Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (13 page)

“I take it they were connected?” I asked, clearing his guest chair of a stack of books and sitting down.

“Yeah. The burglary kicked in because he was witnessed entering the apartment window of the woman he assaulted.”

“She lived alone?”

“Yeah. He attacked her in her bedroom in the middle of the night—tied her down using slipknots, threatened her with a knife, blindfolded her… The whole ball of wax. I’m sorry I didn’t hand him over to you yesterday.”

I reached for the file, my exhaustion turning to adrenaline. “Not to worry—who’d you say his probation officer was?”

“Helen Boisvert.”

“What’s her reading on him?”

“Dunno—I just ran in and grabbed the file. She’s in, though, which is just as well, ’cause I’ve got to hit the road.”

I took the hint and stood up, thanking him again for the coffee.

· · ·

Helen Boisvert had worked for the Department of Corrections for over twenty years. Originally from the state’s so-called Northeast Kingdom region—remote, sparsely populated, and proudly independent—she’d been brought up on society’s fringes, one of six kids of a dirt-poor logger and his wife. Her highly regarded abilities as a probation officer were due in part to the fact that only her own moral strength and determination had stopped her from becoming one of her own clients. Half her siblings had spent time in jail, and two of her brothers had met violent deaths. But as she’d told me once, extracting herself from that environment and ending up in corrections, after earning an M.A. in psychology, was as natural to her as an Eskimo training to be a cold-weather scientist.

She was nestled in an office just like Lou’s, which looked more pleasant but smelled a lot worse, due to its occupant’s lifelong addiction to cigarettes. She was lighting one up as I walked in.

“I hear you’re interested in one of my boys,” she said through the smoke. I returned her file to her. “Bob Vogel—but not for burglary.”

She raised her eyebrows, immediately following my lead, and tossed me that morning’s
Brattleboro Reformer
. “You think he did that?”

Knowing that it was coming, even with Gail’s blessing, didn’t make the front-page story any easier to take. “Selectwoman Raped at Home” ran from one edge of the page to the other, across several related articles and a photograph of Gail at a recent meeting. I returned the paper without reading it further. “It’s a possibility.”

“Interesting.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, struck by her tone of voice.

“Because this took place night before last, and he missed his meeting with me yesterday morning.”

“Have you talked to him since?” I was suddenly worried he’d already taken off.

“Oh, yeah—he came in later. Said he overslept, that his alarm didn’t go off. Interesting coincidence.”

“How did he seem?”

“A little nervous I might nail him for messing up, but otherwise he was the same as always.”

“Which is?”

She took a deep drag, finishing the cigarette, and ground it out in an already half-full ashtray. I imagined her forceful personality allowed her to flaunt the state’s no-smoking rules.

“Bob Vogel is an unrepentant shit,” she finally said. “He toes the line with me because I can pull his chain, but we both know it’s a waste of time. As soon as he’s free and clear, he’ll be back in trouble—unless he’s already jumped the gun.”

I removed the jacket I’d been wearing against the fading morning chill and placed it on the floor next to my chair. “Lou said Vogel’s last assault fit the MO of the guy who raped Gail—what about the two rapes he didn’t get prosecuted for? Were they the same?”

Helen pulled another cigarette from the pack lying on her desk and lit up. “I couldn’t say for sure. I only know about the last one, and even there I don’t have all the details. He moved up here ten months ago, and we only got this preliminary file about four months back, which is par for the course—they’re either drowning in cases down there or they don’t give a damn, depending on the office.

“Anyhow, the outline you got from Lou about sums up what I’ve been told—the big difference being that he used a nightgown to blind his victim instead of a pillowcase. Which helped nail him, as it turned out—not only was he seen going in through the window by a neighbor, but the nightgown slipped off enough so the victim got a look at him. She pulled him out of a lineup.”

“Lou mentioned a knife.”

Boisvert made a face. “Yeah—he cut her nipples a little, I guess to get her attention. A real bastard.”

“What else did he do?”

“Everything shy of killing her, as far as I can tell. The rape lasted several hours, with intermissions for the knife play and beatings. The woman ended up having her jaw wired.”

“Did he trash the bedroom also?”

She looked uncertain. “I suppose—there was mention of a lot of destruction.”

I changed subjects slightly, realizing I was nearing the limit of her knowledge. “Did all three rape victims live in the same area?”

“Two in Greenfield, one in North Adams. None of them knew one another, and none of them knew Bob. He’s a stalker.”

That made me think of Vogel’s one-day employment at Mrs. Wheeler’s. “Was part of his technique getting handyman jobs near where the victims lived?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. Like I said, we actually don’t have all that much on Bob yet. What I do know mostly comes from my conversations with him. The file only highlights the bare bones on the last assault—the one that landed him in the pokey.”

“How did he get off on the first two?”

“Screwups; technicalities. You’d have to check it all out with the Massachusetts people, but from what he told me, the system served him well. For that matter, four years for what he did to his last victim was a slap on the wrist.”

There was a pause, during which I digested some of what she’d told me. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that we had a “hit”—someone who, from a distance at least, fit our profile to a gnat’s eyelash.

“It sounds like he talks about the rape a lot.”

Helen made a dismissive gesture with her hand before grinding out the second cigarette. “Lou should be handling this guy—he’s a sexual offender. It’s only the burglary technicality that makes him mine. But let’s face it,
burglary 
means he entered by force—not that he was out to steal anything—so we don’t spend much time talking about how to jimmy windows or fence TVs. Besides, Bob Vogel reminds me a lot of some of the guys I grew up with, including a couple of my brothers. I don’t like him, and I don’t see him living to a ripe old age—at least not on the outside. But I do know what makes him tick.” She grinned suddenly—so immersed in this world she no longer saw the incongruity. “I guess you could say we get along.”

“Lucky you,” I muttered, to which she only laughed and reached for another smoke.

· · ·

I had copies made of all the information I needed concerning Bob Vogel, including his home address and place of employment, and went straight to my office, despite the fact that I still hadn’t shaved or showered.

Ron Klesczewski’s expression told me I should have tended to those small details first. “Are you okay?” he blurted as he looked up to find me looming over him at his temporary, paper-strewn desk.

I gave him the file I’d secured from Helen Boisvert. “Get the records on this guy—his Massachusetts rap sheet is inside. And see if you can locate a police officer who knows about him, either from North Adams or Greenfield. I’d like to talk to him.”

He flipped open the file and stared at the name at the top of the first page. “Robert Vogel?”

“He did a one-day handyman stint for one of Gail’s neighbors. I found him in your files.” I saw J.P. Tyler waving to me from the hallway door. “Okay?” I asked Ron.

He still looked a little startled, but nodded firmly, regaining his composure.

“What’s up?” I asked Tyler in the hall, as he led me down to the detective bureau, where he’d converted a cramped janitor’s closet into a makeshift laboratory.

“Two things: One, I tried to match the pubic hair I found in Gail’s bed to either you or her and came up empty, which means it came from the attacker.”

It was nice of him to be so diplomatic. In fact, I knew damn well such an argument wouldn’t hold up in court. A third person’s pubic hair found in a de facto conjugal bed did not necessarily involve a rapist. For our purposes, however, it was good enough.

“All I can get from it, though,” he continued, “is that the guy was Caucasian and dark-haired.”

We entered the detective squad office and went not to the tiny lab, but to Tyler’s desk. “The second thing I have higher hopes for.”

He held up a small baggie with a tiny fragment of organic material in it. “Remember this? The vegetable matter I found on the couch near the window? It’s Russian olive—a cross between a screen bush and a small tree. It can grow to twenty-five feet, has small silvery leaves and berries.”

I knew better than to ask him the relevance of this. J.P. had his own style, and it often involved some minor theatrics.

“It’s not a rare plant—you see it planted by the side of the interstate sometimes. Developers like it because it’s cheap, hardy, and easy to handle, and it makes them look like nature lovers when they surround their junky architecture with it.”

He looked at me with a pleased expression. “The point is, there ain’t a single Russian olive on Gail’s property.”

“How ’bout Mrs. Wheeler’s, two houses down?”

I should have known better. “She doesn’t have any either—no one on the block does—which means the assailant left it behind inadvertently, just like the fiber sample from his red wool shirt.”

“Gail told me last night she still has her Swiss Army knife,” I volunteered, my memory jostled by what he’d just said.

Tyler nodded. “Well, we expected that. That’s good, though, ’cause when we find this guy, we can check all his knives for traces of blood. Even if he wiped the blade off on his pants, we might still find something. And the window lock I removed might come in there, too. I know for sure a knife was used to jimmy it open. I might be able to match the marks to the blade.”

I reflected on that for a moment, impressed at how impersonal it could all be made to sound. “That it?”

“For the moment. The DNA analysis won’t be here for weeks, and we’re not expecting anything there anyhow. I’ve pretty much done all I can do with fingerprints. You’re going to get dozens of other people’s prints in most houses anyhow—guests, workers, people like that—and Gail’s was no different. I haven’t had a hit with any of them, except yours and hers, of course.”

“What about Harry Murchison, the window installer?”

Tyler smiled apologetically at the vagaries of his beloved science. “No. We know he was there, but it was over a year ago—it’s hard to expect a print to survive that long.”

I finally asked a question that had been chewing at me since Gail had first brought it up. “Do you know what they heard back on Gail’s blood tests?”

He looked at me quizzically. “I don’t think they found anything. What were you after?”

“No sign of HIV or AIDS?”

His mouth fell open slightly. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I should’ve thought of that.” He looked suddenly embarrassed, and his words came out slowly and carefully. “No—the test was clean… for the moment. That’s fine, of course—a good sign—but you shouldn’t take it as gospel, not yet. She ought to have another test in a month or so—and periodically for every six months after that—just to be sure.”

I thanked him and went into my small corner office. I sat down at my desk and dialed Women for Women.

Susan Raffner was on the line in a few minutes. “Hi. What’s up?”

“Nothing specific. We may have a lead, but we need to check it out thoroughly. I was just wondering how Gail fared last night. I didn’t want to call her at your place in case she was sleeping.”

Susan’s voice saddened. “She’s not doing much of that. She woke up right after you left. I ended up putting her in bed with me—it seemed to calm her down a little.”

“What about something to help her sleep?”

“I’m not crazy about that stuff—her system’s messed up enough as it is—but I did ask her. I think she’s planning to sleep days and stay awake nights, if she can.”

“Is that a good idea?” I asked.

“No, but it’s her own decision, and that
is
good. The more she takes charge of things, the better. She just feels too vulnerable to sleep at night. It’ll pass with time.” There was a pause on the line before Susan added, “Did you see the paper this morning?”

“Saw it—I didn’t read it.”

“Katz played it pretty straight—the editorial’s a little heavy-handed, but sympathetic. He did say a few things you probably won’t be too happy with, like how the paper’s going to make it a mission not to let this just slip by. The quote was something like ‘keeping a spotlight on the wheels of justice.’”

“Great,” I muttered.

“I know how you feel, Joe, but we agree with him, and we’re planning to help him out. We’re going to keep this in the news.”

“I realize that,” I said without enthusiasm.

“And Gail’s going to be a part of it.”

Despite my unhappiness, I appreciated the sensitivity in her voice.

Even believing as she did that I was wholly supportive of Gail’s identifying herself as the victim, Susan still understood the pressures such a decision placed upon a couple. After years of locking horns with her on purely technical grounds, finally I found it oddly comforting that she was there as head of Women for Women, even as she prepared to make my professional life miserable. It was the sign of someone, as irony might have it, that I could trust.

“I know that, too,” I answered. “And I know that’s what she thinks she needs. I just don’t want everyone else’s enthusiasm running her over.”

“I’ll keep an eye on it, Joe. And, by the way, your coming over last night made a big difference. I think you should drop by any time you feel the urge, as long as you keep the same tone. I’ll tell the others you might do that.”

I thanked her and hung up, ignoring the fact that “keeping the same tone” might be easier said than done, depending on my own emotional mood swings.