Borderlines

I bent over, reached out and touched the warm, smooth hide with my fingertips, reminded suddenly of my own losses-real and imagined. If only I’d given warning when I thought none was necessary. I stood up again slowly, anger replacing shock. The location of the wounds indicated that the shots had come from the same side of the road as the deer, but farther south. I began to walk in that direction, cutting diagonally across both lanes of the interstate, my eyes glued to the treeline above the road bank, watching for any movement, listening for any sound. I knew, as if I could actually feel them, that another unseen pair of eyes were watching me come.

I was on the southbound lane’s divider line when I saw it-a flash of fluorescent orange-accompanied by a hunter’s heavy boots crushing the brush underfoot as he moved. “Stop where you are. I’m a police officer.” I began running the rest of the distance to the treeline, straight to where I’d seen that one bright flicker of color.

Just before I entered the woods, I glanced back to see the two parallel blacktop ribbons, my car, its exhaust pluming smoke in the crisp cold air, and the body of the deer. From this angle, the animal must have presented an almost irresistible target, its muscular outline highlighted against the black of the road and the pale horizon, a temptation only decency and sportsmanship might have stilled, and obviously had not.

I hadn’t walked ten feet into the woods before I was utterly enveloped in its dense, dark embrace. I stopped, listening. The hunter had bolted late in my approach, and could only have covered a short distance before I’d reached this spot. I scanned the dark curtain of trees before me, aware of only the absolute stillness, and of the sound of my own heart beating from the exertion of the run. “I’m a police officer. You’ve already broken one law; don’t add resisting arrest.

Come on out.” The vapor from my words hovered briefly about my face and then vanished in the answering silence.

I looked to the forest floor, hoping to see some tracks, but tracking wasn’t one of my strengths, at least not in the woods. All I could see was a tangle of twigs, rotting leaves, and frozen brush. The sudden, blinding combination of a third rifle shot and the explosion its bullet made in the tree trunk next to me threw me to the ground before I could think, my Korea-bred instincts suddenly as keen as they had been many years earlier.

With my face to the ground, breathing in the damp mustiness of the near-frozen earth, I waited for the ringing in my ears to fade. Behind it, fading also, I could hear a body crashing away through the forest.

It had been a warning from a hunter whose initial purpose had not been sport. That deer in the road had not been shot for a trophy and some bragging, as I’d imagined. It had been meat, a hedge against the winter, a hungry and self-sufficient man’s necessity for survival, as he saw it. He had not missed killing me; he had warned me to back off. I got up slowly and brushed myself off. Ahead of me, some one hundred and fifty feet away, I saw an orange hunting jacket hanging from a tree branch a single bright beacon in an ever-darkening, cold and silent world. It was another warning; he was a hunter no longer, but a man with a gun, dressed to blend into his chosen environment. He could now stand with impunity next to a tree, invisible beyond fifty feet, and fill his rifle scope with my chest. I was now in Vermont’s so-called Northeast Kingdom-poor, isolated, thinly populated by people who had chosen to put their independence and wariness of the rest of the world above the hardships of living here. The man watching me had no interest in killing me, but he did want it known that he would if he had to. I stood absolutely still, watching, listening, aware now that my movements were my only relevant spokesmen. A line had been drawn: I could die defending the rights of a dead deer, or I could retire and leave the field to my unseen opponent and his more ancient, instinctive code of moral right and wrong. It wasn’t my kind of debate. I returned to my car, as depressed as I’d been angry when I’d left it in outrage. It had been a short and violent reminder of the limitations of legal authority.

Here, in this high, cold country, the law had less to do with rules, and more with personal honor. Often, they were one and the same, but not always. I got back behind the wheel, drove around the carcass, and continued north.

My trip to the Northeast Kingdom that late fall was an escape. I was heading for a temporary job a minor embezzlement investigation for Ron Potter, the Essex County State’s Attorney-but that was largely a pretense. I was also leaving in Brattleboro an accumulation of tensions, disappointments and heartache with which I’d felt I could no longer deal. In fact, I had telephoned Potter because I’d heard he was searching for a very short term investigator, a need imposed on him because he was the only Vermont State’s Attorney not assigned a full-time man.

He’d been tickled pink, for purely selfish reasons, no doubt. I had a feeling his delight and ready acceptance of my offer had less to do with my prowess than to the fact I’d been the first to nibble his hook. A stint as the Essex County SA’s investigator was not the stuff of legend in a resume. In fact, not even the SA’s job is full-time, and his office is located in St. Johnsbury, which isn’t even in the county he serves.

My call to him was also helped by the fact that we knew one another. Potter had been a patrolman in Brattleboro about ten years ago, trying to scratch together enough cash to pay his way through law school. He used to come by my desk for occasional moral support, both as a prospective student and as a fledgling cop. I hoped he was better at serving the people of Essex County than he had been working for me.

For nearly thirty years now, I’ve been a policeman in Brattleboro, starting as a patrolman and having just wrapped up a six-month assignment as Acting Chief, an event which went a long way in explaining why I was flirting with burnout. Tony Brandt, the man whose job I’d temporarily held, had been given a half-year suspension so the Town Manager and the Selectmen could save face over a case I’d reopened to prove an innocent man had been falsely jailed. The irony that they’d then asked me to take Brandt’s place should have prompted me to change citizenship and head straight for the border.

But I hadn’t, any more than I’d scared away the deer. In retrospect, the reasons for this lapse of judgment seemed inexcusably trite. The case, involving a hell-bent homicidal crusader in a ski mask, had attracted national attention, and I, in the public’s eye, had emerged the hero of the day. Perhaps I succumbed to the Selectmen’s wishes because my own view of myself was considerably less than heroic.

The outcome, as I saw it later, had been inevitable from the start.

innocent had been freed, most of the guilty had been punished one way or another-but I had been less the driving force in it all than the conductor, madly trying to maintain order on a runaway train. When the dust had settled, I was the only one left who’d looked good, and I felt unhappy enough with my performance to welcome the flattery of the Selectmen’s offer. Now, a mere lieutenant once more, I found the results of my foray into town government had been a lethal overdose of political soft-shoe, and a painful severing of cherished ties to the street. It had also helped to poison my friendship with Gail Zigman, the only woman I’ve really cared for since my wife died almost twenty years ago. Not bad for six months’ work.

So, through either my own stupidity or the simple workings of fate, I felt I’d taken two shots on the nose, one right after the other. I needed to retire to some cave and lick my wounded pride, and to do that, I had looked back over my personal history to find solace in its highlights and refuge in its memories.

I turned off at the Lyndonville exit, drove through town to connect to Route 144, and headed north toward Gannet-a tiny weather-beaten collection of boxy prefab buildings, tar paper-patched trailers, and, with one garish exception, an occasional, abused remnant of nineteenth-century rural architecture. Gannet was undoubtedly, in the eyes of tourists and outsiders, the epitome of “ugly,” but it was also the primary repository of precisely the type of soothing memories I was after.

At the end of every school year, my brother Leo and I would be eagerly packed into the car by my mother-leaving my father to tend to the farm and we’d drive north to spend the summers with my aunt and uncle. Although we lived in Thetford, only sixty miles to the south, the trip took most of the day, sometimes longer when the roads were out.

This afternoon, the trip had taken less than an hour, which was just as well, since my psychological needs were more pressing. Aunt Liz had died several years ago. She’d been a thin, nervous, somewhat scattered woman, given to much activity to little effect, a characteristic she readily admitted with good humor and grace. My uncle Buster had been her counterbalance, huge, benevolent, slow-moving. He owned and ran a ramshackle garage and service station in Gannet, known more as a halfway house for troubled kids than as a place to get your car fixed. A philosopher of sorts, he’d instilled in me the value of listening not just to what people were saying, but why they were saying it-a knack that was to help me considerably as a cop. Together, Buster and Liz had shown Leo and me an alternate way of life from the more isolated one we knew on our father’s farm one with a volunteer fire department, adjoining back yards, and a soda fountain at the local caf.

Route 144 heads off north-northeast, past the struggling Burke Mountain ski resort condominiums, the little village of East Burke, and on into the wilderness toward Island Pond and Canada a narrow, much-patched, rough ribbon of tarmac, following the connecting valley floors through a tangle of brush-choked forest and meandering streams.

The late afternoon sky was blue and cloudless, the low sun highlighting the bare trees, making them look pale purple brown from a distance. The violent coloration of fall had yielded to this timid replacement, a concession to the anticipated dread of winter. I passed several empty pickup trucks and 4 X 4s, parked awkwardly on the shoulder, all with gun racks barring their windows. In contrast to the brutal encounter I’d just had, hunting season was a time of quasi-religious importance to most rural Vermonters, when larders were stocked against the barren months ahead, and when young men with their fathers, carrying old 30-30s, entered a crucial rite of passage from childhood, as I had long ago with Buster. It was also a time when well-heeled flatlanders came north to hunt and drop some greatly needed cash in a region of the state that otherwise rarely attracted them. 1

stopped the car at the top of the low hill south of town. Below was Gannet, whose haphazard cluster of houses and buildings contrasted with the almost rectangular grid of its four streets, the only paved one of which was Route 114. Parallel to Route 114 was Atlantic boulevard to the east, with South Street and North Street connecting the two at the bottom and top of the rectangle. The entire layout was no more than some two hundred yards on its longest side. It was an absurdly regimented layout for such an unruly hodge-podge of buildings and trailers, since not one house was aligned with or looked like another.

About three hundred people lived in Gannet, half of them in town and the rest in the surrounding hills. I put the car back in gear and rolled down the slope, losing my slight aerial perspective and becoming one with the village. Buster’s home, an ancient but tidy ramshackle ex-farmhouse, was the first on the left. Originally a squat and clumsy copy of traditional Greek Revival architecture, one of only about five in town, its outer appearance had been transformed by the practical hand of hard economic times-a prevalent regional feature. The roof was a smattering of rusting and multi-hued, brightly painted corrugated metal panels; the walls, intermixed with a few remnants of the original white clapboard, consisted variously of unpainted plywood, asphalt shingles, battened-down tar paper, and more corrugated metal. And yet the whole structure had the appealing look of a neatly designed patch-work quilt.

Buster was no slob; he just made do. Subconsciously, like a proud apprentice, I picked out those bits and pieces of the building’s exterior that I had nailed into place in years past.

There was a car backing out of the dirt driveway as I pulled up.

It stopped, and an attractive young woman with pale brown hair pulled back in a ponytail got out. She stood uncertainly by her open door, but stuck out her hand tentatively as I crossed to meet her.

“You’re Joe?” “That’s right.” I smiled and shook her hand. It was strong and muscular, which threw me off a little, given her demeanor and her expression-she had the nervous, shy look of a young girl. I guessed her to be somewhere in her early thirties.

“Hi. I’m Laura. I clean your uncle’s house. He’s real excited about your coming. Asked me to do an extra special job.” Her hand went a little limp in mine and I realized I’d held it too long.

“Thank you. It’s good to be back.” She was wearing tight faded blue jeans, sneakers, and a thick sweater. She wasn’t skinny, but she didn’t carry any fat, either. I found her enormously appealing, even sensual, in a no-frills, down-home way. It jolted me a little, and made me think of Gail, whom I’d left behind in a rush in Brattleboro, almost without explanation, like a pain too big to bear.

She gave me a small, crumpled smile and looked at the ground. I’d been staring, and now we were both slightly embarrassed.

She put her hands in her pockets. “Well, I better get going.” “Is Buster inside?” She looked up again, her face clear. “No, he says it drives him nuts to watch me work, makes him feel bad. He’s probably at the Rocky River by now, or maybe at the garage. He’s real excited… I guess I said that. Do you know which room you’re in?” “Yup.” She smiled again. “That was dumb. Not like it’s your first time here, is it?”

“No, although it almost seems like it. I’ve been away so long.” “Buster told me you’re investigating something.” “Yeah. Not here, though. I just thought I’d stay with him while I’m in the area-you know, cheaper than a motel and a whole lot friendlier.” There was a long pause. I suppose neither one of us wanted to start talking about the weather, which was certainly all I could think of at the moment. She broke the silence by turning toward her car, repeating, “Well, I better get going.” I stepped back and shut her door for her. She rolled down the window. “It was nice meeting you.” “My pleasure. Hope I see you around.” She laughed, which made her face suddenly quite beautiful.

“Hard not to in this town.” I watched her back out and drive north, up through town, and thought again of Gail. She, too, was younger than I, although in her forties. She was smart and strong and reasonable, both a successful realtor and an effective town selectman. She, like I, enjoyed being independent, and so we lived apart, getting together only when it suited us both, which had been less and less lately. It had been a while since we’d shared a laugh, or much of anything. I hadn’t told Gail I was leaving for Gannet until this morning, thereby highlighting the sorry state of our friendship. I’d decided beforehand what her response would be, and had thereby guaranteed it. She’d greeted the news, and its late delivery, with a chilling-cold anger. It had been a self-fulfilling prophesy, but it had nevertheless come as a shock. I’d orchestrated things so that only her pleas could reverse them. She, predictably, had passed on the opportunity.

I got my duffel bag out of my car and parked it inside the front door of the house. Then I started walking toward town on the left shoulder of the road. The sun had just set, the shadows were darkening, and the evening’s chill was now coming up around me like a blanket. The radio had predicted a low in the mid-twenties tonight. Gannet had no sidewalks, just the road cutting across driveways and the occasional scraggly front yard. A few of the houses, on my left, didn’t even face the street. The mobile homes, none of which would ever be mobile again, had a stranded look, as if they’d reluctantly put down roots after being abandoned beside someone else’s house.

There was a fence or two, a swing set, a few stray dogs.

Properties blended into one another, making it difficult to figure who might lay claim to the odd, rusted weed-strangled car that lay somewhere between two homes-what Gail, with her realtor’s acerbic eye, called “Vermont planters.” If there was a nucleus to Gannet, it lay in the large island of land ahead on my right, hemmed in by Gannet’s four streets. There, the houses were older but equally dilapidated. They faced the road like circled wagons, with unfenced back yards abutting one another, forming an untamed field of sorts in the middle, pockmarked by seemingly stray gardens, bushes, or leafless shade trees. During summers past, Leo and I had used this inner field, about the size and length of two football fields end to end, as a communal playground, and it was a natural magnet for every kid in the area.

As I came abreast of South Street, I saw the first real sign of life-four children playing with an incredibly mangy dog. They were dashing back and forth in the middle of the dirt road, chasing stones, sending up a thin cloud of dust that glowed in the dying light. I was struck by their identical tattered-quilt suits, reminiscent of what Chinese troops wore in the fifties, when I was being underpaid to fight them in Korea. I couldn’t tell if the kids were boys or girls-they all had long hair, tied back at the nape of the neck to keep it out of their faces. They stopped playing when one of them saw me. I waved, but to no response. They stood stock-still, ignoring the barking dog, staring at me not in wonder or curiosity, but as nervous animals might, transfixed by the sight of a dreaded predator. I was chilled by both implications: that I might be seen as a threat to these youngsters; and that they had been trained to see me, and presumably others like me, as blatant enemies. It made me feel there was a larger presence among us, an invisible authority dictating how people should be perceived.

The ominous spell only lasted a moment. The dog finally bumped one of the kids to gain its attention, and they all returned to their game with the same enthusiasm as before. But the episode startled me, and concerned me, too.

Buster had mentioned these people once on the phone. Oddballs, he’d said, members of a back-to-nature group that had bought most of the buildings on South Street and on the lower half of Atlantic. They didn’t use electricity, didn’t believe in money, didn’t own cars, and, according to Buster, had set up the only legitimate business enterprise the town had ever seen-something called The Kingdom Restaurant. The contradiction about money threw me off at the time, but Buster had merely laughed and said he wasn’t going to probe. Some of the people who came to eat there also topped up their cars at Buster’s garage.

The garage, on my left, was locked up tight, looking like a rusty beached Liberty ship, far from the sea. What little I knew about cars, I’d learned here, tinkering on an assortment of wrecks. I’d never known if they belonged to Buster, were headed for the dump, or were actually the property of paying customers. Directly opposite-once a demurely rotting erstwhile farmhouse-stood the Kingdom Restaurant, its windows glowing yellow. Several cars were parked out front.

I cut diagonally across the street to where a familiar figure was putting the final shine on the roof of a 1943 Chevrolet fire truck. He was standing on the running board and had his back to me, caught in the circular gleam from the sole streetlight by the road. The truck was parked in front of a two-bay firehouse with GANNET VOLUNTEER FIRE

COMPANY carefully painted in red on the wall between the first and second floors.

“Hello, Rennie.” Rennie, a man about my own age, turned with the rag still in his hand. He didn’t get down, but just looked at me from where he stood and smiled. “Joe Gunther, you son of a bitch. How the fuck are you?” I laughed and shook my head. “I’ve been better. How are you?” His familiar round, florid face broke into a theatrical scowl. He was a barrel of a man, short, square, and muscular, his body more a monument to hard work and fatty foods than to genetics. The diet had undoubtedly also contributed to his increasingly flushed skin tone, which by now had progressed to the stage where he looked either on the brink of blowing sky-high, or of having a major heart attack. He stepped down and shook my hand. “Pissed off. I told the others to be here to give the trucks their last wash and wax before winter, and I’m the only one that showed up. I’ve been here the whole fucking day.”

“Can’t compete with the deer.” “Deer, shit. Just a bunch of drunks with rifles. What’re you doing’ up here?” His eyes were shining, and he still hadn’t released my hand. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed his company.

“Temporary job for the State’s Attorney-moonlighting.” Rennie snorted, dropped my hand, and retrieved a can of car wax from the roof of the cab. “Well, that chicken shit needs all the help he can get.

What’s the job?” “Some town clerk dipping into the till. I’m supposed to dig up the proof.” “Murial’s dipping? Damn, you’d think she’d live better than she does.” “Not Murial, different town. I just thought I’d stay with Buster while I’m in the area.” He got behind the wheel of the fire truck. “Yeah?” he said nonchalantly, looking completely uninterested. “What town?” I grinned at him. “Nice try.” He started the engine with a tremendous roar and eased the truck backward into the station. The clearance between vehicle and doorframe was about an inch and a half on all three sides. Another truck-a ‘55 Chevy-stood at gleaming attention at the mouth of the second door. I crossed over to it as Rennie killed the motor and came around the front.

“Memory row, huh?” I smiled and patted the red fender. “I remember when Buster first rode this into town.” “Yeah, the only brand-new truck we ever had.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m still partial to Engine 1, though, even if it is Army surplus. That son of a bitch has never been a problem.” “And this has?” Rennie shrugged. “I don’t like it as much.” I knew it wasn’t the truck-it was the fact that it was Buster’s baby. Buster was Chief-seemingly always had been-while Rennie had worked his way up to Assistant Chief through pure attrition.

During my first vacations up here, Rennie and I had been “junior firemen,” duped by that meaningless title into sweeping, cleaning, washing, polishing, waxing until we’d qualified as Grade-A maids, all seemingly under the stern direction of anyone and everyone in the department eighteen years or older. My willingness to “shovel the shit,” as Rennie put it, despite my connection to the Chief, had formed the initial basis of our friendship.

That had later blossomed as we’d graduated to manning equipment and fighting fires-albeit only the minor ones-always together, always a team. We’d even exchanged letters throughout the school year, comparing notes on how many ways adults conspire to torture teenagers.

We were young men by the time Buster rolled into town on the new Chevy in 1955-both veterans. That was the last time I was to spend more than a couple of days in Gannet at one time. My connection to Rennie faded in intensity after I signed on as a policeman in Brattleboro; the correspondence died of neglect and memories began to replace an updated friendship.

It had seemed reasonable to think that Rennie would eventually replace Buster as Chief. Now, I wasn’t so sure. Buster was in his eighties somewhere, and it looked like he would outlive us all. I imagined that fact, along with all the other intangibles that had grown between the two of them through the years, had created a kind of low-level but permanent friction.

Rennie, like most of the other people in Gannet, worked in St.

Johnsbury. He was a loading dock foreman for a large trucking firm, or at least he was the last time I saw him.

I walked to the back of the station, reflecting on how many hours I’d spent in this building, so many years ago. Attached to the 55’s backstep, I discovered two shiny new Scott-Paks, breathing tanks and masks used for entering smoky buildings. I raised my eyebrows and pointed at them. “Pretty fancy. When did you get those?” Rennie grinned. “Ever try one on?” “A few times. We used to carry them in our patrol cars in case we had to go in with the firefighters. We dropped it, though. The training was costing a lot and the Fire Chief felt his turf was being invaded.” “Too bad, they’re kind of fun. The Order gave ‘em to us-good will gesture, I guess.” “The Order?” “Yeah. The Natural Order. The cult, or whatever you call it.

Haven’t you heard about them?” I nodded. “I thought they didn’t support this kind of stuff.” “They don’t. But their leader is a real politician. He holds all the money, has electricity in his house, drives a car. He’s no fool-got the best scam running I ever seen. He gave us those and a couple of new portable pumps; he even tried to buy us beepers for when we get a call, except we don’t have a system that would trigger the beepers.” “What’s his name?” “Depends. If you’re a member, he’s called The Elephant; real name’s Edward Sarris. Nice enough for a nut; sure spreads the money around. Christ, when they moved into town, they paid top dollar for all those houses-cash, too.”

“Where’s the money come from?” “Damned if I know. The restaurant does good business, I guess mail order, mostly; you know, granola head stuff organic foods. Rumor has it when you join, you got to give all your money to Sarris, but for all I know, they could be printing it in the basement.” I glanced out the door. “Well, I better get going. Haven’t seen Buster yet. You coming down to the Rocky River later?” “Sure. Be along in a bit.” I continued my walk down the street, taking in the sights. The contrasts I saw were familiar and typical of the Northeast Kingdom.

Between and beyond the weather-blighted buildings and broken roads of the village, my eye was drawn to the land-wild, undulating, pristine.

Its beauty lay in its pocket vistas, rarely extending beyond a mile or two. Farther south, the Green Mountains offered breathtaking views of valley passes and river gorges. Up here, the whole earth was shoved up closer to the sky, its hills and dales more interconnected, less in conflict. Seeing this land, oddly arctic in appearance at this time of year, gave one a comforting, although false sense, that there were perhaps corners of the world where civilization had yet to set foot.

I’d always thought it was as much the remoteness as the beauty of the region that made the Kingdom a shrine of sorts to the citizens of Vermont.

I thought back to the man who had shot at me to protect both his freedom and his winter’s meat, which made me focus anew on how the once-familiar buildings of this town were being ground down without respite. The Kingdom would live on, but not as it had. The younger generations were already abandoning it, lured by the monied south, and those who had made that money were seeking new places, like the Kingdom, in which to buy real estate.

For the Gannets, tucked away from the main highways, on the outskirts of the commercial centers, things weren’t looking too good. I began to wonder if after decades of clinging to this land, Gannet was finally slated to die.

Considering that I’d come back here for some mental and emotional rest and relaxation, this kind of thinking was not the stuff of dreams.

The Rocky River Inn was the one glaring exception to the town’s generally muted architecture. It took up one entire side of North Street, with one wing at the corner of Route 114, and the other looking straight down Atlantic Boulevard. It was an enormous place, dwarfing any three buildings in town put together. It was also a first-rate Victorianstyle dump. It had a sagging rusty metal roof, diseased-looking, paintpeeling walls, and its windows were covered with either torn plastic sheets or dilapidated plywood. Although it had “wrecking ball” written all over it, it had looked that way for as long as I could remember.

It had once been a palace, of course, built in the middle of nowhere in the 1 850s by a lunatic logging king named Gannet, who had died one week after moving in. It sported turrets and bay windows, porches and balconies, and more gingerbread than any sane Victorian would have considered tasteful. Now, however, one of the turrets was draped with a moldy green tarp, the balconies had been declared unsafe, and the wraparound first-floor porch groaned under the weight of several cords of stacked firewood. The gingerbread was half gone, and two of the bay windows flickered with the garish light of several neon beer signs.

A combination hotel/bar/cafe//home, the Inn was owned by a mercurial woman in her fifties named Greta Lynn. She had run the Rocky River for the past twenty-five years or so, inheriting it from her equally eccentric mother, and lived there with a succession of mousy male companions whose names nobody could recall. Greta, Rennie, and I were, as they say “of an age,” and had run around with the same crowd when we were younger. In later life, after “Peanuts” had become a popular comic strip, I was convinced that somehow Charles Schulz had met Greta-and had found his inspiration for Lucy Van Pelt. I climbed its warped, cracked and creaking front steps and entered a huge entry hall.

A crumbling carved hardwood staircase rose directly ahead, and two equally large rooms opened on either side. The room to the right had been converted into a cafe//bar-where I’d slurped sodas of yore-and was segregated by a pair of ornate multi-paned pocket doors. The room to the left had no doors and spilled out into the entry in a seeming attempt to take it over. I turned left to what everyone called “The Library” to find Buster, for this was his home away from home-a room of paperback-cluttered halls, of tall dirty windows, clanking radiators, and derelict furniture, overshadowed by a gap-toothed, non-functional, cobweb-choked handelier. There, at the head of a semicircle of mismatched sofas, armchairs, and ottomans, like some long-dethroned king with his wery-bred entourage, Buster held court.

He saw me as I crossed the threshold and raised his beer high.

Goddamn, it’s the celebrity. Come here.” He struggled to his feet as I approached and placed one gargantuan arm across my shoulders. He was a huge man, fat and bearded, six and a half feet tall, with crooked, yellow teeth and bleary, misty eyes-a man with intimate knowledge f the bottle, yet whom I’d never seen under the influence. Or maybe ever seen sober.

I am no grasshopper myself, but standing next to Buster, I felt like a child posing with a hippo.

He waved his beer can at the small group of people sitting around e semicircle of chairs. “You know any of these guys? John The man finished for him. “John Secco.” “Right; not too good with names,”

Buster muttered. “This is Joey gunther-sorry, Lieutenant Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro Police department, my nephew. Remember hearing about that Ski Mask murder case down in Brattleboro? Well, Joey here nailed him.” Several heads nodded, I think out of pure politeness. He pointed at another man, hesitated, obviously groping for a name, and finally gave up on the general introductions. He pushed me to the chair to his right, settled back down himself with a grunt. He as about to ask me a question when Greta entered the room. “Thought I heard you in here.

How’s your mother?” No hugs or kisses from her. There never had been; never would be. Greta Lynn was square, no-nonsense woman who prided herself on being ready and able to spit any man in the eye metaphorically speaking. She was short-tempered, opinionated, and brusk and, as far as I knew, had never shown a different side of herself to anyone in all her fifty-six years except to my mother. To her way of thinking, it would have been sappy and contrived to have made more of a fuss over my arrival. “She’s fine. I dropped by on the way up here.

She asked me to give you her best.” “That’s very thoughtful. And your brother?” Here her tone was solicitous. Leo, who still lived with our mother in the old family house in Thetford, loved classic cars from the fifties, cheap flashy omen, his work-he was a very successful butcher-and our mother, ho was older than Buster and whom Leo nursed in his own effective fashion. It was a combination of plusses and minuses in Greta’s eyes, and had always found absolute whites and blacks easier to deal with.

“Leo’s fine, too. Making a killing with his new butcher shop.” She made a noncommittal grunt. “Would you like something?” “Cup of coffee would be nice. Thanks.” “All right.” She turned to Buster. aNother one?” He never got a chance to answer. Suddenly, the front door flew open with a crash and a middle-aged, thick-waisted woman half-fell into the entrance hall. She was disheveled and frightened and was still holding her leather handbag.

“My husband,” She gasped as she tried to get up off the floor.

Greta ran to help her, the rest of us looking on. “What happened?”

Greta asked.

“It’s Bruce. He’s gotten into a fight with one of the cult people.” “Where?” “In one of those houses, down the street.” She pointed toward Atlantic Boulevard.

Greta looked over her shoulder at us. “Well, come on, move it.”

She turned the woman around and charged out the door with her. The crowd, I among them, moved like cattle to follow them.

“You know what’s going on?” I asked Buster, as we hurried down the street, struggling into our coats. “I can guess. She and her husband came up here a couple of days ago trying to find their daughter. Sounds like they got into trouble instead.” “What do you mean, ‘Find their daughter’?” “My guess is she joined the Order and her folks are trying to get her back.” “Has this happened before?” Buster shrugged. “Off and on. We get parents, clergymen, newspeople. They either come to gawk or raise a little hell. Never amounts to too much.” Rennie, catching sight of us from across North Street, ran over to join us. “What’s going’

on?” Buster chuckled. “I guess that Boston fella is getting the short end of the stick with the Order.” Rennie looked down Atlantic Boulevard at Greta and the woman.

“Oh, Christ, Greta on the warpath.” He trotted on ahead to catch up to them.

We were near the bottom of Atlantic when we heard muffled shouting coming from the last house on the east side of the street. Ahead of us, Rennie, Greta, and the woman, who Buster identified as Mrs. Wingate, broke into a run. Mrs. Wingate began calling, “Bruce. bruce,” as she went.

Rennie reached the front door first and pounded on it with his fist, yelling for someone to open up. As Buster and I drew near, I noticed absolute stillness from the neighboring houses, and felt the odd sensation of dozens of eyes watching me from the dark. I was struck again by the same ominous chill I’d felt earlier upon seeing the four children and the dog in the street.

I stood beside Rennie and tried the doorknob, my adrenaline now pumping at a good clip. Inside, the shouting had been joined by the sound of objects breaking. The knob turned in my hand, but the door was obviously bolted from the inside. Mrs. Wingate began to cry. “Please, get him out. Somebody’s going to be killed.” Rennie glanced at me.

“Window?” I nodded. The two to the left of the door were blocked by a flower box, so Rennie and I ran for the building’s south side, looking for another option. The sounds from the inside continued unabated.

As we rounded the corner, a shattering explosion of glass at head level made us veer on, our arms thrown up to protect our faces. As if n slow motion, his jacket fluttering like broken wings, his white shirt blowing in the night as with an energy of its own, a man came sailing backward through a large, ground-floor picture window, accompanied by a million tiny shards of glass, each twinkling fiercely in the light of the full moon. He landed with a solid thud, flat on his back, his arms spread eagled, and his expression one of utter astonishment. From his clothing, which included black slacks and penny loafers, I knew he had to be attached somehow to the tweed-and-wool Mrs. Wingate.

His face was bleeding slightly and he looked utterly astonished, but otherwise he appeared more surprised than injured. Above us, standing still what used to be a ground-floor window, loomed a tall bearded man with long black hair, dressed in quilted cotton.

“What’s going on here?” Rennie shouted.

“He threw Bruce out of the window,” Greta said, emphasizing the obvious.

I stepped over the shattered glass and bent down near the man on the ground. “You okay?” He looked at me in silence for a couple of seconds. “I think so.” I could sense him trying to regain his composure. He was having to dig deep.

“Anything hurt?” Mrs. Wingate joined me at his side. “No.”

Wingate moved a little. “I think I’m okay.” He sounded a little distracted. With his wife’s help, I lifted him to his feet.

“I’m a little dizzy,” he said as he tried to take a couple of steps. We sat him down on the grass, away from the broken glass.

“Bruce, what happened?” Mrs. Wingate asked, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief she’d produced from somewhere. His cuts were superficial and had already stopped bleeding. He pushed her hand away.

“That bastard wouldn’t let me see Julie. Wouldn’t even let me In.

I had to use force.” He tried for a smile, but his lips were tight and pale. “I guess I lost.” Mrs. Wingate introduced us-her first name was Ellie-and we all shook hands awkwardly. I noticed then he was trembling slightly. I could hear more shouting from inside the house.

“Someone told me you’re trying to find your daughter.” “That’s right.” The noise inside got louder. I looked over to Ellie. “You okay here for the moment? I think I better get in there.” She nodded. I found the others just inside the front door. Not surprisingly, the noisemakers were Rennie and Greta.

“Goddamn it, Greta, if you’d shut the hell up, we could find out what happened here.” “Any idiot can see that. Bruce came to get his daughter and was beaten up. That’s assault and battery.” I interrupted.

“Not necessarily, Greta. I’m Joe Gunther.” I stuck my hand out to the tall man with the beard, who’d just been watching up to now.

He smiled slightly and took the handshake. “Fox.” I continued: “If Mr. Wingate broke in here uninvited, these people had a perfect right to throw him out, although maybe not through the window. Is that Mr. Fox, or Fox something?” “Just Fox. Are you a lawyer?” A woman with three small children stood behind him, all dressed identically in their quilted suits. The disheveled room, even with the window permanently open, was quite warm.

I smiled at his question, and at the kids, who looked very small and scared. The oldest couldn’t have been more than five. “No, I’m a Brattleboro policeman, up here visiting. Can you tell us what happened?” “Oh, this is going to be good,” Greta muttered.

“We were returning from Evening Gathering when this man approached us, demanding to see his daughter, someone named Julie. I told him I knew of no such person, and would he please leave us alone, but he followed us home. I tried to keep him out when we got here, but he forced his way in, locked the door behind him, and began pushing me around, screaming and yelling. He grabbed that chair and tried to hit me with it. I had to think of the children, so I stopped him. He slipped and went out the window.” “The people in your party are all here now, in this room? No one’s missing?” “That’s right.” I nodded toward the woman. “What’s your name, ma’am?” Fox answered for her.

“Dandelion.” Greta almost choked. “Dandelion?” “Give it a rest, Greta.” I walked over to the window and called to Wingate. “Did you break in here uninvited looking for your daughter?” He froze for a moment, his eyes narrow and angry. “Did you start the fight?” He looked up at me furiously. “He wouldn’t let me see her, said she wasn’t in there and that he didn’t even know who I was talking about. I saw her with my own goddamned eyes. We followed her here, for Christ sake. Why do you think I came to this house in the first place?

e lied to my face. He’s lying right now.” I sensed violence surging within him, but for the moment at least the man in the Robert Hall clothes maintained his self-control.

I told Fox, “You can press charges if you want.” “What?” Greta asked, visibly surprised.

Rennie answered for me. “It’s the law-Wingate was trespassing.”

Greta looked at me. I just nodded.

“We don’t wish to press charges,” Fox said in a quiet voice. “You want him to pay damages?” Again Fox shook his head.

“We may have a kidnapping here,” Greta’s voice was a notch higher.

“I demand that we be allowed to search the building.” It was good line of bluster, but, knowing Greta, I could sense her sails beginning to flap.

“That’s way out of line,” Rennie said behind her. She whirled on him. “Since when the hell did you become such a gal hotshot?” “We don’t mind.” Fox’s calm, resonant voice spread between em like oil on water.

We could’nt search so much as amble from room to room, like tourists visiting a museum. And the analogy held, for in many wayS, the tour revealed a life style of long ago. There were no lamps or electric lights-the only illumination came from homemade candles; the floors, apart from an occasional small wool or braided rug, were bare; dried foods hung from hooks in the kitchen; the beds upstairs were nothing more than wood frames strung with rope supporting straw-stuffed mattresses. Everything was neat, clean, and frugal to the point of being bare.

At the foot of the stairs, there was a jury-rigged wood stove made from an upended fifty-five-gallon drum. It was supported on bricks and had wire supports running from the wall and ceiling to the stovepipe.

Rennie passed his hand near the hot surface. “This ain’t the safest stove I’ve ever seen. I got no bone to pick with you about how you live, but you better fix this: new stovepipe, new supports, some kind of firewall behind it. We don’t really have a fire code around here, but this is dangerous. I’ll get you a pamphlet on what you need if you like.” Fox nodded. “Thank you.” He escorted us to the door, his small family mute behind him.

Greta suddenly marched up to the woman called Dandelion.

“Do you know where Julie Wingate is? Has she been hidden someplace?” All four of them looked at Fox. “You may answer.” “No,” the woman said. “Christ.” Greta stormed out.

“Would you like to see the basement?” Fox asked politely. I could hear a slight inflection of victory in his tone. Rennie patted his arm as we filed by, pretty amused by the entire proceeding by now. “I think we’re outta here.” The Wingates were standing outside with Greta.

“Better luck next time, Bud,” Rennie called over to Wingate. “My name’s not Bud.” The sheer hostility in his voice caught us all off guard. For some reason, it made me think of when the light gets strangely yellow, just before a big storm hits from out of nowhere.

Rennie heard the menace in Wingate’s voice clearly. “Hey, look, “I’m not your problem. If you can’t keep your shit together, don’t lay it on me.” Greta looked from one to the other. “Never mind, Rennie.”

But Bruce Wingate seemed to have found an outlet for his anger and frustration. He was like a stove glowing cherry red. Rennie stared at him for a moment, typically unwilling to walk away and let the situation cool. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” “You people make me sick.”

The words slipped out between unmoving lips.

Greta tugged at Rennie’s sleeve. “Drop it, Rennie, the man’s upset.” “I can see that. What I don’t see is why he’s pissed at us.

Seems to me we put up with enough bullshit from these assholes-them and their fucked-up daughter.” Wingate hit him with his fist hard across the face, making him stagger back. Rennie’s mouth was open, his expression stunned. Buster and I instinctively caught him by his arms and held him. But he didn’t attempt to react. He just watched as Wingate stalked off, stiff-legged, with his wife in tow. Buster patted Rennie lightly on the back. “You okay?” Rennie straightened and shook us off.

“Yeah. Fucking dink.” He walked away in the other direction, rubbing the side of his face.

The three of us, Greta, Buster, and I, were left standing in the dark street. “Christ almighty,” I muttered. “What’s been going’ on around here?” Greta looked at me for a moment, and then left us without saying a word.

As I stood there in the evening chill, I knew one thing: The violence and frustration buried deep inside all of us was working its way to the surface in Gannet, building up slowly, like the sweat of exertion n a hot summer day.

Buster and I stood quietly for a while, watching Greta’s stumpy figure receding up Atlantic toward the Inn.

He sighed gently, the vapor from his nostrils caught in the light from the moon and the blanket of brilliant icy stars overhead. I sensed n him a resignation of sorts, not just about tonight’s behavior, but about the causes behind it. He was one of life’s observers, and the social integration I sensed in this town must have been a focus of his tension for years. I felt the sadness emanating from him like the heat from dying embers.

Buster shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “You going home?”

I hesitated. “I don’t think so, not yet. I thought I might go back to the Inn. I would like to talk to you about all this, though.” He nodded. “I’ll walk with you. I’m stiffening up.” I let him hit his stride in silence for a couple of minutes, knowing he hadn’t forgotten my request. He wanted to give it some thought.

“You know anything about this group here?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Rennie told me they’re headed by a guy who calls himself The Elephant. They’ve spent a lot of money making friends.” “Right.

Edward Sarris. Well, Greta and I are still Selectmen, along with Renie Cutts. About five years ago, this guy Sarris comes to one of our monthly meetings and introduces himself. He says he’s moving up here with some friends and that they’ll be buying up a bunch of property. He knows people are going to talk ‘cause his bunch is a little unusual, but that we’re all going’ to be real good neighbors.

He’s not asking us for anything, you know-it’s more like an announcement, just so we don’t think he’s sneaking around trying to pull a fast one. “Well, sneaking was hardly a problem. They came in here gangbusters, paying top dollar for about a dozen houses, buying the old Morse farm north of town, building something like a church up in the woods beyond Atlantic, opening that restaurant, spreading money around like snow in January. People were so busy stuffing their pockets, they didn’t see half the town had switched hands.” “How many members are in the Order?” “Oh, I don’t know-seventy-five to a hundred. Anyway, problem was, once they were in, the town was split in two; they didn’t mix with us and we weren’t invited to mix with them. It’s against their religion, or whatever they call it. You saw it in that house: They’re real structured and keep to themselves. They say they’re anti-materialists and that everybody who ain’t like them are the bad guys. It’s like any other bunch of oddballs, I suppose-you got to hate something or someone to make yourself feel better. Maybe that’s what Greta’s doing.” I had seen Greta’s hatred, and Wingate’s, but Fox had seemed downright gracious in the face of our invasion. “Who do they hate?” “The ‘material world,’ as they call it: the pollution, the moneygrubbing, the commercialism, electricity and plumbing and cars-us, in other words.” “Does that animosity ever come out? Have they ever threatened anyone?” He gave a surprised look. “Oh, no, they wouldn’t touch us with songs. Except for Sarris he’s their ambassador in dealing with the outside world.” I shook my head. “So it’s a time bomb?” He chuckled, which came as a relief. “We could be close-minded y now. I don’t know. There’s more, though, a feel to it that unsettles people.

I’m not real bent out of shape myself, mind you. I don’t like hat we lost half the town, but that was our fault. Other people, though, see ‘em as a threat. They dress funny, look weird, keep to themselves.

Hell, when you get down to it, I think it’s just the hippy thing all over again. They’re nature freaks they fertilize their gardens with their own shit; they don’t believe in zippers or in getting married; they call each other by funny names. And then there’s the sex.

Rumor has it everybody does it with everybody else and Sarris gets the pick of the litter. Doesn’t sound too bad to me, but people like Greta ain’t too fond of it. She always was a little strait-laced, I thought.”

“You told me once the restaurant was the only genuine business the town has.” He sighed. “Oh, it is-it’s real successful. It has a mailorder part to it, too, that sells ‘natural food,’ whatever the hell that is.

But with the town half-sold on, and the restaurant pulling whatever traffic comes y, Greta’s found herself pretty pinched. The whole town has, for that matter.” He shook his head and smiled sadly.

“Looks like maybe we sold our soul for a few quick bucks.” “How badly off is she?” “Greta? Who knows? She’s gotten pretty wild about them.

You want to get your ears burned, just mention the Order. This Wingate couple blowing into town has been like a fuse. She’s latched onto them like a mother hen, determined to help them find their daughter. I don’t know, though. They seem pretty weird to me, too.” Despite Buster’s amiable tone, the picture he was drawing was rim, of desperate people in a face-on, the backs of their heels on the edge of a chasm. “Has Wingate blown up before?” Buster frowned. “That was a first; course, he’s only been here a couple of days. It wouldn’t have happened if that damned fool Rennie hadn’t pushed.” I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to fault Rennie. It had seemed to me his irritation at Wingate’s tone had been justified, even if he had been a little lacking in sensitivity. Still, that was the Rennie of old ever afraid of being popped if he felt he was right. I’d always loved running in his wake as a kid, glorifying in his bravado.

It was the exact way Buster so disliked in him.

Buster resumed. “Except for tonight, old Bruce strikes me as a pretty tight drum, as buttoned down as his collars. I never seen him so much as smile, I don’t think.” He shook his head. ‘I’m not sure I’d be real keen to go home with folks like that.” We had reached the front steps of the Inn. “You coming inside?” I asked him.

“Nah, I think I’ll go home. Laura usually puts something in a Crockpot for dinner. I’ll leave it on for you, if you like.” “Hmm, I met her when I came in. Sounds like you’re getting decadent in your old age, hiring a housekeeper.

He smiled. “Nice kid. No… I helped her out a few years back-alcoholic family, lousy friends. She straightened herself out and thought I had a lot to do with it; said she wanted to return the favor somehow. I got tired of arguing, so she fixes me the odd meal now and then and cleans the house… well, catch you later.” I climbed the steps and looked back at him, heading toward the corner of North and 114. In the dark, barely visible from the Inn’s anemic lighting, he looked like some bear heading back to his cave.

I stepped inside the door and hung up my coat. Greta was coming out the cafe/’s double doors. “I thought you went home.” “I wanted to ask you something.” She looked at me warily. “What about?” “The Wingates.” She placed her hands on her hips, not the most subservient of gestures. “Is it true you’re working for the State’s Attorney now?” I hesitated, suddenly conscious of how I might be perceived here.

“I’m on temporary assignment for a specific case. It has nothing to do with Gannet, though.” “Are you going to help the Wingates?” “I don’t know if there’s anything legally I can do.” She let out a short bark of a laugh. “Those Order people kidnapped the Wingates’ daughter.

That’s against the law, isn’t it?” “If they kidnapped her. Sounds more like she ran away. There was a burst of laughter from the other room, followed by loud voices competing for attention. Greta scowled. “She’s like a zombie-she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. They’ve got her drugged or something.” She bent forward and thrust her face up at me. “Jesus, Joe, stop tiptoeing around. What do you think this Order is anyway-a summer camp?

It’s a cult, just like that Jonestown bunch. They’re sick. Did you see what happened when I asked the woman about Julie? She looked Tarzan for permission. These people can’t even think for themselves. they’re sick and I think they’re dangerous.” I opened my mouth but she wasn’t finished. “Did you see those kids tonight? They can’t read or write, they all act like robots.” She held up one hand like a traffic cop. “I know that Fox guy I’ve seen him round. He’s one of the big shots, one of Sarris’s flunkies. If we went back to that house a week from now, I guarantee you’d find him with different bunch of kids and a different woman. These people move round like rabbits.” I thought about pursuing it, but then I changed my mind, giving to one of those sudden emotional cave-ins that occur when you’re already close to throwing in the towel.

It had been a cop’s impulse to question Greta instead of going back home with Buster. But Greta was right. I should probably just get out of the way. I should go after my ticky-fingered town clerk for the State’s Attorney, avoid further complications in my life, and get the hell back to Brattleboro.

I realized I’d come up to Gannet with false expectations; I’d wanted to find the town unchanged, my friends waiting to greet me.

gannet was a kind of tonic I’d hoped would make me feel better. It had been a silly, self-serving notion. I turned back to the row of pegs on the wall and retrieved my coat. I don’t know, Greta. Seems to me everyone here’s a little too steamed up. If you like, I’ll tell the SA to keep an eye on this bunch.” She stepped forward and stopped me from putting on my coat. My ague, evasive tone had made her quite angry by now. “Don’t you pat me on the head, Joe Gunther. I don’t need you looking down on me.

I watched her eyes, narrow with fury, remembering a similar look n Wingate’s face, and Rennie’s as he had walked away after being punched.

Compared with theirs, Fox’s had been cool and superior, displaying an icier, perhaps more threatening anger.

I removed Greta’s hand from my coat and put it on, bidding her goodnight, suddenly eager to escape back into the cold. Outside, I shook my head. Anger is no byproduct of self-contentment. I couldn’t hake the ominous feeling that Wingate and his wife, Greta and Rennie, and God knew how many other people in this town were all in the process of slipping their mental anchor lines, yielding to the different frustrations that had consumed them over time. I wondered in how many of them this rage might be controllable, and in which ones it indicated a ship drifting toward the rocks.

A searing pain in my shoulder blew me awake. “Ow. Damn.” “Wake up-fast.” Buster punched me again, hard. “Cut it out, goddamn it.”

“Siren’s blowing-we got a fire.” He was already out the door and heading for the stairs.

As I stumbled out of bed, groping for my clothes, I could hear the eerie funereal wail of the firehouse siren, rising and falling, a persistent, nagging, penetrating noise that made my hair stand up on end.

Slipping my shoes on unlaced, holding my coat under one arm, I stumbled downstairs to the front door. As I kicked it open, Gannet’s siren enveloped me, making the air vibrate. Buster’s pickup was already rolling down the driveway, the passenger door open. Come on. Move it.”

I half-ran, half-jumped onto the seat next to him. The sudden acceleration slammed the door for me and threw me back against the seat as we squealed down the street. “There,” he shouted, pointing down South Street as we drew abreast. “Looks like that house we were in earlier.” We came to a skidding stop next to the firehouse just as the siren blew its last mournful note. The firehouse doors were already open and I could hear the roaring of both truck engines being fired up.

Pickup trucks and cars appeared out of nowhere, parking helter-skelter up and down the road, as half-dressed men ran toward the fire trucks, even as they eased out of their tight berths. Buster and I clambered aboard the 55, next to a young man wearing glasses and a mustache. “Hi, Chief.” “Hey, Paul. Hand me that helmet.” Paul cracked my knee with the stick shift as we pulled into the road. It was a two-man cab, and I was the third man in the middle.

Buster shouted out the window at one of the other firemen, “Call East Haven and East Burke, we’re going to need backup on this.” The driver hit the toggles for the red lights and siren, which, considering the size of the town and the short distance we had to travel, seemed a little excessive to me. It also made it hard to hear myself think. I could see Buster’s lips moving, but I couldn’t tell if he was muttering or shouting.

As Buster had suspected, it was the same house Bruce Wingate had been thrown out of earlier, several of its windows now glowing orange or actually leaking flames. The smoke above the building reflected the hellish pink glimmer. As we pulled up, I saw where someone, presumably Fox, had nailed a piece of plywood over the broken window.

Everyone piled out of both trucks and began grabbing equipment: hatchets, boots, bunker coats, hose, axes, Halligan tools. Two men each grabbed the two new portable pumps Rennie had showed me earlier and ran for the bank of the Passumpsic River to set up a continuous water supply for the truck pumps.

I had been to fire scenes before, both here as a kid and as an adult n Brattleboro, but what I’d forgotten was the lack of radio equipment n most truly remote, rural fire departments. Instead of the usual cracking of electronic voices and the sight of white-coated officers walking round with portable radios, the people here ran flat out, some with megaphones, shouting out orders like barkers at a carnival.

“Put this on,” Buster said as he shoved a coat and helmet into my arms. “And get some boots-rear compartment.” I did as I was told, jostling with others at the back of the truck, trying to stand on one foot while shoving the other into a heavy, folded-over rubber boot. One of my shoes fell on the ground and was instantly kicked under the truck by someone grabbing for a pair of leather gloves.

I pulled back finally, with boots too big and a coat too tight across the shoulders. I slapped the helmet on and felt it dig into my forehead. At least the gloves fit and I had a working flashlight.

Rennie jogged by, carrying one of the Scott-Paks in his arms. ‘Joey, come with me.” Paul, my erstwhile driver, was holding the other coat.

Only then, hearing Rennie’s voice, did I remember that we had one this before, Rennie and I, as a team. For once, here was a memory hat was holding true, and I gave in to it happily, the observer no longer.

We half-ran toward the burning house and stopped near the front door. Another crew was laying a one-and-a-half-inch attack line on the round for use inside the building.

Rennie thrust his Scott-Pak at me and turned his back. “Help me put this damn thing on.” I held it up so he could lace his arms through the shoulder harness and supported it while he tightened the buckles.

Paul, both thinner and much younger, was doing the same on his own beside me. But in the flickering red lights from both the trucks and the fire, I saw his face looked wan and fearful. His hands were shaking badly as he fumbled with the straps. Rennie took his helmet off and was about to slip on the face mask when there was an explosion above us.

“Look out.” We all three ducked and felt a shower of glass and wood splinters pelt our backs. Rennie was the first to straighten up.

“Flashover.” Paul, standing still, was shaking his head, his Scott dangling from one shoulder. “No way, man. No fucking way. Rennie looked at him.

“What’re you talking about? Scott up, goddamn it.” Paul dumped the air cylinder onto the ground. “Not me, man. The whole fucking place is going. You’re going to die in there.” Rennie shook him by the coat.

“Paul, come on, don’t do this.

There’re people in there. Once we ventilate the windows, the heat’ll escape. That’s all that was. Come on.

A firefighter pounded Rennie on the shoulder. “All set, line’s charged.” I looked down and saw the hose was now fat with water. “I’m not going to die for a bunch of granola heads.” Rennie stared at him, his mouth open in astonishment, momentarily bewildered by an attitude as foreign to him as ancient Greek. As prejudiced as he could be under normal circumstances, once that fire coat went on his back, I’d never seen him hesitate to stick his neck out for others. It was a form of unspoken oath with him: To differentiate between victims out of pure prejudice would have been to spit on his own beliefs. I yielded to impulse, Rennie and I fighting fires again. I began grabbing Paul’s equipment. “Give it to me. I’ll go in.” Rennie gave me a shit-kicking grin, the years, for just a moment, gone from his face. “Just like old times.” “Up to our knees in shit,” I whispered under the noise, and began to load up.

I tightened the air bottle’s straps over my shoulders, slipped the face mask over my head, and triggered the positive-pressure lever on the regulator harnessed to my chest. Scott-Paks are designed to operate in two ways: Demand-pressure allows the air to reach the face mask only with each inhalation of the firefighter. It’s the best way to guarantee that the air released from the tank goes into the lungs of the wearer, with no waste. The other way, positive-pressure, allows a little air to leak through the regulator and into the mask at all times so that the pressure inside the mask is slightly greater than the pressure without: It’s an extra safety device to keep posioned air from getting in around the edges of the mask. Considering he size of the fire we were facing, I opted to waste the small amount f extra air generated by the latter method.

Not that the mere flip of a lever took care of all my worries. The face mask is similar to what scuba divers use, with rubber borders and a curved plastic lens. Putting one on made me feel claustrophobic; not only was my peripheral vision blocked on, but the sound of the air rushing into the mask at each breath reminded me that in twenty minutes, at the very most, my bottle would be empty faster if I breathed harder.

Rennie positioned himself at the front door, nozzle in one hand, an axe in the other. I stood right behind him. My job was to bear most of the weight and clumsiness of the thin, unyielding hose so that Rennie might move more freely. We both also had flashlights available.

Buster ran up and shouted, “We’re ready to ventilate if you’re ready to go.” He suddenly recognized me behind my face shield. “What the hell are you doing?” Rennie thrust his head forward, shouting through his mask. “Paul won’t go in.” Buster eyed me sternly, “You been trained for Scott use?” I merely nodded but Rennie’s face clouded. “I wouldn’t have him in it if he hadn’t been.” Buster smiled, gave a thumbs-up, and began shouting orders. I could hear upstairs windows being broken by ladders. This would encourage the flames to course through the house, but it would also draw out the smoke, a fire’s primary killer. If Rennie and I could hit the base of that fire during our search and rescue, then the flame problem would be eliminated also.

It was a standard best-laid plan that rarely went as hoped.

We crouched to one side of the door as Rennie turned the handle and pushed hard. The door flew open and a bright orange tongue of flame spat out next to us. We waited a second for it to recede, and then entered the building, bent low.

The scene before us, especially as viewed through our plastic lenses, had the unlikely look of a Hollywood inferno. Overhead, the ceiling was totally occluded by a thick, roiling cloud of orange and yellow smoke. About twenty feet ahead, at the foot of the stairs, the wood stove Rennie had criticized earlier lay on its side, caved in and white hot, its contents the heart of an angry, noisy, air-sucking fireball. In its midst lay a darker shadow, and from that shadow, extending out beyond the center of the blaze, was a human arm, charred and twisted.

The heat, especially compared to the twenty-degree temperature outside, was almost instantly unbearable. The flames columned straight up from the destroyed stove with a cyclonic ferocity, flattening against the ceiling and shooting up the stairway like an upside-down waterfall.

Rennie opened the nozzle to a full-fog pattern, putting a curtain of cooling water between us and the fire. The downside to this lifesaving maneuver was expected and dramatic; the water instantly turned to steam and knocked out our vision with the abruptness of a plug being pulled on a lamp. Of the split-second sharp picture I’d had upon entering, all that was left was a world of smoke and steam with a blurry heart of orange. We were reduced to crawling forward, dragging the hose along, groping with outstretched hands and relying on our memories of what we had toured a few hours earlier. Rennie led us straight to the fireball. The sound of water hitting white-hot material was like nonstop thunder, but the effort paid off. We quickly got to the body on the floor-or what was left of it-and progressed to the foot of the stairs. There, Rennie rolled over and aimed the stream overhead, at the sloping ceiling above the stairs. The splashback soaked us with soot-stained warm water. He cut back on the water after the flames went out above us and shouted through his mask: “How many rooms are downstairs? Do you remember?” The noise of the steam, the fire still crackling upstairs, and the water trickling everywhere blocked off his already-muffled voice. I responded with the one word most frequently uttered by firefighters inside a burning building: “What?” He repeated his question. I held up three fingers and pointed at the nearest door, just to the left of the stairs, which led to the kitchen. I realized I was panting and made a conscious effort to slow down my breathing.

It probably took us ten minutes to crawl along the walls of those three rooms, arms outstretched, feeling for more bodies. That was faster than it should have been, but we both knew we were doing it for the benefit of the doubt; through it all, our minds were on the bedrooms upstairs, dreading what we suspected lay ahead.

By the time we regrouped near the still-sizzling remnants of the stove, there was no question of where we were headed-upstairs, where both bedrooms faced each other at opposite ends of the landing, with a bathroom in between.

We quickly crawled to the top. Here, too, the ceiling was on fire.

Rennie hit it with water, showering us once again. Through the gaps the fire had burned overhead, we could see an ominous glow in the attic.

we could also hear the sound of a chain saw being applied to the roof, the fire to exit and the water to get in from outside. The flames temporarily contained, we quickly crawled to the left, where we both remembered the three children slept. Rennie reached the bedroom doorknob and turned it. “It’s locked.” I crawled to one side to give him room to swing his axe. My knee, ready raw and sore from abuse, landed on something sharp and inful. I let out a shout and shined my flashlight at the floor. There as a old-fashioned door key. I picked it up and handed it to Rennie. “Try this.” He slipped it in, turned it, and twisted the knob again. The door swung back.

There was no fire in the room, not even much smoke. Enough, though-just enough. With our flashlights and the red and white flicking light filtering in through the window from the trucks below, we could make out four human-sized bundles clumped together on one of e three beds. They were huddled under a blanket, the one woman and three children we’d visited before, their arms around one another, eking protection from an evil that had already sealed their fate.

We peeled back the blanket and felt for signs of life. There were none. The smoke, what little there was, had killed them.

Rennie moved to the window and broke it out with his axe. The sounds of men shouting, the roar of revving engines and of water under pressure filled the room. And on top of it all, a sound I’d missed while concentrating on the search-a dull rumbling, as of a freight train far away; that, from my experience, meant a fire someplace was getting the upper hand.

Rennie banged the outside wall with his axe to attract attention.

heard a voice from below. “Get the hell out of there. The attic’s about go.

Rennie pulled back his mask just enough to shout back. “We’ve of victims here. Get a ladder.” “They’re all being used.” “Well, unuse one, for Christ’s sake.” “All right, all right.” Rennie replaced his mask, already coughing. “Let’s check out the first bedroom while they’re getting the ladder.” “What about the attic?” I shouted back. He shrugged. “It’ll hold.

This won’t take long.” We backtracked onto the landing. The rumbling was louder, the train getting closer, the threat more imminent.

I pounded him on the back as he crawled across to the other door.

“Rennie. Let’s get the hell out of here. Something’s not right.” He didn’t turn around; he just waved his hand back at me and continued. I noticed that the heat seemed suddenly worse. My ears began to sting. I looked around, stabbing at the smoke-stained walls with the feeble yellow shaft of my flashlight. I became suddenly aware of a fearful creaking in the walls. Rennie put his hand on the doorknob and turned it just as I felt the hose in my hand go flat a firefighter’s worst nightmare. We were out of water, and I knew for a fact we were out of luck. The explosion behind us was like a tidal wave of flaming air, lifting us up off the floor and hurling us through the doorway.

The roar of the train was now complete and all-encompassing, surrounding us and making our bodies vibrate with its thirst for oxygen. Through my plastic face shield, all I could see in every direction was a spectrum of swirling red and yellow patterns, curling and lapping like some volcanic river of fire. It was the color of heat, of death in the midst of fire, the last thing a body experiences before it is cremated. And through the din, as from a small boat on an enraged sea, I heard a bell madly ringing the alarm on Rennie’s Scott-Pak, warning of the few remaining minutes of air still trapped within his cylinder.

I was lying on my back, watching the kaleidoscope ceiling, when I heard that bell. I rolled over, hands out, feeling for Rennie, and landed on the hose. It was still flat, its water gone before the flashover, and the senseless thought occurred to me that I’d make sure the pump operator’s life was made miserable if I got out of here alive.

I couldn’t tell which end of the hose led to the door, or to the nozzle.

The walls were invisible my flashlight had been torn away. I was aware of my breath coming in short, panicky bursts. I began to crawl in one direction, feeling the softness of a rug under my knees, my helmeted head bumping against a bed, then a chair. The heat was still terrific, but not as it had been. I found a wall and stuck to it, moving to my right, one gloved hand gliding along the baseboard, the other outstretched into the room, feeling for Rennie, hearing the bell getting louder and louder. My face broke out in sweat as I heard my own bell join in, an incessant, unyielding, frantic clamor-the sound of a sinking ship with its steam whistle tied open. I found him sitting with his back against the wall. I shouted at him and shook him. His head moved, his helmet bumping mine. I saw his flashlight still gripped in his hand and pried it loose from clenched fingers. I shone it in his face. His eyes were open-almost -as if he were daydreaming.

“Rennie. Goddamn it.” I punched him in the chest, hard. I saw his face convulse with pain and his mouth open to inhale. that moment, his bell stopped ringing, its mission over. His eyes rolled further as he realized there was no more air and both his hands up to the mask to tear it off.

“No, no. Wait.” I fumbled at his regulator as I batted his hands His body began to heave and twist, trying to fight me off. He away and I rolled with him, banging my head against the wall. Suddenly, I felt the release ring loosen around the end of his ‘s elephant-like air hose.

I shoved my head into his chest, up his regulator, and quickly pulled the hose loose and shoved it her the rubber rim of my own mask so that we were both breath what little air I had left. I could hear the urgent hissing rushing through the leak I’d created. I crushed my mask against my face, taking his air hose into my cheek, trying to stem the loss.

“Come on, come on,” I shouted, dragging him beside me, afraid the connection might be severed, that his hose might tear from k, that my air might expire, that no window was on the wall feverishly pawing as we stumbled and crawled along the floor. My hand hit something-Bill.

“Stand up. Stand up. We got a window.” But he stayed there on all fours, a dog beaten down, seemingly to expend the one last effort that would save his life.

I reached under and unclipped his harness at the chest and waist, I should have done earlier but had forgotten, and I dragged air bottle off his back. “Come on, goddamn it.” My bell stopped. For a split second I froze, realizing that frantic of leaking air had ceased. I closed my mouth, fighting the urge in the poisoned air from around the gap in my mask, and, as much of Rennie as I could manage, I launched both of us the floor and toward what I hoped was a window. There was a crash, a splintering of glass.

I felt cold air on my neck in an embrace, we both toppled headlong out the second window.

We rolled out the window, hit a shed roof, fell off its edge, and landed in some bushes, still locked together like two lobsters in mortal combat. Rennie didn’t even get hurt.

But we didn’t go back inside. The hot embers from the stove were reignited by the blast, returning the first floor to its hellish first appearance. For the rest of the night, our firefighting consisted of trying to save what we could from the outside, preserving the walls of the coffin for those people within.

It wasn’t until dawn, after the last water had flowed and I sank exhausted onto the tailgate of Buster’s fire truck, that I realized I hadn’t escaped unscathed. It was Laura, there as a member of the women’s auxiliary, who discovered that I’d burned my ear, and who set about putting it right.

“Ow. What the hell is that stuff?” “It’s Bag Balm. It doesn’t hurt; it’s the burn that stings.” I ducked away from her hand. “You’re not on the receiving end.” Laura gave me an exasperated look. “Good thing, too; it’s all over your hair now. Stay put.” I stayed put, but only because the pain was mitigated by her sitting so close to me. In the cool breeze of early morning, I could smell her cleanliness mixed in with the bitter odor of charred wood. Whether it was the fatigue, my brush with death, or just the fact that Laura stood in such contrast to our surroundings, I found myself swept up by the romantic notion of being tended by a pretty woman in the midst of a virtual battlefield.

She held my chin in her other hand to steady my head. “I can’t believe you got off so lightly.” I looked across to the blackened, punctured, sagging building.

“I’m not sure I believe it, either.” Rennie, in fact, was stuffing his face with doughnuts at a long table the auxiliary had set up in the driveway. That’s what had brought Laura over to me in the first place-a sugarcoated, creme-filled monster that had done wonders for my spirit, if not for my arteries. Laura leaned back and admired her work. “That should keep it from getting infected. It’s going to sting like hell if you shower.” “I’ll work around it.” She handed me the green tin of Bag Balm. “Here, keep this.” I took the tin and smiled my thanks. Her eyes were on the green side of hazel and looked straight back into mine with refreshing directness.

“I’m almost glad I burned my ear. Her cheeks tinged very slightly, and I regretted having tipped my hand, even when she responded, “So am I.” I shifted my position to lean against the closed rear compartment door, suddenly feeling all the aches and pains of the night’s activities. My bunker coat was covered with a thin sheen of ice that crackled and flaked as I moved, but it was tight and warm on the inside, although damp with old sweat, and I didn’t want to take it off. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to sense with my face any warmth from the rising sun.

“What was it like?” Her voice was surprisingly soft. “In there?”

“Yes.” “Oh, I don’t know…. Hot, confusing, scary… noisy. Very colorful, though.” “They told me you didn’t have any air left in that tank.” “Not a whole lot.” I opened my eyes. Good thing I’m not religiously inclined, huh?” For all the chaos I’d witnessed on the inside, the building was still remarkably intact. Its roof was pretty much history-a good chunk of it had been blown away by the explosion-and all the window tops were charred and smeared black, but the walls remained standing for the most part. Still, my guess was the whole thing was unsalvageable. I realized my trying to be lighthearted had bordered on being flippant, which was not my intent. “It’s funny. I know Rennie and I came close to dying in there, but it all seems kind of far away right now.

“You must be tired.” I smiled. “That I am.” Fire trucks from at least five surrounding towns were parked every which way. The ground was littered with a spaghetti-like maze of hard, frozen hose, glistening in ice-rimmed pools of water that were starting to reflect the sun’s washed out daily appearance. Firemen wandered about, collecting equipment, chatting, banging at hose connections with rubber mallets.

And in the midst of all this solemn, dark and brooding quiet, stood the remains of the charcoaled house and five extinguished lives, huddled as we’d found them, wards of the state now of the arson investigators, the police, and the medical examiner.

What had caused that fire? I wondered, and shuddered suddenly.

Mentally replaying what I’d just been through, I recalled the spasm of panic I’d felt when the hose had gone flat, just before the explosion.

There’d been no time for reflection at the time. Indeed, it had happened so fast, I’d almost thought it part and parcel with what had followed. But I knew otherwise now, and the realization scared me. My running out of water had had nothing to do with the explosion. Buster’s large profile stepped between me and the source of my reverie. He handed me a cup of coffee. “How’re you feeling?” “Tired.” “I bet.” He looked at me steadily, his face solemn. “I’m glad you made it, Butch.”

I lifted my cup to him. “Butch,” for him, was the ultimate endearment.

“Feeling’s mutual.” But his expression was steady, almost hard. “How did it happen?” “Damned if I know. Flashover, I guess; it got incredibly hot just before it blew. I suppose whatever ventilation there was wasn’t reaching the landing; maybe the attic had something to do with it. I just don’t know. It was pretty confusing.” I took a sip of coffee, which burned on the way down. My throat was sore from the smoke. “Dick said he told Rennie to get the hell out of there when he asked for the ladder.” My mind began to focus on what was going on here.

Buster was after something seeking to lay blame. Any questions I was about to ask concerning the the flat hose line were pushed aside. “I heard some shouting,” I said vaguely.

“Well, that’s what he said. What did Rennie tell you?” “He said we ought to check out the other bedroom. I agreed with him.” “He didn’t tell you Dick warned him the attic was about to go?” “He may have tried.

You know what communication’s like with those things on.” There was a long, drawn-out silence between us. Then Buster pushed out his lips and turned away. “I gotta go check on the equipment.” We watched him lumber off.

“Is he mad about something?” Laura asked. I leaned back again, watching the women’s auxiliary, chatting and laughing, serving their hot coffee and doughnuts to all corners. “We were just kind of bumping bellies.” “Over what?” “Oh, I don’t know. Different people have different ways of doing things. I think he feels we shouldn’t have gotten so close to getting killed.” She was quiet for a couple of seconds. “And he’s trying to blame Rennie.” “He’s just upset, trying to find answers when there’s no point to.

He’ll let it go in a while.” I didn’t quite believe that he’d let it go, but into a mental filing cabinet with the rest of Rennie’s real nd imagined transgressions. I didn’t want to tell her that. Right now didn’t want to think about it.

Besides, it was history. Buster had always leaned on Rennie, first with high hopes, and then in disappointment. In the early days, I think was because the older man wanted to mold the younger one in his own image, to shape a son he didn’t have. But Rennie had refused to lay along, staying independent and wounding Buster’s pride. Buster ad an admirable track record with most younger people. It was a sad and perhaps fitting irony that the one he’d decided to make his special project had also been the one to consistently stand up to him. Through all these years, they’d stayed locked in harness, linked as much by their differences as by their similarities.

I saw the Wingates approaching, stepping over debris like survivors from a train wreck, carefully wending their way toward us. Windgate had his arm around Ellie’s shoulders, which were bowed as if the arm was heavy enough to grind her into the ground. The last time I’d seen this man, he’d been in almost exactly the same spot, but seething with an anger so intense that he’d vented it on someone who’d been trying to help him. I couldn’t help wondering if it all tied together in some way.

He nodded stiffly to me, like we were being introduced at a party and I’d just thrown up all over my shirt front. I was reminded again that I was probably one of the few people in the world to have seen this an in some pretty unbanker-like positions, a point that was probably so important to him as it was immaterial to me.

“Hi there, Bruce.” He frowned slightly at my use of his first name.

On the surface, his was not the man of last night; now, his raw passion was a secret only he was supposed to know about. His chilly demeanor further made me wonder how he’d unloaded his excess steam. “Good morning. I wanted to thank you for your help last night.

“I’m afraid I was a little overwrought.” “No problem.” My response was purely mechanical. I was stunned by his opening concern. The last time this man apparently had seen his daughter alive, she was entering a now almost totally burned building.

Even allowing for the fact that we later hadn’t found her there, the assumption that she was safe belied common sense. He either had ice in his veins, or he knew something I didn’t. “I don’t usually act that way.” “Don’t worry about it.” I was watching Ellie Wingate, who stood stock-still, her eyes glued to the ground. I had the feeling that if she could have turned herself outside in and disappeared like some black hole, she would have done so on the spot. “You didn’t find our daughter in there, did you?” The question wasn’t casual, but it still came too late-like polite but insincere condolences.

“I don’t think so.” He suddenly sharpened, thrown off balance. His eyes locked onto mine. “What do you mean?” “There’s one body that’s pretty badly burned. I don’t know who that is, or even what it is. And one of the victims is a woman. I don’t know what your daughter looks like.” I could have told him I’d recognized the woman from last night, and the three kids, but something about this man told me not to volunteer much, to make him come to me as much as possible. He pulled a picture out from inside his coat and handed it to me. It was a face shot of a woman in her late teens, with shoulder-length light brown hair-not particularly attractive. She had the usual expression of a person who’s wishing the photographer would drink arsenic. I looked at it for a long time, wondering what lay behind the sulky face. I wondered if the hostility I saw in her eyes was actually there, or whether I was injecting some of my own feelings for her father.

I handed the picture back after Laura had glanced at it over my shoulder, a gesture which caused her hair to brush my cheek lightly.

“She’s not the unburned victim.” “Thank God,” Mrs. Wingate whispered.

Her husband pocketed the photograph. “Can we see the other…

victim?” “No. That’s all off-limits until the powers that be arrive to investigate.” “When will that be?” “Several hours, I would guess. They come from far and wide.” He looked concerned. “You make it sound like an army. “Sometimes is, depending on what you got. Usually it’s just the State troopers-there’s one here already that I’ve seen-but in cases like this an arson investigator, the medical examiner; sometimes the State’s Attorney and the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation get involved if they suspect something.” “Do you think it was arson?” I looked at him for a couple of seconds. He seemed so removed, if his mind was being overworked, concentrating on other things. “I don’t know. I guess time will tell.” The State trooper I’d seen stringing a brightly colored plastic bond labelled “Police Line-Do Not Cross” around the house came walking up to us. He was thin and carried himself stiffly, as if on parade.

This was helped somewhat by his green and gold uniform, which somehow looks more official than most state-trooper getups, especially the green ribbed commando sweater with the matching elbow and shoulder pads.

He nodded quickly at me and Laura, before addressing the couple before us. “Are you Mr. and Mrs. Wingate?” “Yes, we are,” Wingate answered.

“My name is Corporal Wirt. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Of course.” Wirt glanced at us again and gestured down the street, away from the fire trucks. “Let’s step over there.” They all three moved away.

“I wonder what that’s all about,” Laura murmured.

“Cousin Brucie had a fight with one of the unfortunate people in that building.” “He did?” Her eyes were bright with interest. In the midst of all this destruction, the air thick with unanswered questions, only Laura seemed fresh, youthful, and enthusiastic, yet somehow fragile. It was a beguiling combination. Her face had a way of completely altering itself as she shifted from one emotion to another, the way gusts of wind disturb a still body of water.

“He thought his daughter was staying there, so he went in last night and got himself thrown out the window for his pains. small group of us trooped down to cart him away. I would imagine Corporal Wirt finds all that of some interest.” “If anything interests him. He walks around like he’s got all the answers. Rumor has it he was banished up here because he stepped on some toes. We all call him Corporal Jerk.”

“Where’s he work out of?” “Island Pond. He makes no secret about hating this place. I think it’s silly they posted him here. The guy the State Police had here before was wonderful-knew everybody’s name, used to come by when he was off duty and shoot the breeze. He made the State Police look good, you know? Of course, that was before the Island Pond thing.

Wirt was transferred here right after that..

The “Island Pond thing” rang more than one bell for me. Island Pond, a town about twelve miles north of Gannet on i-14, was host to a Christian sect called the Northeast Kingdom Community Church. Some years back, over one hundred State troopers and social workers invaded the town, armed with a warrant, and rounded up some two hundred and twenty members of the church, including one hundred and twelve children.

The charge was child abuse. It was alleged that adult members beat their children to discipline them. But before anything could be made of the case, a judge declared the raid unconstitutional and ordered everyone returned to their homes. That left a lot of egg on a lot of official faces. To this day, if you wanted to see a Vermont State official start looking for the exit door, all you had to say was “Island Pond.” No doubt, all of that was going through Corporal Wirt’s head, too.

Laura tugged at my sleeve and pointed up Atlantic Boulevard at a man walking in our general direction. He was dressed in the quilt uniform of the cult, although the way he walked made it look more like a business suit, and his full beard was trimmed and neat. He carried himself with an air of studied authority and ease.

“Who’s that?” “The Elephant Edward Sarris. The leader of the Natural Order.” Her tone, I was sure, would have jacked his ego up several pegs.

Whether influenced by his notoriety or fame, she was clearly impressed.

It was the kind of reaction that doubtless stood him in good stead.

As he walked down the street, I noticed for the first time some signs of life from the houses around us. Faces appeared in windows, a few doors opened, a couple of bearded men stepped out on porches to watch. They were all clearly members of the Order. It was only then I remembered not having seen a single Natural Order bystander at the fire-just as I hadn’t at the fight between Wingate and Fox. Now, with their leader in evidence, his followers were being drawn out, perhaps as much by curiosity as by allegiance.

He came toward us, his expression neutral, his hand held out in greeting. “Lieutenant Gunther, I’m glad to meet you. I’m Edward Sarris, leader of the Natural Order.” I shook his hand. I noticed that while he spoke, his eyes widened slightly, giving him a slightly startled look. It occurred to me he was probably trying to appear earnest, although his knowledge of my name tilted the scales more toward contrivance. That, however, may well have been my own cynical view. He did cut an impressive figure tall, slender, with large dark eyes that looked straight at his target. He combined an uncanny mixture of intensity and calm in those eyes, which I imagined had done their fair share of persuading people.

“I wanted to thank you personally for your extraordinary act of valor in trying to save my people. There are many who wouldn’t have risked so much for their own children, much less for total strangers.

I can understand why you -are so widely respected.” It was a perfect little speech, well-modulated, nicely phrased, astoundingly out of place. It wasn’t phony or hyped-up, not like a used car dealer’s pitch. But it didn’t sound like human speech, either; it was too grammatical, as if I’d just been praised by the head of the English Department.

I nodded, momentarily at a loss for words. “Please extend my thanks and compliments to all your colleagues.” “Is Julie Wingate one of the bodies?” I asked him. He was unfazed at my abruptness. “No. She left the building just as her father arrived and created that unfortunate altercation last night.” “How do you know that?” “It is standard practice in our society. This is not the first time parents or other outsiders have attempted to take the law unto themselves.” “Where is she now?” “Safe.” The finality of the word made the speaker’s intention clear. He looked around, apparently without purpose, and saw Rennie standing at the coffee and doughnuts table. “Excuse me,” he said, and began to walk off, presumably to dump as much praise over Rennie’s head as he had mine.

I raised my arm and motioned him back. “If you’re sure Julie Wingate isn’t in that building, I think her parents would like to know.”

I motioned over to where Wirt was just finishing with the Wingates.

Sarris smiled carefully. “Of course-an excellent suggestion.

Thank you, Lieutenant.” He nodded at Buster, who had appeared from around the side of the truck. “Nice job, Chief. We all appreciate your effort.” “No problem,” Buster muttered.

I watched as Sarris strode off, self-confident and almost buoyant.

“Not easily depressed, is he?” Rennie walked up, now cradling three doughnuts and a cup. His mouth was full. “Man’s an asshole.” Buster’s brow furrowed at Rennie’s approach. “I better check on how the cleanup’s going.” He left us and Rennie swallowed before smiling bitterly. “Your uncle thinks I tried to kill you.” “I thought you were trying to commit suicide.” “Guess I fucked up all around, huh?” Laura, still sitting nearby, laughed. Rennie took a sip of coffee and then looked at me more carefully. “Did he ask you what Dick said to me?”

“About the attic getting ready to blow?” “Yeah.” “Yup. Told him I didn’t hear it. But,” I added, “I also told him you decided to search the other room, instead of getting out.” “Over your objections?” “No, just that you decided and I followed.” He nodded. “Good. I told him I couldn’t hear what Dick was saying.” He smiled again. “It’s driving him crazy.” He laughed then and began to walk away. I stopped him with a question. “What made the hose go flat?” He rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand. “They told me the portable pump froze. Didn’t have any oil in it.” He shrugged and filled his mouth with another huge bite, talking at the same time. “By the way, thanks for saving my butt.” “Least I could do for someone who tried to kill me.” He let out a grunt and continued on his way. Laura was looking at me with increasing concern. “What did happen in there?” I smiled at her. “It’s like Rennie said.” She shook her head in frustration. “You guys…” She stood up suddenly and waved. I followed her look and saw a pickup with a young man at the wheel pulled off of South Street. He waved back from the driver’s window.

“Gotta go. See you later.” I watched her run to the truck, her hair bouncing. She looked good in jeans, and I felt an unreasonable pang at her leaving. I also felt an odd sensation at her running toward another man, even though, presumably, he was her husband.

“I hear you’re a police officer.” I turned around, surprised at the sudden intrusion. It was Wirt, in full official splendor. “That’s right. Joe Gunther, out of Brattleboro.” We shook hands, although primarily because my hand was flapping in the breeze before Wirt reluctantly grabbed hold of it. “I was told you and Wilson were the first two in there. What did you see?” I resisted stating the obvious-like “a fire”-which would have forced him to step outside the Joe Friday imitation.

“One incinerated body at the foot of the stairs, wrapped around the remains of the wood stove, and four more upstairs, apparently dead from smoke inhalation. There were no puddles of flaming gasoline on the floor, but the four people upstairs were behind a locked door, with the key on the outside, on the floor.” He looked up from the notepad he was carrying. “What kind of key was it?” I knew what he was after.

“Old-fashioned, key operated from the other side. It wasn’t a dead bolt.” “And there wasn’t a key on the other side as well.” “Nope, not in the door.” “But there might have been one in the room?” “That’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely. I’ve never seen a lock key with more than one key. In fact, usually the one key’s been lost years ago and people use a hook and eye to lock the door.” He was scribbling feverishly by now. “Any idea what caused the fire?” I was beginning to tire of this. Also, I didn’t see much to gain by humoring him further.

I knew damned well all this would stop dead in his little black book.

With the locked-door problem, he was going to have to bring in BCI-the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. None of them would ask him his opinion on the case, and everyone would ask roughly the same questions of me and everyone involved a dozen ore more times over the coming week.

A street cop worth his salt could be an invaluable source and a good friend to cultivate; a disliked man. Wirt was best suited to directing traffic and nurturing his resentment.

I got up and stretched. The ice that had covered me earlier had melted in the morning sun, leaving me damp and weighted down. I began to peel off the cumbersome and very dirty bunker coat as I answered his last question. My own body odor, finally released, damn ear made my eyes water. “Probably the wood stove. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll hit the hay.” I hung the coat on the truck’s tail gate and walked away. “‘Night.” “I have more questions.” The tone was supposed to freeze me in my tracks. “Don’t doubt it for a second. I’ll be around.” I didn’t need to turn round to see him glaring. The heat from his eyes on the back of my head was enough. The truth was, I had some questions of my own. As a rule, accidental fires have a way of explaining themselves, especially where dead bodies are involved. People either die in their beds, oblivious to what killed them, or they’re found along the way toward some hoped-for exit. When they appear behind a locked door, with the key on the outside, I have to wonder just how “accidental” the fire might have been.

I didn’t make a clean getaway. As I walked down South Street toward I-14, a red Mercedes pulled in, heading my way. The license plate was marked “QUNCY.” I moved out of its way and bent down to the driver’s window as it stopped alongside me. “I thought you drove a blue car.” Dr. Beverly Hillstrom, Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Vermont, smiled up at me. “I did. I traded it in. Big mistake. You should stick to the larger Mercedeses; these little ones just aren’t the same.

I laughed at that. “I’m lucky to be stuck to a rebuilt Toyota.

How are you?” She patted the back of my hand, which was resting on her door.

“In tip-top shape. What on earth are you doing here? You look terrible, by the way.” She wrinkled her nose. “And you smell awful.”

“Thank you. I’m staying with my uncle. I used to come up here regularly when I was a boy.” “And play fireman?” “How’d you guess?” “You should see your face in the mirror. You look like a chimney sweep. And your ear looks medium rare.” She gave me an appraising look. “It’s hard to imagine Joe Gunther on vacation.” “I’m supposed to be working with the local SA on a small job around here. If you came from Burlington, you made awfully good time.” “The local M.E.’s out of town and I was in Barton anyway. My husband and I are looking for property in the Kingdom. Pure serendipity. Who’s the SA-Potter?” “Very good.

She laughed. “Not really. I was told he’d meet me here.” There was a small pause. “So, what have we got here?” “I don’t know. I figure if I stay around long enough, maybe you’ll tell me.” I let her park and opened her door for her. As she swung her legs I saw she was wearing a dress and high heels elegant garb for an gant woman. “Lord.

You’ll have a tough time getting around in these.” She stood up and walked to the back of the car. “I used to. I’ve haven’t since.” She opened the trunk and pulled out a pair of dirty L.L. Bean boots with bright blue socks stuffed in them. “So, you suspect ‘foul play,’ as they say?” I watched as she slipped off her shoes. Beverly Hillstrom was in mid-fifties, maybe a bit older-tall, blond, and slim-but she looked thirteen years younger. I’d first met her on the case in Brattleboro that stimulated the local politicos to make a scapegoat of my boss and me on the hot seat for six months. She’d been the one person who’d supported my reopening what had seemed a closed case and had even plied forensic evidence she’d been keeping in the deep freeze for no reason.

And that, as Humphrey Bogart would say, was beginning of a beautiful friendship.

“I don’t know what I suspect-nothing specifically. It’s got several visible readings as I see it, bit of a surprise package.” “And I’m to unwrap it.” “If you would.” I glanced up at the sound of another car pulling behind us. A man in his late thirties, wearing a bad complexion, thin ir, a pot belly, and an ill-fitting three-piece suit got out and waved me. “Here’s Potter now.” “I should have known you’d be in the middle of this,” Potter said me as he approached. “I thought you were supposed to check into the office before you started trouble.”

His smile, in direct contrast with rest of his appearance, was infectiously childlike. He walked up to Beverly Hillstrom and introduced himself. “I’m n Potter, Essex County State’s Attorney.”

“Beverly Hillstrom, State M.E.” “Oh, yes, I know. It’s a real privilege. I was expecting the local.E.” Hillstrom’s tone was noticeably cooler now that Potter had arrived.

The warmth she showed me was a sign of friendship, which was something she did not dispense freely. “Pure chance-he was out of the way; I happened to be in it.” Potter nodded and turned to me. “Any ideas about the fire?” Hillstrom reached back into the trunk and pulled out a camera, a notepad, and a small shoulder bag while I told Potter, “It may just be a guy falling downstairs and knocking over a jury-rigged wood stove.” The three of us began walking toward the building. “Or it may be something else,” Potter added. “Maybe. There’s background for more-a fight last night, some bad blood between townspeople and the bunch that owns the house “Ugh,” Potter interrupted. “Don’t even mention it. I got two calls this morning already from newspeople, wanting to know if it’s arson or murder or God knows what. Shades of Island Pond.” “There may be something more. We found four of the bodies behind a locked door, with the key on the outside.” “Were you the one who found them?” Hillstrom asked. “Me and another guy, just before the whole place blew up. I’m not exactly sure what shape the building’s in.” We had just ducked under the police line when Wirt came jogging up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Hillstrom looked at him in amazement, her chilly Nordic dander up. “I beg your pardon?” “This is a police line. You can’t just ignore it.” The message was appropriate, but the tone was doing him dirt. I tried to smooth things over. “Corporal Wirt, this is Chief Medical Examiner Hillstrom and State’s Attorney Potter.” He looked at me with contempt, not accepting the social escape hatch I’d opened for him. “This scene is closed until the arson people look at it.” Hillstrom’s back straightened slightly. “Corporal, were your arson people here now, I might concede that point. But they are not and I am. It is my responsibility to examine those bodies, and I am not going to stand around for several hours waiting. Is that acceptable to you?” Potter chimed in. “As chief law enforcement officer of the county, I’ll take full responsibility.” Wirt stared at us for a few moments, his mind obviously crowded with options, some obstinate, some petty, and probably a few quite vulgar. But I guess he decided to pass on them all, or he remembered that his opinions had landed him here to begin with. He muttered, “All right, go ahead,” and left us on our own.

We entered through the same door Rennie and I had used before, although you could have told that only from the outside. The inside was unrecognizable-the floor covered with a tangle of glistening, black, charred debris. The walls were stained with smoke and dirty water; the smiling half-gone, chunks of soggy plaster hanging to shattered pieces lathing. It brought back memories of the shell-blasted buildings I’d marched as a young soldier over thirty years before, my finger cramping round the trigger, ready to fire at the slightest movement.

Only here, any movement aside our own was out of the question.

he smells of damp plaster, wet wood, charcoal, and burned cloth were of death. The very dripping of water in the walls had a funereal sound to it.

Hillstrom, in the lead, paused to take a couple of pictures.

“Which ay, Lieutenant?” Despite our recent friendship, we had never dropped the official titles perhaps as a token of our mutual respect.

“To the foot of the stairs.” Sunlight was beginning to shaft down the staircase through the open roof above, giving me the sensation of being in a damp cave far below the surface of the earth. Dr. Hillstrom began picking her way slowly and carefully through the tangle, making sure of her footing, anscious not only of her own safety, but of the integrity of the scene as well.

All three of us knew that while her goal was to view the bodies in place, other experts would follow with different interests-interests we might obliterate if we just marched through the building, tossing bricks aside to make a path. It took us ten minutes to cross some twenty feet.

The foot of the stairs was especially cluttered, since the staircase had acted as a funnel for much of the debris from the floor above. The crystal-clear mental snapshot I had of the night before, of the white-hot stove spewing its column of flame straight up, and the blackened human m extending from its base, was now smudged and altered, covered with enough clutter to render it almost unrecognizable. Had it not been the staircase, I might not have even known where to start.

“Here?” Beverly Hillstrom asked, sensing my hesitation. I scanned the wall for the stovepipe flue and then pointed to the door. “That’s where the stove is, or was. The last I saw, the body was laying in the middle of it.” The sunlight was quite bright here. Indeed, looking up the stairs, we could see clouds against a blue sky where once there had been a skyline. But the shadows were correspondingly harsh, and made looking beyond the surface of the rubble difficult. Hillstrom pulled a flashlight from her shoulder bag and began probing the recesses. “Here we go.” She crouched suddenly to look more carefully. Both Potter and I instinctively did the same. Caught in the lamplight, its white teeth shining, was a charred human head, its eyes, nose, and lips burned away, its mouth open wide in a silent, agonized scream.

Potter straightened abruptly. “Jesus,” he muttered and staggered slightly, shifting a pile behind him.

Dr. Hillstrom looked over her shoulder at him. “Careful, Mr.

Potter. Would you like to wait outside? I’m not going to do much at this stage anyhow, and I won’t be issuing any findings before autopsy.”

“No, no. I’m all right.” She smiled brightly. “Oh, I know that. I just meant this will take a while and won’t tell you much. So, if you have other things pressing on your time, you might want to pursue them rather than watch me poking around.” Potter nodded and made a show of checking his watch. “Well, maybe that’s a good point. I’ll get out of your hair.” “You’re not in my hair. You’re certainly welcome to stay.”

“No, no. That’s okay. I’ll see you later.” He began to backtrack slowly toward the door.

Hillstrom didn’t say anything until he’d left. She took photographs and notes, shifting an occasional piece of wood or plaster and then replacing it carefully.

“Very diplomatic,” I said finally.

She chuckled. “I didn’t relish him throwing up down the back of my neck.” Her investigation was limited by what we could see without seriously altering the scene, so we soon made our way slowly and gingerly up the clogged stairway, occasionally going on all fours. I noticed her dress was beginning to suffer.

At one point, she paused to look back and take a photograph. “So you think he may have tumbled downstairs, knocked himself out, and spilled the stove in the process?” “Maybe. You ruling that out?” “No.

It’s very possible that kind of thing happens. There was no other source of fire?” “None that I saw.

“And no smell of petroleum or oil or something similar?” “Nope.” I was impressed she asked. I wondered what was going through her mind, but I also wasn’t about to inquire. Like most investigators, she was assembling pieces in her head, mentally constructing an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, hopeful that what she had might be enough for her to guess at an overall picture. She didn’t need me to bring up questions she’d already asked herself.

As we reached the top of the stairs, she asked, “Right or left?”

“Left.” The bedroom door hung open like the entrance to a dark lair a lack rectangle in contrast to the sun-drenched landing on which we stood.

Hillstrom looked up at the sky. “Amazing. Where were you when this went up?” “Right over there.” I pointed to the opposite door, which had been blown off its hinges.

She shook her head silently and smiled.

We picked our way to the bedroom door. With the sunlight now behind us, the room’s shadows receded somewhat. Here there were no reflective signs of catastrophe; aside from the cloying odor of damp smoke and wet plaster, the scene had an untouched feel about it, a peacefulness enhanced by the shape of seemingly sleeping figures clumped together n the bed. Hillstrom shined her light on them and revealed one small, waste-white face, its dull eyes half open.

She sighed and extinguished the light. I kept quiet. After just a moments pause, she adjusted her camera’s flash unit and began taking pictures, writing notes, and examining the bodies, being careful not to displace them more than Rennie and I had hours before. I admired her professionalism, tinged as it was by the stray compassionate gesture checking a loose strand of hair behind the mother’s ear, giving a small head an unconscious pat. It somehow seemed irrelevant that her parents were all dead, since the concern and attention she demonstrated could have been the same had they been living.

She eventually finished and straightened, looking around one last me. “Was the smoke very bad in here when you found them?” “No. More like a thin fog.” “And the window, presumably, was closed?” “Yeah.” She nodded, but stayed silent. She had told me once that several ears ago, she’d been encouraged to guess at a cause of death prior to autopsy and had been mistaken. Nothing adverse had come of the roar; she caught it almost as soon as the body was stretched out in her b back in Burlington. But she had learned a lesson, and had vowed ever to announce her findings from the field again.

I was therefore surprised when she paused at the foot of the stairs, after we’d spent another fifteen minutes carefully retracing our steps. he stood looking down at the black, flaky skull-like head with its frozen, soot-smeared grin.

“What do you think killed him?” I followed her gaze. Most of him was under debris, but you could see bits and pieces, if you knew where to look, along with one twisted, charcoaled arm, its fist clenched in midair-the classic “pugilistic stance” of the severely burned victim.

I’d taken it earlier as a piece of wood.

“Sounds like a trick question. I’ll say the fire.” “Therefore dying of smoke inhalation?” “I guess.” “Have you seen many people die from falling down a set of stairs?” “No.” “What are their injuries, usually?” “I couldn’t say-not about stairs-but from similar falls, I’d guess mostly bumps and bruises, broken legs and hips, an occasional neck or two… something like that.” “How about being knocked out cold?” I looked again at the man I’d briefly known as Fox, wondering what he was telling her that he’d hadn’t told me yet. “Not often, I guess.” “How old was he… ? Oh, did you even know him?” “I met him once. He must have been in his late twenties, early thirties.” She pursed her lips.

“Well, then you’re right, statistically at least.

Very few people of this approximate age group die from such a fall.

Most of the time, they’re nimble enough to take some sort of evasive measures. They might break something in the process, but they rarely die, and they rarely get knocked unconscious.” “Rarely.” She nodded.

“True-the exception proves the rule. But there’s something else. Are you aware of the AVPU scale of consciousness?” “AVPU? Sounds like something hatched in the Pentagon.” “It does. It’s a mnemonic, actually, with each letter standing for a key word in the descending order of consciousness: a patient is either Alert, responsive to Verbal stimulus, responsive to Painful stimulus, or totally Unconscious.” She drew the letters in the air for emphasis.

“Painful stimulus is usually a pinched ear or a knuckle rub on the sternum-some physical way of disturbing this artificially deep sleep, in other words.” I was finally beginning to follow her train of thought.

“Or putting your hand on a hot stove.” She smiled. “Right. You do something like that, and all but a deeply unconscious person will react, usually by pulling away from the stimulus. Again, it’s not a guarantee; it’s just a statistic.” “But if it’s true, this man was out like a light before he hit the e.” “That’s not all. Look at his flesh, high on the chest.” I followed her pointed finger. Fox’s skin had split in several places, ch as a hot dog’s does when it’s been cooked too long. “What color is it?” she asked. “Sort of beige; a little pink, maybe.” “The classic sign of carbon monoxide poisoning is the cherry-red or of the skin after death. Of course, where the skin is charred, you k for the flesh underneath for the same indicator.” “So he was dead before he hit the stove.” “He might have been dead before he hit the stove.” She wagged finger at me. “And don’t you tell anyone I told you so.” Ron Potter sat on the toilet seat and shook his head. “The BCI arson teams are here. They helped Dr. Hillstrom get the bodies out.

e burned one kept falling apart; I don’t know how she does what she s.

I spat into the sink. “It’s interesting. If it gets to you, just think being a proctologist-now there’s a curious line of work.” He made a face. “They had to get three different funeral homes carry the bodies to Burlington. Nobody had enough body bags we five people killed simultaneously in this state, and it’s considered official disaster.

The guys in New York must have racks in their recesses.

We were upstairs in Buster’s house. I’d just spent four hours trying to catch up on last night’s lost sleep, with negligible success.

Potter had looked in on me fresh from a shower, while I was brushing my teeth, he had been asking me questions. He watched my technique for a moment. “You think Bruce Wine killed them?” I rinsed my mouth out and squeezed by him to cross the hall to bedroom. He followed me. “I think the fire killed them, at least st of them.” “Come on, Joe.” I began putting on a fresh shirt. “Maybe. I want to see what we get from the scene before I draw any conclusions. We may find out it was an accident, that Fox had a heart condition and died of it on the way downstairs.” “What about the locked door, then?” “I don’t know. Maybe they had an argument and he locked them in.

Maybe he locked them in every night. People do strange things, especially this Order bunch, from what I hear.” Potter sat on the windowsill and stared out gloomily. He had not been the brightest cop I’d ever worked with; he lacked the flair it often took to get people to open up. He’d been hard-working and earnest most of his fellow officers had found him a grind-but it hadn’t seemed to do him much good. I’d thought maybe his lackluster style was because being a cop was a means to an end; according to him, he’d always dreamed of becoming the state’s Perry Mason, carrying the cop’s hard work up to the bench and convincing judge and jury that the bad guys deserved hard time. I’d never pointed out to him that Mason was a defense attorney; it was his flat-footed opponents who were prosecutors.

I wondered now, looking at him, whether that kind of misconception should have told me more at the time. Judging from his present lack of enthusiasm, it appeared the idea of his job was more appealing than its reality. It reminded me, albeit cynically, that the State’s Attorney was an elective post, as open to politicians as to qualified prosecutors. I made a mental note to keep that distinction in mind before putting all my trust in his hands.

I finished dressing. “Any objection to my tagging along with the arson people?” He stood up quickly. “Objection? God, no.” “Well, I’m your boy now. I could drop this whole thing and go after your embezzling town clerk.” He waved his hand. “Oh, forget her.

Do what you got to do.” Like a model at a fashion show, the burned house had again changed appearances. From the scene of a fight to a five-alarm inferno, it was now playing host to a full police investigation. Instead of fire trucks and hose, State Police and Sheriff’s cruisers clustered near its blackened walls. Men in uniform and in plainclothes milled about, measuring, photographing, and collecting evidence. As I approached the front door, one of them came up to greet me. He was about my age, but with more hair and more gut, and was dressed in filthy blue overalls with “State Police” stenciled in white letters across his shoulder blades. “You Gunther?” he asked, sticking out a dirty, ham-sized hand.

I almost winced at the grip. He was also about my height-five ten inches-but built like a brick. “Yeah.” “I’m Dick LeMay State Police arson investigator. Thanks for ing the scene clean.” I looked for some irony there. Arson sites, aside from their natudirty nature, are notoriously abused by others: Firemen, rescuers, s, medical examiners, homicide teams, and sometimes even insure adjustors and gawkers trample on the evidence before the arson investigator gets his first glimpse.

More often than not, important things that could have told the story of the fire right off are ground into vion.

“Unless you’re pulling my leg, you ought to thank Corporal Wirt.

roped it off before it was even cool.” “Yeah, well, I don’t like him. I also heard you and Hillstrom were dainty going in for an early look.” We were standing in front of the house, by the front door.

Suddenly, there was a crash from inside.

“That’s the boss.” LeMay grinned, and motioned me to enter ad of him.

Another man in blue overalls was moving slabs of plaster and ing away from the middle of the floor. The air was thick with acrid smoke.

I could see already that a lot had been done to restore the room’s appearance prior to the fire. The space around the wood stove was clear down to the bare floor-or what was left of it-and of the stairs had been cleared as well. The body was gone. LeMay made the introductions from the door. “Jonathon, this is Gunther-he’s the SA’s man we were expecting. This is Detective geant Jonathon Michael; that’s Jonathon with an 011 at the end ead of an-parents were either hippies or illiterate. He’s my superout of St. Albans and he’s real sensitive about his name, so get ight in your reports.” “You can spell it any way you want; everyone else does.” Michael ed to me from across the mess.

“Glad to meet you.” Michael was the Stan Laurel to LeMay’s Oliver Hardy, thin and tall, with a narrow face and steel-rimmed granny glasses that gave a perpetually surprised look.

“So, what have you found so far?” LeMay maintained center stage. “Well, the fire started at the me burned straight up and out. You can see the V pattern clearly, g with the downburn pattern over here. All that started secondary eups, especially when the ceiling started to go, but you can tell they me all offshoots.” He guided me around the room, showing me one burned area after another. I nodded-I hoped intelligently-but I couldn’t tell one from the other. To me, the whole room looked trashed and burned to a crisp.

We all turned at the sound of someone entering the front door. A small, neat man with carefully combed brown hair and an immaculately trimmed mustache stood there watching us. His hands were buried in the pockets of his tan overcoat, giving him an oddly proprietary look, as if he were appraising the building for possible purchase. LeMay sounded surprised to see him. “Hullo, Crofter. I thought Appleby was on this.”

The small man’s face didn’t change. “He is. I just wanted to take a look.” He shifted his gaze to me. “Who are you?” “The SA’s guy-Joe Gunther.” LeMay answered for me. “What are you doing here?” There was a momentary pause. The question wasn’t harsh, but the inflection was so loaded with suspicion that even LeMay was rendered mute.

Michael cleared his throat. “Hamilton okayed it.” “He did?” LeMay regained his voice, although he kept it low-key. “Yeah.

You can check with him if you like. We’re going to be here for a while.” The small man didn’t answer, but looked at me carefully once more, turned on his heel and left. The tenseness in the room followed him out like a cloud of after-shave. I looked to the other two. “Who was that?” Jonathon Michael answered. “Crofter Smith. He’s the senior BCI man under Hamilton at the St. J. barracks. He’s a little reserved good cop, though.” “Even if he does look like a shoe clerk,” LeMay added. Michael gave a short laugh. “Better that than sanitation workers, like us.

He’s just not real fond of outside investigators; makes him a little aloof.” “I think he’s a cold fish.” Michael shrugged. Years back, SA investigators used to be state policemen on rotation. Then the legislature, for whatever reasons, broke up the marriage. It didn’t alter the basic system to any great extent, but it did affect the ease that once marked communications between State’s Attorneys and the State Police. Many of the latter, and obviously Crofter Smith among them, felt the loss of direct representation in the SA’s offices had been a major mistake. LeMay pawed at the ground for a moment, muttering, “Where was I?” He then grabbed my elbow and steered me over to where the stove had stood.

“Okay, so here we have the origin-nice and tidy. But it dumped? Was coal shoveled out of it onto the floor? Was it sed with an accelerant to make it explode?” I noticed Michael had found a seat on an evidence can and was tching LeMay’s show. I wondered what he was thinking, until I sed in his expression the simple admiration of a shy man for an berant one.

“I know there’s not much left of the floor lucky there’s any at really, or you and Hillstrom and the SA would have ended up in basement.” He peered up at me from his crouching position. “Bet never thought of that, did you? First thing we did was shore it up. “Anyway, look at the alligatoring here. See where the wood has n burned into squares? Well, we had a little debate about that, athon and me. You can get a pretty good idea from the size of those le squares whether the fire was slow and smoldering, or fast and hot. blem is, if the fire goes for long enough, then everything gets coned, and you have no way of telling whether it started fast or slow. at’s where you get into figuring out the layers of a fire, and somees you’re helped because something falls on a piece of wood, extinshes the flame, and preserves the alligatoring up to that point, so it’s dy sometimes to have the ceiling fall in.” “Gotcha,” I muttered, feeling I had to say something, even if it n’t reveal the depth of my wit.

LeMay jumped on it. “Gotcha, you say. But got what? Here’s the dence. Was it fast or slow to start?” I stared at where he was pointing, feeling my face flushing slightly. all for slow, large for fast… “Slow.” LeMay slapped his knee. “Damn. Brilliant. You were looking at wrong piece, by the way that’s fast char but you’re right anyMichael spoke up from his corner. “He guessed wrong, too, at t.”

LeMay chuckled. “That just puts you in good company.” I straightened, looking for a punch line in all this. “So what pened here? Can you reconstruct how it started?” Jonathon Michael finally got up and joined us, his voice quiet and asured compared to LeMay’s.

“We’ve taken samples for testing at crime lab-in those clean paint cans there-but we think what pened is that the man you found lying here fell up against the stove dumped it over; it wasn’t very sturdy, and it wouldn’t have taken ch.” LeMay chimed in. “The fire smoldered for a while, maybe half an r, building up a lot of smoke; that’s what killed the people upstairs.

Then, when things got hot enough, whoosh. The whole place went.

That’s why it was a little confusing telling the fast char from the slow. You have both here.” “So there’s no sign of arson?” I asked.

Michael shook his head. “Nothing blatant. There are problems, but nothing that outright says arson. “What problems?” “Oh, it’s mostly law of averages, like the position of the body.

We know he was lying on the stove-a good indicator that he fell on it to make it topple over-but we found him facing up. Usually, they face down.” Again, LeMay pitched in. “See? Unusual, but not really suspicious.” I glanced at the stairs. “What about up there?” LeMay led the way upstairs, the irrepressible tour guide, pointing to the details.

“We didn’t find anything up here. The fire spread along the ceiling, just like in a chimney. You can see on the walls how it seeks the highest spot. Then it got to the landing, had nowhere to go, spread out to all four walls, and then began to eat its way through to the attic.”

We were now standing between the two bedroom doors, opposite the bathroom, and in full daylight from the hole above. The floor had not been as carefully cleared as the one below. I pushed at a small piece of debris with my toe.

“So there were no signs of any fire being set up here?” LeMay dropped to his knees, pointing out the details. “You can see char here, just like downstairs, but that’s from fall-down, junk from the burning ceiling. See? You can see the outlines of individual pieces of wood and stuff. We took photographs before we moved it, of course, so you can see from those, too.” As he moved, his foot brushed against a small, flaky pile near the mop board at the top of the stairs. Something briefly twinkled and caught my eye. I bent over to look more closely.

“What have you got?” Michael asked, squatting next to me. “Damn,”

muttered LeMay, on his hands and knees by my other side. “I better get the camera.” As he clambered downstairs, Michael and I just looked at the object, wondering what to make of it. It was the shiny spent cartridge casing for a 9-mm bullet.

By the time I climbed the front steps of the Rocky River Inn that ing, I was seriously wishing I could just go home to Buster’s and into bed.

The day had been spent crawling all over every square inch hat charcoaled house, looking for anything that might explain that spent cartridge. We had found nothing-no bullet hole, no gun, no cartridges nothing to justify wrapping up the day with a celeion at the Inn.

Buster, however, had told me in no uncertain terms this was where I was to be tonight.

My weariness from both lack of success and lack of sleep was ed by the realization that the Rocky River had evidently been gnated this evening’s official hot spot. Every window blazed with t, and the suppressed tremor of dozens of blended voices seeped out he street.

I stepped through the front door, and was greeted by a seriously xicated Rennie Wilson, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Hey, hey, rybody. Here he is, the hero of the hour, that man among men, that man’s fireman, the son of a bitch who really truly pulled my fat from fire: Mr. Joe Guntherrrrr.” A ragged cheer followed his announcement. I gave a feeble wave found a beer bottle thrust into my hand. Several people, none of m I knew, slapped me on the back. The air was almost as full of ke as it had been during the fire, and the noise, now that I was in midst, was deafening. Greta probably hadn’t had a crowd like this ears.

By my rough estimate, there were over a hundred people flowing een the cafe’, the entrance hall, and the Library. At first glance, I n’t recognize anyone aside Rennie, whom I could see lurching off he bar.

That, of course, wasn’t surprising-the crowd was mostly de up of younger people, in their twenties and thirties, and many of m were firemen and their relatives from the surrounding towns. There were a few older faces, I saw finally, some of whom were iously residents of the establishment, dressed in bathrobes or wearundershirts; one was only in pajamas. Greta ran less of an inn than etirement home/hostel for the itinerant; people stayed anywhere two hours to ten years, and could do so, if they wished, in total ation. The air was hot and stagnant. I put my coat on the back of a chair near the wall and hoped I’d find it later. Then I made my way slowly toward Buster’s den.

Greta found me at the door and tried to push a beer bottle into my hand. It clinked against the one I already had. “Someone beat me to it, huh? Want a refill?” “It’s still full. Thanks.” Actually, I no longer drank beer, or anything else, for that matter. Over the years, the appeal had gone out of it.

She kissed me on the cheek, a lifetime first. “You’re a good man, Joey, and Rennie’s a ]ucky one. Your drinks are on the house tonight, so enjoy.” I could see the top of Buster’s head through the bodies and steered toward it. When he saw me, he punched the arm of the man sitting next to him and motioned him to leave.

“No, stay put,” I motioned.

Buster eyed the beer in my hand. “I thought you didn’t go in for that stuff anymore.” “I don’t. Want it?” I had to shout to make myself heard. “Hell, yes.” He drained the one he was holding and took mine.

“Greta’s doing’ all right, I guess.” “She told me I could drink free all night.” “Shit, Joe. She knows you don’t drink. I told her so.” I watched him take a long pull from his bottle. “Hard to believe five people died today.” He gave me a long, philosophical look, a little on the blank side for all the beer inside him. “That’s true, Joey, but it just doesn’t weigh the same to most people in this town-sad but true.”

He seemed content to leave it at that, so I obliged him. Philosophical ruminations obviously were not at the top of his list at the moment.

Watching him made me thirsty, if only for something like tonic water, so I began carving my way back toward the cafe/bar. As I got to the double glass doors, however, Greta’s bullhorn voice cut through the din. “Quiet down, everybody. Quiet down. I want to listen to the news. Somebody close those doors.” I was the somebody, and the word was passed to pipe down. Greta was on a stool behind the bar, fiddling with the color TV that hung there.

I was considerably less sanguine than she that this crowd would stay still for an entire news program, even with her repeated admonitions. Fortunately-or unfortunately, depending on your viewpointwe turned out to be the lead story.

“Tragedy struck the small Northeast Kingdom village of Gannet ly this morning when a fire broke out in a residence owned by a up calling itself the Natural Order. Five members, including three all children, lost their lives. They were the sole occupants of the lding.

“Firemen from five surrounding towns fought several hours to ng the blaze under control, almost losing two of their own in the rt. There is more to this story, however, than a valiant but fruitless empt to save lives and property, as our own Donna Fields discovered lier today.” My heart sank as the screen switched to a young, blond, colleged ingenue standing in front of the Atlantic Boulevard house, mike hand.

Once again, I thought back to the mess I’d left behind in attleboro.

Much of our troubles during that investigation had mmed from the overheated media attention, and the predictable litical response to it.

It suddenly looked like I might be headed for re of the same.

My fears increased as I listened to the report. The fire was dubbed ysterious,” despite Jonathon Michael’s statement that while his dings were not final, he’d found nothing suspicious about the cause the fire. The camera lingered on the gaping hole in the roof as the orter pondered the significance of the “unexplained explosion” that d almost killed two firemen, followed by some neighboring Fire Chief o said that flashover explosions were a common occurrence in struce fires. The portable water pump was the next focus of attention, with its w dramatically drained oil reservoir, which one local firefighter I n’t recognize called “real strange”-an assessment with which I uldn’t argue.

Finally, there was a long shot of several State Police isers parked alongside the road and a close-up of the “Police Line Not Cross” ribbon around the house, as the voice-over by young enda Starr stressed that a full investigation was “being launched in zs case.” Greta, still perched on her stool, hit the off button and picked me from across the room. “What do you think, Joe?” To the bottom of my soul, I wanted to be somewhere else. “It’s lly inappropriate for me to say anything.

It’s an ongoing case; the st thing is to wait for the final report.” “So there is something suspicious about it.” Another voice imed in.

I held up both my hands. “No, hold it.” I walked over to behind e bar, which was elevated slightly above the rest of the floor. “As far I know, this was an accidental fire, caused by someone falling against rickety old stove that shouldn’t have been lit in the first place.” “The guy was dead before he hit the stove.” I played dumb, although I was amazed the way these things seemed impossible to contain.

“That’s news to me.” The man speaking was the fireman who had panicked at the front door of the burning house-Paul somebody. “I saw him when they carried him out. He had his arms up like this.” He postured in a boxer’s pose.

“Like he was fighting someone when he bought it.” “That happens in a hot fire; the flames contract the muscles and bring the arms up.” “Well, I heard it from one of the State Police, too.” “And what about that pump?

Somebody must have drained it,” another voice added.

Greta joined in. “I heard the Wingates were arrested for suspicion. I saw them being driven away.” I banged a glass on the counter like a gavel. “All right, all right.

Let me tell you how it works, okay? First of all, nobody outside Hollywood gets arrested for suspicion. The Wingates were taken somewhere for questioning, and they were taken voluntarily. If they hadn’t agreed to go, they’d still be here.” “Oh, sure, and if they hadn’t agreed to go, they’d look guilty as hell.” “You don’t look guilty because you don’t cooperate: You look guilty because the facts weigh against you, and it takes a little time to accumulate those facts. Come on, now. I bet a dozen people in this room were questioned by the police today.” A few heads nodded.

“So why take them away?” Greta persisted, an edge to her voice. I knew they weren’t going to like this one. “Probably because they agreed to a lie detector test.” There was a predictable hubbub. The double doors opened and a few more people squeezed into the room. I hoped I could get this over with before word spread too far. Greta began to warm her jets. “A lie detector test? And you say there’s no suspicion?” “I said you couldn’t be arrested for suspicion. Be reasonable, Greta, you saw the fight. The police have to consider the possibility that Wingate returned to the house later.” “I talked to Ellie..

“I’m talking possibilities here,” I spoke over her. “Not alibis.

The State Police have to look at everything before they can rule anything out. That’s logical, isn’t it? For all I know, they’ll be questioning you as well, especially given your feelings about the Order.” “What are you saying?” I couldn’t believe I’d been that stupid.

“I’m just pointing out that ps have to look at everybody at the start But Greta was already craning her neck looking around the room, er face flushed. “Where’s Norm? Norm, goddamn it.” “I’m here, I’m here.” A small man with a pencil mustache raised is hand in the middle of the crowd. Just looking at him, I pegged him be one of Greta’s boyfriends.

They came and went, but they all oked roughly the same. I was impressed she got the name right.

“Wasn’t I in bed all last night, after that fight?” There was an embarrassing pause. “Answer me.” Norman gave a limp shrug. “I guess so. I was asleep.” He looked round sheepishly.

Someone snickered, there was a guffaw across the room, and lowly the entire place was swept with laughter. I took advantage of the ap and headed for the door, half-expecting to feel a spear smack me between the shoulder blades. But either Greta was being drowned out, r she too had beaten a hasty retreat, probably to murder Norm.

I found Buster standing at the door. He stepped aside and let me ass into the entrance hall. “Catching some flak?” I brushed it off.

“Not too bad. People get anxious.” He planted one big paw on my shoulder and steered me toward he counter under the main staircase.

“Things are different up here ow, Joey. Folks are angry, and the Order is catching the brunt of it. don’t think anyone’s glad those people died, but they don’t want the lame pinned on Gannet. Look at Greta.

She’s all tied up in knots ause of old-fashioned competition. The Natural Order came in, hrowing money around, and we took it. Hell, she and I are Selecten-we said they’d be good for the local economy. Now she’s going broke ‘cause of the Kingdom Restaurant. There’s a lot of that anger oin’ ‘round, blaming them so we don’t have to look in the mirror.” He tapped my cheek with his hand. “We can’t fight back at the flatlanders, or the economy, or the government, but we can take it out n the Order. They’re right here, in our own back yard; we can reach ut and squeeze ‘em. And unless this shit is straightened out fast, that’s ust what’s going to happen. Somethin’s going’ to blow.” He straightened suddenly, either struck with a new idea or reactng to a crick in his back. Then he mussed my hair. “Well, I think I’ll et one last one for the road. See you at home.” And he lumbered off oward the bar.

It had been a startling little speech, mostly because I’d thought him too drunk to give it, but it left me thinking, and a little worried.