Suddenly, I heard a soft crack beside me, along the dark wall of estaurant. I turned my head in time to see Rennie Wilson standing e shadow.
“Rennie. We’ve been looking all over for you.” He turned in an instant and vanished around the edge of the ing.
“Rennie. Hang on, goddamn it. We gotta talk.” I bolted after him but had to contend with a small picket fence that ked the alley. By the time I cleared it, his crashing footsteps were e far end of the building.
The narrow alleyway that ran alongside the restaurant was pitchand choked with high weeds and brush. I ran with my hands in of my face like a blind man, praying I wouldn’t lose an eye or be ked senseless by something hanging low from overhead. I was driven as much by desperation as by adrenaline. Christ only what risks Rennie was running by not coming in, but one of them ure was a small army of policemen, armed and convinced he was lent killer.
I broke through the end of the alley into the overgrown rectangueld behind the Order residences. The grass was chest-high and wasn’t much more light here than in the alley. The sky was cast and there were no streetlights aside from the one blocked by ark hulk of the firehouse.
%160 I stopped dead in my tracks and listened. A dog balked far away a car door slammed. Somewhere I heard muted laughter. In the house’ to the north, lights shone through the windows. I watched them, hoping to catch some movement between them and me. My eyes scanned slowly, trying not to skip from light to light trying to see more than was humanly possible. About midway from Ief to right I saw a short shadow, too broad for a sapling, too narrow fo a shed, about a hundred feet away. I moved slightly to one side, sIidin~ a distant-lit window along so it would backlight the shape. It was man, standing stock-still. I crouched and began moving toward him, hoping to hell wouldn’t step on anything that would give me away. I got about thre’ yards before my left shin struck something thin, horizontal, and resist ant-a wire. As my momentum pushed me forward, I tried to lift mj foot over, got my shoe caught, and began to fall. I made a giant ster with my right leg, hit the same low-strung piece of wire, and fel headlong into someone’s abandoned fenced garden.
I scrambled up as quickly as I could, but I knew I’d lost my on’ chance.
The shadow was gone, leaving only the faint sound of a distanz body moving swiftly through the grass. Again, as when I’d seen Bruce Wingate lying dead at the bottotr of that ravine, I felt as if I’d let something slip through my hands something that was to cost me dearly.
I called Hamilton after losing Rennie, and he’d rallied the troops For most of the night, we drove, walked, and talked our way acros’ what seemed like the entire county, all for nought. It was Rennie” backyard, and he obviously knew it well enough to stay out of our way On the other hand, it gave me plenty of time to think. Despite the case against him, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Rennie was running for reasons other than Wingate’s murder. There were too many inconsistencies; too many leaps of logic, like the assump. tion that a punch in the face merited a lethal revenge. Also, there were the other actors in the play-Sarris, Ellie, Gor.
man, Julie among them-none of whom glowed with innocence. Ren’ %161 e’s actually running only made him the most blatant of these, but the hers were just as shy of the limelight.
All night long, I mulled this over, leafing through flashcards in my ind, trying to piece together some reasonable sequence of events. ter hours of this, the only common denominator was the opening line each and every scenario-Julie’s migration from home to college and the Order had set the whole game into motion. The more I looked at it, the more I saw the missing Wingate as e catalyst for most of the police’s problems.
We’d been spending tually all our efforts trying to locate Rennie and prove him guilty, gely because he custom-fit the role. The evidence was against him, actions were self-incriminating, and warrants with his name on em were easy to secure: He was a natural.
Just what Julie was not.
With her, warrants were unobtainable, evidence was nonexistent, d no one had even set eyes on her. And yet there she was, like a ge-front actor with no lines to deliver.
All that, after less than two hours’ restless sleep, had brought me wn out of the Northeast Kingdom and into Massachusetts-to Nak, specifically-to find out all I could about the elusive Julie Wingate. I parked just shy of the town’s central square of updated turn-of-century red brick buildings. It was still dark, although dawn’s first y blush was just beginning to touch the sky. I stretched, rubbed my es, and crossed the street to a small restaurant. Inside, I sat at the unter and ordered coffee and a sugar-covered cinnamon roll. Natick, m the little I knew, had been transformed over the years from a small ral town to one of Boston’s “bedroom communities,” meaning, I had ays supposed, that its population decreased during the workday. It built low and spread out, with lots of quiet residential streets lined th middle-aged trees, occupying an economic middle ground among ston’s wide variety of satellites. A good town, as they say, in which raise a family, benefitting from a nearby metropolis and an inordinate mber of nearby malls, and yet enjoying the slower pace of suburban On the surface, Bruce the banker and EIIie the secretary fit in here e peas in a pod white, middle-class, hard working. Looking enough the restaurant window at the early, Boston-bound commuter fflc, I wondered what had made Julie so desperate to escape. As I ate, I flipped through the pages of a borrowed phone book. uce Wingate was listed as living at 4 Maple Avenue. I got directions m the woman behind the counter. Maple Avenue was a short dead-end street, very pretty and quiet, %162 lined with smM, W ottd W aT One-vitttage homes Ioeated oh liny, M’~~ Bare trees stood guard by the sidewalk and pinned down the neatly mowed, frost-covered lawns. An occasional tricycle and swing set attested to warmer weather scenes of children enjoying life on a street with no through traffic.
Number 4, with its narrow front, high-peaked roof, and dark wood trim, seemed right at home. The Wingates’ residence, however, was not my primary interest. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone really, who might tell me of its inhabitants. I parked in the middle of the block, where I could see most of the street, and waited for some activity. The first sign of life appeared as a concession to the day’s gathering light-the bulb above Number 7’s porch was switched off.
I got out of the car and climbed the steps to the porch. Whoever had hit the switch had also seen me coming. The door opened a crack, too narrow to let me see who was standing there. “Yes?” It was a woman’s voice, sharp and thin. I pulled out my badge and showed it to the crack. “Sorry to disturb you so early in the morning. My name is Joe Guntherz I’m a policeman working with the Vermont State’s Attorney’s office, and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.”
“Vermont?” The woman stayed hidden behind the door. “I’ve never been to Vermont.” I gave my best genial smile, feeling like an idiot with no one to look at. “No, ma’am, this isn’t about you. I wanted to find out a few things about the Wingates.” “Who?” “The Wingates-they live right across the street.” “Oh. I don’t know them. I’ve only lived here a few months. What did they do?” “Nothing. I just need some background.”
“They kill someone?” “Not that I know of.” It wasn’t strictly a lie, although I had my suspicions about Bruce Wingate.
“Rob a bank?” “No. I wonder if you could tell me who on this block might know them.” “Try Number 6 she’s pretty nosy. Name’s Grissom. They in the drug business?” “Thank you for your time.” I left Number 7 and crossed the street to Number 6. The door opened wide to my ring of the doorbell, revealing a pleasant-faced elderly woman wearing a full-length fluffy robe. She gave me a smile as I ran through my cumbersome introduction.