Archer Mayor - Bellows Falls

“You wouldn’t,” I said. “It’s mostly alcohol, perfume, and coloring. It would cover anything. Stay where you are. I’m sending someone up to take the aftershave to be tested. And keep your fingers crossed. I don’t think this sounds crazy at all.”

I dialed Isador Gramm in Burlington next, the only board-certified forensic toxicologist in the state, and a man I’d consulted in the past to great advantage.

“Is it possible?” I asked him after explaining Padget’s theory.

“I’ve never heard of it, but I suppose so. You say he bleeds as a result of shaving?”

“Yes.”

There was a thoughtful pause at the other end. “I can’t see where it wouldn’t work, Joe. Alcohol would not only completely dissolve the cocaine, but it would work as a carrier taking it into the system. It would be tough for whoever spiked the aftershave to come up with just the right amount-enough to appear in the urinalysis, but not so much that your victim would notice-but that could be dumb luck. I think the coke, by the way, would have to be pure. Any cutting agent would mess things up-either make the aftershave cloudy or inhibit the effect of the cocaine.”

“I know this is a little unusual, but if I had a courier hand-deliver this bottle to you in about three hours, could you run it through your machinery and bill it to the AG’s office?”

“Moving up in the world, are we? Sure, I don’t see why not. Send it on.”

I called over to the Patrol Division and arranged for a courier. Then I dialed Beverly Hillstrom’s number.

“You do send me the most curious packages,” she told me minutes later. “Although I’ll tell you right up front that I have nothing to report on the small skeletonized remains, other than it appears to have been a male Caucasian in his mid-teens. I found absolutely nothing on what might have killed him.”

I was disappointed with that, less because it implied an investigative dead end, and more because I truly hated the idea of taking someone so young, and dumping him into the bureaucratic equivalent of a pauper’s grave.

“What about Morgan?” I asked.

“There I can be more helpful. I’ll be faxing you my full report later, but I know how you like a sneak preview. Also, I found something you might find interesting, which I’ll tell about in a moment.

“Al Gould,” she continued, “was right on the mark concerning cause of death. The first bullet caught him through the body at a sharply oblique angle, a wound which if treated within an hour or so need not have been lethal, although it did stimulate significant blood loss. The second bullet was fatal, removing the right carotid and part of the jugular and causing massive exsanguination. Both bullets passed without measurable residue or noticeable fragmentation, and both appeared to me to have been shot from far enough away not to leave any powder marks. Of course, I’ve sent the clothing and samples to the lab, but my guess-which will not appear in the report-is that your shooter was not overly skillful. I think the first shot was intended for the heart, missing it posteriorly, and the second was probably aimed at the head-the standard coup de grâce between the eyes-ending up in the throat. So unless you’re dealing with someone very clever, you can eliminate any known crack shots.

“The body otherwise,” she went on, “was unremarkable in presentation, typical of a young male in good condition. Toxicology hasn’t reported back yet-they’ll be sending you separate findings in any case-but I wouldn’t be surprised to find both alcohol and drugs present. Mr. Morgan’s inner workings showed typical signs of both, albeit not to the extent they’re often present in older and/or more self-abusive people. I would say he got around without noticeable deficit.

“Now,” she finally said, to my relief, “for the interesting anomaly I mentioned. Inside Morgan’s body, along the path of the first bullet, I found a single, tiny filament of copper wire.”

I frowned at the phone. “Could it have come from the bullet’s jacketing?”

“No. I put it under the microscope. The size and shape of it suggest it was carried there by the bullet.”

I thanked her after a few closing comments and sat back in my chair, my eyes shut. In the darkness of my memory, I flipped through a catalogue of mental snapshots, looking for the one I recalled that featured small electrical wiring.

Satisfied at last, I left my office and circled the cluster of desks in the squad room to find Sammie and Jonathon poring over her reports.

“Jon,” I asked him, “did they find any prints belonging to Norm Bouch in that Burlington apartment, or anything else that proves without doubt he was ever there?”

“Yeah, along with three dozen other people’s, plus the neighbor’s statement who said he met him once.”

“I just hung up on Hillstrom. She found a tiny piece of electrical wire inside Jasper Morgan’s body. When I was interviewing Randy Haskins in that apartment, he was picking at a small patch sewn into an old electric blanket covering the sofa. I remember because I saw the wires dangling out one end of it.”

They both looked at me blankly.

“Bouch took the blanket off Morgan’s bed and brought it to Burlington?” Sammie asked incredulously.

“Did you find anything personal belonging to Morgan in that motel room?” I countered.

“No.”

“No pants or shirt or anything else, right? The place was cleaned out, just in case people like Marie Williams came snooping around later. Assuming Morgan ran for it right after he’d been shot, there probably wasn’t much blood on the blanket. So why waste it, when all it needed was a small repair?”

Jonathon was smiling. “Might be a question to ask Jan tomorrow morning. She was probably asked to patch it.”

“And in the meantime, we can get another search warrant and pick it up for a lab analysis.”

He began moving away. “I’ll call Kathy.”

“I’ve got a courier going to Burlington in a few minutes if she needs something signed by either one of us.”

He waved acknowledgement over his shoulder and vanished into my office.

“Even if Jan identifies it,” Sammie warned me, “it won’t take you far.”

I smiled at her, sensing at long last the first spidery signs of a real break developing. “Every bit counts, Sam, even the little ones.”

Early the following morning, Jonathon Michael and I were sitting on a bench in an inner hallway of the Windham County Courthouse, outside the spacious office of Judge Rachael Aumand. Inside were Jan Bouch, the judge, Kathy Bartlett, a stenographer, and the battered electric blanket we’d retrieved from the Burlington apartment.

When I’d picked her up just after sunrise, Jan had looked terrible-pale, nervous, teary, and obviously sleepless. She’d protested that she’d changed her mind, which I’d been expecting, and proclaimed Norm to be the victim of a miserable childhood. It had taken me an hour to turn her around, and I was by no means convinced the conversation would last three minutes into the inquest.

It had been over an hour, however, and we hadn’t heard a peep yet.

“If she does nail that blanket to Norm,” I said quietly, my voice echoing off the bright, pristine walls, “maybe we should issue that BOL on him.”

“Why?”

“Jasper’s dead, Lenny’s under wraps, Jan and the kids are in protective custody, Steve Kiley’s got every task force CI working to find out where Norm is and what he’s up to, and Greg Davis has the whole BFPD interviewing everyone who ever knew him. He’d have to be on another planet not to know we’re after him. And if he did pop Jasper, he’ll be twitchy as hell and prone to use a gun again. I don’t want anyone approaching him without knowing all that.”