Bellows Falls (26 page)

By that time, I was heading toward the stairs to confront Lenny in cuffs. I was stopped by Audrey’s voice. “Joe?”

“On my way.”

“You might not want to do that. Lenny’s grabbed a hostage. Some old lady was asleep in one of the cars he was near. Jon didn’t see her.”

I froze in place. “What’s the layout?”

“Lenny’s where he was, near one of those window-type things. We’re fanned out in a semicircle behind all the cars. He’s got a knife to her throat.”

“No gun?”

“None visible. What’s your location?”

“Still up top. Keep him talking. I might be able to flank him.”

I looked over the railing again at the narrow steel fender fifteen feet below. I checked the bulkhead nearby and found a traditional orange life ring on a hook with a coil of rope attached.

Unraveling the rope, I quickly tied it to the railing, threw the rest overboard so it trailed in our wake, and returned to the pilothouse. “Got a pair of gloves?”

The captain, still in the midst of making his circle, merely pointed to a pair by the window. I grabbed them and ran back to my rope, putting them on while I swung one leg over the side.

My toes parked on the outer edge of the deck, I looped the rope across my shoulders and brought my gloved hands together in front of me. Slowly, I paid out line until my body was parallel with the blur of water. Ignoring the pain that leapt back to life in my damaged right arm, I began stepping backwards down the hull.

I’d positioned myself well aft of where Lenny was holding the others at bay, but as I worked my way between two of the window openings, I came into full view of some two dozen people. Nobody commented or pointed, either riveted by the action or cognizant of my intentions. Still, it was with a sigh of relief that I reached the fender, ducked out of sight, and let go of the rope.

Now I was on the equivalent of a narrow ledge at the foot of a sheer cliff, with water rushing by so close I could almost touch it. As long as I was under one of the large windows, this wasn’t a problem, since I could hook my fingertips onto the bottom edge for stability. But moving from opening to opening was something else. The dividers were five to six feet wide—enough to force me to take at least two long side steps without any handhold at all. In addition, the closer I got to Lenny, the more likely it was he would hear me. Any noise on my part and he’d be able to lean outside, still holding his hostage, and merely pitch me into the water. Too late I remembered Tim Giordi’s admonition against yielding to impulse and thought of how much easier it would have been to wait for the police boat to come alongside and show Lenny he was surrounded. On the other hand, I told myself, with one murder to his credit, he was possibly no longer in the mood for debate.

The first window divider proved pretty easy. I was still far enough away that I could use my momentum to help me along. Crawling toward the second, however, I began to have doubts. I could clearly hear Duncan negotiating and, as I got closer, could see the back of Lenny’s head showing just beyond the next divider. Bridging that second gap would have to be like walking a tightrope—slow, easy, and with absolute balance. And with a gun in one hand.

Perhaps it was the will to succeed, or a slight tilting of the boat in my favor, or probably, as I still think, pure dumb luck, but that last, short, perilous journey was made without mishap. I slid along the fender, my feet flat and perpendicular to the bulkhead, my arms spread out to either side, and my cheek pressed against the damp steel, until I was so close to Lenny, I could smell him. At that point, I closed the fingers of my free hand firmly onto the window ledge and gently pressed the barrel of my gun under his ear. He froze as if I’d hit him with a tranquilizer.

“This is a gun, Lenny. Do you understand?”

His voice was barely audible above the water’s rush. “Yeah.”

“I want you to drop the knife and let the lady go. Okay?”

His hand opened, and the knife dropped out of sight, landing with a clatter. The old woman almost messed things up, twisting around and nearly knocking me off my perch, but by then the others had closed in, encircling Lenny and pulling me on board.

After a few congratulatory backslaps, I moved away to the ferry’s bow, now pointed back toward Burlington and the nearby police boat, which was lying dead in the water.

I changed channels on my radio and called on them to answer.

“Go ahead,” came the response.

“Any luck finding the body?”

“We’ve got it on board. He didn’t make it.”

I thanked them and asked that they stand ready to receive us, in exchange for additional people to process a crime scene. I then slipped the radio into my pocket and stood staring out at the slate-colored water.

Audrey McGowen’s voice mingled with the breeze around my head. “You okay?”

I turned to look at her, noticing her injuries had spread to include a semicircle of bruises across her eyes and cheek. I thought back to an earlier conversation I’d had with Gail, whom I was missing terribly just then. “I don’t know.”

“WHY’D HE KILL HIM?”
Duncan asked, of no one in particular.

Jonathon was sitting on the police boat’s gunwale, his feet planted on the bench running across the stern. “He probably represented a threat. He’s the only one who saw you and Joe meeting with Lenny.”

“And maybe because for every lieutenant you often have a sergeant,” I said. “Could be this kid knew more than was good for him. The duffel bag was packed for a long trip. Lenny might’ve been heading for someplace only he and the kid knew about.”

Jonathon, Duncan, and I formed a semicircle on the fantail. Audrey had stayed on the ferry to help the crime scene team. Lenny was under guard below deck, having refused to say a word since surrendering. The body bag containing the subject of our conversation lay at our feet like a misshapen ottoman.

“Either way,” Jonathon resumed, “it sure makes you think twice about old Norm Bouch. That is some fear to instill in a guy, to make him kill a kid just so he won’t be traced.”

The muffled bleating of a pager floated into the air among us. Instinctively, we all checked our own units, found nothing, and returned to staring out across the featureless water. It was Jonathon who finally asked, “So whose was that?”

We looked at one another and then, as if pulled by a common string, stared at the bag in our midst.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Duncan exclaimed, and fell to his knees. He pulled open the zipper, revealing a pale, wet, blue-tinted version of the young man we’d met that morning. He peeled back the flaps of the bag and slightly rolled the body to one side. Reaching under, he extracted a beeper and held it up.

Jonathon took it and checked the display. “This was it, all right.”

“You got your cell phone?” I asked him.

He pulled it out of his inside pocket and handed it to me. I gave it to Duncan. “Call your office, get an address on that number, and let’s see if we can get a search warrant.”

Duncan pushed the appropriate numbers, passed along the request, and waited. A minute later, he looked up at us, grinning broadly. “It’s Norm Bouch’s apartment on North Street.”

· · ·

North Street looks like a transplant from another city. Unlike Burlington’s college-influenced, commercialized downtown, or the residential areas of old Greek Revival architecture with dime-sized backyards, North Street looks like something out of turn-of-the-century, down-at-the-heels Chicago. It is a gray, featureless, ruler-straight avenue filled with bland, worn, flat-faced buildings. The effect is of pure utility—cheap houses built to shelter, and nothing more. It is also pervasive—even the occasional exception seems tainted by the whole, as if all the fancy architecture in the world couldn’t alter the reality tucked behind those peeling wooden walls. Of the visible businesses, bars and junk food convenience stores predominate.

Norm Bouch’s apartment was located next to a lawyer’s office, its windows protected by Plexiglas since, as Duncan explained, every time the lawyer had lost a case, the client had paid him with a brick on the wing. The building was square, flat-roofed, wrapped in scalloped asbestos siding, with doors and windows so flush with the surface they looked painted on. Two patrol units were on guard by the time we arrived, a search warrant in hand.

“Any movement?” Audrey asked one of the uniformed officers.

He shook his head. “Not in or out. Someone’s pretty nervous at the window, though. Checks on us every five minutes.”

We entered the building by the front door, climbed a set of narrow, dingy steps, precariously equipped with a loose railing, and arrived at a door on the top landing with a shiny new peephole in its center. Jonathon pointed at it and raised his eyebrows before Duncan pounded on the door.

We heard soft footsteps approach the other side and hesitate. Duncan held his badge up to the peephole. “Knock, knock,” he said in a loud voice, “Police.”

The door opened slowly, revealing a pimply-faced teenager weighing ninety pounds fully clothed. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice cracking.

Fasca pushed the warrant at him. “To search this place. Belongs to Norm Bouch, right?”

“Who?” The boy stepped aside to let us enter.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Randy Haskins.”

“You live here, Randy?”

The others had spread throughout the small, dark, shabbily furnished apartment. Haskins eyed them nervously. “No. I come to visit.”

“Where do you live, then?”

“On Archibald.”

“And who do you visit when you come here?” I steered him over to a lumpy sofa covered with a dirty electric blanket with the wires hanging out. I took the armchair opposite.

“Lenny Markham. I thought he owned it.” He looked around nervously. “Are you sure you have the right place? I never heard of the other guy.”

“You used the phone to call a beeper number about two hours ago, didn’t you?”

His mouth opened. “How’d you know that?”

“Who were you calling?”

“Robbie Moore.”

“Why?”

“Just to hang out—you know.”

“What do you and Robbie and Lenny have in common?”

Randy Haskins swallowed hard. “Nothing. We’re just friends. We do stuff together.”

“Then why are you here and they’re not?”

“Lenny lets us use this as a crash pad. We all drop by when we want. It doesn’t have to be to meet anybody.”

“So there are more than just Robbie and yourself.”

His face reddened. “A few.” He began absent-mindedly picking at a dark rectangular patch sewn into the middle of the blanket.

“What are their names?”

He hesitated, chewing his lip.

I leaned forward. “Randy. Our being here should tell you it’s all gone up in smoke. A judge doesn’t sign a search warrant unless there’s a very good reason for it. You and I both know what that reason is, right?”

I gave him enough time to nod.

“Then you probably also know your best bet is to be as cooperative as you’ve been so far.”

He grimaced as if in pain. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“From Lenny? He can be nasty, can’t he?”

Again, he nodded.

“Well, here’s the deal, then. Lenny met with Robbie on the ferry earlier today, and before we could stop him, he stuck a knife into Robbie’s heart and threw him overboard. Robbie’s dead, and Lenny’s in jail, and he’s never getting out.”

Randy’s mouth opened and closed several times. “Robbie’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so. Why do you think Lenny killed him?”

He rubbed his forehead, shaking his head. “He was stupid. I told him to keep quiet.
Lenny
even warned him, but he didn’t take it seriously. I was scared of Lenny. I knew he didn’t kid around.”

“Keep quiet about what?” I asked gently.

“Running dope. That’s what we did so Lenny would take care of us. But it was supposed to be secret. That was the one big rule. Lenny said he’d kill anyone who squealed—that he’d done it before and would do it again.”

“And what was Robbie’s problem?”

The patch on the blanket was almost totally detached, what with Randy’s nagging it. “He liked to brag. Made him feel bigger. He did everything he could to suck up to Lenny, but then he’d shoot his mouth off to complete strangers—ask them if they wanted some dope, that he could put together a big score if they’d pay.”

“He was working behind Lenny’s back?”

Randy shook his head sharply. “No, no. That’s how Lenny found out about it. Robbie came to him and said he’d set up a deal—all Lenny had to do was produce the dope and collect the cash. Lenny almost took his head off, but he still didn’t get the message.”

“Why didn’t Lenny get rid of him? Wasn’t there a regular turnover of kids?”

At that Randy seemed genuinely baffled. “There was… But it didn’t affect Robbie. Even with all their fights, they really liked each other.”

· · ·

I placed the list of names Randy Haskins had eventually given me on the conference table. “He didn’t know Norm Bouch, has never been to Bellows Falls, didn’t know if Lenny had either… There doesn’t seem to be any connection at all between Norm and Lenny, except for the use of the apartment.”

“Which was clean as a whistle,” Kathleen Bartlett said.

“Right.”

We were back at the Burlington Police Department’s headquarters—Bartlett, Jonathon, Audrey and myself—sitting around a small table near the coffee machine.

Kathy Bartlett sighed. “Well, maybe it’s just as well. It would’ve complicated things if you had found something. What about phone records?”

“We got ’em. The long distance numbers are being checked right now, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. There were none to Bellows Falls or Lawrence, Mass, or anywhere else connected to all this.” I slid the Randy Haskins list across the table to Audrey. “Maybe you can get something out of this, but my guess is Lenny played it pretty close to the vest.”

“Which is why we think he whacked Robbie Moore, by the way,” Jonathon added.

“Why did you say it was just as well we didn’t find anything in the apartment?” I asked Kathy, my spirits sinking still further. “Aren’t we going to deal on this?”