Bellows Falls Page 11

  “I contacted Audrey McGowen—we went to the Academy together. She checked with the juvie crime squad, who said that in general, they haven’t seen any changes. There are a tiny number of kids that seem vaguely interconnected, but it’s fluid, they come and go like hourly workers at a fast-food joint. And when they do bust one on possession, they can’t find where the drugs came from or where they’re headed—the kids pick it up and drop it off but don’t make contact with buyer or seller. That’s the structured part the PD noticed, ’cause it’s so consistent. Surveillance might crack it open, but who’s got the money, especially with so little to go on? And if all they get is a bunch of kids, the busts won’t justify the overhead.”

  “Which Bouch knew from the start,” I said softly.

  Sammie nodded. “He also knows to keep it small. The numbers Audrey gave me didn’t come to more’n six kids, max. ’Course, who knows? And the profit margin’s huge. She told me a ten-dollar bag of coke in New York’ll bring you thirty-five in Burlington. They’re hungry up there.”

  “Did she know Norm Bouch by name?”

  Sammie smiled broadly. “Yeah, and it’s from an interesting angle. They’ve got a special unit up there—some sort of multi-jurisdictional thing… ”

  “CUSI,” I said. “Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations. I thought that was mostly sex-related crimes.”

  “Exactly. That’s where Bouch’s name popped up on her screen. It’s a little dated now—a few years at least. But his interest in minors made him a natural for them. They never caught him abusing kids or anything, but they talked to juvies who knew him well—like you were telling us about those Bellows Falls kids, he was a Pied Piper. Keep in mind, though,” she emphasized, “I got the clear impression Audrey wasn’t blown away by any of this. Bouch is small potatoes—one name out of thousands they have on file, and an old one at that.”

  I rose to my feet. “I don’t mind that. I’d just as soon have this whole thing run low-key. The fewer people get interested in it, the more likely it is we get the nod to run the case for the AG. If Norm Bouch was seen as a big deal, we’d have DEA, the task force, and everybody else wanting to grab some of the action. We’ll probably get a little of that anyhow. Drug busts make for happy voters and keep the grant money flowing.”

  Sammie stopped me as I was about to leave. “That reminds me—I got something else you might like. You must’ve tickled Phil Marchese’s fancy, ’cause he did some poking around after you left Lawrence. Norm Bouch’s NCIC records I think you already know about… ” she quickly checked her notes. “DWI, check fraud, two misdemeanor possessions, and a first-degree unlawful dealing with a child, for selling beer to a bunch of minors. What doesn’t appear, ’cause it was supposed to stay off the books, was that Bouch participated in a special program the Lawrence PD and the local parole board had going under a short-term federal grant. It wasn’t therapy, so there’s no patient confidentiality to worry about, but it involved psychologists trying to find out what makes the bad guys tick when they’re out on the street, instead of when they’re in jail. It was like a big brother program of sorts—or big sister in this case. It folded fast, of course—you can pick your reasons why—but Marchese found a woman named Molly Bremmer who dealt with Bouch for several months. He said she’d be willing to talk to you.” She gave me Bremmer’s name and number on a slip of paper.

  I looked at it appreciatively. “Nice work, Sam.” I hesitated a moment before adding, “Do me another favor, would you? This is off the record, so be discreet, but I’d like to find out about a Bellows Falls policewoman named Emily Doyle—as much personal information as you can find. She wasn’t too thrilled to talk to me when I asked her about Padget, and I found out last night she was in a position to plant that dope at his place. I have no reason to suspect her of anything, but I am curious. When I talk to her, I’d like to know more about her than she thinks I do.”

  Sammie wasn’t too thrilled but nodded her assent.

  Harriet Fritter handed me the newspaper as I walked toward my office. “Front page,” she said. “You’ll find it interesting.”

  I took the paper and sat down at my desk. “Bellows Falls Police Officer Suspended on Drug Charge,” read the headline. In smaller type underneath it continued, “Chief promises thorough investigation.”

  I sighed deeply. It hadn’t taken long for the carnival to begin. The only good news was that since I was hearing of it just now, apparently no one had given the paper my name. I began to read carefully, hoping I was correct.

  For most of its length, the article toed the line, outlining how police, acting on a tip given them through the Reformer, had secured a search warrant for the home of Officer Brian Padget, of the BFPD, and had discovered “several” grams of what was believed to be cocaine. Padget, who had earlier tested positive for drugs in a urine analysis, was unavailable for comment and was said to be on paid suspension while awaiting arraignment. That much was pretty mundane, although I wondered at the speed with which the paper had secured its information. The answer to that was supplied on the last page, where the article concluded, “Holding a brief press conference with Town Manager Eric Shippee, Bellows Falls Police Chief Emile Latour told reporters last night, ‘We will nip this thing in the bud. There will be no dirty cops tolerated on the force. The public can expect a full and speedy accounting for this whole sorry affair.’”

  I reached for the phone and called Greg Davis at his home, knowing his shift didn’t start until the afternoon.

  “Davis,” he answered on the first ring.

  “It’s Joe Gunther. How’re the troops holding up?”

  He didn’t hesitate, which I hoped was a sign of trust. “Considering our fearless leader has just tried and convicted one of our own without a jury, I guess they’re doing okay.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Can you blame them?” he asked. “You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?”

  “The press conference? No way. You know I led the search, though.”

  “Yeah. I can’t believe this.”

  “How’s Emily Doyle taking it?” I asked.

  There was a cautious silence at the other end.

  “I know she likes him,” I added as explanation. “She was madder than hell at me for doing the internal.”

  “She’s taking it hard,” he said simply. “But she’s not alone. You might’ve seen Brian as Latour’s pet, but everybody liked him. He was one of the guys. The double whammy of his maybe being dirty and the Old Man throwing him to the wolves so fast has everyone pretty confused.”

  “And angry?”

  “Yeah,” Davis admitted. “And beginning to split into pro-Brians and anti-Brians, with the antis winning. That’s the dark side to Brian’s good standing with the chief—if Latour throws him out, the troops will too. You better know there’s a lot of anti-Joe Gunther in there, too.”

  That came as no surprise. “What was Shippee’s role in calling the press conference?”

  “I don’t know—he couldn’t’ve found out about the dope that quick unless Latour made a beeline to his office. I don’t much care about that part, to be honest. I’m standing between Captain Bligh and a seriously pissed-off crew all of a sudden. So I just wish to hell they’d both kept their mouths shut.”

  We chatted a few minutes longer, mostly to allow him to vent some more steam. I sympathized with his position. A police organization is heavily hierarchical and leans on the conservative notion that rank begets fealty—Davis’s constant reference to Latour as the Old Man was an example of that. To have a father figure turn his back at the slightest show of adversity was serious cause for the jitters. Cops were isolated enough in society without being sabotaged from within.

  It was that very isolation, however, that brought me back to something I’d sensed lurking in the background. “I hate to ask, Greg, but was there ever anything between Emily and Brian?”

  “Yeah,” he conceded reluctantly. “They had a thing ear
ly on. Puppy love in uniform was how I described it to my wife. It’s pretty common, especially with more women joining up—you think you have so much in common just because you’re both throwing drunks into jail. It didn’t last long and she took it pretty hard.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Oh, hell. Six months, more or less. She hadn’t been with us for long. I suppose you’re going to be asking a lot of questions like that, aren’t you?”

  “If I end up in charge of the case. I’ll try to wear kid gloves, but if I’m going to start with the presumption of innocence, it means I’ll be looking to pin the tail on some other donkey. With all your boys and girls wondering what flag to rally around, they better keep that in mind.”

  “I hear you,” he said. “I’ll try to prepare them for the rough spots.”

  Chapter 11

  I MET WITH MOLLY BREMMER at the Howard Johnson’s in Greenfield, Massachusetts, partway between Brattleboro and Lawrence. That arrangement was at her suggestion, and I appreciated the gesture. Before I left town, I’d received a call from Jack Derby, telling me he was meeting with the attorney general’s office early that afternoon, and that if I wanted my ambitions turned into reality, I’d better show up to make the best presentation of my life. I was keeping my fingers crossed that Bremmer might supply me with a little extra ammunition.

  Marchese had told her some of what I was up to, and on the phone I’d answered several questions she’d formulated as a result. She’d said she would make a few calls and check some files but wanted to tell me what she found in person. Her enthusiasm, I sensed, had been stoked by Marchese’s own, which had less to do with me than with his fondness for Sammie Martens. It was a refreshingly human insight on how police work often gets done, or even why in some cases.

  Molly Bremmer was middle-aged, stocky, and appeared faintly doddering until I saw her eyes. They, like her hair, were iron gray and spoke of a woman who was used to standing her own ground. We greeted one another in the parking lot and entered together to find a small table, far from anyone else, near a window looking out onto the traffic.

  After ordering coffee from the waitress, Bremmer placed a pair of reading glasses low on her nose, and extracted a yellow legal pad from her briefcase. “Norman Bouch, the gentleman-thief,” she said with a smile, and looked over her glasses at me. “What did you want to know?”

  “Charmed you, did he?”

  The smile only widened. “He tried. I merely observed. I think he’s more successful further down the food chain. I interacted with him over a long enough period that he finally stowed the bullshit and opened up a little, although not enough to spill any beans. He was a man with a plan, and a do-gooder like me was purely a bureaucratic necessity he had to deal with before moving on.”

  “So he didn’t divulge the plan?”

  “No, he’s arrogant and a showoff, but he’s far from stupid. There are elements of the chess player in him, minus the patience. Still, I’d say it probably involved kids and abused or vulnerable women. Those are his specialties. That’s not necessarily a sexual scenario, by the way—he just needs to dominate those around him. The charm is part of that, practiced on those he can’t actually control. If you can’t win ’em, woo ’em.”

  That sounded right, from what I’d seen. “What did you mean by a ‘sexual scenario?’ ”

  “Personality disorders of this type often have a sexual basis, but I don’t think there’s any of that here—not with the children at least. Women are another matter. But I never picked up on a single pedophiliac marker. Norm just needs the dependency. It’s one of those paradoxical signs of insecurity. In a weird kind of way, you could describe him as a typical co-dependent.”

  “Did you always meet Norm in your office?” I asked.

  “No. The point of the program was to send us out into the subject’s habitat. It was supposed to make them feel more at home, and allow us to see them functioning among their peers. On that level, it worked quite well. After some initial discomfort—shared by both sides—” she added with a smile, “they loosened up enough that we collected some peripheral data. Nothing of much value, however, which is why the whole thing collapsed. No one figured out that the only people who’d agree to participate would be self-servers like Norm. Maybe they thought a bank robber would invite a shrink along on a heist, purely as an observer… Still, the money was good and the experience personally valuable.”

  “Did Norm get chummy enough to introduce you around?”

  “Oh, he played it up. I was his personal show horse, after all.”

  “What was he up to at the time?”

  “Technically, he was a garage mechanic. Psychologically, he was an empire builder. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a leader. His only problem was finding an army who’d follow. That’s where the kids and women came in.”

  “Was someone named Jasper Morgan one of the kids?”

  She laughed. “Not even a remote chance I’d remember that, probably not even if you waltzed him in right now. I met a great many people, but in this instance my only focus was Norm.”

  I thought a moment. “I told you on the phone we think Norm has created that army, as you put it. My guess is he compartmentalized it into cells so it won’t fall over like a row of dominoes. He has lieutenants in different towns, empowered to hire and fire on their own. It gives them autonomy and a sense of authority and makes it harder for us to track the scheme from one end to the other.”

  She was shaking her head slightly. “What I’ve been dancing around with my psycho-jargon is that Norm Bouch is a control freak. What you describe may be correct in part—the complexity of the structure reflects the man’s intelligence, and I’m sure he makes his lieutenants feel powerful, but don’t believe for a moment that he trusts anyone with autonomy. Whatever it is you’re facing up there in Vermont, he’s pulling the strings. You should be able to backtrack everything to him in the long run, like pulling the right loose thread. It might just take some doing, that’s all.”

  I described the sexual harassment case that had brought me to Bellows Falls, explaining how I thought Brian Padget’s subsequent troubles were based partly on Norm’s irritation at having his first scheme ruined by me.

  Molly Bremmer shrugged. “We all make mistakes. It could be he misjudged the harassment angle, but I’d be cautious if I were you. Remember that Norm likes to show off—to himself if to no one else, somewhat like masturbation. Your Bellows Falls officer being saddled with a drug charge may have been a back-up plan—it could also have been in the works from the start.”

  That possibility solved some timing problems. If Padget had been framed only after the sexual harassment charge had collapsed, Bouch hadn’t had much time to put it together. Bremmer’s suggestion seemed more likely and made me realize just how devious an opponent Norm might be.

  Assuming Brian had been framed at all.

  I was having a hard time seeing him as a drug user—much less a dealer—but the young cop’s own cocaine-tainted urine couldn’t just be ignored. Until I could explain it, any theories that he was set up weren’t going to be very convincing.

  I returned to something Bremmer had mentioned earlier. “You said you met a great many people when you were hanging out with Bouch. Were there any from Vermont?”

  She again consulted her notes. “Yes. There was a young man named Lenny. I only took note of him because he was such a standout. He was slightly older than some of the others and more like Norm in his personality, which struck me as an anomaly. Norm’s standard choice was the submissive type, not somebody who might stand up to him. It was the one instance where I sensed a genuine friendship holding sway over Norm’s usual controlling pattern.”

  “No last name?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I only knew he was from Vermont because he called Burlington home. I sensed he was traveling to and from there to meet Norm in Lawrence.”

  “If I ever found a picture of this Lenny, would you recognize him?”


  “Maybe. I saw him several times. It was always a social setting. I don’t know what business they might have been cooking up, or even how they met in the first place, but he became a familiar face.”

  The tip about Lenny was hopeful—maybe. It certainly echoed what Amy Sorvino had said about Burlington and the relationship Bouch had reputedly had with Jasper Morgan. But it didn’t give me anything additional to win over the AG’s office. I was still, as Tony had said, totally reliant on my abilities as a bullshitter.

  Disappointed, I paid for the coffee and escorted Molly Bremmer to her car, thanking her for all her help.

  As I was closing the door after she’d slid in behind the wheel, however, I suddenly asked, “Given Norm’s personality, is it likely his wife could’ve been fooling around without his knowing it?”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “My professional opinion, without knowing the wife? I’d not only say it was unlikely, but that if she was, Norm probably had a hand in it. As a manipulator, it would’ve been right up his alley.”

  · · ·

  I arrived back at the office fifteen minutes before my scheduled meeting with the attorney general’s envoy, underwhelmed at my prospects. If my pitch to Derby had worked, as Gail had pointed out, because he’d wanted to avoid a potentially messy, labor-intensive case, it stood to reason the AG might reject me for the exact same reasons. What I’d learned since had sounded encouraging to me, but I doubted someone with a tight budget and a limited vested interest would be similarly impressed.

  Sammie Martens walked briskly into my office as I was pondering my strategy, a notepad in her hand. “You got a second?”

  “Just that.”

  “I started looking into Emily Doyle—just public access stuff, no official fingerprints—and I came up with something pretty interesting. She’s from Burlington originally.”

  I raised my eyebrows noncommittally, but she’d grabbed my attention.

  “Not only that, but when she was there, she lived in an apartment on North Street, just a few doors down from where Norm Bouch still has a place.”