Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (33 page)

Tony Brandt tugged at his ear, probably wishing he were on vacation. “You’re suggesting somebody cut the alarm to set him up?”

“Possibly. The other argument being that he cut it himself to give himself an alibi.”

I let Tony fill in the blank on that one. “For missing a meeting with Boisvert? Seems a little elaborate for someone who can barely string two sentences together.”

“Plus we didn’t find a wire cutter anywhere, in his car or the trailer,” J.P. added.

Tony mulled it over for a few moments. “Jesus,” he finally muttered, “we’re going to have to tell Dunn.”

“And he’s going to have to tell defense counsel,” I added.

I looked down at what I’d been holding when Brandt found me—the photos Vogel had taken of Gail walking around town. They were not sealed but were instead in a brown envelope, tied with a string. I opened the envelope, catching Brandt’s attention.

“What’s that?”

“Another of the things that bugged me. In that box of files you brought up, I found out we never did find a camera, and that the Green Mountains Lab people who processed the film had no files or recollections linking the film to Vogel.”

“And that got you thinking, too,” Tony finished morosely.

I didn’t answer. As I’d been speaking, I’d also been flipping through the eight pictures, not looking at Gail, as I had previously, but at the backgrounds to each scene. “Yeah, it did,” I murmured. “It struck me that since we found them in his trailer, we automatically assumed they were his, especially since we had so much other stuff against him. So we looked at them for who they showed us, and for what fingerprints might be on them, which, conveniently enough, were all smeared. What we never concentrated on was when they were taken.”

“Actually, I did,” Tyler said, trying not to sound offended. I was finding fault, after all, with his part of the investigation, not something he was used to. “But all I could get was that it was summer. I couldn’t find any calendars or clocks in the background store windows, or anything else that would give me a better fix.”

I held out one of the pictures to him, of Gail waiting to cross the street at a traffic light opposite the Photo 101 camera store. Next to her was a blue Toyota Corolla, its license plate easily readable. On its windshield, barely visible, was a small blob of color. “How about a parking ticket?”

J.P. took the picture from me. “Shit.” He quickly copied the plate number and headed off to a computer terminal. All our tickets were issued using a computerized, handheld system, which meant the time, date, parking-meter number, and details about the vehicle would all be in our files.

Brandt let out a sigh. “So what else have you been churning over in that hyperactive brain of yours?”

I told him about the logging-equipment yard near Jamaica, the oil slicks, and of my conversation with Fran Gallo. He absorbed it all quietly, having already adjusted himself to the inevitable meeting with Dunn.

He nodded once I’d finished. “All right. I don’t think the oil slicks or the red shirt’ll cause much trouble, but this other stuff might.” He checked his watch. “They’re probably about ready for a lunch break over there. I’ll talk to Dunn. You better come along.”

Tyler returned and handed him a slip of paper with a date on it. “It’s the only ticket that car’s had in the last two years. No possibility of confusion. And the owner paid it off personally, here in the building, one hour later, so the picture could only have been taken during about a forty-five-minute time span.”

Brandt looked at the slip of paper grimly. “Well, let’s hope Vogel doesn’t have an alibi.”

ROBERT VOGEL DID HAVE AN ALIBI
for the time the pictures were taken of Gail. He was at a doctor’s office, having his cigarette-corrupted lungs examined by special request of New England Wood Products’s insurance carrier, who was interested in tacking a waiver onto Vogel’s coverage.

We found this out at the end of a long, tense afternoon, spent in the offices of an extremely unhappy James Dunn, who, during the brief times he came out of his office to consult with us in an adjoining conference room, kept giving me looks that he obviously hoped would make me burst into flames.

We never saw Tom Kelly or Bob Vogel—all communications with them were handled either by phone or well out of our sight—but from Dunn’s terse reports, both of them were having a pretty good day.

As was the press. On its own merits, this case had already built up enough steam to attract over two-dozen reporters—among them two competing-network correspondents from New York, complete with camera crews—all of whom had been roving about town in packs of various sizes. However, now that something had obviously gone awry—the judge having granted an unexpected continuance in the middle of the state’s case, and Dunn sequestering himself in his aerie with all of us—everyone with a tape recorder, a note pad, or a camera was packed into the Municipal Center’s third-floor hallway.

The impression of being under siege was further enhanced by Dunn himself—driven to distraction by the cacophony of ringing phones—who finally ordered all public lines into the office disconnected, leaving only the unlisted ones, which nevertheless stayed busy enough. Outside, the muted rumble of the growing crowd burst into occasional flower whenever one of the staff battled his or her way through the door.

At last, the windows darkened by the coming of night, Dunn called Brandt, me, Todd Lefevre, and Billy Manierre into his office. He arranged himself behind a desk almost as large, polished, and bleak as his ego, and stared at us in theatrical silence.

“This continuance will extend twenty-four hours, at which point the judge will ask both sides if we need further relief. I intend to answer no. That means that you will have totally reviewed this case by then and found it to be as airtight as it should have been when I first received it. I can then present all this as a minor glitch, of no great consequence.”

He leaned forward, placing his hands flat on the glistening desktop. “That is what’s going to happen—correct, Lieutenant?”

“We’ll see,” I answered, which caused him to flush. The discovery of that severed alarm had been no minor glitch to me. It had been a crack in a structure perfect in outward appearance, neatly plastered over by a truly malevolent artist. Despite Dunn’s wishful thinking, I was sure we’d find more flaws, now that we knew to look for them. Unfortunately, I had no way of proving that to him and thereby sparing him further humiliation.

Dunn glared at me, straightened, and then addressed us all. “Get out. Todd, coordinate with them.”

“That arrogant bastard,” Brandt muttered as soon as Todd had closed the door behind us.

“Maybe,” Todd said, showing an unexpected loyalty. “But he’s got a point. He doesn’t need his own people pulling fast ones on him in mid-trial.”

“If he doesn’t like surprises, he ought to give us more than twenty-four hours,” I countered. “Now we’re going to have to review the evidence selectively. Luck’ll have to substitute for thoroughness.”

“What do you mean?” Billy asked, leading the way into the empty conference room opposite Dunn’s office.

“It means that a few key elements could swing this case one way or the other.” I began pacing up and down the length of the room as the others slowly grabbed seats and made themselves comfortable. “Given the down time I’ve had, I’ve been able to dissect this one more than most, and what I’ve found is that the most supposedly concrete evidence—the underwear, the blood on the knife, the knife nicks on the window lock, the red shirt, the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, the leaf, and even Vogel’s MO—might well be the most circumstantial, the most easily manipulated by someone who wanted to lead us by the nose. After all, it’s the kind of evidence we’re trained to look for, and that juries can get their teeth into.

“But there are other details—more supportive ones, like the clock and those photos—which were a little harder to manipulate, since they called for more than just planting something in the right place. As a result—if I’m right—those can be traced to the real rapist. It’s the window-dressing details that we need to track down.”

Tony shook his head and spoke softly. “And all in a single day.”

I turned to Todd. “What will Tom Kelly be doing during the continuance? Is twenty-four hours enough?”

He nodded. “No reason why not. He’ll probably depose Fran Gallo, the doctor who just alibied his client, Vogel’s next-door neighbor, the Green Mountains Lab people for good measure, and maybe even you, so that you can throw the oil-slick and red-shirt angles into question.”

“Great,” Tony murmured.

“’Course,” Todd continued, “he may not bother, figuring the judge or our newfound zeal will get him off the hook anyway. He’s been so cagey up to now, it’s hard to tell. But the momentum’s going his way all of a sudden. I’d bet he’s not going to trust to fate alone.”

“What’s the judge got to do with it at this point?”

Todd shrugged. “Tom Kelly clerked for the Honorable Gordon Waterston in Burlington way back when, and Waterston’s notoriously hard on women in sexual-assault cases.”

“Susan Raffner told me that last part,” Tony admitted. “So you’re the one who knocked over the apple cart. What’s the first step?” he added, looking at me.

“The pubic hairs found in Gail’s bed,” I answered. There was a stunned silence. “That’s what I meant by focusing on a few key elements—things we overlooked before. The standard tests on hair don’t give us much, especially when the samples don’t have roots, and therefore can’t be DNAed. But there are nontraditional tests they can do, including one I thought of when we found out about Vogel’s doctor visit.

“One thing you can detect in hair, if you’re looking for it, is nicotine. We all have it to a certain extent, because of smoke in the air, but smokers themselves—heavy smokers—have a lot. Since neither Gail nor I smoke, heavy nicotine in the pubic-hair samples will help point to Bob Vogel.”

“Unless there is none,”

Todd pointed out. I raised my eyebrows. “Either way, it’ll point us in some direction.”

“All right,” Brandt agreed, “I’ll send J.P. up to Waterbury with the samples. How long should it take?” he asked me.

“The test shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. Getting it priority attention’s something else.”

Tony nodded firmly. “I’ll handle that. What else?”

“We assumed that some of the minor discrepancies between this rape and the others Vogel committed were because of a learning curve. That was a mistake. What we should have noticed was that there were too many similarities between Vogel’s third rape and Gail’s. Seeing that might’ve started us thinking of a copycat crime instead of a learning curve.

“I think we need to get the people who investigated those cases on the phone—like Jim Catone from Greenfield—and grill them, point by point.

“We also need to retrace all the physical evidence, from the red fiber on the doorjamb to the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, only not for how it lines up against Vogel, but for how it might’ve been used to frame him. For example, find out where Gail had the catalogue in the house. If it was on a coffee table, Vogel might’ve grabbed it on the way out. But if Gail had already thrown it out, then why would he have gone through her trash? Or the oil pan on Vogel’s car—why did it puncture when it did? Tyler’ll be out of town, but Kunkle’s pretty good at forensics—have him check it out more closely.”

I looked around the room, surprised and pleased at the lack of interruptions. None of them wasted time defending themselves, arguing that the case was sound and that what I was proposing was a waste of time. Not that they were converts—I knew that. But just as one set of evidence had put them on course to one conclusion, they all seemed to accept that another set might result in something different. It was an attitude I didn’t expect to be shared by many outside this room, but it was here where it counted.

I took advantage of the silence to make one last proposal: “I also think we need to call in a criminal psychologist, give him or her everything we’ve got on Gail’s case, and see how it matches what we know of Vogel’s personality.”

“Joe,” Tony finally protested, “that’s not going to do us any good in court. And if Dunn found out about it, he’d hit the ceiling.”

I sat down on the table next to him. “I know, but I want to plan ahead for once. If someone is jerking us around, I want to see if we can get a peek at what makes him tick. It’s only going to take a phone call—Megan Goss might be interested. Dunn did say he didn’t want any more surprises—this could be a way to grant his wish. Indulge me, okay?”

Tony smiled. “Indulge you? You’re not even supposed to be in the building.”

“I won’t be. I’m going to a bar.”

· · ·

Simply leaving the building proved more difficult than I’d thought. The mob outside the door tightened around us, bristling with questions, microphones, and a battery of camera lights. It was a stupefying assault, and a self-defeating one, the combined noise of all the questions being loud enough to override any response.

Near the top of the main stairwell, where the crowd threatened to stall completely, I muttered, “See ya,” into Brandt’s ear and cut away in the opposite direction, where resistance was weakest. There was a momentary hesitation on the part of several reporters on the fringe, who were tempted to go after me. I waved them off and walked briskly to the far end of the hallway, hearing one last “Lieutenant Gunther?” clutch at my heels as I made my way down the narrow back stairs.

Two young men followed me. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, just outside the selectmen’s meeting room, and turned to face them. They were from out of town, unfamiliar with the building.

“Lieutenant, why did the judge issue a continuance so abruptly?” one of them asked.

I held up my hand and smiled resignedly. “All right. But it’s been a long afternoon. Let me use the men’s room first, and then I’ll give you what I can.” I pretended to look around and then jerked my thumb at the meeting-room door, clearly marked. “They have a private one in here. I’ll be right out.”

I ducked through the double doors, turned left, and as quietly as possible opened the fire-escape door. Below me, the parking lot was empty of people. Keenly feeling the lack of a coat in my weakened and emaciated condition, I slipped outside and went down the broad metal staircase.