Scent of Evil

8

I paused at the building’s entrance, blinking away the bright sunlight and trying to reacclimate to the heat. I was wondering how many such brutal contrasts would eventually lead to pneumonia when I recognized Ted McDonald’s official, antenna-festooned WBRT car parked diagonally across the street. McDonald was just pulling his bulk out from behind the wheel, his eyes fixed on the upper windows of the building I’d just left. I recalled then seeing a small “ABC Investments” sign perched on the sill behind Arthur Clyde’s desk. That meant the cat was out of the bag-that either Brandt had held a press conference revealing Jardine’s name, or McDonald’s old-boy network had yielded him another golden nugget.

I was still standing in the shade of the doorway, I hoped unobtrusively. I waited until McDonald ducked back into his car to retrieve his recording gear, and then I cut north, away from him and toward the Paramount Theater.

My next planned move had been to visit Rose Woll at her job in the Vermont National Bank Building, the front entrance of which was directly beyond McDonald’s car. Now, dreading any encounter with the press, I thought a flanking maneuver was in order.

I strolled to the pedestrian crossing where High Street dead ends into Main, and waited for the traffic to stop. Leaning against the far side of the lamppost, I peered back at McDonald jaywalking in a beeline to Jardine’s office. I let out a sigh of disappointment.

From my current vantage point, it was a straight shot to the Dunkin’ Donuts on the opposite corner, which, given my sudden change of mood and my gastronomic proclivity, was an extremely inviting harbor. It was also a necessary one, as I saw it. I hadn’t eaten since the night before and, like Pavlov’s dog, I reacted with a jolt as soon as I saw the pink and orange sign. Sacrificing all to camouflage police business from the media, I ordered a coffee, a Bavarian creme, a double honey-dipped chocolate, and an orange juice. By the time I finished, I figured I’d have a clear shot at the bank’s rear entrance via the Harmony parking lot.

Even if there hadn’t been a press conference, I wasn’t too surprised McDonald had put the name to Jardine’s body. I sometimes thought both he and Katz had more connections inside the police department than I did. Any fact that became part of almost any document usually found its way into their hands sooner or later, regardless of the restraints put upon it, which is why Brandt had stressed we keep the Wolls’ involvement in all this to ourselves.

The irony was that most cops pride themselves on keeping their mouths shut. Among themselves, however-and the greater fraternity of deputy sheriffs, state policemen, state’s-attorney investigators, and prosecutors-they often felt free to talk confidential shop. It was the same age-old human impulse that had given “I’ve Got a Secret” high ratings for years. And given the sheer number of people that were finally involved in this grapevine, I was more often surprised when McDonald and his colleagues actually missed a story now and then.

The Harmony parking lot occupies the entire center of Brattleboro’s primary business block and is entered through a low, narrow, vaulted tunnel reminiscent of the entrance to a medieval castle. Inside, the encircling buildings form a near-solid courtyard-like wall. There’s an abrupt lessening of the hustle-bustle here; the strong, weathered, ugly backs of the buildings, the recently planted trees among the parking meter islands, and the presence of a café poised on the roof of a single-story outcropping all lend to the area a feeling of cloistered serenity.

From the parking lot, I cut a diagonal path to the bank’s back door. Rose Woll worked in customer relations, a small cluster of desks in the corner of the bank’s recently revamped lobby. There were few people needing help this morning, and all of them were at tellers’ windows, so Rose was sitting at her desk alone, staring at a computer display. I noticed as I approached that her hands were in her lap, idle, and that her eyes were vacant and unmoving. The computer might as well have been off.

“Rose?”

She jumped in her seat and looked at me, her face pale. “Lieutenant.”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course.” But a sudden trickle of tears down her face made a lie of it.

“Can we go somewhere to talk?”

She nodded without speaking or getting up. I gestured to a neighboring desk where one of her colleagues was watching us with keen interest, a sheaf of papers still clutched in her hands. “Can you cover for her for a while?”

“Of course. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No. I think we’ll be okay. She just needs a couple of minutes.”

I circled the desk and took Rose by the elbow. She got up and led the way to the back of the lobby and a short hallway lined with doors. Behind one of them was a small, empty cubicle with a counter and two chairs, presumably designed for pawing through safe-deposit boxes in privacy.

“Tell me about Charlie Jardine, Rose.”

She was wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, her body shuddering with her sobs. I didn’t know her well, she was one of many spouses I saw primarily at department picnics. But her emotional state encouraged an intimacy we’d never shared.

I reached over and took her hand away from her face. Her eyes focused on mine. “Did you love him?”

She left her hand in mine and gave an exaggerated shrug, her face contorted with sorrow. “I don’t know. I did, but he wasn’t… It never would have worked. We always knew that. But he…” She left the sentence unfinished.

“Did John tell you about his death?”

She nodded silently.

“Did he know about you two?”

She dropped my hand and wiped both her eyes then, shutting off the tears and struggling for composure. “He’s always known. We were all friends in high school.”

“John and he were close?” I was remembering Woll’s vague comments about Jardine the night before.

“I was the link. I dated them both.”

I was so used to these kinds of interviews evolving slowly that her immediate intimacy startled me. I changed gears to keep her going. “So they were really rivals.”

She shook her head emphatically. “They weren’t rivals. I just couldn’t decide. They were so different; I was the only thing they had in common.”

“Who pursued who in the long run? Did you really want Charlie and end up with John?” Even with my scant knowledge of the three, that would have seemed believable.

“That makes it sound so bad. I chose John. I love him very much. I knew he would be dependable, and that Charlie would always be chasing rainbows.”

A practical choice, I thought, and a surprising one, given Rose’s naïve appearance. Of course, sometimes appearances are cultivated to good purpose. “Sounds like he hit the pot of gold anyhow.”

“That was later. Back then, he was wild and funny and caring. A ‘reckless dreamer,’ I called him, but undependable.” She half smiled.

Her face had cleared somewhat, still stained with tears and flushed. She was no beauty, but she emanated a tangible sensuality with an open, innocent visage and a body given to suggestive fullness.

“You married John because he was safe.”

She took offense, but only slightly. “I married him because I loved him.”

I didn’t respond. Speaking to her was like watching for movement at the bottom of a stream, an effort thwarted by shadows, reflections, and self-doubt.

“And he was dependable,” she added.

“Why did John drop his scholarship and his chance to go to college?”

Her eyes welled up again and her lip quivered. She was emotional enough right now for any reminiscence to cause tears, no matter how trivial, so I had no idea what had set her off. I played it safe by silently taking her hand again and giving it an encouraging squeeze.

She returned the gesture and smiled sadly. “I was pregnant.” That was certainly not trivial, nor had it appeared in any paperwork I’d studied. “And you lost the baby later?”

Silently, wiping her cheeks again, she nodded.

“I’m sorry, Rose.” I let a moment pass for that to sink in, but I had to keep going. “So what happened between you and Charlie?”

“He understood. We kept in touch. We were always friends.”

All of which told me nothing. Her show of openness had been reduced to three telegraphic sentences, closed doors I had to get through by presuming I already knew what lay behind them. I felt now that my night’s reading was yielding benefits. “Until John began drinking.”

She became very still, looking at me in wonder, a prior acquaintance who now seemed to know a great deal about her. “He got so wrapped up in himself. I kept asking him what was bothering him, but he wouldn’t talk.”

“Did Charlie know about the drinking?”

“Not until I told him. After school, he and John never saw each other.”

“So when you said John knew about you and Charlie, you didn’t mean as lovers.”

“No… Well, yes, in high school… And just recently, but not in between.”

There was an awkward silence. I changed tack to safer water, keeping her reference to “recently” in the back of my mind. “What do you think made John hit the bottle? Work? Being a special officer instead of full-time?”

Still she looked distracted, too caught up in the intimacy of her troubles to want to share them, especially with me. “Being part-time… That was part of it.”

I racked my brain to come up with something else, remembering what I knew about John, thinking about what Rose had told me. I was casting on that water, trying to coax something to the surface. “And you were the other part?”

She sighed so deeply her body shuddered. “Yes.”

“Fights?”

She nodded.

“About what?”

Her eyes had strayed to the counter top and now remained fixed there, as if captivated by its cold, white, featureless surface. “Oh, you know…”

That was stretching things a bit, but I gave it another stab. “Married life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?”

“John is so good. So hard-working, forgiving, generous-”

I was getting the gist of it by now. “But boring.”

That stopped her cold.

“Did you begin your affair with Charlie before or after John began to drink?”

Her expression turned to a pout, reminding me how powerful self-delusions can become. “It wasn’t an affair. It was like I needed something only Charlie could give, like therapy.”

“Something to keep your marriage together.”

I hadn’t kept the skepticism from my voice-a calculated risk. She brought her face up sharply and glared at me for a moment. I remained impassive, as if this entire conversation were merely a rerun for me, the veteran of a thousand broken hearts. She finally acknowledged the point, albeit defiantly. “It helped me, and our marriage still works.”

“So when did John hit the bottle, before or after?” I wanted to establish cause and effect here, to make sure I had the sequence of events down accurately.

She seemed to think about that for a while, perhaps cautioned by the way I was forcing the issue. I was grateful she’d chosen to take this conversation more as a counseling session than as part of a murder investigation.

“Before. That was part of the reason I called Charlie; I was starting to climb the walls.”

“But now you think maybe your feelings for Charlie, and your dissatisfaction with John, helped turn John toward the bottle?”

Once again, she began crying. “It was like he was the only one whose problems counted. I thought if I could take care of my needs, then I could help John with his. I could be strong for him like he’d been for me before.”

“When you were pregnant, you mean?”

“Yes.”

I paused for a moment and then took another gamble. “Were you carrying Charlie’s baby?”

She froze, her eyes focused on some middle space. Her lips moved slightly, but a full fifteen seconds elapsed before she answered: “No, of course not.”

It was a straightforward denial, but I found the hesitation significant. I chipped away from another angle. “Didn’t things get a little complicated once Charlie began to do well? I mean, initially, you’d chosen John because you were in trouble and he was supportive and dependable. But it didn’t take long before you returned to Charlie for both support and sex. What happened when Charlie began looking more dependable than John?”

I wasn’t surprised she became angry. In fact, I wondered why she’d taken so long. “That never happened. Charlie was making a lot of money, that’s all. But he was seeing other women, too. John would never have done that. If I’d moved in with Charlie, it wouldn’t have lasted a month. John’s always been the rock in my life; I would never leave him-not for what Charlie had to offer.”

“Rose, how long did you think you could have your cake and eat it too?” I blurted unintentionally.

She looked stricken.

I played the card she’d dealt me earlier, partly to cover my outburst. “You said John had found out about you two just recently?”

She blinked a couple of times, her shoulders slumping. “Last night he told me he did. He’d never let on. He said he understood what I’d done with Charlie. I explained to him that my heart was all his, and that Charlie had just been something I’d needed to keep it all together, like a safety pin to close a coat.”

I thought, instead of the grenade pin I’d mentioned earlier to Billy Manierre. “How did John tell you about Jardine’s death?”

“He was very sweet, very gentle.”

Given John’s brooding character, I found that hard to believe. The choice, therefore, was either that she was lying, or kidding herself, or that John was being more manipulative than I thought. That idea turned me cold.

“Did he say how he’d found out about Charlie’s death?”

She looked surprised. “He said you’d told him, you and Billy. Didn’t you?”

“We talked. Were you and Charlie seeing each other up to the end?”

“Oh, no. After John turned his life around, it ended between Charlie and me. I started thinking that if he could do it, then so could I.”

A deadly quiet settled in my brain, her lie confirming my earlier suspicions. “I heard your voice on Charlie’s telephone tape machine last night, Rose.”

Her cheeks turned bright red, but she looked at me defiantly. “So? We were still friends.”

But from her yearning tone on the tape, I knew she was still hooked on Jardine for something; even if I paid her the benefit of the doubt and agreed that sex was no longer the attraction, that still left one obvious alternative.

“Rose, do you have any idea why Charlie was killed?”

She curled in on herself slightly, her hands back in her lap, her chin on her chest. The room was still for a while. Finally, she shook her head. Her voice was almost a whisper. “All night, I thought about that. He never hurt anybody.”

“When you took cocaine with him, did he ever say where he got it? That crowd plays pretty rough.”

It had been a ham-handed ploy, and it didn’t work. After what I thought was a telling pause-just enough to ruin what should have been innocent spontaneity-Rose gave me a wide-eyed look. “We didn’t do cocaine. Charlie never wanted anything to do with that stuff.”

My patience was wearing thin. She was naïve, true enough, but also selfish, clever, and manipulative, much like Charlie Jardine was beginning to sound. I decided I’d better quit before I gave myself away.

I got to my feet, the fuse-equipped secret Brandt and I shared at the forefront of my mind. If McDonald, Katz, and company got hold of this in its present nebulous, volatile form, there would be hell to pay. “I hope all this hasn’t been too much of a strain, Rose. Right now, we’re all trying to keep you and John out of this; you might want to keep a low profile.”

She stood and I opened the door for her. “Sure, Lieutenant. Thanks.”

In the hallway, a bank officer whom I knew, and whom I thought worked upstairs, came swinging out of the men’s room in front of us. “Hey, Joe, how’re you doing? Oh, oh.” He playfully checked Rose’s wrists for handcuffs. “You’re not busting our customer-relations people, are you? A simple nasty letter would have done the trick.”

Rose and I both handed him weak smiles. He waved and walked on.

So much for the low profile.