Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (36 page)

SUSAN RAFFNER'S VOICE WAS
fogged by sleep. “Hello?”

“It’s Joe Gunther. I’m sorry to be calling in the middle of the night, but I need to talk to Gail—and to you, too.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Is she there?”

Gail’s voice, clear and wide awake, came on over an extension. “I’m here.”

“Can I come over?”

“Yes.”

· · ·

The porch light was on at Susan’s house, and the front door swung back as I reached the top of the porch steps. Susan, her hair tangled, her dressing gown awry, her eyes still at half-mast, stepped back to let me in. “In the kitchen,” was all she said.

I knew where to go, down the dark hallway next to the staircase and through a swinging door at the rear. I’d been in the house before—aside from my recent visits—for the occasional politically correct cocktail party, where people like Tony and me usually killed time together, nursing fruit juice from paper cups, our backs to the wall.

The kitchen suited the house—painted wood trim, mottled linoleum, steel-tube furniture from thirty years earlier. It made me feel instantly more at ease. Gail was standing at the stove, her back to the door, fiddling with a tea kettle.

“Hi.” She turned and smiled but stayed put, indicating the reserve remaining from our last encounter.

“How’ve you been?”

“Better,” she answered. “Thanks.”

Susan came up behind me and cut straight to the point. “I was fine, too, until 2:45 a.m. What do you want? And what the hell happened in court yesterday? Or is that privileged?”

Even Gail gave her a weary look. “Sit, Susan. Give him a chance.”

I smiled at the strength in her voice—the underlying sense of humor. She was improving. I could see it for myself.

I pulled out a chair at the small breakfast table and sat down. “Between these walls, nothing is privileged. What happened yesterday is that the shit hit the fan. Tomorrow, unless Tom Kelly has lost his mind, he’s going to move for a mistrial—and get it.”

Susan slammed the table with her fist. “You stupid bastards—”

“We have the wrong guy.”

They both looked at me in stunned silence. “Gail, what did you smell when you were attacked?”

She froze and then managed a murmured, “What?”

I let her digest the question. Susan just stared at me. Gail wrinkled her forehead in thought. She finally admitted, “Nothing.”

“Bob Vogel smells like sewer. He smokes, he drinks, his teeth are half green, and he only showers when he’s caught in the rain. On the night of the rape, before he left work, one of his co-workers noticed his BO from several feet away. With all his clothes off, he would’ve stunk like raw garbage.”

Susan was at emotional raw ends, muttering angrily to herself, perhaps so wrapped up in the political ramifications of my news that my words were hard to focus on. “She had other things on her mind than body odor,” she protested. “She was afraid for her life.”

“I remember everything else,” Gail tentatively disagreed. “It’s not that I didn’t smell anything at all—I just don’t think there was anything unusual.”

I saw the intelligence in her eyes and knew I’d caught her attention.

“In one of our conversations, you told me the first indication you had that something was wrong was when you felt a weight on your chest—you were having difficulty breathing. You opened your mouth to speak, thinking I’d come back, and that’s when he grabbed your face and pushed it to one side. You said it was all a blur.”

“Right.”

“Which means your eyes were open.”

She shook her head, as if arguing with herself. “They must’ve been—but I didn’t see anything. It was too dark.”

“I’ve brought Megan Goss in on this to advise us—that’s strictly confidential, by the way. We just came from your place. We were standing in the doorway to your bedroom with the lights off, and I remembered there was a bright moon that night.”

“So there was light?” she asked doubtfully, the anger that might have flared a few days ago absent. She pressed her hand against her cheek and looked at the floor between us, thinking hard. “I just don’t remember, Joe. I thought it was pitch black.”

“That’s okay,” I said supportively. “That may be good news. Would you be willing to be hypnotized by Megan? To see if you can fill in the gaps? I read her your transcript, and she thought hypnosis might help you recall some of the missing details.”

“Joe, for Christ’s sake,” Susan blew up. “How many times are you going to jerk her around?”

“Susan,” Gail answered strongly. “Stop. I’m willing to do it—for my own reasons. He’s right—I can use this.”

The kettle began to whistle on the stove. Susan rose to tend to it, although Gail was right there and starting to move. “Leave it. I need something to do.”

Susan twisted the gas knob, paused as if considering what to do next, and then faced me angrily. “Why the hell wasn’t all this done before? Bringing Megan in and asking Gail about the smell? I mean, that sounds pretty basic to me. And what about all the evidence against Vogel? Did you people just make that up?” Her voice rose with emotion. “You come waltzing in here in the middle of the night, full of bright new ideas, casually announcing that you jailed the wrong guy. Do you have any idea what harm you’ve caused?”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

She was in no mood for irony. She glared at me, speechless for a moment. “It crossed your mind? Fuck you, Joe Gunther. You see this as some goddamn game—catch the bad guy, put him in jail. Make a little mistake? No big deal. Go after somebody else. What about all the women who worked so hard to guarantee that, for once, justice would be served. They believed you when you said Vogel was the guy—they let out a collective sigh of relief. And then, in workshops and encounter groups all over this town, they fought their fears that some deal might be cut to set him free, or that Dunn would procrastinate until after the election and piss the case away, or that Judge Waterston would give another rapist a pat on the ass for a job well done. They prayed that for once things would be done right. And now you have the balls to say, ‘Oh, sorry—back to square one.’ Christ, Joe, it was Gail who was raped—couldn’t you have done a slightly better job for her sake?”

My face burning, I rose stiffly to my feet, the anger so caught in my throat I had to focus on my breathing. Bob Vogel had been no mere threat to me—the son of a bitch had tried to kill me. But I was still willing to stick my neck out, risking the enmity of my colleagues, the public, and the best friend I had, because it was the right thing to do.

I knew Susan’s outburst stemmed from exhaustion and despair. Those efforts to heighten a society’s conscience and change its attitudes had been her own, expended at great emotional cost. But while I understood rationally that no words from me were going to change that, it still took all my self-restraint not to burn the bridges between us and reciprocate with some of her own verbal abuse.

Instead, only barely aware of my own movements, I headed for the door in a stifled blind rage. Gail followed me down the hallway to the main entrance.

I opened the front door and let the cold night air wash across my face. Gail stood beside me quietly, shivering slightly, waiting for me to regain my composure. I was grateful to her for not making excuses for her friend—for trusting me to understand that, despite its appearance, Susan’s outburst hadn’t been a personal attack.

I finally took a deep breath and asked in a near-normal voice, “How do you feel about this? Are you angry, too?”

“I would’ve been a few days ago, but Bob Vogel doesn’t matter as much anymore. I matter, and you matter, and putting this behind us matters, and that’s what I want to work toward. I’m trying to get away from the blame and the fear… and the anger.”

I gave her the bear hug I’d been saving from the beginning of all this, her words a confirmation that we were both on the mend.

· · ·

Megan Goss’s office was located at the rear of one of a long row of nineteenth-century red-brick buildings that stand along the east side of Brattleboro’s Main Street like bluff, Dickensian representatives of a bygone industrial era. In most cases, however, it is more facade than reality, the implications of high-ceilinged, wood-paneled, airy rooms giving way to a jumble of businesses, offices, and apartments. Some of these had been remodeled into modern, boxlike conformity, and others left dark, poorly ventilated, and reeking of despair. It cannot be said of Brattleboro that its urban poor were forced out of downtown—they are as much a part of the geography as the high-profile stores facing the sidewalks.

The back of this bank of eccentric buildings faces the railroad—parallel to but some thirty feet lower than Main Street—and the broad Connecticut River below that. To walk through the maze of hallways, stairwells, and assorted offices of one of these narrow, deep, brick monstrosities, and reach a window that faces this view, is to make a startling and wonderful discovery—a sylvan scene of impressive beauty lost on the rest of downtown. Apart from the lightly used railroad, the view is of trees, river, islets, and an antique metal bridge, all massively overseen by wooded Mount Wantastiquet, looming high over the neighboring New Hampshire river bank.

In addition to its hidden aesthetic advantages, this rear area provided a sense of isolation from the bustle far to the front. Megan Goss wasn’t the only therapist located along this row, and entering her office with Gail, I understood why. The built-in tranquility was as soothing as the smell of fresh bread in a country kitchen.

Megan Goss greeted us and placed Gail in a soft leather armchair near the window, opposite a comfortable but less regal office chair she took for herself. I sat at her immaculately clean desk, off to one side, and turned on the tape recorder I’d brought with me.

“How are you feeling, Gail?” she asked.

“Fine—a little tired.”

“Still not sleeping at night?”

Gail looked sharply at me, but Megan intervened. “It was a guess. I haven’t asked Joe anything about you, nor has he volunteered anything beyond the police records concerning your case.”

Gail smiled and relaxed. “I don’t know why I reacted that way. It’s hardly a secret.”

Goss waved it away with her hand. “Perfectly understandable. Among other things, your privacy has been violated. You’re inclined to hold onto everything more dearly than before.” She paused a beat before resuming, “In fact, that could be relevant to what we’re about to attempt today. Are you comfortable with the idea of being hypnotized?”

Gail nodded emphatically. “I want all this out in the open.”

“All right.” From beside her chair, Megan Goss retrieved a thick folder, which she opened on her lap. “What we’re going to try is called cooperative hypnosis. It has nothing to do with darkened rooms, or swinging watch fobs, or deep states of unconsciousness. It’s more like what happens to you sometimes when you’re on a long car trip and your mind wanders. After a while, you realize you’re not sure where you are anymore. You haven’t been driving dangerously, or been out of control, but you have been in a light hypnotic state. It’s what most people call daydreaming, and it’s the same thing that gives truth to the phrase, ‘time flies.’

“There is a reason we all do this, besides just dealing with the boredom of a long drive. We do it to clean house a little—to occasionally dig a little deeper into our subconscious state and let in some light. That’s why these little mental side trips sometimes result in great sadness, or profound self-revelation. In any case, it’s a process where a little gentle probing can be used, to pursue a specific goal.

“It will take your cooperation, however. Nothing I do can put you into this kind of hypnosis. Listening to my words will help, but only as the hum of the highway and the blurring countryside flying monotonously by helped you when you were traveling on your own.”

I blinked my eyes twice and rubbed the back of my neck, realizing that while she was laying out her procedure, Megan Goss had already begun. Her voice had slid into a soft, supportive, sedative tone, and I could see by watching Gail settling more deeply into her chair that it was already having its effect.

For that alone, I was grateful. It was now eleven o’clock in the morning. Two hours earlier, all that we’d anticipated had occurred. James Dunn, stiff with rage, had met with Tom Kelly before Judge Waterston’s bench and within seventy-five minutes had been handed a mistrial—the search warrant used to invade Bob Vogel’s trailer was invalidated, and all the evidence secured thereby ruled inadmissible. The sole consolation was that Waterston’s decision meant no immediate change of address for Vogel. The scars across my stomach were a guarantee of that.

As consolations go, however, it wasn’t much, and it did nothing to stem the explosion of anger and outrage we’d all known was going to erupt. Nor had the SA’s office and the police department done anything to help cool things off. Falling back on an understandable circle-the-wagons instinct, both offices had barred their doors to all outsiders and released a joint media communiqué—fatalistically prepared beforehand—stating that a press conference would be held shortly. Whatever deal Brandt might have forged with Stanley Katz was guaranteed to be tested to the limit immediately.

Generally, the communiqué had a predictable effect. Shortly before Gail and I entered Megan Goss’s peaceful retreat, the entire Municipal Building had been surrounded by protesters, onlookers, and a small army of newspeople, forcing Brandt and Dunn together to call on the state police and the county sheriff to help secure the place from being completely overrun. Fortunately, I’d already briefed my squad—and the additional personnel lent to me by Billy Manierre—and had put them on the streets, re-interviewing witnesses and potential suspects.

Also, although I hadn’t anticipated the extent of the public’s fury, I had assumed what its focal point would be, and had placed Gail and myself at a friend’s apartment far from the Municipal Building, near Megan’s office. When she’d called us to say she was ready to begin, it was a simple matter to walk a couple of blocks without being noticed.