St. Albans Fire Read online

  She was so motionless, he wondered if she was even alive, a thought that had crossed his mind on the drive over here.

  “Nice night,” he said hopefully, his eyes on the invisible horizon. “A little cold, still. You warm enough?”

  Linda didn’t answer.

  Joe slowly, almost casually, sidestepped in her direction, causing her to stir at last.

  “I have a gun.”

  “I know,” he said lightly, trying to hide his relief. “I just thought I’d pick the next pew, if that’s all right. This one right here.” He laid his hand atop a headstone two over from her and sat on the ground as she was, using the stone as a backrest.

  “Beautiful spot,” he commented. “Sad Bobby can’t enjoy it.”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I want you to give me the gun and come with me so we can sort this out.”

  “What’s to sort out? I heard you’ve been asking questions. You know what happened.”

  “I know there was an accident. That Bobby died when he shouldn’t have. That was nobody’s intention.”

  “I killed John Gregory, too.”

  He wished she hadn’t said that. The finality of it worried him. “I’m not so sure that was all your fault, either,” he told her.

  “I killed him with a baling hook. The one your people took.”

  He nodded, unsure if she was watching him. “True, but that doesn’t have to mean much—there were mitigating circumstances. Life isn’t as black and white as you’re painting it, Linda. It’s not that simple.”

  “Simple?” she burst out.

  He pretended to laugh. “Yeah. I know what you mean. But that’s the beauty of the law. It takes things like that into account. Plus, you’ve got your dreams, your ambitions. Reasons to keep going regardless of what any lawyers might say.”

  “All gone.”

  “Your kids… Jeff.”

  “They might as well be gone, too.”

  He continued staring out at the vastness before him, stretched like a black sheet punctured with hundreds of tiny, light-leaking holes. Personally, her finality struck Joe like an all-too-familiar chord—Gino’s decision to die at the hands of strangers, Marie choosing the legacy of a dead father over her own family’s happiness, John Gregory killed because of his own greed, and Peggy dead because of loyalty.

  Which thoughts, as they so often did, brought him back to his own life’s watershed moment. “I had a wife once, long ago. I loved her like I never loved anyone. I thought losing her would kill me, too.”

  Linda remained silent.

  As did Joe. He was no longer just negotiating with her, he realized. This last admission made that clear. For while it was true that losing Ellen to cancer had knocked his legs out from under him, it had done more permanent damage than he’d ever comfortably acknowledged. It had killed a vital response deep inside him, stunting his ability to love with abandon forever after. It occurred to him now, with sudden conviction, that Gail’s increasing estrangement, while fueled by her own ambitions and fears, had also been abetted by his own reluctance—inability, really—to fight for their continuing union.

  It was an admission of his own form of cancer—emotional in his case—that he’d been staving off for most of a lifetime.

  He pressed his hand against his forehead, overwhelmed by the feelings this released in him, and murmured, “God almighty.”

  “What?” Linda asked.

  He turned to her, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be talking you out of doing something foolish, and instead, I’m thinking about myself.”

  “Your wife?” she asked, surprised to not be the topic of conversation.

  “Her—and the woman in my life now. Things aren’t going too well with us. They say life never turns out the way you expect, but they make it sound like it’s all because of outside forces. That we have nothing to do with it, like it’s preordained.”

  “You said your wife died,” she argued. “You didn’t make that happen, did you?”

  “No. She got sick.”

  “Then you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “And you had everything to do with Bobby dying?” he countered, bringing the conversation back around.

  “I hired the guy who burned the barn.”

  “Why?”

  “Christ,” she let out, her reticence falling away. “Count the reasons: being buried in debt and cow shit, having a crazy mother and a henpecked father and a husband whose head is so deep in the sand, he wouldn’t recognize daylight if it hit him in the face. You talk about my kids. What the hell do they have to look forward to?”

  “What you set in motion,” he tried to explain, “you were doing for everyone’s sake. Except that Bobby died by accident and screwed everything up.” Joe turned toward her suddenly, as if struck by a revelation. “Don’t you see what that tells you? If you’d been coldhearted and selfish, thinking only of yourself, you would have kept going—collected the money, sold the farm, rebuilt a life. But you didn’t. You loved Bobby. You love them all. You’re a good person, Linda,” he stressed, ignoring the patent absurdity of the assertion in the hopes that, this time, at least, he might prevent another death.

  “This accident,” he continued, “this horrible miscalculation—it meant nothing to John Gregory or to the arsonist. They took it in stride. But to you, who had everything to gain by having the same attitude, it stopped you cold. You couldn’t go on. You had to set things right and balance the books. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that why you’re here with that gun?”

  She took a while before conceding, “I guess.”

  “Well, then,” he said, working with that small opening, “that’s it. You’ve got one last thing to do, and you’re done.”

  “What?” she asked, startled and clearly confused.

  “Get it all out. Tell them what happened—everything.”

  He could hear the scowl in her voice. “That’ll make a good impression.”

  “What kind of impression do you think you’ll leave by blowing your brains out?” he asked, challenging her. “What’ll Jeff and the kids be left with then? Gossip and rumors generated by people who’ll have no clue what really happened. You think you’ve messed things up now. Take a wild guess how they’ll turn out after you’re gone.”

  “I’ll be in jail. How’ll that be any good?”

  “It’ll show you held yourself responsible. Your grandfather drank himself to death. Look what that did to your mother. You want the same thing to happen to the people in your life? Cindy and Mike? Or are you going to own up to your mistakes and show them how it’s done?”

  She didn’t respond. The silence stretched out between them for a long time.

  He spoke one more time, very quietly. “You made a mess of things, Linda. I’m not saying otherwise. It’s your choice whether that stops now and you own up, or you end your life and cripple your children.”

  After another half minute of not saying a word, she finally shook her right hand free of the blanket’s folds and laid a large handgun on the ground between them. He could see in the half-light that it was fully cocked.

  “Okay,” she said, her resignation clear.

  That sense of defeat, so at odds with the tone of his sales pitch, left him wondering what favor he might in fact have done them all.

  · · ·

  Joe pulled up to Gail’s condo around midnight, not surprised to find people still milling about and all the lights on inside. Fatal shootings in Vermont were not the routine they were in large urban areas. Even the experienced cops here took extra time to get it right.

  He cut the engine and swung his legs out tiredly onto the driveway, pausing to watch a crime scene tech in the distance set up a photograph that included both the pool of blood and a ruler he clearly didn’t want dirtied.

  “Anything wrong, sir?”

  Joe glanced to his immediate right, where a uniformed Montpelier patrolman was standing in the shadows.

&n
bsp; “No—been a long day,” he told him. “The senator inside?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Joe rose to his feet and watched the photographer a moment longer, all the while thinking of both the conversation ahead and the one he’d just left behind. He recalled the first time he’d set eyes on Linda Padgett and how her youthful beauty had so struck him. Now she, in a living parody of Peggy DeAngelis, was done with a life she’d barely begun to taste.

  “The choices we make,” he murmured.

  “Yes, sir,” came the voice from the darkness.

  He smiled and shook his head, making a mental note to stop thinking out loud.

  He didn’t use the entry code on the condo’s front door lock, but rang the bell instead.

  Gail opened up a minute later. She was pale and exhausted. She also looked resolved.

  “Hi, Joe.” She didn’t give him a hug, and he hesitated offering one. “Did you find the girl?”

  “Yeah. She’s okay. I never told you, what with all that’s gone on, but she was the one—”

  She interrupted him with a raised hand. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.”

  He nodded, as much in confirmation to himself as in acknowledgment of her request. Never before had she countered him like that.

  “Right.”

  They stood awkwardly in the open doorway for a few moments.

  “Well, anyhow. It’s safe. I wanted you to know it’s all over,” he said.

  She gave him a sad smile. “Funny turn of phrase.”

  “Oh, Christ,” he said. “No. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”

  But she was already shaking her head. “I think I do—mean that.”

  He took a shallow breath. “Ah.”

  She reached out at last and touched his cheek. He quickly turned his head and kissed her fingertips.

  She dropped her hand, her expression soft and mournful. “And I’m the one who’s sorry, Joe. It’s not you. It’s me.”

  “But it is what I do, isn’t it? Maybe even who I am.”

  She didn’t argue with him. “You couldn’t stop that,” she said flatly.

  He opened his mouth to answer, but again, she stopped him. “I wouldn’t want you to, no matter what you might say now.”

  “There’re other ways I could do the same things,” he suggested.

  “It would be like being the water boy at a football game,” she told him. “And I’d be the one responsible for putting you there.”

  He saw that was a dead end. “You’re sure this is necessary?” he asked more generally.

  “This isn’t the first time we’ve been here,” she reminded him. “You’ve been stabbed, beaten, almost blown up—God knows what else. You were shot at just a few hours ago. You’re in the middle of all that, taking responsibility, calculating the risks. I’m just the person who loves you, waiting for the bad news.”

  “Will that change if we break up?”

  She pursed her lips, the bearer of bad news. “Over time? Yes. It will diminish. I won’t know what you’re doing day-to-day. Also, selfishly speaking, chances are greater I won’t become a target because of you.”

  He had to credit her honesty, if not her tact. Still, it was the former he’d been wanting for quite a while now, if dreading its content.

  “I realize this is hard for you to understand, Joe, even with your abilities. I’ve never known a more sensitive man than you. But what just happened brought me back like a slap in the face. It was the rape all over again. I even felt raped. All over again. One of the ploys I used to get me through the rough spots back then was playing the old lightning-can’t-strike-twice denial game. They don’t recommend it, but it saw me through. Now I see what they meant.”

  She paused. He didn’t say anything, at a loss for words.

  “I can’t afford to do that again,” she concluded.

  His heartbeat was rapid, and he knew his face was flushed, but he stayed silent, conditioned both by upbringing and by training to guard his counsel, to listen before speaking, to accept his losses. It took two to avoid the outcome she was suggesting. Whether she was right or not, she was determined to keep to her course.

  And he’d never been a man to argue just for the sake of it.

  Slowly, so she wouldn’t misinterpret, he leaned forward at the waist and kissed her gently on the cheek, enjoying the familiar warmth of her skin on his lips.

  “I love you,” he said, straightening.

  “I love you, too,” she responded as he turned to go. “I always will.”

  Chapter 28

  JOE HADN’T WANTED TO RETURN to the Cutts farm. As of late, his life was full enough of loss and grief and unanswerable questions to make a gratuitous visit to another emotional black hole impressively unappealing.

  Which, of course, didn’t preclude his needing to do it anyway.

  Not for Marie. Even considering his treatment of her at their last encounter, he still wasn’t keen on trying to make amends. Given what she’d always thought of him, that bordered too close to pure masochism.

  Calvin, however, was another matter. Belittled by his wife and daughter, diminished by his own mixture of stoicism and self-effacement, Cal remained for Joe a potential touchstone—someone who, even now that his family was reduced to ashes, might have something to say that Joe could use in putting all this to rest.

  For that remained an important coda for Joe—something he searched for at the conclusion of most cases, especially the ones extracting their weight in sorrow. In his world—the one that had just cost him Gail—such bruising needed redress, or at the very least, a moment of observance.

  He had no idea how or if Calvin Cutts could supply him with such spiritual liniment, but for some reason, he’d thought of no one else when the need had become clear.

  All that having been said, however, he still didn’t want to see Marie again, so, like a man obliged to attend a formal ceremony he yearned to avoid, he lingered in his car at the top of the hill above the farm, steeling himself against the inevitable—in this case, his arrival in the dooryard and the usual buzz saw greeting.

  Which is when, as if from providence itself, a tractor cleared the horizon to his right and began trundling down-field, aimed directly at the fence beside him. Calvin Cutts was at the wheel.

  Joe got out of the car and waited by the edge of the road until the tractor drew abreast and Calvin killed its engine.

  The accompanying silence surrounded both men like the palpable warmth of the sun overhead.

  Cal nodded at Joe before slowly disentangling himself from behind the steering column and climbing down to the freshly plowed earth.

  “Agent Gunther,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans as he approached.

  “Mr. Cutts,” Joe said, returning the courtesy.

  Cutts reached the fence and stopped. Neither man extended a hand in greeting. “What can we do for you?”

  “Nothing I can think of,” Joe answered. “Just dropped by to see how you were all doing.”

  It was the kind of statement Marie Cutts would have treated like a grenade pin, but Cal merely shrugged and answered, “Feeling a little caught between a dog and a tree, but I guess we’ll sort it out.”

  “The farm?”

  “Always. The insurance turned out to be even less than we thought, and Billy dropped his offer to where it didn’t make any sense. Looks like it’s back to life as usual.”

  They were standing side by side with the fence between them, both facing the distant mountain Joe had admired on one of his first visits. Calvin’s last comment didn’t seem utterly delusional, as it might have from someone else facing his reversal of fortune. Instead, it came across as a simple statement of fact, and, for all of that, Joe was hard-pressed to doubt it. He and Cal were not entirely unalike, after all, from their parentage and age to their general stoicism.

  “Could be worse,” Cal added. “Some foundation—run by that John Gregory’s brother—said they’d help out—pay for Linda’s kid
s’ education, replace the herd. Marie didn’t want it, of course, but we’ll take it—for all our sakes. Still,” he continued, “it’s not that we couldn’t still sell. Jeff could make more money someplace else, and I could even retire, more or less, given my needs.” He paused to rub his chin with one rough hand.

  “But,” he added, “it just wouldn’t feel right.”

  “What about Marie?”

  He nodded. “Well, that’s part of it, of course. Farming’s what she knows. It would be a bad time to uproot her.”

  When he left it at that, Joe asked, “How’s she doing?”

  Cal kept his eyes on the horizon. “Not too good. Hasn’t said a word since it turned out the way it did—losing both her kids, one way or the other. It’s pretty clear Linda won’t be getting out anytime soon.”

  “I am sorry about that,” Joe said gently.

  Cal finally looked at him with a sad smile. “So am I. You have kids?”

  “No.”

  “It’s interesting,” he said philosophically. “They sure can surprise you.” After a pause, he added, “But they give you something to love all the way to the end.”

  That made Joe think of Linda’s family. “Is Jeff going to stay put?” he asked.

  “Far as I know. I suppose that’s the funniest part of this whole deal, when you think about it. He only really stayed because of Linda. Now it’s just him and me, basically. A couple of guys doing what they can—like shipwrecked sailors, when you think of it.”

  He shook his head slowly, as if countering an argument. “No, best to keep things the same. Linda’ll know where we are that way, wherever she might be, and Marie can use the familiar routine to get better. Won’t hurt those kids, either, knowing we stuck it out.”

  He bent down and retrieved a clod of earth, which he held in his hand like a talisman. Joe wondered if the gesture would result in some comment combining both insight and hope.

  In the end, he wasn’t sure it didn’t.

  “Guess I better get back to work,” Cal said.

  Excerpt

  If you enjoyed St. Albans Fire, look for The Second Mouse, seventeenth in the Joe Gunther series.