Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

by Mayor, Archer

  They weren’t used to having that image tarnished, especially by one of their own.

  I had been talking for a half hour, explaining step by step the realities that now faced us, trying to prepare them for what the morning would bring, but I couldn’t deny the humiliation they’d soon be suffering at the hands of a probing media and a judgmental public.

  It turned out Ray’s faulty testimony had not been the only boulder to fall from the pile we’d stacked on top of Bob Vogel. Tyler had returned from the state police crime lab in Waterbury a few hours earlier with proof that the pubic-hair samples he’d gathered from Gail’s bed had no appreciable levels of nicotine, and thus couldn’t have belonged to Vogel. Furthermore, he’d reinspected the garbage I’d stolen from Vogel’s front curb, as requested, and found that a front-page fragment of an old newspaper, soiled almost beyond legibility, had someone else’s address label on it, opening up the possibility that Vogel had collected some of his mail the way we had—from the trash. Scrupulous to a fault now, Tyler had called Gail and asked her where she’d last seen her catalogue. She hadn’t been able to swear that she hadn’t thrown it out.

  All this, combined with the questions I’d already raised about the red shirt and the oil slick, did more than bolster Bob Vogel’s prospects—they all but guaranteed that the search warrant that had led to his arrest would be thrown out. The probable cause that had earned us Judge Harrowsmith’s signature on that warrant no longer existed.

  But now that my official status had been reinstated a few hours earlier to “fully active” by our insurance carrier, I wanted it made clear to everyone in this room that we were finally on the right track, and that the case against Vogel had collapsed for good reason. I used J.P. Tyler’s rigorously-objective personality to finish that job for me.

  He walked to the blackboard at the head of the room, picked up some chalk, and wrote, “Physical Evidence.” He then added, on separate lines: “Leaf; Pubic Hair; Red Fiber; Blood Traces; Tool Marks; Catalogue; Underwear; Photos; Red Shirt; Oil Pan.”

  He then turned and addressed us in his bland, almost professorial voice. “These constituted the bulk of the case against Vogel. As the lieutenant’s been telling you, some of them don’t hold water anymore.”

  He went back to the board and crossed out “Photos” and “Pubic Hair.” “The hair samples and photos you already know about. Of course, somebody took those pictures—it just didn’t happen to be Vogel. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t someone working with him.”

  Ron Klesczewski, tense and defensive, feeling himself targeted for letting things get so fouled up, interrupted, his eyes locked to the tabletop. “Is it a given that rapists always leave hair samples behind?”

  “No,” J.P. answered after a pause, “it’s just generally true.” And then he added in a strictly neutral tone, “But to be totally objective, if Vogel did rape her, leaving nothing behind, then the samples we found came from a third party—not Vogel, and not Joe.”

  Willy let out a short laugh. Sammie, loyal and outraged, glared at him. “You’re such an asshole.”

  “Up yours.”

  I rose quickly to my feet, alarmed at the sudden spike in tension. “We’ve got to consider everything,” I said loudly and clearly, although I wasn’t sure my face was any less red than Sammie’s.

  Unperturbed, J.P. returned to the blackboard, circled “Oil Pan,” and put a question mark next to it. “We have some additional problems the rest of you may not realize yet. The famous oil slick—and where it came from—has been thrown into doubt by now, but the oil pan from Vogel’s car is another story. According to him, the pan sprung a leak, which he then plugged with a screw. That’s exactly what we found. What sidetracked us was trying to figure out how he happened to have the right-sized screw and four quarts of oil in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Willy took a closer look at the pan this afternoon, and what he discovered—again thanks to one of Joe’s suggestions—was a trace of wax around the hole. I’ve looked at it under the microscope. It’s a type of malleable molding wax that melts when heated. Its presence suggests that someone, having created the puncture, then sealed it with wax, knowing that once the engine heated up a few miles down the road, the wax would melt and the oil would leak out.”

  “That doesn’t tell us why Vogel had all the right gear in his car to fix it,” Dennis DeFlorio said, receiving an encouraging nod from Ron.

  I looked at them all as Tyler continued speaking, pondering their personalities. Despite a few feeble protests, no one could argue with the facts J.P. was detailing, and the impact they would have once they became public knowledge. Sammie, Willy, and J.P., I felt sure, would merely soldier on from here. Ron and Dennis would need temporary protection from the coming limelight—a little time to adjust.

  For the next half hour, J.P. addressed each listed item in turn. The bottom line, however, remained as uninspiring as ever—the case was a shambles, and Dunn would soon have to fold his tent. And, never addressed but still lurking in most of our minds, was the bitter possibility that Vogel did rape Gail but had somehow been clever enough to use the system to cut himself loose.

  By the time J.P. finally sat back down, I had before me as demoralized a group of people as I could ever remember trying to rally.

  I dealt with DeFlorio and Klesczewski first. “Dennis, tomorrow morning I’d like you to hit all the hobby shops and art-supply houses within a fifty-mile radius. We’re looking for recent purchases of molding wax. But do it in person, not by phone—it makes it harder for them to brush you off. Also, find out what catalogue outfits handle the stuff and if any recent orders have been made from this area—if so, to whom. That may take some legal paperwork, so coordinate with the SA’s office on how to go about it.

  “Ron, I want you to continue running the command center. We’re going to have to go back to square one on the potential suspects, and you know them better than any of us. One by one, they’ll have to be re-interviewed and their alibis re-checked. We may even have to sweat a few of them to see how they react. Make sure we don’t step on each other’s toes, and flag any discrepancies between new and old stories. It’s going to be tougher than before. You won’t have as many people helping you, and the press’ll probably make you feel you can’t even stick your nose out the door.”

  He nodded without enthusiasm. I turned to Billy. “That’s where I’d like you to pitch in as much as you can. More than anything, I need patrol officers in plainclothes to conduct field interviews—people good at getting people to open up.”

  “You got it.”

  “One extra note,” I told them all. “Earlier, J.P. mentioned those pictures of Gail. Regardless of who took them, he had to have done so at a specific date and time, and from a specific place. Find out if your suspects have alibis for that time period. And J.P.? Maybe you can canvass the area around where they were taken and see if anyone remembers somebody with a camera.”

  I turned to Tony. “How much interference do you think we’re going to be facing?”

  Brandt shook his head slowly. “This is the biggest mess we’ve ever had, and everybody’ll have an opinion on how to sort it out. I’ll do my best, but to be honest, it’s going to be hard to control.”

  I took J.P.’s spot in front of the blackboard. “That means you’re going to have reporters dogging your tracks, maybe getting in your way. They’ll want to talk to you, talk to the people you’re interviewing. And they won’t be alone. Other people are going to make it their business to find out what we’re up to. In most cases, they’ll be within their rights, just as you’ll be within yours by refusing to answer them. Keep that last point in mind. If somebody gets your back up, walk away and report the incident to the chief.”

  I left my invisible podium and stepped up to the table, leaning on it for emphasis. “On a personal note, I want to thank you for all you’ve done. We did our jobs as we should have, and it’s a credit to the system that, even this late, we can catch a problem and correc
t it. We still have to find a rapist, and I’m confident we’ll do just that. Right now, though, I want you all to go home and get some sleep. We’ll reconvene at seven o’clock tomorrow morning to receive specific assignments.”

  I straightened up and added, “One word of advice: In a town this small, people are bound to find out your phone numbers before long. If you’ve got ’em, use your answering machines to screen calls. Or unplug your phones and keep your portable radios on so we can reach you. And if the stress starts to get to you, talk to me or Billy or someone you trust. Don’t let this get to you.”

  “Come to my office,” Tony said as we left the room, and led the way.

  I followed, curiously buoyant. Despite the somber mood of the meeting, I couldn’t shake off a certain elation—the sense of having successfully hurdled some half-seen barrier. Bob Vogel was no longer our primary suspect, and the real rapist would soon be feeling the heat. I felt back in control, and that my instincts had served me well.

  A small, slight, peaceful-looking woman with a benevolent expression and long gray hair tucked back in a neat ponytail was waiting patiently for us in Brandt’s office. Megan Goss was a criminal psychologist who’d spent years working with killers, sadists, rapists, and victims of abuse, sorting through the debris of their minds in an effort to understand them, or repair the damage they had suffered. I had known her for years, and the department had used her talents several times in the past. She always brought a thoughtful, measured tone to bear, often shedding light where confusion, politics, or tension had made for impenetrable shadow.

  She rose and greeted me warmly. “I hear you have a problem.”

  The three of us sat in a tight circle of chairs, like conspirators sorting through details. This was the one aspect of our revitalized investigation that I most wanted kept under wraps. Given the bumbling image of us that was about to appear in the headlines, I didn’t want Goss’s services misconstrued—or even identified. But if my hunch was right, her special knowledge of the criminal mind was going to be of enormous assistance.

  “Have you been following the case?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “Yes. And I’ve been working with Susan Raffner in dealing with some of the emotional fallout. An assault of this nature never has just one victim.”

  “We’re now thinking Bob Vogel was framed by someone who copied his MO.”

  She raised her eyebrows but otherwise remained silent.

  “Would you be willing to review this case from the ground up—to visit the crime scene, study Vogel’s style, interview Gail, look at everything we’ve got—to see what we might have missed?”

  Goss sat back in her chair, tapping her lips with the index finger of her right hand. “Yes. But I want to concentrate first on the actual crime. I don’t want to see any evidence or any suspect profiles—not yet. If that is how you were led astray, it might be helpful for me to avoid it.”

  I couldn’t repress a grin. “Great. When can you start?”

  “The crime took place in the middle of the night, correct?”

  “Right.”

  “Then perhaps we should begin immediately. Can you take me to the scene now?”

  · · ·

  The odors that had once given Gail’s house life—the smell of fresh food, live plants, clean laundry, and myriad others that arose from her daily routine—had been replaced by a deadened staleness. It reminded me of visits to the homes of the very old, whose tenuous grasp on life saturated the walls around them.

  Without a word, I led the way up the familiar set of stairs to the lofty bedroom high overhead, noticing as I went the dead plants, their leaves gray with a fine coat of dust.

  I reached for the light switch.

  “No. Wait,” Megan said quietly, placing her small hand on mine. She stood in the doorway, looking into the darkness ahead of her. “Can we turn off the downstairs lights from here?”

  “Sure.” I reached back onto the landing and plunged the entire house into obscurity.

  “Thank you.”

  We stood there for a minute or two, motionless, before she added, “Does she always leave the drapes open?”

  Thinking back, I stared at the disheveled bed, dimly glowing in the indirect moonlight, remembering how we’d enjoyed chatting side by side, gazing up at the night sky. “Damn,” I muttered, “the moon was directly overhead that night.”

  Megan kept her voice very still, as quiet as ours had been on those evenings. “A full moon?”

  I furrowed my brow, berating myself for having missed the obvious: “No, not quite, but it was much brighter in here.”

  I saw her nod thoughtfully in the near gloom. “That’s quite the clock.”

  Surprised, I looked across the bed to where the radio alarm’s large glowing numbers were still counting off the minutes on the night table, to the right of the headboard. The clock was the most prominent feature of the room in the half light, apart from the large, pale expanse of the bed. I was beginning to see things the way Megan was—the way Gail’s attacker had. It made me grateful we hadn’t waited twenty-four hours to do this, when the weather report was calling for a freak, premature snowstorm straight out of the Canadian north.

  “When you two were together, did Gail sleep on the right or the left side?”

  “The right. The side nearest the clock.”

  Megan stepped farther into the room, her eyes fully adjusted to the gloom. She stopped at the foot of the bed. A small shiver went down my spine while I imagined the attack just a few weeks earlier, coming as Gail slept peacefully.

  Megan moved silently to the night table on the far side of the bed. She picked up the radio alarm clock and balanced it in her hand. She then replaced it and took one last long look around the room. “All right. You may turn on the lights now.”

  What leapt up around us was a blinding, chaotic contrast to the sinister, half-seen mystery of seconds earlier. Now it was the crime scene I knew all too well, where one life had ended, and from where a new one would have to be rebuilt.

  And yet Megan Goss altered it, even now. She didn’t proceed with Tyler’s scientific detachment, with cameras and tweezers and small white evidence envelopes. Instead, she hovered, paused in thought, only rarely touched something, and that usually with just the tip of one finger, as if checking for signs of latent energy.

  As she proceeded, she had me read aloud from Gail’s statement, made on the morning following the rape. When Gail told of being assaulted, Megan moved to the foot of the bed, staring at it throughout that part of the transcript; when I read of the rapist’s rampages around the room, Megan mimicked his movements, pausing before the shards of the broken plate that used to hang on the wall, and running her fingertip across the dusty surface of the expensive, uninjured television set.

  Two hours later we were both back at the door, as I read of Gail listening to her attacker putting his clothes back on before leaving the house.

  I finally stopped and waited. Megan stood silently, peering into the room, lost in thought. At last, she turned to me. “She didn’t smell him?”

  I stared at her in astonished embarrassment, remembering Vogel’s rank breath in my face, just before he stabbed me. “I… It didn’t come up.”

  “Odd, don’t you think?” Her smile was kind, conspiratorial, as if together we’d opened the last lock of an intricately closed box.

  22

  SUSAN RAFFNER'S VOICE WAS fogged by sleep. “Hello?”

  “It’s Joe Gunther. I’m sorry to be calling in the middle of the night, but I need to talk to Gail—and to you, too.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Is she there?”

  Gail’s voice, clear and wide awake, came on over an extension. “I’m here.”

  “Can I come over?”

  “Yes.”

  · · ·

  The porch light was on at Susan’s house, and the front door swung back as I reached the top of the porch steps. Susan, her hair tangled, her dressing gown awry, her eye
s still at half-mast, stepped back to let me in. “In the kitchen,” was all she said.

  I knew where to go, down the dark hallway next to the staircase and through a swinging door at the rear. I’d been in the house before—aside from my recent visits—for the occasional politically correct cocktail party, where people like Tony and me usually killed time together, nursing fruit juice from paper cups, our backs to the wall.

  The kitchen suited the house—painted wood trim, mottled linoleum, steel-tube furniture from thirty years earlier. It made me feel instantly more at ease. Gail was standing at the stove, her back to the door, fiddling with a tea kettle.

  “Hi.” She turned and smiled but stayed put, indicating the reserve remaining from our last encounter.

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Better,” she answered. “Thanks.”

  Susan came up behind me and cut straight to the point. “I was fine, too, until 2:45 a.m. What do you want? And what the hell happened in court yesterday? Or is that privileged?”

  Even Gail gave her a weary look. “Sit, Susan. Give him a chance.”

  I smiled at the strength in her voice—the underlying sense of humor. She was improving. I could see it for myself.

  I pulled out a chair at the small breakfast table and sat down. “Between these walls, nothing is privileged. What happened yesterday is that the shit hit the fan. Tomorrow, unless Tom Kelly has lost his mind, he’s going to move for a mistrial—and get it.”

  Susan slammed the table with her fist. “You stupid bastards—”

  “We have the wrong guy.”

  They both looked at me in stunned silence. “Gail, what did you smell when you were attacked?”

  She froze and then managed a murmured, “What?”