Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

by Mayor, Archer

  “He was there to protest the wording of a sexual-harassment clause in the new town employment guidelines. He got ugly over it, raving about the dykes and fags and whatnot.”

  “Sounds pretty typical,” Tony said softly.

  It was the wrong response. Wallis stuck her face closer to his. “You should know, considering how long it took you to upgrade the wages of your own female employees.”

  Brandt’s voice went flat. “That was years ago. I had to follow the town attorney’s rules of procedure. You can’t change everything overnight.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but I interrupted. “Mary, this run-in with Ryan, did Gail get into it with him, or did he just foam at the mouth a little and take off?”

  She let go of the door, shaking her head in disgust. “Jesus. One of your own men had to come in and escort Ryan from the room. He was threatening her, for God’s sake, and you don’t know a thing about it.”

  Tony muttered, “Let’s go. We’ll look into it, Mary—thanks for the tip.”

  She looked at him grimly.

  I drove by the patrolman who’d been listening to all this with a half smile on his face—the small joys of hearing a boss reamed out in public—and continued slowly up the long, steep driveway.

  Brandt rubbed the side of his nose with his finger. “That was a little embarrassing. Did you know anything about it?”

  “Nope. Gail never mentioned it, and it wasn’t in our daily reports.”

  “The board met last Thursday, didn’t they? Let’s find out which of our people was asked to throw him out. I think we ought to dig into this a bit.”

  I smiled as I parked and cut the engine, wondering who was talking—the cop or the politician. Both sounded worried.

  All the earlier activity had ceased. There were no more lines of searchers crossing the field like grouse hunters looking for lost change, no reporters lurking at the boundary lines. The house, apart from four cars parked outside, looked empty and forlorn, standing out against the flat, gray sky, its windows blank. As we slammed our doors, a patrolman sheepishly stepped out onto the deck from inside.

  We climbed the outside steps to join him. His name was Marshall Smith—a native Floridian who always took on a slightly bereaved look around this time each year, as summer’s warmth began to wilt. He was wearing a coat, unlike us, and it was tightly buttoned up.

  I opened the door for Tony and motioned to Smith to follow suit. “No point getting cold. Where’s J.P?”

  Smith pointed across the broad central space of the house. “Downstairs bathroom. You just missed Ron—left about ten minutes ago.”

  We found Tyler standing on the toilet seat, scrutinizing the sill of a single high window and muttering into a small tape recorder.

  “Find out how he got in?” I asked after I’d heard him snap the recorder off.

  J.P. pocketed his machine and picked up the camera from the top of the toilet tank. “I think so; from the evidence, I’d say it was through one of the living-room windows.” He focused on the windowsill, took a shot, and then climbed down.

  “What about that?” I pointed at the high window.

  “It was locked and painted shut. I’ve documented all the windows, just in case it comes up later.”

  That fit Tyler’s character perfectly—a scientist in cop’s clothing. His job description was as broad as the rest of ours, encompassing all the usual duties of a small-town detective; but where some of us relished working the streets and the snitches, J.P. was most at home in forensics. I often wished we had both the budget and the business flow to have him specialize only in that.

  “You about finished?” I asked him.

  “Yup. That was my last stop.” He led us toward the living room. “As far as I can tell, the guy entered through here, using a knife or a shim to slide the lock back on the window.”

  He kneeled on the sofa in front of the row of sash windows and pointed to the middle one. “This is the intriguing part, and what makes me think whoever did this was invited inside the house at least once before: See this lock?”

  He manipulated the ancient clasp that swiveled from the top of the lower window frame to grasp the bracket attached to the bottom of the upper frame. It swung to and fro so loosely that he barely had to touch it.

  “Just slipping a blade up between the frames from the outside is enough to pop this open. In itself that’s no big surprise—these are notoriously lousy locks—but this is the only one in the house that’s this loose, and the only one of the older windows to open easily. In fact, all the others are either jammed or painted shut, or are newer windows with more pickproof locks.”

  Tony frowned and unconsciously pulled his pipe from his pocket and began filling it. Tyler’s not protesting was a sure sign he’d finished his search.

  “Any prints outside the window?” I asked.

  J.P. shook his head. “Ground’s dry and hard. Dennis and his crew didn’t find anything outside. I did come up with something here, though.” He pointed at the sofa he was still kneeling on. “A trace of vegetable matter. Assuming he did enter this way, he had to step on the sofa to get to the floor, so I’m hoping what I found came off his shoe.”

  I looked dubiously at the dozens of house plants that Gail had placed on almost every flat surface available. Tyler answered my question before it was out. “I took samples of all the plants to rule them out. I’d also like to remove the lower half of this window and replace it with plywood. Some tool marks were left on the wood and the lock. If we find this guy, we might be able to match his pocket knife, or whatever he used, to the marks.”

  I nodded my approval and turned to face the building’s interior. “So you think he entered here, went straight up to the bedroom, and then left by the front door?”

  “Yeah.” Tyler led us from the living room to the staircase leading up to the bedroom. “And by now, I’m almost positive he brought both the knife and the rope with him. I found Gail’s knives in a rack in the kitchen, all arranged by size. There don’t seem to be any missing, and they’re all clean as a whistle.”

  He looked back over his shoulder as he began climbing the stairs. “Of course, the guy could’ve used one of them and washed up afterward, but I didn’t see any evidence of that. As for the rope, there’s none in the house that matches what he used. Joe, did Gail have a sports knife or a pocket knife tucked away anywhere? Something he might have found easily and used?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “She has a Swiss Army knife she carries in her purse, or on her belt when she goes camping. She didn’t say it was missing.”

  “You might double-check, and ask her about the rope and the window lock, too, just to see if something comes to mind. Maybe some visitor made a comment she’d remember about the lock.”

  Tony, by now trailing an aromatic cloud of smoke, spoke up. “How long ago did she have the newer windows put in?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know—maybe a year. I’ll ask her for the name of whoever installed them.”

  We arrived at the top of the stairs, where J.P. stopped us at the threshold, looking directly at Tony. “I want to preserve this room at least another twenty-four hours—even put a guard on it so we can guarantee its legal integrity, if you’ll let me.”

  Brandt nodded. “I think we can do that—sure.” He removed his pipe and cradled it protectively in his palm.

  Satisfied, Tyler turned to the room like a lecturer to his blackboard. “I’ll have to compare my notes with Gail’s statement to nail down the sequence of some of this—I can’t tell if he trashed the place first and then raped her, or vice versa—but I have a pretty good idea of how he moved around the room.”

  He took a couple of steps forward, being careful not to disturb anything. “In a way, it’s like an archaeological dig—you know that, generally speaking, whatever’s at the bottom was put there first. So all I had to do was link various articles on the floor—and how they were layered—to similar items still left in the dr
awers and the closet. That way, I could roughly trace his progress around the room, figuring out which drawers he’d emptied first and last.”

  “Which told you what?” Tony asked.

  Tyler pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Here’s the crime-scene sketch I did of the room. I left out a lot of the clutter to clarify what was where, but you can see the guy’s progression—very methodical. He toured the room in a clockwise direction, Wiping out things as he went.”

  “Telling you he’s repressed, compulsive, and angry as hell?”

  Tyler looked at me and tilted the flat of his hand back and forth in an equivocal gesture. “Maybe; I don’t have the psychology training to take this too far. The best I can do is establish a pattern—something we might find in somebody else’s files.”

  Brandt coughed gently and cleared his throat. “Yeah—not ours. This doesn’t ring any bells with you, does it, Joe?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve already circulated the basics to surrounding departments. J.P., if you could translate what you just told us into something for them to check against—and send it out in a second bulletin—it might help. Then we can cross our fingers this bastard didn’t come from California.”

  I looked at the rope nooses still hanging from the bed frame and felt the familiar twinge in the pit of my stomach. “What else was left behind?”

  The contented gleam burned brighter in Tyler’s eyes. “A few things, actually, some of which won’t be his—like your fingerprints, hair, and—” He suddenly stopped, realizing his blunder.

  I got him off the hook. “Semen.”

  His face, for the first time to my knowledge, flushed bright red. “Right. Anyway, barring those, I still think we have a couple of hair samples, the tool marks, the vegetable matter I found downstairs. And this… ” He pulled a white envelope out of his jacket pocket and held it open to the light.

  “What is it?” Tony asked.

  “Looks like a fiber,” I answered, squinting at a tiny comma of red material suspended in the middle of the envelope like a microscopic goldfish in a bowl. “Where’d you find it?”

  “Right here.” J.P. pointed to the door frame opening onto the bathroom, catty-corner to the door in which we were all standing. There was a thin sliver protruding from the rough, natural-wood frame, about half a foot up from the floor.

  “I’ll be damned,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “Gail said he was naked when he attacked her, but that she could hear him putting his clothes on afterwards by the door—right here.”

  “You or she have any red-wool shirts?” J.P. asked.

  I scratched my head. “Sure. Christ, those are common as dirt around here—at least shirts with red in them. You probably have one, too.”

  Tyler carefully crossed the room to the closet and lifted the corner of a dress that had been tossed on the floor. Beneath it was the sleeve of a red-plaid shirt. “Like this?”

  “Yeah.” He shook his head happily. “Not the same. When was the last time you wore your shirt in this room?”

  “I don’t know; a long time ago, if ever.”

  He shoved the envelope back into his pocket, a pleased expression on his face. “Then this may be where he screwed up. Find the shirt in his possession, and this little baby,” he patted his pocket, “will place him at the scene.”

  “Maybe,” Tony cautioned. “Even if we do find the shirt, he might have sixteen different explanations for how a piece of it wound up here.”

  Tyler’s smile was undiminished. That was a legal problem, and not his department. And I had to admit, I shared his pleasure. Regardless of how far it led—and despite my own skepticism—it was a step, and that’s what these cases were built on.

  I gave Tyler a thumbs-up. “Here’s to that being the first nail.”

  He nodded confidently. “There’ll be more. By the way, when we get back to the office, I’m going to need some fingerprints and hair samples from you, to rule some of this out.”

  For the first time, I didn’t mind being intimately involved.

  Tony and I left Tyler to do a final sweep of the place and were almost back to the car when I saw Dennis DeFlorio’s grimy sedan, dust-covered and blotched with rust, nose into the driveway and grind up the hill to join us.

  I waited for him, one arm crooked on the open door, my foot perched on the rocker panel, while Tony took advantage of the pause to fire up his ever-ready companion once again.

  Dennis pulled alongside and heaved himself out—a round man, unhealthy in appearance, who even in a coat and tie looked somehow untucked and disheveled, an effect heightened by his pants being stuffed into the tops of a pair of laceless, ancient hunting boots. I saw Tony examining the entire package like a slightly dismayed anthropologist.

  After he’d led the search of the grounds, Dennis had coordinated the neighborhood canvass, but he hadn’t actually come face-to-face with me since the start of all this and was the least successful at hiding his discomfort at my personal connection to the victim. He scratched his ear, looked at the house, the ground, the cars, and everywhere else but at me, and aside from an undirected half wave of the hand, accompanied by a muttered, “Hi, Joe,” he finally ended up addressing Brandt exclusively.

  “Hi, Chief. Dispatch said you were here, so I thought I’d give you what we got so far.”

  Brandt smiled and nodded, transparently amused with Dennis’s anguished pantomime. “Shoot.”

  DeFlorio pulled a battered notebook from his pocket and flipped it open. “It’s not a great neighborhood for this—not too many houses, and they’re pretty far apart—but so far I got a jogger goin’ by around ten, a dog barking maybe an hour later. The hottest lead is a car leaving this driveway a half hour after that—”

  “That was me,” I interrupted.

  Dennis pursed his lips, obviously taken aback, but then carried on, his eyes glued to the page, still ignoring my existence. His voice, however, was just a shade flatter, “—another vehicle a few hours later, and then two male voices talking in the road about half an hour before dawn.”

  “Explain that last one,” Brandt said.

  “It’s a little vague. I think it might’ve been two guys walking—for exercise, you know? The person who heard it said there was no sound of an engine—just two voices going by slowly, talking normally.”

  “You find out who they might’ve been?”

  Dennis shook his head. “But not everybody’s home. At work, you know? And if they were exercising, they could’ve come from a mile away or more. I just did the local area. I didn’t mention it, but Ms. Zigman’s car was also seen leaving her place at a little before four.”

  “Anything more on the second car you mentioned?” I asked.

  He finally gave me a furtive glance, as if checking to see that I hadn’t fallen to pieces. “Not too much—it might’ve been a truck, though, and technically, counting Ms. Zigman’s, it was actually the third vehicle seen. The only one who heard it was an old guy who lives about three houses down. He was going to the bathroom when it went by; saw the lights through the window. Said he could tell by the way they jiggled and were high off the road that it was either a truck with a cap on the back, or something like a Bronco, with a squared-off look to it. It was a dark color anyway—like dark blue or green, maybe.”

  “He’d never seen one like it in the area before?”

  Dennis was becoming more relaxed with my presence. “He might have. He said he’d have to think about it a little and get back to me. Maybe he’s got something and maybe he just likes the attention. I guess we’ll find out.”

  Brandt checked his watch impatiently. “So basically, except for someone seeing Joe’s car leaving this driveway, we don’t really have anything yet.”

  Dennis pursed his lips again, obviously put out. “It’s a little early—and nobody told me Joe’d been here last night. I thought I had something.”

  Tony backed down. “No—you’re right—we screwed up there. Shou
ld’ve told you.”

  “Dennis,” I asked him, “what time was the truck or Bronco spotted?”

  He checked his notes. “About 4:15.”

  That was disappointing. Gail had remembered 3:37 as the time she’d finally freed herself. “What about anything before last night? Did anyone see anything unusual over the past week or so?”

  DeFlorio shook his head. “No. I asked, but all I got was the usual: postman, UPS trucks, yard men, garbage truck, normal traffic… Stuff like that.”

  “The ten o’clock jogger?” Tony asked.

  “Nope. There are a few regulars, but nobody running that late.”

  “You know that from the runners themselves, or from people watching them?”

  “Mostly people watching. I talked to one woman who jogs, but she goes out in the morning, around eight. Everyone else I interviewed was pretty old—retired. I’ll have to come back later to check on the ones who work. They’re probably the health freaks.” He made the last statement with understandable scorn, given his own physique.

  I turned away and looked across the valley to the east, the distant gray mountains of New Hampshire forming an almost seamless bond with the dull sky overhead. Before this day was finished, we’d have dozens of reports like Dennis’s, involving dozens of innocent people, that would have to be checked out, from the postman to the joggers to the old guy peeing in the middle of the night. Until something or someone fit the circumstances and the time slot of Gail’s attack, we would have to cross and recross the terrain before us, looking at every detail like hyperactive bird dogs.

  It wasn’t the stuff of movies—but it was the way things worked. Somewhere out there, there was evidence to be found, people who knew things maybe they didn’t even realize—all rungs on a ladder we had to build from scratch, hoping it would lead us where we wanted to go.

  4

  I HADN'T FORGOTTEN WHAT Mary Wallis had told us about Jason Ryan. Upon returning to the Municipal Building, I went to find Billy Manierre in his well-tended cubbyhole built into a corner of the patrol officers’ room.