Perfect Poison

by M. William Phelps

  Lussier then placed the batteries in the toy.

  “See.”

  “Nice toy, huh?” Gilbert said, holding it up in the air, staring at it. She was a bit more relaxed now that she knew the toy was in working condition.

  “Sure is,” Lussier said politely, placing it in a bag.

  “You know . . . it’s a gift for my nephew,” Gilbert offered, smiling.

  “I’m sure he’ll love it, ma’am,” Lussier said as Gilbert left.

  For some reason, Gilbert felt the need to lie; she didn’t have a nephew.

  An hour or so later, when Gilbert stopped at her apartment for a moment, she ran into Samantha Harris, who was sitting outside watching her son play with some of the other children who lived nearby.

  Harris didn’t even want to bump into Gilbert anymore. And she didn’t feel like participating in Plante and Murphy’s version of Murder, She Wrote much longer. It was dangerous. Gilbert was still calling her three and four times a day, and showing up at her door unannounced. Sooner or later, she was going to catch on to what Harris had been doing.

  “Hello,” Harris said as Gilbert walked up to her. She seemed to be in a really good mood, Harris noticed. It was odd.

  “You’ll never guess where I was today,” Gilbert said.

  “I give up. Where, Kristen?”

  “I went to the Holyoke Mall. You know they have an Internet coffee shop up there now?” Smiling, she seemed thrilled at the prospect. Harris, on the other hand, was unimpressed. She just wanted Gilbert to go away.

  “So I’ve heard,” Harris said, nodding her head.

  “The Internet is amazing. I mean, do you know how easy it was for me to download a bomb recipe?”

  “That’s nice, Kristen,” Harris said. “But I have to go inside and get dinner started.”

  “I’ll call you later then.”

  Later that same night, after Harris had readied her son for bed and began to wind down herself, Gilbert made good on her promise. And as soon as Harris picked up the phone, she knew immediately something had happened.

  “Did Jim call? Did he check up on me today?” Gilbert asked.

  It had been the second time that day Gilbert had asked the same question. She was forever preoccupied with Perrault’s inquiries as to where she was and what she was doing.

  “It was almost as if she wasn’t able to function,” Harris later recalled, “without knowing that Jim had inquired about her.” But at the same time, because she was following him around and vandalizing his car so much, she was also worried that Perrault might have seen her and told Harris and her husband what she had done.

  “Not that I know of,” Harris said.

  “Well, ask Phillip,” Gilbert insisted.

  Harris’s husband had indeed spoken to Perrault earlier that day. Perrault told him that his car had been damaged again, and he knew Gilbert had done it.

  The reason Perrault had called right after he found out about the vandalism was because he wanted to know if Phillip had seen Gilbert or her car. “No,” Phillip told him.

  Harris held her hand over the receiver so Gilbert couldn’t hear what was being said. She debated for a moment if she should lie and tell her that Perrault hadn’t called, or just tell her the truth. Her choices weren’t exactly welcoming: Either Gilbert was going to catch Harris in a lie or realize that Perrault had lied to her and that Phillip was covering for him. It was obvious Perrault had called Gilbert already and given her hell for vandalizing his car. Besides, Perrault and Harris had decided not to let Gilbert know that they were conferring with each other.

  To avoid any fuss, Harris said, “Yes, Jim did call! He asked Phillip where you were. What time you had gone out and what time you got home.”

  Gilbert didn’t say anything.

  “Kristen, you there?”

  After a moment, Gilbert dropped her voice down real low and said, “Twit . . . fucking twit!”

  “What did you say, Kristen?”

  “Okay . . . okay . . . Sami, I have to go.”

  Harris went into her bedroom, and made the day’s entry in her diary. The following morning, she woke to find her car had been vandalized.

  “I guess it was my payback,” she later said, “for talking to Jim.”

  CHAPTER 57

  Karen Abderhalden was sitting at the VAMC Admissions desk at 6:40 P.M., on Monday, September 30, 1996, when the phone rang.

  Using the same disguise, the caller said, “Pay close attention to this message. . . .”

  “Excuse me?” Abderhalden said.

  “Remember the bomb scare a week ago?” the caller asked.

  “Yes!” Abderhalden answered.

  The caller hung up.

  By this time, there wasn’t anyone at the VAMC who didn’t think it was Gilbert making the calls. In fact, Abderhalden recognized the voice immediately as being Gilbert’s because she knew it so well. The two had recently lived together for three weeks. Gilbert would phone Abderhalden every day and ask her what was going on at the hospital. “Are people talking about me? What are they saying? Are the investigators asking a lot of questions?” One time, Gilbert even put the blame on her old boss, Melodie Turner, telling Abderhalden, “I think they ought to investigate Melodie.”

  Now, though, with the caller using a disguise, something else occurred to Abderhalden when she heard the voice for the first time.

  She had a fourteen-year-old son who had a tiny tape recorder he used to go around the house and tape everyone with. She also owned the movie Home Alone II and had seen it more times than she wanted to admit. When she heard the caller’s voice, it immediately reminded her of the movie and her son’s zany antics.

  So Abderhalden called Perrault after the caller hung up on her and explained to him what had just happened.

  “Thanks, Karen,” he said. “It’ll probably continue . . . just let me know if you receive any more calls.”

  Shortly after hanging up with Abderhalden, at 6:44, the security desk phone rang.

  “Officer Perrault speaking . . .”

  There was silence. Then the caller hung up.

  A few moments later, however, the caller called back.

  “Is this Officer Perrault?” the caller asked.

  “Yes, this is Officer Perrault.”

  “I’ve been watching you, boy.” This time it sounded like a woman trying desperately to disguise her voice as a man’s.

  “Sir, uh . . .” Perrault tried explaining before the line went dead.

  It occurred to Perrault that beside the fact that he was being addressed now by name, there was something noticeably different about the caller’s voice from the previous times. Whoever it was had gotten pretty comfortable with what he or she was saying. The only difference Perrault noticed tonight was that the caller had tried, as Perrault later described it, to put a “Southern drawl” into his speech and sounded as if he was drunk.

  Gilbert’s imitation of a drunken Southerner, however, failed. Perrault, the first time he heard the new voice, did everything he could not to laugh.

  Ironically, not a minute after Gilbert, posing as the mysterious caller, called and hung up, the security phone rang once again. Perrault thought for sure it was going to be another threatening call.

  But it wasn’t. Instead, it was Gilbert calling as herself. She was curious about something.

  “What do you think about the bomb threats?” Gilbert asked. She explained that she had read about them in the newspaper.

  “I don’t know, Kris. I’m real busy right now.”

  “What about those newspaper articles? They said there were only four calls.”

  “Yeah . . . so?”

  “Hadn’t there been more calls than that?”

  “I can’t talk about it, Kris. I have to go now,” Perrault said before hanging up.

  About a half hour went by without another call. Then, at 7:42, the phone rang again at Karen Abderhalden’s desk.

  “Don’t transfer this call. I was paid by a po
lice officer a week ago, in Northampton, to make the threatening call,” Gilbert said, sounding halfheartedly distressed, in the same drunken Southern drawl, referring to the calls on September 26 and 27.

  Almost immediately afterward, the Ward C nurse’s station upstairs took a call.

  “Hello, I met a police officer in a bar last Saturday night, and he paid me fifty dollars to make the bomb threat.”

  Two hours later, Perrault picked up the phone at the security desk, and the caller simply said, “Officer Perrault?”

  “Yes?”

  Silence.

  “Hello . . . ?”

  Then she breathed heavily and hung up.

  Ten minutes later: “VA Police Officer Perrault speaking, how may I help you?”

  “What makes you think my problem is personal?” Gilbert asked in her Southern voice.

  Perrault heard some clicking in the background. It sounded to him as if someone were pounding on a computer keyboard, as if maybe Gilbert were taking notes as they spoke.

  “Well, sir,” Perrault said, “you seem to be directing it toward me, sir. I don’t know if it’s personal or not. I’m a Gulf War veteran, and you used my name, so I tend to think you’re directing it toward me.”

  There was a long pause.

  “What do you think?” Perrault asked when he got no response.

  “Do you think that I am stupid?” Gilbert said, her voice bellowing a long, drawn-out Southern drawl as if she were speaking in slow motion.

  “No, I don’t think you’re stupid, sir. I just think that we have a problem that we have to work out.”

  Another long pause.

  “Are you there?”

  The line was dead.

  For the remainder of his shift, Perrault and the VAMC staff waited, anticipating more calls. By this time, he had been schooled by Plante and Murphy enough to know that he somehow had to keep Gilbert on the line if they were going to prove it was, in fact, her making the calls. They wanted her to reveal something substantial. Maybe a town. A street sign. A piece of information that only someone who had worked at the VAMC could have known—a smoking gun: Gilbert, on tape, admitting it had been her the entire time. They thought that if Perrault provoked her enough, she might become enraged, drop the Talkboy, and lash out at him in real time, in her own voice. Besides, there was still that sixty-four-thousand-dollar question that nearly everyone wanted an answer to: “If you’re innocent of the crimes you’re being investigated for, why, then, are you phoning bomb threats into a federal institution?”

  Gilbert must have sensed they were on to her, because after the “Do you think that I am stupid?” call, she didn’t call back.

  CHAPTER 58

  Monday, September 30, had been a long day—and even longer night—for James Perrault and most of the VAMC staff involved in the bomb-threat debacle. They had been through several days of what amounted to terrifying phone calls from someone they now presumed might also be a murderer.

  It was no secret that the events were, in everyone’s assessment, escalating. If Gilbert was capable of killing her own patients, and truly believed the entire VAMC staff was “out to get her,” what was she capable of doing to get even?

  After the end of his shift on September 30, James Perrault found solace the same way he had on many nights: at the VAMC Rec Hall gym. Three or four times a week, Perrault went to the Rec Hall and lifted weights. Lately, though, spending time in the Rec Hall was twofold. The time and energy he burnt working out not only benefited his appearance and physical strength, but also took his mind off the utter chaos that had been going on around him.

  As he often did after working out, Perrault stopped at the Michael C. Curtain VFW on Meadow Street, just down the street from the VAMC. It was a convenient place to stop and unwind after a night of work. Beers were cheap. Talk was casual. Playing pool helped kill some time and take his mind off things. It had been a rough summer. Hell, the last year had been anything but normal. Going down to the bar after work and discussing things with colleagues and locals over a few cold ones seemed to take a little bit of the sting out of the events.

  Plante and Murphy had been telling Perrault right along that it was possible Gilbert had murdered forty patients during her seven-year tenure at the VAMC. It was an unthinkable crime. Perrault couldn’t fathom how a person could do such a thing. The thought of Gilbert’s killing someone during her shift and Perrault’s bedding down with her the same night made him sick to his stomach.

  But that was only the half of it. As almost everyone knew, Perrault’s dream was to become a cop one day. He talked about it all the time. Regardless of what anybody said, he knew his track record during this investigation would unquestionably have something to do with his future in law enforcement. He had to forget about Gilbert and focus on helping Murphy and Plante. He had no other choice.

  Around 11:55, after a quick workout and shower, Perrault flung the solid oak VFW bar door open, walked up to the bar, and sat down.

  “Whatcha havin’ tonight, Jimmy?” Jane Moran, the nighttime VFW barmaid, said in a flinty, nice-to-see-ya voice. It was comforting to Perrault.

  “Same thing, Janey.”

  Sipping his beer, Perrault ran his hand through his military-cropped haircut and stared blankly at the projection television at the bar.

  Earlier that day, he had received an odd letter from Gilbert.

  Gilbert wrote that while she was out driving one night she just happened to be going by the VFW and, wouldn’t you know it, she spied Perrault’s car out in the front parking lot. She said she “couldn’t help herself,” so she pulled in. Instead of going in and saying hi, however, she said she stood outside the window, just watching him as he threw darts. After a while, she left. Seeing him like that and not being part of his life, she said, was just too much to bear.

  Perrault shook his head. He was appalled. “I never lied to you about loving you,” Gilbert’s letter ended.

  “Hey, Jimmy, you got a phone call,” Janey yelled.

  It was a few minutes past midnight.

  Perrault motioned that he would take the call in the lobby. It was odd, he thought, someone phoning him at the bar at this hour. The only person he knew to have done that in the past was Gilbert. And there was certainly no reason for her to be calling him at the bar, especially since she didn’t even know where he was.

  “Yeah . . . hello?”

  “You think you have a problem? Just wait and see what I have planned for you.”

  It was that same cold, eerie voice. Same speech pattern. Same angry, threatening tone. Same phony Southern drawl, along with the same articulate pronunciation of words and syllables.

  Yet something else struck Perrault as he stared out the window, holding the buzzing phone receiver in his hand: It was obvious to him now that Gilbert could have been the only person to know where he was at that exact moment. The timing of the call was too perfect.

  “Janey,” Perrault quickly yelled from the foyer, “star fifty-seven the call I just got.”

  “Hold on.”

  It didn’t work. Gilbert had again blocked the call.

  But Perrault had heard enough. It was time to do something about Gilbert before she did something about him.

  CHAPTER 59

  October 1, 1996 dawned crisp and cool in Hampshire County. With fall came that cold Canadian air from the north that enveloped the Northeast every year. Within weeks, the leaves on the gigantic maples around town would be bursting a fiery collage of blood red, pumpkin orange, coppery-bronze and sun yellow. Tourists would be swirling around, settling in to rooms at local inns, and clogging local restaurants. All here to take in the breathtaking view of the foliage.

  Perrault had scheduled a meeting at the Northampton DA’s office before his shift. Gilbert was out of control, he told Plante on the phone earlier that day. Her behavior was turning vindictive, violent. If letting the air out of Perrault’s tires and keying the cars of just about everyone who had ever been involved in the cas
e weren’t enough, now she was following him around.

  What would she do next?

  When Perrault introduced himself to the secretary in the DA’s office, she phoned Detective Thomas Soutier, and let him know Perrault had shown up a bit early.

  “Send him to my office,” Soutier said.

  Detective Soutier knew why Perrault was there, and he wanted to make him feel comfortable while he waited for Murphy and Plante.

  “How’s your job search going?” Soutier asked. “I understand you’re applying at several local police departments.”

  The detective seemed excited. They had something in common. A bit of small talk might do them both some good and maybe loosen Perrault up a bit. It was obvious he was uncomfortable about going to the DA’s office.

  “It’s slow,” Perrault said, regarding his search for a job in law enforcement. “I’m concerned that my involvement in the murder investigation will taint my possibilities of ever being a cop.”

  “If there ever comes a point in time that anyone questions your part in the murder investigation, Jim,” Detective Soutier said sincerely, “feel free to have them call me, and I will explain everything.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  Soutier, Murphy and Plante considered Perrault to be a professional. He acted mature, and they agreed between themselves that he would probably make a fine cop one day. He was a good man who had made a few bad choices and was trying his best to clean up the mess.

  An hour before Perrault showed up for the meeting, Plante had one of the female clerks in the office make a recording into the Talkgirl Plante had purchased at the Toys-R-Us just days ago—one of the calls—verbatim—that the VAMC had received. Before that, Plante had his wife record her own voice into the Talkgirl. He wanted to be sure it was possible to change a woman’s voice into a man’s.

  The experiment had worked perfectly.

  Detectives Murphy and Soutier, along with Bill Welch and Plante, agreed they wouldn’t tell Perrault they had made a recording of the clerk. They would simply play the tape and see what Perrault’s reaction was. It was a bit devious, perhaps. But it would certainly produce an unbiased opinion of what they believed to be the truth—that there was absolutely no way in hell James Perrault could mistake Kristen Gilbert’s voice for somebody else’s, disguise or no disguise. Perrault knew her possibly better than anyone.