personality dictated he’d probably move a cot in before long—and I knew at least one officer from each patrol shift was assigned to be there. What I found was four times that number of people, all of them immersed in work, shrouded by the sounds of typewriters, telephones, muttered conversations, and the vague odor of overcooked coffee.
Sammie Martens was the first one to see me standing in the doorway. Listening on the phone, she waved me over to where she’d staked out a claim at one end of a long folding conference table.
She jotted down a few notes, thanked whoever it was at the other end, and hung up, explaining, “Still canvassing Gail’s neighborhood.”
She rose and led me to one of the bulletin boards, which had been covered horizontally by a six-hour timetable, divided into columns fifteen minutes apart. The legend,
Time of Assault
, occupied the center-most column. Reading from her freshly obtained notes, Sammie filled out an index card with “car sound—southbound—un-witnessed,” and stuck it with a pin under the 4:00-4:15 label.
She stood back and explained the team’s progress so far. “We’re filling it up little by little. Some of them, like Dennis’s old guy going to the john, are pretty specific; others, like the one I just got, aren’t worth too much.”
I pointed to the only entry in the 3:30-3:45 column, a card stating, “Burgess returns home.” After freeing herself and pulling the pillowcase off her head, Gail had locked the time at 3:37. “What about that one?”
“Timothy Burgess—lives over a mile down the street. One of the patrolmen working with Dennis found him. Rock-solid alibi, seen leaving one place and arriving home. We checked him for priors just to be sure. Nothing.”
I scanned the entire board, noticing that even I made an appearance. “Anything interesting at all, even if it doesn’t fit the timetable?”
Sammie shrugged. “Maybe.”
She marched back to her table and pawed through a pile of notes, extracting a single sheet. “Harry Murchison, works for Krystal Kleer Windows and Doors. He was half the crew that installed two of Gail’s windows last year.”
She handed me the sheet—a printout from the Vermont Department of Corrections. “One count of sexual assault and battery, for which he served time, and an arrest for sexual molestation, which never made it to court. We haven’t contacted him yet, nor have we run him by Gail to see if he rings a bell.”
She hesitated a moment and then added, “Are you planning to see her soon?”
I handed the sheet back. “I don’t know. Probably. You been able to check out what Murchison was doing last night?”
“I asked around his neighborhood a bit—low profile. He has a girlfriend with a noisy kid, they like loud music, and they put down a fair amount of beer on the weekend, so they’re not too inconspicuous. But the closest I could get to pinning down his whereabouts was whether his truck spent the night at home.”
She paused, apparently for effect. “It didn’t, at least not the whole night. When the woman I spoke to went to bed at midnight, the truck was still gone. When she got up early this morning, it was there, and she says she thought she heard it coming back ‘sometime in the middle of the night,’ to quote her.”
My mind was running through the various ways we could get closer to Mr. Murchison without tipping our hand. “He on parole or probation?”
Sammie shook her head. “I thought of the same thing. No, he’s not, so we can’t use a parole officer to help us out. Except for maybe getting chummy with his girlfriend, I don’t see how we can get close.”
“Maybe one of our snitches will. Where’s Willy?”
She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Out there somewhere, poking around in other people’s laundry. This is his kind of case. I’ll try to find him and tell him to work on that.”
I glanced back at the bulletin board with the timetable. “You said Murchison has a
Sammie Martens was the first one to see me standing in the doorway. Listening on the phone, she waved me over to where she’d staked out a claim at one end of a long folding conference table.
She jotted down a few notes, thanked whoever it was at the other end, and hung up, explaining, “Still canvassing Gail’s neighborhood.”
She rose and led me to one of the bulletin boards, which had been covered horizontally by a six-hour timetable, divided into columns fifteen minutes apart. The legend,
Time of Assault
, occupied the center-most column. Reading from her freshly obtained notes, Sammie filled out an index card with “car sound—southbound—un-witnessed,” and stuck it with a pin under the 4:00-4:15 label.
She stood back and explained the team’s progress so far. “We’re filling it up little by little. Some of them, like Dennis’s old guy going to the john, are pretty specific; others, like the one I just got, aren’t worth too much.”
I pointed to the only entry in the 3:30-3:45 column, a card stating, “Burgess returns home.” After freeing herself and pulling the pillowcase off her head, Gail had locked the time at 3:37. “What about that one?”
“Timothy Burgess—lives over a mile down the street. One of the patrolmen working with Dennis found him. Rock-solid alibi, seen leaving one place and arriving home. We checked him for priors just to be sure. Nothing.”
I scanned the entire board, noticing that even I made an appearance. “Anything interesting at all, even if it doesn’t fit the timetable?”
Sammie shrugged. “Maybe.”
She marched back to her table and pawed through a pile of notes, extracting a single sheet. “Harry Murchison, works for Krystal Kleer Windows and Doors. He was half the crew that installed two of Gail’s windows last year.”
She handed me the sheet—a printout from the Vermont Department of Corrections. “One count of sexual assault and battery, for which he served time, and an arrest for sexual molestation, which never made it to court. We haven’t contacted him yet, nor have we run him by Gail to see if he rings a bell.”
She hesitated a moment and then added, “Are you planning to see her soon?”
I handed the sheet back. “I don’t know. Probably. You been able to check out what Murchison was doing last night?”
“I asked around his neighborhood a bit—low profile. He has a girlfriend with a noisy kid, they like loud music, and they put down a fair amount of beer on the weekend, so they’re not too inconspicuous. But the closest I could get to pinning down his whereabouts was whether his truck spent the night at home.”
She paused, apparently for effect. “It didn’t, at least not the whole night. When the woman I spoke to went to bed at midnight, the truck was still gone. When she got up early this morning, it was there, and she says she thought she heard it coming back ‘sometime in the middle of the night,’ to quote her.”
My mind was running through the various ways we could get closer to Mr. Murchison without tipping our hand. “He on parole or probation?”
Sammie shook her head. “I thought of the same thing. No, he’s not, so we can’t use a parole officer to help us out. Except for maybe getting chummy with his girlfriend, I don’t see how we can get close.”
“Maybe one of our snitches will. Where’s Willy?”
She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Out there somewhere, poking around in other people’s laundry. This is his kind of case. I’ll try to find him and tell him to work on that.”
I glanced back at the bulletin board with the timetable. “You said Murchison has a
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