Fruits of the Poisonous Tree Read online

  “What else?” I asked, swallowing against the tightening in my throat.

  J.P. looked contemplative. “It’s a messy scene, from a pretty angry guy. The underwear on the lamp shade might’ve been to taunt her, or us later on. Or it might’ve been to turn him on. Hard to tell. It’s all definitely a display of power and control, from the ropes to the knife to the destruction. Was her bedroom usually pretty neat?”

  “Yes, she’s very tidy,” I said, nodding. “So what does it all tell you?”

  Tyler, befitting his scientific bent, had taken several training courses in rape psychology, some on his own time, and therefore had a better knowledge of it than the rest of us, who tended to rely on our past experience alone. He shrugged slightly. “Fast attack, preplanned, with a specific goal in mind. I noticed before I came up here that the disturbance seems to be confined to this room only. She lock up at night?”

  “Generally.” I looked to Ron. “How much did Gail give you?”

  “She didn’t see him or recognize anything about him. He didn’t say much, and then only in a whisper, so she couldn’t identify his voice. He came out of nowhere and left right after he’d finished. She said she didn’t notice any damage to the house except for here.”

  “You said she saw the clock before he bagged her. Did she look at it later?”

  He nodded. “She freed herself at 3:37. She wrote it down ’cause she knew we’d need to know.”

  Tyler whistled. “Did he beat her up?”

  “Why do you ask?” I countered, cutting Ron off.

  He pointed at our surroundings. “Big mess, took a long time, a little knife play, a lot of pent-up violence. They usually don’t stop at beating on the furniture.”

  Ron spoke up then. “She’s actually not too bad physically—he nicked her a few times with a knife, but not enough to require stitches, and only whacked her hard a couple of times, just before he split.”

  There was a slight pause in the room as we contemplated what had happened here just a few hours earlier. I was struck by the way the references to violence had been confined to fists and a knife. It seemed to me the biggest source of violence hadn’t even been mentioned.

  J.P. frowned. “No knife here. I’ll check the kitchen, but if he brought it with him, that’s another indicator this was preplanned.”

  “You think anything was stolen?” Ron asked of no one in particular.

  J.P. looked at me. “I would doubt it—maybe a single article, kind of like a souvenir. What do you think?”

  I shook my head. “Too hard to tell the way things are now. The TV and stereo are pretty fancy, and they haven’t been touched. She keeps her jewelry in that box over there.”

  I pointed to a hinged cherry case with an inlaid maple design I’d bought her years ago. It was lying on the floor, unopened, half under one of the night tables. J.P. gingerly stepped over to it and opened it, his hands clad in ghost-white latex gloves. It was full of the things I’d grown used to seeing Gail wear.

  Tyler replaced the box exactly. “Later, you might get her to do an inventory. If anything is missing, my bet’s on something personal.” He glanced at the lamp shade.

  “Jesus,” Ron muttered to himself. Tony Brandt cleared his throat and spoke for the first time. “J.P., you set for what you need?”

  Tyler nodded. “I’d like Ron to help me go through all this with tweezers, but that’s about it. Dennis is running the show outside, from the boundary line in toward the house. You might ask him if he needs more people. Otherwise, I’m okay. The fewer inside the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Brandt had his hands in his jacket pocket, fidgeting with his pipe. I knew he was dying to fire it up, something he never did at one of Tyler’s scenes, for fear of leaving a shred of tobacco behind. He was obviously getting restless as a result. “Okay, then. We’ll get out of your hair.”

  He turned on his heel and was about to work his way down the long staircase, with me behind him, when Tyler stopped us with a question: “You going to talk to her again soon?”

  I answered. “We’ll try to—kind of depends on her. Why?”

  “It’s a gut reaction so far, but I’d say the guy knew her—well enough that she’d recognize him if she’s given the chance.”

  I nodded and went after Brandt, reflecting wistfully that no one in that room, including myself, had referred to Gail by name.

  · · ·

  We found Todd Lefevre outside on the deck, chatting with the patrolman on guard. Lefevre’s was an unusual—and highly envied—job. A law-enforcement officer, he belonged to no department. His only boss was the State’s Attorney, and his jurisdiction extended as far as the SA’s. Lefevre could run his own investigations, delegate them to other officers, or cooperate as he was doing here. He worked with sheriffs, municipal departments, the state police, or any relevant federal agency, and could, if the job required it and the money was available, travel anywhere outside Vermont’s borders to do what he had to do. The only downside was that he existed on the SA’s say-so, and on the state legislature’s willingness to fund his position, both of which definitely blunted the appeal. Not only was James Dunn a weak excuse for a human being, but from a one-time high of eleven state investigators, there were now only three full-timers left.

  Chances were good Windham County would be allowed to keep one of those, but for the first time in his career, all bets were off concerning Dunn’s future—and therefore Todd’s—at the polls. Dunn’s opponent, Jack Derby, was as low-key and appealing as the State’s Attorney was not, and he seemed to have all of Dunn’s ability, judging from a very respectable twenty-year career as a trial lawyer. Dunn’s acknowledgment of his own vulnerability was highlighted by a sudden newfound interest in popular opinion, complete with awkward appearances at Rotary lunches and Red Cross fundraisers.

  Todd didn’t seem concerned by any of it, however, remaining as affable and easygoing as always, and he greeted us with none of the election-time heartburn I knew a major case like this ignited in his boss. Perhaps the prospect of Todd’s own potential unemployment was offset by a secret enjoyment in finally seeing “the gargoyle” sweat. In any case, I knew he was too discreet to tip his hand either way.

  “Tyler working his magic?” he asked as we joined him.

  Brandt nodded, crossing to the railing. “Yeah, with Ron. How’s Dennis doing?”

  Lefevre chuckled. “He’s got ’em organized like a bunch of Boy Scouts on parade.”

  Almost cut off from view by the far corner of the building, we could see a long line of patrolmen, traffic officers, auxiliary members, and even a few borrowed state troopers marching slowly across the field under the supervision of Dennis DeFlorio, the detective squad’s weakest link. A good-ol’-boy with a limited imagination, and ambition only for his pension, Dennis was never good enough to give me hope, or poor enough to give me cause to replace him. He did, however, have an unflagging sense of humor, never pretended he was better than we knew him to be, and always did what was asked of him. I was confident that if something could be found out in that field, he would probably come up with it.

  “Where’re Sammie and Willy?” Lefevre asked conversationally.

  I turned away from the distant search line and looked at him. We had worked together before, and with pleasure. For years he’d been both the liaison to Dunn’s office and the man who inherited our cases after arraignment, when the SA officially took over control. But things would be different this time. Without having discussed it with Brandt, I knew Todd would be nearby from the start—the price Dunn was exacting from Tony for allowing me on this case.

  I smiled and accounted for the two missing members of my squad. “On the street, squeezing their snitches.”

  He nodded. Brandt had hitched one leg up onto the railing and was stuffing his beloved pipe with tobacco, glancing at the two of us without a word.

  “So what’s next?” Todd asked.

  I appreciated his courtesy, granting me the illus
ion of leadership, but I waved a hand toward Tony. “I would guess a door-to-door inquiry’s being made right now.”

  Brandt nodded, his cheeks puffing eagerly behind a balloon of smoke. “Then I guess it’s time to talk to Gail,” I quietly conceded.

  · · ·

  Brattleboro is an unusually mixed bag of a town. An icon of the previous century’s industrial might, it has an imposing downtown of stolid red-brick buildings, a few obligatory tree-lined neighborhoods of impressive Victorian showpieces, and a vast number of standard, modest, updated nineteenth-century homes—in good or poor shape depending on the locale. The whole thing rests on a broken-backed, topsy-turvy, creek- and river-creased patch of land, and looks like some oversized historical plaster diorama that’s been dropped by mistake and abandoned. Its few modern touches—a Dunkin’ Donuts right at its heart, and a dreary commercial strip heading north out of town—barely make an impression. It remains a town that the architectural ravages of the optimistic, taste-free fifties and sixties essentially bypassed.

  Sprinkled throughout, however, just off the well-traveled thoroughfares, Brattleboro has a contrasting scattering of neighborhoods unique unto themselves. They are poor or middle-class or shyly redolent of old money, but they all share a separateness from the whole, as if, during the town’s early evolution, hidden genetic strains of other far-distant communities were subversively introduced.

  One of these enclaves clusters around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir—a football-field-sized, cement-lined pond with a potentially commanding view of the town in three directions. Curiously, the potential is all that’s there, since the surrounding trees have been allowed to slowly shut out the urban scenery, leaving only glimpses of what might be available. In the same vein, the standard trappings of an exclusive, remote, dead-end block have all been dressed down. The houses are muted to dullness, the street and lawns nondescript, and the reservoir itself, historically the town’s first private water supply, is almost ugly—concrete-wrapped and encircled by a rusty chain-link fence.

  It was overlooking this dark, brooding, cold slab of water that Susan Raffner had her home, and it was there that Lefevre, Brandt, and I, in two separate cars, negotiated the narrow, potholed street—twisting up like an urban goat path—in order to speak with Gail.

  The uncharacteristically chilly weather set the mood of the place—the low, gray sky leaching down into the tentacles of the trees all around. The foliage was still green and full, but in this light it all looked somber and cold; and our breath collected in vaporous clouds about our heads as we emerged from the warm cocoons of our cars.

  Raffner’s house fit the tone set by its neighbors—large, dark, shingle-sided and unimposing—and like them, it murmured comfortably of a hundred and fifty years of generations spinning away through endless successive life cycles. It was through the echoes of those embracing ghosts that we made our way across the frost-dappled lawn, up the porch steps, and to the front door. It was still early, not even eight o’clock.

  Raffner answered the doorbell, her face poised between suspicion and hope. “You catch him?”

  “Not yet,” I answered. “Could we come in?”

  The hopefulness died, but she opened the door wider and invited us to enter. “So what are you doing?”

  “Everything possible. You know Todd Lefevre, from the State’s Attorney’s office?”

  She shook her head, and I finished the introductions, which she just barely acknowledged. Except for a cursory glance at Todd, she kept her eyes locked on mine, her intention to get a fuller answer clear. We were still standing around the foyer, and Raffner made no move to extend her hospitality.

  “Gail told the first officer she spoke to that she had no idea who this guy was. We have teams in the streets conducting interviews; we have a forensics unit going over Gail’s place with tweezers; and we’ve got people covering her grounds and neighborhood. Something like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum—for one thing, we’re already pretty sure he knew her—”

  Raffner snorted. “I could have told you that—he raped her in her own bed, for Christ’s sake.”

  I held up my hand. “I meant there’s a good chance she knows him, too, even though she didn’t recognize him. That’s probably the reason for all the cloak and dagger. If we can combine her memories of the attack with what we get from our investigation, it might be enough to come up with a name.”

  She looked at all three of us doubtfully. This was hardly the first time she’d dealt with this kind of situation—part of Women for Women’s role was to escort rape victims through the legal system—and my request was certainly mundane enough. But Susan Raffner was used to dealing with “clients”—not members of her own board of directors. For her, as for us, this attack had become personal, and the trauma of it had cut through all our professional defenses.

  “So you want to talk to her now? All three of you?” Tony Brandt answered for me. “No—just Todd and Joe. I have a selectmen’s meeting to make.”

  Raffner was slightly mollified. “That might be a little less intimidating. Let me go upstairs and check if she’s up for it; then maybe you can see her.”

  Todd and I stood in the entrance hall for some fifteen minutes, checking out the wall hangings, staring out the windows, and generally paying homage to whatever psychological mood Susan Raffner was establishing.

  When she finally gestured to us from the top of the stairs, we discovered how thorough she had been.

  Gail was located in a bedroom overlooking the reservoir, but she wasn’t in bed, which stood, fully made, to one side. Instead, she was sitting in an imposing wingback chair by one of the broad windows with the light to her back, dressed in a heavy, full-length caftan. Her feet were resting on a small ottoman, and she wore a shawl around her shoulders. Despite her pale and hollow face, the overall effect—while blatantly orchestrated—was one of security and peacefulness, almost of regality.

  It may have bolstered Gail’s own psyche—I certainly hoped so—but it did nothing for me. My eyes locked onto hers from the moment I entered the room, and in them I saw only the pain, the exhaustion, and the despair of a woman in mourning. Once again, I felt a trembling at the center of my chest. I found myself yearning to embrace her and unwilling to speak—knowing I couldn’t do the first, and would have to do the second.

  Todd Lefevre covered my initial paralysis by introducing himself, explaining what he was doing here, and asking permission to run a small tape recorder he’d pulled from his pocket, all while Susan Raffner and I found our seats—she comfortably by Gail’s side, and I next to Todd on one of two unstable-looking straight-backed chairs Raffner had placed in the middle of the room like penitents’ stools.

  By the time he’d turned his machine on, I had found my voice. Leaning forward in my seat, elbows on my knees, getting as close to Gail as the staging allowed, I asked her, “Do you feel you can talk a little?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  It was said with determination, belying the circles under her eyes and the gauntness of her cheeks, but its brevity spoke also of a need to conserve energy. This interview had to be done, but it would cost her, and she knew it. It was then that I noticed, under the caftan’s long, roomy sleeves, that her hands were gripping the arms of her chair like a child’s on a wildly swinging Ferris wheel.

  “Would you feel more or less comfortable with me asking the questions? Or even being in the room? I can wait downstairs if you want.”

  Her face hardened, tight with impatience. “Come on, Joe.”

  I stopped hanging back. “You told Ron you didn’t see your attacker—didn’t recognize anything about him. Now that a little time has passed, has anything come to mind? Some phrase maybe, some allusion he made that might place him in context?”

  Her forehead furrowed in concentration. “He didn’t say much, and he whispered.”

  “What kinds of things did he say?”

  “Orders at first—telling me not to kick after he got off my legs
to tie them down.”

  “He’d already tied down your hands before you woke up, right? How could he have done that?”

  Her face flushed abruptly. “I don’t know; I was asleep. Why don’t you catch him and ask him?”

  I straightened in my chair, stung by her fury. I’d anticipated an awkwardness between us—not that she’d react completely out of character. It emphasized that our intimacy could be a real liability here, leading me to expect the even-keeled rationality I’d grown used to. The first rule in interviewing rape victims was to absolve them of any notion that the attack was their fault. I’d inadvertently cut a corner there, assuming Gail would understand where I was heading. Her failure to do so told me that the same love that had driven her to want me here could just as easily turn to resentment if I presumed too much.

  “I’m sorry.” I pressed on, “He ordered you to cooperate while he tied down your legs. Is that when he used the knife? To persuade you?”

  She nodded silently, her eyes downcast, the color draining back out of her cheeks.

  “How did he use the knife, Gail?”

  “He pricked my breasts; he said he’d cut off my nipples if I fought him.”

  I paused a moment, steadying my voice. “What words did he use—exactly?”

  “His voice was very calm—the whisper, I mean. He didn’t seem excited at all. He said—” She stopped, apparently thinking back. “He said, ‘I’m going to get off your legs now; if you move a muscle, I’ll cut your tits off.’ Then he pricked me with the knife and said, ‘With this.’”

  “What happened then?”

  “He tied me down. I didn’t move.” There was a tremor in her voice, and she looked—I thought almost apologetically—at her friend Susan.

  Raffner squeezed her shoulder and kissed her forehead maternally. “You did the right thing. Your life was what mattered; you did it to save your life.”

  “Did he ever use the knife again?” Todd asked in the brief lull.

  Gail shook her head.

  “But he did beat you,” I added.

  “At the end, just before he finished. He seemed suddenly frustrated—angry for the first time. It was the only time his voice changed. He said, ‘You snotty goddamn bitch.’ And then he hit me.”