Chat - A Novel Part 2

"Just that, nothing more."

Joe could almost hear the other man thinking. Generally in an accident like this, with no death resulting and no involvement by anyone else, the physical aspects of the vehicle examination were pretty much limited to the condition of the tire treads. It didn't make sense to go looking beyond driver error, and it cost a lot more money.

"Could you do me a favor?" Joe therefore asked, to help the man reach a less hasty conclusion.

"What's that?"

"Could you keep the car where no one can mess with it until I get someone to check it out?"

Barrows hesitated before asking in turn, "I don't want to step on anyone's toes here, sir, but are you not telling me something?"

"Absolutely not," Joe rea.s.sured him. "I have no reason to think this wasn't just what it looks like. But given what you and I do for a living, wouldn't you be curious?"

"I see your point," Barrows conceded. "I'll give it a closer look myself-I know cars, too. And I'll make sure it's kept under lock and key."

"Thanks, Deputy. I owe you one. I'll see you a little later."

"That would be my pleasure."

Joe snapped the phone shut and was putting it away when it vibrated in his hand.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Gail Zigman's voice was tight with concern. "Joe, I just heard. How are they?"

Joe was startled by his reaction. After something like twenty years, he and Gail were no longer a couple, and hadn't been for over a year by now. But whether it was his own present vulnerability or simply the preexisting pattern that any couple establishes after so much time together, he was caught between feeling genuine relief and a sense that this was one conversation he just didn't have the stamina to maintain. One reminder at a time of the price of loss seemed ample.

"Hi," he muttered stupidly.

"Are they all right?" she repeated.

"They're alive," he finally managed. "Leo looks the worse for wear, but he's conscious. Mom is just asleep."

"Asleep?"

"That's what I call it. They're not saying 'coma' yet, but that's probably just for me. Maybe it's a kind of twilight until things become clear."

There was a long pause, followed by "My G.o.d, Joe. I am so sorry."

"Me, too."

"Do you know what happened?"

"Not yet. All Leo told me was that it was the car, so maybe the brakes went out, or something in the steering. I'll look into that later."

He could almost hear her thinking, examining the angles. Gail was a lawyer, a legislator, someone with ambition who knew how to organize things. After ending her relations.h.i.+p with Joe, she'd moved altogether from Brattleboro to Montpelier, the state capital, so she could fully concentrate on her new political career. If Joe were to bet on it, she had the governors.h.i.+p in her sights.

"What are your plans?" she asked.

"I'm on leave until I get a handle on this."

"Would you like some company?"

He had a split second to respond correctly, and almost inevitably chose poorly. "It would mean a lot to them."

Her comeback drove home his error. "I know that's not true for you, too, but I won't get in your way. I promise. I would just like it if you said it was okay," she said. "I feel so awful about this."

He scratched his forehead, thinking a rap with his knuckles might have been more appropriate. "Gail, you'd never be in the way. They both love you, and I could do with the help. I'd really appreciate whatever time you can spare."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely. I'll clear it with the hospital, too, in case they have rules or something about visitors."

Her voice was soft, almost tearful, in response. "Thank you, Joe. I'll be down as soon as I clear a couple of things up here. Give them my love."

Despite his fumbled comeback to her offer, it remained true that Gail's presence would be helpful, even if painful. He hadn't been the one to end what they'd shared, but it had certainly been his profession, in large part, that had precipitated her decision. He'd been a cop for enough decades to have made a few enemies, and survived enough bullets, knives, and explosions to understand anyone's desire to gain a little distance from him. But he did miss her, and having her nearby again was going to be tough.

He rose and stood before the window, looking down on the snow-dusted trees that circled the hospital.

It would allow him to be practical, though, and perhaps a little self-preserving. Leo was in good hands, and their mom was out of reach, at least for the time being. There wasn't much of a role for him here. Gail's arrival would guarantee that someone he could trust was nearby while he did what he could to find out what had happened.

He didn't actually suspect much, of course. He was acting more from professional paranoia, or perhaps habit born of witnessing bad things. But it would keep him busy, and perhaps on the edge of the double emotional tar pits represented by Gail and his family's plight.

Besides, there was always the nagging possibility that this had been more than a simple car accident.

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Chapter 4.

It was snowing in a Bing Crosby sort of way-fat, lazy, photogenic flakes that, in the end, wouldn't amount to much. Under normal circ.u.mstances, it was the kind of weather that Joe loved to stand in, designed for kids to catch snow crystals on their tongues.

Except that he was no longer a kid, and was staring at a scene where no sane parent would let any child run free. He was standing in an auto graveyard on the eastern reaches of Thetford Towns.h.i.+p, a few miles north of where Leo went off the road, confronting a long, low wall of precariously stacked cars, piled like absurdist bricks and extending from one edge of the property to the other.

The snow cover had softened some of the visual carnage, but there wasn't much hope for the raw materials-a virtual billboard of the crushed, sharp-edged, broken detritus of an all-consuming industrial juggernaut. It was a vision only enhanced by its otherwise bucolic surroundings. All around the yard, gently vanis.h.i.+ng into the blur of falling snow, were tree-crowded hills, fields, and forestland.

This section of the Connecticut River Valley was absurdly pretty, slicing between New Hamps.h.i.+re and Vermont, and decorated with covered bridges, backwater bays, and cow-sprinkled farms. The background of ancient mountains behind the ma.s.sive, undulating, dark river told a tale of humanity's struggle with nature, since both these weather-beaten New England states had eschewed their peaks for the water's edge and turned the river into a commercial highway for over two hundred years, luring pioneers, aboriginal and white, who had forged far inland and upstream for reasons benign and not.

Held up against such a portrait of heritage and beauty, not even a car graveyard stood much chance of becoming a significant eyesore.

"Who're you?"

Joe turned at the voice coming from the low building to his left. A man had appeared at a door haphazardly cut into the sheet metal siding. He was bearded, long-haired, and dressed in the standard-issue green uniform of mechanics and road crew workers everywhere, complete with name tag st.i.tched above his breast pocket. The man was labeled "Mitch."

Joe pulled his badge from his pocket. "Police. I was looking for a car brought in last night. A Subaru."

"That's sealed up. Can't get to it. Sheriff's got the key."

That's one of the things Joe had wanted to hear. It seemed Deputy Barrows was efficient as well as accommodating. "You ever get a look at it?" he asked.

Mitch shook his head. "I wasn't on. You here to pick it up? The boss wants it gone. It's taking up s.p.a.ce."

"The sheriff not paying you?"

"Sure, but we're not a storage unit. We got work to do. We need the bay." He waved at the picturesque falling snow, adding, "'Specially in this s.h.i.+t."

"Won't be much longer," Joe rea.s.sured him with no basis whatsoever. "Who's the boss?"

"E. T. Griffis."

Joe had turned toward his parked car, getting ready to leave, but he faced Mitch again at this. "E. T.? No kidding."

"You know him?" Mitch asked.

"Everybody knows him."

Mitch c.o.c.ked his bushy head to one side. "Everybody local. That you?"

Joe smiled before heading back to his car. "Used to be. I'll tell the sheriff to get that car out of here soon."

Joe continued up the road. It had been a poignant and disturbing journey so far-from the hospital, to the crash site, to where the car was stored, and now on to the family farm-perhaps exacerbated by the very beauty he'd been admiring earlier. The familiar name of E. T. Griffis commingled with his sentiments to form a curious mixture of comfort and pain. One generally revisited one's place of upbringing for support, not to wonder if it might become the watershed where everything falls apart.

Because that was a distinct possibility: His entire family was so small that the present situation had the potential of leaving him all by himself.

The mention of E. T. also served to highlight what few degrees of separation there were within Vermont's scant population. A small, square man with blunt hands and a manner to match, E. T. had been a near mythological fixture in the greater Thetford area for as long as Joe could think back. He seemed to own at least a piece of every rough-edged business around. And his impact on Joe hadn't stopped with nostalgic memory-years earlier, Joe had also arrested his youngest son, Andy, for a crime committed in Brattleboro, revealing an abrupt fragility to E. T.'s aura of indomitable feudal lord.

Joe could sympathize. He had received such reversals himself over time, starting as a young man, when he lost his seemingly indestructible father. After that, life had never seemed quite so secure, and the more of it he'd seen, from combat to police work to the vagaries of the daily grind, the more he'd been confirmed in his skepticism. His wife had been taken by cancer; colleagues had died in the line of duty; Gail, years ago now, had been raped and forever transformed. His personal experience had not been lacking in drama, nor his emotional wariness left wanting for evidence. That a local monolith like E. T. Griffis had begotten a son who would later end up a jailbird was mere proof of the futility of denying humanity's clay feet.

Joe Gunther had become a student of hard knocks. As he approached the homestead, he was under no delusions that life would suddenly surprise him by cooperating.

The farm was less than it had once been. In fact, it wasn't a farm at all anymore. Much of its land had been sold off to neighbors to retire debts and establish a nest egg. But the core remained, and certainly its appearance was unchanged. All his life, Joe had learned to come up the winding drive and trust that his heart would beat easier. Even now, despite its inhabitants being in the hospital, the place still lent him hopefulness by simply standing strong.

Ostensibly, Joe was here to feed the cat, turn off the lights, check the doors, and do whatever else hadn't been considered by two people thinking they'd be out for a couple of hours. In fact, he discovered that this housekeeping applied more to himself. He took his time wandering through the rooms, absorbing the scents and scenery that had populated his upbringing, and tried to position his thinking to accept whatever might be coming. He didn't want to be pessimistic, but he did want to be prepared.

He stood, finally, in the living room, his mother's center of operations. There was a docking station of tables and a desk laden with reading material, a phone, a recently added only-the-basics computer, all facing a large, empty-eyed TV set. Only her wheelchair was missing to make it complete, and it looked barren as a result. He used the opportunity to remember to check on the wheelchair's welfare in the back of the ruined car. When Mom woke up, she'd be clamoring to get back here and tend to her piled-up projects.

Gail had arrived at the hospital about an hour earlier, carrying two briefcases and clutching a cell phone as if it were a lifeline. She and Joe had hugged awkwardly before she moved directly to his mother's bedside to gently stroke the old lady's hair and murmur her greetings. Joe had left shortly thereafter.

He sighed, shook his head, and went back outside into the falling snow. Visiting the farm had been useful emotionally, but his instincts told him it was time to get busy. It rarely paid to linger and ponder overmuch.

Outside the door, under shelter of the roof's overhang, he pulled out his phone, taking advantage of the farm's exposure to the New Hamps.h.i.+re hills across the river, and their cell towers. He dialed a number in Burlington, in Vermont's far northwest corner.

"Office of the chief medical examiner. This is Suzanne."

"Hi, Suzanne. It's Joe Gunther. I was wondering what you might have found out about that John Doe we s.h.i.+pped you-the damp, bald one."

Suzanne laughed. "For that, you want the chief. You really got to her this time."

In part, Joe was glad to hear that. He and Beverly Hillstrom went back a long way and had developed, he believed, a possibly unique relations.h.i.+p, cemented last year when, after he'd broken up with Gail and Beverly had been left by her husband, they spent a single night together. In theory, a terrifically bad idea. In fact, the best thing that could have happened to either of them. It had cemented the trust they shared, and had granted each a brief respite in which to rea.s.sess their lives. In Beverly's case, she'd been able to reconcile with her husband; in Joe's, the night with her had allowed him to better distance himself from Gail's departure.

They had never referred to that encounter since, but the nominal formality that had existed before had been replaced by something much warmer and more valued.

"Joe," she said when she came on the line. "You usually let me put them in the cooler before you chase me down with questions."

"I'm sorry, Beverly. I've got nothing with this guy. I hope it's all right."

"Of course," she said. "I just finished up. But keep your fingers crossed for good tox results, because I didn't find a thing-aside from a run-of-the-mill drowning, of course."

"Nothing?"

"Not a scratch or a bruise. And his organs are in the same condition. I wouldn't call him a health nut. He clearly didn't make a point of exercising, and his personal hygiene could have stood improvement. But all his parts and pieces were working fine."

Joe thought back to the man's clothing, which had seemed unremarkable to him. "You think he was a b.u.m?"

Hillstrom's response was immediate. "More like he was heading down the social ladder. He struck me as a man who lives alone and doesn't get out much, or lives with someone who doesn't care that he only bathes occasionally. For what it's worth, and based on a theory I would never share with anyone else, I think he was pure middle cla.s.s. And from the style of his clothes and their present condition, I'd guess his fall from grace dates back less than a year."

"What theory?" Joe asked, intrigued, remembering only now a frayed pant cuff and the worn heels of the man's shoes.

"Toenails," she said flatly, adding, "which I will deny if you quote me."

"You guess their social cla.s.s from their nails?" he asked, taken by surprise.

"Something like eight times out of ten, I'm right," she told him. "It's hardly rocket science, but the worse the toenails are, the worse is the decedent's economic situation. This clearly only becomes useful when a person's other outward indicators are conflicting, as with a b.u.m dressed in a fine suit. Which," she added, "is a little of what you've got here-a man on the skids, but whose toenails reflect a regular, if nonprofessional, attention to personal appearance. Do with it what you will."

He laughed, shaking his head at the phone. "You don't have much to worry about there. I won't touch that with tongs. I appreciate it, though. And I will wait for the tox."

"Speaking of which," she said, "we did do the standard alcohol test on him-the prelim. He'd had maybe a couple of beers, that's all."

"Anything distinctive in his stomach?"

"No, I'm sorry. He ate too long prior to death."

Joe stared sightlessly at the mesmerizing blur of snowflakes falling before him, lost momentarily in thought. Beverly knew him well enough to let half a minute go by.

"Okay," he finally said. "I can't thank you enough."

"You already did," she said, and hung up.

He punched in Sammie Martens's number.