A bent, leathery man emerged from the house as we approached, our car slowly lurching over the pits and ruts of what was little more than a grassy path by now.
He waited for us to get out of the car, his gnarled hands empty by his sides, a mournful, bitter look on his face. We both showed him our credentials. I let Mason do the talking. “I’m Patrick Mason, of the Agency of Natural Resources Enforcement Division. This is Lieutenant Joe Gunther, of the Brattleboro Police. Could we have a few words with you?”
The man paused before answering, looking disgustedly from one of us to the other as if deciding who was the lower life-form. “You already have.”
“You own this property?” Mason asked, unfazed.
“Not if you count the bank.”
“How many acres do you have?”
“Hundred seventy.”
“All under cultivation?”
“Some.”
“But not enough.” Mason assumed. “Must be tough to make ends meet.”
The farmer didn’t answer, but his expression made it clear he wasn’t in the mood for sympathy.
“What’s your name?”
“Norm Blood.”
“Well, Mr. Blood, we’d like to see where you’re letting those trucks dump their loads, especially the one about four or five nights ago.”
His tone of voice did the trick-as if this conversation were just the latest in a long string they’d already had on the same subject. It left no room for guile.
Norm Blood shifted from anger to resignation. “You bastards. What do you give a damn?”
Mason, unrepentant, merely answered, “We can use my car.”
I placed my portable radio on the kitchen table without a sound, as quiet as I’d been while negotiating the building’s collection of locks. The security lights had come on when I’d nosed into the driveway, as always, but Gail’s office faced in a different direction, and from the lack of any sounds upstairs, I assumed she hadn’t noticed.
I was saddened by the small surge of relief that gave me. There had been a time when I’d have pounded upstairs to find out what she was up to, or when she’d have kept an ear peeled for my arrival, so we could share a late-night snack.
But there’d been little of that lately. The early novelty of living together had fallen prey to a distracting metamorphosis I wasn’t sure she’d even noticed.
Gail and I had met more years ago than I could remember, at a political rally for one of our Washington senators. She’d been an enormously successful Realtor for years by then-a big change from the New York hippie who’d come to Vermont to explore her soul in a marijuana daze. But the transition hadn’t undermined her fundamental beliefs. She’d maintained an ideological anchor line to her wealthy, liberal upbringing, getting on the boards of most of the left-leaning nonprofit organizations dedicated to salvaging society’s downtrodden. In fact, her hooking up with me had struck most of her friends as consorting with the enemy.
But we had made a good pair, despite our difference in ages, backgrounds, experiences, and goals-a weirdly successful catamaran of a couple, demonstrated by the fact that for years we’d comfortably lived apart, while retaining the same chemistry that drew most couples under a shared roof.
I walked through the dark, silent house-it was almost ten o’clock by now-and settled onto the living room couch, my feet on the coffee table, my head against the cushions, looking out onto a moon-bathed wooden deck with a tree through its middle, stars glimmering through its skeletal branches. A tableau in variations of wintry blue-freezing cold.
Gail had been raped a few years ago. The man responsible had been caught, and Gail had weathered the emotional and psychological upheaval with her usual levelheaded strength, bartering for her sanity and survival with a carefully considered array of needs, wants, and hopes. She’d traded her physical independence for the security of living with me, her freewheeling lifestyle for an assortment of alarm systems.
But she’d also examined what she’d done with her life and had come to some major decisions-dusting off a law degree she’d never utilized, passing the Vermont bar, and becoming a deputy state’s attorney. What had started as an extraordinary reaction to a traumatic loss had led to a driving ambition to do more than make money and sit on the boards of well-meaning groups. It had ignited a desire to reinvent herself.
I had rarely seen her more self-fulfilled. Working for the SA, swamped daily with cases, sorting through the lives clogging the legal system, she was discovering things about herself she’d never expected. Her brain had become adrenalized, and despite the long hours, the grueling pace, and the depressing nature of many of her cases, she was thriving-confirmed in the choices she’d been forced to make.
But I’d been sensing a drag line threatening this resurrection-the slow evolution I was assuming she hadn’t noticed yet. To my sorrow, I was also pretty confident that when the time came, she’d be strong enough to recognize it for what it was and leave it behind.
That drag line was me, of course. Older, less driven, not as bright or quick on my feet as she, I was one of the few remaining things she’d have to shake loose if her momentum were to be preserved. I believed we’d become each other’s best friend, and didn’t expect that to end. But our history together had rarely been conventional, and now that it had been that for the few years we’d shared this house, I didn’t expect it to last. She was slowly drifting off, as yet unaware, and I was sadly watching-pain laced with relief-as the gap inched even wider.
Not that such insight was helping me prepare for the inevitable, of course. I was keeping my mouth shut, hoping against the mounting evidence that I was making this whole thing up.
I rose from the couch, resolved to stop these self-eroding reflections, and went upstairs.
I found her as I often did, half buried in a huge armchair, surrounded by paperwork in a small office down the hall from our bedroom. She tilted her face back to receive a kiss and smiled at me, her eyes warm.
“You must be bushed.”
“I could do with some sleep,” I admitted, settling on the floor opposite her, my back against the wall. I thought she looked beautiful, her hair tangled, the reading light next to her throwing the angles of her face into relief.
“I heard about it in the office. It sounded horrible.”
“Not too bad, really. The train did such a job on him there wasn’t much left.”
“Any leads yet?”
I shook my head. “I’m oh-for-two today. Had an illegal dumping case that came up empty, too. We got the guy who received the stuff-filled a whole ravine with all sorts of poison, over several years-but he says he doesn’t know who delivered it. He’s an older man, in lousy health, trying to hang on to a family farm on the skids. I’d love to cut him a deal so we could swim upstream and nail the people behind it, but I don’t think it’ll happen.”
“Is he too scared to talk?” Gail asked, her professional curiosity stirring.
“I don’t think so. The dumping was always at night. He never knew any of the drivers. Sometimes didn’t even see them. And the arrangements were made on the phone. He’s just the one left holding the bag, pure and simple.”
I rubbed my eyes and stood back up, heading for bed. “It’s not up to me anyway. It’s an ANR case now. And maybe we’ll get a lead on the train track guy from the medical examiner tomorrow-either that or a witness we haven’t talked to yet. It’s still pretty early.”
I paused at the door by her chair and looked down at her. “Something interesting did come up, though. Kunkle claims Sammie’s fallen for someone she met during the canvass.”
Gail smiled. “It’s about time. You know him?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’d like to, though. Be interesting to see who could turn her head so fast after all this time.”
Gail looked reflective and echoed my own concerns. “Yeah. Does seem a little unlikely. Hope she’s thinking straight.”