The impression was only enhanced by his appearance. As I swung out of my car in the police department parking lot and paused to enjoy the view of the broad Connecticut River across the road, a short, burly, round-bellied man with thinning white hair, a flushed complexion, and a shy smile, walked out of the building to greet me. His regulation blues fit him as comfortably as a pair of pajamas. He was a vision from a forty-year-old recruitment poster.
“Joe Gunther? Good to see you again. I’m Chief Latour. Thanks for coming up so fast.”
I shook his hand, noting its blunt, dry, dormant strength, reminiscent of my long-dead father’s. A farmer’s hand. Despite the uniform, I instantly envisioned him on his knees in a large garden, enjoying the silky dampness of earth between his fingers.
“My pleasure,” I answered. “Hope I can be useful.”
He touched my elbow and gestured toward the building’s front door. “Oh, that won’t be a problem. I don’t think this’ll lead to anything.”
From the outside, the House of the Seven Gables was weighted toward the fire department’s needs, with a row of open bay doors revealing several gleaming trucks. Once over the threshold, I became all but convinced that the police department’s tenancy had been an afterthought at best. They had a nice if compact radio dispatch room, with windows facing both the parking lot and the lobby, but beyond the inner blue door, we were faced with a cramped, ill-fitting string of narrow, short hallways, tiny rooms, and a twisting staircase. Latour’s office on the second floor was tucked under the eaves, with two skylights angled so close to the one small conference table that I had to watch my head as I pulled out a chair to sit. Legend was that the building had been the first municipal project of a young architect fresh out of school, who had among other things omitted putting heat in the basement because, as he’d explained it patiently to his challengers, “Heat sinks.”
Chief Latour, shorter and more used to the precarious proximity of his ceiling, grabbed the chair facing me without concern. “Did Tony Brandt fill you in at all?” he asked.
“He said it was a sexual harassment case.”
The chief shook his head. “It’s got to be a bum rap. The officer’s name is Brian Padget. He’s been with us two years. He’s well liked, respected, a hard worker-probably end up going to the State Police, with my luck. The complaint is he’s been pestering a married woman.”
“And the husband brought the complaint?”
Latour quickly glanced at my face. I sensed that locking eyes with other people made him uncomfortable. “Right. Norman Bouch. Not one of our model citizens. That’s one reason I think this whole thing is bullshit.”
“He have a grudge against Padget?”
He paused while the room filled with the reverberating roar of an unseen passing truck. “I don’t know that they’ve ever met,” he said eventually.
“What makes Bouch not a model citizen?”
“Nothing we could ever prove. He pretends he’s an excavation contractor. He’s got a backhoe he digs holes with around town, but everybody knows he sells dope for most of his income.”
I was a little uneasy with the assumptions. “He lives beyond his apparent means?”
Latour was now staring at the polished tips of his shoes, and smiled at my careful phrasing. “He’s got a wife and kids, a decent house, a Harley with all the fixin’s and a late-model Firebird. You figure it out.”
The conviction in his voice was absolute. I shifted my approach slightly. “Tell me a little about Padget.”
There was a fleeting glance at the wall. “Best officer I ever had.”
Given such praise, I was surprised at its brevity. “Local boy? Married? Liked by the others?” I prompted.
Latour straightened in his seat, suddenly emphatic. “No, he’s not married. But he wouldn’t fool around. I told you, he’s respected and admired-by everybody.”
I finally sensed what was eating at him. “But you think there might be something to what Bouch is claiming.”
The chief stood up, crossed the room, and resettled behind the protection of his desk.
“Are you going to interview him?” he asked.
“Not until I’ve finished my investigation. If I dig up anything criminal, a statement by him prior to being Mirandized will be thrown out in court-the judge’ll say he was coerced into talking for fear of being fired.”
Latour flapped his hand as if to shoo me away, no doubt regretting his having called Brandt in the first place. “Criminal? Christ Almighty. Bouch is just trying to bust our chops.”
“Does Padget know about the allegation?”
“Sure he does. I told him. He denied it completely. I’ve put him on paid leave till this is cleared up.”
“And he knows I’ve been asked to check it out?”
Latour gave a rueful half-smile. “By now, I’d say the whole department does.”
“What’s the general consensus?”
“They all think like I do. Bouch is just doing a number. It happens a lot, especially in this town. Do you know what they call Bellows Falls at the police academy? ‘Dodge City’-I kid you not. Our crime stats are in the top four or five for the state year after year, and we’re a quarter Brattleboro’s size-thirty-eight hundred people, tops. Besides me, I got one sergeant, six officers, and a bunch of part-timers. My other sergeant’s with the drug task force for two more years. We’re sitting ducks.”
“Does Bouch get much of your business?” I asked, hoping to head off more complaining.
“We’ve gone to his house for disturbances-domestic abuse stuff, drunk and disorderly. We’ve held him overnight to dry out, but no one’s ever filed charges against him.”
I rose and prepared to leave, my mind chasing after a dozen diverging questions. I had my doubts, however, that Chief Latour was the unbiased source I needed for answers.
I left to get my bearings-drive around, clear my head, and see the town. Latour had grumpily given me Padget’s and Bouch’s addresses. I wanted to check out the latter’s first but took the scenic route to get there.
The geographical protuberance I thought of as Bellows Falls’ pregnant belly is called the Island, although it is only the canal that has made it such. Nevertheless, that barrier has led to a wholly separate identity, consisting largely of an empty railroad yard and station, a few half-abandoned factories and warehouses, a couple of businesses, and an impressive view of the cascade and Fall Mountain beyond. It is like a failing industrial park hogging the best real estate in the area.
The next longitudinal stratum to Bellows Falls, west of the canal, is the downtown corridor I’d driven through on Rockingham Street, resolutely turned in on itself around its oddly shaped square, and-as in Brattleboro and many other older New England towns-with its back turned against the natural scenery.
Prominent above downtown is Cherry Hill, an oblong rise bisecting the village, and jammed with an assortment of schools, churches, a cemetery, and some of the town’s famous and ubiquitous white clapboard housing-both pleasant Greek Revival single-family homes and several squalid three-deckers, bursting at the seams with down-and-out tenants.
Skirting Cherry Hill’s western slope, Atkinson parallels Rockingham Street but is overwhelmingly lined with residential buildings. It exposes the village’s social extremes most clearly, with some of its more spectacular mansions snuggling up to the seediest flophouses. Atkinson, and the side streets extending across a narrow flat section to its west, are where the vast majority of the town’s inhabitants live. It is a beehive-like neighborhood-rich, poor, elaborate, and plain-virtually crawling with people and stamped by their passage. Toys, bikes, cars abandoned and functional, swing sets, birdbaths, and assorted debris all lie scattered among the houses like yard sale rejects. More vivid than the dramatic setting, overwhelming the spectacular architecture, is the sense of people in this town. They appear to live everywhere, as on an overloaded riverboat.