Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (3 page)

He turned and looked straight at me. “And there’s the personal side to it. How’re you going to perform? I noticed you weren’t too eager to hear the details from Ron a while back. You and Gail have been together for years—might as well be married. Psychologically, it would be like investigating your own wife’s rape. How would you handle it, if our roles were reversed?”

I wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. “The same way you’re probably going to. You’ve been thinking about this since Ron first called you—I saw you checking me out in the car. So what’ve you decided?”

He shook his head and snorted gently, amused at my stubbornness. “I’m putting you in charge, but not alone. Everything you do, think, or even dream about has to be flown by me first. Nothing happens without my prior knowledge, and everything is shared with the SA and his investigator immediately.”

An indefinable part of me found its footing with those words, anchoring all my other mixed emotions, if only tenuously. I made myself believe that Tony Brandt had not only just helped
me
out, but Gail and the case’s outcome as well.

Still, I couldn’t ignore that he’d chosen the bolder of his options—something the State’s Attorney was likely to remind him of, and perhaps use against him if things went wrong. “James Dunn is going to love this.”

Brandt jumped off the loading dock and began walking toward his parked car. “I’ve already told him. He doesn’t, but he’ll survive.”

· · ·

We drove to Gail’s house together. A converted apple barn, the house was the sole remnant of a farm that had once dominated a hill overlooking Meadowbrook Road in quasi-rural West Brattleboro. It stood alone now, the other buildings having long since been dismantled or moved, reminiscent of a frontier outpost of two hundred years ago—tall, weather-beaten, built of rough, dark wood. Gail had purchased it for near nothing over a decade ago and had turned it into a bright, soaring, multilevel cathedral of a home, filled with plants, ceiling fans, colorful art, and intimate lighting. It was a hidden showcase of prime real estate and went a long way in demonstrating why she was the town’s single most successful realtor.

At the moment, however, it looked more like the police department parking lot. Tony had to park halfway up the long driveway behind a string of patrol cars. We went the rest of the way on foot.

As we’d turned off the road, I’d noticed both WBRT’s and the
Brattleboro Reformer
’s cars perched by the edge of the ditch. “How’d you fare with them?” I asked, as we trudged up the steep slope.

“We played footsie a bit. They asked me if it was Gail, or if she’d been hurt, or if we’d caught the guy; I mostly said, ‘No comment.’ I also made it crystal clear I’d be pretty pissed if they divulged any names. They looked shocked I’d even suggested it.”

“You talk to Katz about it?”

Stanley Katz, once the
Reformer
’s cops-’n’-courts reporter, had recently been made editor-in-chief by his Midwest owners, right after he’d surprised them with his resignation—a true example, we thought, of the Peter Principle run wild. But Katz, despite his ambition, his cynicism, and his total lack of manners, had always showed integrity. I just hoped this sole virtue could withstand his bosses’ thirst for wider circulation.

Tony seemed to have been thinking along similar lines. “I didn’t see the point. He’ll be coming to me soon enough—he’s got too much bloodhound in him to leave it to some reporter. I did tell his boys—and BRT—that they are not allowed on Gail’s property, but they’ll probably try what they can.”

He suddenly stopped and put his hand on my shoulder, the fog from his breath shrouding his face in the chill morning air. “I’d prepare myself for the worst, though. This could turn into a three-ring circus before it’s done, and I’d be amazed if Gail’s anonymity survived. Which means she—and you—will be front-page news. You might want to consider that before we finish this climb.”

I nodded and started walking again. “My being involved depends on you and Dunn. I’m staying till one of you stops me.”

The front door of the building led out onto a broad deck, which in turn had a flight of steps connecting it to the driveway. We had just set foot on the deck and greeted the patrolman guarding the entrance when Ron Klesczewski stepped out through the sliding glass door, a nervous smile on his face.

“They let you on the case.”

I smiled back at his obvious relief, although he didn’t need me as much as he thought he did. I wouldn’t have made him my second-in-command if he didn’t have the wherewithal to do the job himself. But his lack of self-confidence, perhaps due to my constant presence, never allowed my belief in him to be put to the test. “You may regret that they did.”

Brandt interrupted the obvious denial already half formed on Ron’s lips. “He’s on it, but he’s not running it, at least not by himself; we’ll be co-leaders on this. Is Todd Lefevre here yet?”

Ron scrutinized our faces quickly, trying to gauge my view of this unorthodox command. Like most cops everywhere, he saw the chief as a bureaucrat only—not a street cop—despite the proof, given time and again over the years, that Tony functioned easily in either role. “He got here about five minutes ago—he’s inside.”

He stepped away from the door and ushered us across the threshold. Todd Lefevre—the State’s Attorney’s criminal investigator—was standing in the center of the building’s main room, admiring its huge, bright space extending high overhead, interlaced by enormous, ancient cross beams which supported, here and there, a varying assortment of staircases and lofts.

He turned as we entered—a small, round man with a pleasant, bookish look about him—and came over to shake my hand. “Hi, Joe, I was real sorry to hear about this.”

“Thanks, Todd.”

“J.P.’s set up in the bedroom,” Ron explained. “He asked we keep the traffic down to a minimum, and that everyone stay on the brown paper till he’s had the whole place checked out.”

Lefevre, as diplomatic as his boss James Dunn was not, bowed out. “You go ahead. I’ve already had a quick look around—I’ll talk to you when you’re done.”

Ron, Tony, and I followed the brown-paper runner that J.P. Tyler—the forensics member of the squad—had laid down across the floor and up a long, narrow staircase to the uppermost loft, tucked under the sloped ceiling some thirty feet up. This was where Gail had established her bedroom, in the walled-off equivalent of a tall ship’s crow’s nest.

As Ron had said, the house was essentially empty, in order to preserve J.P.’s sacrosanct “field of evidence.” Still, I felt the presence of strangers everywhere, something the butcher paper underfoot did little to dispel.

All three of us paused at the top of the stairs and surveyed the bedroom before us. Dominated by a king-sized bed awash in light from an enormous skylight, it looked like a war zone—the pictures askew on the walls, the dresser swept clean of its bric-a-brac, the closets and drawers disemboweled, their contents resting on the floor and furniture like freshly fallen snow. The only sign of any order in this mess was a perversely precise display of Gail’s more revealing underwear, hung neatly along the upper edge of a lamp shade.

A sudden flash from Tyler’s camera caught me unawares, startling me, and finalized the room’s transformation from intimate retreat to crime scene.

I stared at the bed he was photographing, its covers pulled all the way to the foot, exposing an unnaturally vast expanse of bottom sheet, wrinkled in the middle, stained here and there by minute spots of crimson. I remembered Ron’s comment about a knife—“Pinpricks, really, just to prove he had it.” The bed took on the vague aspect of a laboratory table.

“Any semen stains?” Tony asked, his tone a little brusque, as if the question were as much to challenge my objectivity as to get an answer.

“A few,” Tyler answered, still focusing. He then lowered the camera and turned to face us, seeing me for the first time. Normally, his scientific detachment at a scene rivaled his inanimate equipment’s, but he looked suddenly uncomfortable now, a reaction for which I silently thanked him. To his face, however, I merely nodded and said, “It’s okay.”

He looked at me clinically for another second and then nodded, satisfied. “What did she say about ejaculate?”

Ron cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed. “I didn’t ask. We didn’t talk for long—she was pretty upset—so I just stuck to the immediate stuff, like did she see the guy, or know him.”

I stepped away from the doorway, fighting my own growing discomfort. I nodded toward the stains on the sheet, “Some of those are probably mine. I was here last night. What else have you found?”

Tyler took my cue and moved on. “Nothing much so far, but I only got here a few minutes ago, just long enough to take a few overall shots.” He pointed along the bottom edge of the box spring. The rope slipknots Ron had mentioned at the hospital hung limply from the metal frame, two on each side, like a demented child’s preparations for a miniature mass hanging. “Looks like common clothesline—the more she pulled against them, the tighter they got.”

Ron added, “She told me she finally freed herself by shifting to one side as far as possible, cutting off the circulation to one hand until the rope loosened enough for her to slip the other hand out.”

“What else?” I asked, swallowing against the tightening in my throat.

J.P. looked contemplative. “It’s a messy scene, from a pretty angry guy. The underwear on the lamp shade might’ve been to taunt her, or us later on. Or it might’ve been to turn him on. Hard to tell. It’s all definitely a display of power and control, from the ropes to the knife to the destruction. Was her bedroom usually pretty neat?”

“Yes, she’s very tidy,” I said, nodding. “So what does it all tell you?”

Tyler, befitting his scientific bent, had taken several training courses in rape psychology, some on his own time, and therefore had a better knowledge of it than the rest of us, who tended to rely on our past experience alone. He shrugged slightly. “Fast attack, preplanned, with a specific goal in mind. I noticed before I came up here that the disturbance seems to be confined to this room only. She lock up at night?”

“Generally.” I looked to Ron. “How much did Gail give you?”

“She didn’t see him or recognize anything about him. He didn’t say much, and then only in a whisper, so she couldn’t identify his voice. He came out of nowhere and left right after he’d finished. She said she didn’t notice any damage to the house except for here.”

“You said she saw the clock before he bagged her. Did she look at it later?”

He nodded. “She freed herself at 3:37. She wrote it down ’cause she knew we’d need to know.”

Tyler whistled. “Did he beat her up?”

“Why do you ask?” I countered, cutting Ron off.

He pointed at our surroundings. “Big mess, took a long time, a little knife play, a lot of pent-up violence. They usually don’t stop at beating on the furniture.”

Ron spoke up then. “She’s actually not too bad physically—he nicked her a few times with a knife, but not enough to require stitches, and only whacked her hard a couple of times, just before he split.”

There was a slight pause in the room as we contemplated what had happened here just a few hours earlier. I was struck by the way the references to violence had been confined to fists and a knife. It seemed to me the biggest source of violence hadn’t even been mentioned.

J.P. frowned. “No knife here. I’ll check the kitchen, but if he brought it with him, that’s another indicator this was preplanned.”

“You think anything was stolen?” Ron asked of no one in particular.

J.P. looked at me. “I would doubt it—maybe a single article, kind of like a souvenir. What do you think?”

I shook my head. “Too hard to tell the way things are now. The TV and stereo are pretty fancy, and they haven’t been touched. She keeps her jewelry in that box over there.”

I pointed to a hinged cherry case with an inlaid maple design I’d bought her years ago. It was lying on the floor, unopened, half under one of the night tables. J.P. gingerly stepped over to it and opened it, his hands clad in ghost-white latex gloves. It was full of the things I’d grown used to seeing Gail wear.

Tyler replaced the box exactly. “Later, you might get her to do an inventory. If anything is missing, my bet’s on something personal.” He glanced at the lamp shade.

“Jesus,” Ron muttered to himself. Tony Brandt cleared his throat and spoke for the first time. “J.P., you set for what you need?”

Tyler nodded. “I’d like Ron to help me go through all this with tweezers, but that’s about it. Dennis is running the show outside, from the boundary line in toward the house. You might ask him if he needs more people. Otherwise, I’m okay. The fewer inside the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

Brandt had his hands in his jacket pocket, fidgeting with his pipe. I knew he was dying to fire it up, something he never did at one of Tyler’s scenes, for fear of leaving a shred of tobacco behind. He was obviously getting restless as a result. “Okay, then. We’ll get out of your hair.”

He turned on his heel and was about to work his way down the long staircase, with me behind him, when Tyler stopped us with a question: “You going to talk to her again soon?”

I answered. “We’ll try to—kind of depends on her. Why?”

“It’s a gut reaction so far, but I’d say the guy knew her—well enough that she’d recognize him if she’s given the chance.”

I nodded and went after Brandt, reflecting wistfully that no one in that room, including myself, had referred to Gail by name.

· · ·

We found Todd Lefevre outside on the deck, chatting with the patrolman on guard. Lefevre’s was an unusual—and highly envied—job. A law-enforcement officer, he belonged to no department. His only boss was the State’s Attorney, and his jurisdiction extended as far as the SA’s. Lefevre could run his own investigations, delegate them to other officers, or cooperate as he was doing here. He worked with sheriffs, municipal departments, the state police, or any relevant federal agency, and could, if the job required it and the money was available, travel anywhere outside Vermont’s borders to do what he had to do. The only downside was that he existed on the SA’s say-so, and on the state legislature’s willingness to fund his position, both of which definitely blunted the appeal. Not only was James Dunn a weak excuse for a human being, but from a one-time high of eleven state investigators, there were now only three full-timers left.