Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (8 page)

“How about now that she got her good fuck? Were you thinking about filing a report now?”

He looked both surprised and angry that he’d been set up, predictably missing the point. “It was the local nut case shooting his mouth off, Lieutenant—it didn’t mean anything.”

I threw the door open and swung out, welcoming the fresh air on my face. I leaned back inside the car where Santos was sitting stiffly, his eyes straight ahead like an adolescent wishing all adults would vanish. “You know that for a fact, do you?”

“Yes, I do.” His voice was barely audible.

“You better hope you’re right, Al, or we’ll talk again with more company. Don’t ever pull this kind of shit again.”

My fury grew exponentially as I walked back to the office—not just at Santos, whose error had been no worse than Billy’s laxity, but as much at myself. Instead of immediately seizing Al’s information as the possible lead it was, I’d used his procedural sloppiness, and his predictable sexism, as a target for my own frustration. Knowing what Santos and his buddies would later make of this episode made me feel exposed and did nothing for the professional demeanor I was struggling to maintain.

I headed back to the squad room reluctantly, wishing I could invent some excuse that would keep me on the street, at least for the rest of the day. What had happened to Gail was just a few hours old—a fresh crime with fresh leads. Statistically, that gave it “quick to solve” potential. People’s memories would be sharp; any covering up would be either ongoing or slipshod; and the combination of Gail’s status and the SA’s political needs would allow for a no-expenses-spared, all-out investigation. That was the good news.

The downside was all inside me and had been building steam since Tony had pulled up to my place this morning. That part of me didn’t want to work around the clock, finding the man who’d turned Gail’s life upside down. It just wanted to spend time with her, helping her to rebuild her equilibrium. I could rationalize that one role fulfilled the other—I was on the case, after all, at Gail’s insistence. And I knew that giving her psychological “space” was not only sound, it was out of my hands. But none of that addressed my own emotional needs.

Nevertheless, as I reentered the Municipal Building, I began feeling slightly better—or at least more in control.

Harriet Fritter, not surprisingly, seemed to sense some of what was chewing at me. The even-tempered matriarch of an enormous gaggle of children, grandchildren, and at least one great-grandchild, she was a veteran observer of us all, and her sympathetic smile as I walked in was enough to move me up a few more notches.

“I got hold of Lou Biddle at Probation—he’s calling a special intelligence meeting at Rescue, Inc. in forty-five minutes. He thought it might be more efficient for you to brief the whole group, instead of relying on phone calls or faxes.”

The intelligence meeting was normally a monthly arrangement—a gathering of law-enforcement representatives from all the surrounding jurisdictions. It had operated discreetly for years, meeting on neutral ground, and served as an informational conduit that both cut the red tape and made for less formal relations among the participating agencies. That Lou had called them together—and in no time flat—was testimony to the support we could expect on this case. Brandt had been right about how Gail was being viewed, at least by those who wore a badge—she might as well have been my wife.

I thanked Harriet and asked her if either Sammie Martens or Willy Kunkle had reported back in from their respective sweeps of the town’s nether reaches.

Sammie’s head popped up from behind one of the soundproof panels that separated the four desks set up in the middle of the room. “I’m here.”

I went around the corner to find her climbing off her chair. Slim, dark, and almost overly intense, she was also as small as a teenage girl, with a similarly impulsive style. Over the years, I’d had to pour oil on occasionally troubled waters between her and her colleagues. Whether it was being the first and only woman to have been made detective in our department, or just a natural competitiveness that bordered on the cutthroat, her drive could make her difficult to deal with. Only Willy Kunkle, infamous in his own right, seemed totally unaffected by her.

Her expression was not encouraging. “I chased down almost every connection I have, Joe. There’s nothing stirring out there. And there’s a lot of interest—everyone knows who the victim was, and they’re all dying to be on the inside. If any of them knew, I’m pretty sure I would’ve heard about it. I’m real sorry.”

I shrugged it off. My conversations with J.P. Tyler had already braced me for bad news. The meticulousness of Gail’s attacker—the preplanning, the caution he’d taken to conceal himself—had persuaded me we wouldn’t find him hanging out in a bar, bragging about his latest score.

“I don’t think this was a spontaneous assault anyway. Did you compare notes with Willy?”

She nodded. “He didn’t find anything either. He’s getting coffee in the officers’ room, if you want to talk to him.”

The door to the hallway opened and Ron Klesczewski walked in, purposeful and obviously full of news. I turned back to Sammie. “I’d like to talk to both of you, actually. Round him up and bring him back over here, will you?”

Sammie left, and I shepherded Ron into my office cubicle, parking myself on the corner of my desk. “What’ve you got?”

“I’m setting up a command post in the extra room—bulletin boards, a dedicated phone line. Billy’s given me one guy out of each of his shifts to man it. We’ve already started classifying those neighborhood witnesses by what they saw and at what time, and Dennis is chasing down the ones he missed at their work places instead of waiting for tonight. We figured the sooner the better. With any luck, we’ll construct a chronology of the whole night and then see what sticks out.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Does Tony know about this?”

Ron smiled. “He authorized it. I don’t know if it’s James Dunn or the board—or maybe both—but the chief ’s catching some serious heat on this.”

I remembered Tony’s pessimism about keeping Gail’s name under wraps, and what would probably happen once it got out. “I think he’s just preparing for the worst. You doing all right coordinating it all?”

Klesczewski nodded emphatically. “Oh, yeah. I like it—tips are already starting to come in. It’s interesting, separating the bullshit from the solid stuff.”

“Good. Keep at it. Run things from the command post, keep me and Brandt updated, and use the patrol division to chase down leads as you see fit. Get Dennis to help you out. If you see the need for a squad meeting before Brandt or I do, call it yourself. Before too long you’re going to be in a better position than any of us to know the overall picture, so throw your weight around a little.”

I was pleased to see the satisfaction in his eyes. His youthful insecurities were hardening with time, and while he’d always have problems with someone like Willy Kunkle, I no longer harbored Tony Brandt’s ebbing skepticism that I’d backed the wrong horse as my second-in-command.

Sammie Martens and the infamous Kunkle were loitering outside my door—she almost at attention, a note pad clutched in her hand, and he typically leaning against the wall, sipping his coffee, and gazing out the window, looking bored. I waved them in as Ron happily departed for his newly established nerve center.

There is a media-hyped misconception among many people that the only difference between most cops and the people they bust is the badge in their pockets. In my personal experience, that’s mostly bunk—except with Willy. He was a cynical, hardbitten, nasty-minded street cop with a withered, crippled left arm he kept from flopping around by anchoring its hand in his pants pocket. He had no friends that I knew of, no pleasures outside his job, and no discernibly pleasant characteristics. He’d had a wife once, whom he’d taken to beating and who’d left him years ago, and he’d once fallen so far into the dumps that I’d thought we’d have to fire him. Instead, a sniper’s bullet in the arm had retired him on permanent disability.

That should have marked the end of his career, except that I’d encouraged him to challenge the town under the Americans with Disabilities Act to get his job back. He’d never thanked me for that apparent folly, but he’d never given me cause to regret it, either. For as bitter and disagreeable as he could be, he understood the workings of Brattleboro’s least desirable social circles like no man I’d ever met. And while he talked like them, acted like them, and at times even appeared indistinguishable from them, Willy Kunkle was positively driven to putting the “bad guys” in jail. He was, like a highly motivated but disturbingly hostile attack dog, unbeatable at his job. I just never had him tour the schools upholding the department’s image.

“Sammie tells me you didn’t have any better luck than she did.”

“Nope.”

“Did either one of you hear Jason Ryan’s name come up while you were poking around, in any context at all?”

Kunkle’s cup froze halfway to his lips. “Ryan? Don’t you think it’s a little early to get that desperate?”

Sammie merely shook her head.

“He threatened Gail just a few days ago—got so unruly at a board meeting, Santos was called in to throw him out.”

Kunkle shrugged instead of responding.

“I’d like you two to check him out—discreetly—especially what he was up to all last night. Find out if he’s been mouthing off about Gail, and see if you can nail down exactly what was said at that meeting.”

Kunkle made a face, drained his Styrofoam cup, and tossed it into my trashcan. He easily—even gracefully—shoved himself out of my guest chair with his powerful right arm.

Sammie, more polite, was looking at me dubiously. “You want us both on this?”

“As far as it makes sense—I want it fast and thorough. There is one other item, though. J.P. thinks Gail’s attacker entered through one of the living-room windows, and that he knew which one to choose beforehand. She had several windows replaced about a year ago, by whom I don’t remember—some local outfit. We’re thinking one of the workmen might have scoped her place out back then.”

They both nodded at that one, knowing full well that similar patterns had proven out in the past, in both rape cases and robberies.

Kunkle headed out the door, but Sammie lingered a moment, looking a little uncomfortable. “I’m sorry about what happened to Gail. Must be tough when it’s someone you know.”

I didn’t argue the point.

· · ·

The next several hours were spent at Lou Biddle’s emergency intelligence meeting—discreetly held in the back room of the local ambulance squad—where a dozen of us culled through reams of files from Vermont’s Department of Corrections and those of law enforcement agencies from most of the towns and counties around Brattleboro, including several from Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The mood was not encouraging, however. Stimulated already by Tyler’s faxed circulars, these people had already given their files a preliminary survey, all without a “hit.” Now, each of them discussed their second and third choices, mentioning the presence of a knife, the blindfolding of a victim, the use of physical restraints, the timing of an attack, or the fact that it had taken place in the victim’s home. And while I gratefully accepted even the most remote possibilities, I did so without much hope.

I was thanking all those around me for their help when the pager on my belt erupted with its familiar chirping. As the rest of the people in the room began gathering their things and filing out the door, I used a nearby wall phone to call my office.

Brandt answered immediately. “You finished there?”

“Just now.”

“You better get over to the
Reformer
. We just heard through the grapevine that Gail’s name is hitting the headlines tomorrow morning.”

I didn’t answer at first. Tony had predicted this would happen, and I’d even made a certain feeble mental effort to prepare for it. But now that it was becoming reality, I felt caught totally off guard.

“That information’s from the paper itself,” he added. “One of our friendlier contacts. Sorry.”

I smiled bitterly at that. “Does she know yet?”

“I have no idea.”

I weighed my options—to see Katz at the paper, to try to see Gail, or to do nothing—and tried not to let my feelings get the better of me.

I thanked Brandt for letting me know, gathered up the files, and gave them to Todd Lefevre. I told him I’d meet him at the office—that I wanted to quickly swing by the newspaper first. Whether it was a lack of concern, or a perceived look in my eye, he asked me no questions and didn’t insist on joining me.

I drove over to the
Reformer 
offices in a simmering rage. The
Brattleboro Reformer
, once a reputable small-town blend of global and community news, had been going through rough times. Purchased a year ago by a Midwest news conglomerate, it had been reduced to a
USA Today
-style tabloid, its front-page banner changed from traditional black to sensationalist red, all its articles reduced to one-page news bites, and its old editor and much of his staff either encouraged to leave or downright fired.

One of the few holdovers, just barely, had been Stanley Katz, who’d actually already begun working for the
Rutland Herald
, in the western part of the state, before he was lured back. In the old days, as a writer, Stanley had delighted in making the police department miserable, motivated by a conviction that his efforts kept us honest. Now, rehired as editor-in-chief, he had loftier—and we thought more realistic—goals in mind, such as saving his paper from bankruptcy. Its brief and trendy foray into nouveau journalism—an unappealing package in a politically hard-nosed town—had been costing its owners a bundle, and everyone knew that Katz had his hands full.

Knowing all this convinced me that, in an effort to stem the tide, he’d reverted to the take-no-prisoners journalism of yore.

But there, it turned out, I was wrong. The first person I met at the
Reformer
building, exiting the front door, was Susan Raffner.