Occam's razor

24

We didn't arrest Walter Freund, although there was pressure to do so among members of the squad. Instead, we sent a car to his house shortly after he’d returned home and had a patrolman question him about his girlfriend’s whereabouts, implying she might have been involved in a crime and left town. The officer reported later Freund hadn’t seemed too concerned.

The contents of the bag-the bloodstained clothes, the sneakers, and a vicious-looking but very clean hunting knife-were labeled, packed up, and sent to the crime lab for analysis.

Gail, Jack Derby, Tony Brandt, and I met on the afternoon of the next day in Derby’s office to discuss what to do next.

Derby, seemingly recovered from his anger of our last meeting-I thought in large part because we’d brought him something useful-made a show of letting Gail represent their office in the conversation.

“You’re comfortable not arresting him?” she asked us after I’d outlined how we’d come by the bag-barring a few details.

“We don’t think he’s going anywhere. He has to report daily to his parole officer, he doesn’t know what we’ve found, and he thinks his girlfriend just got into a jam and split town. On our side, we don’t want to repeat the mistake we made with Owen Tharp and move prematurely. Until the lab tells us otherwise, we can’t prove if the contents of that gym bag have anything to do with him or Brenda Croteau.”

“Would you have any objections to getting a nontestimonial evidence order for a blood sample from Freund?”

I thought about that for a moment. It was perfectly feasible. Freund had waded deeply enough into the “reasonable suspicion” category to allow a judge to grant such a request. And with Alice Duprée now out of harm’s way, stirring up Walter’s paranoia might not be a bad idea. It could push him to do something that might land him in hotter water.

“This to compare with the tissue sample collected from under Brenda’s fingernail?”

“Seems like a good idea-it didn’t match Owen,” Gail admitted with a smile.

“Sure, I’ll serve him with it,” I answered. “What happens with Owen and Reggie McNeil while we’re waiting for forensics?”

Gail deferred to Derby.

“We’re meeting with Reggie in Judge Harrowsmith’s chambers this afternoon. I’m hoping Reggie will see the value of holding his breath till we sort this out.”

I asked another question that had been nagging me. “What did your shrink think of Owen?”

“Perfect fit,” Gail said. “I just got her report this morning. She confirmed our guess he was a prime candidate for manipulation. She couldn’t ask him anything about the crime, of course-not with Reggie there-but in general terms, she found him both extraordinarily malleable and prone to devoting himself to whoever’s treating him well at the moment. Supposedly, Owen’s sense of gratitude is so psychologically rooted that it virtually stands in stead of a conscience. He’s not wired too tightly, of course, which doesn’t help matters, so he’s also easily overwhelmed by people’s use of language.”

“What about the fits of violence?”

“They’re there, but ‘fits’ is the operative word. She agrees with me that the carnage at the Croteau scene exceeds Owen’s capabilities, even if he was artificially disinhibited with booze and dope.”

That caught Derby off guard. “Hold it-I thought we were working on the theory that if the blood on Freund’s belongings was Brenda’s, then that merely placed him at the scene. Is the shrink suggesting he actually played a role in the killing?”

“That’s what we’re starting to think,” I admitted, “but my question is, why did Walter get Owen involved in the first place? Why run the risk of having some simpleminded kid spill the beans later?”

“He hasn’t spilled the beans, though, has he?” Gail answered.

She had a point.

“Still, the risk…”

“So Walter set Owen in motion,” Derby hypothesized, “and then watched from the shadows to make sure he did the job right?”

“And possibly finished her off when he didn’t,” I suggested. “Now that we have two knives, I can ask the ME to try to match each wound to the blade that caused it.”

“Why would Walter make it so complicated?” Derby wanted to know.

Gail shrugged. “Because he had the perfect fall guy. Because it fits his sociopathic needs. Because he almost got away with it.”

That last crack obviously hurt. Derby scowled. “What a mess.”

Tony broke his silence to disagree. “Maybe not-in a few days, we could have a nice, tidy little package that McNeil will be happy to help gift-wrap.”

Derby looked doubtful. “Maybe. What bothers me about all this is that everything made sense when Owen was the sole killer. With the death of his girlfriend, he had the perfect rationale for killing Croteau.” He looked at Gail balefully. “You’re the one who’s so hot on motive. What did Freund have against Croteau?”

If he’d had a sense of humor, the obvious response should have been that motive wasn’t a prosecutor’s concern. Gail, however, wasn’t about to go there again, jokingly or not. She simply said, “Let’s hope we find out.”

I found Walter Freund in what seemed to be his home away from home, the Dirty Dollar-a true dump of a bar near where South Main meets up with Canal. Once the basement of a tenement building, the Dirty Dollar reminded me of the lower-class speakeasies I’d read about as a boy, where the bar had consisted of a plank and two sawhorses, and a seat was wherever you chose to fall down.

It wasn’t quite that bad, of course. Building codes and licensing requirements had seen to that. And a long time ago some pretense had even been made to decorate the place. But the effort was so faded or in disrepair, and the lighting so poor in any case, that none of it really mattered.

Walter was sitting in a corner booth, his back against the wall, his feet extended along the bench, as if he were propped up in bed. On the battered table next to him were a pack of cigarettes, an overflowing ashtray, a small, closed notebook, and a glass of what looked like water, although the glass itself was too dirty to tell. He was a small man, cadaverously thin, with a long greasy ponytail and a yellowish complexion that reminded me of mushrooms.

I slid onto the bench facing him. “Walter Freund?”

“Lieutenant,” he said, as if we’d known one another for years. In fact, despite his reputation, we’d never actually met. Neither of us extended a hand in greeting, and Freund kept his eyes sleepily focused elsewhere.

“Your name’s been coming up quite a bit lately.”

“So’s yours,” he answered.

I kept my tone conversational. “Oh, yeah? How’s that?”

Walter gave a shrug so small it was barely a quiver. “Busting Owen, shooting Billy, libeling politicians. I was thinking you maybe had Katz on the payroll-keeping you in the news. Must compensate for the lousy salary and all those hours. What do you make?”

I was impressed by the way he modulated his voice, making it almost theatrical. “Funny you should mention Owen and Billy. They were regulars here, weren’t they?”

“Them and a lot of other people.”

“You and Owen pretty tight?”

He glanced at me. “Kid’s a retard.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

His eyes narrowed just a fraction, then he went back to staring into space. “He was a wannabe-attached himself to whoever didn’t shake him loose.”

“Like you.”

“What do you care who he hung out with?”

I ignored the question. “You may be right-we think he’s a little simpleminded, too. Prone to doing what he’s told, even when it gets him in trouble.”

“No shit?” But he didn’t sound surprised.

“You know anyone who used him that way?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t pay attention. He sucked up to me a lot, but it just bugged me.”

“So that’s what people saw when you two were together? Him sucking up and you resisting?”

He smiled. “Okay. It wasn’t that bad. I didn’t know he was a psycho, though. I would’ve told him to fuck off if I’d known he was nuts. I mean, hell, he could’ve whacked me.”

“He did come at you once. What did you do to piss him off so much?”

He seemed to consider that for a moment. “Don’t know. I don’t even remember it.”

“You know Brenda Croteau?”

He took the change of topic in stride without comment. “Sure. Everybody did-one way or the other.”

“Which way was it for you?”

He leered. “Oh, no. I wasn’t going to stick it in that honey pot. She was just a barfly to me, and an ugly one to boot-that’s it. Did the autopsy show she had AIDS? I bet she did.”

“How ’bout Owen?”

“I didn’t think he knew her-guess I got that wrong, huh?”

“Interesting. You two were glued at the hip. He knows her well enough to kill her, and you don’t think they were even acquainted.”

He equivocated again. “Well-acquainted-sure, they were probably that. This is a popular place. All sorts of people see each other.”

“What was the scuttlebutt when he killed her?”

“Not much. It’s a weird world. Lot of bad shit happens.”

I slid a document across the table at him. “Got something for you.”

He picked it up as though it were a flyer stuck under his windshield wiper and gave it a cursory glance. His eyebrows knitted slowly. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s a court order for a sample of your blood.”

“Why do you want my blood?”

“You can have it drawn at the hospital within the time frame stated in there. Or if you want, I can drive you there right now-get it over with.”

“I got to do this?”

“So says the judge.”

For the first time, he seemed at a loss for words. He stared at the evidence order before asking, “What’s my blood going to tell you?”

“Your DNA, for one thing, plus all the information a urine sample does.”

He laughed. “Oh, shit. I live to pee in a cup. Seems like that’s all I do for you people. I can tell you now, you aren’t going to find any drugs. No way I’m going to fuck up my parole doing that shit.”

I slid out of the booth and stood up. “Then you got nothing to worry about.”

He hesitated, obviously weighing his options. “What about DNA? They use that like fingerprints, right? For rapists and whatever?”

“Yeah. You leave a little of it behind and we find it, you might as well have left your driver’s license.”

Walter’s confidence seemed to return. He actually laughed as he also got to his feet. “Just like a fingerprint. That’s pretty cool. Lead the way.”

I took him to my car and we drove to the hospital at the other end of Canal Street, less than a mile away.

“So why me?” he asked on the way.

“You knew Owen, Brenda. You been a bad boy in the past. You’re actually pretty high on our list of suspects.”

“Suspects of what? Owen whacked her.”

“He knifed her. We don’t think he killed her.”

He was quiet for a while, watching the scenery go by. The snowbanks hadn’t been replenished for several weeks. Winter was winding down, and its coat was shabby, tattered, and stained.

“I never heard she was raped.”

I liked that his brain was circling this problem, trying to sort it out.

“She wasn’t.”

Another patch of silent thinking. “Then why collect DNA?”

“Oh. There was a ton of blood. Her head was almost cut off-by a hunting knife-probably one with a double edge, curved at the tip like a Bowie knife.”

He turned away from the view to stare at me. “How could you know that?”

This time I laughed, pulling into the hospital parking lot. “Don’t you watch TV? They don’t make that stuff up. Those lab guys are incredible. Here we are.”

I escorted him to the ER, got him hooked up to a nurse, who quickly and efficiently sat him down in one of the examination rooms, tied off his upper arm, swabbed the inside of his elbow, and extracted a tube of bright red blood-all in a matter of minutes. Throughout, I could almost see the wheels turning in Walter’s head as he tried to calculate what he’d just given up.

Finally, rolling his sleeve down over a Band-Aid and putting his parka back on, he asked, “So they’re going to compare my blood with what they found at Brenda’s?”

“Yeah, among other things. You want a ride back downtown?”

He paused in the lobby. “What other things?”

“Well, DNA’s funny that way. It’s not just in blood or semen. It’s almost everywhere in the body. It’s what makes up our cells.” I held up my fingertip. “There’s DNA in every bit of skin, for example-in the roots of each hair. And you know how much they fall out-hundreds of them every day, supposedly.”

Unconsciously, his hand snuck up and touched the side of his head. He jerked it away as if he’d found it trespassing.

“But it’s not really hair we’re interested in,” I continued casually. “Turns out there was a small sample of skin under one of Brenda’s nails-we think where she scratched the man who really killed her. That’s what we’re hoping this’ll match.” I patted the pocket where I’d placed Walter’s vial of blood.

He stared at me, and then down to the pocket, his lips slowly compressing.

“Give you a lift back?” I offered again.

I could barely hear his voice, it was so low. “I’ll walk.”

I was watching TV when Gail got in that night, not too late. I heard her dump her briefcase in the kitchen, as usual, and kick off her shoes in exchange for the slippers she kept by the back door.

“Hot water’s on,” I shouted and heard her preparing one of the curious-smelling concoctions she called tea.

A few minutes later, she entered the living room balancing a steaming mug and a plate of cookies on a tray. I cleared the coffee table in front of the couch.

“My kind of hors d’oeuvres,” I said, grabbing one of the chocolate chips. “How was your day?”

“Pretty good,” she said noncommittally. “What’re you watching?”

I hit the mute button and reduced two people to reading lips over a greasy pan and a dishwasher. “The news. Just finished. I was trying to make up my mind to either veg out or make some dinner. I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

She laid her head back against the cushions. “I know. And I have a pizza being delivered. So you’re off the hook. What did the news say?”

“Hot topic’s our esteemed speaker, Mark Mullen, who’s doing what everyone thought he would. Now that the Reynolds Bill is in his hands-which he never refers to by name-there’s a whole bunch of hemming and hawing going on. The clip they showed had him touting the virtues of all us heroes in blue, and how the worst thing we can do to this precious resource we call Vermont is to overreact to an admittedly egregious situation, et cetera, et cetera. I smell some wicked deal-making in the air.”

Gail sipped her tea. “There will be that. He has to pay lip service to the popular support that came out of those town meetings, while he replaces Reynolds’s name with his own as the author of a solution.” She sighed. “Pretty predictable. Even if he weren’t competing with Reynolds for governor, he’d still be inclined to gut the bill and start over. It’s his nature. He’s been in the House for more years than anyone can remember, cutting deals, bringing opposites together, making or breaking friends and enemies-and in the process completely forgetting that sometimes you don’t need to do all that crap. Sometimes a situation is so simple and obvious that it’s worth your while not to mess with it.”

“Occam’s Razor,” I muttered, remembering Reynolds’s words in a different context.

“Exactly. But it ain’t going to happen, ’cause even if it weren’t his nature, Mullen does want the governorship. The point’s moot.”

“So what’s he going to do?” I asked.

She munched on a cookie. “He can’t bury it in committee or kill it legislatively. It’s too popular. Somehow or other, he’s got to make it his own. How is beyond me. He’s been putting in some late hours with his cronies, though. How did it go with Walter Freund?”

“I think we shook him. He associated DNA with semen only, and maybe blood. I let slip at the end that it works with tissue also, and that we had a sample from under Brenda’s nail. When I left him, he was looking like he wanted to throw up. I also described the kind of knife we found in his bag as the murder weapon. That caught his interest.”

“Good,” she said as the doorbell rang.

We rose to take in the pizza, pour drinks, break out a bag of chips, and bring everything back to the living room, which was still being entertained by a silent television set.

“Things back to normal between you and Jack?” I asked before taking a large bite.

“Pretty much.”

“Is something up?” I asked with my mouth full, struck by her distracted tone.

She hadn’t begun eating yet and now looked at me squarely, as if bracing for a shock. “I got a job offer today-from Vermont StayGreen. They want me as part of their legal counsel.”

My chewing slowed down. Vermont StayGreen was the state’s biggest environmental group. A powerful combination of gatekeeper and lobbyist organization, it appealed to all sorts of nature lovers, from those wandering the hills with sandals and a guidebook to the more combative, who liked bringing the battle to the Legislature’s door. They published books, periodicals, and pamphlets, organized grass-roots campaigns against everything from gas pipelines and condo developments to snowmaking ponds and nuclear energy-and, to be fair, in support of forest management, nature trails, municipal conservation projects, and a raft of other things-and had political and financial connections as far-flung and diverse as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Given Vermont’s cuddly image in the national consciousness, they had no trouble attracting a steady stream of backers.

They were, despite their detractors, a major political force in the state.

They were also headquartered in Montpelier.

I swallowed what I had in my mouth half-eaten, sensing at last that all the issues Gail and I had been circling lately were about to be addressed, if in an unexpected way. “That’s quite an offer. What’s it entail?”

“Be part of their legal staff. Maybe do some lobbying. A lot of travel.” She smiled halfheartedly. “Not to the Grand Canyon or anything. More like Washington and New York and places like that. Still, it’s a pretty big deal.”

I wiped my fingers on a napkin and sat back, my appetite gone. “You must be feeling on top of the world.”

“It is flattering. I didn’t commit myself one way or the other, though. There’re a lot of things to consider.”

There was an awkward silence. The people on the screen yammered soundlessly on, looking like the chorus of voices in my brain-and just as effective.

“The timing’s not bad,” Gail said. “I mean, not overall. I have to see this case through, of course. I did tell them that, and they said they’d taken that for granted. But I can’t deny, the SA job hasn’t worked out the way I’d hoped.”

“Maybe you should run against Derby,” I suggested lamely, irritated with myself that now that the moment had come, I didn’t know what to say. While she was talking about a job, I kept thinking of us, although I knew that with time, we’d end up on the same page.

She laughed politely and played out the game. “Yeah, right. No-he’s a little frazzled right now, but only because he’s nervous about being reelected. He’s so much better than Dunn was, it isn’t funny, but he’s the last to realize it. He’ll win in a landslide, and things’ll settle down. I bet in the long run he’ll become one of the best SAs this state’s ever had.”

She thought a moment before adding, “He’s not the problem-it’s me. I think I got into this line of work for the wrong reasons. I’m not designed for it-all the God-like manipulations. It bothers me to cut a deal to avoid the cost of a trial, or to dismiss one person’s crime so we can go after someone else. I understand the rationale behind it. But it doesn’t feel right. And I’m not sure it does anything for the victims.

“And there’s a glee to it that bothers me, too,” she continued, making me realize how heavy a burden she’d been carrying all this time. “We talk about nailing people or hanging them out to dry, like they were rabid animals. It reminded me of why I stopped coming to police department picnics years ago-I hated hearing the people you work with reducing the world to scumbags and losers and bringing down bad guys. It sounded like a bunch of nasty kids playing with lethal toys. Part of the reason I became a prosecutor was that I thought I’d be standing above all that, helping put things back on an even keel by looking at them in a compassionate, measured way.”

She stopped to smile, presumably embarrassed by her own naïveté.

I couldn’t argue against her. I’d never heard any prosecutor speak with that kind of idealism. In fact, it was usually disparaged as missing the whole point of the job.

“Not very practical,” she concluded, as if reading my thoughts. “Derby’s made that pretty clear. I’m sure he kicks himself nightly for hiring me.”

“I doubt it,” I said supportively. “He probably sees the same potential in you that you see in him.”

She stared out the window without comment.

“Are you going to take StayGreen’s offer?” I asked.

“It’s probably the right thing to do,” she conceded. “It’s taken me a long time to get my feet back under me. I know going to law school and joining the SA’s office were mostly in reaction to the rape. I wanted to get even, I wanted to stop hurting, to become sane again. I even wanted to do something that would bring me closer to you-to what you did. I was feeling so disconnected from the world around me.”

She looked at me again. “But that’s been changing. I’ve begun to care again about the things that interested me before-politics, the environment, people’s welfare-and it’s made me feel a little trapped by some of the decisions I made to survive in the short run.”

We were at that watershed point again, but now I finally understood what had brought her there. “Like our living together.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, and as I said it, I took her hand in mine. “To be honest, it was always a little weird having you in the SA’s office, knowing you like I do. It was fun talking shop, and I was incredibly proud of everything you did. But deep inside, I kept asking myself why you were doing it-and when it might wear off. Just like this arrangement.” I waved my other hand toward the ceiling.

She sat there, seemingly unable to speak.

“It’s been a healing process for both of us,” I continued, feeling strangely at ease, “and with this StayGreen offer, it just brings us back full circle-the hippie and the cop. The Velveeta-man and the granola-head. The couple nobody can cook for, or explain to their friends. Let’s face it, we’ve been working against nature lately-way too conventional.”

She laughed, if only feebly. “God, it feels good to get it out.”

I kissed the side of her head, the smell of her hair so familiar.

“You know,” she said, snuggling closer, “if I do take this job, it would probably mean spending most of my time in Montpelier, at least to begin with. I asked them about working from down here later, what with computers and all. They said that would be fine when the Legislature’s out-like having a branch office.”

She tilted her head back to look at me. “A while ago, you said that the reason we worked so well together was that we gave each other lots of space. You want to try turning the clock back a little-live apart like we used to, and see if we can’t sort this out? I want this new job to be a part of making life normal again-but I want us there, too.”

I hesitated, wondering how much we should tackle at one time.

But she seemed so much like her old self again. “Since we’re laying our cards on the table, I gotta admit, I have sort of missed having a place of my own.”

She gave me a long kiss and then said, “I know. And I know this house was never really a home for you. But I’m going to hang on to it. Maybe you’ll like it better as a place to visit.”

I let out a long, bottled-up sigh, stretched out on the couch alongside her, and hit the off button on the TV remote, plunging the room into darkness.

The pizza would taste just as good cold.