He hesitated, weighing whether or not I was setting him up. “Wait a minute.”
He disappeared into the gloom to the rear of the trailer and reemerged moments later with a cracked plastic Baby Ben clock-an old wind-up model dating back thirty years.
I turned it over, pulled the alarm tab up, and moved the hour hand until it touched the alarm sweep. Nothing happened-just as I’d suspected. “Was this broken when you got it?”
“Yeah-piece of shit. Should’ve known.”
“That makes two of us.”
I found J.P. Tyler squirreled away in his compact forensics lab. His eyebrows arched when he saw who’d opened the door. “Joe. How’re you doing? I didn’t know you were back.”
“I’m not officially, so don’t tell anyone.” I handed him the broken clock. “Do me a favor. Find out why the alarm doesn’t work in this thing.”
He took it from me and smiled. “Sure. You ought to look into buying a new one, though. These aren’t too accurate.”
“It’s not mine. It’s part of a case, and it’s red-hot priority.”
The smile widened. “And you’re not back officially.”
“Right. Let me know as soon as you can. I’ll be in the property room.”
The property room was across the hall from Tyler’s closet, and about three times larger. A high-security area, it was where we held evidence until it was needed for trial, and therefore was packed to the ceiling with tagged and labeled bags and containers. What I was after, however, was right in the middle of the floor, readily accessible for the case being heard across the street at this very moment. I sat down among the boxes and began sorting through the envelopes within them, being careful not to break any evidence seals.
I hadn’t completely closed the door-the stench of stale, confiscated marijuana being reminiscent of old, dirty clothes-but I had dropped the bar that stopped people from inadvertently stepping inside the sacrosanct room. When I heard a movement behind me a quarter of an hour later, therefore, I expected to see J.P. Tyler. Instead, I looked up to find Brandt staring down at me. He didn’t look pleased.
“What the fuck’re you doing?”
I stood up awkwardly, favoring my wounded gut, and smiled lamely. “I have to put this to rest, Tony. I got too many questions rattling around up here.” I touched my temple.
“I’m not so sure you’ve got anything up there. The hospital called this morning, madder than hell. They’d already contacted our insurance carrier, who in turn called the town manager, who’s just finished reaming my butt. I called Harriet and found out you’re not laid up at home, feeling sorry for yourself, you’re in here, fucking around with state’s evidence for the hottest ongoing trial we’ve had in a decade.” His voice had grown in volume and pitch throughout this monologue, but was cut short by Tyler appearing at his elbow. “What the hell do you want, J.P.?” he asked.
Tyler held up the clock between us. “The alarm mechanism’s been cut clean through-fresh marks, I’d say probably by a pair of wire cutters.”
“It couldn’t have just fallen off through wear and tear?”
“No way.”
Brandt looked at both of us and took the clock from Tyler. “What are you talking about?”
“Bob Vogel said he missed his meeting with Helen Boisvert the morning after Gail was raped because his alarm didn’t go off. It sounded pretty lame then, but lying on my back for three weeks got me wondering. The guy’s a total shit-we know he’s raped before, and he treats everyone he meets like scum-but he’s hanging onto his probation like a drowning man. Look at the effort he takes not to be caught driving that beater of his. Also, since he signed up with New England Wood Products, he’s never missed a day, never even been late. I wanted to find out if he’d lied about the alarm clock.”
Tony Brandt tugged at his ear, probably wishing he were on vacation. “You’re suggesting somebody cut the alarm to set him up?”
“Possibly. The other argument being that he cut it himself to give himself an alibi.”
I let Tony fill in the blank on that one. “For missing a meeting with Boisvert? Seems a little elaborate for someone who can barely string two sentences together.”
“Plus we didn’t find a wire cutter anywhere, in his car or the trailer,” J.P. added.
Tony mulled it over for a few moments. “Jesus,” he finally muttered, “we’re going to have to tell Dunn.”
“And he’s going to have to tell defense counsel,” I added.
I looked down at what I’d been holding when Brandt found me-the photos Vogel had taken of Gail walking around town. They were not sealed but were instead in a brown envelope, tied with a string. I opened the envelope, catching Brandt’s attention.
“What’s that?”
“Another of the things that bugged me. In that box of files you brought up, I found out we never did find a camera, and that the Green Mountains Lab people who processed the film had no files or recollections linking the film to Vogel.”
“And that got you thinking, too,” Tony finished morosely.
I didn’t answer. As I’d been speaking, I’d also been flipping through the eight pictures, not looking at Gail, as I had previously, but at the backgrounds to each scene. “Yeah, it did,” I murmured. “It struck me that since we found them in his trailer, we automatically assumed they were his, especially since we had so much other stuff against him. So we looked at them for who they showed us, and for what fingerprints might be on them, which, conveniently enough, were all smeared. What we never concentrated on was when they were taken.”
“Actually, I did,” Tyler said, trying not to sound offended. I was finding fault, after all, with his part of the investigation, not something he was used to. “But all I could get was that it was summer. I couldn’t find any calendars or clocks in the background store windows, or anything else that would give me a better fix.”
I held out one of the pictures to him, of Gail waiting to cross the street at a traffic light opposite the Photo 101 camera store. Next to her was a blue Toyota Corolla, its license plate easily readable. On its windshield, barely visible, was a small blob of color. “How about a parking ticket?”
J.P. took the picture from me. “Shit.” He quickly copied the plate number and headed off to a computer terminal. All our tickets were issued using a computerized, handheld system, which meant the time, date, parking-meter number, and details about the vehicle would all be in our files.
Brandt let out a sigh. “So what else have you been churning over in that hyperactive brain of yours?”
I told him about the logging-equipment yard near Jamaica, the oil slicks, and of my conversation with Fran Gallo. He absorbed it all quietly, having already adjusted himself to the inevitable meeting with Dunn.
He nodded once I’d finished. “All right. I don’t think the oil slicks or the red shirt’ll cause much trouble, but this other stuff might.” He checked his watch. “They’re probably about ready for a lunch break over there. I’ll talk to Dunn. You better come along.”
Tyler returned and handed him a slip of paper with a date on it. “It’s the only ticket that car’s had in the last two years. No possibility of confusion. And the owner paid it off personally, here in the building, one hour later, so the picture could only have been taken during about a forty-five-minute time span.”
Brandt looked at the slip of paper grimly. “Well, let’s hope Vogel doesn’t have an alibi.”
20
Robert Vogel did have an alibi for the time the pictures were taken of Gail. He was at a doctor’s office, having his cigarette-corrupted lungs examined by special request of New England Wood Products’s insurance carrier, who was interested in tacking a waiver onto Vogel’s coverage.
We found this out at the end of a long, tense afternoon, spent in the offices of an extremely unhappy James Dunn, who, during the brief times he came out of his office to consult with us in an adjoining conference room, kept giving me looks that he obviously hoped would make me burst into flames.