Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

by Mayor, Archer

  “This one might be of interest to you.”

  I took my eyes off the road and glanced quickly at the radio, as if some further explanation might appear in spectral writing. With half the town monitoring our radio conversations—a practice so peculiarly widespread, we referred to our unseen audience as “scannerland”—some of our messages became cryptic to a fault. I therefore knew better than to ask for details and merely responded, “10-4. O-3 is responding.”

  The restaurant in question was located right at the edge of the Retreat Meadows. Once a flood plain of fields belonging to a local drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation facility named the Retreat, it was now, thanks to a dam farther down the Connecticut River, a scenic, lake-like pocket that marked the confluence of the Connecticut and the West Rivers. The restaurant’s broad veranda had become an idyllic platform for watching canoeists, fishermen, and outboard-motor enthusiasts in summertime, and ice fishermen and skaters during the winter months.

  No one was watching now, however. Not only was it jet black by now, but the action was most distinctly in the dirt parking lot to the restaurant’s rear. As I left the Putney Road and cut back down a narrow switchback leading to the shore, my headlights picked up a large throng of people clustered around two stationary vehicles.

  I stopped at the crowd’s edge, let Dispatch know I’d arrived, and was told a patrol unit was about five minutes away. Relieved by that bit of news—these kinds of disputes were famous for drawing indiscriminate blood—I removed my badge from my pocket and, using it as a combination calling card/battering ram, began slowly to edge my way into the center of the crowd.

  I heard the fight before I saw it, and so recognized at least one of the participants. Mary Wallis’s authoritative voice cut through the night air like the railing of an outraged nun. I immediately began to rue Dispatch’s apparently warped sense of humor.

  My dread, it turned out, was justified. When I reached the front row of spectators, I found that Wallis had fixed her wrath on none other than Jason Ryan—our unlikely primary suspect. He was sitting in his car with the windows up and the doors locked, nursing a split lip with a bloody handkerchief. She was standing next to the car; yelling invectives and finally pounding on his driver’s-side window with her shoe.

  My appearance, signaled by the parting of the crowd, caught both her attention and her rage. “Why isn’t this man in jail?”

  I approached her and gently reached for the shoe. “As far as we know, he’s done nothing to deserve it.”

  She waved the shoe menacingly in the air, distracting me from making good eye contact with its owner.

  “Nothing? What about Gail? You of all people should know what he’s done.”

  My hand closed on the shoe. Her arm didn’t relax, which made us look locked in a dance step, but at least I felt a little safer. I looked at her carefully. “Mary—what are you doing here?”

  The window of the car rolled down a few inches, enough for Ryan’s scratchy, whining voice to be added to the chorus. “Arrest that bitch. She hit me—fucking bitch hit me with her goddamn shoe. That’s assault and battery.”

  I heard the door mechanism click as he began to open up. I kicked the door shut again with my foot and glanced at him briefly. “Stay in the car or I’ll let her loose. I’ll get to you later.”

  Looking like an ad for Arthur Murray dance lessons, I moved Mary a short distance away from the car, still in front of an enthralled and speechless crowd. I could hear a comforting siren approaching from afar.

  I shook her arm a little, as a reminder. “Would you put your shoe back on, please? You’ll catch cold.”

  She looked up at our entwined hands and flushed with embarrassment, suddenly conscious of the absurdity of her situation. The arm finally descended. “I came here for dinner. Not to confront him.”

  “You met by chance?”

  She nodded. Around us the dark crowd of faces and the trees beyond them began pulsating with the reflected blue lights from the arriving patrol car. Two officers waded through the parted spectators, barely restrained smiles on their faces.

  “Got this one locked up, Lieutenant?”

  I pointed at the people now fading away, the fun over and the risk of personal involvement just beginning. “Grab a few of them and get statements. And don’t let the guy with the bloody lip out of his car. I want to talk to him.”

  I turned back to Mary Wallis, who was obviously starting to reflect on the trouble she might be in. “Where did you see him?”

  “At the bar.”

  “And he approached you?” I was making it easy for her to build a face-saving story, knowing very well her honesty was almost as rigid as her dogmatism.

  She didn’t disappoint me. “I went up to him and asked him if he raped Gail.”

  My eyes widened a bit. “Just like that.”

  She scowled at me. “Yes, just like that—what did you expect? I thought you people would have him in jail by now.”

  I held up my hand to keep her calm. “I take it you weren’t being conversational at the time?”

  “I didn’t scream at him—l merely asked him for the truth.”

  “And what was his response?”

  “He began abusing me—swearing at me, using foul language… ”

  “Did he touch you at all?” I was hoping we could counter his assault charge with one by her—and maybe get him into jail where we could sweat him a bit.

  She shook her head. “He didn’t have to. His words were enough—they were sexually violent, and I considered them grounds for self-defense.”

  “Meaning you hit him.”

  Again, her face darkened with anger. “This is incredible. Not twenty-four hours has gone by since a prominent woman in this town—your own partner—was raped by that man, and you’re giving me the third degree because I hit him.”

  “If he presses charges, it’ll be worse than that. You might end up spending the night in jail.”

  She stared at me, openmouthed.

  I shook my head, muttered, “Stay here—I’ll see what I can do,” and went to talk to the two patrolmen, who were standing side by side behind Ryan’s car, finishing their notes.

  “He yelled at her, she whacked him, he ran for cover,” the older one said, with a veteran’s economy of form.

  I thought for a moment. The patrolman seemed to have read my mind when he added, “And he never so much as brushed up against her.”

  “But the language was good?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “You know the man, Joe—worst mouth in town.”

  I nodded and borrowed the note pad he’d used to gather statements. “Okay, good. Why don’t you two keep Ms. Wallis company for a few minutes while I try something.”

  I went around to the passenger side of Ryan’s car, motioned to him to open up, and looked in. “How’re you doing, Jason?”

  “Not too fucking good. You goin’ to bust that bitch?”

  I noticed his lip, though swollen, had already stopped bleeding, and that the cut was apparently on the inside of his mouth, where it wouldn’t show. “Well—” I squatted down to get a better view of him in the dome light. “That might prove to be a two-edged sword.”

  “What the fuck you talkin’ about? Look at my goddamn face. She hit me, for Christ’s sake.”

  “After you provoked her with some pretty strong language. We have a roomful of very impressed witnesses.”

  He fairly exploded. “Language? What the hell’s going on here? She accused me of raping your fucking girlfriend, and you’re talking about two-edged swords? Did all your fucking witnesses turn into dummies when that happened?”

  “No, no. They got it right. They also saw you hightail it for your car and lock the doors against a small woman with a shoe. That got a few laughs. How much do you weigh?”

  Several expressions chased across his face as he began seeing where I was headed. “What was I supposed to do?” he finally asked a little lamely, “punch her out? You would’ve nailed me for
sure.”

  I glanced over the patrolman’s notes once more. “You could’ve tried to defend yourself. You ‘ducked and ran,’ according to these people. One said you screamed.”

  “Horse shit I screamed. What the fuck’s goin’ on here, Gunther? You jerk me around anymore and I’ll sue your ass to hell.”

  I put the note pad into my coat pocket. “Straight? Okay, you press charges against her, and I’ll make sure the eyewitness accounts get circulated all over town. You don’t press charges, and I’ll also make sure she stays out of your way—with a restraining order, if necessary.”

  He didn’t react immediately. Ironically, for a man whose prose made sewage look clean, his self-image was important to him. What he saw in the mirror was a bastion of conservative rectitude, attending town meetings and writing letters to the editor as a saint might stand by the front door of a brothel, warning all of the sins within. My offer, though painful, had its impact.

  He glanced out the window at Wallis and the two patrolmen. “What’s to stop them from blabbing?”

  “Me. Some word might get out from the crowd that was here, but that’ll just be gossip you can deny.”

  There was a long pause as he stared out the windshield, considering his options. What he finally said both surprised me and helped explain his decision, which had less to do with vanity than I’d thought. “I didn’t rape your girlfriend.”

  “You said all she needed was a good fuck.”

  “I say that to a lot of people.”

  “Saying it that time made you a suspect.”

  I expected outrage, but he looked at me, genuinely startled. “But I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do that.”

  I let it stand at that. I didn’t want to pursue this without seeing what Kunkle and Martens might have dug up about Ryan’s whereabouts last night. I gestured toward Mary Wallis. “So what about her?”

  He frowned and touched his lip. “Tell her to stay the fuck away from me, and that if I hear one more crack out of her, I’m suing for libel. And that goes for you assholes, too. Shut the fucking door.”

  I drew back and complied. He fired up the car and spun its rear tires leaving the parking lot. Across the now-empty space, I looked at Mary Wallis. “You’re off the hook, with a few provisions.”

  · · ·

  My first opportunity to see Ron Klesczewski’s handiwork came at around eight o’clock that night, not long after I’d filed a report about my meeting with Stan Katz, and a private memo to Brandt concerning the parking-lot spat I’d just arbitrated.

  Ron’s command post reflected his penchant for order and tidiness. The room directly down the hall from the detective bureau—normally a wasted space in search of a proper function—had been transformed into a data-management center of classic design. Bulletin boards, desks, phones, in and out trays, rows of open cardboard filing boxes were all arranged clearly and logically, without clutter or duplication—an efficient bureaucratic information funnel, designed to guide every scrap of incoming intelligence, no matter how trivial, to an easily locatable parking spot.

  I hadn’t expected to see much activity at this time of night. I knew Ron would be there—his personality dictated he’d probably move a cot in before long—and I knew at least one officer from each patrol shift was assigned to be there. What I found was four times that number of people, all of them immersed in work, shrouded by the sounds of typewriters, telephones, muttered conversations, and the vague odor of overcooked coffee.

  Sammie Martens was the first one to see me standing in the doorway. Listening on the phone, she waved me over to where she’d staked out a claim at one end of a long folding conference table.

  She jotted down a few notes, thanked whoever it was at the other end, and hung up, explaining, “Still canvassing Gail’s neighborhood.”

  She rose and led me to one of the bulletin boards, which had been covered horizontally by a six-hour timetable, divided into columns fifteen minutes apart. The legend, Time of Assault, occupied the center-most column. Reading from her freshly obtained notes, Sammie filled out an index card with “car sound—southbound—un-witnessed,” and stuck it with a pin under the 4:00-4:15 label.

  She stood back and explained the team’s progress so far. “We’re filling it up little by little. Some of them, like Dennis’s old guy going to the john, are pretty specific; others, like the one I just got, aren’t worth too much.”

  I pointed to the only entry in the 3:30-3:45 column, a card stating, “Burgess returns home.” After freeing herself and pulling the pillowcase off her head, Gail had locked the time at 3:37. “What about that one?”

  “Timothy Burgess—lives over a mile down the street. One of the patrolmen working with Dennis found him. Rock-solid alibi, seen leaving one place and arriving home. We checked him for priors just to be sure. Nothing.”

  I scanned the entire board, noticing that even I made an appearance. “Anything interesting at all, even if it doesn’t fit the timetable?”

  Sammie shrugged. “Maybe.”

  She marched back to her table and pawed through a pile of notes, extracting a single sheet. “Harry Murchison, works for Krystal Kleer Windows and Doors. He was half the crew that installed two of Gail’s windows last year.”

  She handed me the sheet—a printout from the Vermont Department of Corrections. “One count of sexual assault and battery, for which he served time, and an arrest for sexual molestation, which never made it to court. We haven’t contacted him yet, nor have we run him by Gail to see if he rings a bell.”

  She hesitated a moment and then added, “Are you planning to see her soon?”

  I handed the sheet back. “I don’t know. Probably. You been able to check out what Murchison was doing last night?”

  “I asked around his neighborhood a bit—low profile. He has a girlfriend with a noisy kid, they like loud music, and they put down a fair amount of beer on the weekend, so they’re not too inconspicuous. But the closest I could get to pinning down his whereabouts was whether his truck spent the night at home.”

  She paused, apparently for effect. “It didn’t, at least not the whole night. When the woman I spoke to went to bed at midnight, the truck was still gone. When she got up early this morning, it was there, and she says she thought she heard it coming back ‘sometime in the middle of the night,’ to quote her.”

  My mind was running through the various ways we could get closer to Mr. Murchison without tipping our hand. “He on parole or probation?”

  Sammie shook her head. “I thought of the same thing. No, he’s not, so we can’t use a parole officer to help us out. Except for maybe getting chummy with his girlfriend, I don’t see how we can get close.”

  “Maybe one of our snitches will. Where’s Willy?”

  She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Out there somewhere, poking around in other people’s laundry. This is his kind of case. I’ll try to find him and tell him to work on that.”

  I glanced back at the bulletin board with the timetable. “You said Murchison has a truck?”

  “Yeah—a dark-blue pickup with a cap. Could’ve been the one the old guy saw.”

  “God bless old bladders,” I muttered.

  Sammie hadn’t heard me. “Willy checked out Ryan, by the way. As far as we can tell, he had dinner with friends, wrapped things up a little before eleven, and went home to bed, the last part being speculative. He lives alone, the neighbors don’t have a clear view of his house or driveway, and they hate his guts anyway, so they aren’t too interested. Besides that, Willy found out he has a couple of bicycles and that he likes to ride at night, probably to look through people’s windows. He could’ve snuck out on one of them after pretending to hit the sack. Nobody would’ve heard him, and he doesn’t live that far from Gail’s place.”

  I nodded, half to myself, my eyes on Ron Klesczewski, who’d left his computer terminal to refill a cup of coffee at the urn near the door. I didn’t tell Sammie about my recent chat with Jason Ryan, or the fact that for
some reason I’d believed him when he’d told me of his innocence.

  “I suppose you heard Gail’s name is being published in tomorrow’s paper?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” Sammie’s response was bitter.

  “It was her choice—you might want to spread that around before everyone starts dumping on the Reformer prematurely. Besides, it might be helpful—we won’t have to tiptoe around quite as much, and maybe we can start pulling people in and pressuring them a bit. Thanks for all your work, Sammie. You ought to think about getting some shut-eye.”

  “You too,” she said quietly as I walked over to see Ron.

  “We’ve been working on the intelligence files Todd dropped off,” Ron said as I approached, “and we may have a couple of hits.”

  He pulled a folder from one of his neatly arranged file boxes and read me two of the names I’d heard earlier at the intelligence meeting. “Barry Gilchrist and Lonny Sorvin. Both of them are in town, both have MOs that at least partially fit the bill, and as far as we can tell, both have daily schedules that would’ve allowed them to do the assault. I contacted their parole officers and we’re arranging for interviews tomorrow morning.”

  I glanced at the files, familiar with their contents. Neither one of them had struck me as prime during the meeting, but I wasn’t going to fault Ron’s enthusiasm. My instincts weren’t infallible, and the textbook approach had put a lot of guilty people behind bars.

  He reached into another box and handed me a sheet of paper. “That came from Gail—somebody dropped it by early this afternoon. It’s a list of men she thinks could have done it. Ryan’s on it.”

  I felt a slight tingle at the nape of my neck as I took the sheet. “How far have you gotten on this?”

  He picked up on the urgency in my voice, which triggered his dormant insecurity. “I gave it top priority—over the intelligence files even. I figured if she gave us those, she must’ve had good reason. Problem is, there’re some twenty names, and we want to do them right—not move too fast. So far, we’ve dug into about half of them.”

  I pointed at the list. “I take it the ones that’re crossed off were misses?”