Archer Mayor - Bellows Falls

I thought in silence for a few moments. “That’s fair. Could you describe the Bouches as parts of a bigger picture-without compromising confidentiality?”

“You ever hear the joke about what’s the most confusing day in BF?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Father’s Day. It may not be a thigh slapper, but it cuts pretty close to the bone. Norm Bouch came up here like a lot of others, ’cause the living was cheap and the pickings were easy. He’s an urban animal-from Lawrence, I think-and what he learned growing up there helps him run circles around the local yokels. People like Jan. She was unmarried when she had her first kid, she’s never had a job in her life, and her mom’s fifteen years older than she is. She’s the product of generations of welfare-dependent women-people who wouldn’t know what to do with an opportunity if it bit them on the ass. Guys like Norm can walk in out of the blue, not even bother with the usual razzle-dazzle, and sweep these girls off their feet. We shake our heads and say ‘tut-tut’ when they get pregnant and hooked on drugs, but we don’t do jack shit about preventing the problem in the first place. We graduate kids from high school after giving them Home Economics and watching them run around the football field, and we don’t seem to care that they can barely read and write and know nothing whatsoever about contraception. Norm’s original spin in this routine is that he doesn’t just love-’em-and-leave-’em. He keeps the kids he fathers. Not that that’s good news-he coerced every one of the girls he impregnated to give up their babies, and not because he loves kids, either-he lets welfare and Jan handle them. With him, everything is possession and/or power. Father Flanagan he’s not, even if we can’t prove anything.”

“Jan’s on drugs?” I asked, extrapolating from her generalized portrait.

That brought her up short. She stared at me in silence, her mouth still half-open, and then sat back in her chair, perhaps defeated that I’d only listened to her outburst to satisfy my own ends. “I don’t guess that’s a state secret. Yeah.”

I ventured a guess at the source of part of her anger at Norman Bouch. “And Norm helped put her there?”

“You didn’t hear it from me.”

“Fair enough. She in pretty bad shape?”

“Not physically, but it takes some stamina to kick even the soft stuff, and she’s got none of that. To answer your question, she’s admitted to me using coke and marijuana-and booze, of course. That’s always there, like oxygen.”

A silence settled in the small room as we looked at each other, linked by the knowledge of a world we were both paid to travel wearing metaphorical hip boots, looking for souls to salvage.

“You ever feel you might’ve been at this too long?” I finally asked.

“Every day. It’s becoming hard for me to believe there are normal, happy families out there. I see a father walking down the street holding his daughter’s hand, and I wonder how long he’s been abusing her.”

I looked at her in astonishment. This was about as hard-bitten as I’d seen. And yet I shouldn’t have been surprised. We expect aberrant behavior to spread inside a prison, or conservative militarism to result from an Army career. To think that someone could work year after year in Anne Murphy’s job, and not become a burned-out cynic, was to expect a depth of character the likes of Mother Teresa’s.

I stood up and pocketed my recorder, half hoping my next interview would be with some besotted optimist. And yet I felt deeply for Anne Murphy. She was truly one of the good guys, fighting against both the bureaucracy-and the public’s perception of it-and her own clients, who had in many cases come to see resignation as a birthright.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate all you’ve done.”

“Good luck,” she answered. “You’ll need it.”

But this time she shook my hand.

Bellows Falls’ town manager was a round, red-faced, busy-looking man with smudgy glasses. He walked around the outer periphery of his cluttered, dingy office like a blind man looking for a way out, his hands touching piles of papers, clipboards hanging from the walls, the spines of books lining the shelves. I half expected him to duck out of sight in mid-sentence when he reached the open door.

Unfortunately, he didn’t.

“When Chief Latour first told me about this situation, I was all but assured it was nothing,” Eric Shippee said, passing the doorway and placing a fingertip along the edge of a framed Norman Rockwell print. “Your exact words, Chief, were, ‘This is smaller than a wart on a rhino’s butt.’ Are you telling me something different now? Do we have a problem all of a sudden?”

Emile Latour gave me a beleaguered look and didn’t answer.

“Not necessarily,” I said, “but to do this investigation properly, it’s going to take more than a single afternoon.” I considered saying more, but I was already uncomfortable just being here and decided to keep things brief. I wasn’t sure why Latour had told Shippee about the allegations so early on, while downplaying them to such an absurd degree. It seemed he was opening himself up to trouble from two sides simultaneously, when simply keeping his mouth shut would have been perfectly appropriate. I wondered if I was dealing with incompetence, stupidity, cowardice, or something more devious I hadn’t yet sniffed out. It was the final possibility that made me nervous.

Shippee kept roaming, peering at me periodically from various spots around the room. Latour, predictably, returned to staring at the floor.

“You must’ve found out something by now,” Shippee persisted. “Was there sexual harassment or not?”

“It’s too early to tell. Accusations of this sort, especially against police officers, are often suspect-a way of getting back. But they all need to be looked at carefully-”

“I know the party line,” Shippee interrupted. “That’s precisely why I want to hear what you’ve found so far, so I can prepare for any fallout. In case you haven’t heard, this town is a lightning rod for trouble, and the press eats it up. We’ve been busting our asses lately to give Bellows Falls a better image, and I don’t need my own police department sneaking around behind my back with a piece of dynamite in their hands.”

I raised my eyebrows, not only at his mistrust, but at why such a supposedly mundane case should stimulate this kind of passion. “Have you heard something I haven’t?”

He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I instantly regretted having spoken. “Nothing. I’m picking up information where I can find it. I was told Norm Bouch travels in all the social circles, so I was wondering if you had something I could use-even a gut reaction.”

“Implying I’m not only hanging out with Bouch but holding back information as well?”

I got to my feet and headed for the door, stung by the man’s paranoid combativeness. “Why don’t you chew this over with Emile? I’ll go back to doing what I’ve been asked to do, as a courtesy, and I’ll report what I find to him. With any luck, we won’t have to meet again.”

I clattered down the noisy wooden steps of the town hall, through the ground floor lobby it shared with a movie theater, and emerged into the village square. It was ghostly gray outside, an odd mixture of ebbing daylight and glowing street-lamps. Half the stores had turned their lights on. Small clusters of teenagers drove or walked by like reconnaissance platoons looking for action. It was closing in on nine o’clock, and the weather was balmy. Experience told me it would be a busy night for the police, in Bellows Falls, Brattleboro, and elsewhere.