Bellows Falls (4 page)

That sensation was confirmed a moment later, when a ball came soaring over the garage roof from the backyard and bounced harmlessly against the motorcycle. A screwdriver still in his hand, Bouch picked up the ball and began circling the garage, just as a small boy appeared at its far corner, running full tilt. Both of them froze in their tracks as they caught sight of each other. I could no longer see Bouch’s face, but the boy’s paled with fright, and he began wringing his hands with practiced intensity.

I stopped the car and continued watching, seeing the boy speaking quickly, no doubt begging forgiveness for the ball’s sudden intrusion. Bouch held it up as if discovering it for the first time and turned it admiringly in his hand. Then in one fluid movement, he stuck it with his screwdriver and tossed it half-deflated at the boy’s feet. The child looked down forlornly and slowly stooped to pick it up. Bouch was already heading back to the Harley, a smile on his face.

I resumed driving down the street, unnoticed—and wishing to remain that way.

I didn’t want to interview Norm Bouch—not yet. Internal investigations are ticklish affairs. The cops tend to see you as a potential traitor, and the civilian complainants as a guaranteed whitewasher. So despite the pressure from both camps to come up with results, and a tradition that dictates interviewing the complainant and witnesses first before doing the peripheral homework, I tend to favor a more roundabout method. By approaching the problem from the outside, collecting knowledge on the way in, I often end up with a pretty complete picture before even meeting the primary players.

It’s unorthodox, slower, and it makes twitchy officials twitchier, but it gives me a better sense of what I’m getting into.

I therefore drove past to a nearby convenience store, parked in its lot, and sat like a bird-watcher taking notes from the bushes.

The Bouch home was a two-story, ramshackle, turn-of-the century clapboard pile, probably quite tidy and small when original, now a typical cob job of artless additions and alterations. New England is dotted with such buildings, where the amendments have all but swallowed the original. Norm’s was adorned with the mismatched roof lines, bare sheathing, and patched-on sagging porch exemplifying the least of such examples. The yard was a similar mess—cars, broken toys, a washing machine, and assorted jetsam all vied for space. From my vantage point, I could partially see into the backyard, where the small boy was still holding the flattened ball, but was now surrounded by several other unhappy children.

A quarter hour later, a pickup truck on testosterone pulled to the curb in a roar of doctored mufflers, and a heavyset man in a tight tank top swung out to join Bouch by the side of the Harley. Bouch greeted him with a laugh, handed him a beer from a nearby cooler, and engaged in animated conversation, still working on his bike. I didn’t doubt that in the heat of a summer afternoon, variations of this scene were being duplicated a millionfold across the country.

I have long passed the point of expecting people to look their parts. Emile Latour’s uniformed, round-bodied look of benevolent, innocuous authority hid an anger I’d sensed simmering just below the surface. What I was watching now, I knew, could be anything—two guys bonding over beer and the Harley mystique, or two drug dealers discussing business in a totally placid setting.

· · ·

Brian Padget lived in Westminster, several miles south of Bellows Falls. But where most Vermont towns appear sprinkled across a picturesque and hilly topography, Westminster sits on a flat terrace of land, its rigidly placed buildings straddling a wide, straight, smooth stretch of road more conducive to speeding than to the leisurely enjoyment of a small, quaint village. The details of the latter are there, of course—the town predates the American Revolution. But the sturdy, classically built homes and businesses are dwarfed by the numbing, methodical way in which they were laid out, and the overall impression of Westminster remains an anonymous blur.

Padget’s house was a single-story converted trailer at the edge of town, tightly wedged between two similarly built neighbors. The tiny lawn was cut and trimmed, the one bush out front neatly pruned, and the vinyl clapboards of the house looked freshly washed. I knew from Latour that Padget wasn’t home—he was out of town visiting his folks for the day. As with the Bouch residence, all I was after here was a first impression of the people I was about to investigate.

Padget’s home was the precise opposite of Bouch’s—on the surface, it spoke of precision and attention to detail, but under that was a concern for appearances, a sense of others standing in judgment. It reflected an underlying insecurity typical of a young unmarried man, who was both relatively new on the job and eager to impress.

Bouch, on the other hand, had seemed more comfortable with himself. The self-confident blue-collar squalor of his home had been as eloquent as Padget’s cautious ambition. I sensed Norm was positioned to take advantage of the world around him, whereas Brian was more dependent on the blessings of those with clout.

It made me ponder the forces that had set these two people in opposition. “Sexual harassment,” like a foghorn in the night, covered a range of possibilities—from a mere disturbance to a warning of catastrophe. I didn’t have Emile Latour’s confidence that the former was preordained.

SERGEANT GREG DAVIS HAD
been with the Bellows Falls Police Department for seventeen years, a record broken only by his chief. Unlike Latour, however, Davis was an extrovert, stimulated and satisfied by his job. He relished the learning process, in whatever form, and made an effort to attend any conference or meeting he could to pick up pointers and make contacts. As a result, he was both well known and well liked throughout the state.

Also, for the moment, he was the department’s sole sergeant, standing alone between the chief’s office and the rank and file. It was for this reason, along with my general respect for the man, that I sought him out following my reconnaissance. Organizationally, he and I occupied middle rungs on the ladder, a connection I hoped would stand me in good stead.

Since Davis was on duty, he’d told me he’d swing by the police department parking lot to pick me up. It seemed like driving around Bellows Falls was going to be my first day’s primary activity.

“Sorry we’re meeting again under these circumstances,” he said after I’d settled into his passenger seat and exchanged greetings.

“What do you make of all this?” I asked him.

His answer was understandably guarded. “Suppose anything’s possible.”

I looked out the side window at the parade of passing houses, and rephrased something I’d asked Tony Brandt. “Back home, we get a sexual harassment charge, we check it out first ourselves. It’s only after we think it’s real that we bring in an outsider.”

There was a long pause. Davis pulled into one of the side streets and headed west. “What did the chief say?”

The question brought back Latour’s defensive reaction when I’d asked him about Padget’s culpability. “He made hopeful noises that it was smoke with no fire.”

Davis snorted. “Don’t I wish.”

“He also said a few uncomplimentary things about Norman Bouch.”

This time, the other man laughed. “Doesn’t
he
wish. Latour’s been grinding his teeth about Bouch for years. But he’s never been able to lay a finger on him.”

“He made it sound more personal than that.”

“Now that his fair-haired boy’s in a jam? You bet.”

I chose from several questions triggered by that response. “Was it Bouch’s drug dealing that had him so worked up before, or something else?”

Davis continued negotiating the back streets of the village, his eyes taking in alleys, parked cars, pedestrians, the doors and windows of residences and businesses. With the warm weather, the car’s air conditioning was on, but both windows were rolled down. Veteran cops did that sometimes—it allowed them to be comfortable, but without cutting off the sounds and smells from outside, two extra vital signs a good patrolman learns to appreciate.

“Everybody likes Bouch,” Greg Davis answered. “He makes sure of it. That drives Latour nuts, plus the fact that Bouch goes out of his way to irritate the Old Man. He’ll have some of his teenage rat pack commit minor offenses, knowing we can only slap them on the wrist. Or he’ll slug his wife and get away with it ’cause she refuses to squeal on him. It’s not all calculated—he is a bad guy. But it is a way of gaining him prestige with the people he wants to control.”

“Tell me about the rat pack,” I asked.

“I shouldn’t have made it sound that organized. They hang around his house a lot, though, and I know goddamn well they run errands for him… It’s just another thing we haven’t been able to prove.”

Davis slowed the car to a crawl, watching a group of kids huddled together under a basketball hoop, with no ball visible. The kids looked up as we drew near and sullenly dispersed.

“I guess it’s like a basic morality issue. Latour was brought up on the straight and narrow, and people like Bouch piss him off. The Pied Piper angle gets to him, too. These kids have a slim enough chance as it is.”

“You said Padget was Latour’s fair-haired boy.”

Davis hesitated, but only momentarily. “Padget’s a rising star—everything Bouch isn’t, and probably everything the Old Man wished he’d been. He’s smart, ambitious, good-looking, idealistic, nice to be around. And not too goody-two-shoes, either, although he won’t drink even when he’s off duty. A lot of rookies have to strut their stuff, you know? Bust bad guys, put on an attitude, wear those short black leather driving gloves, supposedly so their hands won’t get messed up when they start pounding the shit out of people.”

I laughed at the sadly familiar image.

Davis joined me briefly. “Right. Well, Padget’s not quite a rookie by now, but he’s not too far from it, especially to an old fart like me. But he never pulled that crap. He can be high-strung, and he’s always on the gallop to bring law to the streets, but there’s nothing juvenile about it. He’s one of the true believers.”

“So maybe he’s a little hard to take?”

The sergeant allowed a rueful smile. “He can wear you down, but that’s probably more my fault than his. I get tired, depressed sometimes. Brian just keeps charging ahead.”

“Even now?”

Greg Davis had been wearing dark glasses. At that, he pulled to the side of the road and pushed them up on his forehead so he could look me straight in the eyes.

“No. He definitely felt this one. He’s not talking about it, but he’s been stunned.”

Which brought me to the one question everyone seemed to be skirting. “So the charges against him aren’t just smoke?”

Davis looked at me a moment longer, and then gave me another non-answer, dropping his glasses back into place. “I guess that’s why you’re here.”

I wondered if I’d presumed too much from my friendly acquaintance with this man, or if he was merely stalling while he decided whether to trust me. We left the neighborhood west of Atkinson and slowly drove to the top of Cherry Hill, where the Episcopal church and its small, pretty cemetery crowned the village. From the narrow road among the headstones, the view of Fall Mountain was pastoral and beautiful—the one looking down on the square precipitous.

“How did this first come to the PD?” I asked.

“Jan Bouch called me at work. Said Brian’d been bothering her—watching her house, following her when she went shopping, talking to her when she wanted to be left alone.”

“Sounds like stalking.”

“No, no—‘He’s been sexually harassing me,’ were her exact words, like they’d been rehearsed.” He paused, and then, as if suddenly relieved of a burden, he added, “To be honest, the harassment angle was a surprise, but not his hanging around her. Word had already leaked out about that. This town has a grade-A grapevine, and they’d been seen together, though not the way she was saying—I’d heard it was consensual.”

“I thought her husband filed the complaint.”

Davis looked a little embarrassed. “Yeah. I dropped the ball there. Knowing what I did about Brian and the girl, I let things slide a couple of days, thinking they’d probably just had a spat and she was getting back at him. That’s when Norm Bouch called the chief. Latour chewed me out about it—Bouch whined about how he was worried that, since he’d been in trouble with the law before, Padget and his cronies might frame him for something. Get him sent to jail so Brian could have a free hand with his wife. My inaction supported that scenario. It was a total crock, of course, but Norm played it well and got the chief nervous enough to order an outside internal right off the bat.”

“Did he know about the rumors?”

Davis hesitated. “I asked him. It just made him madder. But he never really answered, so I think he did. Probably didn’t want to admit his chosen boy had clay feet.”

That assessment mirrored some of my own misgivings about Latour. “Tell me about the chief.”

“I think he’s burned out and can’t let go,” Davis said bluntly. “He’s a good guy—don’t get me wrong. I like him. But he’s sort of gotten buried behind that desk, like an old mole backing more and more into his hole.”

We’d reached the square east of Cherry Hill, and were proceeding along Rockingham Street toward one of the bridges heading out to the Island. Davis waved his hand at the buildings around us. “Which in my book says as much about Bellows Falls as about the chief. This town can get to you if you don’t watch out. People who were born and brought up here bad-mouth this town like it was the birthplace of root canal, and then they give you shit if you join in, saying it’s talk like that’ll doom the place forever. It’s a textbook love-hate thing—like being Polish and telling all the worst Polack jokes.

“I think Latour joined the PD ’cause he thought he could help turn things around, and over time it’s just ground him down. And he’s especially bitter now, seeing Bouch do a number on Brian, and Brian having been dumb in the first place.”

I was impressed at the depth of the analysis, and at its probable accuracy. It bolstered my opinion of Davis, but it also begged an obvious question. “Why’ve you hung on so long?”