“You leave Emily alone,” Padget finally gasped, fighting nausea. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands, breathing hard and deep.
“Why should I? She’s the one who put you on to Norm Bouch in the first place.”
He continued trying to keep his stomach under control. Davis returned with the towel and soundlessly placed it in his hand. Padget buried his face in it, rubbing it around. Through the material, he asked, “She tell you that?”
The phrasing of the question gave me hope I’d gotten lucky. “She told me Norm Bouch was the scum of the earth-to be taken out like a tactical threat and held up as an example.”
Padget shook his head. “God, she hates his guts.”
“What did she do?”
Suddenly, giving in to all his penned-up emotions, Brian Padget began to weep. Starting with a slight shaking of the shoulders, his grief spread until his entire body was racked by sobs. I shifted over next to him on the bed, rubbing his back and shoulders. Greg Davis moved into the room and sat opposite us.
For fifteen minutes, we let him dredge himself out. Then gradually, I began coaxing him back, telling him to breathe deeply, straighten up, open his eyes and look at us. Eventually, he took a final, shuddering gulp of air and wiped his eyes with the towel.
“Tell us the truth now,” I urged.
His voice was barely audible. “Emily was running a covert investigation on Norm Bouch, but she refused to quit when I found out. I told her it could cost her her job-ruin everything she’d fought for her whole life-I finally said I’d do it instead, that if she didn’t let me, I’d turn her in. She knew I was serious. We fought like hell-that’s why we broke up-but she finally went along.”
Greg and I exchanged looks. As irony had it, this admission put Padget in hotter water than he already was. If he were cleared of the drug charges, he’d end up battered but still employed. Running a clandestine investigation, however, put his career in the same jeopardy he’d been trying to spare Emily. Police officials do not take kindly to cops becoming freelancers.
“What about Jan?” I asked. “How did you two get together?”
He shook his head with embarrassment. “I was staking out their house one night when she walked right up to me and asked me what I was doing. She’d noticed me hanging around. She wasn’t angry-just curious. And she was real sad. I could see it in her eyes-all the shit he pulls on her. She came to see me as someone who might help her and the kids to get free.”
I listened quietly, fighting the urge to tell him I thought he’d been worked like a trout by an expert angler. Norm’s fingerprints were all over this story, down to the unbelievable notion that Jan would notice someone hiding in the bushes and then go out to meet him without consulting her husband.
“You should’ve run the case by me,” Greg finally said. “I might’ve okayed a surveillance.”
Brian looked at him sadly. “We didn’t believe that. We were sure the chief would give it thumbs down, him not wanting to make waves and all.”
“Why not admit you and Emily wanted to score points,” I said harshly, irritated by their arrogance and naiveté both. “Bring in a bad guy on your own? Emily’s got a problem because Burlington wouldn’t have her, and you’re so hot to climb the ladder, you can barely stand it.”
Greg gave me a warning look, and I softened my tone. “Look, I know it got away from you, but how did you think it was going to end? Even if you got the goods on Norm, people were going to ask how you’d done it. Being successful wouldn’t have made you any less of a maverick. Why didn’t you follow your own advice to Emily?”
He shook his head tiredly. “We didn’t think it out. It was like a personal thing I got caught up in-first stopping Emily from getting fired, then trying to save Jan. I felt I could do it.”
I shook my head silently. Any chastising by me was gratuitous compared to what he was facing. I patted his back instead, told him to try to get some sleep, and that for the rest of the night I’d stick around in case he needed me.
Davis and I retired to the living room after tucking Padget in. We left the lights off and settled in opposite corners of the sofa. “You think he’ll get to keep his job if he’s cleared?” I asked quietly, already hearing the dull rumble of Padget’s snoring down the hall.
In the reflected glow from the street light outside, he shrugged. “The chief likes him, or used to. He might get a month or two without pay if he’s lucky. Politics could run him over-Shippee hates all this-and I doubt his career’ll have much oomph, at least in the short run.”
“Things improving any at the department?” I asked.
He sighed. “Not a whole lot. The job’s getting done, but no one’s heart is in it. This thing’s like a group headache none of us can shake.”
“Latour still seen as part of the problem?”
“He’s not helping any.”
“And you can’t talk to him?”
There was a pause. “We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
Silence fell between us for quite a while. I finally stuck out my foot and prodded his own in the dark. “You’ve done your time here. Go home to your family. I’ll bunk on the couch.”
After a moment’s thought, he rose to his feet. “Guess I will. Thanks.”
I walked him to the front door. “Why did you call me, by the way?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “This wasn’t anything you couldn’t have handled.”
He didn’t answer at first, rubbing his hand along the door frame instead, as if checking it for splinters. He spoke slowly at first. “That was a mistake. I didn’t know about Emily and him running a case on their own. That sort of changes things.”
I tried interpreting that. “Meaning you were pissed and wanted me to see the damage I’d done.”
He laughed softly, shaking his head. “That makes it sound mature. Guess I screwed that one up.”
“I don’t think so,” I disagreed. “You’re trying to take care of your people. I don’t have a problem with that.”
He nodded meditatively. “Silly impulse, though. I shouldn’t have done it.” He looked up then. “How do you think this’ll wind up?”
“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” I told him, at least guardedly optimistic. “By the way,” I added, “something happened in Burlington today that might make Norm a little antsy. Is there any way you could keep an eye on him-enough to let me know if he leaves town, or changes habits radically?”
“Sure,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
I watched him get into his car and drive off into the night. I hoped he was right. If Norm turned from puppet-master to loose cannon, there was no telling what might happen.
Chapter 21
By the time I left Brian Padget the next morning, he’d showered, shaved, eaten a light breakfast, and made an appointment with a local counseling service. Given the condition I’d found him in, I wasn’t begrudging a poor night’s sleep.
It was perhaps that developing hopefulness that made me turn again toward the Bellows Falls police station instead of continuing home.
Emile Latour was in his awkwardly laid out office, sitting at his desk, staring into space.
He looked up when I tapped lightly on the door frame. “Hi, Joe. Come on in.”
“I just spent the night babysitting Brian Padget. You been to see him since all this hit the fan?”
He frowned. “Babysitting him? Why?”
“Greg Davis called me. He’s been dropping in on Padget, seeing how he’s doing. He found him blind drunk and sick, feeling sorry for himself. He’s better now.” I sat in one of the guest chairs and studied him, watching a series of thoughts pass like shadows behind his eyes.
He seemed to absorb what I told him in slow motion, gradually lifting his hand to rub absent-mindedly at his temple. Finally, he said, “I didn’t realize.”
I kept my voice neutral. “He’s a kid-and an idealist. He hasn’t acquired what we’ve got to fall back on.”
“But what about the urinalysis?”