Bellows Falls (29 page)

“I’m not sure.”

“Norm opened his mouth to answer, and you beat him to it. Remember?”

Her face cleared suddenly. “I said, ‘No.’ I knew otherwise it would get Brian into trouble.”

I matched her enthusiasm with my own. “That’s right. You said, ‘No.’ But you did more than that. Why did you say it so fast, so clearly?”

She looked like she was concentrating for a final exam. “Because Norm was about to say, ‘Yes’?”

“Don’t ask me, Jan. Tell me. Was that the way it was?”

“Yes, it was. I didn’t want him to do that.”

“You stood up for yourself,” I said, “and you helped a friend. You may’ve caught hell later, but it felt good, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” but her voice had lost some of its edge.

“Would you like to stop using drugs?”

She perked back up. “Oh yes, I would.”

“Or live peacefully with your children, happy and in control and without fear?”

“I’d like that.”

“What’s the biggest barrier between you and those goals?”

Her eyes widened at the possibility of a single simple solution. “The drugs?”

“That’s pretty big,” I agreed. “But what brought them into your life?”

“Norm?” she asked in a whisper.

I leaned forward. “What would change if he were out of the picture?”

“I could get my life back,” she suggested, almost to herself.

I wasn’t sure how great she’d actually find that to be, but I wasn’t about to quibble. While I was blatantly manipulating her with my own self-interest, there was also no way I didn’t think Jan Bouch could stand an improvement in her life.

“Here’s another one—what do you think will happen if you let things continue the way they’re going?”

The tears began flowing again. “They’ll take my kids away?”

I kept quiet, cautious about saying too much. Instead, I got to my feet and began walking around the room, dominating it with my presence, occasionally passing behind her to heighten her insecurity.

“Mrs. Bouch, I don’t need to tell you that forces are at work right now that are bigger than anything you can do to fight them. You’ve gotten used to being pushed around by Norm, but that’s nothing compared to this. There is a silver lining in that, though. You know what it is?”

I was behind her when I said this and paused long enough to force her to ask, “What?”

“It’s that those larger forces are on your side. They want you to succeed, to live with your kids, to have a normal, happy life. They want to make sure Norm doesn’t hurt any more people than he already has… Like he’s hurt you.”

Predictably, she wavered there. “He’s not a bad man.”

“You asked him for a favor when you first got together and began having children, didn’t you?” I asked, my voice lowered, my head just behind hers. “You asked him for something that wouldn’t have cost him a thing, but which meant everything to you—and to those same children.”

Her head bent forward and her weeping increased.

“He forced you to live a lie because he wouldn’t make this simple dream come true, didn’t he?”

Her entire body was shaking by now, bent over almost double. I tried to use that grief to temper the adrenaline I felt coursing through me, but I couldn’t resist seeing it as a measure of my success. The gap between me and Norm—at least regarding this one pathetic soul—had grown immeasurably close. His victim had become mine.

“He wouldn’t even marry you, would he, Jan?” I ended in a whisper.

“No,” she wailed. “I wanted my kids to be different from me, but he wouldn’t do it. That’s why I lied about being married.”

At last, I put both my hands on her shoulders, bridging the gap I’d so cynically created. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You did it for good reason. You tried your best. And if Norm hadn’t kept pushing, it might’ve worked.”

I circled around to face her, crouching low so I could see her eyes. “It’s fallen apart, and you know who’s to blame. I know it’s scary, and that you don’t want to do it, but for your children, you’re going to have to make some choices. You won’t be alone this time. People will be there to help you, but you’ll have to help them, too. Do you understand?”

She nodded dumbly. I knew she had no idea what I was talking about. That would come later, and at the hands of others—others, I comforted myself, who really would have her best interests at heart.

“Some people are going to want to talk to you about Norm,” I resumed. “Ask you questions about his business dealings. You may not think you know anything, but your helping them in any way will be crucial. It’ll be at a special meeting called an inquest, and the only people there will be a judge and a prosecutor—a friend of mine named Kathy. Are you willing to be a part of that?”

Again, she nodded.

“All right. I think it might be better if Norm doesn’t find out about this. Remember the women I mentioned in the chief’s office a few days ago, who take care of people like you and your kids?”

“The shelter?”

“Right. I can have all of you taken there right now, where Norm can’t find you, so you can be safe until Kathy and the judge ask you those questions. Are you agreeable to that?”

“Okay,” she said simply.

I straightened up, the tension draining out of me. The frustration I’d felt losing Lenny Markham to the legal system was finally dissipating in the face of new expectations.

“You stay here,” I said to her. “I’ve got a few phone calls to make.”

JONATHON MICHAEL FOUND ME AT THE WOMEN
For Women shelter in Brattleboro, three hours after my conversation with Jan Bouch, and right after Gail and I had finally handed her and the kids over to the shelter’s staff. Those few hours had seemed without end, since as soon as I’d gotten Jan to agree to an inquest, I was sure Norm would come waltzing through the front door and ruin everything.

“I just hung up on Kathy,” Jonathon said, walking across the parking lot with me. “She’s arranged a date here in town with Judge Rachael Aumand, at eight tomorrow morning.”

I turned to stare at him. “Tomorrow morning? How the hell did she pull that off?”

He smiled. “The judge said she’d come to work ninety minutes early. Kathy can be very persuasive, especially after what happened in Burlington. ’Course, I don’t think it hurt that Aumand and she went to law school together. Lucky, too, ’cause there isn’t an opening in the court docket till next month.”

“Thank God for living in a pea-sized state,” I muttered.

“There’s something else,” Jon added. “I’m guessing you asked Greg Davis to keep an eye on Norm Bouch?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Last night and this morning both. I didn’t want Norm busting in on me.”

“Well, he’s been trying to get hold of you—left a message with Kathy. Norm’s disappeared. He didn’t show up at the site he’s been working on, and no one’s seen him around town.”

“He must’ve heard about Lenny,” I said.

“Maybe. I hope he didn’t hear about you snatching his wife, too.”

We reached my car and I pulled open the door. “You think we should issue a BOL?”

Jonathon shook his head emphatically. A BOL involved a lot of people all of a sudden, none of whom knew the details behind the request. It also had a way of leaking outside police circles, often to the press. “It might spook him more than we want,” he said. “Push him underground. Right now, he’s probably scrambling to make sure Lenny isn’t the start of a major hemorrhage. What might be better is a selective BOL, to every unit with a specific interest in the drug business. If Norm is running around checking for damage, it’s bound to cause a ripple somewhere.”

“Time to mend fences with Steve Kiley?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“Say what you will about the task force,” he answered, “they have better connections than anyone I know.”

I swung in behind the steering wheel and looked up at him. “Let’s meet up at the Municipal Building. We can call him from there.”

· · ·

There were two messages waiting for me at the office—one from Beverly Hillstrom, the state’s medical examiner, the other from Brian Padget. After introducing Jonathon to Sammie, and asking her to show him what she had on our two homicides, I dialed Padget’s number first. Given the time I’d spent trying to straighten him out, I wasn’t about to let him dangle longer than necessary.

“Hi, Brian. It’s Joe,” I said after he’d picked up.

“I been doing what you asked, thinking back over everything. I thought of something that’s probably pretty dumb, but I can’t get it out of my head. You know how you got me to spruce up this morning? Shave, shower, and all that? Well, I use aftershave—always have. Could that be a way to get coke into my system?”

The simplicity of the idea was startling. “Do you feel any numbness after using it?”

“No. That’s why I think it’s probably wrong. But I bleed a little when I shave—my skin’s not all that great—and it just seemed possible. It’d be like I was giving myself a dozen miniature injections, sort of. But I didn’t feel anything, and I can’t see or smell anything wrong with the stuff.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said. “It’s mostly alcohol, perfume, and coloring. It would cover anything. Stay where you are. I’m sending someone up to take the aftershave to be tested. And keep your fingers crossed. I don’t think this sounds crazy at all.”

I dialed Isador Gramm in Burlington next, the only board-certified forensic toxicologist in the state, and a man I’d consulted in the past to great advantage.

“Is it possible?” I asked him after explaining Padget’s theory.

“I’ve never heard of it, but I suppose so. You say he bleeds as a result of shaving?”

“Yes.”

There was a thoughtful pause at the other end. “I can’t see where it wouldn’t work, Joe. Alcohol would not only completely dissolve the cocaine, but it would work as a carrier taking it into the system. It would be tough for whoever spiked the aftershave to come up with just the right amount—enough to appear in the urinalysis, but not so much that your victim would notice—but that could be dumb luck. I think the coke, by the way, would have to be pure. Any cutting agent would mess things up—either make the aftershave cloudy or inhibit the effect of the cocaine.”

“I know this is a little unusual, but if I had a courier hand-deliver this bottle to you in about three hours, could you run it through your machinery and bill it to the AG’s office?”

“Moving up in the world, are we? Sure, I don’t see why not. Send it on.”

I called over to the Patrol Division and arranged for a courier. Then I dialed Beverly Hillstrom’s number.

“You do send me the most curious packages,” she told me minutes later. “Although I’ll tell you right up front that I have nothing to report on the small skeletonized remains, other than it appears to have been a male Caucasian in his mid-teens. I found absolutely nothing on what might have killed him.”

I was disappointed with that, less because it implied an investigative dead end, and more because I truly hated the idea of taking someone so young, and dumping him into the bureaucratic equivalent of a pauper’s grave.

“What about Morgan?” I asked.

“There I can be more helpful. I’ll be faxing you my full report later, but I know how you like a sneak preview. Also, I found something you might find interesting, which I’ll tell about in a moment.

“Al Gould,” she continued, “was right on the mark concerning cause of death. The first bullet caught him through the body at a sharply oblique angle, a wound which if treated within an hour or so need not have been lethal, although it did stimulate significant blood loss. The second bullet was fatal, removing the right carotid and part of the jugular and causing massive exsanguination. Both bullets passed without measurable residue or noticeable fragmentation, and both appeared to me to have been shot from far enough away not to leave any powder marks. Of course, I’ve sent the clothing and samples to the lab, but my guess—which will not appear in the report—is that your shooter was not overly skillful. I think the first shot was intended for the heart, missing it posteriorly, and the second was probably aimed at the head—the standard coup de grâce between the eyes—ending up in the throat. So unless you’re dealing with someone very clever, you can eliminate any known crack shots.

“The body otherwise,” she went on, “was unremarkable in presentation, typical of a young male in good condition. Toxicology hasn’t reported back yet—they’ll be sending you separate findings in any case—but I wouldn’t be surprised to find both alcohol and drugs present. Mr. Morgan’s inner workings showed typical signs of both, albeit not to the extent they’re often present in older and/or more self-abusive people. I would say he got around without noticeable deficit.

“Now,” she finally said, to my relief, “for the interesting anomaly I mentioned. Inside Morgan’s body, along the path of the first bullet, I found a single, tiny filament of copper wire.”

I frowned at the phone. “Could it have come from the bullet’s jacketing?”

“No. I put it under the microscope. The size and shape of it suggest it was carried there by the bullet.”

I thanked her after a few closing comments and sat back in my chair, my eyes shut. In the darkness of my memory, I flipped through a catalogue of mental snapshots, looking for the one I recalled that featured small electrical wiring.

Satisfied at last, I left my office and circled the cluster of desks in the squad room to find Sammie and Jonathon poring over her reports.

“Jon,” I asked him, “did they find any prints belonging to Norm Bouch in that Burlington apartment, or anything else that proves without doubt he was ever there?”

“Yeah, along with three dozen other people’s, plus the neighbor’s statement who said he met him once.”

“I just hung up on Hillstrom. She found a tiny piece of electrical wire inside Jasper Morgan’s body. When I was interviewing Randy Haskins in that apartment, he was picking at a small patch sewn into an old electric blanket covering the sofa. I remember because I saw the wires dangling out one end of it.”

They both looked at me blankly.

“Bouch took the blanket off Morgan’s bed and brought it to Burlington?” Sammie asked incredulously.