Perfect Poison

by M. William Phelps

  “He wasn’t the smartest individual in the world,” one nurse later recalled.

  But Kristen hadn’t chosen Nobel prize-winners as lovers—and, as James Perrault would soon learn, for good reason: They were harder to manipulate.

  CHAPTER 7

  During the latter part of September 1995, one of the more pressing issues facing many of the nurses who had worked with Kristen Gilbert for the past six years wasn’t the obvious trouble in her marriage, or even the new boyfriend she thought she was keeping secret; it was that her new lifestyle was beginning to affect her work. Gilbert wasn’t as conscientious a nurse as she used to be. Her once-admired nursing skills had diminished over the course of the summer, and she didn’t seem to care about patients anymore.

  This was somewhat shocking because Gilbert had always been able to separate life and work. She always kept it together, and even fed off the attention a career in nursing offered. During codes, for example, Gilbert thrived, often demanding to be the “defibrillation” person on the team who got to yell “clear” before applying the paddles to a patient in cardiac arrest. She, along with others, had brought scores of patients back to life over the years.

  But something had changed.

  Back on March 23, 1995, without calling in, Gilbert showed up for work late. So her boss, Melodie Turner, asked why.

  “I was at the Holyoke Mall. I saw an elderly man fall on the ground . . . his wife on top of him. The man, Melodie, then went into cardiac arrest. I gave him CPR with the assistance of a bystander for about twenty minutes. The ambulance showed up and brought him to a local hospital.”

  “What happened to him?” Turner asked.

  “I stopped at the hospital on my way in to check on him . . . but he died, Melodie. I tried.”

  Turner was overwhelmed.

  The next day, Turner sent out e-mail to VAMC staff explaining how Gilbert had acted as an “angel of mercy to the poor wife who fell over.” The subject of the e-mail read “very nice job.”

  Turner ended the short note with, “Kristen is an excellent emergency nurse,” before letting the staff know where Gilbert could be reached.

  E-mails of gratitude poured in.

  Priscilla McDonald, a colleague, called Gilbert a “hero.”

  “Even though the man you assisted died,” wrote Denise Carey, “the wife would have been more distraught if no one had come to their aid.”

  Investigators later located the elderly man and his wife. Surprisingly, they both were alive and well and living in Springfield. The wife said she had, indeed, fallen on top of her husband at the mall, but no one stopped to help them.

  It was even possible, investigators speculated, that Gilbert had seen the entire incident take place—but, in fact, did nothing.

  By the first week of October, James Perrault had set himself a few goals—one of which, undoubtedly, involved getting into Kristen Gilbert’s pants. Not a day went by without Perrault’s showing up on Ward C at some point during Gilbert’s shift.

  “I’m not meeting anybody I feel I can spend a lot of time with,” Perrault told Gilbert one night. He wasn’t dating anyone at the time, he added, because there just wasn’t anyone he “found interesting. I’m looking for something . . . solid.”

  “My marriage,” Gilbert said, “is commonplace. I’m unhappy, too.”

  As the days passed, Gilbert started e-mailing Perrault on the VAMC computer system.

  Soon after, they started planning all their breaks together, meeting in the library, in the basement near the boiler, or anywhere they could find a spot to be alone. They began meeting up the street after work at the local VFW. They went out for breakfast at area diners.

  One night, Perrault was sitting at the VFW bar having a few beers with a bunch of friends and coworkers. The place was packed. By the time Gilbert strolled in, around midnight, there wasn’t a seat available.

  “Can I share a stool with you, Jimmy?”

  “Sure.”

  After about an hour, Perrault said he had to go. So Gilbert asked him to walk her to her car.

  When they got to Gilbert’s car, without a word, they started kissing. Kathy Rix and Karen Abderhalden, coworkers and friends of Gilbert, were standing at the other end of the parking lot.

  Worried that her coworkers had seen the kiss, Gilbert became upset, hopped into her car, and sped off.

  Unsure of what had just taken place or where it was headed, a confused Perrault jumped into his truck and began driving toward his mother’s house in Chester.

  As he passed Ryan Road School in Florence, he noticed Gilbert’s car pulled off to the side of the road on the grass. Gilbert’s house, where Glenn and the kids were sleeping, was less than a mile away.

  So Perrault pulled up behind her and flashed his lights.

  As he shut off his truck, Gilbert got out of her car walked up to his driver’s side window. Before Perrault could even get the window rolled down, Gilbert reached in, opened the door, hopped up, and straddled Perrault.

  At first, Perrault didn’t move. Then Gilbert began kissing him all over.

  For about twenty minutes, they kissed and fondled each other. Then, just like that, Gilbert jumped out and sped off again without saying a word.

  The following day, as Perrault was driving the grounds of the VAMC, he saw Gilbert coming out of the main door. She’d had the day off but had to stop by for something. When she saw him, she stopped and walked over to where he had parked in front of the main entrance.

  “Last night was a big mistake,” she said. “That shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry for misleading you.”

  “It’s all right,” Perrault said. “I understand. You’re married.”

  “Can we go back to how things were and forget that it ever happened?”

  Before driving away, Perrault said, “That’s fine. If that’s how you really feel, Kris, I have no hard feelings.”

  At eleven that night, shortly before Perrault was getting ready to leave, he got a phone call in the security office.

  “Can you meet me after you get off work?” Gilbert asked.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Sure,” Perrault said. “Up the street at the commuter parking lot?”

  “I’ll see you then, Jimmy.”

  When Perrault pulled up, Gilbert came running over to his truck and said, “I want to be someplace alone with you . . . I know a place. . . .”

  “Where?” Perrault asked, sticking his head out the window.

  Gilbert didn’t answer. Instead, she got into her car and took off.

  Perrault followed.

  She drove for about fifteen minutes toward Hatfield, a small farming town west of Northampton.

  Far away from any residential neighborhoods, Gilbert turned off the main thoroughfare and drove down a dirt road by the edge of a cornfield, then continued on until they were far enough from the road where anyone driving by could not see them.

  After turning off his lights, Perrault got out of his truck and walked toward Gilbert’s car, while she walked over to the passenger-side back door and opened it.

  “Get in!”

  Neither said a word; they just started kissing. But after a moment, Perrault stopped her.

  “No, Kris. Stop this.”

  “Come on, Jimmy.”

  “I don’t know how far you want this to go, based on your conversation earlier today, Kris,” Perrault said.

  “All the way,” Gilbert said. “I want it to go all the way.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Kathy Rix began her VA nursing career in 1975 in Syracuse, New York, where she worked for ten years in the medical ward and two years as an emergency room supervisor. In 1988, Rix moved to Westfield, Massachusetts, married a local cop, and got a job working at the Leeds VAMC.

  Rix was perceptive, a professional. Dedicated and cerebral, she took her responsibilities as a nurse with the utmost seriousness.

  Not too much got by Kathy Rix
.

  At a lean five-four, with a slight red tint to her shoulder-length blond hair, Rix had an eye-catching attractiveness to her. She had been a nurse for two decades and knew her job better than most. When she met Gilbert, they immediately hit it off and not only developed a working relationship but also became friends.

  Rix later said she had never met a nurse as attentive and qualified as Gilbert. She viewed Gilbert’s clinical and patient assessment skills as being far beyond those of many of the nurses she had worked with throughout the years. Her knowledge of medications, Rix recalled, was “excellent. She was very efficient in documenting [events], and her notes seemed to be clear and easy to read.”

  In early October, several Ward C nurses went to Rix and began complaining about Gilbert’s recent behavior. They felt they could depend on Rix. If they told her their concerns, they knew something would be done about it. In particular, Beverly Scott, April Gougeon, Lisa Baronas and Lori Naumowitz said they had a big problem with the way Gilbert was leaving the ward for extended periods during her shift.

  When Rix confronted her, Gilbert said she would go off to the library to look up work-related things. Once, she said, she went to the security office to get a new parking sticker for her Jeep because the old one had been torn off in the car wash. She didn’t understand what the big problem was.

  The nurses knew they were lies; Gilbert was slipping away to meet her new boyfriend, James Perrault—and they were sick and tired of it.

  Like everyone else Gilbert had worked with, Rix noticed the physical changes in Gilbert during the fall of 1995 as well.

  As time passed, Rix began to become concerned about all the time Gilbert was spending at the VFW. She had never known Gilbert to frequent bars regularly, and watching her apply lipstick and put on a fresh layer of clothing at the end of her shift gave Rix reason to believe Gilbert was up to no good.

  Shortly before Halloween, Gilbert called Rix at her home, and with one simple question let Rix know exactly what she was up to without even admitting to it.

  “I have a friend who is having an affair,” Gilbert said. “I want to know your thoughts about it, Kathy.”

  “Are you sure you’re not talking about yourself, Kristen?”

  “Oh, no. Why would you say that?”

  “Well, you haven’t had anything good to say about Glenn in a long time.”

  “I’m not talking about my situation, Kathy. Trust me,” Gilbert said before ending the conversation.

  James Perrault was wearing out his welcome on Ward C by the end of October. To the chagrin of most of the nurses, as codes became more regular, so did Perrault’s presence. Many nurses noticed that the codes and medical emergencies happened only when Perrault was on duty, and, disturbingly, Gilbert and Perrault would flirt with each other while trying to save a patient’s life.

  They were seen rubbing their bodies together and touching each other in a provocative manner. Gilbert would even smile at him and make eye contact while they worked.

  Perrault loved the attention and noticed the bumping and grinding got more erotic as each code was called.

  “You’re good at what you do,” Perrault said one night.

  “Thanks,” Gilbert said. “I enjoy watching your muscles while you do compressions. You do it better than most other officers.”

  Since that first night back in September, when Perrault and Gilbert physically consummated their relationship in the backseat of Gilbert’s car as though it were prom night, they began meeting four to fives times a week at various places. Like two virgins discovering sex for the first time, they screwed their way through October.

  They just couldn’t get enough of each other.

  On some days, they’d meet before work and after work. It wasn’t in cheap motels or at Gilbert’s home while Glenn was at work. Always under Gilbert’s direction, they would run off to the old cornfield in Hatfield, down by the Connecticut River boat launch, or they would pull off on dirt roads Gilbert had discovered while four-wheeling with fellow nurse David Rejniak.

  Close to the end of October, the nurses on Ward C decided they needed something to take them out of the funk that was overwhelming everything they did. The talk and focus had been centered on how much Gilbert had changed, the affair she thought she was hiding, and poor Glenn Gilbert, the “good guy” who was getting the short end of a very long stick.

  With Halloween right around the corner, the Ward C staff decided to have a masquerade ball.

  Days before the party, Gilbert dreamed up an idea and presented it to Perrault while they sat in the basement of the VAMC one night and talked.

  “I want to fix you up with my sister, Jimmy. With the Halloween party coming, it’ll be the perfect place for you two to get together.”

  “What about us?”

  “Well, there can’t be an ‘us,’ Jimmy. You know that.... Anyway, you’ve met my sister—”

  “Yeah, she’s attractive.”

  “You two will get along well.”

  Perrault didn’t care one way or the other. He’d already had Gilbert; why not try out the sister, too? As a bonus, Tara was single. She could offer Perrault what he wanted: a steady, fulltime girlfriend he could go out on the town with without worrying about being seen.

  For the next few days, Gilbert went around the ward and told everyone the latest news. She was beside herself and seemed elated by the prospect. Miss Matchmaker. It was all her idea.

  Just about everyone from Ward C showed up at the party: John Wall, Kathy Rix, Renee Walsh, Lori Naumowitz, April Gougeon, David Rejniak, the whole crew, including friends of the nurses, dates, husbands and wives.

  Glenn Gilbert was, of course, a bit apprehensive about going, but thought maybe a night out with his wife would somehow help the marriage. He wanted nothing more than to have a life with Kristen.

  Kristen dressed as a gypsy. She wore a loose-fitting, bright, blood-orange-colored costume with all the trimmings. The blouse part of the costume was cut right below her modest breasts, making her belly button visible. An expert sewer, she put the costume together herself. Her sister, Tara, went as a medieval maiden, dressed in a blue gown that accentuated her dirty blond hair and pale-white skin. Perrault, of course, being ever so preoccupied with how he looked, wore a simple two-piece suit, with a red tie and white shirt. He drank Budweiser from the bottle and worked the party as if he were a nightclub singer after a gig, schmoozing with whomever he could.

  Kristen’s night was dominated by trying to act as if the entire event had been her idea. She strutted around as the hostess with the mostest, catering to everybody’s whim—with the exception of her husband’s.

  Tara and Perrault never hooked up, and many wondered if the idea had been a front.

  Either way, Glenn had seen enough of his wife’s following her sister and Perrault around.

  “Kristen,” Glenn said, pulling her aside, “why the hell are you so preoccupied with your sister and Jim?”

  Kristen didn’t respond.

  “Can’t you pay me any attention?”

  Kristen walked away without speaking. Glenn, having seen enough, left the party and walked home.

  Later on, Perrault approached Kristen, reminding her of her earlier suggestion that he meet her sister.

  “So, when am I going to formally meet your sister?”

  “No!”

  “No? But you said . . .”

  “I know what I said, but I’m jealous.”

  A few days later, Renee Walsh went up to Gilbert and asked her how the date between her sister and Perrault had gone. With the fuss that Gilbert had made over the date, and Walsh not even seeing them together once during the party, she was curious about what had happened between Perrault and Tara after the party.

  “So, did your sister have a good time with Jim?”

  “No, I wouldn’t let her.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you wouldn’t let her’?”

  “Jim was drinking . . .” Gilbert started to say. “He was
a real asshole, anyway. I didn’t want him near my little sister. I told her she couldn’t go out with him.”

  CHAPTER 9

  To be closer to his married girlfriend, James Perrault rented a one-bedroom apartment on Parsons Street in Easthampton on November 1, 1995. Renting the apartment, however, was only the first step. If Gilbert wanted to continue the relationship, Perrault soon made it clear, she would have to make a decision.

  “You’re the kind of guy I wish I could be with,” Gilbert said one night. “I wish I never married Glenn in the first place.”

  “I like you, too, Kris. But—”

  “He abuses me,” Gilbert added. “He verbally abuses me and pushes me around.”

  It was a lie. Those who knew Glenn Gilbert knew he wouldn’t lift a finger to anyone, let alone the mother of his children.

  “You could get a restraining order against him, Kris. You know that, don’t you?”

  “No! I have to think about the kids.”

  “Well, in that case, you should go to counseling then. You know, try and save the marriage.”

  Gilbert was adamant. “No. Never. It won’t work. It’d never work.”

  With that, Perrault was at a loss for ideas. He wasn’t a marriage counselor. Far from it, actually. He was just trying to figure out where Gilbert’s life was heading and where—and if—he fit into it somewhere. If she wanted to try to work things out with Glenn, it was okay with him. He hadn’t really invested too much time in the relationship by this point, anyway.

  “You have only one option then, Kris.”

  “What’s that, Jimmy?”

  “Move out.”

  But Gilbert didn’t want to move out of her Drewson Drive home. She demanded that Glenn leave—and vowed to friends she would do whatever it took to get Glenn out of house so she could stay there with the kids.

  When Glenn got home from work on November 5, he felt sicker than he had in years. For the entire day, he’d suffered from flu-like symptoms. Sweaty, pale and nauseous, by the time his wife had gone off to work at four, Glenn sat down to see if he could shake off whatever it was he had.