Occam's Razor (34 page)

As I was retreating to my office, however, I was approached by patrolwoman Sheila Kelly, an expectant expression on her face.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

She kept her voice low. “I might have something that could be helpful—an old snitch I used to have.”

I escorted her to my office and closed the door behind us. “Have a seat,” I said. “Fill me in.”

She got straight to the point. “She used to do me favors now and then when I was with the Burlington PD. About six months ago, I heard she’d moved down here. I looked her up, but she didn’t want anything to do with me—said her new boyfriend would string her up if he ever found out she’d been a snitch. It didn’t mean much to me at the time, but the boyfriend is Walter Freund.”

HER NAME WAS ALICE DUPRÉE.
She was all of twenty—blond, emaciated, stoop-shouldered, her eyes bruised by too little sleep and poor nutrition. She had a fondness for leather clothes, body piercing, odd-colored nail polish, booze, and dope. She was also quiet, subservient, and conditioned for abuse.

Walter Freund’s kind of woman.

For two weeks, we put her under surveillance, eight hours of every day, when she wasn’t in Walter’s company. The schedule was chosen not just for budgetary reasons—since the evidence linking Freund to Brenda’s death was too slim to justify much overtime—but also because we were worried Walter might tumble to us faster than his more naive companion.

Walter, after all, was looking at time in a place like Leavenworth if he was ever caught dirty again. It made him a terribly cautious man. Watching him around the clock was deemed a waste of time.

Not so Alice Duprée. She was needy, high-strung, easily bored, and alcohol-dependent. And Walter’s job on the four-to-midnight shift at a paper plant outside of town left her alone when many of those characteristics played in our favor. During those two weeks, as the evenings stretched into night—and her need to keep awake for her man hinged on keeping herself busy—we caught her on film drinking, smoking dope, getting friendly with other men, and agreeing on tape to sell crack to Sam’s undercover impersonation of a newfound friend.

It was a somewhat otherworldly period of time for me, split between studying the self-indulgent roamings of an aimless girl, supervising the increasingly frustrating investigation into Billy Conyer’s last days, and tracking in the press how the Reynolds Bill was faring in town meetings across the state. Especially since it was all in addition to coming home every night to a few gingerly handled hours with a woman under pressure from her boss, who was increasingly impatient with me to produce results.

By the time we decided we had enough on Alice Duprée to suit us, I was more than a little anxious she would provide us the break we were craving.

The night the crack deal was to go down with Sam, we had one officer tail Walter to work—to make sure he stayed there—while Sheila, Willy, and I huddled in the freezing, empty second-floor office of a warehouse, watching Freund’s dilapidated apartment building from across the street.

At the appointed time, dressed in threadbare punk regalia, Sammie appeared below, casually climbed the steps onto the building’s rotting porch, and disappeared inside. Over our headphones, we heard her high-heeled boots clumping upstairs and watched through the binoculars as her expectant hostess rose in response to her knock on the door and let her in.

The deal was concluded so quickly and with such ease it was almost anticlimactic. Alice’s friendship with Sammie had been built on a specific offer. Once that had been dealt with, Sammie ceased to be relevant. Alice had eyes only for her newly won wad of cash.

Until Sam slipped a badge under her nose.

At that point, things did pick up a little, as Sheila had warned us they might. Over my headphones, I heard Alice scream, and saw her leap to her feet and strike out, only to be quickly reduced to a crooked pile on the floor, with Sammie’s knee in the small of her back. At Sam’s unruffled suggestion that we come on over, Sheila and I did just that, leaving Willy to cover.

We’d wanted no fanfare, had dressed down for the occasion, and so crossed the street at a leisurely pace, our arms interlinked as if heading to bed after a long day at the bar. We made it to Freund’s apartment without meeting another soul.

That, of course, had been the main point of this exercise. Alice Duprée wasn’t worth clogging up the system—not that we’d tell her that—but the digs she called home were something else. We were perfectly willing to lose our case against her in exchange for a little conversation and the chance to legally search Walter’s room.

When we arrived, Sammie had perched Alice on the edge of the bed with her hands cuffed behind her and was talking to her, inches from her face, in a tone too low for us to hear from the door. From Alice’s expression, however, I wondered once more about all the time Sammie had spent with Willy over the years.

Sammie straightened as I closed the door behind us, and moved to Alice’s side.

She recognized Sheila and managed to say, “You bitch,” before Sammie clamped a hand on her shoulder and quieted her down.

I took a chair from near a scarred bureau, placed it before Alice, and sat in it. Sheila positioned herself on Alice’s other side, close enough so that she and Sammie looked like an honor guard.

Alice’s eyes widened as the space around her was completely boxed in. “What do you want?”

“Has Detective Martens read you your rights?” I asked, knowing full well she hadn’t.

She hesitated before answering, probably looking for the trap. “No.”

“Good. That leaves us some options, ’cause if she had, that would mean you were under arrest, and we’d have to cart you off to jail, take your fingerprints and mug shots, have you spend the night in our basement, and arraign you in front of the judge tomorrow morning. In short, saddle you with a criminal record that would haunt you the rest of your life.”

“I don’t give a shit about a record. All my friends have records and it don’t hurt them any.”

I smiled at her. “I doubt they’d agree. But—miracle of miracles—you’ve still got a clean slate. A couple of goes at Diversion for retail theft, a misdemeanor or two over your drinking, a dropped charge for malicious mischief. You’re right on the edge, but so far you’ve hung in there. Until now, of course.”

I paused to let the significance of that sink in.

“What do you want?” she repeated, her voice more plaintive than defiant.

“We’d like you to tell us about your roommate.”

She went pale. “Walter?”

“Yeah. We’re a little suspicious he’s been up to things he shouldn’t be. What do you know about him?”

“I know he’s done stuff.”

“What kinds of stuff?”

She apparently changed her mind. “Whatever. We don’t talk about it. It’s just part of life in the streets.”

The phrase was so melodramatic, it sounded like she’d read it from a cue card.

Sheila said softly, “Alice, I know your folks. This life was your choice. Nobody drove you to it.”

Alice’s lower lip went out like a child’s, and she stared at her feet.

“I think you know exactly what kind of man you’re living with,” I said. “That’s part of the appeal, isn’t it?”

“He’s a good guy,” she murmured.

“He’s a powerful one, and a dangerous one. He ever done things to scare you?”

Her silence spoke for her.

I extracted a folded piece of paper from my inner pocket and held it up to her. “This is a warrant to search this apartment, Alice, for any and all materials pertaining to the sale or possession of illegal drugs. What’re we going to find?”

She tossed her head toward Sammie. “She set me up. It was entrapment.”

I pulled several cassette tapes from another pocket. “These’ll prove otherwise. You know how long we’ve been watching you?”

She stared at me, her mouth partly open.

“That’s right. For hours on end, day after day.” I pointed over her shoulder. “From right over there, across the street. And from other places, too. We have tapes, photos, video, the testimony of other undercover officers. We’ve been living your life with you for weeks, Alice. Think back over some of the things you’ve been doing.”

I glanced up at Sheila and Sam. “Undo her cuffs and go ahead.”

They both set to work searching the small room, moving quietly and efficiently. We’d timed all this to allow for plenty of leeway before Walter was due back. Alice watched them anxiously, like a kid whose secret horde is about to be uncovered.

“They’re going to find something, aren’t they?” I asked her.

“I got nothing to hide.”

Sheila extracted her latex-gloved hand from a bureau drawer. A small baggie of crushed brown leaves dangled from her fingers.

“You may be right,” I said.

I pulled one last item from my pocket, a manila envelope filled with five-by-seven photographs. I laid one on her lap.

“You know the drinking age in Vermont?”

She nodded.

I turned the picture around slightly, so we could both see it. “Pretty good shot. You can even make out the label on the bottle.”

From across the room, standing in the open closet, Sammie smiled, “Joe.”

She was holding a crack pipe.

I shook my head. “It’s not looking good, Alice. You ever been to jail before? No. That’s right. I forgot. Tough place. Overcrowded, too. Not enough room for young women to be housed apart from one another.”

Alice began to fidget.

I put a second picture on her lap, of her and Sammie talking, hunched together like conspirators. “Show-and-tell,” I said. “To go with the tapes.”

Alice brushed it off her knee onto the floor with a spastic gesture. “I can’t tell you anything. I don’t know what Walter does. He’s real private.”

“Private, maybe. But you live with him. You notice things. Remember the night Brenda Croteau was murdered?”

She sat farther back on the bed, lifting her knees so she could slide all the way up against the headboard. I moved to her spot at the foot, still crowding her. “No.”

“You do, don’t you? What happened that night?”

“Nothing.”

I took a wild guess. “Walter was late coming home from work.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Then why’re you scared half to death? It was pretty bad, wasn’t it? And he told you to keep your mouth shut.”

“Nothing happened that night.”

“You think I’m making this up?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t answer correctly.

“I’m not telling you anything. I don’t care what happens to me.”

“Because he’d beat you up? Or worse? It may be a little late for that.” I placed a third picture before her. “He’s pretty jealous, isn’t he?”

She glanced at it and swayed slightly. “Oh, shit. You can’t do this.”

It was a photograph of her kissing another man.

“That’s not what it looks like. He said he’d rape me if I didn’t. I—”

I cut her off. “Walter’s not going to believe that. Alice, pay attention. Sheila’s told us about Burlington. We can fix things up between you and your folks—get you straight again, get you back in school. This is not a dead end. You can get out. You just have to talk to us.”

My pitch was more desperate than she knew. I had no intention of sharing what I knew with Walter. And, glancing over my shoulder, I could tell Sam and Sheila hadn’t found anything more than what they’d already shown me—which meant the apartment contained nothing so incriminating against Walter Freund that we could move decisively against him.

Fortunately, Alice was beyond knowing such things, much less using them to her advantage.

“I got something,” she blurted, making me release an inner sigh of relief. “A bag. He had it with him that night. He did come in late. He was real worked up. He treated me rough, tore my clothes, treated me like a whore. I followed him when he left with the bag, and I saw him throw it away in one of the dumpsters. I got it out right after and hid it.”

“Why?” I asked. The others were deathly silent, frozen in place.

“He pissed me off. He said stuff—it really hurt. All the shit I do for him.”

“Did you look in the bag?”

“No. I was too scared. And then later, he said he was sorry and everything was cool, and I sort of forgot about it.”

“Where’s the bag now?”

“I got a hiding place in the basement.”

“Will you show us?”

She was so nervous by now, she couldn’t keep still. “I don’t know. He can get real mean. I’m scared.”

“I know you are, Alice, but it doesn’t matter what’s in the bag—you’re out of here now. We’ll put you somewhere safe, get you back with your folks. You can leave this behind you—tonight.”

“Oh, God. I don’t know.”

I leaned for emphasis. “Alice, listen to me. You stay here, word of this will get out. Not from us, but someone’ll talk. That’s the way things work. You know that, right? Word gets around sooner or later. Somebody sees something, or somebody, and puts two and two together. You want to run that risk? You want us to find you like we did Brenda Croteau, in a pool of blood with your head half cut off?”

She covered her ears and began rocking back and forth.

I reached out and stopped her. Pulled her hands down. “Alice, show us the bag and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Without comment, she swung her legs off the bed and headed for the door. Sammie quickly updated Willy by radio, and we all three silently followed our skinny guide down the dark, creaking stairs, straining to hear anyone approaching, fearful we’d be interrupted with the prize almost within grasp. Alice led us to an earthen-floored basement, cold and damp and filled with shadows. We used flashlights rather than hit the lights, and Alice took us to a distant corner, behind a monstrous oil tank squatting on short metal legs.

Brushing aside cobwebs, crawling on our hands and knees, just she and I squeezed behind the tank and came to a stack of moldy bricks, which she began unpiling in a frenzy, sending up a clatter that rebounded off the cold walls.

“Slow down, slow down,” I urged her. “It’s okay now.”

She finally reached into the middle of the bricks and pulled free a dirt-smeared black gym bag, which she thrust into my hands as if it were on fire. “There. Can we go now? Please?”