Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

by Mayor, Archer

  At first, loitering in the doorway, I didn’t see anything except the backs of the three women I’d followed, lined up in a tight semicircle around a chair in the far corner of the room. Then one of them bent forward to receive the hug I’d been longing to give, and over her shoulder I saw Gail’s face—pale, swollen, her eyes shut tight with longing, a dark bruise beginning to take hold of her left cheekbone. Her bare arms encircled the neck of her friend, and I clearly saw the red welts the rapist’s bonds had left around both her wrists. The sight left me rooted in place, without a word to say.

  Her eyes opened then, and she took me in for a long couple of seconds before murmuring, “Joe.”

  Gail’s visitors turned to face me, their expressions stern, even vaguely hostile, their usual professional demeanor transformed by the emotional toll of having to tend to one of their own.

  I stayed put, thoroughly daunted by the anger I felt radiating toward me. Gail motioned to me to come nearer, and as I did, two of the women flanking her draped protective hands on her shoulders. It was not how I’d envisioned our encounter, and it triggered a small but resentful response deep inside me—toward the man who had done this to my best friend, toward the women around her who obviously lumped me with him, and toward Gail herself, for not allowing us this moment alone.

  Fully revealed by the others who’d moved aside, Gail sat in an oversized, green hospital gown, her arms and legs pale and skinny by contrast, looking as frail as a lame child. Her swollen face, crowned by a tangle of disheveled dark hair, made her head look enormous atop a thin, almost shrunken body. The effect was so startling I instinctively crouched before her and reached to hold her hands in my own, my throat tight with emotion.

  That twin gesture caught her by surprise and made her jump and grip the arms of her chair. I dropped my hands immediately, embarrassed that my own professional training had been so easily overridden.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, painfully aware of the others all around, looking down at me. “How are you doing?”

  She smiled faintly. “I’ve been better.”

  “I wish I’d been there,” I added without thinking. There was a predictable but silent stirring at this traditional male cliché, but Gail embraced its intent.

  She nodded and said, “I do, too.”

  I found myself groping for something to add, something other than what was crowding the front of my brain and which would do her no good at all—about how we would catch the guy and take him to the cleaners; that I wouldn’t sleep till we had; that I wished we could turn the clock back a few hours.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked instead.

  “Catch the guy,” Susan Raffner answered immediately.

  I didn’t take my eyes off Gail’s. “Would you like to stay at my place? I could bunk out on the couch, or at the office.”

  Gail shook her head. “No, that’s okay.”

  Susan Raffner’s voice was softer and she touched my shoulder. “I’ll put her up at my house for a while—lots of room. Lots of people, too, when she wants the company.”

  I conceded the point and felt slightly foolish about my suggestion. “Thanks, Susan.”

  I paused a moment, trying to find the right words, knowing I’d done poorly enough already. Gail was looking at her hands in her lap—an obvious sign I’d overstayed a welcome I’d never received in the first place. Fighting the desire to at least touch her hair, I rose and stepped back.

  “Well, I’ll get out of here. Let me know if I can do anything to help.” I looked around. “Any of you—day or night.”

  Raffner nodded her thanks. Gail didn’t move.

  I took another step toward the door. “They’ll have to come back and ask you more questions—probably later today.”

  Gail’s head shot up. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “You’re not going to be on this case?” Her voice was incredulous, rich with betrayal.

  I opened my empty hands to her, burning with anger that I couldn’t immediately grant her one request. “I can’t say. They may not let me.”

  Her eyes blazed at me. “I want you on it, Joe.”

  I pursed my lips and nodded. “Okay. I’ll make it work somehow.”

  She looked at me a moment longer, her expression softening, becoming distant again—mourning the loss of something precious and irreplaceable. She went back to studying her hands.

  I moved to the door, at once eager and reluctant to leave. I paused there and glanced back at her, at her friends beginning to close around her once more.

  “I love you, Gail.”

  There was no response.

  2

  THE LOBBY, AS IN SOME Alice-in-Wonderland dream, was totally empty again, aside from Elizabeth Pace, alone and behind her curvilinear counter, who was talking on the phone. She waved at me and smiled as I passed through the electronically triggered double doors that led to the ambulance loading dock outside.

  The brittle air came as a relief, slightly stinging my cheeks and lungs as I drew in a deep breath. I stood there a moment, overlooking the parking lot, whose features were softly emerging as the harsh, unnatural sodium lights faded against the far gentler but more pervasive gray glow of the looming dawn.

  I was so overwhelmed by the feelings inside me, I was having a difficult time making sense of them. Moreover, I felt an urgent need to do so—and get on with the job at hand.

  Because that was the primary issue here—to do the job. I didn’t have the opportunity of escaping to the daylong demands of an accountant, or a backhoe operator, or a logger—of burying myself in something totally apart from what had happened to Gail and, through her, to me. My job was to eat, breathe, and live what she’d just been put through, not only because I was paid to do it, but because Gail had specifically requested it of me. That meant, despite Elizabeth Pace’s well-intentioned advice, that I was going to have to batten down some of the psychological hatches she’d urged me to throw open, and hope that the pressures behind them wouldn’t blow out at the wrong time or place.

  There was, however, one nugget of solace in my awkward position. Of all the gremlins that conspire to torture the mind of a rape victim, the conviction that her attacker is still out there, waiting to attack her again, is one of the most terrifying. And my job was to bring that guy in.

  Assuming they’d let me try.

  “How’s she doing?” The voice was Tony Brandt’s, coming from the dark far corner of the loading dock.

  I turned to see him leaning against the hospital wall, his hands buried in his trouser pockets, smoking his omnipresent pipe. “You still here? I thought you’d be at the scene by now, or updating the board.”

  Gail had recently been made chair of the town’s board of selectmen, currently a group of notoriously fickle people—and not to be left outside the informational loop for long.

  He smiled and pushed himself away from the wall to join me. “Already have—by phone. We’re meeting in a couple of hours so they can shovel on the outrage, and I can tell them I can’t tell them anything yet.” He paused a moment to launch a couple of pungent clouds into the atmosphere, and then rephrased his opening question. “So, how’re you doing?”

  I hesitated before answering. We had been friends a long time and had been allied in some tough political wars. He was someone I greatly respected, and who’d consistently earned my trust. I knew his inquiry went beyond its simple wording.

  “I was just asking myself the same question. I’m not sure yet—part of it’ll probably depend on Gail.”

  “You get to talk to her?”

  “A little. She’s pretty closed down. I don’t think I’m what she needs right now.”

  “Ah,” he nodded. “The sisterhood.”

  “Yeah.” I turned that over in my mind a couple of times, seeing both sides of it—understanding it in our terms. “Kind of like cops when they get in a jam.”

  He chuckled. “Okay.”

  “She wants me on the case, Tony.”

  He worke
d on his pipe a bit, finally taking it out of his mouth and staring into the bowl for inspiration. “That’s not exactly kosher. The State’s Attorney might have problems with it.”

  “Do you?”

  He parked the pipe back in his mouth. “Not in theory. You’re the best investigator I’ve got, and given Gail’s prominence, and the SA being in a tight reelection bid, I’m going to need the best.”

  “But… ”

  He nodded slowly in agreement. “Right, ‘but…’ People could scream conflict of interest, and the SA’s opponent could make political hay out of it, especially if we don’t nail our man right off. Plus, if the case gets to court, as the last person who saw her before the attack, you’d be a prime witness. All a little awkward.”

  He turned and looked straight at me. “And there’s the personal side to it. How’re you going to perform? I noticed you weren’t too eager to hear the details from Ron a while back. You and Gail have been together for years—might as well be married. Psychologically, it would be like investigating your own wife’s rape. How would you handle it, if our roles were reversed?”

  I wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. “The same way you’re probably going to. You’ve been thinking about this since Ron first called you—I saw you checking me out in the car. So what’ve you decided?”

  He shook his head and snorted gently, amused at my stubbornness. “I’m putting you in charge, but not alone. Everything you do, think, or even dream about has to be flown by me first. Nothing happens without my prior knowledge, and everything is shared with the SA and his investigator immediately.”

  An indefinable part of me found its footing with those words, anchoring all my other mixed emotions, if only tenuously. I made myself believe that Tony Brandt had not only just helped me out, but Gail and the case’s outcome as well.

  Still, I couldn’t ignore that he’d chosen the bolder of his options—something the State’s Attorney was likely to remind him of, and perhaps use against him if things went wrong. “James Dunn is going to love this.”

  Brandt jumped off the loading dock and began walking toward his parked car. “I’ve already told him. He doesn’t, but he’ll survive.”

  · · ·

  We drove to Gail’s house together. A converted apple barn, the house was the sole remnant of a farm that had once dominated a hill overlooking Meadowbrook Road in quasi-rural West Brattleboro. It stood alone now, the other buildings having long since been dismantled or moved, reminiscent of a frontier outpost of two hundred years ago—tall, weather-beaten, built of rough, dark wood. Gail had purchased it for near nothing over a decade ago and had turned it into a bright, soaring, multilevel cathedral of a home, filled with plants, ceiling fans, colorful art, and intimate lighting. It was a hidden showcase of prime real estate and went a long way in demonstrating why she was the town’s single most successful realtor.

  At the moment, however, it looked more like the police department parking lot. Tony had to park halfway up the long driveway behind a string of patrol cars. We went the rest of the way on foot.

  As we’d turned off the road, I’d noticed both WBRT’s and the Brattleboro Reformer’s cars perched by the edge of the ditch. “How’d you fare with them?” I asked, as we trudged up the steep slope.

  “We played footsie a bit. They asked me if it was Gail, or if she’d been hurt, or if we’d caught the guy; I mostly said, ‘No comment.’ I also made it crystal clear I’d be pretty pissed if they divulged any names. They looked shocked I’d even suggested it.”

  “You talk to Katz about it?”

  Stanley Katz, once the Reformer’s cops-’n’-courts reporter, had recently been made editor-in-chief by his Midwest owners, right after he’d surprised them with his resignation—a true example, we thought, of the Peter Principle run wild. But Katz, despite his ambition, his cynicism, and his total lack of manners, had always showed integrity. I just hoped this sole virtue could withstand his bosses’ thirst for wider circulation.

  Tony seemed to have been thinking along similar lines. “I didn’t see the point. He’ll be coming to me soon enough—he’s got too much bloodhound in him to leave it to some reporter. I did tell his boys—and BRT—that they are not allowed on Gail’s property, but they’ll probably try what they can.”

  He suddenly stopped and put his hand on my shoulder, the fog from his breath shrouding his face in the chill morning air. “I’d prepare myself for the worst, though. This could turn into a three-ring circus before it’s done, and I’d be amazed if Gail’s anonymity survived. Which means she—and you—will be front-page news. You might want to consider that before we finish this climb.”

  I nodded and started walking again. “My being involved depends on you and Dunn. I’m staying till one of you stops me.”

  The front door of the building led out onto a broad deck, which in turn had a flight of steps connecting it to the driveway. We had just set foot on the deck and greeted the patrolman guarding the entrance when Ron Klesczewski stepped out through the sliding glass door, a nervous smile on his face.

  “They let you on the case.”

  I smiled back at his obvious relief, although he didn’t need me as much as he thought he did. I wouldn’t have made him my second-in-command if he didn’t have the wherewithal to do the job himself. But his lack of self-confidence, perhaps due to my constant presence, never allowed my belief in him to be put to the test. “You may regret that they did.”

  Brandt interrupted the obvious denial already half formed on Ron’s lips. “He’s on it, but he’s not running it, at least not by himself; we’ll be co-leaders on this. Is Todd Lefevre here yet?”

  Ron scrutinized our faces quickly, trying to gauge my view of this unorthodox command. Like most cops everywhere, he saw the chief as a bureaucrat only—not a street cop—despite the proof, given time and again over the years, that Tony functioned easily in either role. “He got here about five minutes ago—he’s inside.”

  He stepped away from the door and ushered us across the threshold. Todd Lefevre—the State’s Attorney’s criminal investigator—was standing in the center of the building’s main room, admiring its huge, bright space extending high overhead, interlaced by enormous, ancient cross beams which supported, here and there, a varying assortment of staircases and lofts.

  He turned as we entered—a small, round man with a pleasant, bookish look about him—and came over to shake my hand. “Hi, Joe, I was real sorry to hear about this.”

  “Thanks, Todd.”

  “J.P.’s set up in the bedroom,” Ron explained. “He asked we keep the traffic down to a minimum, and that everyone stay on the brown paper till he’s had the whole place checked out.”

  Lefevre, as diplomatic as his boss James Dunn was not, bowed out. “You go ahead. I’ve already had a quick look around—I’ll talk to you when you’re done.”

  Ron, Tony, and I followed the brown-paper runner that J.P. Tyler—the forensics member of the squad—had laid down across the floor and up a long, narrow staircase to the uppermost loft, tucked under the sloped ceiling some thirty feet up. This was where Gail had established her bedroom, in the walled-off equivalent of a tall ship’s crow’s nest.

  As Ron had said, the house was essentially empty, in order to preserve J.P.’s sacrosanct “field of evidence.” Still, I felt the presence of strangers everywhere, something the butcher paper underfoot did little to dispel.

  All three of us paused at the top of the stairs and surveyed the bedroom before us. Dominated by a king-sized bed awash in light from an enormous skylight, it looked like a war zone—the pictures askew on the walls, the dresser swept clean of its bric-a-brac, the closets and drawers disemboweled, their contents resting on the floor and furniture like freshly fallen snow. The only sign of any order in this mess was a perversely precise display of Gail’s more revealing underwear, hung neatly along the upper edge of a lamp shade.

  A sudden flash from Tyler’s camera caught me unawares, startling me, and fina
lized the room’s transformation from intimate retreat to crime scene.

  I stared at the bed he was photographing, its covers pulled all the way to the foot, exposing an unnaturally vast expanse of bottom sheet, wrinkled in the middle, stained here and there by minute spots of crimson. I remembered Ron’s comment about a knife—“Pinpricks, really, just to prove he had it.” The bed took on the vague aspect of a laboratory table.

  “Any semen stains?” Tony asked, his tone a little brusque, as if the question were as much to challenge my objectivity as to get an answer.

  “A few,” Tyler answered, still focusing. He then lowered the camera and turned to face us, seeing me for the first time. Normally, his scientific detachment at a scene rivaled his inanimate equipment’s, but he looked suddenly uncomfortable now, a reaction for which I silently thanked him. To his face, however, I merely nodded and said, “It’s okay.”

  He looked at me clinically for another second and then nodded, satisfied. “What did she say about ejaculate?”

  Ron cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed. “I didn’t ask. We didn’t talk for long—she was pretty upset—so I just stuck to the immediate stuff, like did she see the guy, or know him.”

  I stepped away from the doorway, fighting my own growing discomfort. I nodded toward the stains on the sheet, “Some of those are probably mine. I was here last night. What else have you found?”

  Tyler took my cue and moved on. “Nothing much so far, but I only got here a few minutes ago, just long enough to take a few overall shots.” He pointed along the bottom edge of the box spring. The rope slipknots Ron had mentioned at the hospital hung limply from the metal frame, two on each side, like a demented child’s preparations for a miniature mass hanging. “Looks like common clothesline—the more she pulled against them, the tighter they got.”

  Ron added, “She told me she finally freed herself by shifting to one side as far as possible, cutting off the circulation to one hand until the rope loosened enough for her to slip the other hand out.”