Our courtship was leisurely. She’d never married, I’d been widowed for quite some time. We were both therefore very comfortable in our respective singlehoods and in no rush to complicate things. But we discovered over time that we had become best friends, turning to one another for advice and companionship over lunch or dinner. Becoming lovers, finally, was a natural extension of that friendship.

  Mine had not been an overly populated life. My brother, Leo, and I had been born and brought up on a farm near Thetford Hill, about halfway up the eastern side of the state. Our father had been a silent, hard-working man, considerably older than our mother, who had dedicated herself to supplying her family with virtually all its essential needs, including many of its cultural ones. She did this with such success that Leo and I were content most of the time to stay put on the farm.

  As teenagers, we never felt any yearning to escape to the neighborhood watering holes, an isolationist tendency that followed both of us through the years. Leo, several years my junior, never did marry and still lived on the farm with our now wheelchair-bound mother, working as a butcher and dividing his extracurricular interests between classic cars of the fifties and fabulously endowed young women with very short attention spans.

  I, on the other hand, had become for a time a nomad, fighting in the Korean War, attending but not graduating from college in California, sampling the early stirrings of what would revolutionize the sixties. I returned to Vermont with an enormous library of eclectic tastes, more questions than I could handle, and was gradually tamed, first by Frank Murphy, who lured me to Brattleboro and the police department, and then by Ellen, whom I met and married shortly thereafter.

  Ellen’s death, eight years later, nipped that renascent taste for interdependence in the bud, driving me back to my solitude and my books. Meeting Gail many years later was thus a seriously mixed blessing and had posed the first real threat to my by-now stolid bachelor ways.

  Not that she ever pushed for marriage, or even cohabitation. She too had become used to a single life. Still, relationships by their very nature must evolve, and I often feared ours would eventually collapse precisely because neither one of us wanted it to change.

  It nearly had ended the previous fall. I’d gone up to Gannet, in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom area, for what I’d hoped would be a working vacation. It had turned out to be a grueling murder investigation. I’d emerged from the traumatic Gannet case dedicated to patching things up between us.

  That optimism had benefitted us both. We still lived apart, still pursued our separate interests, but now, having leapt this hurdle of self-doubt together, we’d come to trust one another more deeply, which is why the John Woll time bomb, and the obvious effect its explosion would have on the board of selectmen, chewed at me so constantly.

  Gail lived in West Brattleboro, on the other side of Interstate 91, on Meadowbrook Road. Her home had once been an apple barn, isolated at the top of a hill, the lesser of several outbuildings belonging to the Morrison Farm. Now that barn was Morrison’s only tribute, the farm having been sold and subdivided, and all the other buildings demolished.

  She’d renovated it, of course, filling it with a dizzying array of platforms and catwalks, all interconnected by enough stairways to satisfy an aerobics instructor. The core of the building she’d left open, so it soared some twenty feet to the rafters. In the winter, the whole place could be heated with the single wood stove in the center of the first floor. In the summer, the heat rose to the high ceiling and was vented through large skylights there, encouraged by two broad Hunter fans that continually moved the air.

  I drove up her steep, long driveway, leaving the gloom of the gully and the road behind and becoming increasingly exposed to the sunset-lit view that surrounded her house. As I got out of the car, I felt bathed in the light of the pink-tinged bluish clouds overhead, stretching all the way to the blazing, mountainous horizon.

  Gail, barefoot, in shorts and an abbreviated T-shirt that exposed her tanned stomach, lay stretched on a metal-and-plastic lawn chair on the second-floor deck that surrounded three sides of the building. Stepping onto the deck, I walked over to her and kissed her without saying a word. Her lips tasted of salt.

  She shifted her gaze from the dazzling sunset and smiled at me. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”

  I settled into the chair next to hers, feeling as I did so the last of my energy giving out. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

  She reached out and took my hand in hers. “How’s it all going, Joe?”

  “Well, it ain’t no back-bedroom crime of passion. I have the sinking sensation we’ll be tearing at this for a while, and that before it’s all over, there’ll be more bodies to bury, literally and otherwise.”

  She looked at me with her brow furrowed. “Why do you say that?” I waved my free hand toward downtown Brattleboro, invisible behind a masking cloak of distant green trees and hills. “Somebody down there has a serious grudge, and I don’t think he’s half close to getting it off his chest.”

  “And you haven’t the slightest idea who he is?”

  I shook my head, tempted to tell her anyway. “I have ideas, but that’s all.”

  She looked confused. “So you have a suspect, but you don’t know if he’s the right guy?”

  I changed my mind and slid away from the truth. “You got it.”

  I told her about Gary Nadeau making a grab for some inside information. I put it in joking terms, but she only half smiled.

  “Luman Jackson was behind that; I can almost guarantee it. Mrs. Morse finally found someone she could get hysterical with.”

  That was not good news, nor was it surprising. Jackson was vice-chairman of the board of selectmen. Once a teacher at the local high school, he’d retired several years back and had decided to right the wrongs he’d claimed had been foisted on the town by its incompetent leaders. Now, no less incompetent himself, he was a brooding, occasionally raging presence on the board, using manipulation, accusation, and sometimes outright blackmail to get his way. I guessed Gary Nadeau was deep in his pocket, and I knew Town Manager Tom Wilson would usually yield rather than stand on principle. I also sensed that a good many other people in town government had become Jackson’s stoolies out of fear for their jobs. He was the man Tony Brandt most frequently locked horns with and was without doubt one of the primary reasons Brandt had chosen his current strategy.

  I kept my voice neutral. “He’s getting worked up, is he?”

  Gail hesitated before answering. “Well, he’s certainly doing that, but that’s nothing new. He hates Brandt and would love to see him canned. But I sense something else here. Usually, he gets this glint in his eye when he’s really onto something, but this time it’s not as obviously calculating; it’s more emotional. Nothing positive, though; just a feeling.”

  I thought of John Woll. “No innuendos to go on?”

  She shook her head. “Just the glint, so far, although it seems worse than usual.”

  I glanced over at her, her eyes closed, her skin made dark by the blush of the fading sun. She looked very peaceful and in control, not at all awed by the threat of what she’d just forecast. She came from a generation that had cut its teeth protesting the Vietnam War, defending the underprivileged, decrying complacency and the status quo. Her past had prepared her well for her service on the board. People like Luman Jackson were not taken personally or blown out of proportion. She dealt with their actions and avoided the dirt. It was an admirably clear-sighted approach, but I knew it must take its toll. Gail was no saint, after all, and had a nasty temper when properly irked. I knew that from personal experience.

  “Has Luman leaned on you over this thing, because of me?”

  “Oh, a bit.” She opened her eyes and turned toward me. We were still holding hands. “Not enough to make any difference. Luman lives his life as a conspiracy, so he sees everyone else conspiring against him. To him, you and I aren’t a couple; we’re a plot, a dark and private conduit between the selectmen and the PD. So, sure, he leans on me sometimes, making insinuating remarks, but that’s all he can do. It amounts to a lot of hot air. It might be different if we were creeping around trying to keep this a secret; he would love that. But we’re not, so I wouldn’t worry.”

  That made me feel great.

  An alarm jangled by her side. “Ah, dinner beckons.”

  She got up and I followed her into the house. It was cooler than the deck. The fans overhead were whirling at top speed, making the dozens of plants look like they were enjoying a breezy day by the sea.

  The kitchen had once been in a separate room, but Gail had torn down the wall between it and the central core of the house. In fact, the bathroom was the only totally walled-off enclosure left in the building. I noticed that nothing was on the stove and that the oven knob was set at zero. “What was the alarm bell for?”

  Gail went over to the icebox and pulled out a large earthenware bowl. “Cold soup; I had to refrigerate it for a couple of hours.” She kept adding to a pile of things on the counter, all from the icebox. “Also cold fruit salad, cold celery and cheese, cold ice tea, and, in the freezer, cold ice cream. It’s a thematic meal.” She was a lacto-vegetarian, eating no fish, fowl, flesh, or eggs.

  I looked suspiciously at the cheese on the celery. “What is that?”

  “A mixture of bleu and cream cheese. Sorry, they were out of Cheez Whiz.”

  “You should switch stores. And this?” I sniffed at the soup, which had no odor whatsoever.

  “Carrot soup mixed with orange juice.”

  “My God. Is that legal?”

  Laughing, she dipped a spoon into the gluey orange substance and held it out for me to taste. I scooped a bit off the end of the spoon with my lips. It was delicious. “Oh, that’s awful.” I finished the spoonful.

  We ate under the fans, on the thick wool rug, our plates, bowls, and glasses spread out as if at a picnic. The sun had set, and the lighting came from indirect, hidden sources, mostly tucked behind the plants to project the giant shadows of their leaves across the ceiling and walls. It was all I had hoped it would be earlier, when I’d opted to come despite my exhaustion. Now, that deadness at my center had been smoothed to mere fatigue and I was feeling whole again, and more hopeful that, with time and a few breaks, what had seemed chaos to me earlier would sort itself out.

  Gail got up, walked over to me, and told me to take off my shirt and roll over onto my stomach. She then sat on my haunches and began working her fingers into my back, locating the knotted muscles and setting them loose. She was very good, trained in this as she was in the other extensions of her naturalist philosophy.

  After some fifteen minutes of pure bliss, I rolled over onto my back and looked up at her, still straddling my hips. Her face was shining with perspiration. “You do good work.”

  “I’d take that as a compliment if I didn’t know you’re only half conscious.”

  I laid my hands high on her bare thighs, which were hot and slippery from her exertion. “Christ, you worked up a sweat.”

  She smiled at me and in one fluid movement removed her T-shirt. She was wearing nothing underneath. “That’s not all.”

  · · ·

  When the phone rang, I listened to the answering machine giving its predictable message. Then I heard Sammie Martens’s voice: “Lieutenant, I hate to bother you, but if you’re there, could you either pick up or call me at the office right away? Thanks.”

  Gail, now naked, had dozed off on top of me. We were still on the rug, still intertwined and slightly sticky with sweat. I slid out from under her and glanced at my watch as I answered. At most, I’d been asleep a couple of hours. It wasn’t quite midnight. “What’s up, Sammie?”

  “Sorry, Joe, but I think I’ve got the man we’ve been looking for, the one who spent the night under the Elm Street bridge.”

  16

  EVER SINCE SAMMIE HAD REPORTED that Toby, her homeless informant, had been offered five hundred dollars by some mystery man to locate the bridge dweller, I’d told her to concentrate solely on finding him. Despite the growing work load, and the help she could have given by fulfilling other duties, my instinct was that the killer was stalking that bum, and that if we didn’t find him first, we never would. Her phone call gave me hope that we were close to a major breakthrough.

  Buddy Schultz almost dropped his mop when I banged through the back entrance to the Municipal Center. “Holy cow, Lieutenant. You almost scared me to death. Somethin’ up?”

  “Just a little late-night work. Sorry I startled you.”

  He shook his head in wonder. Compared to his other tenants, the police department was probably a prime source of entertainment. He made me feel almost sorry I couldn’t tell him of a major riot breaking out.

  Sammie was waiting for me in my office, which, when I entered, I wished she hadn’t been. I was instantly assaulted by the overwhelming odor of cheap wine, stale sweat, and what could only be described as rotting animal matter, all of it emanating from the tattered pile of humanity that was parked on one of my two guest chairs.

  Sammie rose as I entered. “Hi, Lieutenant. This is Milo. Milo, Lieutenant Joe Gunther.”

  Milo looked as if he’d fallen asleep, a gesture I envied him. I wondered myself how much longer I could keep functioning without some sleep. I sat on the edge of my desk, my fingers unconsciously dabbling in the large ashtray filled with paper clips. “Hello, Milo. How’re you doin’?”

  He looked at me with one yellow, watery eye. The other one had a whitish glaze and didn’t seem to function. “Okay.” His voice was low and gravelly, as if he had a severely sore throat.

  “Sammie tells me you used to live under the Elm Street Bridge. That right?”

  He thought about that. In fact, all his responses were delayed by long pauses, although I became less convinced as we went along that thoughtfulness had much to do with it.

  “Yup.”

  “Were you living there the night before last?”

  “Before last? Sure.”

  “How long had you been living there?”

  The eye, which had wandered to the floor, slid back up and fixed me again, watching me carefully. “How long? I don’t know.”

  “A few days? A few weeks?”

  “A while.” Behind his caked, multi-stained beard, I caught the hint of a smile.

  “And three nights ago—the night before last—did anything happen that struck you as unusual?”

  He was wearing a raincoat, and he removed one hand from its pocket to scratch at his forehead, which was grimy and spotted with scabs. His fingernails were snaggled and black. “Like what?”

  I had to be careful here. If I suggested a possibility he found acceptable, some defense lawyer down the line could accuse me of creating the very story I wanted to hear. “How did you sleep that night, Milo? Did you sleep through the night?”

  “I woke up to piss.” He glanced at Sammie to check for a reaction, but she was busy scribbling on her note pad.

  “Did you see or hear anything unusual during that time?”

  “I pissed in the water. I like the sound it makes.”

  “I meant something outside the area in which you were sleeping.”

  “Like what?” Again the sly smile.

  I looked at Milo for a moment, wondering about that smile. Then I circled my desk, pulled out the file Tyler had put together on the bridge site, and resumed my perch. “I don’t know; how about gunshots? Hear any of those?”

  “Nope.”

  I feigned surprise. “You’re kidding. No shots? Something like a backfire, maybe?”

  His brow furrowed. “I never read nothin’ about gunshots.”

  “I’m asking what you heard, Milo.”

  His face closed down to an obstinate mask. “No. No shots.”

  “What did you make your bed out of?”

  “I was under the bridge. There wasn’t no bed.”

  “But you slept on something. What was it?”

  “You know what it was. You found it. Don’t you believe me or somethin’? I was under that bridge.”

  “I believe you, Milo, but the bedding was missing. We need to know what it was you used as a bed.”

  Sammie had stopped writing and was looking at me strangely.

  Milo’s eyes shifted back and forth several times, his lips tight. “Cardboard. I slept on cardboard boxes.”

  “Not newspapers? I thought you guys liked newspaper.”

  “It tears.”

  “So, no newspaper at all.”

  “No.” His voice was defiant.

  “Why’d you sleep so near the water? Weren’t you afraid of getting wet, or of rolling over into the stream in your sleep?”

  “No.” More doubtful now.

  “I would have tucked myself right up under the bridge, maybe dug a shelf so I’d be high and dry. Why didn’t you do that?”

  “Too much work.” He didn’t believe it anymore than I did.

  “You smoke, Milo?”

  “Why?”

  “We found some butts. They yours?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You smoke a lot, huh.”

  “Yeah. A lot.” His confidence was returning.

  “Bullshit.” I tossed the file onto the desk. It made a little slapping sound in the quiet room. Milo watched it as if it might fly off and attack him, but it already had.

  “Why’re you telling us this, Milo? You were nowhere near that bridge.”

  He bristled. “Was too.”

  “Whoever was living there had been there for weeks, well over a month. The bed was made of newspaper. It was tucked up onto a shelf right under the angle of the bridge, six feet from the water, and there wasn’t a butt to be seen that was under two months old. Why are you here, Milo?”

  He went back to staring at the floor, his hands jammed into his pockets. Sammie was looking embarrassed.

  “You’re not in any trouble, you know. You haven’t broken any laws. The worst you’ve done is waste my time and make Detective Martens feel bad. You could fix that by telling us why you came to us. Did someone tell you to?”