“You okay?”
I took my eyes off the star-filled skylight over our bed and looked in Gail’s direction. Her hand appeared from under the covers and stroked my cheek. “You’ve been lying that way for over an hour.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. Can’t turn my brain off.”
“The case?”
“And the people in it. Along with a few thousand others I’ve dealt with over the years. Old ghosts ganging up, I guess.”
Gail shifted around and slipped her arm across my chest. I could hear the clinical neutrality in her voice as she gently prodded. “Are they saying anything that makes sense?”
I laughed to set her at ease. “Yes, doctor. They all agree I’m going nuts.”
She didn’t laugh with me. “Are you?”
I moved my own arm around to cradle her head, embarrassed at trying to put her off. We’d been through a lot together. She deserved honesty when she asked for it. “No. I’m just piling on the baggage with this one. I don’t know if it’s a critical-mass problem or just these particular people, but I’m feeling more and more weighed down by what I’m finding.”
“Like what?”
“Name it: teenage mothers on coke, a young boy in a ménage à trois, a cop probably being set up by his addict lover, a guy using kids to run a drug ring. Things’re looking pretty bleak… ”
“You’ve been wading through the dregs for decades, Joe. Some of it’s got to stick.”
She was right, of course. It began sticking the first year-but dealing with it was a rite of passage. Routine. From the angry, out-of-town motorist cursing your small-town rules, to the fading glance of a drug-dazed, pregnant girl who’d just slashed her wrists to get some sleep, you took it in stride. It became a spectacle occurring beyond a thick pane of glass.
In fact, I’d been noticing the accumulation of all this before I’d been asked to go to Bellows Falls. It had been catching up to me like old age itself. But it took working in that town to bring it into focus. Brattleboro was a part of me, and I’d grown to overlook what I chose to. Bellows Falls was uncharted territory, and I didn’t know the shoals well enough to avoid them. Jan Bouch, Emile Latour, Anne Murphy, Eric Shippee, Emily Doyle, and my own lamb-to-slaughter Brian Padget had all come too close, sharply revealed in their despair. I’d been caught by the exhaustion, the bitterness, and the suspicion I’d been avoiding.
What was keeping me awake was the effort to recall something other than all that misery. Even the woman lying next to me was in this house we shared because a brutal rape had forced her to change her life. I had to reach back to my youth on a farm, halfway up the state, to recall a time when most of the faces around me were smiling and unfettered by turmoil.
I glanced over at Gail, to see if she was still expecting me to explain what I couldn’t. Thankfully, her steady, even breathing answered for her and let me off the hook. I was once again free to peruse my catalogue of lost faces in solitude.
Chapter 10
SAMMIE MARTENS LOOKED UP AS I approached her desk the following morning. “You look terrible.”
“You should be a doctor. What did you find out about the towns Amy Sorvino mentioned? Any Oliver Twist-style teenage gangs on the loose?”
“Burlington is a definite hit, and Kunkle’s been snooping around our own backyard, trying to find out what Jasper Morgan might’ve been up to. You ought to talk to him. Barre I got a lukewarm-there’re kids into drugs, but the PD had no sense they were more organized than usual.”
“Tell me about Burlington.”
“I contacted Audrey McGowen-we went to the Academy together. She checked with the juvie crime squad, who said that in general, they haven’t seen any changes. There are a tiny number of kids that seem vaguely interconnected, but it’s fluid, they come and go like hourly workers at a fast-food joint. And when they do bust one on possession, they can’t find where the drugs came from or where they’re headed-the kids pick it up and drop it off but don’t make contact with buyer or seller. That’s the structured part the PD noticed, ’cause it’s so consistent. Surveillance might crack it open, but who’s got the money, especially with so little to go on? And if all they get is a bunch of kids, the busts won’t justify the overhead.”
“Which Bouch knew from the start,” I said softly.
Sammie nodded. “He also knows to keep it small. The numbers Audrey gave me didn’t come to more’n six kids, max. ’Course, who knows? And the profit margin’s huge. She told me a ten-dollar bag of coke in New York’ll bring you thirty-five in Burlington. They’re hungry up there.”
“Did she know Norm Bouch by name?”
Sammie smiled broadly. “Yeah, and it’s from an interesting angle. They’ve got a special unit up there-some sort of multi-jurisdictional thing… ”
“CUSI,” I said. “Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations. I thought that was mostly sex-related crimes.”
“Exactly. That’s where Bouch’s name popped up on her screen. It’s a little dated now-a few years at least. But his interest in minors made him a natural for them. They never caught him abusing kids or anything, but they talked to juvies who knew him well-like you were telling us about those Bellows Falls kids, he was a Pied Piper. Keep in mind, though,” she emphasized, “I got the clear impression Audrey wasn’t blown away by any of this. Bouch is small potatoes-one name out of thousands they have on file, and an old one at that.”
I rose to my feet. “I don’t mind that. I’d just as soon have this whole thing run low-key. The fewer people get interested in it, the more likely it is we get the nod to run the case for the AG. If Norm Bouch was seen as a big deal, we’d have DEA, the task force, and everybody else wanting to grab some of the action. We’ll probably get a little of that anyhow. Drug busts make for happy voters and keep the grant money flowing.”
Sammie stopped me as I was about to leave. “That reminds me-I got something else you might like. You must’ve tickled Phil Marchese’s fancy, ’cause he did some poking around after you left Lawrence. Norm Bouch’s NCIC records I think you already know about… ” she quickly checked her notes. “DWI, check fraud, two misdemeanor possessions, and a first-degree unlawful dealing with a child, for selling beer to a bunch of minors. What doesn’t appear, ’cause it was supposed to stay off the books, was that Bouch participated in a special program the Lawrence PD and the local parole board had going under a short-term federal grant. It wasn’t therapy, so there’s no patient confidentiality to worry about, but it involved psychologists trying to find out what makes the bad guys tick when they’re out on the street, instead of when they’re in jail. It was like a big brother program of sorts-or big sister in this case. It folded fast, of course-you can pick your reasons why-but Marchese found a woman named Molly Bremmer who dealt with Bouch for several months. He said she’d be willing to talk to you.” She gave me Bremmer’s name and number on a slip of paper.
I looked at it appreciatively. “Nice work, Sam.” I hesitated a moment before adding, “Do me another favor, would you? This is off the record, so be discreet, but I’d like to find out about a Bellows Falls policewoman named Emily Doyle-as much personal information as you can find. She wasn’t too thrilled to talk to me when I asked her about Padget, and I found out last night she was in a position to plant that dope at his place. I have no reason to suspect her of anything, but I am curious. When I talk to her, I’d like to know more about her than she thinks I do.”
Sammie wasn’t too thrilled but nodded her assent.