Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (11 page)

I nodded, half to myself, my eyes on Ron Klesczewski, who’d left his computer terminal to refill a cup of coffee at the urn near the door. I didn’t tell Sammie about my recent chat with Jason Ryan, or the fact that for some reason I’d believed him when he’d told me of his innocence.

“I suppose you heard Gail’s name is being published in tomorrow’s paper?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Sammie’s response was bitter.

“It was her choice—you might want to spread that around before everyone starts dumping on the
Reformer
prematurely. Besides, it might be helpful—we won’t have to tiptoe around quite as much, and maybe we can start pulling people in and pressuring them a bit. Thanks for all your work, Sammie. You ought to think about getting some shut-eye.”

“You too,” she said quietly as I walked over to see Ron.

“We’ve been working on the intelligence files Todd dropped off,” Ron said as I approached, “and we may have a couple of hits.”

He pulled a folder from one of his neatly arranged file boxes and read me two of the names I’d heard earlier at the intelligence meeting. “Barry Gilchrist and Lonny Sorvin. Both of them are in town, both have MOs that at least partially fit the bill, and as far as we can tell, both have daily schedules that would’ve allowed them to do the assault. I contacted their parole officers and we’re arranging for interviews tomorrow morning.”

I glanced at the files, familiar with their contents. Neither one of them had struck me as prime during the meeting, but I wasn’t going to fault Ron’s enthusiasm. My instincts weren’t infallible, and the textbook approach had put a lot of guilty people behind bars.

He reached into another box and handed me a sheet of paper. “That came from Gail—somebody dropped it by early this afternoon. It’s a list of men she thinks could have done it. Ryan’s on it.”

I felt a slight tingle at the nape of my neck as I took the sheet. “How far have you gotten on this?”

He picked up on the urgency in my voice, which triggered his dormant insecurity. “I gave it top priority—over the intelligence files even. I figured if she gave us those, she must’ve had good reason. Problem is, there’re some twenty names, and we want to do them right—not move too fast. So far, we’ve dug into about half of them.”

I pointed at the list. “I take it the ones that’re crossed off were misses?”

He looked over my shoulder. “Yeah—Dan Seaverns is out of town. I talked to him in Salt Lake City, just to make sure. Johnston Hill’s mother died two days ago, and he’s been dealing with that with witnesses. Philip Duncan was at a late dinner party, lasted till two-thirty. Mark Sumner was there, too—I think it was some realtor blast—they work in the same office. Anyhow, that checks out, too. Richard Clark was home in bed, according to his daughter—”

“His daughter?”

“Yeah. Dennis did that one. Little unorthodox, I guess, but he intercepted the daughter at school this afternoon, got into a big conversation, and found it out.”

“How would she know where her father was at two in the morning?”

“They sleep in the same bed—the whole family does.”

I shook my head and pointed at the last entry, not crossed out. “What’s ‘Peter Moore’s people’ mean?”

“That’s the hottest one we have so far. Didn’t Sammie tell you about him? Peter Moore runs Krystal Kleer—the people who put in Gail’s windows last year. I guess Gail didn’t know their names, but Harry Murchison’s the one we’re interested in.”

The phone had rung during this conversation, and a patrolman now held it up in the air and pointed at me with an inquiring look on his face. I leaned over Ron’s table, picked up his phone, and punched the one blinking button.

“Gunther.”

“Hi. It’s me.” Gail’s voice—soft, sounding a hundred miles away—warmed me like a fire on a cold winter night, giving me all the comfort I was yearning to give her. “Could you come over?”

“I’m on my way,” was all I said.

THE CIRCLE OF HOUSES
on Chestnut Hill was somber and quiet, the only signs of life a glimmer here and there from a crack in some curtain. They looked chilly and withdrawn, buttoned up against a second night of near-zero temperatures. The reservoir around which they clustered was as much a bottomless hole of cold air as a slab of opaque water.

I parked opposite Susan Raffner’s home and got out, pausing a little, the vapor from my breathing dissipating the glow from the porch light. Raffner’s parting words last time still echoing in my head, I had mixed feelings being here, knowing I would have to watch myself with utmost care. The Gail I’d come to visit was not someone I felt I knew—she was frail, fractured, and struggling to recover, and I had no time-tested, familiar protocol to fall back on if things got emotionally complicated.

Susan opened the front door before I could ring the bell, smiling and ushering me in as a friend—a comforting change due, I thought, to her misunderstanding about why I’d been at the newspaper office so close on her heels. “She’s upstairs, Joe, waiting.”

I nodded and headed for the stairs.

“Joe?”

I looked back at her, surprised by the gentle tone of her voice. “Thanks for helping Mary out this evening. I know she could’ve gotten into a lot of trouble.”

I smiled at her. “Thank Ryan’s vanity.”

Gail was in a different chair this time, close to the now-rumpled bed, and lit by a single soft shaded light that gave her face a gentle glow. Still, she looked exhausted, her eyes weary and drooping, her cheeks gaunt. She sat as if she’d been dropped from a great height and was utterly incapable of movement.

But she did move. She saw me against the gloom of the hallway, smiled tiredly, and extended her hand to me.

I crossed the room and took it in my own, noticing its coolness and frailty, and I sat on the bed next to her, resting both our hands on my knee. “How’re you getting along?”

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “I wish I knew what to do.”

She squeezed my hand then and smiled again. “You’re doing fine. I’m sorry for what I’m putting you through.”

“You’re sorry?” I burst out. “You had nothing to do with all this. My only problem’s been not knowing how to act. Last time I was here, Susan told me to put a cork in it and concentrate on helping you.”

She actually laughed briefly. “The head lioness.” She paused and then looked me straight in the eyes. “Susan gave me your message. Releasing my name to the paper wasn’t easy. Your support meant a lot.”

Feeling guilty by now, I kept quiet.

Gail didn’t notice. “I feel like half of me’s looking in, and the other half ’s looking out. I’ve spent so much time with rape victims, working with Women for Women, guiding them through all the emotional stages… It’s strange being on the other side. I have all these feelings, and halfway into them I start thinking, ‘Oh, right—that’s the guilt kicking in—typical.’ Or, ‘Why aren’t I mad yet? Oh, yeah—that comes later.’ It gets pretty confusing.”

I knew some of those stages myself. “I saw the list you sent—that’s a good sign, isn’t it? Fighting back, regaining control?”

A look of pain crossed her face and I worried I’d overstepped somehow. “God, I’m a long way from there… And putting a list together of all the people you think could have… There were so many of them.”

Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “I can’t stop asking, ‘Why?’ I’m not a bad person. I’ve had disagreements with people, but I’ve never wished them harm. What did I do?”

I let go of her hand and rubbed her back gently in a slow, circular motion. “You didn’t do anything, Gail. You were a target.”

Her anguish intensified. “But he planned it, right? He spent a long time thinking about it. He didn’t just wander by.”

I wondered if telling her more would help—not that I had much to tell. “He planned it, but he wasn’t as careful as he thought. He made a few mistakes, and those’ll lead us to him. The point to remember is that he attacked what you are, not who you are.”

She passed her hand across her forehead. “I wish I could remember more about him—something that would help.”

“You have… ”

A dog barked outside, once and not loudly, but Gail started as if stuck with a pin.

“You okay?” I asked in alarm, remembering a similar response when Todd Lefevre had snapped off his tape recorder early that morning.

She sat back in her chair and rested her head against its high pillow, her gaze on the opposite wall. The light hit her face directly that way and made it look like a marble mask. “I can’t relax—little sounds set me off. I’m so hyper they actually hurt.”

I glanced at the rumpled bed. “Have you tried to sleep?”

She rubbed her forehead and smiled, embarrassed. “I remember how peaceful I felt when you left me last night… I’m scared to fall asleep, Joe. I try to rationalize it, but I’m scared of everything—noises, sleep, going back home. I’m scared going down the hall to the bathroom, for God’s sake.”

I heard the hollowness of my own words: “It’s going to take time.”

A crease appeared between her eyes, and her voice darkened. “Yes, Susan comes by every once in a while and drops off one-liners like that.”

I began to rethink my approach, remembering what she’d just said before the dog barked. “You want to talk about the case? I hadn’t been planning on it, but there are questions you could answer. Maybe it would help.”

After a slight hesitation, she nodded. I tried to organize all the details running around my head into some kind of order. “Let’s start with something minor. J.P. was wondering if you still had your Swiss Army knife.”

A mix of expressions crossed her face—bafflement first, as she wondered why J.P. would care, followed by a frown as she figured it out for herself. “Yes, I do,” she answered in a near whisper.

“Okay. Another easy one: Do you have a wool shirt or piece of clothing that has red in it, other than the red-and-black check in your closet?”

She thought about that one for quite a while, the reason for it totally eluding her. “No. That’s it, as far as I can remember. I have other red things, but not wool.”

“Do you remember me wearing red wool in your bedroom in the last year?” Her eyes widened slightly. “He left a strand of red wool behind?” I nodded. “We think so, unless you can place anyone else in that room wearing something like that.”

She shook her head emphatically, obviously heartened. “No, I can’t.”

“Good. Harder question now. Can you remember anything else about the attack that you might not have mentioned this morning? I’m thinking specifically about those few seconds just before he put the pillowcase over your head—you called it a blur.”

She sighed and closed her eyes briefly. “I need to do this—get it out.”

It was a statement to herself, not a question, but it still stimulated an answer from me: “Not if you don’t want to.”

Her eyes reopened, more purposeful, reminiscent of the Gail of just yesterday. “No, no. It’s okay.” She paused. “It was my breathing that woke me up—or the difficulty I was having. I felt something heavy on me. For a split second, I thought it was you—that I was dreaming, or that you’d come back. I opened my mouth and his hand pushed my head to the side—that’s when I saw the clock, and when I realized what was happening. It was almost clinical, as if something inside of me snapped to the outside and said, ‘You’re being raped—remember everything you can. Joe will want to know,’ as if it was happening to someone else.”

I paused before asking, “Did you ever catch a glimpse of him?”

She shook her head. “It was too dark. He fumbled around with the pillowcase for a couple of seconds—that’s when I first realized my hands were tied, because I tried to push him off—and then he pulled it over my head. After that, I couldn’t see a thing.”

“Was he trying to get the case off the pillow, or just having a hard time getting it on you?”

“It was already off the pillow. My head was flat on the mattress. He’d done all that before waking me up.”

“Okay—a little off the subject: On the list you had delivered to the police department this afternoon, you marked down, ‘Peter Moore’s people.’ I know you meant Krystal Kleer, but did that refer to when they installed those windows last year?”

Again, she looked both embarrassed and angry. “It’s so crazy, wondering who, of all the men you’ve set eyes on, was the one that finally raped you. It could have been anyone, Joe. It could have been a counter clerk at a shop, or a gas-station attendant, or even someone reading the newspaper and seeing my picture—someone I’d never even seen before.”

I reached out and took her hand again. “Maybe, but something made you write the window people down. What was it?”

She took a deep breath, doubt clouding her earlier determination. “Probably nothing—certainly nothing that anyone can do anything about. It was the equivalent of a wolf whistle in the street, or someone leering at you… ”

“One of them did something like that?”

She squirmed in her seat, still trying to avoid the inevitability of what she’d set in motion, the impact her words might have on others. “It wasn’t that obvious, or that direct. It was more a feeling I got from one of them—the way he looked at me.”

“Did you get a first name or a nickname?”

“No. That’s why I wrote it down the way I did. He was tall—over six feet—with black hair tied back in a ponytail and bright blue eyes. That’s what kept bothering me when they were here. It was so obvious every time he looked at me, because of those eyes.”

“But he didn’t do anything physical—touch you or anything?”

“No… It wasn’t a touch. It was creepier than that. I offered them both coffee, and I served it on a tray in the living room. I was wearing a work shirt with buttons down the front, unbuttoned at the top, and as I leaned forward to put the tray on the low table, the one with the blue eyes stood up slightly, so he could see down my shirt. It was so blatant… I jerked my head up when he did it, at first wondering if he was going somewhere, because of how quickly he’d gotten to his feet, but he just stayed there, watching me. No apologies—he didn’t try to pretend he was looking at something else, like most men do. He just kept looking until I put the tray down—I damn near dumped the coffee—and then he smiled at me. Nothing was said, but I felt like it had been. I left right after that—told them to close the door behind them. I had to get away—I felt I’d been trespassed upon.”