“Did Norm get chummy enough to introduce you around?”
“Oh, he played it up. I was his personal show horse, after all.”
“What was he up to at the time?”
“Technically, he was a garage mechanic. Psychologically, he was an empire builder. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a leader. His only problem was finding an army who’d follow. That’s where the kids and women came in.”
“Was someone named Jasper Morgan one of the kids?”
She laughed. “Not even a remote chance I’d remember that, probably not even if you waltzed him in right now. I met a great many people, but in this instance my only focus was Norm.”
I thought a moment. “I told you on the phone we think Norm has created that army, as you put it. My guess is he compartmentalized it into cells so it won’t fall over like a row of dominoes. He has lieutenants in different towns, empowered to hire and fire on their own. It gives them autonomy and a sense of authority and makes it harder for us to track the scheme from one end to the other.”
She was shaking her head slightly. “What I’ve been dancing around with my psycho-jargon is that Norm Bouch is a control freak. What you describe may be correct in part-the complexity of the structure reflects the man’s intelligence, and I’m sure he makes his lieutenants feel powerful, but don’t believe for a moment that he trusts anyone with autonomy. Whatever it is you’re facing up there in Vermont, he’s pulling the strings. You should be able to backtrack everything to him in the long run, like pulling the right loose thread. It might just take some doing, that’s all.”
I described the sexual harassment case that had brought me to Bellows Falls, explaining how I thought Brian Padget’s subsequent troubles were based partly on Norm’s irritation at having his first scheme ruined by me.
Molly Bremmer shrugged. “We all make mistakes. It could be he misjudged the harassment angle, but I’d be cautious if I were you. Remember that Norm likes to show off-to himself if to no one else, somewhat like masturbation. Your Bellows Falls officer being saddled with a drug charge may have been a back-up plan-it could also have been in the works from the start.”
That possibility solved some timing problems. If Padget had been framed only after the sexual harassment charge had collapsed, Bouch hadn’t had much time to put it together. Bremmer’s suggestion seemed more likely and made me realize just how devious an opponent Norm might be.
Assuming Brian had been framed at all.
I was having a hard time seeing him as a drug user-much less a dealer-but the young cop’s own cocaine-tainted urine couldn’t just be ignored. Until I could explain it, any theories that he was set up weren’t going to be very convincing.
I returned to something Bremmer had mentioned earlier. “You said you met a great many people when you were hanging out with Bouch. Were there any from Vermont?”
She again consulted her notes. “Yes. There was a young man named Lenny. I only took note of him because he was such a standout. He was slightly older than some of the others and more like Norm in his personality, which struck me as an anomaly. Norm’s standard choice was the submissive type, not somebody who might stand up to him. It was the one instance where I sensed a genuine friendship holding sway over Norm’s usual controlling pattern.”
“No last name?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, I only knew he was from Vermont because he called Burlington home. I sensed he was traveling to and from there to meet Norm in Lawrence.”
“If I ever found a picture of this Lenny, would you recognize him?”
“Maybe. I saw him several times. It was always a social setting. I don’t know what business they might have been cooking up, or even how they met in the first place, but he became a familiar face.”
The tip about Lenny was hopeful-maybe. It certainly echoed what Amy Sorvino had said about Burlington and the relationship Bouch had reputedly had with Jasper Morgan. But it didn’t give me anything additional to win over the AG’s office. I was still, as Tony had said, totally reliant on my abilities as a bullshitter.
Disappointed, I paid for the coffee and escorted Molly Bremmer to her car, thanking her for all her help.
As I was closing the door after she’d slid in behind the wheel, however, I suddenly asked, “Given Norm’s personality, is it likely his wife could’ve been fooling around without his knowing it?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “My professional opinion, without knowing the wife? I’d not only say it was unlikely, but that if she was, Norm probably had a hand in it. As a manipulator, it would’ve been right up his alley.”
I arrived back at the office fifteen minutes before my scheduled meeting with the attorney general’s envoy, underwhelmed at my prospects. If my pitch to Derby had worked, as Gail had pointed out, because he’d wanted to avoid a potentially messy, labor-intensive case, it stood to reason the AG might reject me for the exact same reasons. What I’d learned since had sounded encouraging to me, but I doubted someone with a tight budget and a limited vested interest would be similarly impressed.
Sammie Martens walked briskly into my office as I was pondering my strategy, a notepad in her hand. “You got a second?”
“Just that.”
“I started looking into Emily Doyle-just public access stuff, no official fingerprints-and I came up with something pretty interesting. She’s from Burlington originally.”
I raised my eyebrows noncommittally, but she’d grabbed my attention.
“Not only that, but when she was there, she lived in an apartment on North Street, just a few doors down from where Norm Bouch still has a place.”
“Any indication they knew each other?”
“Not so far.” Her smile betrayed an ambition to clear that up soon.
“How’d you find out Bouch had an address in Burlington?”
She laughed. “I called Information. He’s listed. Then I got hold of public records. He’s been renting for about three years.”
I shook my head in wonder at how often, with our growing dependence on high-tech communications and sophisticated information gathering, we simply forgot about things like phone books. “Nice, Sam. I guess you better go town by town and see if he pops up anywhere else while you’re at it.”
“I got something on Jasper Morgan, too,” she said as I checked my watch. “I asked Willy to snoop around Morgan’s neighborhood, see if anyone had gotten more chatty now that things have cooled off. Turns out Jasper’d gotten a little cocky just before he disappeared, and maybe a little greedy. Word is he was starting to look over his shoulder. This was just before he entered the Retreat incognito, which makes me think maybe we weren’t the ones he was hiding from.”
“And that maybe he ran from us,” I finished, “because our flushing him out turned him into a sitting duck for someone else.”
“Sounds good.”
I patted her on the back as I left the office. “It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Sammie. I’ll give the AG your regards.”
The AG was personified in this case by a tall, dark-haired, tough-minded woman named Kathleen Bartlett, who for the past five years had headed the Criminal Division. The AG in Vermont was similar to the county-based State’s Attorneys in terms of power, but unlike them, he had greater jurisdictional reign. Also, since his office wasn’t split among fourteen counties, his staff was proportionally more impressive. For example, for all the SAs in Vermont, there were two investigators, one of them part-time. In Bartlett’s division alone, there were five.