Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (38 page)

I pulled the tapes I’d made at Megan Goss’s out of my pocket. “Harriet around?”

“Yeah—I put her in there.” He jerked his thumb at a tiny cubbyhole office that filled one corner of the large room. “All our calls are being transferred in here, too. What’s that?”

“More proof that Vogel didn’t do it. I want her to transcribe it. What’ve you heard back from our people?”

“We’re supposed to have an update conference at four.”

I checked my watch. “Bring ’em in now. Maybe I can cut down on their workload.”

· · ·

The setting was less formal than before. People sat on chairs, on the edges of tables; a few were on the floor with their backs to the wall. In all, there were over a dozen of them—detectives, patrolmen in plainclothes, and, inevitably, Brandt and Lefevre.

I felt an odd combination of skepticism and excitement mingling in the air. “I apologize for yanking you back here on short notice, but I think it’ll be worth your while. Harriet’s been typing a transcript of a conversation Megan Goss had with Gail Zigman this morning after putting her under hypnosis. As a result of that session, we’ve been able to get a more detailed description of the man we’re after.”

I paused for theatrical effect. “He’s of medium build, flat stomach, no chest hair—although that could have been shaved off for the occasion—between twenty-five and forty, meticulously neat. He also doesn’t smell like a stray dog, which ought to rule out Bob Vogel if nothing else does.”

There was a polite ripple of muted laughter. “Based on the fact, therefore, that Vogel was carefully framed, I had Goss draw up a psychological profile of the type of man we’re after. I want to use that profile to narrow down our suspects to a revised A-list.”

“We throwing out the names that don’t fit?” Kunkle asked skeptically.

“Just moving them to the back. Criminal profiling is a good, time-tested tool, but it’s not always accurate. However, since we’ve got one, we might as well use it. If we don’t get any hits, we’ll go back to knocking on doors.”

I looked around, as if inviting debate, but I knew the simplicity of the rationale had already won them over. It would mean a hell of a lot less effort if it worked—never the worst incentive to a beleaguered, tired, uncertain team.

“All right, let’s deal with the solid evidence first—rule out the extremes. Who’s got anyone with either a real gut or who’s skinny as a rail?”

One of the patrolmen raised his hand tentatively. “I had Barry Gilchrist. He’s pretty scrawny—looks like he’s starving.”

I nodded. “Okay. He gets bumped. Anyone else?”

Encouraged, another one said, “Lonny Sorvin’s a porker.”

Three more names were added to the pile, for one reason or the other.

“Five down,” I said. “Okay. Goss said that, in all likelihood, we’re after a loner who’s compulsively neat, highly intelligent, likes nice things, and who keeps fit doing a solitary activity, like jogging or weight lifting. She also thinks he probably collects things—stamps, coins, or something similar.”

“Well, unless it’s empty beer cans, that lets out Harry Murchison,” Willy called out. “He and his girlfriend live like pigs, and he’s dumb as dirt.”

The laughter that followed was accompanied by several more folders being put aside.

“Who do we have left?” I asked.

“There’s still Jason Ryan,” Sammie spoke up. “He’s thin, compulsive, hates women, rides a bike, and doesn’t have an alibi.”

“He’s also nuts,” someone added.

J.P. waved a folder in the air. “Philip Duncan fits, and he was on Gail’s original list, but he has an alibi. On the night of the assault, he was at that office party until 2:30 a.m.—lots of witnesses, including Mark Sumner. Of course, Sumner’s on the list, too, and also fits, but of the two of them, I like Duncan better. The realty office they work at is just a few yards away from where those photos were taken of Gail, but at the time, Sumner was showing a property up near Newfane. Duncan claimed he was working at his desk. Said he didn’t see anyone wandering around the sidewalk with a camera.” Tyler’s skepticism showed in his voice.

I thought of how the buildings were arranged on that street. “You can see the entrance to Gail’s building from that office, can’t you?”

Tyler raised his eyebrows. “You can see it from Duncan’s desk.” There was a slight lull, which Tyler filled reluctantly, forced by his scientific mind to redress some balance. “The downside to Duncan being our man is still his alibi for the night of the rape. That and the fact that whoever put this whole frame together is too smart to be caught taking pictures of his target in broad daylight on a busy street.”

“Maybe,” I answered. “Maybe not. Concentrate on Duncan. See if he slipped out of the party early. It could be people just assumed he was there when he wasn’t.”

Tyler wrote a note to himself. I looked around the room. “Who else?”

“Richard Clark,” one of Billy’s men said. “The alibi’s pretty wobbly—the whole family shares a huge bed—‘the community bed,’ they call it—but that night, it was only his daughter and him, and she can’t swear he was there all night.”

There was a predictable amount of snickering at that one, followed by Sammie saying, “Johnston Hill was arranging his mother’s funeral, but the witnesses he mentioned when we first questioned him are starting to go soft—they either don’t want to get involved or they’re lying.”

“That it?” I asked, checking the list I’d been keeping. “Ryan, Duncan, Sumner, Clark, and Hill. What were Ryan and the last two doing when the photographs were taken?”

Sammie and the patrolman who’d reported on Clark began flipping through their files. Ron answered for them. “I’ve been keeping track of that. Sumner’s the only one who comes out squeaky clean. The rest of them are like Duncan—they were either at work, with no solid alibis, or doing something downtown that could’ve given them enough time to duck out and take a few shots.”

“Which makes Sumner kind of stand out,” Willy muttered.

“That’s true,” I agreed. “He may have an alibi because he knew he’d need it. That would fit a careful planner. Do any of the five of them have priors?”

Ron answered again. “Well… Ryan, of course. None of the others do.”

“You said the profile calls for a loner. Does that mean he’s not married?” Sammie asked.

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. The implication was that he tends to keep to himself more than not, but he could be the ultimate actor, able to play any role he likes.”

Kunkle was obviously tiring of all the abstractions. “So what the hell’re we supposed to do? Bust the tidiest one with the highest IQ?”

“Goss’s recommendation,” I answered, “was that since we know this man hates women, we might get lucky using an aggressive woman to punch his buttons.”

I bowed slightly to Sammie. “I’d like to send you in to interview each of these men—at their homes, if possible, so you can look around a bit. Really turn the heat up under them—make each one think he’s our primary suspect, that we’re on the brink of making an arrest. You’ll be wearing a wire at each interview, of course, and have a backup team of a detective and a plainclothes patrol officer that’ll remain behind to tail the suspect afterward. Goss thinks those who are innocent will most likely run to their lawyers, the board of selectmen, or whoever, to raise a stink.” I turned to Brandt. “Which means you better warn the town manager he might be getting some calls.

“Conversely, she also thinks the one we’re after will probably sit tight and bide his time. If it works out that way, it might save us some wear and tear and allow us to focus on one individual.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Sammie said without hesitation.

“That may be what you get,” Willy countered. “If this man really does have a thing against women, and we convince him he’s got nowhere to turn, what’s to stop him from blowing your head off?”

There was a moment’s silence as we all considered the strong possibility that he could be right. “We’ll just take precautions,” Tony finally said softly. But everyone knew better than to take too much comfort in that.

AS PROMISED IT WAS SNOWING
—large, featherlike flakes, falling so gently they seemed unsure they wanted to land at all. When they did, however, they stuck, the ground being cold enough to keep them from melting. Not only was this the earliest preseason snowfall I’d ever seen, it had already covered the ground with a good two inches.

I hit the windshield wipers to clear my view of Johnston Hill’s elongated split-level Harris Avenue home. I was parked, motor running but lights out, about three houses south. Tyler and one of Billy’s patrolmen were north of me in Tyler’s personal vehicle. All three of us were listening to Sammie Martens grilling Hill.

Her approach was similar to what she’d used on Philip Duncan an hour earlier, and on Richard Clark and Mark Sumner at the beginning of this process. And Johnston Hill was reacting similarly to Clark and Sumner, too—helpful at first, then apparently stunned into shocked disbelief, and finally flailing in anger and outrage.

She was very good, her voice reeking of suspicion, her theatrical pauses of blatant incredulity. She wielded her pointed, accusatory questions like a stick to keep them off balance. I could picture her dark, intense expression adding to her impassioned fierceness.

And it was working. Each of the men had reacted to the pressure. Even Philip Duncan—the coolest of the three—had finally demanded she leave his house, albeit without fanfare. Richard Clark—he of the community bed—had become hysterical, falling apart when she’d asked him who slept where, what they wore, and—more insinuating—what they didn’t. But since their sleeping arrangement had been used as an alibi, he couldn’t force her to drop the subject. He’d finally admitted that there were times he was driven—by claustrophobia, by incestuous fantasy, by the futile desire to make love privately to his wife—to seek the solace of the couch downstairs.

On the night in question, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter had been alone—his wife and other child having stayed at his in-laws’ house for the night. Sammie had probed and prodded at the man’s growing discomfort, until he’d ended up admitting that he’d spent the night alone downstairs, and that in fact he did not have the alibi he’d claimed.

Mark Sumner had been less vulnerable. Not only was his alibi buttressed by other witnesses at the office party, but his trip to Newfane on the day of Gail’s surreptitious photo session had been prompted by an unexpected call from prospective clients. Sumner had left his office on the spur of the moment to cater to them—a spontaneous scenario we hadn’t been able to discredit, despite working the phones all afternoon. Nevertheless, Sammie had given it her best, going after his being a thirty-year-old bachelor, a solitary drinker, a man who saw Gail as a rival realtor and a success where he was not. Sumner had ended the conversation by calling his lawyer then and there, forcing Sammie to either get on the stick and be specific, or leave.

Duncan had been the standout. At first friendly—even charming—he’d quickly become almost robotically aloof, refusing to rise to Sammie’s bait. With growing tension, we’d sat in our darkened vehicles, keyed to Sammie’s microphone, listening to a floundering interview die against a wall of cold antagonism. By barely saying a word, Duncan had controlled the conversation. When I’d debriefed Sammie immediately afterward, she’d been shaken—even fearful—and very happy to be away from him.

This had not come as a total surprise. All afternoon, Tyler and I had focused on Philip Duncan, running his name through our computer, talking to his colleagues, calling up his friends—all stimulated by the small bell that had gone off in my head when I’d heard he had a view of Gail’s office from his desk. What had emerged was a pristine model citizen with a nightmarish childhood—a man about whom several people told me, “I can’t believe he turned out so well.”

Unfortunately, that Boston childhood had been routinely brutal. Duncan had been born into a poor family with multiple and transient fathers, an alcoholic mother, in a neighborhood on the ropes. As a youngster, he and one sister had been legally adopted by a domineering and abusive aunt and gone to live north of the city, where he’d grown up silent, private, and rigidly self-controlled. He’d left home as soon as he’d been legally able and had never returned since.

The sister, with whom he still kept in touch, lived in Greenfield. She’d moved there just before Robert Vogel had raped Katherine Rawlins.

Shortly before we’d sent Sammie out on her interviews, I’d telephoned Gail to ask her again why Duncan’s name had appeared on her list. Speaking to Ron weeks earlier, she’d merely said that Duncan gave her the creeps, and given her state then, we hadn’t pushed her for more.

This time, she went into more detail. “I don’t know if it’ll help, but a few years ago, Ethan Allen Realty had an exclusive listing on a million-dollar estate in Hillwinds. It was Phil Duncan’s account, and he couldn’t get it to move. He kept urging the owners to lower their price. They eventually got tired of him and came to me, and I sold it within a month. It was a pretty standard deal—no breaches of contract or anything—but I guess Ethan Allen was suffering, so the loss was felt generally. Sumner was pretty unpleasant about it—and has been ever since—which is one of the reasons he made it on the list. But Duncan was weird. He confronted me on the street afterward, all smiles and charm, and said he now knew what it felt like to be violated.”

“In those exact words?”

“Close enough. But it was the way he said it—kidding around, but cold, too, like it was some private bad joke. I found the comparison offensive. I told him I seriously doubted it, and we parted company. As far as I know, we’ve never spoken since, and whenever we see each other around town, he makes it a point to avoid me.”

I’d questioned her further, but that had been the total gist of it—from Gail, from my own research, and from Sammie after her interview—an accumulation of muted alarms, not one of them loud enough to allow us to do more than we were already doing. I had people back at the station still checking computer files and making phone calls about Duncan, but right now our current plan seemed as potentially fruitful as any. It also helped us avoid the same trap we’d fallen into with Vogel, of focusing on one man too much and too early.