Bellows Falls (15 page)

I had known Kathy Bartlett since her fledgling days as a county prosecutor and had always admired her no-nonsense, apolitical pragmatism—traits I wished were more commonplace within law enforcement. After shaking hands all around—Latour, Brandt, and Derby were also in attendance—she didn’t disappoint me by dwelling on the amenities.

“Jack’s briefed me on your proposal, Joe, and I’ve read what files he and Tony could scratch together. I won’t deny I’m interested, and I even agree with some of your arguments—the risk of conflict by involving the drug task force, for example, although I know they won’t like it—but I’m not convinced we’re the right office for this. As things stand, people could legitimately claim you’re either on a vendetta for Lavoie having his gun stolen or just on an ego trip.”

“Jasper Morgan may’ve started this case,” I began, “but since then, we’ve come up with Norm and Jan Bouch, Brian Padget and Emily Doyle of the BFPD, and even someone named Lenny who lives in Burlington, knew Bouch in Lawrence, and who well might be running things for him in Burlington.

“And the connections are still growing. I recently found out Doyle and Padget were once an item, before Padget fell for Jan Bouch, and that Doyle used to live in Burlington, just a few doors down from an apartment rented by Norm Bouch.

“I also just got word Jasper Morgan’s old neighborhood pals are starting to think he got whacked by his boss for sticky fingers. If that’s true—and it fits why Jasper was so desperate to disappear—then it certainly involves the Bratt PD in more than a simple gun theft, and it gives me a leg up as the investigator since I’m already looking into the guy we’re all supposing is the boss in question.”

I paused, but only briefly, for any objections. “Last but not least,” I went on, “is the timing and cost effectiveness. The timing hinges on the arraignment date for Brian Padget—it would be nice to have a better idea of his guilt or innocence before he faces a judge. The cost effectiveness is that since this case plays to Brattleboro’s self-interest, among others, I’ll be working on salary, doing most of the legwork, without calling on too many of the AG’s resources. If and when I dig up enough to fully whet your appetite, then you can jump in with little lost up front.”

Bartlett frowned at that. “If we’re in, we’re in. We won’t rubber-stamp an operation just so you can run all over the state like the Lone Ranger. I’ll buddy you up with one of my guys, and I’ll be expecting daily updates.”

“I realize that,” I countered, pleased by that show of acceptance. “This deal would merely give you an extra investigator instead of costing you one. You’d call the shots.”

She seemed mollified by that. “Jack was telling me the primary reason to exclude the State Police was both your passion for the case and your already considerable knowledge. I have to admit I agree, and the arraignment does make the timing important. Emily Doyle worries me, though. What do you think’s going on there?”

“Any number of things. She could’ve planted the dope in Brian’s home because she was pissed off at him for dumping her; she might’ve done it because she’s in cahoots with Bouch, and Bouch saw her as the easiest way to plant the stuff; or she may be an entirely innocent victim of circumstance and coincidence.”

“Which we’re trained to mistrust,” Tony added.

“Why are you so convinced Brian Padget was framed, especially when his own urine says otherwise?” Bartlett asked suddenly.

“I’m not,” I answered. “But I do think the urine is the only solid thing against him, which is unusual.”

For the first time, Latour made his presence felt, with a small, enigmatic grunt.

“The dope in the toilet speaks for itself,” I explained. “It may be exactly what it appears to be, or just as easily be a plant. The involvement with a dope dealer’s wife straddles the same fence. He may have been trying to lure her onto the straight and narrow, and she—with or without her husband’s involvement—may have been setting him up. What sticks in my craw is the guy who squealed on Padget to the paper. He said he was pissed off because Padget hadn’t paid him for drugs, not once but twice. He also said they’d done drugs together the night before he made the phone call. Now, that sounds pretty screwy to me—you don’t do drugs with someone who just stiffed you on the payment. My bet is Bouch was the caller, hoping to use us to nail Padget’s hide to the wall.”

In the silence that followed, Kathleen Bartlett took us all in for a long moment before finally nodding her head. “All right, I’ll sign off on it. I’ll have to fly it by the boss, and explain things to the VSP and the head of the task force, but I’m willing to give it a shot. It would be nice to clear a cop or two, jail a bad guy, stop a source of drugs coming into the state, and protect a few teenagers all in one swoop—assuming any of this pans out.”

Her last comment didn’t go unnoticed, but like people circling an unexploded bomb, we all gave it a wide berth and made plans for how to structure the investigation, covering our doubts with a slightly strained optimism.

It was only then I began wondering how much of my neck I’d stuck out. Worst-case scenario, it was possible I’d chosen to deal with job-related weariness and ambivalence by committing professional suicide.

I MET WITH KATHLEEN BARTLETT AGAIN
the next day in Montpelier, on the second floor of the Pavilion Building, an ornate, Georgian-influenced red brick and white-trim monstrosity with two deep wooden balconies and a broad set of porch steps that reached out to State Street like a bridge spanning a moat. Ironically, I had to circle the block to reach the AG’s offices in a modern addition far to the rear. Where I ended up was disappointingly familiar—a huge room divided into partitioned cubicles, with tasteful fluorescent strips overhead and the continual chirping of tinny, distant phones in the air. There was the usual row of windowed offices corralling it all, from where the privileged few could soak in the sun or call for coffee and assistance from those occupying the wasteland to the interior.

The summons to come here, befitting the summoner, had been pleasant but crisp. Bartlett’s boss had taken the bait, as she put it, so time was officially wasting. I was to pack a bag for a visit of unknown duration and get on the road ASAP.

I had no complaint with that, and not just because she was right about the time. Given the vagueness of most of the allegations I’d parlayed into a hypothetical case, I needed something solid to put my hands on.

Kathy Bartlett met me at the reception desk and escorted me down one side of the central room, eventually ushering me across the threshold of an office near the back wall. “I thought I’d start by introducing you to your partner, since the two of you will be joined at the hip from now on.”

As we entered, a tall, thin man wearing old-fashioned granny glasses rose from a small conference table in the middle of the room and approached us, his hand stuck out in greeting.

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “Jonathon Michael. How are you?”

Bartlett smiled. “So much for breaking the ice. Jon came to us from the State Police three years ago.”

“From arson investigations,” I completed for her. “We worked together in Gannet, in the Northeast Kingdom—wild case.”

“That it was.” Jonathon Michael smiled.

“Jon’s been figuring out how we can loosen some of the knots in this one. You mind starting right away, Joe? I should’ve offered some coffee, or at least the bathroom.”

I shook my head and grabbed one of the chairs grouped around the table, already littered with papers. “No, I’m fine. Thanks anyway.”

Michael sat where most of the papers were gathered. “I’ve been trying to split this thing into its various components,” he said. “So if you’ll indulge me, I’ll just go from the top and run through the list. We can kick it around afterwards.”

I smiled at the approach. As an arson investigator, Jonathon Michael had been more scholar than cop, always proceeding methodically, never in a rush, shyly explaining things as he went along, even when his audience already knew where he was headed, or couldn’t have cared less. He’d graduated from college as an architectural engineer after seven years of intensive study and had then immediately joined the State Police with no explanation. He was unflappably easygoing, completely self-effacing, and the most private man I’d ever met. He also had a near-perfect solve rate.

He pushed at his glasses absent-mindedly, sliding them up his nose. “The case on top, regardless of its true importance, is the only one actually headed for court,” he said softly. “That’s the Brian Padget illegal possession charge. Joe, have you come up with anything new on that?”

“No, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m convinced both Bouches are involved, and maybe not as I’d first thought.”

He nodded politely. “Right. Kathy told me a little about that. But in terms of concrete leads… ”

I shook my head. “Best I can do right now is a relative shot in the dark. As far as I know, we haven’t run a comparative test between the coke found in the urine sample and the stuff in the bag. Maybe that’s where we’ll get lucky.”

Kathy Bartlett wrote a note on the pad before her. “I’ll get that done.”

“Okay,” Michael continued. “Next up is Emily Doyle. There’s nothing here except innuendo, but there are some strange coincidences. The problem with digging into them openly, though, is that if word gets out, we’ll be caught in a limelight none of us wants, and Doyle may not deserve.”

“Maybe we should approach it indirectly,” I suggested.

He nodded. “I agree. If all this is interconnected, we’ll find where Officer Doyle fits eventually. Next up is Jasper Morgan. Am I correct that not a single sighting of him’s occurred since the night he gave you the slip?”

“As far as I know.”

Michael pursed his lips. “That puts an ominous slant on things. When was the last time you remember a young punk keeping totally underground for more than a week?”

“So we assume he’s dead,” Kathy said flatly.

I agreed with her. “I’ll have the Brattleboro PD grill everyone who knew him. We did that before, when we thought he was just lying low, but people are starting to talk more, supposedly because they’ve reached the same conclusion.”

Jonathon wrote a note to himself. “Good idea.”

I sat back, comforted by how things were progressing. A good twenty-five years my junior, Jonathon Michael was as easy in his supervisory role as I was with my own squad. I had been in other special units where the team leader’s style had been boorish, autocratic, aloof, or downright incompetent. This was obviously to be a much more pleasant experience.

“Next up is Jan Bouch,” he continued. “I decided to keep her separate, mostly because you seem to be leaning that way.”

“I’m not sure one way or the other,” I amended. “She could be a complete patsy—she might also have acted independently in some of this. She’s obviously under her husband’s control. I’d like to interview a nurse named Anne Murphy about her. We talked once, but I might be able to get her to open up more.”

“Good. That would be handy.” He sat back and looked at me, the overhead fluorescent lighting glinting off his glasses. “Which brings us, last but not least, to Norman Bouch. I’ve treated him almost like a small company and turned him into a flow chart.”

He extracted two sheets of paper from a folder and handed one copy to each of us. “Under his name are six categories: ‘Sources,’ ‘Network,’ and ‘Clients’ being the basics of most drug operations. I’ve also listed ‘Assets,’ ‘Friends,’ which include employees, and ‘Habits,’ meaning travel routines and weekly and monthly schedules. We don’t have the wherewithal to analyze each one of these, but I thought I’d highlight them to see if one stands out more than the others.”

I looked over the neatly typewritten sheet. “We know nothing about his sources. They might come out of Lawrence, that being his old stomping ground, but Lowell or Boston or New York would fit, too. Same thing for clients. I think our best bet is the network. We’ve got an inkling of how it’s run and where, and we’re pretty sure Jasper Morgan was part of it, as might be Lenny in Burlington.”

“Maybe the local PD’s in-house computer will spit out something on him,” Kathy said, “assuming he has priors.”

“Assets are something else we can use the computer for,” Jonathon added. “I can do that from here.”

I folded the sheet and put it in my pocket. “I suppose the most straightforward approach would be to put Norm under surveillance and tap his phone line… ” Both my companions’ heads shot up, so I quickly added, “I know, I know—I don’t think it would be a good idea anyway. Norm knows goddamn well he’s put a bee up our nose with Padget. I spoke to a psychologist in Lawrence, who told me he’s a control freak and a showoff, so we can assume he’s expecting a reaction and maybe waiting to ambush us with something else.”

Jonathon Michael examined his paperwork. “How ’bout going through Lenny? You learned about him in a roundabout way. If Bouch is playing this like a chess game, he may not even know Lenny’s on the board.”

I nodded. “I can also find out what happened to the void Jasper left behind. Presumably somebody’s replaced him.”

“I doubt that,” Kathleen said, without looking up from her note-taking. “Using Jonathon’s logic, if I’d whacked my regional operator, I’d lie low, especially if I had other sources of income.”

“True,” I agreed. “But it might work to distract Bouch. I’ll dig into Lenny and have my squad chase down the Jasper angle. If I go back to Brattleboro to get them rolling, that ought to put me in Burlington in a day or so.”

“You can pick me up on your way back,” Michael said. He suddenly smiled at an afterthought. “It is a little weird, not doing anything about the only hard-core case we’ve got.”

Kathy Bartlett dropped her pad on the table. “We’ll be running the toxicology comparison, but I think Joe’s right. Let’s avoid the obvious, if for no other reason than to frustrate Norm. We can investigate Brian Padget in a few days, especially if we start feeling his dealings are separate from Bouch’s. Right now,” she added with a smile, “let’s avoid the bait, if that’s what Padget is, and work on finding out how to bite the fisherman.”