Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (2 page)

“That’s right.” She shook my right hand. “Elizabeth Pace. Pleased to meet you. I’m sorry about the circumstances.”

I understood she was trying to lighten me up a bit, perhaps help me over the rejection I’d received at Gail’s door. Her effort made me bite back my gloominess, although I refused to play along completely. “How’s she doing?”

Elizabeth Pace hesitated, pretending to be judging a vein the size of a small child’s finger—something she could have stuck with her eyes closed. “You’ve probably dealt with rape victims before.”

“Yes.”

She swabbed the spot with alcohol, making the vein glisten. “I came from Boston. We had a lot of them there. We ended up cataloguing them, among ourselves, from the off-the-wall hysterics to the dead-eyed catatonics. You probably do the same kind of thing in your work.”

She lanced the vein with a needle attached to a Vacutainer hub and quickly slid a vacuum tube in. A small squirt of blood quickly filled the tube. “Given that sliding scale—and the assumption that all those women are in some form of shock—I’d say your friend is taking it pretty well. She came here right away, told us to call the police and her friend Susan Raffner, who then contacted Women for Women. She’s been helpful and cooperative from the start.”

Raffner was the head of Women for Women, a high-profile crisis and counseling center that often worked with us on rape cases, and of which Gail was a founder and a board member. The two of them had been friends and allies through many a political battle.

Pace withdrew both the tube and the needle, released the tourniquet, and placed a cotton ball against the puncture wound. “Bend your arm to keep that in place a few minutes.”

She sat back and appraised me for a couple of seconds. “You’ve known her a long time?”

I appreciated her professional directness. This was obviously a woman of considerable experience in dealing with people, and she was paying me the courtesy of being honest.

“A lot of years,” I admitted.

“In my book, that makes you both victims, except nobody’s going to spend much time on you. Part of that’s as it should be—her needs are greater. But if you two are going to get on with things, you better not forget that you took a shot here, too. Get some help—it’ll benefit both of you, especially over the next few months. It’s not going to be easy—you’re going to be asked to put your feelings at the back of the bus.”

She grinned at me suddenly. “But you knew all that, right?”

“I’ve had a taste of it already.”

We stood up and she ushered me to the door, patting my back like a supportive parent, although we were probably close to the same age. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Treat her gently, okay? She’s a strong woman, but right now she’s got invisible
Fragile
signs stamped all over her.”

I shook her hand again. “Thanks. And welcome to town.”

I went back down the hallway, still passing Gail’s door with regret but feeling a little less isolated.

The lobby outside the nurse’s station had been abruptly transformed from a bland, overlit, near-empty patch of linoleum to a tension-filled convention of mutually distrustful people, clumps of whom were clustered in separate corners. In descending order of numbers, there were a half-dozen patrol officers, reinforced by several sleepy-looking off-duty people; three sharp-eyed representatives of Women for Women, including Susan Raffner; a growing number of curious hospital personnel; and three people whose presence there caused my heart to sink—Ted McDonald, from WBRT, the local radio station, and a reporter/photographer team from the
Brattleboro Reformer
.

I found Ron Klesczewski surrounded by blue uniforms, giving out orders to seal off Gail’s house and property and to start some fast preliminary street inquiries in the hope of glimpsing at least one ripple in the town’s social swampland before alibis and plausible denials smoothed the surface back over.

Tony Brandt, wearing his political hat, was standing with Raffner in the center of the room, speaking earnestly and quietly and occasionally glancing over to make sure the three media people were staying—as requested—temporarily out of earshot.

I waited for Ron to finish with one of the patrolmen and tilted my head in the direction of the reporters. “How’d they find out so fast?” He shrugged. “Don’t know, but considering the crowd, I’m not surprised.”

“They know it was Gail?”

He didn’t answer directly. “She’s a pretty big name in town; a lot of people know where she lives. We’ve had to use the radio to get our people out to her place, and both the
Reformer
and BRT have scanners.”

I nodded. He put his hand on my arm and added, “They’re usually pretty good about keeping the lid on names.”

I saw that Tony and Susan Raffner were parting company, so I joined him as the Women for Women contingent headed up the hall toward Gail’s room. “Trouble?”

He smiled thinly. “No—just staking out turf. I basically told her we would pull out all the stops—like we always do—and she basically told me we better do a hell of a lot better than that. All very polite.” He glanced over to where the reporters were looking increasingly impatient. “Maybe I’ll have better luck with them.”

He left me to watch Raffner and her colleagues knock on the door to Gail’s room and walk in. I hesitated a moment, groping for a reasonable excuse for what I was about to do—Gail had said she wasn’t up to seeing visitors, albeit a while ago; she obviously was receiving people now, and her door had been left open.

For the third time that night, fueled by flimsy logic and pent-up emotions, I walked down that corridor, unsure of my motivations—or of what I expected to see.

At first, loitering in the doorway, I didn’t see anything except the backs of the three women I’d followed, lined up in a tight semicircle around a chair in the far corner of the room. Then one of them bent forward to receive the hug I’d been longing to give, and over her shoulder I saw Gail’s face—pale, swollen, her eyes shut tight with longing, a dark bruise beginning to take hold of her left cheekbone. Her bare arms encircled the neck of her friend, and I clearly saw the red welts the rapist’s bonds had left around both her wrists. The sight left me rooted in place, without a word to say.

Her eyes opened then, and she took me in for a long couple of seconds before murmuring, “Joe.”

Gail’s visitors turned to face me, their expressions stern, even vaguely hostile, their usual professional demeanor transformed by the emotional toll of having to tend to one of their own.

I stayed put, thoroughly daunted by the anger I felt radiating toward me. Gail motioned to me to come nearer, and as I did, two of the women flanking her draped protective hands on her shoulders. It was not how I’d envisioned our encounter, and it triggered a small but resentful response deep inside me—toward the man who had done this to my best friend, toward the women around her who obviously lumped me with him, and toward Gail herself, for not allowing us this moment alone.

Fully revealed by the others who’d moved aside, Gail sat in an oversized, green hospital gown, her arms and legs pale and skinny by contrast, looking as frail as a lame child. Her swollen face, crowned by a tangle of disheveled dark hair, made her head look enormous atop a thin, almost shrunken body. The effect was so startling I instinctively crouched before her and reached to hold her hands in my own, my throat tight with emotion.

That twin gesture caught her by surprise and made her jump and grip the arms of her chair. I dropped my hands immediately, embarrassed that my own professional training had been so easily overridden.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, painfully aware of the others all around, looking down at me. “How are you doing?”

She smiled faintly. “I’ve been better.”

“I wish I’d been there,” I added without thinking. There was a predictable but silent stirring at this traditional male cliché, but Gail embraced its intent.

She nodded and said, “I do, too.”

I found myself groping for something to add, something other than what was crowding the front of my brain and which would do her no good at all—about how we would catch the guy and take him to the cleaners; that I wouldn’t sleep till we had; that I wished we could turn the clock back a few hours.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked instead.

“Catch the guy,” Susan Raffner answered immediately.

I didn’t take my eyes off Gail’s. “Would you like to stay at my place? I could bunk out on the couch, or at the office.”

Gail shook her head. “No, that’s okay.”

Susan Raffner’s voice was softer and she touched my shoulder. “I’ll put her up at my house for a while—lots of room. Lots of people, too, when she wants the company.”

I conceded the point and felt slightly foolish about my suggestion. “Thanks, Susan.”

I paused a moment, trying to find the right words, knowing I’d done poorly enough already. Gail was looking at her hands in her lap—an obvious sign I’d overstayed a welcome I’d never received in the first place. Fighting the desire to at least touch her hair, I rose and stepped back.

“Well, I’ll get out of here. Let me know if I can do anything to help.” I looked around. “Any of you—day or night.”

Raffner nodded her thanks. Gail didn’t move.

I took another step toward the door. “They’ll have to come back and ask you more questions—probably later today.”

Gail’s head shot up. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “You’re not going to be on this case?” Her voice was incredulous, rich with betrayal.

I opened my empty hands to her, burning with anger that I couldn’t immediately grant her one request. “I can’t say. They may not let me.”

Her eyes blazed at me. “I want you on it, Joe.”

I pursed my lips and nodded. “Okay. I’ll make it work somehow.”

She looked at me a moment longer, her expression softening, becoming distant again—mourning the loss of something precious and irreplaceable. She went back to studying her hands.

I moved to the door, at once eager and reluctant to leave. I paused there and glanced back at her, at her friends beginning to close around her once more.

“I love you, Gail.”

There was no response.

THE LOBBY, AS IN SOME 
Alice-in-Wonderland dream, was totally empty again, aside from Elizabeth Pace, alone and behind her curvilinear counter, who was talking on the phone. She waved at me and smiled as I passed through the electronically triggered double doors that led to the ambulance loading dock outside.

The brittle air came as a relief, slightly stinging my cheeks and lungs as I drew in a deep breath. I stood there a moment, overlooking the parking lot, whose features were softly emerging as the harsh, unnatural sodium lights faded against the far gentler but more pervasive gray glow of the looming dawn.

I was so overwhelmed by the feelings inside me, I was having a difficult time making sense of them. Moreover, I felt an urgent need to do so—and get on with the job at hand.

Because that was the primary issue here—to do the job. I didn’t have the opportunity of escaping to the daylong demands of an accountant, or a backhoe operator, or a logger—of burying myself in something totally apart from what had happened to Gail and, through her, to me. My job was to eat, breathe, and live what she’d just been put through, not only because I was paid to do it, but because Gail had specifically requested it of me. That meant, despite Elizabeth Pace’s well-intentioned advice, that I was going to have to batten down some of the psychological hatches she’d urged me to throw open, and hope that the pressures behind them wouldn’t blow out at the wrong time or place.

There was, however, one nugget of solace in my awkward position. Of all the gremlins that conspire to torture the mind of a rape victim, the conviction that her attacker is still out there, waiting to attack her again, is one of the most terrifying. And my job was to bring that guy in.

Assuming they’d let me try.

“How’s she doing?” The voice was Tony Brandt’s, coming from the dark far corner of the loading dock.

I turned to see him leaning against the hospital wall, his hands buried in his trouser pockets, smoking his omnipresent pipe. “You still here? I thought you’d be at the scene by now, or updating the board.”

Gail had recently been made chair of the town’s board of selectmen, currently a group of notoriously fickle people—and not to be left outside the informational loop for long.

He smiled and pushed himself away from the wall to join me. “Already have—by phone. We’re meeting in a couple of hours so they can shovel on the outrage, and I can tell them I can’t tell them anything yet.” He paused a moment to launch a couple of pungent clouds into the atmosphere, and then rephrased his opening question. “So, how’re
you 
doing?”

I hesitated before answering. We had been friends a long time and had been allied in some tough political wars. He was someone I greatly respected, and who’d consistently earned my trust. I knew his inquiry went beyond its simple wording.

“I was just asking myself the same question. I’m not sure yet—part of it’ll probably depend on Gail.”

“You get to talk to her?”

“A little. She’s pretty closed down. I don’t think I’m what she needs right now.”

“Ah,” he nodded. “The sisterhood.”

“Yeah.” I turned that over in my mind a couple of times, seeing both sides of it—understanding it in our terms. “Kind of like cops when they get in a jam.”

He chuckled. “Okay.”

“She wants me on the case, Tony.”

He worked on his pipe a bit, finally taking it out of his mouth and staring into the bowl for inspiration. “That’s not exactly kosher. The State’s Attorney might have problems with it.”

“Do you?”

He parked the pipe back in his mouth. “Not in theory. You’re the best investigator I’ve got, and given Gail’s prominence, and the SA being in a tight reelection bid, I’m going to need the best.”

“But… ”

He nodded slowly in agreement. “Right, ‘but…’ People could scream conflict of interest, and the SA’s opponent could make political hay out of it, especially if we don’t nail our man right off. Plus, if the case gets to court, as the last person who saw her before the attack, you’d be a prime witness. All a little awkward.”