Finding Amy (8 page)

I can hear Diane's voice through the tunnel of crime scenes. An intercom page breaks through the commotion in my head and the quiet murmur of Diane's speech. It's Sergeant Joyce. I call 8526. “Yeah?”

“Listen, we got a guy hanging in a basement up on the hill, looks like a suicide but I'll let you know. The kids found him so it's a pretty bad situation. Fagone is there, so the scene is all set. But get this …”

I try to mask my feelings to spare Diane any more grief as I press the receiver into my ear. “It's the same house where that poor Newcomb girl was murdered and the boyfriend shot himself after, out back. Remember? Weird, huh?”

Kelly Newcomb was the daughter of a Portland firefighter, a great, jovial guy who died soon after in my local gym of a heart attack. I saw him a day before he died. Another sad story.

“Oh, and Joe?” Tommy continues. “The chief wants to see you about that last press conference … he was pissed.”

“Oh, great. Thanks, Tom. Keep me posted.”

Don and Diane hold hands and I see the strain between them. Diane talks more about Amy and the spiritual connections she feels. I explain that we are searching everywhere and are focusing on one or two individuals. Inside I really know who we're looking at. I know he's responsible. We're working so hard to get him—often right through the night.

I tell Diane I may call Vicki Monroe, the clairvoyant. We speak about our own spirituality and life, and death, and life after death. I know it's true. I've seen enough people die and enough death to become spiritually connected. Cops usually go one way or the other regarding mortality and death—either spiritual or cynical and fatalistic.

I see my brother's swollen head after his car accident. Is Amy's head swollen? I think—what might have happened? Diane's voice comes at me through the tunnel. “I feel her presence trying to guide me. We were so close. I truly feel her.”

Again the phone rings. The building page blares. We rise and I shake Don's hand. I hug Diane and I tell them we are working very hard to find her daughter. “I know. I know,” she says as she glides out of my office.

It's true we do notifications all the time, but if they were all like this, no one could do the job.

There's no time to process it, to feel it. The fact that we've got a big case doesn't stem the normal flow of work. As I walk them out, Sergeant Jones catches my eye. Then Sergeant Coffin. The bureau is buzzing with detectives on phones, people being escorted to interview rooms, the chatter of dozens of cases, Jones grabs me and asks to talk.

“Make it quick, Mike. The chief wants me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Look, Lieutenant, we've got two burglars in jail waiting for arraignment and we can't find the report from the officers last night and the computer system is down…. I got a search warrant going over on Brighton Avenue and I'm down two guys because of this jerk's interview in the other room.”

We move it into the office for privacy and Sergeant Coffin comes with us. We start with all the problems of the day and it's only 1015. On the video monitor behind me, I hear Coons and Teceno talking to a pedophile, his low voice explaining how he had anal intercourse with a nine-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy like it was a normal conversation. God, I can't believe he's saying it like it's okay. But we've heard it many times before. I tune it out, getting back to Jones and Coffin with a bunch of instructions.

“Get patrol out to Brighton and make sure that thing is secure. When I get back from the chief, I'll get on the computer thing with Deputy Chief Burton. Bruce, make sure that shithead goes by the numbers with Coons.”

Gotta see the chief. I move through the desks, the paper, the phones. “Hey, Lieutenant, you going to the gym tonight? Looks like you need it,” hollers Detective John Dumas.

“Don't push me now, Clownie.”

I'm in the corridor door to Chief Chitwood's office. It's like going before the Wizard of Oz and I'm the Cowardly Lion. I pause to collect myself, then open quickly. He's down the hall by the personnel office. A man with amazing energy. Always moving. Now he's coming toward me like a train.

“Joe! You're not the damned spokesperson for the department. Got it? Everything on the St. Laurent case goes through me from now on.”

I try to interject. “Chief, I thought you were okay with it. I believed …”

“Joe!”

I know he's really mad when his ears are hot red and the spit starts coming out the corners of his mouth. No sense in arguing. “Okay, Chief. It will never happen again.”

He moves back to his office and I sneak back into the Detective Bureau. My pager goes off again. It's Tom out at the death scene. The bureau's hopping. The city's hopping. It's only 1100.

Detectives went on with the detailed work of checking Gorman's story. On Thursday, Young and Detective Scott Dunham, one of the department's computer forensics experts, went to 230 Brighton Avenue and met with Jason Cook. In order to establish more exactly the time Gorman had returned to the apartment on Sunday morning, Cook agreed to allow them to search his computer for the e-mail message he had sent to his aunt at the time Gorman arrived.

Detective Dunham, Cook, and Gorman all attempted to find the message but there was no such message on the computer. Cook said he had a program that automatically erased e-mails a few days after they were sent. He was unable to explain how other e-mails, sent between October 1 and October 17, were still present on the computer.

Young obtained the name and address of Cook's aunt in Hollywood, Florida, and asked the Hollywood police homicide unit for assistance in locating the aunt. Hollywood police Detective Phil Reingard reported that he had contacted Cook's aunt, had explained the circumstances, and together they had examined her computer for e-mail between October 18 and October 21. There were no messages from Jason Cook. Cook's aunt said she'd received no messages from him for some time.

Young then spoke with Jamie Baillargeon, Gorman's ex-girlfriend, one of three persons Gorman said he might have phoned on Sunday morning. Baillargeon confirmed she had not received a call from Gorman between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 21, although she had subsequently spoken with Gorman about Amy St. Laurent. Detectives already knew he hadn't called Matt Despins. When they finally tracked down Kermit Beaulieu, the third possibility Gorman had named, they established that Gorman hadn't called him between 2:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. but might have called earlier, asking for information about finding a cheap motel room.

Police talked to bouncers and bartenders at the Pavilion, using information gleaned from them to begin tracking down witnesses who had been present on Saturday night. Detectives sat outside the Pavilion at closing time on the nights it was open (Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday), speaking with patrons as they left to locate those who might have been in the street early that Sunday morning. Tracking witnesses this way led them to people as far away as Boston and Burlington, Vermont.

Amy's mother, unable to sit on her hands and wait for news while her daughter was missing, also visited the Pavilion the next several nights that it was open, hoping to locate people who had seen her daughter or who might have information about her disappearance.

Detectives collected reports from police on the late out shift in the Old Port, including a plainclothes liquor enforcement officer who had been in the area around the Pavilion at the time Amy St. Laurent was allegedly dropped off. The officer's presence was part of a joint effort with the Pavilion's owners to enforce a new security plan to quickly clear the sidewalk and street to prevent chronic Old Port problems such as fights and intoxicated people in the road. She reported that the streets and sidewalks had been nearly clear, that few people had been around the Pavilion, and that anyone walking down the street would have been clearly visible. The officer had not seen Gorman, Gorman's car, or Amy.

Since getting the first call about Amy on Monday night, Young and the other detectives had been working virtually nonstop. Working the phones, interviewing, writing reports, briefing the brass. Searching. Following up on phone tips—a strange-acting neighbor here, someone digging on the beach there, tips about a gang murder in another city, a body found on a beach in Massachusetts. Detectives had been meeting regularly to share their collected information. They would throw it up on the dryboard and see what avenues needed pursuing, what stories didn't mesh, decide which witnesses needed to be reinterviewed, what names witnesses had given that needed to be followed up, and in what order.

When they weren't doing all that, they were sorting through the piles of messages, or the jammed voice mail. So-and-so says he doesn't know anything, but his friend such-and-such knew Gorman and he might. They were working against the fundamental detective's clock that says the first few hours, the first few days, are vitally important because of how quickly memories fade, stories get concocted, evidence gets destroyed.

At the same time, they were working with a second fundamental rule, which told them to take as much time as they needed to get things right the first time. Interviews with important witnesses had to be recorded and took as long as necessary to get through the stories. It was also standard investigative protocol for these interviews to be observed by a second detective who would be able to concentrate on things the interviewing detective might miss or switch with the interviewer if the chemistry wasn't right. That meant important interviews often tied up two detectives.

In the center of the case, Danny Young, the primary detective, needed to have many different abilities. The ability to work in a calm and focused way in the chaos of the Detective Bureau, breaking down the investigation into pieces and parceling them out to other detectives. The ability to take in massive amounts of scattered information, process it, and connect seemingly disparate dots. The ability to organize the paperwork that was piling up at an incredible rate. The ability to constantly reprioritize and focus on a particular thread of the investigation. Most of all, the wisdom and experience to keep thinking through the stories and details and putting them all together.

The primary detective is the “funnel” that everything comes through. By SOP, every interview must be reduced to writing, including times, dates, names, addresses, and dates of birth. All the information collected by anyone goes to the primary, is cross-referenced, and goes into a notebook on the primary's desk. All internal reports and all supplemental reports from other cops, evidence technicians, the medical examiner, and so on, are collected by the primary and signed off on by the supervisor, who is ultimately responsible for their content and for ensuring that SOPs are followed. The primary is the person who will ultimately testify in court. To ensure continuity and security of the information, there will be many pieces only the primary and the supervisor will know.

An investigation is a kind of controlled chaos. The control that was needed in order to free Danny Young to concentrate on the St. Laurent case came from Sergeant Joyce. Joyce was very comfortable and adept at handling all the confusion of an intense investigation in the midst of the Detective Bureau's routine, ongoing chaos, where everything was always time sensitive and an emergency. Situations that made others cringe made him smile.

In the police hierarchy, Lieutenant Loughlin would say, “Tommy, you run it and tell me what you need,” and then Joyce would farm out the jobs. As the eighteen-hour days went on, though, Loughlin worried that Danny Young was trying to do too much on his own. He and Sergeant Joyce argued about it.

“Tom, he's doing too much.”

“He's fine. Joe. Fine.”

“Dammit, Tom, he's not fine. You're working him like a mule. Even your other people can see it. His phone never stops. He's got a constant stream of interviews and people. He's been called in on other shit.”

“I'm watching it, Joe. Alright! What am I supposed to do? Thorpe and Rybeck have two death scenes going. Dumas and Krier the Asian gang interviews. All the past cases and those two stabbings. A trial next week …” He goes on.

I hold up my hand for him to stop. “It's about control, alright. You have to control everything. I know that you're good. I believe in you, but you're pushing him too hard. You know what I want. Get it done. I've got too many other distractions and issues. I have to depend on you, Tom. Get it done.”

Tom placates me and includes others in peripheral work, but it does help Dan.

It's 1100. Dan comes into my office and tells me he's fine. He can do it. He updates me. Fascinates me. We compare notes. He's fielded twenty-two messages over the morning. I've had seventeen and everyone wants answers now.

“Jeez, Dan, I wish I could join you on police work. This admin stuff is bullshit.”

Danny adjusts his belt. “Hey, you're losing weight,” I say. “This might be good for you after all.”

The case is starting to boil over with information and legal concerns. Posturing. Egos. Media. Family. Anxious queries from the public. And we've got all these other cases.

Amy St. Laurent had been missing almost a week. Despite a full-court press, police still had no idea where she was or what had happened to her. No witnesses. No physical evidence. No crime scene. Just a void where a warm and vibrant woman had been and an increasingly disturbing picture emerging of their prime suspect.

A
my St. Laurent disappeared in late October, just as the glorious crescendo of a Maine fall was fading away. It was a fall most public safety personnel missed. Now Halloween loomed, and November. The days were getting colder, shorter, and darker, and no one had time to notice. The detectives working on the case felt the weight of those days. There was always more to do, and the urgency of the case didn't diminish.

By the end of that first week, their belief that Amy St. Laurent had been murdered was reinforced by what they were learning about Russ Gorman, the last person known to have been with Amy on the night she disappeared. Long before FBI specialists were writing books about criminal profiling, detectives were doing their own sort of profiling. Not the type made famous by FBI agents trying to identify the unknown subject, or UNSUB; police were building profiles of known suspects. In the case of Amy St. Laurent, they had studied the victim so that they could understand who she was and predict how she would have behaved; now they had to fill in the other side of the equation.

The picture they'd built of Amy St. Laurent told them that she was a thoughtful and responsible young woman who was that rare thing in the police officer's daily cavalcade of life's underbelly, a truly innocent victim. The picture they were building of Gorman told them he was exactly the sort of guy who would glibly try to charm a girl when it was sex and not a relationship he had in mind, then react with violence when she resisted.

Gorman's criminal record and interviews with his friends revealed a twenty-one-year-old man who lacked empathy, had an extremely negative attitude toward women, had demonstrated a propensity toward violence, and had shown a willingness to exploit anyone to satisfy his needs.

Gorman was born in Alabama to young parents who divorced when he was one and wrangled about his custody until he was six. Although provisions were made for each parent to have partial custody of the boy, disputes, lack of cooperation, and new relationships kept the arrangement from working. Eventually his father moved away and later started another family, ending most contact with his son. His mother had another child and began drifting in and out of Gorman's life, often leaving him behind in the custody of his grandparents.

Gorman was unsuccessful in school, eventually repeating first and fourth grades, ending up at age fifteen in seventh grade. He was diagnosed as hyperactive and Ritalin was prescribed, but he refused to take it. He frequently refused to go to school in Delray Beach, Florida, because of gang activity there, dropping out altogether after the seventh grade. During his teenage years, he was shuttled back and forth between his mother, Tammy Westbrook, and his paternal grandmother, Dot Gorman, living part of the time in Troy, Alabama, and part of the time in Florida.

Between thirteen and eighteen, he amassed a significant juvenile record in both states. From 1993 to 1998, Gorman's record showed twenty-four incidents in which the Troy police were involved, including auto theft, robbery (in one case befriending an eighty-one-year-old man and then stealing his few valuable possessions), breaking and entering, trespassing, punching a teacher in the head, and making phone calls of a sexual nature to a thirteen-year-old girl. In many instances, he served as apprentice to his uncle, Danny Gorman, already a convicted criminal. At one point, he served thirty-nine days in the city jail for theft. He began abusing drugs and alcohol early in his teens. Along with his criminal activity, Troy police reported that Gorman was known for his terrible temper when he'd been drinking.

Gorman's record in Florida was no better. In 1994, at fifteen, he attacked his mother after he had broken into a neighbor's house and stolen guns, frightening her and convincing her that she could no longer handle him. She told police that he refused to obey her, swore at her, punched holes in the walls, and wouldn't attend school. A CHINS (Child in Need of Supervision) petition was filed, and Gorman was taken into state mental health guardianship.

A psychiatric evaluation determined that Gorman was depressed and suffering from oppositional defiant disorder, the old-fashioned term for which is “stubborn child.” Psychiatrists found that Gorman's judgment and impulse control were poor and that he lacked insight into the effects of his actions on others.

Gorman spent time in an institution and was prescribed psychoactive drugs for his depression. As with the Ritalin, when he was out of an institutional setting, he would not take his medication. Eventually, as a result of his behavior, he was placed on probation until his eighteenth birthday. His grandparents in Alabama petitioned for guardianship and then changed their minds, but Gorman did end up living with his grandmother in Troy. When he was eighteen and living with his mother, he again attacked and punched her.

Witnesses described Gorman's terrible relationship with his mother. Matt Despins said, of Gorman, “He's not a grounded guy with a family behind him.” Despins told investigators that Gorman absolutely despised his mother, adding, “I've seen some of the stuff she says to him. She deserves every bit of hate that he gives to her.” An ex-girlfriend told them that his mother was very hateful, often not wanting him. Gorman and his mother would have screaming arguments; often, she would throw him out of the house only to take him back a short time later.

During one of the periods when he was living in Florida, Gorman became involved with a woman named Kathleen Ferguson, with whom he had a daughter when Ferguson was seventeen. For a time, they lived together with their child, but the relationship failed, in part because of Gorman's negative attitude toward women and his treatment of Ms. Ferguson, which included hitting and punching her while she was pregnant. Child support was ordered but Gorman never complied, although he always managed to find money for drinking with his friends or for drugs.

Approximately eighteen months before Amy St. Laurent's disappearance, he had come to Maine to join his mother, Tammy Westbrook, and her boyfriend, Rick Deveau, who had moved to Scarborough with her teenaged daughter and Westbrook and Deveau's two young children to live in a house belonging to Deveau's mother. In Maine, Gorman held numerous menial jobs.

In September of 2000, he was working at Bill Dodge's auto dealership, cleaning and prepping used cars for resale, when he approached a fellow worker asking if the man wanted to buy some high-end car stereo equipment he'd stolen from a customer's car that had been left for service. His coworker reported Gorman's offer to the employer, the employer went to the police, and once again Gorman was convicted of theft.

At the time Amy St. Laurent disappeared, he was still on probation for that crime. He was later arrested for leaving the scene of an accident. Shortly before police interviewed him in connection with Amy St. Laurent's disappearance, he was arrested for operating after his license had been suspended and illegally attaching license plates and sentenced to twelve days in jail. The process was under way to suspend or revoke his driver's license.

Gorman's unstable temper quickly showed itself in Maine, where he was often involved in fights. A witness described Gorman at a party suddenly punching someone in the head and finding it amusing. In any group he was the loudmouth. The cocky, confident one. He was an adept manipulator and a first-class moocher, highly skilled at getting other people to provide him with housing, rides, and drinks.

Despite his criminal record and his unstable personality, Gorman was a kind of hero to many of his slacker friends and acquaintances in the Old Port because of his incredible facility for picking up and bedding women. “Quality women,” in the words of one friend. At the time he crossed paths with Amy St. Laurent, Gorman, who prided himself on keeping score, bragged that he had slept with over ninety women even though, for much of the time, he had had one or another steady girlfriend.

Often he would go to the Old Port with his friend Ryan Campbell. The two would pick up girls, take them to Campbell's apartment in his parents' house, and have sex with them. On the night Gorman met Amy St. Laurent, however, Campbell was away on an overnight cruise on the
Scotia Prince
, the ferry from Portland to Nova Scotia, with his family. Although there was some suggestion that Campbell's friends came and went rather freely at his parents' house, Campbell's father, who had not gone on the trip, might have been home, making it difficult for Gorman to take a woman there for sex.

Gorman was so successful, sexually speaking, that some of his friends told detectives they believed he was using drugs as well as alcohol to ensure his luck with the ladies. Gorman was reported to be a big dealer in the popular club drug Ecstasy, which he sometimes exchanged for sexual favors. But there also appeared to be girls who had no memory of what had happened when they were with Gorman. Amy St. Laurent's behavior in leaving with Gorman was sufficiently uncharacteristic that detectives joined his friends in speculating that a date rape drug such as GHB (gamma hydroxybutyric acid), Rohypnol (flunitrazepam), or Ketamine (ketamine hydrochloride) might have been used.

As Gorman's story crumbled under police scrutiny and the details of his character began to be known, Danny Young determined that it was important for them to search Gorman's car. He reasoned that it was highly probable that some part of the crime against Amy St. Laurent had occurred in the car—a controlled environment where Gorman could be sure of having his victim confined. If something had happened in the car, evidence might still be recovered that would give them information about what had happened and possibly bring them a step closer to an arrest.

Even though they knew that Gorman had cleaned his car (behavior that only confirmed their suspicions something might be found there), they also knew that evidence could be tenacious and might still be discovered using forensic investigative techniques. A good evidence technician—and Chris Stearns and Kevin MacDonald were very good—might still find something.
¹
There might also be dirt, debris, or vegetation stuck to the underside of the car that might lead them to her body. Since Gorman had refused to consent to a search of the car, such a search could be conducted only if a judge could be persuaded to grant them a warrant.

Here Young ran up against the hard reality of his case. In a normal suspicious-death case, you have a body. Police get a call. Go to the scene. Determine from the information at the scene whether the event looks like a homicide or is suspicious enough to warrant further scrutiny. If so, they proceed to investigate with a medical examiner. But the Portland police had no evidence that a crime had been committed other than their strong suspicions based on their knowledge of criminal behavior and the fact that there was no other reasonable explanation for Amy St. Laurent's disappearance.

In Maine, all homicides are prosecuted by the attorney general's office. Young had already been in contact with Deputy Attorney General William (Bill) Stokes with questions about the progress of the case. It was usual for prosecuting attorneys to be involved from the very earliest stages of a homicide; indeed, prosecuting attorneys often began their involvement in cases at the crime scene. Now Young asked Stokes about the possibility of getting a warrant to search Gorman's car.

The response Young got wasn't encouraging. Bill Stokes informed him that he knew of no prior case in the state of Maine where a judge had granted a search warrant when there was no body or other evidence of a crime. Stokes then told Young he had nothing to lose by trying.

So Danny Young tried. Young had written at least fifty affidavits in his career and was well schooled in how to write one that wouldn't get flipped and lose them their evidence at trial. Now he gathered together the facts he and other detectives had amassed from their interviews and drafted a twenty-page affidavit, which he submitted to Stokes for review. Following his summary of the facts then known, Young stated:

As previously set forth in this affidavit I believe there are reasonable grounds that probable cause exists that Amy St. Laurent is deceased and the victim of a homicide. The last time Amy St. Laurent is accounted for, based on Jeffrey Gorman's own statements … is in the vehicle of Jeffrey Gorman. There is no evidence at this time that anyone sees Amy St. Laurent after she is in Gorman's vehicle
²
… [I]n my training and experience as a homicide detective with the Portland Police Department, I believe that any evidence in the crime of homicide can be readily destroyed or lost if a substantial amount of time elapses between the time of the event and the crime scene search … [I]n homicides such as this, often forcibly removed hairs, blood, fibers, bloody clothing or material, semen and other body fluids are found even after the scene has been cleaned.

A week after Amy St. Laurent disappeared, on Saturday, October 27, at 3:00 p.m., a state court judge, persuaded by Young's compelling affidavit, signed a search warrant authorizing the seizure of Gorman's 1991 red Pontiac Grand Am for the purpose of conducting a search of the vehicle. Gorman's car, which was found parked in the Old Port, was towed to police headquarters at 109 Middle Street, where evidence technicians Chris Stearns and Kevin MacDonald would spend twenty-five hours processing the vehicle.

The garage door at 109, a mechanical monster, chugs and screeches, then buckles and moves up slowly. My eyes are burning as the light slashes slowly across the cement floor of the underground garage. Only two calls overnight on different scenes. Not bad compared to some nights.

Still, I'm light-headed and rubbing my eyes as the monster rolls up. A kind of friendly monster today, I think, moving inside, but I don't know why. Some days, this same machine would greet me in the morning and churn my stomach for what lay ahead. Others, it couldn't move fast enough.

The light shoots across the cement. To my right, I see the parked cars of the command staff. The chief is in already. My pager spits my symphony music, summoning me to morning staff meeting as I move my Taurus into my slot. But wait … something's different there in the back … a car.