She hesitated, obviously tempted to ask what I was up to. Instead, all she said was, “I’ll see what I can do.”
· · ·
There were two cars parked in Brian Padget’s driveway when I pulled up, one of which I assumed was Greg Davis’s. Despite my initial disappointment on the phone with Gail, I was curious why I’d been summoned. I doubted, however, that it was because Padget had followed my advice and figured out how and why he’d landed in his present predicament. As promising as Latour thought him, Padget was also young and inexperienced, and more prone to wallow than to dig his way out.
Davis met me at the door, his weary expression confirming the worst. “Thanks for coming.”
He stood aside, ushering me into a dense atmosphere of stale, fetid air, tinged in equal parts with sweat, booze, and vomit. A faint but refreshing tang of coffee struggled feebly in the background.
“Great,” I commented. “When did this start?”
“I checked on him last night. He’d been drinking some, but I thought I’d shaken him out of it. A couple of hours ago was the first chance I had to drop by since. Looks like he’s been at it all day.”
I wandered past the small kitchen, down the hallway to the back bedroom, where the smell approached critical mass. In the dim light leaking in from behind me, I saw Padget lying face down on the bed.
“Brian. It’s Joe.”
“Fuck you.” His voice was muffled by a pillow.
“Hear you’ve been having a rough time.”
“Get the fuck outta here.”
I picked my way carefully across the room, noticing a dry pool of vomit on the rug near the night table. I sat in a small rocking chair. “You’ve probably had enough of people getting out of your hair.”
His head shifted. A pale half-moon of face appeared from out of the pillow. “What?”
“What’s been going on, Brian?”
“What the hell do you think? I’m the crooked cop—might as well be a leper. The paper calls me that, the guys at the station’re thinking it, that asshole Shippee wants me fired yesterday, and the chief’s letting me cook in it.”
“You talk to Emily?”
The face vanished back into the pillow.
“You’re not telling me she cut you off.”
Silence.
“So you did it for her, right? Won’t let her come by, won’t talk to her on the phone?”
I could barely hear him. “No.”
“She’s the best friend you got.”
“I messed her up enough already.”
“You were used, Brian. Somebody put water in your gas tank so your car would malfunction and Emily would have to drive you to work. It was a double setup to taint you both.”
“Then why’m I still going to court?”
It was a good question, and reflective of his thinking clearly despite the self-abuse. In fact, what I’d just said was speculative, absurdly optimistic, and procedurally inappropriate. Alleged dirty cops were supposed to stew on their own, not be comforted by the investigating officer.
But I didn’t care much about the rules of protocol anymore. “ ’Cause I can’t prove it yet,” I answered him. “I am getting closer, though. Did you do any thinking about how you got nailed, like I asked?”
He turned to face me again. “You think this is a crossword puzzle or something? Some bastard planted dope in my house—in my body, for Christ’s sake. How the hell’m I going to figure how that happened?”
“The dope in the toilet tank and the stuff in your system don’t match. They came from two different sources. You need to start thinking about that.”
He raised himself up on his elbows so he could shout at me. “Fuck you. What the hell you think I been doing?”
“Feeling sorry for yourself.”
He grabbed the pillow and tried to throw it at me, collapsing in the process and smacking his reading lamp, which I caught before it hit the floor. I heard Greg nervously shift his weight in the doorway.
“You know,” I said, “it would help if you were straight with me.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That in the middle of all this shit, and with people like me and Greg and Emily all pulling for you, you’ve been holding back on the truth.”
He didn’t answer. I let the silence last as long as was necessary. The response, when it came, was predictably feeble. “I have not.”
“You told me you’d first met Jan on a call to her house for a domestic dispute.”
“So?”
“That was a lie. You were never on any of those calls.”
He lapsed back into silence.
“Emily, on the other hand,” I continued, “was on almost every one.” I thought back to what I’d said about both of them having been framed, and wondered why they’d earned that much attention.
He rolled over and slowly began sitting up, swaying with the effort. I glanced at Greg. “Could you get a cold, wet towel?”
He disappeared without comment.
“You leave Emily alone,” Padget finally gasped, fighting nausea. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands, breathing hard and deep.
“Why should I? She’s the one who put you on to Norm Bouch in the first place.”
He continued trying to keep his stomach under control. Davis returned with the towel and soundlessly placed it in his hand. Padget buried his face in it, rubbing it around. Through the material, he asked, “She tell you that?”
The phrasing of the question gave me hope I’d gotten lucky. “She told me Norm Bouch was the scum of the earth—to be taken out like a tactical threat and held up as an example.”
Padget shook his head. “God, she hates his guts.”
“What did she do?”
Suddenly, giving in to all his penned-up emotions, Brian Padget began to weep. Starting with a slight shaking of the shoulders, his grief spread until his entire body was racked by sobs. I shifted over next to him on the bed, rubbing his back and shoulders. Greg Davis moved into the room and sat opposite us.
For fifteen minutes, we let him dredge himself out. Then gradually, I began coaxing him back, telling him to breathe deeply, straighten up, open his eyes and look at us. Eventually, he took a final, shuddering gulp of air and wiped his eyes with the towel.
“Tell us the truth now,” I urged.
His voice was barely audible. “Emily was running a covert investigation on Norm Bouch, but she refused to quit when I found out. I told her it could cost her her job—ruin everything she’d fought for her whole life—I finally said I’d do it instead, that if she didn’t let me, I’d turn her in. She knew I was serious. We fought like hell—that’s why we broke up—but she finally went along.”
Greg and I exchanged looks. As irony had it, this admission put Padget in hotter water than he already was. If he were cleared of the drug charges, he’d end up battered but still employed. Running a clandestine investigation, however, put his career in the same jeopardy he’d been trying to spare Emily. Police officials do not take kindly to cops becoming freelancers.
“What about Jan?” I asked. “How did you two get together?”
He shook his head with embarrassment. “I was staking out their house one night when she walked right up to me and asked me what I was doing. She’d noticed me hanging around. She wasn’t angry—just curious. And she was real sad. I could see it in her eyes—all the shit he pulls on her. She came to see me as someone who might help her and the kids to get free.”
I listened quietly, fighting the urge to tell him I thought he’d been worked like a trout by an expert angler. Norm’s fingerprints were all over this story, down to the unbelievable notion that Jan would notice someone hiding in the bushes and then go out to meet him without consulting her husband.
“You should’ve run the case by me,” Greg finally said. “I might’ve okayed a surveillance.”
Brian looked at him sadly. “We didn’t believe that. We were sure the chief would give it thumbs do
wn, him not wanting to make waves and all.”
“Why not admit you and Emily wanted to score points,” I said harshly, irritated by their arrogance and naiveté both. “Bring in a bad guy on your own? Emily’s got a problem because Burlington wouldn’t have her, and you’re so hot to climb the ladder, you can barely stand it.”
Greg gave me a warning look, and I softened my tone. “Look, I know it got away from you, but how did you think it was going to end? Even if you got the goods on Norm, people were going to ask how you’d done it. Being successful wouldn’t have made you any less of a maverick. Why didn’t you follow your own advice to Emily?”
He shook his head tiredly. “We didn’t think it out. It was like a personal thing I got caught up in—first stopping Emily from getting fired, then trying to save Jan. I felt I could do it.”
I shook my head silently. Any chastising by me was gratuitous compared to what he was facing. I patted his back instead, told him to try to get some sleep, and that for the rest of the night I’d stick around in case he needed me.
Davis and I retired to the living room after tucking Padget in. We left the lights off and settled in opposite corners of the sofa. “You think he’ll get to keep his job if he’s cleared?” I asked quietly, already hearing the dull rumble of Padget’s snoring down the hall.
In the reflected glow from the street light outside, he shrugged. “The chief likes him, or used to. He might get a month or two without pay if he’s lucky. Politics could run him over—Shippee hates all this—and I doubt his career’ll have much oomph, at least in the short run.”
“Things improving any at the department?” I asked.
He sighed. “Not a whole lot. The job’s getting done, but no one’s heart is in it. This thing’s like a group headache none of us can shake.”
“Latour still seen as part of the problem?”
“He’s not helping any.”
“And you can’t talk to him?”
There was a pause. “We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
Silence fell between us for quite a while. I finally stuck out my foot and prodded his own in the dark. “You’ve done your time here. Go home to your family. I’ll bunk on the couch.”
After a moment’s thought, he rose to his feet. “Guess I will. Thanks.”
I walked him to the front door. “Why did you call me, by the way?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “This wasn’t anything you couldn’t have handled.”
He didn’t answer at first, rubbing his hand along the door frame instead, as if checking it for splinters. He spoke slowly at first. “That was a mistake. I didn’t know about Emily and him running a case on their own. That sort of changes things.”
I tried interpreting that. “Meaning you were pissed and wanted me to see the damage I’d done.”
He laughed softly, shaking his head. “That makes it sound mature. Guess I screwed that one up.”
“I don’t think so,” I disagreed. “You’re trying to take care of your people. I don’t have a problem with that.”
He nodded meditatively. “Silly impulse, though. I shouldn’t have done it.” He looked up then. “How do you think this’ll wind up?”
“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” I told him, at least guardedly optimistic. “By the way,” I added, “something happened in Burlington today that might make Norm a little antsy. Is there any way you could keep an eye on him—enough to let me know if he leaves town, or changes habits radically?”
“Sure,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
I watched him get into his car and drive off into the night. I hoped he was right. If Norm turned from puppet-master to loose cannon, there was no telling what might happen.
Chapter 21
BY THE TIME I LEFT BRIAN PADGET the next morning, he’d showered, shaved, eaten a light breakfast, and made an appointment with a local counseling service. Given the condition I’d found him in, I wasn’t begrudging a poor night’s sleep.
It was perhaps that developing hopefulness that made me turn again toward the Bellows Falls police station instead of continuing home.
Emile Latour was in his awkwardly laid out office, sitting at his desk, staring into space.
He looked up when I tapped lightly on the door frame. “Hi, Joe. Come on in.”
“I just spent the night babysitting Brian Padget. You been to see him since all this hit the fan?”
He frowned. “Babysitting him? Why?”
“Greg Davis called me. He’s been dropping in on Padget, seeing how he’s doing. He found him blind drunk and sick, feeling sorry for himself. He’s better now.” I sat in one of the guest chairs and studied him, watching a series of thoughts pass like shadows behind his eyes.
He seemed to absorb what I told him in slow motion, gradually lifting his hand to rub absent-mindedly at his temple. Finally, he said, “I didn’t realize.”
I kept my voice neutral. “He’s a kid—and an idealist. He hasn’t acquired what we’ve got to fall back on.”
“But what about the urinalysis?”
“I can’t prove it yet, but I think the dope was put into him somehow. It doesn’t match the stuff we found in the toilet tank, which is what the snitch told the paper they’d both been using.”
Latour’s gaze returned to his untouched paperwork.
“How’re the others holding up, with Padget heading for arraignment?” I asked.
He sat back in his chair, his shoulders slumped. “The whole department’s in a mess. I get, ‘Yes, Chief,’ ‘No, Chief,’ and ‘Will you sign this, Chief?’ And that’s about it. I stuck my foot in it saying what I did at that news conference. I lost them.”
“You disappointed them. That’s different.”
He looked slightly irritated. “The end result’s the same. They won’t talk to me. I don’t know what to say to them. Half of them think Brian’s dirty and Emily’s in it with him. The other half have gone totally nuts, saying Shippee, me, Norm Bouch, the village trustees, and all the dirtbags in town have ganged up to screw them.” He waved a hand feebly across his desk. “Coming to work is like going to a funeral every day.”
“What about Shippee?” I asked. “What’s his role?”
Latour’s face darkened. “That son of a bitch. He doesn’t give a good goddamn. He wants it solved, period. He sees this new group in town trying to make things better, and his contribution is to tell me to fire any troublemakers I find in my department. To him it’s all whitewash and flowers—cater to the do-gooders, buy yourself some political mileage, and then watch them disappear in six months, wiped out by their own disappointment—just like before.”
I was impressed by his anger and tried stoking it a little. “You told me earlier you thought they had more on the ball than that.”
“They do. I know it started with flowers and name changes, but they’ve moved beyond that. They’re talking about taking care of the kids that just hang around the streets now. They invited them to their meetings and asked them for suggestions, for crying out loud. You don’t see Shippee at those. For the first time, there’s a sense these folks aren’t going to be happy till something improves. I looked around the room at their last get-together, and I saw people who can’t stand each other trying to find some middle ground. It was amazing.”
“They approach you yet?” I asked.
He blinked, as if coming out of a daydream. “Sure they have, with the usual complaints—loitering kids, open drinking, cars speeding, too many drugs… I’m two guys down and the rest are in the dumps. I’m really going to hold my breath, keep my fingers crossed, and make everything better.”
I got up and headed for the door, not wanting to feed his bitterness. “You’re not in a position to do that, which may be part of your problem. You ever think you might’ve outgrown your job, Emile—that you could do more if you weren’t Chief of Police? Maybe you’re more frustrated than burned out.”
I half expected an angry comeback, but as I looked over my shoulde
r, he was merely staring into space again. I thought I saw a difference, though—an intensity in his expression, as if in reviewing his own words—or mine—he might have found something deserving a second look.
“I’ll see you around,” I said in parting. He didn’t respond.
· · ·
Gail called me at the office shortly before noon. I’d been going over our double homicide and finding little of use. Nothing new had surfaced concerning Jasper Morgan, and we still hadn’t put a name to the little guy in the adjoining grave. Willy had spent hours trying to trace the parents, but without success.
“Jan just got her visit from SRS,” Gail reported.
“What did they find?” I asked.
“Not enough to warrant any action by them, but they didn’t tell her that, and the effect was what we were after. If you want to chat with her before hubby comes home from work, now’s the time.”
“I’m on my way,” I told her. “But before I go, did you find out where Norm and she were married?”
“Anne thought it was Bellows Falls, but she wasn’t sure. I had our clerk check it out, and she couldn’t find any record of it, so Anne must’ve been wrong. They probably went to Vegas or somewhere—that sounds like Norm’s style. Why did you want to know, anyhow?”
I answered vaguely. “Legal question—trying to sort out any potential husband-wife problems we might run into. I’ll let you know how I fare. Thanks for setting it up.”
I dialed Brian Padget’s house immediately after hanging up.
“Hello?” The voice on the other end wasn’t chipper, but it didn’t sound drunk, either.
“It’s Joe Gunther. How’re you doing?”
“I went to the shrink, if that’s what you mean.”
“It wasn’t, but how did it go?”
“All right, I guess. It makes me uncomfortable.”
“That’s probably good. Digging into yourself should hurt a little. I got a question for you—some legal paperwork I’m trying to clear up. Where were Jan and Norm married?”
“Here,” he said immediately and then corrected himself. “I mean Bellows Falls. She told me one night they had a church wedding—white dress, tux, one of the kids as ring-bearer, the whole shootin’ match.”
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