Perfect Poison (24 page)

By the middle of September, Samantha Harris had come to the horrifying conclusion that her next door neighbor was, possibly, a cold-blooded serial killer.

As she sat one day in her living room and put all she had seen throughout the summer into perspective, Harris became almost embarrassed by her naivety. How could she have been so blind? She remembered how Glenn had shown up after work one day and Kristen had attacked him in front of the kids, screaming obscenities.

It made more sense to Harris now.

A few days later, Glenn again came by to pick up the kids, and Kristen told him Brian hadn't been feeling well.

“He's had a headache all day,” Kristen said. “I want to give him some medicine before you take him home, Glenn—”

“Absolutely not,” Glenn snapped. “Don't give him anything! I'll take care of them myself.”

A fight ensued. Kristen, clawing and kicking, went after Glenn while Harris huddled the kids together in the corner of the kitchen.

After a few moments, Harris calmed Kristen down enough so Glenn could gather the kids and leave. It was one of the last times Kristen had taken care of the children.

There were other times when Kristen would tease the children right before Glenn arrived. She would take things from them and taunt them. Gilbert's youngest was two years old at the time. Like Linus from “Charlie Brown,” the boy had a favorite blue blanket he carried around with him. Harris couldn't believe it as she watched Kristen rip the blanket from his hands one afternoon, and, as he begged to have it back, she refused.

It was as if she were punishing the children because their father was talking to the investigators, Harris thought later.

 

 

By September, Harris was at her wit's end. Gilbert's behavior had become so unpredictable it was a crap shoot every day as to whom she would be. Harris had given her the benefit of the doubt throughout the summer. She still believed in Gilbert's innocence. She felt the system had been using Gilbert as a scapegoat, forcing its theory down the throats of her family, friends and coworkers until they agreed to believe it.

But here it was, the second week of September, and things were anything but normal. As Harris recalled different episodes throughout the past few months, she became convinced of Gilbert's guilt. As it was, Gilbert had been phoning Harris three and four times a day and stopping by unannounced whenever she had a chance. Now, Harris realized, the entire time Gilbert had been pumping her with misinformation—things she wanted only Harris to know.

As Harris began to put things together and discuss them with not only Perrault, but Gilbert's other friends and coworkers, she realized Gilbert had been playing her all along.

Three specific episodes stuck out in Harris's mind, chewing at the fabric of her perception enough to force her to go running to the Northampton DA's office seeking help.

First, there was the matter of a canoe Gilbert had given to Perrault for his twenty-sixth birthday back in May.

It seemed like an innocent gesture from a lonely woman in love. At that time, Harris was just getting to know Gilbert and Perrault. “Wow,” she told herself, “what a wonderful gift. She must really love the guy.”

It was a beautiful brand-new red canoe with hand-woven seats. There were several prime spots around the immediate area to go boating, and Perrault loved nothing better than to spend his day off soaking up the sunshine in the great New England outdoors. He and Gilbert had even taken the canoe out several times right after she had given it to him.

One day, however, as Glenn and his brother-in-law were driving by Gilbert's apartment, they noticed something odd: Perrault's car sitting in Gilbert's parking lot with Glenn's brother-in-law's canoe strapped to the top of it.

Someone had stolen the canoe out of Glenn's backyard a few weeks before. It had been locked and chained under a large oak tree. It was unimaginable to think that one person could break the lock's combination, carry a twenty-foot canoe up the slope, strap it to a car, and drive off without being seen.

Even more peculiar was that Kristen, at the time, had been wearing a sling because of the injury she had purportedly sustained on February 17.

Glenn confronted Kristen.

“What the hell is your boyfriend doing with my brother's canoe?” he asked.

“I bought that canoe for Jim for his birthday, Glenn.”

“You stole the damn canoe and gave it to your boyfriend for his birthday? Are you kidding me? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Kristen denied it. She said she bought the canoe from a guy in Holyoke who sold outdoor sporting goods in his front yard.

“Do you have a receipt?”

“No,” Gilbert said.

Glenn and his brother-in-law cut their losses and decided not to call the cops and press charges. There was enough going on already. It would have been hard to prove.

Perrault, on the other hand, felt ridiculed and embarrassed. He returned the canoe, and it was rarely ever discussed again.

When Glenn told Harris what had happened, she couldn't believe the story. Kristen, she insisted, because of her injury, was incapable picking up a handbag, much less a canoe.

So Harris wrote it off and, as Kristen had told her many times, assumed Glenn was upset that she had left him for another man. This was one of the ways he could get back at the both of them, Kristen said.

The canoe incident was usurped a couple of months later by an event involving a pair of kittens Gilbert had taken in around the middle of July—an event that proved to Harris how most things in Gilbert's life were sketched around the way James Perrault felt about her.

“Attention,” Harris would tell herself. “Everything Kristen did, she did under the guise of gaining attention.”

It had something to do with Tara, Gilbert's younger sister, Harris believed. Gilbert didn't speak of Tara too often, but when she did, it was always in the realm of how much more attention Gilbert's father had given to Tara. One story was that the old man had built a tree house for Tara when they were kids, and Gilbert wasn't allowed in it. When Gilbert asked for one, the old man coldly refused.

The kittens Gilbert took in were beautiful females, about ten weeks old. Whenever Gilbert was confined to jail or the hospital, Harris and Perrault had made it a point to have keys to her apartment so one of them could feed the kittens in her absence. When Gilbert wasn't there, Perrault made sure always to enter her apartment with Harris, so Gilbert couldn't later accuse him of anything.

One day, out of the blue, Gilbert called Harris and said that one of the kittens had developed a bacterial infection and would be spending some time at the vet hospital.

It was the first time Harris had heard one of the kittens had been ill.

“She'll be okay,” Harris promised Gilbert. “Don't worry about it. It's just an infection. It'll be okay, Kristen.”

But a few days later, shortly after Harris had gotten home from work, Gilbert called a second time. She was hysterical.

“The kitten's dead. She's dead. I can't believe it . . .”

Thinking that it was the kitten Gilbert had taken to the vet a few days earlier, Harris rushed over to comfort her friend.

Gilbert was upstairs in the corner of her bedroom when Harris walked in: crying, moaning, visibly trembling, looking away from the kitten, but pointing at it as if she were scared to look.

As Harris approached the animal, she could see it curled up in a ball. It was barely breathing, with blood running out of its mouth. Its eyes were glossed over, a murky pus-colored yellow. But she could hear it making a faint wheezing sound.

“Kristen,
what
happened?”

“Well,” Gilbert said. She wasn't looking at Harris or the kitten. She was looking off in the distance. “I came home, and it crawled out from underneath the bed . . . and . . . it . . . it had a seizure and just laid on the ground.” Gilbert then began to get hyper, moving around, pacing. “So . . . I . . . I . . . I gave it mouth-to-mouth,” she said, perking up, “and saved its life!”

The first thing Harris thought of was getting the kitten to the vet before it died in front of them.

“Kristen, we need to call the vet right away.”

“Well, I
already
called Jim.”

“No. No. No! We
need
to call the vet.
Right now!”

Gilbert then went to the linen closet, got a towel, and wrapped up the kitten. As Harris watched, she couldn't believe how Gilbert, instead of comforting the thing, held it out in front of herself as if she were repulsed by the sight of it. As a mother, all Harris wanted to do was pick the animal up and cradle it in her arms.

Harris then called the vet.

“Can we bring it in right away? It's going to die at any time.”

“Bring it in immediately.”

“Kristen,” Harris said, turning toward Gilbert and grabbing her by the shoulders, “listen to me. The vet said to bring it in right away.”

Gilbert wouldn't look into Harris's eyes.

“Oh, no. I
have
to wait for Jim to come before I do anything.”

“My God, Kristen, the kitten is going to die. Why in the world do you have to wait for Jim?”

“Because I called him, and he said he was on his way.”

“Kristen, why don't you just take the kitten to the vet, and I'll wait here for Jim and send him down there when he gets here?”

“No! Absolutely not! I
have
to wait for Jim, Sami. Now that's the end of it!”

Gilbert put the cat down on the ground, walked away and sat down on the bed.

Harris was stunned by her lack of compassion. Gilbert had spent her entire adult life in nursing. Her job had been to care for people.

Luckily, while they were talking, Perrault arrived. He and Gilbert then brought the animal to the vet, and both kittens ended up being fine in a matter of a couple weeks.

The next day, Perrault went over to Harris's to thank her for what she had done.

“What the hell happened yesterday, Jim? I wish someone would explain it to me.”

“I don't know, Sami. She's . . . she's . . . I don't know what to say.”

“What the hell is wrong with her?”

Perrault then moved in closer as if he didn't want anyone else to hear what he was about to say.

“You know, Sami,” he whispered, “just the other day, in the heat of an argument, I told her that I loved those kittens more than her. You know, just to hurt her feelings. Maybe this had something to do with that?”

“What?”

“And just last night we were watching one of those ‘real video' shows on TV, and they showed a tape of this fireman who saved this cat's life by giving it mouth-to-mouth.”

Harris just shook her head.

 

 

There was one more instance, even more horrifying, that finally sent Harris running to the DA's office.

In early September, Gilbert called Harris and started ranting and raving about the investigation and everyone who had turned their backs on her. It was same rhetoric Harris heard since the July car ride, when Gilbert had told her about the investigation. “I'll get them all,” Gilbert would say. “They're all against me!” It had become casual conversation. All she ever talked about was the investigation.

Yet this particular morning, Gilbert said something that Harris didn't take as just another one of her informal threats. It gave her pause to wonder if Gilbert was planning on taking a grander step toward stopping the investigation.

“You know,” Gilbert said over the phone, “that Karen Abderhalden better watch out.”

“What do you mean?”

Harris liked Karen. She had only met her a few times, but she had spoken to her over the phone on numerous occasions throughout the first few weeks of September. Abderhalden had a warm disposition. But like everyone else involved, she was petrified of Gilbert. And because Harris was so close to Gilbert, she became the epicenter of the investigation. Everyone involved was calling her at one time or another to see what Gilbert was up to. Most called out of fear, and actually believed Gilbert would follow through on her threats. It became a ritual. People would call Harris and, half-joking, half-serious, say, “Tell me: What kind of day am I going to have today, Sami?” Or maybe their car had been vandalized the previous day, and they would call to see if Gilbert was home at such-and-such a time.

Abderhalden lived with her parents in Ashfield, a rather spread-out, reclusive town just outside of Northampton, and had taken Gilbert in back in August. She had convinced her parents that Gilbert needed to be around friends. Everyone had turned their backs on her. She was having problems with Perrault, her husband had totally written her off, and the investigation was beginning to destroy her emotionally. Gilbert had attempted suicide several times, and Abderhalden just wanted to be there for her as a friend. Yet, in truth, Gilbert had played Abderhalden and her parents like a virtuoso, convincing them of her innocence and using them to further her agenda.

“Well, well, well,” Gilbert said to Harris, “you know, Karen's house is so far out in the boondocks . . . if the whole family was killed, nobody would find them for a very long time.”

This coming from a woman who had called Abderhalden eighty-six times between August thirtieth and early September to lean on her for support. The calls lasted anywhere from thirty seconds to more than an hour. During one call, Gilbert had told Abderhalden that “because Jimmy [Perrault] loved her cats so much, she intended to strike back at him by having them euphemized [sic] and was going to lay the cats at his doorstep.”