“It still doesn’t sound too bad-maybe an unprofessional conduct ruling against the officer, and a little bad publicity. Do you smell something else going on?”
I smiled at her mild tone, thinking back to earlier days, when we lived apart and Gail was a Realtor and a selectman here in Brattleboro. Then, she’d been very much the citizen advocate, distrustful of the legal system, and often taking the underdog’s side in debates with me. Now, her sympathies had broadened and become less doctrinaire. I would have been more pleased if a violent rape hadn’t been the catalyst behind this transition. But she had adapted well, and I was happy with the end result and with her obvious satisfaction with her new life.
“I do as of an hour ago,” I said in answer to her question. “You know that kid we chased through the bowels of the Retreat a few weeks ago? Jasper Morgan?”
“I remember the chase. I don’t know anything about him.”
“We’ve known him from when he was in his mid-teens. His parents used to beat the hell out of one another, and he tried running a protection racket at the high school, with predictable results. Later, he dabbled in anything that could make him an illegal buck, always without getting caught. We heard he’d moved on to bigger things-getting people to do his dirty work for him-when he suddenly disappeared for no apparent reason. Anyhow, I just found out he used to hang out with Norman Bouch, the complainant’s husband in this case.”
“Was Jasper ever found?”
“Nope-nor was Pierre’s gun. It may be pure coincidence, but it keeps gnawing at me-like I’m supposed to be hearing something I can’t quite make out.”
Gail was by now cooking up a steamy mess in her skillet, throwing in handfuls of ingredients and stimulating a pungent aroma. “It’s a small state, Joe. People bump into each other all the time, especially if they’re in the same business.”
“I know. I just keep wondering why Jasper ran from us, and why he ducked underground in the first place, changing his name and conning his way into the Retreat.”
“I didn’t know he’d done that.” She drained the water from the pot and dumped the spaghetti into the skillet, mixing the contents together.
“Yeah. Turns out years before, when he lived in Massachusetts… ” I paused. “Damn, that’s another coincidence. I need to find out if he and Bouch knew each other before coming to Vermont. Anyway, when he first sought out help for his addiction problem, he used a false identity, so his medical records were always under a different name from the one on file with NCIC. Clever for a kid.”
“Who was also clever enough to want help,” Gail commented, dishing the meal onto two plates.
“Or being instructed by someone else,” I said, still driven by the possibility of Bouch’s early involvement. “When he wanted to disappear here, he approached a local therapist and asked to be recommended to the Retreat, which is the standard route of admission. Having conned the first guy, he pulled the same gag on the Retreat examiners. After that, he only had to make sure his supposed cure took a nice long time to kick in.”
We settled around the tile-topped island in the center of the kitchen and began eating. “I’m surprised they were all so easily duped,” Gail said. “You sure Jasper didn’t have some legitimate motivation? Maybe you had nothing to do with it. Maybe he wanted to kick his habit and the business both.”
It was all hypothetical, of course, and it had nothing to do with a misdemeanor charge filed against a cop in Bellows Falls-at least so far-but the wheels were beginning to turn in my head. What had started as a favor from one chief to another might suddenly be becoming more interesting-and more relevant to my own department.
Sammie Martens lived on Main Street in Brattleboro, in an apartment near the Municipal Building. I’d never been there before, but I had heard the ribbing she received because of it. Where most officers sought some distance from the department, and a semblance of normalcy in a home with a lawn and an above-ground pool, Sammie had opted for the ultimate short commute. In exchange, she’d been accused of sleeping in her SRT battle gear, and having a zip-line running from her building to the office so she could slide over traffic to cut down her response time. This was usually answered with an extended middle finger.
There was no elevator, at least none I could find in the building’s gloomy lobby, so I took the broad wooden steps to the top.
Sammie was waiting for me, gazing over the railing, smiling at my gradual pace. “You ought to try hopping up with your feet together.”
I didn’t doubt for a moment that was one of her own regular habits. “That must make your neighbors happy.”
She ushered me into her apartment, which turned out to be a single enormous, high-ceilinged room, stretching from the Main Street side to a row of windows overlooking the Connecticut River on the other. One of the short walls was covered with full-length mirrors. Placed throughout the vast space, like rest stops along a marathon, were weight machines, stray pieces of furniture, a small kitchenette, and a gathering spot for several rugged looking bicycles. In all, it looked like a cross between a sports equipment warehouse and a teenager’s crash pad. There wasn’t a zip-line in sight.
“Cozy,” I muttered.
She smiled, obviously pleased. “Used to be a ballet school. I love it here.” She steered me over to a pair of mismatched chairs, choosing a stool for herself. “Want some coffee?”
I sat in an armchair. “I’m all coffeed out. I got to go back to Bellows Falls tomorrow on this internal, but I wanted to fly something by you first. Have we heard anything new on Jasper Morgan?”
“Not a word.”
“Did we ever dig deep into his background-have anyone check out his Massachusetts days?”
“We backtracked to when he first used the phony ID on the therapists, but we did that by phone. Nobody actually went down there.”
“Where was there, exactly?”
“Lawrence, I think.”
The same town Anne Murphy thought Bouch had come from.
“Good. Do me a favor, then. Tomorrow, look a little harder into that, and keep an eye peeled for the name Norman Bouch. See if Jasper and Bouch ever crossed paths. Do a triangulation search if nothing pops up. Check out Bouch’s known associates and relatives in Lawrence, and see if any of them show up in Jasper’s background-maybe they had a mutual acquaintance.”
“Who’s Norman Bouch?” she asked.
“The main complainant on the case I’m working in Bellows Falls. But he’s also supposed to be freelancing as a drug dealer. And I found a witness who saw him and Jasper together a few years ago. Maybe Jasper’s sudden rise and fall had something to do with Bouch.”
“Maybe all kinds of things,” Sammie said softly, her skepticism reminding me of Gail’s.
“True, but I don’t like leaving a coincidence like this hanging.”
Sammie didn’t look pleased. “If Bouch is the complainant, that makes him the injured party, right?”
“Supposedly.”
“Won’t it look a little funny, you doing a quote-unquote impartial internal, while you’re having the complainant investigated by another agency?”
She was right, which I only found irritating. “Maybe we could try being discreet for once.”
Not one to be cowed, Sammie merely stared at me and raised an eyebrow.
I wasn’t in the right frame of mind entering my interview with the Bouches. Sammie’s comment of the night before still rankled, as did the sudden reappearance of Jasper Morgan, and biased me against both Norm and Jan Bouch. By forgoing the protocol that an internal investigator should stick with the stated facts and interview the complainants and witnesses first and foremost, I’d made a mess of my own objectivity. Sammie would have disqualified herself from the Bellows Falls case. I was too stubborn for that, which irritated me even more.