Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

8

Todd caught up to me in the hall as Harriet informed me, “Billy wants to see you.”

I smiled at that, watching Billy’s large form slowly lumbering toward his office. Something was bothering him, and typically he wanted to air it on his own chosen ground-using Harriet as an emissary so his plans wouldn’t be upended. I thanked her and followed Todd around the corner, out of the flow of traffic emerging from the command post.

“How do you want to divvy things up?” he asked.

“I’d like to close in on Vogel-just a hair. Scope out his neighborhood, learn his daily routine, maybe follow him around a bit. I don’t want to flush him out yet, but maybe we can find out what he was up to the night before last. Ron’s going to try to set up a meeting with the Greenfield cop who worked Vogel’s last two rapes, so I thought a little hands-on research might be appropriate beforehand.”

He glanced back at Harriet.

I followed his meaning.

“Yeah, I’ll see what’s up with Billy first. You’ve got to make a few phone calls for Ron anyway, right? Could you make a couple for me?”

“Shoot.”

“Call Mrs. Wheeler. She hired Vogel because her regular man’s equipment was destroyed in a fire. I’d like to know how she heard about Vogel. Also, we need to get the regular yard man’s name from her and chase him down. That fire sounds pretty convenient.”

Todd began heading toward the stairs. “Why don’t you have your chat with Billy and then come up to my office? See if I got lucky.”

I nodded my agreement and started down the hallway, pausing as I heard Tony’s voice behind me. “Susan Raffner informed me just before the meeting that they’re planning an ‘awareness march’ down the middle of Main Street tonight, complete with hand-held candles. They want to wind up surrounding the courthouse-‘an unbroken circle of light,’ quote-unquote.”

We fell into step side by side. “Is Gail going to be part of it?”

He smiled grimly. “Right at the front.” It looked like he wanted to say more but thought better of it.

“I take it you’re not impressed.”

He paused in front of the unmarked door to the officers’ room, suddenly giving vent to his frustration. “I’m impressed that a woman fresh from being beaten and raped and having her name plastered all over the paper would think it a good idea to march down Main Street advertising the fact. I know she’s committed to her principles, Joe, and I hope you don’t take this wrong, but if I were her, I’d choose a different way to straighten out my life.”

I merely looked at him and raised my eyebrows. He respected Gail, and liked her. He also knew there wasn’t anything he or I could do to change her mind once it was set.

He finally shook his head, muttered, “What a pisser this is,” and continued down the hall.

I found Billy ensconced in his cluttered office, like mine separated from a larger, outer room by an aquarium-like window. He’d surrounded himself with the memorabilia of a lifetime in police work-pictures, citations, antiquated equipment, and mementos from favorite cases-in a way that reminded me of a bear trapped in a small museum.

He nodded genially at me when I entered and offered me a mug filled from his own private coffee urn.

I sat in his fancy guest chair. “I don’t think so, thanks. I’m about fifty-percent coffee as it is. What’s up?”

He pursed his lips and pulled on his chin, settling his bulk more comfortably in his own chair. He was a man who enjoyed the social niceties, often lamenting the rush of the modern world. But he was also obviously feeling ill at ease.

“Scuttlebutt has it you really reamed Al Santos. Thought you weren’t going to do that.”

I sighed. Not my finest hour. “Yeah-probably overdid it. He pissed me off.”

“It was as much my fault as his-should’ve reamed me, too, when I first told you it was him.”

“All right, consider yourself reamed.” I knew, however, that he was after more than that. So I added, “I nailed him as much out of frustration as for what he did-I could’ve apologized, but then I figured I better leave it alone. The more they think I’m on the warpath because of Gail, the more careful they’ll be to cross every t and dot every i. If we find this man, I don’t want him to walk because of anything we did or didn’t do.”

Billy was quiet for a while, looking out the window at a few of his officers working at their desks or milling about the other room. “That’s one way to look at it, I suppose.”

“As against what?”

“They start talking about how this one’s maybe screwing up your objectivity. They know damn well if it had been their wife or girlfriend, there’s no way in hell they would’ve been allowed on the case. Maybe that’s a good rule.”

I’d been expecting the objection, but not from within my own ranks. That was unsettling. “Are you saying I should have another chat with Santos?”

Billy shook his large head slowly. “I wouldn’t do that.” He hesitated, honesty with a friend being something more easily praised than practiced. “Just don’t give ’em any more to feed on.”

A half hour later I climbed the three flights to the rabbit warren of short hallways and minute offices that made up the SA’s domain. As with most old buildings that had been designed for one use and converted to another-in this case a school built in 1884-the torture showed in the details. Some offices were merely wide spots along a hall, others looked like big broom closets with little air and no windows. Lefevre’s eight-by-eight office did have a window, but it was placed a good five feet off the floor, probably to dissuade any student’s wandering eye. The window was open in an effort to dissipate the sauna-like heat that routinely rose-summer and winter-from the floors below.

“Any luck?” I asked Todd, poking my head through his doorway.

He got quickly to his feet. “Yeah-couldn’t believe it-three calls, and I got everything I was after. You ready to go? I need some fresh air.”

Brattleboro has a fair number of mobile-home parks, planted like sentries around its outer perimeter. Some have been there for decades and share the same rooted look of any middle-class suburb, complete with above-ground pools, detached garages, and paved driveways. Others look considerably more ravaged by time and economics-clusters of rusting, swaybacked boxes, their mobile days long gone, arranged haphazardly along grids of rutted, trash-strewn dirt lanes. These latter groupings are small and few in number, and are usually relegated to the no-man’s-land between the town’s outermost civilized fringes and the true boonies-away from the major thoroughfares, out of sight of most of the populace, and out of mind for most public-health and code inspectors. Bob Vogel’s address was in one such backwater, at the very edge of West Brattleboro’s town line.

I waited until we were on Route 9 before asking Todd what he’d dug up.

“Talked to Mrs. Wheeler. Story hasn’t changed-her regular guy told her he couldn’t service her until his insurance settled, and Vogel dropped in out of the blue. He did the job well and disappeared. The regular guy’s name is Ned Barrows.

“I called him next and talked to his wife. The fire that trashed their equipment was in the garage-wiped out his two lawnmowers. Interesting, since he also has two snowblowers, neither of which was touched.”

“Do they think it was arson?”

“No. She said they had no reason to. They just assumed an oily rag started it, or maybe the sun coming through a window and superheating a small gas spill. Barrows apparently isn’t too neat and tidy.”

“A little farfetched, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Maybe. You won’t find their insurance company arguing with you. That’s why they haven’t settled. Barrows is an on-call fireman-dealt with the blaze himself out of embarrassment. I called his adjuster and was told they think the whole thing is pretty murky, including the spontaneous-combustion part. The only catch is, Barrows had undervalued his equipment to save on the premiums, so he’s actually going to lose money on it, even if they do settle.”

“So it’s possible Vogel torched the mowers just to get the job at Mrs. Wheeler’s,” I muttered half to myself.

Todd continued, “I also called Helen Boisvert, and she told me that Vogel currently had a night job with New England Wood Products, a lumber manufacturer up around Jamaica-the four-to-midnight shift.”

I was struck by the location-the town of Jamaica was a good forty minutes away, and one of the ways of getting there involved Meadowbrook Road. “How long’s he been there?”

“Four months. He must’ve been moonlighting when he worked for Mrs. Wheeler.”

I slowed the car by a peeling, barely readable wooden sign announcing Treetops Mobile Park, and turned off Route 9 onto a dirt lane in such poor shape it looked more like a track.

“Did Boisvert know about that?”

Bracing himself against the car’s lurchings over the potholed, mangled road, he answered, “Indirectly. She said he does do odd jobs for extra cash sometimes. He tells her about them when she asks, so she’s never thought much about it. They’re always outside, and she’s never heard a complaint. She double-checked on him at first, calling after he’d done a job and asking the employer how he behaved. She gave it up when it never led to anything.”

I stopped the car and checked my watch. “Well, if he’s still working nights, he must be gone by now-it’s almost 3:25.”

We looked over at what had once been a beige and silver trailer, shoved up against the base of a large evergreen. It was decorated in mottled earth colors now, weather and neglect having conspired to concoct an enviably effective camouflage. Over the top of it, someone had built a pitched tarpaper roof, supported by rotting, warped beams at each corner, presumably to supplement the trailer’s own leaky roof. Skirting the home’s edge, sheets of ancient, shredded plastic had been duct-taped to cut down on the annual winter cold. The windows were small, stained, and blank, showing no curtains, light, or signs of life. Between the battered metal front door and the road was a weed-choked jumble of rusting, broken debris, some of it almost fully returned to the earth, along with one garbage can holding a bulging plastic bag, and an exhausted example of J.P. Tyler’s famous Russian olive. Chained to the evergreen were a rusty, prehistoric, but apparently valued bicycle and an equally ancient lawnmower.

“Home sweet home?” Todd asked in low voice.

“According to what Ron gave me.” I killed the engine, swung out of the car, and approached the trailer.

As I did so, I heard a noise to my left and saw a man emerging from a half-wrecked home similar to Vogel’s. He had long, stringy hair and a struggling, wispy beard and looked like a turn-of-the-century ad for the terrors of consumption.

“He ain’t in.” The voice was jagged and harsh-a smoker’s half croak.

I made a show of seeming disappointed. “Damn. When’s he get back?”

“Late-night shift.”

Now I looked surprised. “This is Bob Vogel’s place, isn’t it? The handyman?”

That brought a half smile to the neighbor’s haggard face. “I don’t know how handy he is.”

“He does yard work, right? A friend of mine recommended him.”

He rolled his eyes. “Some friend.”

“Not a good idea?”

He equivocated slightly. “I don’t know-I’m not in a hiring position. Maybe he’s a frigging green thumb. I wouldn’t try getting sociable, though. He’s a dickhead.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Is there somewhere he hangs out where I might find him tomorrow?”

“Try the Barrelhead.” And without further ceremony, the human scarecrow moved off, climbed into a car I’d thought was abandoned, and drove away under cover of an explosive, rank-smelling smoke screen of burned oil.

Todd had slid over to the driver’s side of my car and rolled down the window to eavesdrop on this conversation. I looked up and down the street for other signs of life, found none, and turned back to Todd. “Pull around in a U-turn.”

He did as requested, stopping right next to Vogel’s garbage can. As quickly and unobtrusively as possible, I pulled the fat plastic bag from the can, tossed it into the car trunk, and got into the passenger seat.

Lefevre shook his head slightly and smiled as he slowly negotiated our way back out of the trailer park. “You’re not going to ask me to help dig through that, are you?”

“Might be interesting.”

“So might the disease you catch from it.”

The radio on the seat between us muttered my call number. I picked it up and answered.

“Ron says the Greenfield investigator you wanted to talk to is on his way up here. You available?”

I hesitated briefly. What I’d been hoping to do was drop the garbage bag off with Tyler and go see Gail. All day I’d been pulled by the twin desires of running the investigation and keeping her company-knowing full well the former not only held the higher priority, but was also what she’d prefer I’d do. Nevertheless, having spent most of the day at it, I now dearly wanted to take a break and see how she was faring, especially in light of tonight’s planned march down Main Street. It was reluctantly, therefore, that I told Dispatch I was on my way in.

Todd noticed my lack of enthusiasm. “Problems?”

“No, no. I asked Ron to locate the guy. I’m hoping he can fill us in on Vogel’s past.” That much was perfectly true, of course, but I sensed from his silence that Lefevre was waiting for a fuller response to his questions.

“It’s just tough pretending all this doesn’t mean something personal to me,” I continued.

“Maybe you shouldn’t try so hard.”

I looked at him directly. “I’m not so sure. Billy-among others-seems to think I’m losing my grip. At the Reformer, Stan Katz questioned the wisdom of having me involved. Even Tony had to shove me down your boss’s throat, and only succeeded by guaranteeing I’d have a twenty-four-hour babysitter. I’m what’s due the devil because we’re shy on manpower and the case is too hot. Which doesn’t mean a lot of people won’t find it convenient to pin the tail on me if something goes haywire. Part of me wants to focus on Gail and on getting her-and us-back on track. Part of me wants to do my job and nail the son of a bitch who raped her. And I know that by trying to do both I’m basically tripling my chances for screwing things up royally.”

Todd was honest enough not to argue the point, which was just as well. My own description fell short of my true feelings. Gail’s rape had triggered inside me the exact same emotions of sorrow and loss, albeit to a lesser degree, that probably would have attended her death. The bizarre twist, of course, was that she hadn’t died. She was alive, vibrant with her own pain and suffering, and her living thwarted the conventional closure that would have followed her funeral.

It was a paradox that gave credibility to a phrase I’d always held in contempt-that rape was a “fate worse than death.” While I still didn’t completely agree with that, I was beginning to understand it.