“Thank you, Gail.”

  She turned and kissed me, her breast brushing my arm. “For what?”

  I hesitated, trying to put it right, knowing it would fall short, and that it wouldn’t matter anyhow. “For your spirit.”

  She patted my bare hip. “Come on, let’s stare up at the stars for a while.”

  31

  I HAD JUST BEEN HANDED MY MAIL, my phone messages, and the daily report by Maxine Paroddy through Dispatch’s freshly hung door when Tony Brandt left his office diagonally across the room and grabbed me on the way by.

  “Ready for the slaughter?” He headed for the back stairs up to the second floor, where the selectmen held their meetings.

  I was both trying to follow him and go through my correspondence, with more or less success. “I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee first.”

  “No can do, unless they have some in there.” We walked down the upstairs hallway to the front of the building. Ahead of us, clustered in front of the doors leading to, respectively, the town manager’s office, the town attorney’s office, and the board of selectmen’s meeting room, were Tom Wilson, Gary Nadeau, and Brandt’s secretary, Judy. Off to one side was James Dunn, whose face looked like he was standing barefoot in manure.

  Brandt swept by them as he had me earlier, marching toward the far-left door. “Hi, boys and girls.” By his tone and demeanor, he struck me as the happiest of Hannibal’s soldiers, off to conquer Rome. I just hoped the results weren’t the same.

  He led the way into a large, newly redone room smelling of fresh paint, cut wood, and new carpeting. The back, from where we entered, was filled with metal folding chairs arranged in rows. Facing us, their backs against the sunlit windows, the five selectmen sat at a long semicircular table, looking like a half-baked imitation of the Supreme Court.

  By instinct, we clustered in separate groups: Brandt, Judy, and I off to one side of the center aisle; Wilson and Nadeau to the other. Dunn stayed disdainfully in the rear, by the door, as if planning to leave discreetly as soon as the lights dimmed and the play began.

  Indeed, the lighting was theatrical, coming mostly as it did from the windows. It forced us to squint slightly and made the faces of those across from us dark and slightly menacing. Brandt said something to Judy. She looked doubtful but, with a little more prodding, finally got to her feet and walked around to the back of the selectmen, lowering the blinds of each of the windows with a snap. Dunn, for his part, hit the switch by the door for the overhead lights. Suddenly, the room was bathed in bland, even, artificial light.

  Luman Jackson, tall, hawk-like, and furiously scowling, twisted in his chair, hoping perhaps to burn Brandt’s emissary with the heat of his glare. It almost worked; the poor woman returned to Tony’s side looking diminished in stature.

  Brandt merely smiled at Jackson. “Sorry. Hard to see.”

  I noticed Gail was hiding her smile behind her hand.

  Jackson was not amused and pointed at Judy. “What is she doing here? This is an executive session.”

  “This is my secretary, Judith Levine. I invited her here to take a verbatim transcription of everything that’s said today.”

  “We already have someone doing that.” He nodded toward the most recent member of the board, a pale-faced accountant named Orton, who was already scribbling furiously.

  “Good,” was all Brandt answered.

  There was a pause, during which I guessed Brandt was supposed to give Judy her marching orders. He just stared at Jackson, waiting for the meeting to begin. Judy looked like one of the vestal virgins about to be thrown on the fire. I seriously doubted that any notes she took following this would be readable.

  Jackson tried a more direct approach: “I’m requesting that you ask your secretary to leave before we begin, Chief Brandt.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Chairman, but thank you all the same.”

  The silence was thundering. I thought I could hear my watch ticking on my wrist. Mrs. Morse, who’d been ineffectually holding her chairman’s gavel from the start, slowly leaned over toward Jackson and whispered into his ear. His expression didn’t change, but his mind apparently did. He nodded once curtly and announced as if nothing had happened, “This meeting is now in session.”

  Gail cleared her throat gently and pointed delicately at Mrs. Morse. Jackson looked from one to the other with irritation and then flushed slightly. Indeed, Mrs. Morse, no shrinking violet herself, looked ready to use the gavel on Jackson’s head.

  Jackson muttered an apology, and Mrs. Morse banged the tabletop loudly. “Now we are in session.”

  James Dunn immediately stood up. “Madam Chairman, might I inquire why I was asked to be here? My understanding of the town charter is that executive sessions are held primarily to discuss personnel matters, like salaries and such.”

  Luman Jackson, whose own frostiness could rival Dunn’s, cocked an eyebrow and shut Mrs. Morse up just as she opened her mouth to respond. “Mr. State’s Attorney, I can sympathize with your wanting to go back to your office, but to pretend this meeting was called to discuss salaries doesn’t do justice to your imagination. We are here to discuss John Woll, who is not only a town employee, but is also being investigated by your office—”

  “And as such not a subject for conversation in a setting like this, at least not with me here,” Dunn finished for him. “If you, Madam Chairman, or anyone else in this room, wants to know what the state’s attorney’s office is doing about John Woll, you will just have to wait until that investigation has been concluded.”

  With that, Dunn turned on his heel and left the room, closing the door behind him with a bang. Jackson was looking less and less like the vice-chairman he was, and more like an angry, frustrated caricature carved in stone. We hadn’t been here five minutes, and already the air had enough electricity in it to power the town for a week.

  Brandt chose that moment to clear his throat. “Madam Chairman, with the departure of Mr. Dunn, I suggest that any further discussion of John Woll be tabled. As you are aware, the police department has been cut out of that investigation and has handed over all its files to the SA’s office. I’m sure Mr. Nadeau would agree with me that any official discussion of the case without Mr. Dunn might well be treading onto very thin legal ice.”

  Mrs. Morse, not bothering to compete verbally, merely pointed her gavel at a pale and nervous Gary Nadeau, who nodded, also without a word.

  “Let it be noted that the town attorney is in agreement with the chief,” she intoned, pleased at last to be heard.

  Tom Wilson, who was no Richard the Lionhearted but who also disliked Jackson with a passion, raised his hand. “That brings up the advisedness of this entire meeting, actually. Mr. Dunn mentioned the town charter; if indeed we are to deal with personnel matters in any detail, it is my understanding that I as town manager am supposed to be the board’s agent in these matters, and that the board should be called together to discuss such a case only after I’ve completed my own investigation.”

  Jackson whacked the table before him in irritation with his open hand. “I’ve had just about enough of this. You bureaucrats can run for cover all you want, but something stinks here, and I intend to find out what it is. I don’t give a rat’s ass what’s in the charter, and nobody’s going to tell me that I can or cannot ask certain questions while the whole goddamn town is falling down like a house of cards.”

  “That may be overstating the case a bit,” Gail said levelly from her end of the curved table.

  Jackson flared. “Maybe from your vantage point, Miss Zigman, but not all of us share your source of information, or your obvious bias.” He shifted his attention back to the rest of us, allowing Gail to redden angrily more or less in private. “My phone is ringing at all hours of the day and night; I’m getting calls from newspapers in California, for Christ’s sake. ‘Is it true that Brattleboro has become the chute for Massachusetts’s dirty laundry?’ That’s what one of them asked me. That’s not good for business or morale, and by allowing it to continue, it might just become true.”

  Gail sailed back in. “What’s the point, Mr. Vice-Chairman?”

  It seemed to me Jackson’s frustration was so real he could barely give it voice. Despite my antipathy for the man, I began to feel slightly sorry for him. “The point is: I want to know what’s happening here. I hear our building inspector is being investigated for no good reason. I hear one of our most eminent citizens is suspected of fraudulent financial dealings. I hear a perfectly respectable businessman had all his records removed by the police, again for no apparent reason. There’ve been shootings, high-speed chases, and now a DWI involving a cop who’s also suspected of murder. It sounds like our police department is both corrupt and stupid. And the result, I might add, will be more lawsuits than this town has ever seen. I’m sick and tired of looking like a moron to everyone who asks me what’s going on, and I want some answers. Now.”

  There was a general rustling following this, as everyone either shifted through paperwork or squirmed in their chairs, figuratively looking for some sort of cover. Tom Wilson glanced at Brandt, who merely smiled and extended his hand in invitation; these people were more Wilson’s bosses than Brandt’s, the gesture said, so be my guest.

  Wilson sighed and addressed the board. “Madam Chairman, I wish I could accommodate you and your colleagues here, and I’ll certainly do the best I can, with Chief Brandt’s cooperation, of course. Despite the setbacks, the confusion, and all the press, the police department is doing its job. Progress is being made, and the instances you mentioned of what looked like random police activity all have clear and reasonable explanations—”

  “Of which we can give you only the barest outline,” Brandt added.

  “I’ll start with that,” Jackson said. “God knows I don’t have a damned thing now.”

  I sensed from the tone that things were settling down slightly and entering a purely informational phase. Wilson and Brandt were to become, for the next several minutes, the feeders at the lion cage, doling out morsels to a beast with an appetite for their arms. I turned my attention to the wad of papers that Maxine Paroddy had handed me earlier.

  It turned out Jackson hadn’t been the only one to get calls from reporters in California. I gave up on the phone messages about halfway through and turned to the daily report to see if anything new had surfaced during the night shift. Apart from the usual array of domestic disputes, a barroom brawl, and a foot chase after a teenager who’d been trying to pry open a bank’s night-deposit box with a crowbar, the report told me nothing I wanted to know. I wished to hell I’d been able to get to my office before I’d been dragged in here, so I could have had a peek at our own interoffice report.

  Disappointed, I returned to my mail, dimly aware of the back and forth goings-on at the front of the room. Wilson, with little help from Brandt, was trying to explain the necessity of checking into everything and everybody in a case like this, even at the risk of stepping on toes.

  My mail was also unenlightening: equipment brochures, official junk mail from the state capital, notifications of various classes being offered to police officers, from first-aid to SWAT tactics. I went back to the phone messages, this time starting from the bottom of the pile.

  The fifth one up froze me in my seat: Isador Gramm, Beverly Hillstrom’s forensic toxicologist, had called with “interesting news.” The message indicated he’d called just five minutes before I’d been dragged into this kangaroo proceeding.

  I snapped out of my reverie at the mention of my name “—been up to, nosing around like some damn tabloid reporter?”

  Brandt answered. “His job, Mr. Vice-Chairman, which he can’t do sitting here.”

  “He is the one heading this investigation, is he not?”

  “He is, but he will not be allowed to speak on that matter.”

  Jackson bristled. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Please,” Mrs. Morse warned, looking at Jackson.

  “It means I won’t let him. I am head of the department, and everything Lieutenant Gunther does is cleared through me. I will be his spokesman at this meeting, and I think you’ll find that doing otherwise will only get all of us into more hot water if and when the press finds out about this little get-together.”

  “I do not intend that they find out.”

  Brandt didn’t argue the point. “May Lieutenant Gunther be excused from these proceedings?”

  It wasn’t, from his tone of voice, a debatable question.

  As Mrs. Morse said, “Of course,” Jackson barked out, “No.” They stared at each other for a long moment, the lady’s knuckles white where she was gripping her weapon of office. Jackson, either cowed or mollified that Brandt himself had no intention of leaving, finally nodded. “Oh, all right.”

  I gathered up my wad of papers, smiled back at Gail’s quick and tiny thumbs-up gesture, and left.

  Outside, on the landing, I met Stan Katz coming up the stairs. He looked as exhausted as I felt. We eyed one another warily. “Hey, there, Stanley.”

  “Hey, yourself. See the paper this morning?” The question was asked neutrally, even tentatively.

  “Nope. You take John to the cleaners?”

  He sighed and his shoulders sagged slightly. It made me wonder for the first time about the toll this kind of story took on the man reporting it. It was a jarring thought and not one I enjoyed; things were tough enough without wondering if Stanley Katz had feelings.

  “I wrote about the accident and put it in context,” he said tiredly. “How’re they doin’ in there?” He motioned toward the room I’d just left.

  I feigned ignorance, Jackson’s claim that the press would never hear of the meeting still echoing in my ears. “They?”

  “The selectmen. The executive session.”

  I played with the idea of giving him the standard “no comment” but thought better of it suddenly, realizing I had nothing to lose here. “How’d you hear about it? Jackson thinks the meeting’s top secret.”

  Katz grinned, the carnivore in him resurfacing. “Really? Maybe I ought to call Ted and the others to fill up the hallway. That would startle him.”

  I shrugged, resigned to his not revealing his source. “Be my guest.”

  He chuckled, the idea growing on him. “I think I will. Why’re you out here, by the way?”

  “Brandt cut me loose. Told ’em he wouldn’t let me talk to them—that they’d have to go through him.”

  This time he laughed outright. “Damn, your boss has balls.”

  “Dunn walked out at the start; said he’d talk when he was good and ready.”

  “Christ, how’s Jackson taking it?”

  “Hasn’t blown a fuse yet, but Mrs. Morse is about ready to kill him. Might be worth sticking around.”

  He shook his head, still grinning. “I gotta get to a phone.” He stopped suddenly, his eyes narrowing to their familiar suspicious squint. “Why’d you just tell me all that?”

  I laughed, heading for the stairs. “’Cause I don’t give a damn and I’m in a good mood.”

  · · ·

  I didn’t even pause to turn on Buddy’s stolen fan before dialing Isador Gramm’s number.

  He answered on the fourth ring. “Dr. Gramm.”

  “This is Joe Gunther, down in Brattleboro. Sorry I wasn’t in earlier.”

  “Oh, nice of you to call back. I think I may have found something in your case. It was one of those brain-teasers, you know? I kept coming up with reasonable possibilities and getting nowhere. Had it not been for the tissue sample Dr. Hillstrom let me have, I’d probably still be barking up the wrong tree.”

  “So what was it that killed him?”

  There was a deadening pause. “Killed him? Cerebral ischemia; I thought you knew that. Dr. Hillstrom didn’t tell me I was to determine cause of death.”

  I swore softly under my breath at the literalness of the scientific mind. “Sorry, I meant what was injected into him?”

  “Tubocurarine chloride.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  I shut my eyes at my own outburst, but Gramm merely laughed. He was obviously so pleased with his own detective work, nothing was going to dampen his spirits. “In layman’s terms, curare.”

  My mouth fell open. “Curare? As in South American Indians and blowguns?”

  He was still chuckling. “Pretty weird, huh? It’s a quaternary amine, the bane of toxicology, a real pain in the butt to analyze, unless you know what you’re looking for, or you just get lucky. I guess I benefited from both.”

  I was still having a tough time mentally transplanting tribal tranquilizers into a Brattleboro setting. “Why curare?”

  “Well, that’s it exactly. Actually, you helped in this discovery. It was your comment to Dr. Hillstrom about the dichotomy of the presenting evidence that started me thinking along the proper lines. The hypothesis ran that the victim was positioned so that he could witness his own death, both visually and, since the method chosen was so specifically painful, sensorially. And yet, while his limbs had been taped to inhibit movement, there were no signs of his having struggled against those bonds, despite the pain he experienced during the terminating process.”

  I winced at the phrase “terminating process,” but Gramm went happily on. “That turns out to have been the watershed deduction, steering me away from the narcotics which, while subduing the patient, would have also subdued his sensitivity to pain. It was in thinking about that seemingly contradictory requirement—to numb the muscles but not the neurological sensitivity—that I suddenly remembered an extraordinary experiment I’d read about that took place in the late 1800s.

  “There was this doctor who had his colleagues overdose him with curare to test the drug’s properties. Back in those days, it wasn’t as exotic as it seems today, but it also wasn’t very well understood. They were standing by, of course, ready to give him artificial respirations if he needed them, and it was a lucky thing, too. He had the most horrible experience. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do the slightest thing. He felt like he was gagging to death, feeling his saliva running down his throat without being able to swallow. That was the first experiment to clearly identify the full range of effects of curare on a human being. Crazy thing to do, of course, but scientists tended to be that way back then—real adventurers.”