I rapped my knuckles on the tabletop to quiet them down. In addition to the entire detective squad, there were several uniformed officers attending, along with Gail and Tony Brandt.
“Okay, folks, this is going to be short and sweet. Turns out we might have gotten a little ahead of ourselves handing the Tharp case over to the SA’s office—understandable given the weight of the evidence. They’d like us to extend the investigation a bit more, based on a few inconsistencies they don’t want used against them in court later.”
Since most of the evidence against Tharp had been gathered under his supervision, J.P. was the first to react. “What inconsistencies?”
I tried putting him at ease immediately. “Nothing involving what we collected so far. If anything, we’ll be needing more of it. There is no doubt whatsoever that Owen Tharp used a knife on Brenda Croteau. Where questions have cropped up is in answering how and why.”
“What do we care about why?” Sammie asked.
“Because it runs to intent,” Gail answered. “Owen may have been misled about Brenda’s role in his girlfriend’s death. He was told Lisa Wooten died because Brenda spiked her dope with poison. We’ve recently found out Brenda didn’t sell her any dope, and that what Lisa used wasn’t poisoned to begin with. She died of a straight overdose, albeit a big one. Also, we need to dig deeper into what happened at Brenda’s that night. We all know a jury is detail-dependent. Those TV shows they watch make them eager for fingerprints and hair follicles and DNA, and—although it shouldn’t be our concern—motive. If, as we’re beginning to suspect, Owen might’ve been programmed to kill Brenda—which we can count on McNeil emphasizing in court—the jury might let him off unless we can come up with an alternate explanation.”
“Programmed by who?” Ron asked.
“Right now,” I answered him, “we’re looking at Walter Freund. We also think he was responsible for Lisa Wooten’s overdose.”
There was a ripple of conversation around the table. One of the uniformed officers, Ward Washburn, asked, “Does this mean the SA is going after Freund instead of Tharp?”
“No,” Gail said emphatically. “Absolutely not. Tharp is still on the hot seat. If it turns out he was manipulated by Freund or someone else, the charges against him might be amended, but only because we’d be dealing with two perps instead of just one. Please keep in mind that the quote-unquote guided missile theory is only that for the moment—no more.”
More generalized chatter followed, which I interrupted. “Owen’s on his way to the head shrinker right now, which may end up telling us a little more about what really happened that night. Our job is to pretend we never handed the case over to the SA in the first place—that the investigation is ongoing. Let’s forget about the confession, which might be thrown out anyway—”
“What do you mean?” Sammie jumped in.
“McNeil’s saying he was too cold, too freaked, and that I scared the shit out of him,” Willy answered.
“Also,” I said loudly, trying to keep things on track, “we need to reanalyze the hard evidence—see what else we can find.” I looked at J.P. “That means going over the blood samples, the knife wounds, whatever prints you collected—the whole ball of wax.”
“There was some tissue under one of her nails. We assumed it belonged to Tharp. Should I get that DNA’d? I hadn’t bothered because of the expense.”
“Yes. Go back over everything with a fine-toothed comb. Now remember, everyone, this means we’re back to running two separate investigations—Tharp and Resnick. Both have equal priority. We’ve made good inroads on the Resnick case. Billy Conyer’s little group of friends is feeling the pressure. We need to keep that up. Our advantage is that we no longer have to worry about stepping on the SA’s toes over Tharp. On the other hand, given the way some of the people we’re dealing with are popping up in both investigations, I have to stress two major points: coordination and documentation. I don’t want a single one of you to move a muscle without clearing it through Sammie or me, and I don’t want anyone to have a conversation, make an observation, or overhear a comment out there that isn’t immediately logged with Ron. We have got to know at all times what everyone’s doing. Is that absolutely clear?”
Everyone nodded. Willy, just as predictably, smiled enigmatically.
“I know,” I continued, “that Walter Freund’s name is familiar to most of you. He’s someone we’d all like to see put away for good. That’s another thing we have to watch out for. Our handing Owen Tharp over to the SA prematurely’s going to cost us with the press and some of the politicians. The race for the primaries will begin after Town Meeting Day. And even though things won’t get hot till May, after the Legislature calls it quits for the year candidates are going to be chasing every issue they can, especially our old pal James Dunn. So, one last request: Keep your mouths shut. Any reporter, any civilian you don’t know, asks you any question at all, tell them ‘no comment,’ and let me know who they are. You all know what happened to Cary Bancroft. Let’s not give him any company on the unemployment line.”
The rest of the meeting was devoted to dividing the workload and apportioning responsibilities and schedules. I let Sammie and Ron run most of it, given their dual leadership roles, except for wrapping things up with a few words of generic encouragement.
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.”
23
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 a
nswer 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.”
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