Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (37 page)

Goss spent the first hour merely laying the groundwork, expanding on her “daydreaming” scenario, getting Gail more and more relaxed until her responses were almost sleep-like murmurs. I, too, became immersed in the exchange, losing track of time, finding myself slipping away from my body’s sense of shape and place. But when a train passed underneath the window in a noisy, metallic clatter, I resurfaced with a start. Not so Gail, who remained utterly motionless, her only signs of life being the slight movement of her breathing and the shaping of her lips around an occasional short sentence. Her eyes, not entirely closed, appeared lifeless and dull, the work of an apprentice puppet-maker.

Megan asked her if she was aware of the train’s passing. Gail said yes, but only as if from a vast distance. Apparently satisfied, Megan came to the point of the exercise.

“Do you feel like talking about the night of the attack?”

“Yes,” Gail answered without hesitation, but without emotion, as if she herself were on that train—a long, long way off.

Megan began by describing the evening—the two of us together, my leaving, Gail’s surrendering to sleep. Gail responded in a monotone, without anticipation.

Megan asked her, “Something wakes you up. What is it?”

“A movement—someone moving on the bed. The pillow’s gone.”

“What do you feel?”

The voice stayed flat. “Surprise. Joe’s come back. I feel the covers pull back.”

I leaned forward instinctively. We knew she’d thought it was me at first, but these extra details explained why she hadn’t woken up more quickly. We’d missed the implication that her sense of security hadn’t been disturbed.

“There’s a weight on my chest. I feel his skin against mine; his hands on my breasts, pushing them together over his penis.”

“Is this something Joe’s ever done?”

Gail gave a hint of a shake, and her mouth turned down. “No. It’s hard to breathe.”

“You’re waking up now?”

“Yes. Something’s wrong.” But the voice doesn’t mirror it. The realization that must have blasted her from sleep is passive now, almost bored.

“What do you do?”

“I try to move, but my arms are caught. I can’t move them. My wrists hurt. I open my mouth—to breathe—to say something.”

“You open your eyes, also?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see anything?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to keep that picture in your mind, Gail. Fix it in your memory. Take your time.”

There was a long pause. “All right.”

“Can you describe it to me?”

The words came gradually but surely. Gail squinted as she spoke, as if the image she was groping for were veiled in mist, and only slowly taking shape. “He’s naked… Not fat, but not skinny either. He’s white. His stomach’s flat… No chest hair.”

“Can you see his face?”

“It’s too dark.”

Megan kept her voice neutral—matter-of-fact. “There’s moonlight, Gail, coming through the window above you, lighting his hair, his face.”

“I see the moonlight, but the face is dark… ” Gail frowned in concentration, obviously puzzled. Megan gave her time to think. Suddenly Gail relaxed, relieved. “It’s a mask. He’s wearing a mask over his head.”

But her satisfaction was my disappointment. Megan didn’t react. “Go on.”

“His hands leave my breasts as soon as he sees me watching him. He covers my face and pushes it away, so I can’t see. He’s fumbling with the pillowcase. I can see the clock, remembering the time, to tell Joe later.”

I gestured with both my hands to Megan and raised my eyebrows questioningly. “Which hand did he use to cover your face, Gail?” she asked. “His right.” I grunted involuntarily at that, caught by surprise. “And what time is it?” Megan continued.

“2:13. I’m thinking about that so hard, I can still see the numbers after the pillowcase goes over my head. I’m fighting now to free my hands, feeling the pain in my wrists. I’m kicking up with my knees, but he slips down onto my thighs, stopping me.”

“Has he said anything yet?”

“Not yet. Now he does. He laughs a little first and whispers, ‘Simmer down. I’m going to get off your legs now; if you move a muscle, I’ll cut your tits off.’ Then he pricks me with a knife, and says, ‘With this.’”

I held up my hands again to prompt the next question. “Can you tell which hand he’s using when he cuts you?”

Gail knit her brows, and Megan quickly added, “Which breast does he cut first, and on which side?”

I smiled and nodded. Megan Goss knew exactly what I was after.

“My left breast, from the outside, then the other, from below.” Most likely the right hand again, I thought.

Megan, now fully attuned to the kinds of questions I was after, asked, “Having slid down onto your thighs, how is he positioned now?”

“He’s almost lying on me, propped on his left elbow, using the knife.”

“His face is close to yours?”

“Yes.”

“Can you smell his breath… Smell him?”

“Yes, but it’s not bad… It’s not anything.”

“Okay. Then what?”

Movement by movement, sensation by sensation, Megan Goss had Gail take her on a tour of the rape, the monotone of their voices acting in bizarre contrast to the horror of the description. It took over two hours to complete and gave me the best sense I’d had to date of what Gail had endured. But it didn’t give me anything new.

At the end of the session, Megan told Gail to review everything that had been said, and to retain it, and then asked her if she was ready to reawaken, giving her the option to just drift for a few minutes. But Gail was ready. Slowly, as if inflated by some inner pump, she straightened in her chair, her arms and legs began to move again, and her eyes opened.

She smiled at both of us. “Jesus.”

Megan chuckled. “Intense?”

“In a good way, yes. It’s the first time I’ve thought about it without feeling the pain. It’s like I finally got it all out in the open, where I can work on it.”

Megan was nodding. “Excellent, excellent. That’s just the way it should be. This ought to be a big step in your therapy.”

But Gail was already looking at me. “You were right about the smell. So it definitely wasn’t Vogel.”

GAIL PASSED HER HAND ACROSS
her forehead lightly, as if making sure it was still attached. Megan Goss watched her carefully.

“So if Vogel wasn’t the rapist, who was?”

“Do you accept absolutely that he wasn’t?” Megan asked instead.

Gail thought about that for a while, gazing out the broad window at the steel bridge spanning the Connecticut River, lorded over by a gray sky, heavy with the first freak snowstorm of the year. “Yes, I do. It’s hard, because it was easier having the man who’d assaulted me in jail, instead of still out there, but I see now it just wasn’t him.”

Megan nodded, apparently satisfied.

“Which brings up today’s second major question,” I said, addressing Megan. “Have you been able to come up with a psychological profile of the real rapist?”

She pursed her lips. “I haven’t had much time for the kind of reflection I prefer. There is one crucial element here, though, that does help, and that’s that whoever did the rape also went to enormous lengths to frame Bob Vogel. That tells me a great deal.”

She took the file she’d been holding on her lap for the past few hours and laid it on the floor. “Also, I put great value on several aspects of Gail’s account that may have already caught your eye, such as the whispering and the double use of masks—the pillowcase for her, the mask for him—and the almost mechanical methodology of his entire performance. The first two imply a fear of recognition, the third an imitative style. He seems to have forgotten himself only twice—once when he broke the plate that hung on the wall, and said, ‘Shit,’ and again when he beat Gail at the end and called her a ‘snotty goddamn bitch.’ That outburst, coupled with his inability to climax, seems to me to have been quite genuine.”

“What’s the significance of the plate?” Gail asked.

“It connects to the lack of damage to the other expensive items in the room, like the television set. Bob Vogel had an utter contempt for his victims, including everything they owned. This man likes fine, expensive things—things he either cannot afford, or couldn’t afford when he was younger. The reference to a snotty bitch reinforces this, since those are words typically used to denigrate someone of a higher social standing than the speaker.”

“What about the actual phrasing?” I asked. “Wouldn’t Vogel have called her something a little more earthy than a snotty bitch?”

Goss nodded. “I think so. There is an effeminate quality there that Vogel doesn’t display anywhere. That could be an important insight.”

“God,” Gail murmured, half to herself.

“I also think,” Megan continued, “that the use of gloves is telling. Joe, you told me you thought the gloves were part of Vogel’s learning curve, which could’ve been very possible. But I’m caught by the fact that the attacker wore them intermittently. He wanted to feel Gail—that’s one of the reasons he removed all his clothing—but he didn’t want to leave fingerprints or harm his hands when he beat her.” She interrupted herself suddenly to consult the file on the floor. “Which reminds me, Gail… In the statement you gave Joe and Todd Lefevre, the beating is described as immediately following the snotty-bitch comment. Just now, when we got to that part, you mentioned a pause, during which he put the gloves back on. I think that pause is significant. If administering a beating was a normal part of his MO, it would have spontaneously followed the frustrated outburst—simple cause and effect. The fact that he paused to put on gloves tells me that the verbal outburst marked the end of the emotional spike, and that the beating was imitative again—that he was back under control, framing Vogel.”

“So what’s all that tell you?” I asked, spurred on by what I felt sure was a breakthrough, and eager for something I could actually use.

“I’d look for someone smart who likes nice things. Also a methodical type—maybe compulsively neat. And a loner.”

“You mean he lives alone?”

She shook her head. “Not necessarily. He’s a loner in his head, but the more perceptive around him will notice that about him.” She seemed to hesitate a moment. When she resumed speaking, her attitude had shifted slightly. She sounded more removed, as if distancing herself a bit from her words. “Look, there is a generalized picture I can see in all this, but I’m worried that if I describe it, you’ll take it too literally and perhaps miss the man you’re after.”

I gave her a slightly helpless expression. “What can I say?”

She let out a frustrated sigh. “All right. From what Gail told us, we know he’s white and fairly trim. That would fit his personality, which includes keeping in shape, but in a solitary fashion, as with jogging or weight lifting. I’d say he’s aged anywhere from his mid-twenties to his late thirties, but not any younger—his style shows maturity, a control over more youthful impulsiveness. And
control
is the operative word: He’s meticulous, even rigid, which also means he presents himself physically that way—no torn jeans, untucked shirts, or weekend stubble. That’s also where any effeminate characteristics might be noticed. And he probably collects something to satisfy this need, like stamps or coins, or what-have-you—something tidy and organized.

“All this camouflages a restless, anguished, insecure, and very violent inner man, whose hatred of women dates way back, and whose violence comes out as revenge against a sex for whom he has nothing but contempt.” She lifted a cautionary finger at me. “But there again you’ll have to watch out, because little or nothing of that will show. This man is a born performer—an actor’s actor. He’ll date women, woo their socks off, and might even have once been, or still be, married—and not necessarily to a mousy, retiring type. Some of these men go after strong women. Whatever the case there, however, I’ll all but guarantee that if you can find out about his youth, you’ll find he comes from a family with serious psychological problems.”

Megan Goss picked up her thick file and placed it on the desk. I turned off the tape recorder I’d had running from the start of our visit, and rose.

She shook my hand and gave Gail a hug. “I hope you get him soon. Because if I’m right, and you don’t, he’ll be back—maybe as a killer.”

· · ·

I thought at first that the crowd had dispersed around the Municipal Building, either from boredom or because something had lured it away. But the parking lot was still suspiciously full, forcing me to park illegally on the edge of a grass embankment. Entering the building supplied the explanation—the hallway between the patrol-administration side and the detective squad of the police department was lined with a small army of irritable reporters.

I hadn’t made it three feet past the door before a sharp-eyed young woman leapt to her feet from one of the benches. “Lieutenant Gunther, could we ask you a few questions?”

I shook my head at the gathering knot of people she’d stimulated. “Not if you want any answers.”

“Where have you been all day? You digging into something new?”

“Rumor has it all this is part of a feud between you and the State’s Attorney. Any truth to that?”

“None whatsoever,” I was stupid enough to answer, adding fuel to the fire. I had planned to retire to my office, but instead I headed directly for Ron Klesczewski’s command center.

“You’re being credited as the one who undermined Dunn’s case in court. Why did you wait till the last second?”

“The case was thrown out because the search warrant was invalidated. Does that mean Bob Vogel is still your number-one suspect?”

Ron Klesczewski looked up at the sudden swell of voices at the door, his face drawn and tired. He smiled at me from behind his long, folder-strewn table and waited until I’d shut the door firmly behind me. “You’re a welcome sight.”

“Feeling a little besieged?”

“When I want to use the john, I wait till the last second so I can combine two trips in one. You hear the press conference on the radio?”

I shook my head.

“Not good. It came out sounding like we weren’t sure if we had the right guy but blew the evidence, or had the wrong guy and were after somebody else. The chief stood by you. Made you sound like the Lone Ranger, fighting for truth and justice. ’Course, that didn’t make Dunn look too good. You could tell the two of them weren’t getting along. The press ate it up.”