Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

by Mayor, Archer

  “Interviewing Bernie Reeves, Vogel’s ex-car pool partner to and from work.”

  “Alone?” Dunn asked. I saw Tony go still, obviously ruing that he’d brought the subject up.

  “Yes. It was only a background talk. He’d make a good witness. Vogel bragged about his past rapes and fantasized about committing sexual violence on women at work. He even pulled a knife on Reeves to keep him quiet about dropping the car pool.”

  Dunn jerked a thumb toward the window and the reporters milling about outside. “Do any of them know you’ve been working alone?”

  I felt my cheeks flush and struggled to keep my voice level. “I haven’t been. I wanted to check this one thing out before drawing up an affidavit. I wanted every detail covered before committing ourselves in public.”

  Dunn gave me a withering look. “We had more than enough for a search warrant early this morning. That’s what those reporters are doing out there. The warrant’s in the bag—unless you screw it up. I’ve already handled enough questions about you as it is, so don’t add to my problems.”

  In the strained silence that followed, Brandt explained, “Santos got chatty with Alice Sims.”

  Mention of the Reformer’s courts-’n’-cops reporter gave Dunn a second wind. “And now Katz is thinking that a little human-interest piece on the trials and tribulations of a certain cop with a big personal stake in this case—whose boss thinks he’s Sherlock Goddamn Holmes and lets him work on his own girlfriend’s rape—might make interesting reading. So if you don’t like the timing of this press conference, keep in mind that it might just keep your ass out of hot water.”

  Brandt let out a small sigh and began guiding me out the door. “Vogel’s jacket came in this morning from Massachusetts. Why don’t you compare notes with Ron while we dance with the media? It won’t be long. Work up a rough draft of the affidavit in the meantime.”

  I paused at the door. “Katz did ask me about a feature piece. I turned him down.”

  Brandt’s murmur was beyond Dunn’s earshot. “Don’t worry about it. He talked to me, too, very reasonably. This Santos thing’s just got the SA worked up. And we do have more than enough for a search warrant.”

  I, too, kept my voice down. “What if we come up empty? We’ll all look like idiots. Why not wait the few hours it’ll take us to check the trailer out? Then he can talk till he puts ’em all asleep.”

  Brandt sighed and glanced over his shoulder. Dunn had gone back to studying the press release. “There was a bad poll this morning.” He paused, knowing how hollow that sounded. “And Jack Derby’s holding his own press conference in an hour.”

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled tiredly. “I can’t tell a state’s attorney what to do. I can only recommend that he’s full of shit, and that only diplomatically. His entire staff is against this, too.”

  Given the threat to the case, that came as no comfort, but I nevertheless did as Tony suggested—I checked in with Ron Klesczewski at the command center, and used him and his by-now voluminous files to draw up the most careful and thoroughly researched warrant application of my career. If this thing was going to blow up in our faces, the police department was not going to be the one needing surgery. In the back of my mind, however, an unacknowledged bell kept sounding that, despite all my care, I was too tired to be doing such detail work.

  I knew some of the hoopla was inevitable. Gail’s own candlelight march had kicked it off, and even it had been the mere overture to a media/politics/public-relations carnival that was going to play on the front page for weeks. What was unsettling me was James Dunn’s reaction. Although never a mellow man, he was powerfully self-restrained, and had never before left the boundaries of his office to meddle with police procedure on such a personal level, and at such a hysterical pitch.

  He had also never made any bones about his dislike of sex-crime prosecutions, of how they hinged more on appearances and prejudice than on the solid evidence he cherished. As far as I could see, the combination of just such a case and an increasingly desperate reelection bid was apparently pushing him to some sort of edge.

  Driving my fogged brain through the wordy intricacies of the affidavit, I kept wondering how the pressures on Dunn might affect his performance. Given his almost irrational behavior now, how safe was Gail’s case in his hands?

  Such meanderings were interrupted by a patrolman sticking his head into the room, informing me that Dennis DeFlorio was on the radio. I crossed over to Dispatch. Dennis had taken over the discreet surveillance on Bob Vogel, stationing himself well out of sight in the trees ringing the trailer park. He was calling in on a special frequency, not commonly found on the recreational scanners around town. Nevertheless, he made all his references as oblique as possible.

  “Joe, our boy just got a visit from Probation, accompanied by a sheriff ’s deputy.”

  I checked my watch. It was late morning. I’d spoken to Helen Boisvert just a few hours earlier. She hadn’t mentioned she was scheduled to visit Bob Vogel. This was not good news.

  “Why was the deputy there?”

  “Pure babysitting—just Helen following the rules. He never left the car.”

  “Anything happen between her and her client?”

  “They weren’t happy with each other. She yelled something at him when she left, and he gave her the finger after she turned her back.”

  “He still there?”

  “Far as I know.” I turned to Maxine Paroddy, the day-shift dispatcher, suddenly alive to how thin the ice had become under Dunn’s—and our—feet. “Who do we have out in West Bratt, or nearby?”

  She answered without hesitation. “Santos and Smith, in separate vehicles. I’ve got two other units close enough to the interstate to be there in under five minutes.”

  “Get all four of them rolling and tell them to convene at the state police barracks down the road. Lights but no sirens till they get near, then go with the flow of traffic. I don’t want to spook this guy unless it’s already too late.”

  I turned to Ron, who’d followed me across the hall. “Where’re Dunn and the chief holding their press conference?” “Upstairs—the boardroom.”

  “Get Brandt and bring him here—now—but don’t tip off the reporters that something’s up.”

  I turned back to the radio. “Dennis, you within sight of the trailer?”

  “Negative. I couldn’t raise you on my portable, so I had to go to higher ground. Too many trees or something.”

  More likely antiquated equipment, I thought. “Get back to your observation post. I’m sending you backup—four cars. They should be there in exactly eight minutes for the bust. You’re in command.”

  There was a surprised silence. Dennis had obviously thought he was calling in with an informational tidbit, not a summons for reinforcements. “What’s the charge?”

  “Driving without a license and operating an unregistered vehicle. But he may be armed. So be careful and do it by the numbers.”

  DeFlorio gave a strictly neutral “10-4,” and returned to his post.

  Maxine, operating the other radio, looked over her shoulder at me. “First two units are standing by at the barracks.”

  I nodded but didn’t answer. After a minute’s silence, I yielded to impulse. “Call Parole and Probation and see if you can locate Boisvert. Maybe she’s back by now.”

  Brandt walked in a moment later, looking grim. “What’s up?”

  “I’m worried Boisvert might’ve tipped Vogel off. I’m sending a team in to arrest him for his vehicular violations. I figured that would hold him till the search warrant is issued.”

  Brandt nodded. “Okay.”

  Maxine added. “The second two units are in place, and Boisvert is still out.”

  I checked my watch. “Tell them to hit the trailer in four minutes.”

  She turned back to the transmitter and passed the word. We could hear the cryptic replies, the tension in the officers’ voices filling the air like static. The room was deadly silent
, each of us listening, balancing what we knew should happen, based on our training and past experience, against what might go wrong. Both Smith and Santos were members of the department’s special reaction team—what used to be called SWAT before Hollywood made the term politically unpalatable—and Dennis, for all his slovenly habits and slow-witted reputation at other times, was at his best in these types of operations, his nature abdicating to adrenaline and years of practice. All of us in the dispatch room would have preferred a more thought-out, coordinated approach, but we were trained to respond to the unexpected, and no one questioned my judgment.

  The four minutes came and went; a few more were added to them. I could visualize the trailer surrounded, the area secured, positions and equipment checked, an attempt made to rouse someone from inside, and finally the forced entry, made low and fast, shotguns ready, men fanning out, their hearts hammering under bullet-resistant vests.

  The radio finally came alive; Dennis again: “He’s gone, Joe. Nobody’s home.”

  12

  JAMES DUNN SAT AT HIS empty, highly polished desk, staring at his neat, interlaced fingers, as if impressed by their utter stillness. I was, too, actually. I figured the news of Vogel’s disappearance would send him through the roof.

  But the SA was no longer the politician scrambling for headlines in the wake of a bad poll; he was in operational mode, in which he was at his best.

  He finally looked up from his hands at the three of us—Brandt, Todd Lefevre, and me. “You talk to Boisvert yet?”

  I nodded. “She said she confronted him on the illegal driving and that he accused her and the state of a double standard—telling him to earn a living and contribute to society, and then trying to send him back to the slammer for driving without a license when he’d done nothing to deserve it.”

  “Is that what she threatened him with?”

  “At first. She told me she calmed down a bit after hearing his explanation and gave him till the end of the week to come up with a solution.”

  “But she heard about his driving to work from you, right?”

  Here it comes, I thought. “Yes. I’d discovered he wasn’t registered with DMV. I had to fly it by her to make sure she didn’t have an explanation, but I didn’t tell her why we were asking. I guess I also hit her at a bad time. Anyhow, she grabbed a convenient deputy instead of one of our guys as an escort—another reason we didn’t know what was going on—and she acted on her own. I should have guessed she might, from her tone of voice. My screwup.”

  “True,” was all he said in retribution. After another pause, he mused, “Doesn’t seem like enough to make him run. What else did they discuss?”

  “She did say he was pretty paranoid about the rape. He kept connecting her visit to our investigation—which she knew little about and he only suspected we were conducting—accusing her of trying to lock him up on a technicality to buy us time till we could nail him with the big one.”

  “Which is exactly what we almost did,” Dunn muttered. “Nice try, by the way.”

  His mildness was almost unnerving. It was possible the same cold, logical thinking that made him good in a courtroom had just saved me from being crucified—but it was hard to believe.

  “So,” he said in a livelier tone, “where do we stand, having told the world we all but have the cat in the bag?”

  Brandt gave him a detailed rundown of the manhunt we’d set into motion—alerting all area enforcement agencies, poring over Vogel’s records for personal references that might tell us where he’d run to, and contacting DMV to put a flag on all inquiries concerning unlicensed drivers who might fit Vogel’s description.

  “And,” Lefevre added, “the affidavit for a search warrant’s been finalized by this office and delivered to Judge Harrowsmith for signing.”

  Dunn nodded. His voice was almost conciliatory when he spoke. “All right, that’s good for the moment, since we’re still the only ones who know Vogel has gone missing. In twenty-four hours, however, that will probably change, and if we still haven’t located him, I’ll be asking the state police to take over the investigation.” He looked up at Tony Brandt.

  Brandt froze. For a moment, I saw them lock eyes like opposing force fields, each apparently hoping pure energy alone would atomize the other.

  Tony finally took a discreet deep breath and countered, “I understand the pressure you’re under, but that might not be in your best interest. We know more about Bob Vogel right now than the state police will learn in a week of going through his files—and that’s a week in which Vogel could disappear forever.”

  “They have better resources than you do.”

  “Perhaps, and if we think Vogel has left the area, we’ll call on those resources.”

  Dunn’s voice became the icy knife I knew all too well. “He’s already left the area, Tony. Your staff saw to that.”

  Brandt ignored that bullet for the sake of the battle. “People in his position don’t run for distance, James, they run for cover, and they run for places they know personally. We’re not just faxing other departments to keep their eyes open—we’re telling them where to look and who to talk to, according to Vogel’s own files. The state police could do no better.”

  Dunn didn’t answer at first. Then, finally, the hands came alive, slipping free of one another as he pointed to the exit. “Good. You’ll have twenty-four hours to prove your point.”

  Bob Vogel’s trailer was dark and cluttered and looked like a cyclone had blown through it. And it stank—of dirty clothes, stale sweat, rotting food, and mildew. The small refrigerator oozed the gaseous sweet odor of a biological time bomb waiting to be freed.

  To Tyler and Kunkle—Tyler’s unlikely but preferred companion for detailed searches—it was all as rich as an untapped gold mine. The two of them, gloved and masked, surveyed the dim premises with interest. I, in contrast, stood in the narrow doorway, imagining only the owner of this rat hole emerging to violate Gail in her clean, airy, sweet-smelling home. That someone with so little to offer could wreak such damage turned my stomach.

  “Let me know if you find anything,” I told them, before returning outside to the relative pureness of the surrounding decrepit neighborhood, where the other members of the squad were foraging around and under the trailer and picking through the abandoned station wagon.

  I stood in the middle of the rutted dirt lane, breathing the cool, fresh air so much at odds with the setting. The weather-beaten, broken-backed trailers were strung out along the road haphazardly, as if thrown away, and shared a disturbingly imperiled appearance—as if the earth were swallowing them up in imperceptibly slow bites.

  Whether it was the disappointment following Vogel’s disappearance, Dunn’s display of clear self-interest, the unslacking melancholy that had dogged me since the attack on Gail, or just plain exhaustion from too many days without sleep, I suddenly felt overwhelmed by lassitude. The damage to Gail had been done, her attacker identified—to my satisfaction at least—and the subsequent process attending both those facts—her healing and his eventual capture and prosecution—put in motion. My role was soon to be diminished to that of the loyal supporter. I was to be attentive, encouraging, helpful if possible, but essentially useless until forces beyond my control had run their course. Once caught, probably by some other agency than ours, Bob Vogel would be in James Dunn’s manipulative hands, while Gail’s recovery depended mostly on her own abilities to rally and rebuild her life. It all left me feeling strangely empty-handed.

  Brandt, who had broken with protocol to join us in the field, came up beside me in the middle of the road.

  I guessed he was going to ask how I was doing, or maybe how Gail was faring—both questions I was in no mood to answer at the moment—so I sidetracked him with what I intended to be small talk.

  “I was surprised Dunn let me off so lightly, even if he does plan to hang us all in public in twenty-four hours.”

  Brandt chuckled and loaded up his pipe. “There won’t be any
hanging. He’ll just write us off as well-meaning boobs. And he sure as hell isn’t about to land on you, especially now.”

  I glanced over at him, puzzled. “What’s that mean?”

  He took his time lighting up, sending out large smoke signals into the air. When he was finally satisfied, he removed the pipe from his mouth and peered into its bowl, as if curious to see how that had happened.

  “It means,” he said at last, “that our State’s Attorney can become a little cynical when the pressure’s on.” He pointed his pipe stem at me. “You are in the public eye, a nice guy, a good cop, and Gail’s lover. In that same light, Helen Boisvert is an antagonistic, introverted crank with no political allies and a low profile—meaning the public doesn’t know who she is and doesn’t care that she also happens to do a good job.”

  “He’s going after Helen?”

  “Not necessarily. Dunn held that premature press conference this morning solely to steal Derby’s thunder, telling the media we were closing in on a prime suspect. He gave no names, detailed no strategy, and still managed to sound upbeat and in control. It was a gamble that worked in the short term, because an hour later Jack Derby gave a sincere and heartfelt dog-and-pony show, but he lacked the goods Dunn pretended to have. Point one to Dunn, something he felt he needed, since Derby had stolen the limelight at the candlelight march.”

  Tony nodded toward the trailer. “If this search results in enough evidence to trigger an arrest warrant, that’ll be point two, showing Dunn to be the experienced old hand he claims to be, and maybe giving him enough of an aura that Vogel’s skipping out will seem like a minor detail, easily remedied, especially if he throws us out and brings in the state police.”

  “But if the aura’s not enough,” I concluded bitterly, “then Helen gets crucified with a great show of reluctance.”

  Tony raised his eyebrows. “You got it.” He was quiet for a moment, seemingly lost in reflection, his eyes on the distant treeline, which was tinged with the first colorful signs of the coming foliage season.