Finding Amy (4 page)

B
y Tuesday morning, Sergeant Joyce had made Danny Young the primary, and the Portland Police Department's involvement in the case of Amy St. Laurent, missing person, began moving forward in a big way. Joyce's first task was to update his lieutenant and convince him that Amy St. Laurent was not just an irresponsible young adult who'd taken off for a few days and that the case merited major attention.

Mornings at 109 are hectic in the Detective Bureau. Reports are stacked on the detective sergeants' desks as they go through the cases and assign them to the detectives. I have an 8:30 meeting with my sergeants, then a staff meeting with the chief and crew. Sergeant Jones and Sergeant Coffin are waiting to start reviewing last night's activity, but no Sergeant Joyce.

I can feel my head and ears get red as I get pissed and call his extension in the bay. “Tom? Don't make me come out there.”

Tom comes into my office, full of energy, bouncing like an awkward daddy longlegs. “What's the holdup?” I ask.

“I told ya. I told ya. The South Berwick thing. The girl is really missing. This is wrong all the way. It feels like the Tevanian case a few years ago.”

Hand up, I hold off the other guys for a moment. “Why, Tom?”

“She's totally departed from her normal behavior. Totally. It's very unusual. Very …” He goes on about the facts.

My pager is blaring and the loudspeaker is calling for me at the same time my phone is ringing. It's about other crimes, and the chief wants to see me before staff. I rush the crime review and Tom gives us more.

“She's never showed at her work. Never called her mom like she always does. She never took care of her cat. Hell, never left her cat like that before. This is real and it's heating up fast, Joe! A guy named Rubright was up visiting from Florida and says he slept in her driveway Saturday night. She never came home! He looks wrong, too. Plus, he has her belongings!”

He goes on about the quirks in her behavior as I pull on my jacket and straighten my tie for staff. “How old is this girl, Tom?”

“ Twenty-five.”

“And what's her name?”

“Amy St. Laurent.”

Later that morning, Chief Michael Chitwood and Amy St. Laurent's family members held a news conference in which she was officially declared missing. St. Laurent was described as stable and cheerful, a responsible young woman who was not the type to simply disappear. Family members pleaded with the public for any information they might have and for help in locating the missing woman.

Detectives spent the day gathering information
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on their most likely suspects, Eric Rubright and Russ Gorman, and beginning the long process of checking out their stories concerning their activities on Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Some detectives worked the phones while others spread out to interview witnesses, setting aside their existing caseloads wherever possible because the early days of an investigation are so crucial. But many other cases were fresh, urgent, and had to be attended to.

Eric Rubright was scheduled to depart that same day on a 4:00 p.m. flight. In response to the police request that he return for a second interview and take a polygraph, he agreed, after some deft cajoling, to delay his flight until Wednesday. Detectives were pleased by his apparent cooperation, but several things they had learned still concerned them. First was the information from Amy St. Laurent's neighbor, Ruth McElaney, provided by the South Berwick Police Department, about Rubright's angry behavior in their shared driveway on Friday night and St. Laurent's statement to McElaney that he was angry because he had hoped to have sex with her and that wasn't going to happen. Other friends of St. Laurent's confirmed that, in the days before Rubright's arrival, she had become increasingly nervous about his visit, worrying about being able to handle him.

Along with some minor drug offenses, detectives learned that Rubright, who was a big guy and a former semiprofessional rugby player, had been given a restraining order after being involved in a domestic incident with a former girlfriend who was also named Amy. They reasoned that a man who flew over a thousand miles to see a girl he hoped to have sex with might well react badly if his plans were thwarted. Especially if that man had a history of reacting violently—even more so if the man had a history of reacting violently toward women named Amy.

It looked like they could make a pretty good case for obsession. If Russ Gorman was telling the truth, and he had dropped off St. Laurent at the Pavilion, it would not be hard to imagine a scenario in which Eric Rubright, already angry at her for leaving with another guy, is cruising the Old Port, sees Amy St. Laurent, and decides he's going to get what he came for. Nor to imagine how badly things could go wrong if she resisted.

On Tuesday evening, with all this information in hand, Portland police borrowed Detective Gerard “Biff” Brady from the Cumberland County sheriff to polygraph Eric Rubright. Rubright didn't do well. Even before he was connected to the machine, while Brady was conducting the cognitive interview, trying to get Rubright comfortable and taking him through the story of the night Amy disappeared, Rubright's body language was strange. He crossed his legs, lowered his eyes, and tried to move away from the interviewer, all suggesting to Brady that Rubright was hiding something. As Brady began the polygraph and took him through the story, just mentioning Amy's name evoked a strong response. Queried about the response, Rubright told Brady about a situation with a woman named Amy in Florida, which resulted in a restraining order. He flagged as deceptive again when Brady queried why Rubright was able to enter Amy's apartment to take a shower but was uncomfortable sleeping there.

The polygraph session lasted for hours, with Brady coming out to consult with the observing detectives several times. Even after being confronted about being evasive and admitting it, Rubright continued to be untruthful, registering a strong response again when Brady asked if he had had anything to do with St. Laurent's disappearance. Sergeant Joyce and Lieutenant Loughlin, observing the interview, both felt that Rubright could be the guy. His behavior was strange and suspicious, he was obviously holding things back, and testing showed his behavior was “consistent with practicing deception.”

“For God's sake, of course it's him! It's great. Less than twenty-four and you guys got him. It looks good, Danny! He's establishing his story …”

Danny looks at me and says, “I'm not sure, Lieutenant. He does look good but I'm still not sure. I feel funny about a few things.”

“Dan, he slept in her driveway. Does that tell you anything? He was disgusted with himself. He went into a jealous rage because of these other guys and probably broke her neck. Then he dumped her somewhere. Look, he couldn't even sleep in her house! Why would you do that unless something else was going on? He stayed there the night before, so why wouldn't he stay again and wait for her return? It's because he killed her and can't stand it. Now, of course he's cooperating. Wanna bet he fails his poly?”

My good buddy Gerard “Biff” Brady is on loan to us to perform a polygraph. Brady is a talented interviewer and has solicited confessions from some of the worst child abuse cases I've ever run across.

“Biff'll get it out outta him.” I head back through the bay toward my office.

We all feel confident Rubright has something to do with this girl's disappearance. Tom Joyce and others are in the room watching the closed-circuit videotape of the polygraph.

“Check his history out,” I say. “You'll see. He's hot.”

It's Tuesday night around 2000 hours. Just twenty-four hours since Danny got the call. We're all still working, but I feel good. They got a guy who looks responsible or certainly knows something. I call the chief and let him know what we got.

Chief Chitwood was involved in over five hundred homicide cases during his career in Philadelphia, including the Ira Einhorn/Holly Maddux murder. He's a cop's cop. I have tremendous respect for the man.

“Yeah, Chief, he's in the poly now and it's not looking good for him. Christ, not only that, he went back to her place Sunday morning with her cell phone, coat, purse, backpack still in his car. He has some BS story about driving around, looking for her, etc. Then he slept in his car in her driveway. There's a whole bunch of crap. I'll keep you up on it. You never know, but yeah, he looks like the guy.”

Brady emerges from the room, drained, and tells the huddled detectives that Rubright has failed on a number of parts, plus he seems nutty.

“He has lied to me several times and admitted to that later on. He's real emotional, of course, considering the circumstances, but he's testing deceptive or inconclusive on various categories. You guys know all of the flags, and that he's got all her belongings to boot? Something certainly isn't right.”

Tom and I get into it a bit. “Christ, Tom, check it out and you'll find the homicidal triad
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in his background, personality disorder, history of violence. Should I go on?”

“Oh, you gonna start this up again?” Tommy says.

“Well, Tom, how many times have I been right on this?”

“Oh, okay, Lieutenant. You know. You know.”

We banter back and forth, our usual mechanism to work our minds. “Now, Tom, when I was in the FBI academy back in '95 in that criminal psychology course …” I go on for fun. “Hey, don't make me go to the box, Tom … Don't.”

The box is an old cardboard box of my solved cases from the '80s and early '90s that I literally slam down on a detective's desk every now and then as a reminder that I, too, did this job.

“Well, he is cooperating,” Tom says.

“Wouldn't you, in a case like this?” But he's right. We still have to be objective. Tom and I like Rubright as a suspect. Sergeant Bruce Coffin likes Rubright. Danny is shifting.

At this point, it's three to one, but Danny pushes on. “Remember, Rubright was mad the night before as well.”

“Look,” Tommy exclaims, “Rubright is gonna leave. He leaves, gets a lawyer, and then it's back and forth to Florida. We gotta hit it hard now and push this other guy aside. He can wait.” Tommy's just doing his job here—prioritizing and being practical.

Brady emerges from the polygraph again, shaking his head wearily, and consults with Coffin. “He's testing deceptive and inconclusive again. Admits he's still lying to me. Plus there's this thing with another girl named Amy. He told me he has harassment papers against him and this other girl fits your girl's description.”

I'm feeling excited because I think we've got our perp. It's a strange, conflicted story, and everything points to him. But Danny is still holding out. He's pushing this other guy, Russ Gorman. Gorman's on probation, which means a criminal history.

“Look,” Danny says, “this Gorman was the last one seen with the girl. We can't eliminate him yet.”

“Dan, he dropped her off, okay? Then nutbag here picks her up and he's in a jealous rage 'cuz she left him. Plus they had that fight the day before she went missing.”

Tom jumps in. “He's leaving tomorrow and we've got nothing on this guy. We have a lot of work to do to check this out.”

No one goes home. We're working against the clock on Rubright with a million other things to check. This is what investigation is all about. It's hard, frustrating, and tedious, but we're starting to think maybe we've got a dead girl, and that's what matters.

Danny Young, who was the primary, continued to disagree. He wanted to focus the attention on Gorman. Young, who felt he had a pretty good rapport with Rubright, took over interviewing him, an interview observed by Sergeant Bruce Coffin. (Frequently, significant interviews will be conducted by one detective with a second one observing.)

Sergeant Coffin is a tall man, wide shouldered and lanky with a graying Abe Lincoln beard. He always wears a suit. Coffin has a ready smile and is quick with a joke to ease tension or lighten people's spirits. His impatience, his eagerness to resolve matters quickly, contrasts oddly with the fact that he is a wonderful and patient explainer of police procedure. When he's not fighting crime, Sergeant Coffin is a gifted artist whose paintings are shown in galleries.

Although both the inconclusive polygraph and Rubright's peculiar manner continued to concern the detectives, Rubright was cooperative and forthcoming. He described being unable to find Amy, leaving the Pavilion nightclub, and using his compass to travel south until he reached the turnpike. Young found Rubright's story and demeanor convincing, and was impressed by his continued willingness to speak with them and his openness about his story.
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Young's feeling was that Rubright, a former college rugby player who was currently unemployed owing to the effects of a severe concussion sustained in a car accident, was just a down-to-earth, dumb jock who had developed a big thing for Amy St. Laurent, a feeling that she didn't reciprocate. However, at the end of the interview, concerns were raised again when Young and Coffin asked Rubright for hair samples and DNA and he refused. Why balk at this after having been so cooperative, unless the cooperation was just a ploy?

At the same time that they were collecting information about Eric Rubright, the detectives were also focusing on Russ Gorman, the man who, according to the timeline they were developing, appeared to be the last one known to have seen Amy St. Laurent alive. Gorman was twenty-one years old, a five-foot-ninish, 160-pound pretty boy with artificially streaked blond hair fashionably spiked with gel. He had multiple tattoos and a pierced ear. He was a regular in the Old Port bar scene, well known to bartenders and bouncers.