretty sure that if Vogel had been a client of ours, I would have remembered him. I was therefore not too surprised to come up empty-handed. I switched to Meadowbrook Road-Gail’s street-and launched a query for complaints originating from there that might have featured either Bob Vogel or his vehicle within the last month. Again, I found nothing, and again, I wasn’t too surprised. I moved next to the Vermont Criminal Information Center’s databank for an overview of all the state’s criminal offenders. This time, the absence of Vogel’s name was a little more troublesome-it meant either I was barking up the wrong tree, pursuing an alias, or that Bob Vogel had appeared from out of state.

I paused to rub my eyes. Despite the adrenaline that had accompanied my little discovery, I was beginning to fade and knew I’d have to call it quits soon. I straightened my back, stretched, and called up the FBI’s National Criminal Information Center to gain access to the Interstate Identification Index-the Triple I-a listing, by state and/or municipality, of most people with felony records.

Realizing this was my last swing at getting any quick results-and that lots of legwork lay ahead if it failed-it was with a small sigh of relief that I finally saw, “Vogel, Robert” appear on the screen. I called up his file and sat back, admiring how close we’d come to missing him, even while doing all the right things.

Robert Vogel was on probation in Vermont on a Massachusetts burglary charge, which explained why Lou Biddle hadn’t thought to bring his file to our intelligence meeting, and why I hadn’t found him in my search of Vermont law breakers-a non-Vermonter, his name had never come up.

My real satisfaction, however, lay in what the computer showed Vogel to be. It turned out that although he was still paying society for burglary, he’d already paid his legal dues for rape by serving a full four-year term in a Massachusetts penitentiary; he’d also been previously charged with two additional rapes, neither resulting in conviction.

I stared at the screen for several minutes, its fluorescent green letters hypnotic in their intensity, before I suddenly realized that despite my excitement I was on the brink of falling asleep. Soon, I thought, soon, as I switched off the computer and slowly walked over to the fax machine. I typed up a brief note for Lou Biddle to call me as soon as he got to his office, punched up his number, and sent it off over the wires.

At that I straightened, stretched, and gave in to exhaustion, satisfied that the day had at least ended with a shred more hope than it had begun.

Four hours later I rued the enthusiasm that had prompted the sending of that fax. Lou Biddle’s voice on the other end of my phone not only gave me no joy, it was even, for the first few moments after I picked up, a complete mystery to my sleep-clotted brain.

“Joe, what the hell’s the matter? You sound sick.”

I cleared my throat and struggled to open my eyes against the light from my bedroom window. “Sorry-long night. Do you have a Robert Vogel in your files, on probation here for a Massachusetts burglary?”

“Not in my files, but maybe one of the others has him. Helen, probably. I’m sex offenders only.”

“Could you find out? Now?”

There was a moment’s surprised hesitation. “Sure. Hang on.”

I spent the five minutes he left me hanging getting tiredly out of bed. Just before he returned, I wondered how Gail had fared through the night-and what use I was going to be to her if I kept up this pace. I realized now that, despite the promising end results, last night’s marathon had been more than a little self-indulgent, triggered by some subtly pervasive urge to vaguely mimic Gail’s ordeal with one of my own making. It had been exactly the type of display I’d been struggling to avoid.

Nevertheless, Lou sounded duly impressed when he got back on the line. “I got him. How the hell did you dig this guy up?”

“He mowed the lawn of one of Gail’s neighbors a couple of weeks ago. You free for the next hour?”

“Next half hour, yeah.”

“I’m on my way.”

The local probation and parole branch of Vermont’s Department of Corrections was located a mere stone’s throw from where Mary Wallis had hammered Jason Ryan with her shoe-down among a cluster of buildings bunched together on the flats between the water’s edge and the high bank on which the Putney Road was perched. Fifteen minutes after hanging up on Lou Biddle, I pulled into his parking lot.

I found him in his office, comfortably settled in an ancient tiltback office chair, a cup of coffee cradled in his hands and his feet propped up on his desk.

He pointed to a coffee machine by the door. “Help yourself. You look like you need it.”

I gratefully followed his suggestion. “Did you get a chance to read that file?”

He leaned forward and pulled it off his desk. “Yup. You may have a hot one here. Three rape charges, the last one with a sentence. He served the rape in full and is doing the burglary on probation.”

“I take it they were connected?” I asked, clearing his guest chair of a stack of books and sitting down.

“Yeah. The burglary kicked in because he was witnessed entering the apartment window of the woman he assaulted.”

“She lived alone?”

“Yeah. He attacked her in her bedroom in the middle of the night-tied her down using slipknots, threatened her with a knife, blindfolded her… The whole ball of wax. I’m sorry I didn’t hand him over to you yesterday.”

I reached for the file, my exhaustion turning to adrenaline. “Not to worry-who’d you say his probation officer was?”

“Helen Boisvert.”

“What’s her reading on him?”

“Dunno-I just ran in and grabbed the file. She’s in, though, which is just as well, ’cause I’ve got to hit the road.”

I took the hint and stood up, thanking him again for the coffee.

Helen Boisvert had worked for the Department of Corrections for over twenty years. Originally from the state’s so-called Northeast Kingdom region-remote, sparsely populated, and proudly independent-she’d been brought up on society’s fringes, one of six kids of a dirt-poor logger and his wife. Her highly regarded abilities as a probation officer were due in part to the fact that only her own moral strength and determination had stopped her from becoming one of her own clients. Half her siblings had spent time in jail, and two of her brothers had met violent deaths. But as she’d told me once, extracting herself from that environment and ending up in corrections, after earning an M.A. in psychology, was as natural to her as an Eskimo training to be a cold-weather scientist.

She was nestled in an office just like Lou’s, which looked more pleasant but smelled a lot worse, due to its occupant’s lifelong addiction to cigarettes. She was lighting one up as I walked in.

“I hear you’re interested in one of my boys,” she said through the smoke. I returned her file to her. “Bob Vogel-but not for burglary.”

She raised her eyebrows, immediately following my lead, and tossed me that morning’s Brattleboro Reformer. “You think he did that?”

Knowing that it was coming, even with Gail’s blessing, didn’t make the front-page story any easier to take. “Selectwoman Raped at Home” ran from one edge of the page to the other, across several related articles and a photograph of Gail at a recent meeting. I returned the paper without reading it further. “It’s a possibility.”

“Interesting.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, struck by her tone of voice.

“Because this took place night before last, and he missed his meeting with me yesterday morning.”

“Have you talked to him since?” I was suddenly worried he’d already taken off.

“Oh, yeah-he came in later. Said he overslept, that his alarm didn’t go off. Interesting coincidence.”

“How did he seem?”

“A little nervous I might nail him for messing up, but otherwise he was the same as always.”

“Which is?”

She took a deep drag, finishing the cigarette, and ground it out in an already half-full ashtray. I imagined her forceful personality allowed her to flaunt the state’s no-smoking rules.

“Bob Vogel is an unrepentant shit,” she finally said. “He toes the line with me because I can pull his chain, but we both know it’s a waste of time. As soon as he’s free and clear, he’ll be back in trouble-unless he’s already jumped the gun.”

I removed the jacket I’d been wearing against the fading morning chill and placed it on the floor next to my chair. “Lou said Vogel’s last assault fit the MO of the guy who raped Gail-what about the two rapes he didn’t get prosecuted for? Were they the same?”

Helen pulled another cigarette from the pack lying on her desk and lit up. “I couldn’t say for sure. I only know about the last one, and even there I don’t have all the details. He moved up here ten months ago, and we only got this preliminary file about four months back, which is par for the course-they’re either drowning in cases down there or they don’t give a damn, depending on the office.

“Anyhow, the outline you got from Lou about sums up what I’ve been told-the big difference being that he used a nightgown to blind his victim instead of a pillowcase. Which helped nail him, as it turned out-not only was he seen going in through the window by a neighbor, but the nightgown slipped off enough so the victim got a look at him. She pulled him out of a lineup.”

“Lou mentioned a knife.”

Boisvert made a face. “Yeah-he cut her nipples a little, I guess to get her attention. A real bastard.”

“What else did he do?”

“Everything shy of killing her, as far as I can tell. The rape lasted several hours, with intermissions for the knife play and beatings. The woman ended up having her jaw wired.”

“Did he trash the bedroom also?”

She looked uncertain. “I suppose-there was mention of a lot of destruction.”

I changed subjects slightly, realizing I was nearing the limit of her knowledge. “Did all three rape victims live in the same area?”

“Two in Greenfield, one in North Adams. None of them knew one another, and none of them knew Bob. He’s a stalker.”

That made me think of Vogel’s one-day employment at Mrs. Wheeler’s. “Was part of his technique getting handyman jobs near where the victims lived?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. Like I said, we actually don’t have all that much on Bob yet. What I do know mostly comes from my conversations with him. The file only highlights the bare bones on the last assault-the one that landed him in the pokey.”

“How did he get off on the first two?”

“Screwups; technicalities. You’d have to check it all out with the Massachusetts people, but from what he told me, the system served him well. For that matter, four years for what he did to his last victim was a slap on the wrist.”

There was a pause, during which I digested some of what she’d told me. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that we had a “hit”-someone who, from a distance at least, fit our profile to a gnat’s eyelash.

“It sounds like he talks about the rape a lot.”

Helen made a dismissive gesture with her hand before grinding out the second cigarette. “Lou should be handling this guy-he’s a sexual offender. It’s only the burglary technicality that makes him mine. But let’s face it, burglary means he entered by force-not that he was out to steal anything-so we don’t spend much time talking about how to jimmy windows or fence TVs. Besides, Bob Vogel reminds me a lot of some of the guys I grew up with, including a couple of my brothers. I don’t like him, and I don’t see him living to a ripe old age-at least not on the outside. But I do know what makes him tick.” She grinned suddenly-so immersed in this world she no longer saw the incongruity. “I guess you could say we get along.”

“Lucky you,” I muttered, to which she only laughed and reached for another smoke.

I had copies made of all the information I needed concerning Bob Vogel, including his home address and place of employment, and went straight to my office, despite the fact that I still hadn’t shaved or showered.

Ron Klesczewski’s expression told me I should have tended to those small details first. “Are you okay?” he blurted as he looked up to find me looming over him at his temporary, paper-strewn desk.

I gave him the file I’d secured from Helen Boisvert. “Get the records on this guy-his Massachusetts rap sheet is inside. And see if you can locate a police officer who knows about him, either from North Adams or Greenfield. I’d like to talk to him.”

He flipped open the file and stared at the name at the top of the first page. “Robert Vogel?”

“He did a one-day handyman stint for one of Gail’s neighbors. I found him in your files.” I saw J.P. Tyler waving to me from the hallway door. “Okay?” I asked Ron.

He still looked a little startled, but nodded firmly, regaining his composure.

“What’s up?” I asked Tyler in the hall, as he led me down to the detective bureau, where he’d converted a cramped janitor’s closet into a makeshift laboratory.

“Two things: One, I tried to match the pubic hair I found in Gail’s bed to either you or her and came up empty, which means it came from the attacker.”

It was nice of him to be so diplomatic. In fact, I knew damn well such an argument wouldn’t hold up in court. A third person’s pubic hair found in a de facto conjugal bed did not necessarily involve a rapist. For our purposes, however, it was good enough.

“All I can get from it, though,” he continued, “is that the guy was Caucasian and dark-haired.”

We entered the detective squad office and went not to the tiny lab, but to Tyler’s desk. “The second thing I have higher hopes for.”

He held up a small baggie with a tiny fragment of organic material in it. “Remember this? The vegetable matter I found on the couch near the window? It’s Russian olive-a cross between a screen bush and a small tree. It can grow to twenty-five feet, has small silvery leaves and berries.”

I knew better than to ask him the relevance of this. J.P. had his own style, and it often involved some minor theatrics.

“It’s not a rare plant-you see it planted by the side of the interstate sometimes. Developers like it because it’s cheap, hardy, and easy to handle, and it makes them look like nature lovers when they surround their junky architecture with it.”

He looked at me with a pleased expression. “The point is, there ain’t a single Russian olive on Gail’s property.”

“How ’bout Mrs. Wheeler’s, two houses down?”

I should have known better. “She doesn’t have any either-no one on the block does-which means the assailant left it behind inadvertently, just like the fiber sample from his red wool shirt.”

“Gail told me last night she still has her Swiss Army knife,” I volunteered, my memory jostled by what he’d just said.

Tyler nodded. “Well, we expected that. That’s good, though, ’cause when we find this guy, we can check all his knives for traces of blood. Even if he wiped the blade off on his pants, we might still find something. And the window lock I removed might come in there, too. I know for sure a knife was used to jimmy it open. I might be able to match the marks to the blade.”

I reflected on that for a moment, impressed at how impersonal it could all be made to sound. “That it?”

“For the moment. The DNA analysis won’t be here for weeks, and we’re not expecting anything there anyhow. I’ve pretty much done all I can do with fingerprints. You’re going to get dozens of other people’s prints in most houses anyhow-guests, workers, people like that-and Gail’s was no different. I haven’t had a hit with any of them, except yours and hers, of course.”

“What about Harry Murchison, the window installer?”

Tyler smiled apologetically at the vagaries of his beloved science. “No. We know he was there, but it was over a year ago-it’s hard to expect a print to survive that long.”

I finally asked a question that had been chewing at me since Gail had first brought it up. “Do you know what they heard back on Gail’s blood tests?”

He looked at me quizzically. “I don’t think they found anything. What were you after?”

“No sign of HIV or AIDS?”

His mouth fell open slightly. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I should’ve thought of that.” He looked suddenly embarrassed, and his words came out slowly and carefully. “No-the test was clean… for the moment. That’s fine, of course-a good sign-but you shouldn’t take it as gospel, not yet. She ought to have another test in a month or so-and periodically for every six months after that-just to be sure.”

I thanked him and went into my small corner office. I sat down at my desk and dialed Women for Women.

Susan Raffner was on the line in a few minutes. “Hi. What’s up?”

“Nothing specific. We may have a lead, but we need to check it out thoroughly. I was just wondering how Gail fared last night. I didn’t want to call her at your place in case she was sleeping.”

Susan’s voice saddened. “She’s not doing much of that. She woke up right after you left. I ended up putting her in bed with me-it seemed to calm her down a little.”

“What about something to help her sleep?”

“I’m not crazy about that stuff-her system’s messed up enough as it is-but I did ask her. I think she’s planning to sleep days and stay awake nights, if she can.”

“Is that a good idea?” I asked.

“No, but it’s her own decision, and that is good. The more she takes charge of things, the better. She just feels too vulnerable to sleep at night. It’ll pass with time.” There was a pause on the line before Susan added, “Did you see the paper this morning?”

“Saw it-I didn’t read it.”

“Katz played it pretty straight-the editorial’s a little heavy-handed, but sympathetic. He did say a few things you probably won’t be too happy with, like how the paper’s going to make it a mission not to let this just slip by. The quote was something like ‘keeping a spotlight on the wheels of justice.’”

“Great,” I muttered.

“I know how you feel, Joe, but we agree with him, and we’re planning to help him out. We’re going to keep this in the news.”

“I realize that,” I said without enthusiasm.

“And Gail’s going to be a part of it.”

Despite my unhappiness, I appreciated the sensitivity in her voice.

Even believing as she did that I was wholly supportive of Gail’s identifying herself as the victim, Susan still understood the pressures such a decision placed upon a couple. After years of locking horns with her on purely technical grounds, finally I found it oddly comforting that she was there as head of Women for Women, even as she prepared to make my professional life miserable. It was the sign of someone, as irony might have it, that I could trust.

“I know that, too,” I answered. “And I know that’s what she thinks she needs. I just don’t want everyone else’s enthusiasm running her over.”

“I’ll keep an eye on it, Joe. And, by the way, your coming over last night made a big difference. I think you should drop by any time you feel the urge, as long as you keep the same tone. I’ll tell the others you might do that.”

I thanked her and hung up, ignoring the fact that “keeping the same tone” might be easier said than done, depending on my own emotional mood swings.

I pulled open my bottom desk drawer and removed an old electric razor, with which I did an approximate job on my face, using my fingertips in place of a mirror. The shower would have to wait. I knew that with this morning’s headlines, the political natives were going to be at least restless, and perhaps arming for battle.

I crossed the hallway to Brandt’s side of the building, only to find him putting on his jacket and preparing to leave. “I was just about to round you up. Dunn wants to see us-I think he’s getting sweaty palms.”

I accompanied Tony back out to the hallway and upstairs to where the State’s Attorney had his offices on the top floor. Dunn’s request-and Brandt’s reaction-were in perfect keeping with my own concerns. The SA had been a fixture in the county for the past fifteen years, a feather in the community’s cap when he’d first been elected as a highly respected prosecutor with big-city credentials. He’d been slumming then, a fifty-five-year-old flatlander, newly retired from handling big criminal cases in New York, and his run for office had reflected that lack of desperate hunger so common among office seekers. Dunn had felt free to say whatever was on his mind, regardless of the consequences, because he’d literally had nothing to lose. It had even seemed to some of us in those days that, were he elected, he might not choose to serve, having found something else of more interest. This curious nonchalance had worked well in his favor, being misinterpreted by both press and public as courage rather than arrogant indifference.

Time had worked its devious alchemy, of course, eroding the man’s lack of ambition-and the public’s gullibility-with the result that he was now as driven to hang onto his position as a growing number of people were to see him replaced.

Having the chairwoman of the board of selectmen raped, therefore, with no suspect in jail and both these facts in banner headlines, was not good news.

He greeted us silently from behind a large, gleaming, imposing cherry-wood conference table, looking like a bad caricature of some egomaniacal dictator. Before him, in pointed isolation, lay a single copy of the morning’s newspaper, face up. We were not invited to sit.

He extended one long, manicured finger and tapped the newspaper gently with it, looking me straight in the eye. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

I hesitated a moment, weighing any number of possible responses, and finally settled for, “I didn’t think of it. Sorry.”

“You guys made me look like an idiot. Alice Sims called me up at the crack of dawn and asked for an on-the-record comment, and I had to ask her what the hell she was talking about. She said you and Raffner’s crowd cooked this up together.”

Alice was Stan Katz’s “courts-’n’-cops” reporter, covering his old beat. She was young and aggressive and dying to make an impression, just as Stanley had been before her. I was sure Dunn was right that she’d make the most of this communications glitch, and felt badly that I’d dropped the ball. I didn’t like Dunn, but it did none of us any good to make it appear the police and the SA weren’t talking.

Dunn continued coldly, “She also told me that Jack Derby had weighed in with his own homespun country-cracker bullshit about the plight of women in this violent society, and how bravery like Ms. Zigman’s was an example of how to stem the tide-or some other highly original piece of crap.”

He pushed aside the paper and laid his thin, pale hands flat on the table’s shiny surface. “Are you two gentlemen counting the days until Mr. Derby moves into these offices? Perhaps you think he needs a little help?”

I had seen James Dunn pull the imperious magistrate performance before-it was one of his better acts. But it had always been directed outward, at a suspect or a reluctant witness. Turning his vitriol on us, especially on purely political grounds, was a mistake I knew Tony was not going to take in stride.

Brandt walked around the end of the long table to join Dunn on the other side. The latter looked taken aback by this gesture and, as Tony approached, even faintly alarmed. He shifted in his chair and raised his hands vaguely over his chest, as if prepared to physically defend himself.

Tony, however, smiling thinly but affably enough, merely pulled out the chair right next to Dunn’s, sat in it, leaned back, and placed his crossed feet on the immaculate tabletop, all the while reaching into his jacket pocket to remove his pipe and pouch. Dunn’s theatrically staged and imposing set dissolved. As an afterthought, I sat down on the edge of the table, instead of standing like an abashed schoolboy.

Tony’s voice, despite his mild appearance, was ice cold. “Want to run that by us again?”

Dunn looked ready to explode. “How did Derby know about this before I did?”

Tony focused on stuffing his pipe. “The paper knew about it before we did, and the paper’s endorsed your opponent. How do you explain it?”

The SA’s eyes narrowed slightly as he stared at me. “What do you mean, the paper knew about it before you did? She’s your goddamn girlfriend, for Christ’s sake.”

I decided to play Brandt’s bland game. “She called them, an informant there called us, and I went over to their office to make it look like we were all coordinating. Katz bought it. You just slipped my mind. I am sorry about that. I’m afraid I was scrambling for cover myself.”

Dunn’s lethal gaze shifted back and forth between us. Tony lit up and his pipe erupted into a cloud of smoke. “Was there anything else you wanted to talk to us about, James?”

It was a graceful offer from someone who would have been entirely justified in simply walking out of the room. Dunn grudgingly recognized it as such.

“Yes. How is the investigation going?” he asked, switching gears.

Brandt spoke as if the conversation had just begun. “Fine. We’ve got two possibles from among the files Joe collected at the intelligence meeting yesterday, and a third one Gail gave us of a guy who replaced a couple of windows at her house a year ago-”

“And Jason Ryan,” I added, “who said she deserved what she got, a few days before the rape. We also have a guy from Massachusetts on parole here on a burglary rap who has a long history of sexual assault.”

Tony gave me a quick glance, since I hadn’t had a chance yet to update him on Bob Vogel. He also was not one who enjoyed being left out of the informational loop, especially with Dunn on the warpath.

Dunn looked at his watch, eager to get this over now that it had blown up in his face. “I take it Todd’s being kept abreast of all this.”

“I haven’t seen him this morning,” I said, “but I’ll fill him in.”

Dunn stood up and walked to the door that led to his private office. “All right. Let me know when something develops.”

He closed the door behind him, and Tony and I looked at one another. “Can’t imagine why the race is so close,” Brandt muttered.

Lunch was a combination of brown-bag sandwiches and chips, ordered-in slabs of glistening pizza, and a mismatched assortment of carrots, pickles, cookies, yogurt, soda, and one Twinkie, belonging to Dennis. Sitting around the least cluttered conference table in the command post were the entire detective squad, Brandt, Billy Manierre representing Patrol, and Todd Lefevre from the SA’s office.

Ron Klesczewski was running the meeting. “Of the two possibles gleaned from the intelligence meeting-Lonny Sorvin and Barry Gilchrist-Sorvin looked the most likely. They had both blindfolded their victims in the past, but only Sorvin used ropes and spoke in a whisper. Neither one of them broke into their victims’ homes, neither one had used a knife, and neither one had stripped naked prior to sexual contact. Still, they were the only ones that even came close to fitting the MO of the guy we’re after. Also, given their jobs and generally known habits, they both had the opportunity to commit the rape in question.

“On the strength of that, we had them interviewed by their parole officers. They were asked to account for their movements in detail, and then we had their stories checked out. As far as we can tell, they’re clean.”

“Who did the checking? Us or Corrections?” Brandt asked, slightly confused by Ron’s syntax.

“I did,” Dennis DeFlorio answered. “I talked to family members in Gilchrist’s case-Sorvin lives alone-and friends and neighbors of both of them. Harriet’s transcribing my report. Maybe I’m wrong, but I kind of think we’d be wasting our time with them. Just my opinion, of course.”

No one challenged him, much to his apparent relief, so Ron plowed on. “We finished going through the list of people Gail submitted, and except for Harry Murchison, we came up empty. But since those were the people she suggested herself, we gave them a second going-over. The only iffy pair were Philip Duncan and Mark Sumner, who were at a party together until two-thirty-after the rape began. Since each had spoken for the other concerning that time, and their friends could’ve been covering for them, we looked for other witnesses for corroboration. Unfortunately-or fortunately, I suppose-we found them. Both a waitress and a bartender confirmed the time.”

“This place was still open at two-thirty?” Billy Manierre asked.

“It was a special party at the Redtop Inn-the dining room was reserved for the whole night. Ethan Allen Realty’s just been bought out by some businessman from Boston, and I guess he wanted to show his new employees what a great guy he is.”

“So what about Murchison?” Brandt interrupted, impatient with Ron’s methodical approach.

“I’ve been checking him out,” Sammie answered. “And he’s still a good candidate. I went to Krystal Kleer pretending I wanted a mirror cut to size, and I got into a conversation with the woman at the desk. According to her, Murchison is a grade-A sexual harasser, making comments, copping feels, and generally being a pain in the ass. She said even some of the customers complained, and the boss had to stop sending him out on the road.

“I looked into the two sexual priors against him-an aggravated-assault conviction and a dropped simple-assault charge. The first involved a woman he was seeing and who’d broken off the relationship; he waited for her one night when she got back from work, forced her inside, threatened her with a hammer, and then raped her, apparently hoping the ecstasy of the experience would make her see the error of her ways.”

Everyone but Kunkle remained studiously silent at the bitterness in Sammie’s voice. Kunkle laughed.

“Murchison did three years for that and got out almost three years ago. The simple-assault charge was eight years ago and didn’t stick because the girl he had sex with was too flaky-she only came forward because her parents forced her to, and she kept changing her story. The state wasn’t all that sure who to believe.”

“What was the background on that case?” Todd Lefevre asked.

“Backseat groping at a lover’s lane. The girl was a well-experienced minor. He claimed he didn’t know how old she was. There was no violence, but her first story-the one she came in with accompanied by her parents-was that he’d forced the situation. There don’t seem to be any parallels with our case, unlike the rape he was convicted for. Willy did the legwork on his whereabouts the night before last.”

We all looked expectantly at Kunkle, who took his time finishing off a Coke. I filled the gap by asking Sammie, “Did you run a picture of Murchison by Gail, just to make sure we’re talking about the same window installer?”

She hesitated. “I wasn’t sure I should-not this soon after.”

“You better get me a mug shot or something. She said the guy had almost electric blue eyes.”

Sammie was already nodding, “That’s him-the receptionist even said it was too bad they belonged to such a creep.”

Willy put his can down and wiped his mouth against his sleeve. “Okay: Harry Murchison is a definite maybe-the truck fits the old man’s description, and we know from his neighbor he spent at least part of the night away from home. Turns out he had a fight with his girlfriend-something about her drinking too much beer at a party they were both at-and she had to catch a ride home with a friend. Murchison lit out for parts unknown.

“I put together a list of his drinking buddies-most of it from his ex-parole officer-and tried to see if I could trace his movements that night. Up to about the time of the rape, I got him drinking at a guy’s house near West Dummerston, but then he disappears. They ran out of booze and Murchison took off, either in search of another watering hole or someplace to pass out besides home. With more time, I might be able to pin down which one. One interesting thing, though-the quickest way to get back into town from the place in West Dummerston is Meadowbrook Road.”

“So the truck the old guy saw was Murchison’s,” Dennis said.

But I saw the problem with that. “Maybe-Willy said Murchison left his buddy’s around the time the rape began-that’s 2:13-and the witness didn’t see the truck ‘til… ” I glanced over my shoulder at the board, “4:15-over half an hour after Gail got loose, and twenty minutes after her own car was seen leaving for the hospital.”

“He could’ve waited, to watch her leave,” Ron suggested.

I didn’t argue the point. “I’m not ruling him out-it’s just a discrepancy we need to remember. Keep digging, okay, Willy?”

He nodded once without looking up, his eyes on a distant pickle.

Ron hesitated and then resumed running the meeting. “Robert Vogel is next. I assume you’ve all read the updates, so you know basically who he is. I made some phone calls after Joe gave me Vogel’s file, and talked to an assistant DA in Massachusetts who knew a little about his case. From what he told me, it does look like we should put Vogel at the top of our list.”

Ron shuffled a few pages in front of him and extracted a single sheet of notes he’d presumably written to himself during his phone conversation. “Bob Vogel is twenty-eight years old-and a dark-haired Caucasian, which fits the samples J.P. recovered from Gail Zigman’s bed. As far as law enforcement in Massachusetts knows, he’s committed three rapes, the last of which landed him in jail for a fully served four-year sentence. As your updates make clear, he’s now out on a burglary probation, being monitored by our own Department of Corrections.

“The interesting thing about this man is that his record shows a learning curve, as if each rape taught him how to improve on the next. In the first attack in North Adams, he held his victim down by the neck and got scratched for his efforts. The next time, he used tape on her wrists and ankles; and on the third outing, he used the slipknots. Same thing with the blindfold: first time, nothing; second time, he ordered her to keep her eyes shut; third time, he used her nightgown.”

“And now he’s into pillowcases,” Sammie muttered.

Ron continued speaking. “In all three instances, the women were single, lived alone, and didn’t know Vogel personally, although they may have seen him around town. Also, all the attacks were made in the middle of the night, all of them involved a knife-although he actually used it the third time only-and all of them lasted several hours.”

“Were the second and third rapes committed in North Adams?” Lefevre asked, taking notes of his own.

“No. After the first one landed him in court, and ended with a hung jury and a dismissal from the judge, Vogel moved to Greenfield. That was about eight years ago, when he was twenty. The second one occurred a couple of years after that, but it never got to court. The prosecutor couldn’t run with it because the investigation was botched-illegal searches, a broken chain of evidence, a few other things. The officer in charge turned out to have a drinking problem and was let go right after, but the case was a wash. The ADA I talked to was pretty bitter-even though they nailed him good and proper the third time, the court had to sentence him as a first-time offender. That’s why he got off so light.”

The similarities between Vogel’s record and the MO used on Gail prompted an outburst of questions as Ron paused to sip from his coffee mug.

“Why don’t we just pick him up?” Dennis suggested.

“Does he have an alibi for the night before last?” Lefevre asked. “How did he set up the three rapes?”

Ron swallowed quickly and held up his free hand. “Hold it, hold it. All this is based on a single phone call. I got the name of the Greenfield cop who worked on the last two attacks, but I haven’t talked to him yet; nor have I seen any paperwork. There’re a lot of holes to fill.”

“And we don’t want to pick him up until we have them filled,” I answered Dennis indirectly. “If we grab this guy before we know most of the answers, we could open ourselves up to a nasty surprise. The press and a lot of other people would have a field day with that. We need to put Robert Vogel under a microscope before we pick him up, not only for an alibi, but for more details on his MO: Did he ever wear gloves? Did he strip before assaulting these women? Did he whisper? Did he trash their rooms or houses? There’s a lot to do yet.”

I turned back to Ron in the answering silence. “What else?”

“A couple more things on Vogel-I’m having the arresting officers’ affidavits faxed to us, since they’re part of the public record, but court transcripts and other closed documents’ll take a little longer.”

Todd Lefevre got the hint. “I’ll get on it-just give me the particulars after we’re through here.”

Ron nodded his agreement. “Okay, next suspect on the hit parade: Jason Ryan. While Willy was prowling the streets checking out Murchison, he also dug a little deeper into Ryan’s supposed activities, which at last report amounted to going home to bed. Were you able to find out if he snuck out later?”

Kunkle gave a disgruntled shrug of his shoulders, typical for when he came up empty-handed. Both his personality and his crippled arm dictated that he should outperform anyone around him. So not doing so tended to make him sullen. “I’ve got one witness who says he might’ve seen him on a bike, but if I’d pushed him harder, he also would’ve said it was pink and had wings. Ryan’s going to stay a question mark until we get lucky.”

Ron was obviously disappointed. “That’s it for me. Since the paper came out this morning, we’ve been getting a steady stream of calls, some of them interesting, some of them loony, and the rest in between. Ryan’s a popular suggestion, mostly among women callers, and there’ve been about ten men who called in suggesting Gail faked the whole thing for publicity. One guy claimed Dunn did it for votes-he didn’t explain how that worked. I was thinking that if we fed the Reformer a few more details, especially about the timing of the attack, we might get another lead.”

I gave Ron credit for an impartial presentation, purposefully downplaying the buzz that the evidence against Bob Vogel had stimulated, but there was no denying which name had suddenly hit the top of the charts.

Still, I wanted to play it by the numbers, this time more than ever. Not only did I have Gail’s interests in mind, but I knew damned well that if we pushed too hard and somehow screwed up, there’d be more hell to pay than any of us could imagine. The upcoming election, Gail’s willingness to have her plight politicized, and the fact that Bob Vogel had escaped prosecution once already through a policeman’s incompetence, all combined to make me especially wary. The moment we let Vogel’s name become publicly linked to this case, we would begin to lose control of it-Dunn, Women for Women, and Stanley Katz, among others, would see to that.

I therefore supported Ron’s suggestion. “Okay. We should stress that we’re currently building a case, but that we’d appreciate all the corroborative help we can get-anything heard or seen that might be linked to the specific time and location of the assault.”

I was looking at both Tony Brandt and Todd Lefevre when I said this. They both silently nodded their agreement. “All right. Ron, why don’t you put together a press release, then.”

I got to my feet and began pacing back and forth across the front of the room. “It would be dumb denying Bob Vogel is now number one. But I don’t want that overshadowing that we have at least two other strong likelies-Murchison in particular-plus Christ knows who else that might pop up. What we need to do, therefore, is to divide into teams and hit all three suspects with equal strength.”

“I’d like you on the Vogel team,” Brandt said quickly and clearly.

“All right, since I’m partnered with Todd and/or the chief anyway, we can make that one team. Willy, you’ve done most of the digging on Murchison. How ’bout you and J.P. keep on him?”

Willy gave a barely perceptible nod, but I knew I’d done him a favor. Besides Sammie, whom he liked because of her devotion to the job-and because she was one of the few people who regularly told him to drop dead-J.P. was Willy’s favorite partner. Polar opposites personally, they’d forged a mutual respect, knowing that each had special abilities the other didn’t.

Unfortunately, all this also predicated who would form the last remaining team. I looked at Sammie, my expression as supportive as I could make it. “And you and Dennis tackle Ryan.”

Her face remained studiously impassive, which for a naturally expressive person told me a lot. I wondered if she’d be in to see me shortly after this meeting.

I returned my attention to the whole group. “Each team should be seen as a core grouping only. I want to leave Ron running the command post, and it’s to him that all of us should report. That way, if any team develops a need for more manpower or resources, Ron’s the man to talk to. Ron, in turn, will either pull people from the other teams, depending on what they’re up to, or he’ll go to Billy for help. Ron will also be responsible for forwarding any information he might get to the appropriate team, as well as giving all of us general updates on all three investigations.”

I turned to the one member of the department whose importance was constantly underrated, except by me. “Harriet, that means you’ll be running the day-to-day details for all of us, plus keeping track of Ron’s paper flow. If you ever feel you’re beginning to drown, I’m sure Tony can find it in the budget to pay for a temp.”

Harriet gave me a look that suggested the possibility of that was remote at best.

I stopped pacing and stood before them in silence for a couple of seconds, slightly tongue-tied by what I felt I had to add. “I’d like you all to know, by the way, that I appreciate all the hours you’ve been putting in-personally, as a friend. It means a lot. Thank you.”

There was a predictably awkward silence following this, diplomatically broken by Tony Brandt pushing back his chair and announcing that it was time to get back to work. In the slightly overplayed hubbub that followed, J.P. Tyler came up to me just as I was about to leave the room.

“Since you’re handling Vogel, I thought you might be interested in this.” He held out a small, slightly silvery leaf.

I held it quizzically between my fingers.

“It’s from a Russian olive-like the one I found on Gail’s couch. After we talked this morning, I drove out to West Bratt to where Bob Vogel lives. There’s a Russian olive right in front of his trailer.”