Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

by Mayor, Archer

  “Knowing that must help a little. Would you like me to come over?”

  “No—I’m all right. How ’bout you?” she asked, surprising me.

  “I’m fine. A little sore. I’m not doing anything strenuous.”

  There was a moment of silence, during which we contemplated everything we hadn’t addressed. “You’re pretty sure he didn’t do it, aren’t you?” she finally asked.

  “I honestly don’t know. I chased down two ideas last night, and neither one of them proved anything. All I’ve got are a bunch of little bells ringing in my head, telling me not to let this one go.”

  She sighed again, and I added, “You’re still at Susan’s, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have Tony send someone over today to install some dead bolts and window locks. Maybe they’ll help you feel a little more secure.”

  “Mary Wallis gave me a gun—a nine millimeter.”

  I didn’t like that, but I knew now wasn’t the time to say so. “You know how to use it?”

  She let out a small, humorless laugh. “Secrets of my hidden past. My dad taught me when I was little. We used to shoot at cans and light bulbs at my aunt’s farm in Connecticut. I got pretty good at it.”

  “Well, be careful. You want those locks?”

  “Thank you… Joe?”

  “What’s up?”

  “You’re still digging into this because of what you said, right? It’s not something else—something you’re not telling me?”

  How well she knew me. “I just want to make sure the job’s been done right.”

  · · ·

  I sat in my car across from Bob Vogel’s derelict trailer, staring in disbelief at what the passage of a few weeks had wrought. The door and several windows were missing; clothing, soiled sheets, magazines, plates, even a few pieces of broken furniture littered the frozen ground. A stained, broken-back sofa lay on the sagging wooden steps leading to the gaping front door, as if it had been shot trying to escape.

  I crossed the yard gingerly, noticing the shredded remnants of the plastic yellow “police line” tape we routinely use to seal off a property—obviously to great effect. The vandals, as usual, had been inordinately capricious in their choices, breaking some items of limited value, stealing others that made no sense. Going through the trailer, I worked both from memory and from a copy of one of Ron’s files that listed the place’s entire contents, complete with “general scene” photographs. Tony Brandt’s box was proving to be a gift from heaven.

  Nevertheless, I couldn’t find the one item I was after.

  I stopped short of the doorway before leaving the trailer twenty minutes later and peered surreptitiously across the yard to the neighboring trailer—the one housing the consumptive scarecrow who’d directed me to the Barrelhead when I’d first visited the neighborhood. A curtain moved slightly as soon as I stepped into the anemic sunlight.

  I walked over and pounded on the rattly metal door.

  “Who is it?” The voice was as I remembered it—raspy, wet, and ruined.

  “You know damn well who it is. Open up.”

  The door swung back with a rusty complaint, and Vogel’s bedraggled, bearded, reed-thin neighbor glared out at me with bloodshot eyes, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. I showed him my badge.

  He coughed, as if under attack by the fresh air. “What do you want?”

  “Talk. Can I come in?”

  He stepped aside, and I entered a virtual wall of stench, thick enough to make my eyes water.

  “What about?”

  I glanced around quickly and pointed to a mildewed dish rack by his sink. “That, for one thing.”

  He stared at it in astonishment. I pointed at a cracked oval mirror leaning against the wall near an armchair with three legs. “And that, too.”

  He swiveled his head like a spectator at a tennis match. “What about ’em?”

  “They belong to Bob Vogel. You stole them.” I showed him the photographs, placing my finger on each item.

  He swallowed hard and glanced at the door, as if contemplating flight. Then he looked at me defiantly. “I didn’t start it. I just got what the others left behind.”

  I didn’t believe that for a moment. “I’m sure that’s true. So I’ll let you off the hook. But I want a favor. I want to see the alarm clock he had by his bed.”

  He hesitated, weighing whether or not I was setting him up. “Wait a minute.”

  He disappeared into the gloom to the rear of the trailer and reemerged moments later with a cracked plastic Baby Ben clock—an old wind-up model dating back thirty years.

  I turned it over, pulled the alarm tab up, and moved the hour hand until it touched the alarm sweep. Nothing happened—just as I’d suspected. “Was this broken when you got it?”

  “Yeah—piece of shit. Should’ve known.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  · · ·

  I found J.P. Tyler squirreled away in his compact forensics lab. His eyebrows arched when he saw who’d opened the door. “Joe. How’re you doing? I didn’t know you were back.”

  “I’m not officially, so don’t tell anyone.” I handed him the broken clock. “Do me a favor. Find out why the alarm doesn’t work in this thing.”

  He took it from me and smiled. “Sure. You ought to look into buying a new one, though. These aren’t too accurate.”

  “It’s not mine. It’s part of a case, and it’s red-hot priority.”

  The smile widened. “And you’re not back officially.”

  “Right. Let me know as soon as you can. I’ll be in the property room.”

  The property room was across the hall from Tyler’s closet, and about three times larger. A high-security area, it was where we held evidence until it was needed for trial, and therefore was packed to the ceiling with tagged and labeled bags and containers. What I was after, however, was right in the middle of the floor, readily accessible for the case being heard across the street at this very moment. I sat down among the boxes and began sorting through the envelopes within them, being careful not to break any evidence seals.

  I hadn’t completely closed the door—the stench of stale, confiscated marijuana being reminiscent of old, dirty clothes—but I had dropped the bar that stopped people from inadvertently stepping inside the sacrosanct room. When I heard a movement behind me a quarter of an hour later, therefore, I expected to see J.P. Tyler. Instead, I looked up to find Brandt staring down at me. He didn’t look pleased.

  “What the fuck’re you doing?”

  I stood up awkwardly, favoring my wounded gut, and smiled lamely. “I have to put this to rest, Tony. I got too many questions rattling around up here.” I touched my temple.

  “I’m not so sure you’ve got anything up there. The hospital called this morning, madder than hell. They’d already contacted our insurance carrier, who in turn called the town manager, who’s just finished reaming my butt. I called Harriet and found out you’re not laid up at home, feeling sorry for yourself, you’re in here, fucking around with state’s evidence for the hottest ongoing trial we’ve had in a decade.” His voice had grown in volume and pitch throughout this monologue, but was cut short by Tyler appearing at his elbow. “What the hell do you want, J.P.?” he asked.

  Tyler held up the clock between us. “The alarm mechanism’s been cut clean through—fresh marks, I’d say probably by a pair of wire cutters.”

  “It couldn’t have just fallen off through wear and tear?”

  “No way.”

  Brandt looked at both of us and took the clock from Tyler. “What are you talking about?”

  “Bob Vogel said he missed his meeting with Helen Boisvert the morning after Gail was raped because his alarm didn’t go off. It sounded pretty lame then, but lying on my back for three weeks got me wondering. The guy’s a total shit—we know he’s raped before, and he treats everyone he meets like scum—but he’s hanging onto his probation like a drowning man. Look at the effort
he takes not to be caught driving that beater of his. Also, since he signed up with New England Wood Products, he’s never missed a day, never even been late. I wanted to find out if he’d lied about the alarm clock.”

  Tony Brandt tugged at his ear, probably wishing he were on vacation. “You’re suggesting somebody cut the alarm to set him up?”

  “Possibly. The other argument being that he cut it himself to give himself an alibi.”

  I let Tony fill in the blank on that one. “For missing a meeting with Boisvert? Seems a little elaborate for someone who can barely string two sentences together.”

  “Plus we didn’t find a wire cutter anywhere, in his car or the trailer,” J.P. added.

  Tony mulled it over for a few moments. “Jesus,” he finally muttered, “we’re going to have to tell Dunn.”

  “And he’s going to have to tell defense counsel,” I added.

  I looked down at what I’d been holding when Brandt found me—the photos Vogel had taken of Gail walking around town. They were not sealed but were instead in a brown envelope, tied with a string. I opened the envelope, catching Brandt’s attention.

  “What’s that?”

  “Another of the things that bugged me. In that box of files you brought up, I found out we never did find a camera, and that the Green Mountains Lab people who processed the film had no files or recollections linking the film to Vogel.”

  “And that got you thinking, too,” Tony finished morosely.

  I didn’t answer. As I’d been speaking, I’d also been flipping through the eight pictures, not looking at Gail, as I had previously, but at the backgrounds to each scene. “Yeah, it did,” I murmured. “It struck me that since we found them in his trailer, we automatically assumed they were his, especially since we had so much other stuff against him. So we looked at them for who they showed us, and for what fingerprints might be on them, which, conveniently enough, were all smeared. What we never concentrated on was when they were taken.”

  “Actually, I did,” Tyler said, trying not to sound offended. I was finding fault, after all, with his part of the investigation, not something he was used to. “But all I could get was that it was summer. I couldn’t find any calendars or clocks in the background store windows, or anything else that would give me a better fix.”

  I held out one of the pictures to him, of Gail waiting to cross the street at a traffic light opposite the Photo 101 camera store. Next to her was a blue Toyota Corolla, its license plate easily readable. On its windshield, barely visible, was a small blob of color. “How about a parking ticket?”

  J.P. took the picture from me. “Shit.” He quickly copied the plate number and headed off to a computer terminal. All our tickets were issued using a computerized, handheld system, which meant the time, date, parking-meter number, and details about the vehicle would all be in our files.

  Brandt let out a sigh. “So what else have you been churning over in that hyperactive brain of yours?”

  I told him about the logging-equipment yard near Jamaica, the oil slicks, and of my conversation with Fran Gallo. He absorbed it all quietly, having already adjusted himself to the inevitable meeting with Dunn.

  He nodded once I’d finished. “All right. I don’t think the oil slicks or the red shirt’ll cause much trouble, but this other stuff might.” He checked his watch. “They’re probably about ready for a lunch break over there. I’ll talk to Dunn. You better come along.”

  Tyler returned and handed him a slip of paper with a date on it. “It’s the only ticket that car’s had in the last two years. No possibility of confusion. And the owner paid it off personally, here in the building, one hour later, so the picture could only have been taken during about a forty-five-minute time span.”

  Brandt looked at the slip of paper grimly. “Well, let’s hope Vogel doesn’t have an alibi.”

  20

  ROBERT VOGEL DID HAVE AN ALIBI for the time the pictures were taken of Gail. He was at a doctor’s office, having his cigarette-corrupted lungs examined by special request of New England Wood Products’s insurance carrier, who was interested in tacking a waiver onto Vogel’s coverage.

  We found this out at the end of a long, tense afternoon, spent in the offices of an extremely unhappy James Dunn, who, during the brief times he came out of his office to consult with us in an adjoining conference room, kept giving me looks that he obviously hoped would make me burst into flames.

  We never saw Tom Kelly or Bob Vogel—all communications with them were handled either by phone or well out of our sight—but from Dunn’s terse reports, both of them were having a pretty good day.

  As was the press. On its own merits, this case had already built up enough steam to attract over two-dozen reporters—among them two competing-network correspondents from New York, complete with camera crews—all of whom had been roving about town in packs of various sizes. However, now that something had obviously gone awry—the judge having granted an unexpected continuance in the middle of the state’s case, and Dunn sequestering himself in his aerie with all of us—everyone with a tape recorder, a note pad, or a camera was packed into the Municipal Center’s third-floor hallway.

  The impression of being under siege was further enhanced by Dunn himself—driven to distraction by the cacophony of ringing phones—who finally ordered all public lines into the office disconnected, leaving only the unlisted ones, which nevertheless stayed busy enough. Outside, the muted rumble of the growing crowd burst into occasional flower whenever one of the staff battled his or her way through the door.

  At last, the windows darkened by the coming of night, Dunn called Brandt, me, Todd Lefevre, and Billy Manierre into his office. He arranged himself behind a desk almost as large, polished, and bleak as his ego, and stared at us in theatrical silence.

  “This continuance will extend twenty-four hours, at which point the judge will ask both sides if we need further relief. I intend to answer no. That means that you will have totally reviewed this case by then and found it to be as airtight as it should have been when I first received it. I can then present all this as a minor glitch, of no great consequence.”

  He leaned forward, placing his hands flat on the glistening desktop. “That is what’s going to happen—correct, Lieutenant?”

  “We’ll see,” I answered, which caused him to flush. The discovery of that severed alarm had been no minor glitch to me. It had been a crack in a structure perfect in outward appearance, neatly plastered over by a truly malevolent artist. Despite Dunn’s wishful thinking, I was sure we’d find more flaws, now that we knew to look for them. Unfortunately, I had no way of proving that to him and thereby sparing him further humiliation.

  Dunn glared at me, straightened, and then addressed us all. “Get out. Todd, coordinate with them.”

  “That arrogant bastard,” Brandt muttered as soon as Todd had closed the door behind us.

  “Maybe,” Todd said, showing an unexpected loyalty. “But he’s got a point. He doesn’t need his own people pulling fast ones on him in mid-trial.”

  “If he doesn’t like surprises, he ought to give us more than twenty-four hours,” I countered. “Now we’re going to have to review the evidence selectively. Luck’ll have to substitute for thoroughness.”

  “What do you mean?” Billy asked, leading the way into the empty conference room opposite Dunn’s office.

  “It means that a few key elements could swing this case one way or the other.” I began pacing up and down the length of the room as the others slowly grabbed seats and made themselves comfortable. “Given the down time I’ve had, I’ve been able to dissect this one more than most, and what I’ve found is that the most supposedly concrete evidence—the underwear, the blood on the knife, the knife nicks on the window lock, the red shirt, the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, the leaf, and even Vogel’s MO—might well be the most circumstantial, the most easily manipulated by someone who wanted to lead us by the nose. After all, it’s the kind of evidence we’re trained to look
for, and that juries can get their teeth into.

  “But there are other details—more supportive ones, like the clock and those photos—which were a little harder to manipulate, since they called for more than just planting something in the right place. As a result—if I’m right—those can be traced to the real rapist. It’s the window-dressing details that we need to track down.”

  Tony shook his head and spoke softly. “And all in a single day.”

  I turned to Todd. “What will Tom Kelly be doing during the continuance? Is twenty-four hours enough?”

  He nodded. “No reason why not. He’ll probably depose Fran Gallo, the doctor who just alibied his client, Vogel’s next-door neighbor, the Green Mountains Lab people for good measure, and maybe even you, so that you can throw the oil-slick and red-shirt angles into question.”

  “Great,” Tony murmured.

  “’Course,” Todd continued, “he may not bother, figuring the judge or our newfound zeal will get him off the hook anyway. He’s been so cagey up to now, it’s hard to tell. But the momentum’s going his way all of a sudden. I’d bet he’s not going to trust to fate alone.”

  “What’s the judge got to do with it at this point?”

  Todd shrugged. “Tom Kelly clerked for the Honorable Gordon Waterston in Burlington way back when, and Waterston’s notoriously hard on women in sexual-assault cases.”

  “Susan Raffner told me that last part,” Tony admitted. “So you’re the one who knocked over the apple cart. What’s the first step?” he added, looking at me.

  “The pubic hairs found in Gail’s bed,” I answered. There was a stunned silence. “That’s what I meant by focusing on a few key elements—things we overlooked before. The standard tests on hair don’t give us much, especially when the samples don’t have roots, and therefore can’t be DNAed. But there are nontraditional tests they can do, including one I thought of when we found out about Vogel’s doctor visit.

  “One thing you can detect in hair, if you’re looking for it, is nicotine. We all have it to a certain extent, because of smoke in the air, but smokers themselves—heavy smokers—have a lot. Since neither Gail nor I smoke, heavy nicotine in the pubic-hair samples will help point to Bob Vogel.”