Borderlines

He wasn’t fresh when he was found. Lividity had set, which generally happens eight to twelve hours after death. Of course, that’s not a law.

Rigor mortis is still ongoing-his hips and legs and part of his torso are still flaccid. But that’s all sensitive to cold, which delays the process; at room temperature, it’s usually complete at twelve hours, so we re still in that ballpark.” He squatted down again and placed his hand on Wingate’s forehead. “The other indicator is that his cornea has just begun to cloud over, something that again usually happens in twelve to twenty-four hours following death if the lids were closed, which they were here.” He moved his thumb and lifted back the right eyelid to show me.

“Incidentally, it may not be of great importance, but he’s missing the hard contact lens from his left eye. See how the cornea’s just slightly cloudy?” I glanced over his shoulder, but without great interest. That kind of detail was more fascinating to him than to me right now, especially since it didn’t tell us much. “Anything else?” Hoard nodded, stood up and took his glasses off again to wipe then,. I wondered if some sweat had fallen onto them or if that was just his particular nervous habit.

“He was found clutching his testicles with one hand.” I remembered from this morning that one arm was pinned under his body. “You think he was kicked?” “It’s just speculation, but it would be an excellent way to render him defenseless, and it’s consistent with his wounds. Also, it increases the odds that anyone could have killed him, even an adolescent.” Spinney languidly cracked a knuckle. We were sitting on the steps of the Rocky River Inn, waiting for Crofter Smith to arrive with the warrant. We shared a view of the low, tired houses opposite and the ratty, brown grass field behind them. There were two withered trees out front, their limbs bare, skinny, and gray, already in despair before winter’s first snowfall. The watery sun still hadn’t made much of a dent on the cold.

“What did you make of the envelope in the trash?” “1,r “Interesting. Wish we could match the handwriting.” “Think it might be Julie’s?” He looked at me sharply. “Yeah, it’s possible.” “The M.E.

said a woman might have killed Wingate.” Spinney mulled that over for a moment. “Of course, the letter ‘t have to come from anyone they knew.

It could’ve been from one: one of her friends, Sarris, an informer of some kind. Who ws? In any case, Ellie’s not cooperating.

She won’t show us anyg with handwriting on it, and we don’t have enough for a warrant. we’re stuck.” “They haven’t tested it for prints yet, have they?” “No, they’ll do that back in Waterbury-better control. Why?”

“I was wondering if you could ask them to save a bit near the glue p.

If whoever sealed it used their tongue, there might still be some va on the paper that isn’t polluted by the glue-you know, some rlap. Maybe they could get a blood type.” Spinney pushed out his lower lip and nodded. “Excellent. You ‘t mind if I tell them it was my idea?” “Go for it. They dig up anything else?” “Nothing obvious. They gotta cook up their chemical stews and what comes up, but I doubt they’ll find much, except for the elope. You know the Wingates are-or were-up to their asses in I mean, we’re not talking innocent mugging here.” He laughed and ok his head. “You know, standing there in their bedroom, watching lab crew at work, I was half-tempted to interview the walls, just to what I’d get.” I glanced over at him. My liking for Spinney grew the more I got now him. Somehow, over years of service in what could be a pretty eling business, he’d managed to keep a poetic flicker alive in the k of his brain, something that allowed him to stay out of the ruts, eep his mind open to any suggestion. I gave the State Police high ks for putting him on a special platform from which he could work Iy; most other outfits would have labeled him a flake and buried him he typing pool.

We were still sitting there in comfortable silence when I saw ter, presumably coming from the garage. I rose to greet him and oduced him to Spinney.

Buster looked worried. “Rumor has it Rennie’s tied into this ehow.”

Spinney nodded, mostly to himself. “Ah, the reliable beat of the gle drums.” “Maybe,” I answered. “We did find something.” %132 “Wha’t?” I looked at Spinney but he merely shrugged. Smith would have had a fit-cops are not supposed to volunteer their findings. “Did Rennie mention losing a lighter within the last ten months or so?” “Is that what you found?” I nodded.

Buster shook his head. “Not that I remember. You talk to Nadine yet?”

“No; we’re about to we’re waiting for a warrant now.” “Nadine’s a friend. Would you mind if I came along? She might like some comfort with you people tearing the place apart.” I ignored the bitter tone in his voice and cast an inquiring look at Spinney.

“She’s in a wheelchair; might be nice if he could hold her hand.”

Spinney nodded down the road. “We can ask the boss himself.” Smith was approaching in his car. As he drew abreast of us, he rolled down his window and waved the warrant at us like a flag.

“Think he’s surrendering?” Spinney asked hopefully, as he rose to climb down the steps.

I forwarded Buster’s request to Smith. Smith looked at Buster with those expressionless brown eyes. “Just have him stay out of the way.” I was surprised. I’d fully expected Smith to reject the idea out of hand.

I was having a hard time pinning the man down, and beginning to think that Spinney’s constant putdowns were throwing me off. I didn’t like Smith much, any more than I had Wirt. But Wirt was a malcontent, while I suspected Smith, despite his instinctive prejudice against me, had a pretty good analytical mind. In fact, I wondered if his dislike of me wasn’t restricted to the office I held, and that it was utterly impersonal.

We drove in separate cars out to Rennie’s place, north of town, past the cutoff leading to Dulac’s ravine. It was a nondescript, twostory house, patched together like Buster’s, but lacking the neatness. Everything about it looked worn, in need of repair or paint.

The rusted metal roof had countless black daubs of tar across its surface, the marks of a losing battle against leaks; part of the foundation had rotted away, making the house list slightly, as if it were about to slip back into the earth that had supported it too many years. Aiding this desolate, familiar picture was a yard littered with a wide variety of rusting metal hulks truck frames, gaping auto bodies, the remains of a tractor, what looked like a harrow-intermingled with old tires, washing machines, bales of rotted wire, and piles of mysterious debris. The only area clear of clutter was a long ramp that ran straight out from the front door to %133 ere a vehicle could be parked. There was, however, no vehicle beside rs and three state cruisers. The four of us assembled with four troopers at the foot of the p. “Anyone seen Wilson?” Smith asked.

One of the troopers nodded. “I saw him getting out of his pickup Lyndonville and heading for a bar about a half hour ago.” “He never came by here,” another added. “Okay. Let’s go.” Spinney, standing next to me, muttered, “Charge!” as we all foled Smith up the ramp to the front door like ducklings behind their there.

The door was opened by a heavyset woman in a wheelchair. Her ice was as high and soft as a young girl’s. “Yes?” Smith brandished his warrant.

“I am Detective Sergeant Crofter with of the Vermont State Police. I have a warrant allowing me to rch this house for any shoes whose tread may match those we’ve llected at the scene of a recent crime.” Christ, I thought.

Buster stepped out from the mob in front of the woman. “Hi, dine. The police found Rennie’s lighter at the scene of a murder. ey gotta check it out.” “A murder?” She spoke the word as if it were foreign. The look her eyes reminded me of a small child’s when confronted with its rst imaginable fear. I was glad Buster had come along. He stepped around her and pulled the chair away from the door, the others could enter.

Her hands lay motionless in her lap. Smith the warrant on top of them and directed his men to spread throughthe building.

Buster moved Nadine across the living room to a large window erlooking the yard, and positioned her so she could see out. It was entle, thoughtful gesture, designed to help her turn her back to the aos overtaking her house. I thought it all the more considerate when oticed the house was as neat and tidy inside as it was tumultuous tside. Like a tidy, conscientious model prisoner, she’d maintained trol over that part of her world she could reach-until now. That, however, brought to mind a further point. I remembered even before Nadine’s accident, their house had reflected this odd trast. In other couples, I would have taken it as a sign of conflict, a difference of styles so sharp that it could only split the marriage. not with Nadine and Rennie; with them it had been a badge of cessful compromise, reflecting a decades’-old ability to walk a cenI line. The apparent disparity had been a curious symbol of enduring %134 affection, as when, I suddenly recalled, he always took off his boots a’ soon as he entered the house through the kitchen door. Buster sat facing her on a small table underneath the window, one of his hands around hers. I half-perched on the sill.

“You remember Joey, don’t you?” Buster asked her. She gave me a wisp of a smile and nodded. “Buster, I don’ understand.” “It may not be anything, Nadine. Some guy from out of town waG killed, and Rennie’s lighter was found with him.” I finished what Buster didn’t know. “We talked to Rennie, and h

said he hasn’t seen that lighter for six months. Do you remember what happened to it?” “No… Who was murdered?” Her voice was so soft, it was hard to hear, especially with the clomping of feet in the rooms around us “Nobody you know,” said Buster. “The father of one of the kid’ in the Order.” “Bruce Wingate,”

I said, watching her face for a reaction. Theri was none. “Did Rennie know him?” she asked. Buster squeezed her hand.

“No-barely.” He was trying to shield her with a tenderness exceeding his usual soft touch with people in distress. I wondered what it was I didn’t know about their friendship. I hadn’t known Nadine when we were all growing up; she was from another town, and I’d only met her briefly during the few times I’d visited over the past thirty years or so. I’d heard about her accident-falling down a flight of stairs or something.

It had happened almost ten years ago.

I decided to let him take care of the sensitivities while I asked the questions, although his look showed me he wished I’d turn to dust on the spot. “A few nights ago, Rennie helped us rescue a guy who got in a fight with some people from the Natural Order.” “Yes. I remember.”

“Well, that was Bruce Wingate. He’d followed his daughter to one of the Order houses, and was determined to go in and get her. Later he picked a fight with Rennie and ended up punching him. Did Rennie tell you any of that?” She dropped her eyes, as if admitting to a crime herself.

“Yes-he was pretty angry.” “What did he say or do?” “He slammed a few doors and talked about it a bit, but you have to understand Rennie.” She reached out and touched my arm. “He wasn’t angry at… What did you say his name was?” “Bruce Wingate.” %135 “He was angry about more than just that. The slap was only a gger, sort of. He’s had fights before; they don’t mean as much as u’d think.

They’re just a way for him to blow off steam.” “What else was he mad at?” She shook her head sadly. “Oh, everything in a way: the flatlands, the economy, how the town’s falling apart. If anything, he was ore frustrated with Greta than with Mr. Wingate. He kept saying e’s gotten obsessed about the Order, that she’s letting it ruin her life, d that she’s bringing everybody down with her.” “He took her problem that personally?” “They’re old, old friends.” Buster shifted his weight. I could tell he was becoming angry with e. “You don’t have to answer these questions, Nadine. You’ve got thing to do with all this.” She looked over her shoulder at the sound of a loud bang. A ooper across the room had dropped a picture off the shelf he was ecking.

Buster stood up. “Hey, do you mind? This ain’t your house.” The trooper looked genuinely embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It zpped.” He carefully replaced it on the shelf a small framed photoaph of a grinning young man in mountain-climbing gear, with a coil rope slung over his shoulder.

I brought it back over to her. “It’s fine no breakage.” “Thank you.”

Nadine placed it on a small table next to her. hat’s my favorite picture of my brother-.” She pulled at Buster’s nd. “Sit down, Buster.

I don’t mind all this. Maybe I can help ennie.” I smiled at her.

“Thanks. When did you see Rennie last night?” She looked down at her lap and shook her head. “I never did. I ink I heard him very late, but I don’t know. Wednesday nights he ways plays cards with Pete Chaney.” I wondered why Rennie hadn’t told me that earlier. It was a stom-made alibi, for at least part of the evening. “Where does he ay?” “Pete lives in East Burke. He runs a small market there, out of the nt of his house. They play at his place. They’ve been doing it for ars.” “And that’s where he was?” “I think so.” “He didn’t come to bed when he got home?” “Well, we don’t… I mean, when he comes in late, he usually eps in the spare room. He doesn’t like to wake me.” “And that’s what he did last night? Slept in the spare room?” %136 “I think so. I didn’t see him this morning, either. I usually don’t.

He gets up early… Always been an early riser, even before this.” She tapped the arm of the wheelchair.

“How about after work? He said he left work around six-thirty and got home about seven to change. Did you see him then?” Again, she looked elsewhere and sighed. “No. I wish I had. I’m not being very helpful, am I?” “Were you in the house?” “Oh, yes. I was in the bedroom. At seven, I would have been watching television and knitting, like always, but it makes a lot of noise.” “The television?” “The knitting machine,”

Buster growled. The “you jerk” went unheard, if not unnoticed.

“You didn’t have dinner together?” I asked. “Oh, no. But that’s not unusual-Rennie eats out a lot.” She shook her head suddenly. “This is coming out all wrong, Joe. It makes it sound like we never see each other, or care for each other. We do, but differently from other people. That was true even before this blasted thing.” She thumped the chair’s arm. “People are always looking at it, thinking they know everything.” I wondered how many times that was true of other couples whose lives centered around a wheelchair. “Joe.” I looked up. Spinney was standing near a back hallway. He motioned to me.

“Sorry, Nadine. I’ll be right back.” “Don’t hurry,” Buster muttered.

“What’s up?” I asked Spinney in the hallway. “Follow me.” He led the way down the hallway through the kitchen, to a small mudroom beyond. A narrow, cluttered, stalesmelling bedroom lay off to one side by the back door. It was as incongruous with the rest of the house’s interior as spilled garbage on a clean floor, and obviously Rennie’s home away from home. The room’s location made it clear why Nadine hadn’t heard Rennie come home, if he had come home. Smith and several troopers were also in the room.

“Take a look at these.” Spinney bent down and picked up a pair of work boots, already encased in a plastic bag.

“A match?” Smith opened an envelope he’d pulled from his coat pocket.

Inside were a handful of Polaroid pictures, all of footprints found at the scene. They were not “offlcial”-those were taken by the crime lab with %137 rger, fancier cameras and would yield sharper results-but they rved an immediate purpose. Smith selected one and showed it to me.

I compared it to the tread I could see through the plastic. They right down to a stone caught between two of the Iugs that showed as a dent in the photo. Furthermore, I could make out circular stains the boots that looked a lot like dried blood. I let out a heavy sigh. “Where’d you find them?” Spinney pointed to the top shelf of the one closet in the room. uried in back, under this.” He held up a shirt. “It’s ‘plain view’ culpatory evidence, along with a pair of pants, too.” He spread them th out on the bed, the shirt above the pants, like flat paper-doll othes. There was a single red-brown spot bridging where the shirt ould have met the pants, and several more splotches descending the ght leg.

The pattern was consistent with Dr. Hoard’s hypothesis that e killer kneed Wingate in the groin to double him over, and then ifed him from overhead.

“Your friend’s in deep shit,” Smith muttered. “I realize that.” As usual, his voice had been utterly without tonation, which technically made his comment a mere statement of ct. But the utter lack of sympathy angered me, especially when I knew was right. Not wanting to count myself as one of the people roping ennie in tighter and tighter, I chose to dislike Smith all the more for relentless, lifeless enthusiasm.

“I’m afraid that’s not all.” Spinney led me back into the kitchen d showed me a large carving knife, lying on the counter. I bent over-not touching it-and looked carefully. There was me clotted material caught between the blade and the wooden hane.

“Look at the tip.” About an eighth of an inch had been broken off recently, by the earn of the metal. I was grateful Smith wasn’t at my side to gloat out that, too. To him, these were rewards, sought-after pieces of the zzle. To me, they spelled heartbreak and doom, the tearing of a fabric cherished most of my life.

They also hit a rebellious chord deep inside. The more I found out out Rennie, the more I realized how much he’d changed since our e together.

Time had obviously ground him down considerably, aking him drink to excess, become moody and pessimistic, neglectful his wife. But that was hardly unique to him-even Buster was a adow of his former self, albeit still a benevolent one. What I couldn’t Iieve was that the same person who had risked his life a few days ago tering a burning building in an attempt to save others would stab a %138 man six times with a kitchen knife because of a punch in the face.

Unless there was something more I didn’t know about his relationship with Wingate. I played dumb and shrugged at the broken tip. “So?”

“Smith called Burlington just now to see if Hillstrom had gotten far enough into the autopsy yet to make a possible connection. She found a blade tip-same size-stuck in the spine. The Iab’ll have to prove it, but it sounds right.” His voice was solicitous, like a doctor’s with bad news. Smith came out of the small bedroom carrying several plastic bags.

“All right, pack up the knife. I think we’re out of here. What did you get out of the wife?” “She didn’t see him or hear him all night. She did say, though, that every Wednesday night, for the last several years, he’s gone to play cards with a guy named Pete Chaney in East Burke; he runs a small grocery out of his house.” “Good, good.” Smith wrote the name down in his notebook. He checked his watch. “We better get out of here. Hamilton wants a powwow with everybody in an hour.” “Him too?”

Spinney jerked his thumb at me. It was the first time the subject of my tagging along had actually come up for discussion. So far, I’d just managed to lay low and avoid the matter. For once, I’d wished Spinney had put a cork in it.

Smith looked at us both with obvious distaste, almost as if by bringing the subject up, we d ruined the delicate shelter under which he’d allowed us to operate. Now he could no longer pretend I wasn’t what I was. “The State’s Attorney’s office will get a full report.” Buster was still holding Nadine’s hand when we returned to the living room.

“It looks like they’re about to wrap up here. I’m sorry for the intrusion, Nadine.” She shook her head. “That’s all right, Joe. I know it’s your job.

Did you… find anything?” “Odds and ends. We won’t know anything until we can look at them closer, and even then, they may not mean anything. There’s a lot of this that goes on in an investigation like this. Most of it doesn’t mean a thing.” She nodded. “Thank you.” “You will give us a call if you see Rennie again, though, won’t you?

He and I ought to talk. I’m staying at Buster’s.” “Of course.” I gave her shoulder a squeeze and straightened. “By the way, does Rennie ever go without a belt?” %139 “Not wear a belt?” “Yeah.” “Oh, no. He always wears one.” She gave that ghost of a smile ain.

“With his tummy, he has to.” I smiled back, but for other reasons.

I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on the table. I was Potter’s office, having completed another couple of hours of paperork with the meticulously accurate Flo Ginty. She was gone now, I as alone, and the office was dark, except from the single lamp on my sk, just the way I liked it. I pulled the phone onto my lap and dialed Beverly Hillstrom’s mber, reading it off a scrap of paper I had tacked to the wall in front me.

“I was wondering when I’d hear from you,” she said after we’d changed greetings. “I take it you’d like a rundown on Bruce Winte.” “If it’s not too inconvenient.” “Not at all. It was a transverse Iaceration of the carotid-from that one, he would have been dead within a minute. But he also had a good sh in the aorta, a severed spinal cord, and a variety of other less ectacular injuries.” “And he’d been kicked in the scrotum, like Hoard thought?” “Oh, yes, and not tenderly, either. The testicles were quite enrged.” “Lending weight to the theory that he was stabbed after being ubled over.” “That’s correct.” I mulled that over for a couple of seconds and then changed bjects. “So tell me about feathers.”

I heard her chuckle at the other end of the phone line. “I thought at would attract your attention.” I could hear soft classical music in the background. “Was the ather you found ingested, inhaled, or just placed there?” There was a long pause. “I honestly can’t say. The neck was %

140 burned entirely through, and the feather was just below that point of total incineration-near the top of the trachea, but also bridging the esophagus.” “Could it have been carried to the spot by a bullet?” She thought a bit. “Possibly. If so, it’s the only sign of a bullet we’ve got. The soft tissue was too damaged for me to find any of the usual traces. Why would a feather be involved?” “The killer might have held a pillow over the gun. We found another feather at the top of the stairs.

Also, their clothing is insulated with goose down-a bullet could have carried a feather from there into the body.” I looked at a small pad on my desk where I’d scribbled some notes. By the way, did you hear whether the crime lab made a match between your knife tip and their knife?” “Yes, they did. I hung up on them just before you called.” “And I suppose the dimensions they gave you of the knife fit the wounds.”

“Yes.” I chewed on that for a while. I wasn’t surprised, but it was hard to accept.

“That’s not good news?” She asked tentatively. “Well, it is what it is. It puts a friend of mine into pretty hot water.” “I’m sorry to hear that. There was one last thing about Bruce Wingate that I thought you might like to know he’d brushed his teeth just before he died.” “How long before?” Like the feather, it was one of those tiny tidbits that were either uselessly distracting, or on which an entire case could hinge.

“A half hour at the most. I discovered it because he had a small smudge of something white at the corner of his mouth, which I had analyzed.”

“That’s interesting,” I muttered. “I thought you might like that.”

“Well, it means one of two things: Either Wingate brushed his teeth before he went to bed every night, which means he died about a half hour after that, or he brushed them especially because he was meeting someone he wanted to favorably impress.” “Someone he thought he might stand close to, or even kiss,” Hillstrom added.

I was silent for a moment. That opened up possibilities I hadn’t considered. “You’re very good at this.” She chuckled.

%141 We talked about Wingate and Fox a bit more, going over known aterial, looking for possible new avenues, and then finally gave it up.

I turned off the light after I hung up and just sat there in the dark, ming it over again and again in my mind.

Bruce Wingate fights with Fox, loses, and takes it out on Rennie.

hen what? Fox and the entire household die in a presumably accidenI fire, only Fox is dead before smoke gets in his lungs, the woman and zds are on the other side of a locked door, a spent 9-mm cartridge is und at the top of the stairs, and Bruce Wingate admits later to having ned a gun of the same caliber.

Then, the next day, Wingate takes an inconclusive lie detector test d won’t let his wife take one at all. Conclusion? The Wingates are up to their chins in this. Only ingate is now dead. Who could have set up a meeting with Bruce ingate and killed him? And why were there so many footprints found the scene? If Rennie did kill Wingate, who were the other two people? And what motivation did Rennie have to do in Wingate?

I had difficult time believing it was because of a punch in the mouth.

I shook my head, remembering Smith’s satisfaction at finding the ots, the clothes, and the knife. I also recalled the sour feeling in my when I’d heard him tell the troops to pick up Rennie for Wingate’s urder.

Just as well I didn’t get an invite to their little powwow might ave raised more questions than they wanted to hear. I knew Spinney wasn’t entirely happy with what they had against ennie, and for all I knew, maybe Smith wasn’t either. He didn’t like e. I was Potter’s man and an outsider to boot. But his going by the ook with Rennie didn’t mean he was ignoring other possibilities. You ab at what you can in this game, nailing down what loose ends you’ve before going after new ones. Smith was a cold piece of work, it was ue, but it was a piece that seemed to work well, without cutting rners.

So who else wanted Wingate dead? Sarris? If Wingate did torch e building, revenge might certainly be due. Of course, Sarris would probably have someone else do it, which then brought up the possibility any one of dozens of men. Or women, for that matter, as Hoard had ointed out. Certainly the fact that there were as many as three people resent when Wingate was killed argued in favor of Sarris and his oup.

Then there was the mysterious Julie Wingate, the reason Bruce d Ellie had come up in the first place. Was their relationship so far ne that she’d murder her own father? She could have mailed the note her father, arranging a rendezvous, and then killed him when he %142 showed up.

Could Ellie and Julie have been in cahoots? Ellie’s sleeping pill story was almost certainly a lie. Bruce Wingate was no charmer; maybe this was an elaborate scheme for the two women to finally get rid of him, the ultimate in mother-daughter bonding. But if so, why leave the envelope in the wastepaper basket?

I laughed at myself in the dark. Jesus. Besides, none of those theories explained why all the evidence pointed at Rennie. Good old Rennie, with your ass in a crack. What have you been up to?

I thought back for the umpteenth time to our teenage years. You never do know what your friends will become. Charles Manson no doubt once played tag and pigged out on Hershey’s kisses. But I had always thought Rennie and a dozen other people I’d known would grow up pretty much as they had. They’d move around a little, they’d grow fat and bald, but they wouldn’t offer too many surprises. And that’s the way it had turned out-except, apparently, for Rennie.

I heard footsteps on the landing outside, followed by a knock on the door. “It’s open.” The light from the landing backlit Spinney’s gangly silhouette. I leaned forward and lit my desk lamp. We both squinted at each other.

“You get a lot done this way?” “Secret of my success. Have a seat.” He crossed the room and took the chair by my desk. He was carrying a folder, which he placed delicately on his bony knees. “Thought you’d like to know what we’ve dug up.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Does Smith know you’re here?” He allowed a half smile. “He said you’d get a report.” He opened the folder. “I’ll skip the stuff you already know.

The fire is still legally an accident, nobody saw a thing, and nothin’s going’ nowhere fast. But,” he raised a finger for emphasis, “we are chipping away at it. Remember the 9-mm casing, which could have come from anywhere, despite Wingate’s having owned the same kind of gun?”

“Sure.” “Well, the print we lifted from it belongs to Bruce Wingate. It ‘puts him at the scene,’ as they say, for the first time.” “It puts his print at the scene.” He gave me that loopy, wide grin. “Right. We kicked that around, too, especially since he says he lost the thing.”

“Which he may or may not have.” I remembered what I’d been kicking around in my head just minutes earlier. “If he didn’t, then he might have been there and fired it. But if he did lose it, then anything’s possible.” “Like the daughter.” %143 I shrugged. “Sure, the daughter-or the wife. What do we know? aybe Ellie tried to kill Julie and frame Wingate, or kill Wingate and ame Julie, or killed Fox on purpose or by mistake, or tried to kill erself and missed.” Spinney was laughing. “All right, all right Apple dug up a lot ore on Edward Sarris. Want to hear it?” “Sure.” Spinney blinked a couple of times to focus on his notes.

“He’s pretty bland, really. Used to be a college professor, wrote a book about me of his back-to-nature ideas, dropped out and formed the roots of is outfit in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Did pretty well, and then me up here because things were getting too crowded and tense down uth.” “How so?” “He was a real pain in the butt to the town government, constantly gging them about what they were doing. He’d show up at council Ieetings and raise hell. It was legal but it caused problems.

They started going after him for code violations of one kind or another, and e’d stall ‘em with lawyers. But that was about it-no big deal. They ink he finally left more because of his success than because of any assles with the town.” “Where’s he get his money?” “They give it to him.

That’s part of the deal. When you join up, ou hand over every dime you own, along with all your material ossessions. He keeps the cash and sells the rest. Then he’s got the estaurant, which has almost no overhead since all the workers are olunteers, and he’s got a mailorder business for all the natural foods ey grow for nothing. He gets into a jam every once in a whileelatives of Order members try to sue because of the money angle, one tate agency or another sticks its nose into labor relations, or the vital tatistics law, which he just ignores, or health and sanitation. Things ke that.

None of it ever sticks he runs a tight ship, he’s got good legal dvice, and he knows what he can get away with. As far as anyone can II, he’s smart and weird, but he ain’t crooked.” “What about the kid that died?

Hamilton said some kid fell off a ridge a while back.” Spinney shrugged.

“I looked at the file: pretty cut and dry. They aid it was an accident, we investigated, and we agreed. The kid took nose dive off the bridge.

We gave a more careful look than we might ave otherwise, because of the people involved, but that kind of thing appens. The bridge railing was a joke-designed for adults. The little uy just squirted underneath, according to the witnesses.” “So there was a bunch of them there.” %144

“Oh, yeah-it was an outing. Twelve kids and two adults. The kid apparently broke ranks and ran to the edge of the bridge.” “How old was he? Hamilton thought fourteen months.” Spinney closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating. Yeah, that was it, just a toddler. It was a real shame. Apparently he was mentally retarded. That might have been why he made a run for it-never understood the danger he was in, plus at that age, what does anyone know?” He pulled a drawing from the file on his lap and handed it to me. It was a scaled sketch of the crime scene with Wingate’s outline and six sets of footprints in different colors spread out around him like multi-hued flower petals.

“Pretty.” “Crofter’s handiwork-he loves stuff like this.” Spinney had another copy for himself. “Still, it helps, considering the crowd that was there before us. There is one caveat that Crofter wanted us all to understand, though. This is all pre-crime lab. They haven’t reported back on their version of what happened, so we don’t have details like the estimated weight of the individuals involved, the shoe sizes and manufacturers, or even who went where first or last or whatever.”

“Okay.” I studied the diagram. “So, let’s see. Two sets belong to Rennie Wilson blue and red. The blue set was made this morning just before I got there, and after he’d been called to the scene by Mitch Pearl, the hunter. The red set was made earlier, and matches the blood-stained boots you boys found in his house.” “Yeah. Red for blood, get it?” I looked up at him and deadpanned, “Got it. The green ones belong to Pearl, and the black ones to Wingate himself-black as in dead, I suppose. So that leaves the yellow and the white, the two that are unaccounted for. The yellow appear to shadow Rennie’s red tracks, and the white come from an entirely different direction.” I paused.

“Rennie and the white tracks seem to have a couple of odd connections…” I pointed at clusters at opposing distances from the body. “Maybe both of them stood around for a while, shifting their weight, as if waiting. Rennie’s seem the busiest, and are concentrated near the head of the victim, while whites are the least busy, just coming in, turning around, and leaving.” Spinney looked up at me.

“Christ, you’re good at this.” “Practice.” “I guess so.” Spinney shook his head and returned to the diagram.

“Crofter thought the other mysterious tracks-the yellow were a bit unusual. They’re smaller than the others and smooth, as if they were made by bare feet or moccasins.” %145 “So that might point at someone in the Order, since they all wear emade shoes, or it may be a setup.” I sat back and laid the sketch y lap.

“Have you confronted Rennie with all this yet?” Spinney gave me a long, enigmatic look. “Well, that’s proved to little difficult. We can’t find him. We went by the bar that trooper us about. He’d been there, knockin’ ‘em back pretty steady, but staggered out about a half hour before we got there. Now he’s ished.” I looked out the window at the traffic below, imagining Rennie out re somewhere. What the hell was he doing? If he had killed Wingate, then played dumb at the crime scene with me, then why had he he’d his bloody clothes where we could find them? It was a logical stion that played in his favor. “You follow up on his story about night?” “He checks out at the job. We found one guy who says he saw him king out to the parking lot and getting into his car at around thirty; the guy added that Wilson often stays late, wrapping things The Maple Door was a washout, though. The bartender I talked was there all last night, knows Wilson slightly from seeing him und, and says he definitely never showed his face. The only waitress firmed that, and she said she knew him pretty well; he’s got a utation as a boozer and a ladies’ man. “And you talked to Chaney.” “Chaney and a bunch of other people-nothin’.” He handed me erox copy from his file.

“Here’s a photo of Julie Wingate. We’ll be ting a sharper version later, but Smith figured the sooner the better.” “Any luck finding her?”

I eyed the picture, a slightly grainy but hful copy of the snapshot Bruce Wingate had showed me the mornfollowing the fire.

“The Order’s not cooperating, and until we get something legal inst her, we can’t force ‘em to open up. It’s almost too bad Rennie you did such a thorough search of that house-now you’re their witness that she wasn’t there hours before the fire. We’re doing at we can, though. We’ve instituted two twelve-hour uniformed fts, two cruisers each. With the rest of us making rounds, maybe ‘II luck out and bump into her-or Rennie, for that matter.” “Do you have anything new on Paul Gorman?”

“No, we’re just starting on him.” “I have my doubts about his mobile phone routine this morning. ean, what was he doing, sleeping in his car? When I spoke to ingate and his wife last night, he said he hadn’t called Gorman since 0 nights ago-Monday-right after they’d spotted their daughter. I d him we would be checking the Inn’s phone records, and he sud %146 denly looked very pleased with himself. It struck me that he’d probably called Gorman more recently and that he’d used a public phone to do it-not the ultimate innocent gesture. If that pulls your chain, you might want to subpoena a few public phone records.” I slid a stapled sheaf of papers over to him. “That’s my report on the entire conversation.” Spinney nodded and wrote himself a note, muttering, “Great, thanks.” He looked up suddenly. “By the way, Gorman’s been making friends.” I hesitated a moment and then rubbed my forehead.

“Greta?” “The one and only. She’s asked him to address a small crowd tonight and tell them of the evil that lurks among them.” He said the last in a tremulous voice, reminiscent of Boris Karloff. “Where?” “The Rocky River. We thought it might be a little confrontational to send one of our own to listen in, but you’re a good ol’ boy.

I exchanged a sour expression for his ear-to-ear grin and heaved myself to an upright position. “And here I was thinking it was nice of you to have dropped in.” My entrance had the subtlety of a wasp up the nose.

Aside from the bar, the Rocky River’s entire ground floor was lined with rows of seats: armchairs, sofas, straightbacks, metal folding chairs taken from the fire department-enough to seat the thirty or so people who were staring at me as if I was the only dru,k at a temperance meeting.

“Lieutenant Gunther. Welcome.” Paul Gorman stood with his back to the closed double doors of the darkened cafe/bar. Beside and slightly behind him, looking a whole lot less thrilled to see me, sat Greta.

“What do you want, Joe?” she asked warily. I sensed the same antagonism that had risen between us this morning. But there was also something else, a defensiveness perhaps at my having found her with Gorman, as if her innate, almost buried common sense agreed with my own skepticism of the man and his motives. “Heard there was a meeting.”

“You weren’t invited.” %147 “Whoa, whoa.” Gorman raised his arms, his professional smile ed in place. “Lots of people here weren’t specifically invited; we just the word out. I certainly have no objection to Lieutenant Gunther ng here. Have a seat.” I found a seat near the door. Looking around, I noticed the crowd relatively young-couples and individuals in their twenties and rties.

There were also several reporters with cameras, whose roles in this were not going to make things any easier for the police. I also saw Laura there, which surprised me; I hadn’t thought she’d interested in Gorman’s rap. She glanced over and gave me an embarsed smile. In my mind’s eye, I’d endowed her with more sense than e part of this crowd. It made me realize how little I knew her, and I’d presumed we shared some basic assumptions. “I was telling everyone a little about cults in general, Lieutenant nther-may I call you Joe?” “Joe’s okay.” I saw several of the reporters stare at me before erishly scribbling in their notebooks.

So much for maintaining a -profile.

“I was explaining how cultists, no matter how different they may ear on the surface, usually operate similarly in their recruitment and octrination. They focus on people that are essentially unhappy or certain in the first place, and then exploit these characteristics to win recruits over. Have you ever dealt with a cult before, Joe?” He was a slick son of a gun, I had to give him that. While Greta uld have preferred to throw me out a closed window, Gorman was ing to embarrass me to death.

I chose my words carefully, sounding like a press release. “Not cifically. I have dealt with individuals with some of that in their kground.” “No doubt you found them disoriented, often depressed, at odds h how to cope with their lives?” “That fits almost everyone I know.”

There were a few snickers. Gorman smiled more broadly. “Good int, and it applies just as aptly to cult recruiters. But where the police stly deal with aggressive types, cult recruiters go after the passive es.

They don’t want people who think they can conquer the world; y want people they can mold.” He held up a finger for emphasis. he irony is that in some cults, the goal is to create conquerors-but Iy as soldiers, never as leaders.” He was addressing the crowd by now, no longer just me, and the ence in his voice betrayed the practiced rhythm of an actor saying lines for the hundredth time.

I looked at the faces in the crowd as he talked about Sarris’s %148

megalomania, his preying on those weaker than himself, and a bevy of other Psychology I 01 catchphrases. The reporters were mostly bored; some of the crowd looked interested, and several more-Laura not among them, I chose to think seemed positively entranced. Greta was the easiest of these to spot, since she was facing me. She smiled when his sentences encouraged it, nodded just perceptively when he hit a standard chord note, frowned when he spoke of the duplicity of those who’d subvert others to support their own egos.

It was an interesting phenomenon, since none of these local people were related to anyone in the Order. For me, the message became darker the more I listened to it. Gorman was stoking intolerance, not sympathy for the downtrodden, and yet he was using the same fuel, the same words he would have used on the parents of lost children.

And it was working. As he progressed, drawing more and more comparisons to the “cult” at hand, his explanations became less professorial and more impassioned; he let up on the theys and increased the 3’ous as he built up the threat of the cults to the people living near them. The number of captivated faces around me grew. The paranoia that Greta had been displaying since the moment I’d seen her three days ago was Iegitimized as fear in the face of real danger. As Gorman spoke, the Order gradually metamorphosed into a human toxic waste dump, planted in disguise among welcoming, friendly people, but designed and destined to leach out beyond its boundaries, infecting and polluting the minds and hearts of those who so innocently gave it harbor. It was a feat of elocution that set my hair on end. Greta stood after Gorman had finished talking. There was no applause. There was no shuffling, no coughing, no whispering to be heard. These people were caught up, believing that what they valued was at stake, and that salvation from their nemesis was at hand. “Most of you know me,” she said. “I’ve been in this town all my life. I’ve served most of you food and drink, or at least drink, and I’ve even cleaned up after a few of you. I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with-some people call me bitchy, and maybe they’re right. On the other hand, nobody in this town can call me a pushover, and they can’t say that I ever stood around and let something happen I thought was crap.

“Well, this cult is crap. It came in here all smiles and sweet talk, buying its way into the town, dumping gifts on the fire department and the school and whatever, just like Paul Gorman was saying. But then their true colors showed, and now look what’s happened-a fire, a murder, an innocent man being railroaded by the cops for killing a guy he barely knew-” %151 She waited a moment after the door had shut. “Hi.” Her expresn was wary. “Hi yourself” “I thought you were pretty good in there.” “Not good enough.” “Paul Gorman’s pretty slick.” “I’m glad you think so. I got the feeling half the people in there re ready to carry him out on their shoulders.” She made a rueful face.

“Maybe they were. The fact they showed for the meeting in the first place shows how uncomfortable they are th all this.” “Are you uncomfortable?” She smiled. “Me? A little-I’m mostly curious. And I have too uch time on my hands. Dangerous thing for a woman, they say.”

I ignored the oneliner. “But you must have thoughts about this.” “Sure I do. I think people have a right to do what they want if they n’t hurt other people. But I don’t know if that’s what’s happening re.” “What about Greta?” She made a face. “I think Greta’s full of it. She runs a lousy siness, and now she’s losing money. It’s her own fault. If they’d ened a McDonald’s, she would have been in the same fix.” I found myself laughing at the image of Greta bringing in Gorman rid Gannet of the Golden Arches. I felt my earlier ill humor slipping ay.

Looking at Laura, smiling, I was suddenly grateful that she’d been ere to lift my spirits. “You had dinner yet?” “No, I was about to head home and put something on. You terested?” Something in her tone prompted me to be cautious. “No, let me at you. Your choice.” She hesitated, “Well, there’s ‘ ‘ ”’ She stopped and gave me a ‘schievous look. “How about the Kingdom Restaurant?” My astonishment showed.

“Is that all right?” She looked suddenly doubtful. “It’s fine. I’m just surprised. I would have thought you’d never set in the place.” She grinned. “I haven’t.” %152 The Kingdom Restaurant was, to the average tourist eye, quite charming.

The interior contained lots of wood-beams, rafters, exposed floors-and plenty of greenery, plants hung from almost every available overhead spot. There was a fire crackling in a large hearth, surrounded by a semicircle of comfortable-looking rocking chairs. The lighting was muted, mostly supplied by candles, including one at each of the gingham-covered tables-a city dweller’s dream come true.

Not that there were too many tourists there. The timing was lousy for them, or for anyone else outside a twenty-mile radius: It was too cold but with no compensating snow; it was fall but the colorful leaves were gone. Of New England’s many unofficial seasons, “T’Aint Season, this pause-before-the-snow-flies, was a general bust, except, of course, for the huiiters. There were three of them in “Day-Glo” dress parked at a table near the front window.

Laura was obviously impressed. “Wow.” “See? You might even like their filet of materialist flambe.” “Not funny. There sure are a lot of them here.” That was true. A dozen or so men, women and children in quilted pseudo-army garb were sprinkled behind the bar counter, around the kitchen door, and about the fire. Apparently, the Kingdom Restaurant doubled as a hangout for its owners.

One of the women approached us, smiling pleasantly, and led us to a booth off to the side. Walking in her wake, I noticed an odd but not wholly unpleasant scent wafting behind her, some complex mixture of things herbal and animal, including a subtle dollop of old-fashioned body odor. Laura followed me so closely, she stepped on my heels. The waitress indicated a small slate on the table, with elegant chalk writing on it, propped against the wall. “That is your menu. Our meals are made from our own products, grown or raised on our own land, and prepared daily. I’ll give you a few minutes to get settled; would you like anything non-alcoholic from the bar in the meantime? We have a wide variety of fruit juices, natural sodas, and sparkling and nonsparkling waters.” I looked at Laura, who was slowly peeling off her down windbreaker like a reluctant warrior shedding his armor in the face of the enemy. “Want anything?” She looked from the waitress to me.

“Coke?” %153 “I’m sorry, we don’t carry Coke, but we do have something like “Okay,” she said doubtfully, and slid into the booth. “I’ll have one, too,” I said as I took off my coat and hung it on e hook by the booth. The waitress went off to fulfill our order. “So far so good.

They haven’t asked us to step into a huge stew yet.” She gave me an exasperated look. “All right, I’m a little nervous.” I reached out and patted her hand. “I’m glad you suggested this.

occurred to me I was criticizing the people at Gorman’s meeting for getting to know the Order, when I was guilty of the same thing.” She looked around. “It is a nice looking place.” She was wearing ery pretty, close-fitting, V-necked blouse. Her throat was bare and r smooth, pale skin ran uninterrupted to the edges of her collar, to ere the first button rested like a medal on her chest. It was startling realize that this was the first relaxed, social moment I’d had since rrived in Gannet.

The waitress returned with a couple of glasses and two cans of bert Corr’s Cola. I quickly glanced at the menu and ordered the least re thing I could find, chili, with a side order of ketchup. Laura settled lemon chicken.

After the waitress left again, Laura looked at her drink suspiusly.

“It’s a national brand. I’ve seen it around.” She sipped gingerly.

“So?” “Not bad.” I decided to ply her for a little more information about the Order. hat was it like when they first came to town?” I indicated the people ound us with my eyes.

“Kind of exciting, in a way. Sarris made a point of being friendly.

ey paid top dollar for the buildings and the farm. People were saying might be a good thing, give the town a shot in the arm, but that was wishful thinking. I remember Greta saying she’d benefit from the siness this restaurant pulled in. Overflow, she called it. Can you agine that? She must’ve been dreaming. No one in their right mind uld come to this town to eat at the Rocky River, especially the tlanders.” I already knew that the backbone of the Kingdom Restaurant was mailorder business. With that as an extra source of income, Greta’s ancial outlook looked doubly doomed. “Did anyone try to roll out e welcome mat for the Order?” She shook her head. “People talk about it now, but no one really %154 went out of their way. I don’t think it would have worked anyway.

Sarris brought his group up here to get away from the locals. The Northeast Kingdom isn’t exactly famous for its hospitality, and I think that suited him.” “Where do they grow their food?” “North of town.

There’s a dirt road called McCallister’s Road. It leads to an old farm-” “Which used to be called McCallister’s Farm. I remember.” She laughed.

“Right. It was abandoned when they bought it, but they’ve done a lot with it. It’s in full production now, or so everyone says.” “Who’s ‘everyone’?” “Oh, other farmers around. Early on, the Order asked surrounding farmers how to work the land. They wanted to know how Vermont farming differed from down south. They paid well, so people were happy to help.

But there’s been less contact lately, now that they know what they’re doing. In fact, they have several advantages over the local farmers.”

“How so?” “Well, they don’t use any middlemen, the mortgage is paid on the farm, they don’t use any power machinery, and the farm hands work for free and there’re a lot of them, too.” “Any resentment from the locals?” “Some, I guess. It’s not really the same market-these people avoid the mainstream-but still, some of them feel the cult’s setting a bad example. Same as with the townspeople; at first, they were well paid, then the money handouts stopped.” She took a swallow of her drink.

During the pause in conversation, I thought I could hear sounds from the seashore, mixed with rain. I looked around, trying to locate the source, and found it leaking from a loudspeaker high in one corner-“natural” Muzak.

“How do you know so much about this?” “My father and father-in-law are farmers,” she said shortly. I watched her swirling the ice cubes around ill her glass, her eyes on the tiny whirlpool. Her tone had revealed as much as her brevity on the subject.

Their life was not to be hers. Apparently, however, that’s where her determination had run out; she knew what she didn’t want but had no alternatives. Our waitress returned bearing our meals, her smile still in place. I focused on her more carefully as she placed the dishes before us. “That was fast.” “Well, we’re not too busy, and a lot of the ingredients are prepared ahead of time.” %155 “You work in the restaurant full-time, or do you do other ings?” She looked at me closely then, her smile fading just around the ges.

“We all work at everything: It’s a sharing community where all e equal.”

“So you all get to know each other pretty well, I guess.” She looked at me as if I’d suddenly lapsed into Arabic. “You ever meet Julie Wingate?” She looked over her shoulder nervously. A man at the bar, watchus, came over to our table. The waitress faded away as he drew up.

an I help you?” The tone of voice was neutral, but I found the uence unsettling.

“No, not really.” “I got the impression you were asking your waitress questions she uldn’t answer.” “I don’t know if she could or not; she didn’t.” “That could be because she knows who you are, Mr. Gunther.”

“Ah, very flattering.” “I’m glad you think so. Well, if there’s nothing I can do, I’ll let u enjoy your meal.” “You know, we’re trying to protect you as much as anyone else; don’t want to see any more of you hurt or killed.” He smiled. “What you want is irrelevant to us.” He turned his ck and returned to the bar. There was a prolonged silence after he left. “Maybe this was a bad a,” Laura finally said.

I poured ketchup into the chili, crumbled some crackers over the p, and stirred it all together. It tasted pretty bland-Tabasco might ve helped. “Hell with ‘em-food’s good.” She looked doubtful, but cut off a piece of chicken and ate. “Good?” She stared at my bowl. I was adding salt and pepper. “Mine’s fine.

hat are you doing?” “Spicing it up a bit.” She had the kindness to keep quiet. I didn’t really mind; my eating bits were legendary in some circles and I’d already survived a lifetime harassment. More important, it had taken Laura’s mind off her dden discomfort at being here.

“So,” I said after a few spoonfuls, “have you decided what to do out you and Tommy?” She chewed a while longer before answering. Then she put down r fork. “I don’t think I have your courage.” “Courage?” I was disturbed by her choice of words. Her view of %156 me, I’d come to realize, needed a good dose of reality, something a l,e’l”5c’n llkp Gail we1in be 9n e’soI’ert at alm1’riisteri”I~~ “You can live alone; you can come up here and do this job, with people you don’t know; you can handle yourself in tough situations and not have it faze you. I don’t think I could be that way.” “That probably makes me callous, not courageous.”

She reached out and grabbed my hand. It was a perfectly natural gesture, but the sentimentality of it made me uncomfortable: It spoke too well of her need to make me the solution to her problems. “I don’t think so. It’s not callous to be strong enough to not care what other people think.” I shook my head. “You’re making me sound too good to be true.” “You are good.” It was a painful signpost of her inexperience-or my skepticism. I turned my hand so that I held hers in mine. “What I am is a crusty old cop. Some of what you’re talking about comes from my just not giving a damn anymore. And the rest is flat out wrong. I care about what people think; I have concerns about coming across well and not looking like a fool. Everyone does. I want you to like me, for instance, but that’s just a normal thing for men and women to do-for anyone to do.” Her face softened. “I do like you. I think I liked you before we even met, just from what I heard from Buster. And now that we have met, I know I was right.” I was angry at myself. Subconsciously, I’d been playing her up, encouraging her. I’d been enjoying the attention, using it to soothe my frazzled ego.

“Laura, you don’t really know me. I live alone for good reasons.

I’m narrow-minded in a lot of ways and I’m selfish as hell-can’t share worth a damn. Don’t look to me for examples of how to run your life; look to yourself and find out what it is you want out of life. Like you said, you’ve got no kids, nothing really to tie you down. If leaving Tommy is what’s best, then do it, but if you think the two of you still have a chance, then maybe it’s worth fixing up.” “I don’t know if I’d be good at that,” she muttered, staring at her plate.

“Come on. You said you lacked courage. That’s baloney-you beat your alcoholism, didn’t you?” “For the moment.” “Did Tommy help at all?” “Not much. Tommy doesn’t do anything much.” Her face became hard.

“I’d try to make it work if he was interested. Hell, I’d make it %157

rk if anyone was interested.” With that, like quicksilver, she was king softly into my eyes.

I felt like a tugboat pushing an ocean liner away from the rocks.

Tommy’s not the man for you, Laura, then find someone who is. don’t tie yourself into knots for the first nice guy who comes along. at’Il bite you in the nose in the long run.” “Do you like me?” I was getting a little frustrated with this. “Of course I like you, but set in my ways.

You’re stuck on me because you’re unhappy with mmy.” I’d been harsher than I’d intended. Indeed, even as I spoke them, alf-regretted my own words. To a guy my age, the palpable yearning an attractive younger woman was a seductive proposition, as pleasto my vanity as it was foolish and misguided to my inner moral pass. In any case, I had pricked whatever bubble had been swelling ween us. She took her hand back and began finishing her meal. I took her cue and attacked my chili again, but the taste had gone of it somehow. After a couple of mouthfuls, I put down my spoon quit. As I looked up, I saw Edward Sarris staring at me from across room.

Moments later, he walked up to the table. “Enjoying your meal?” Laura froze in midbite. Sarris smiled. “Please, continue.” She did, though obviously with limited enthusiasm. I gestured to seat beside me. “Join us?” “No, thank you.” He leaned against the table opposite us instead, hands in his pants pockets, his ankles crossed the perfect picture leisure.

“So, business or pleasure?” “The meal was a pleasure, the fact that we had it here was, I admit, oncession to curiosity.” “Nicely put. So, what do you think?” He pulled out a hand and tured around the room.

“It’s pretty similar to the way The Common se Restaurant is set up in Island Pond, but, as they say, imitation he highest form of flattery.”

“I think it’s materialistic as hell. How do you justify it, given your ‘Iosophy?” “Of which you know next to nothing, I might add.” “Okay, but isn’t there some truth to that?” “Perhaps. What you fail to recognize is that we deal with principle ed with pragmatism. We intend to outlive you to the end of this ented world, and to do that we must live on the fringes of your rId, not utterly apart from it.” %158 “I hear you collect all valuables from entering members and that you have insurance on all your buildings. How’s that fit in?” “I doubt you are truly curious how that ‘fits,’ as you put it. Suffice it to say it’s perfectly legal and that you needn’t waste your time trying to prove I’m a despot leading a bunch of deranged half-wits to poverty.” “I have heard that.” “I don’t doubt it. You’ve probably also heard about sacrifices in the night.” “What about Julie Wingate? Have you seen her around?” “No, I’m afraid not.” His manner was consistently relaxed on the outside, ice-cold on the inside. I had to give him high marks for composure. So far, he had avoided all the easy cliches-no temper tantrums, no outright refusals, no bald-faced lies that I could immediately expose, although I knew in my bones his last comment was pure baloney.

“I hear you’re not cooperating in locating her.” His eyebrows shot up.

“Really?” “You claim you can’t force your followers to help us out, and they won’t move a muscle without your okay.” I glanced at the man behind the counter. “Or one of your lieutenants.” “The first half of that is true; not the second.” “That’s not what we just witnessed. We asked our waitress a simple question, and she immediately was replaced by that man over there.” He followed my pointed finger. “She didn’t know the answer to your question, I suppose.” “I asked her if she knew Julie. Surely she knew the answer to that.” He smiled. “It would seem so. I have no explanation.” It was a wonderful answer, a total roadblock disguised as beguiling truthfulness.

It occurred to me that until we had some concrete evidence that the Order was involved in all this, Sarris would be happy to play verbal footsie ‘til the cows came home. As he’d said earlier, he was quite good at it. I glanced at Laura. “You finished?” She nodded.

Sarris looked disappointed. “No dessert?” “Not this time.” I put a twenty on the table, more than enough to cover the bill and tip.

He reached for the money. “Let me get you your change.” “No, keep it.”

I rose and helped Laura into her coat. Sarris unhooked mine and handed it to me. “After this is all over, Lieutenant Gunther, I’d like it if you could come back informally.

%159 re antagonists now, to be sure, but I have enjoyed our conversas”’

“Seems like all I do is ask questions and all you say is, ‘No ment.’”

“Surely, you’ve glimpsed better than that.” “I haven’t glimpsed much of anything.” Laura preceded me through the door. We stopped on the walkway ide and adjusted our coats against the chill, which, compared to the th of the restaurant, had a pleasant bite to it. “You two guys sure have strange conversations. I can’t figure out u like each other or not.” “I don’t like him but he has a certain style.” She shivered slightly, getting used to the cold. “He gives me the ps. Thanks for dinner, though. It was nice.” “Let me walk you back to your car.”

“Okay.” I stuck out my arm in a Cary Grant gesture. She didn’t know to her arm through mine, and instead patted my elbow awkwardly rent movies.

Suddenly, I heard a soft crack beside me, along the dark wall of estaurant. I turned my head in time to see Rennie Wilson standing e shadow.

“Rennie. We’ve been looking all over for you.” He turned in an instant and vanished around the edge of the ing.

“Rennie. Hang on, goddamn it. We gotta talk.” I bolted after him but had to contend with a small picket fence that ked the alley. By the time I cleared it, his crashing footsteps were e far end of the building.

The narrow alleyway that ran alongside the restaurant was pitchand choked with high weeds and brush. I ran with my hands in of my face like a blind man, praying I wouldn’t lose an eye or be ked senseless by something hanging low from overhead. I was driven as much by desperation as by adrenaline. Christ only what risks Rennie was running by not coming in, but one of them ure was a small army of policemen, armed and convinced he was lent killer.

I broke through the end of the alley into the overgrown rectangueld behind the Order residences. The grass was chest-high and wasn’t much more light here than in the alley. The sky was cast and there were no streetlights aside from the one blocked by ark hulk of the firehouse.

%160 I stopped dead in my tracks and listened. A dog balked far away a car door slammed. Somewhere I heard muted laughter. In the house’ to the north, lights shone through the windows. I watched them, hoping to catch some movement between them and me. My eyes scanned slowly, trying not to skip from light to light trying to see more than was humanly possible. About midway from Ief to right I saw a short shadow, too broad for a sapling, too narrow fo a shed, about a hundred feet away. I moved slightly to one side, sIidin~ a distant-lit window along so it would backlight the shape. It was man, standing stock-still. I crouched and began moving toward him, hoping to hell wouldn’t step on anything that would give me away. I got about thre’ yards before my left shin struck something thin, horizontal, and resist ant-a wire. As my momentum pushed me forward, I tried to lift mj foot over, got my shoe caught, and began to fall. I made a giant ster with my right leg, hit the same low-strung piece of wire, and fel headlong into someone’s abandoned fenced garden.

I scrambled up as quickly as I could, but I knew I’d lost my on’ chance.

The shadow was gone, leaving only the faint sound of a distanz body moving swiftly through the grass. Again, as when I’d seen Bruce Wingate lying dead at the bottotr of that ravine, I felt as if I’d let something slip through my hands something that was to cost me dearly.

I called Hamilton after losing Rennie, and he’d rallied the troops For most of the night, we drove, walked, and talked our way acros’ what seemed like the entire county, all for nought. It was Rennie” backyard, and he obviously knew it well enough to stay out of our way On the other hand, it gave me plenty of time to think. Despite the case against him, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Rennie was running for reasons other than Wingate’s murder. There were too many inconsistencies; too many leaps of logic, like the assump. tion that a punch in the face merited a lethal revenge. Also, there were the other actors in the play-Sarris, Ellie, Gor.

man, Julie among them-none of whom glowed with innocence. Ren’ %161 e’s actually running only made him the most blatant of these, but the hers were just as shy of the limelight.

All night long, I mulled this over, leafing through flashcards in my ind, trying to piece together some reasonable sequence of events. ter hours of this, the only common denominator was the opening line each and every scenario-Julie’s migration from home to college and the Order had set the whole game into motion. The more I looked at it, the more I saw the missing Wingate as e catalyst for most of the police’s problems.

We’d been spending tually all our efforts trying to locate Rennie and prove him guilty, gely because he custom-fit the role. The evidence was against him, actions were self-incriminating, and warrants with his name on em were easy to secure: He was a natural.

Just what Julie was not.

With her, warrants were unobtainable, evidence was nonexistent, d no one had even set eyes on her. And yet there she was, like a ge-front actor with no lines to deliver.

All that, after less than two hours’ restless sleep, had brought me wn out of the Northeast Kingdom and into Massachusetts-to Nak, specifically-to find out all I could about the elusive Julie Wingate. I parked just shy of the town’s central square of updated turn-of-century red brick buildings. It was still dark, although dawn’s first y blush was just beginning to touch the sky. I stretched, rubbed my es, and crossed the street to a small restaurant. Inside, I sat at the unter and ordered coffee and a sugar-covered cinnamon roll. Natick, m the little I knew, had been transformed over the years from a small ral town to one of Boston’s “bedroom communities,” meaning, I had ays supposed, that its population decreased during the workday. It built low and spread out, with lots of quiet residential streets lined th middle-aged trees, occupying an economic middle ground among ston’s wide variety of satellites. A good town, as they say, in which raise a family, benefitting from a nearby metropolis and an inordinate mber of nearby malls, and yet enjoying the slower pace of suburban On the surface, Bruce the banker and EIIie the secretary fit in here e peas in a pod white, middle-class, hard working. Looking enough the restaurant window at the early, Boston-bound commuter fflc, I wondered what had made Julie so desperate to escape. As I ate, I flipped through the pages of a borrowed phone book. uce Wingate was listed as living at 4 Maple Avenue. I got directions m the woman behind the counter. Maple Avenue was a short dead-end street, very pretty and quiet, %162 lined with smM, W ottd W aT One-vitttage homes Ioeated oh liny, M’~~ Bare trees stood guard by the sidewalk and pinned down the neatly mowed, frost-covered lawns. An occasional tricycle and swing set attested to warmer weather scenes of children enjoying life on a street with no through traffic.

Number 4, with its narrow front, high-peaked roof, and dark wood trim, seemed right at home. The Wingates’ residence, however, was not my primary interest. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone really, who might tell me of its inhabitants. I parked in the middle of the block, where I could see most of the street, and waited for some activity. The first sign of life appeared as a concession to the day’s gathering light-the bulb above Number 7’s porch was switched off.

I got out of the car and climbed the steps to the porch. Whoever had hit the switch had also seen me coming. The door opened a crack, too narrow to let me see who was standing there. “Yes?” It was a woman’s voice, sharp and thin. I pulled out my badge and showed it to the crack. “Sorry to disturb you so early in the morning. My name is Joe Guntherz I’m a policeman working with the Vermont State’s Attorney’s office, and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.”

“Vermont?” The woman stayed hidden behind the door. “I’ve never been to Vermont.” I gave my best genial smile, feeling like an idiot with no one to look at. “No, ma’am, this isn’t about you. I wanted to find out a few things about the Wingates.” “Who?” “The Wingates-they live right across the street.” “Oh. I don’t know them. I’ve only lived here a few months. What did they do?” “Nothing. I just need some background.”

“They kill someone?” “Not that I know of.” It wasn’t strictly a lie, although I had my suspicions about Bruce Wingate.

“Rob a bank?” “No. I wonder if you could tell me who on this block might know them.” “Try Number 6 she’s pretty nosy. Name’s Grissom. They in the drug business?” “Thank you for your time.” I left Number 7 and crossed the street to Number 6. The door opened wide to my ring of the doorbell, revealing a pleasant-faced elderly woman wearing a full-length fluffy robe. She gave me a smile as I ran through my cumbersome introduction.

%163 “Vermont-you’re a long way from home.” “Yes, ma’am.” “What questions could you possibly have that I might answer?” “I’d like to know about the Wingates, what they were like as eighbors; things like that. Did you know them?” “Oh, yes. I’ve been living here for quite a while.” She eyed me arefully for a couple of more seconds, and then opened the door wide.

Would you like to come in? I was just fixing myself some tea.” I thought of the gallons of coffee I’d been swilling half the night nd suppressed any thought of caffeine poisoning. “Sounds wonderful.

hanks.” I followed her through to the back of the house, a combination of ark wood, flowered upholstery, and ancient, sturdy carpeting. The air melled of warm wool and medicine. I could hear a parakeet upstairs.

The kitchen was catching the first sun of the day, giving the room bright, embracing warmth. The woman, who confirmed she was Mrs.

rissom, gestured me to an alcove with a permanently mounted breakast table lined on either side with a wall bench. It made me think of iding in a train.

“So, you’re interested in the Wingates,” she stated. She was movng about between the stove and the sink, accumulating the paraphernaia necessary for her tea tray.

“Yes.” “Why?” It wasn’t said with any hostility; it was merely direct, which seemed to be Mrs. Grissom’s general approach to everything.

“We’re investigating a crime, and the Wingates might have some nvolvement with it. I just need some background, something to help e understand what makes them tick.” She was pouring hot water into the teapot with her back to me.

‘It must be a pretty serious matter for you to come all this way just or that.” “It is.” She finished pouring and brought the tray over to the table. “You ook tired.” I smiled at that. “A little. I’ve been up all night.” “Would you like a doughnut? I make them myself.” “Thank you. That sounds great.” She crossed over to a cabinet and brought back a Tupperware ontainer filled with dark brown doughnuts. I bit into one and immeditely eyed the rest; best doughnut I’d ever tasted, even without a reamy middle.

“Eat all you want.” She sat opposite me and began to fill our cups.

%164 “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or is this to be a one-way conversation?” I recognized I was not dealing with some prehistoric busybody, as her neighbor had implied. Whatever Mrs.

Grissom had done in her heyday, she hadn’t kowtowed to other people.

“Bruce Wingate’s been murdered.” She didn’t pause in her activities, but she stayed silent for a moment.

She pushed my cup over to me and looked me in the eye, her face serious.

“I’m sorry to hear that. How’s Ellie?” “Hard to tell. She’s bottled it up. She also has a guy running interference for her, so it’s hard to get close.” “What guy?” The way she pronounced the second word, I could tell she wasn’t fond of casual English. “He’s some kind of anti-cult counselor-organizes peer support groups for parents of children who have joined cults. He probably has other irons in the fire, but that’s the gist of it.” She nodded. “I’m not surprised. So Julie is mixed in with this?” “They drove up to Vermont to find her.” “I thought that’s what it was. They gave me their keys so I could water the plants and feed the cat.” I was a little disappointed by that. The implication was that Mrs.

Grissom and the Wingates were old friends, which made her an unlikely source for objective information.

“Silly mess. All three of them should have run away to separate parts of the country.” I raised my eyebrows questioningly in midsip of tea.

“Theirs was the most minatural-feeling family group I’ve ever seen.”

“Really?” “I never heard any music from over there, or any laughter, not even any shouting. They never held a party, never had friends over, little Julie never played in the yard with a playmate. Any time I saw them together, they were mostly silent. Who killed Bruce?” “We don’t know. Were you good friends with them?” “No,” she answered immediately.

“Nor do I think they had any. I think that was Bruce’s doing more than Ellie’s. My impression was that he dominated the family.” “How?” “Oh, you know, seeing them coming and going, it was always, ‘Don’t get Daddy mad,’ ‘Daddy wants this done,’ ‘I’ve got to get Daddy’s dinner ready.”

Daddy obviously pulled all the strings. It was more than that, though.”

%165 “Oh?” My mouth was half full of doughnut. Mrs. Grissom looked out the window. “Well, what I’ve described ‘t much different from many homes-my own father was a bit of a ciplinarian. I don’t know how to put it, really, except to say that uce controlled them. He was with that child all the time, especially en she was a youngster. The only times I saw her in the yard was his company.” “You mean playing?” She tilted her head from side to side in a vague gesture. “PlaySome would call it that. I would stand at that window years 0,” she indicated the window over the sink, “and watch them tother, throwing a ball back and forth or shooting marbles in the iveway. He would constantly instruct her, his face serious, as if what ey were doing had long-range, almost grim consequences. Neither e of them laughed or smiled. They would just go through the moveents-throwing a ball back and forth, back and forth-without any ling whatsoever. It was almost as if Bruce had read somewhere that was supposed to do these things with his daughter and, being a man sound character, he would therefore do them. There was an utter k of spontaneity.” “Did you ever suspect there was anything unnatural going on?” Her eyes opened wide. “You mean child abuse?” “It happens.” “Yes.” She paused a moment, reflecting. “I would have no reason say that. I certainly sensed that Bruce was the unchallenged authorof that family, which I think is abusive, but in the sense you mean I’d have to say I don’t know I wouldn’t rule it out.” I figured I’d better stop with the doughnuts and leaned back ainst the wall, cradling my teacup.

I was suddenly struck by a notion. 0 you have anything with Julie’s handwriting on it?” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “No, I don’t think so.

e looked up abruptly, her eyes bright. “Wait a minute; yes, I do.” She rose and crossed to a bulletin board littered with calendars, tes, photographs, and postcards. “They went on a trip to the Berkires several years ago and she sent me this.” She unpinned one of the stcards and brought it back to me.

On the back was scrawled a brief note describing the weather and e fact she was writing this in a hurry. It was signed, “Julie.” “May I keep this? I can get it back to you later.” “It doesn’t matter. I have no sentimental attachment to it.” I slipped it into my pocket, wondering if its author had also dressed the envelope that Bruce Wingate had received the night of %166 his death. “You seem to be talking about long ago all the time, when Julie was a little girl. What about recently?” “I can’t say. Once Julie began going to high school, Ellie got ajob.

Every morning, I’d see them head off in the car-Bruce driving, of course-and that would be that. I assumed he dropped the two women off on his way to work, and picked them up later.” “But school got out before five. What did Julie do in the meantime?” “I don’t know. They always came back together.” “And on the weekends?” “I never saw much of them. Julie never seemed to have any friends over, or go out on dates, though, if that’s what you mean.” “You said you ‘thought that was it’

when I mentioned they’d gone up to Vermont. Did you know Julie had run away?” “Yes-Ellie had told me-oh, more than a year ago. She seemed almost embarrassed by the fact, as if Julie’s action had brought shame to them all.” Mrs. Grissom leaned back and gave me a long look. “You know, I can’t say I was surprised when you told me Bruce was dead. It may sound cruel to say, but I always thought it would take his death to allow the other two any kind of freedom, especially Julie. Knowing that family was like seeing a life raft foundering because it carried one person too many.” Growing up in Thetford, there had been two centers to my life.

One was at home, where I was lucky enough to benefit from great comfort and support, and the other was at high school, where my emotional state bounced around as routinely as a basketball in full play. I proceeded to Julie’s high school.

The parking lot was full. Mrs. Grissom had told me how to get there, but from then on, I was on my own. I walked to where I thought I might put the administrative offices if I were an architect. I found a chemistry lab instead, filled with surprised, white-coated students and one teacher, who gave me directions. Once at the principal’s offlce, with much talk and much display of my essentially worthless credentials, I was ushered into a small, bare office to meet a nervous, chain-smoking rail of a woman. After listening to my request to talk with Julie’s guidance counselor, she tapped her pencil on the metal-topped desk for a few moments of reflection, then finally gave me the name I needed and further directions to the teachers’ lounge. There, I was met at the door by a fat, balding, pink-cheeked man %167 with an old-fashioned pencil mustache that looked absurdly at sea on his enormous faee “Mr.

Gunther?” “Yes.” We shook hands. His was damp and flaccid. “Miss Stevens called me on the intercom. You want to ask me about Julie Wingate?” “That’s right.” The lounge was a tired, threadbare room, smelling of stale cigarettes and burned coffee. The furniture had been colorful and modern twenty years back; now it was stained and exhausted.

Harvey Mullen led me to a couple of fabric-covered tubular chairs by the window. “Would you like some coffee?” What I wanted most now was a bathroom. I declined his offer and we both sat, facing each other as if we were at some encounter group. Mullen began rubbing the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other. His eyes blinked, I noticed, with the precision of a clock-once every two seconds.

“I gather you were Julie’s advisor.” He nodded a few times too many.

“Right.” “What kind of girl was she?” “Oh, average.” “How do you mean?”

“Well, you know, there was nothing special about her.” “Did she have a lot of friends?” “I don’t know.” Right, I thought Mullen was as obtuse as Mrs. Grissom had been perceptive; too bad their roles in Julie Wingate’s life hadn’t been reversed. I started over. “What kind of advice do you give students here?” “All kinds. If they have problems with their grades, I see about tutoring; if it’s drugs, I see about counseling. I help them with their college choices, assuming they’re interested. I try to find their strengths, so the school can help them out in the best way.” “Julie went to college?” “B.C.” I took that to be Boston College. “Did she have good grades?” “So-so.” “What was her strength-was she particularly good at any one subject?” He pushed out his lower lip for a moment. “No, not really.” “What was she like to talk to? What did you discuss together?” He gave me another big smile.

“Nothing, oh.. headaches.” This was starting to get to me. “I’m investigating a murder, Mr.

%168 Mullen, which well might involve Julie. Could you be a little more generous with your answers?” Now he looked hurt. “I’m trying to help.

She just never said anything to me. Every time we sat down together, I’d do all the talking and she’d just sit there. The only time she said anything was about headaches.” “What about them?” “She got them a lot, and she complained to me that the nurse wasn’t giving her aspirin anymore, said she was taking too many.” “What did you do?” “Told the nurse to lighten up. It was just aspirin, after all.” “And that was it?

The two of you never spoke about anything else?” “Not really.” “What about when you discussed college choices?” “We didn’t discuss. She said her father wanted her to go to B.C.

and that’s where she was going. That was almost the longest talk we ever had.” Mr. Mullen finally did admit that Julie spent more time in art class, under the supervision of Mr. Petrovic, than she did anywhere else in school. Art class became my next stop.

Mr. Petrovic was everything Mr. Mullen was not tall, slim, thoughtful, concerned, and very aware Julie Wingate was not average in any way.

“She spent every afternoon here, after school let out. She was supposed to be waiting in the library that’s where her father picked her up every day after school but I let her hang out here. She loved to draw, she was good at it, and she never got in my way. Had she been a little less uptight, it would have been a joy to have her here. I could’ve felt I was nurturing the creative process, you know? An art teacher’s dream.

Most of the kids I get here can’t paint their fingernails.” “So she kept to herself”’ We were in a large room, mostly empty of furniture aside from dozens of easels and a few pedestals with odd lumps of clay on them. One entire wall was made up of glass windows, and with just the two of us here, it was a little like sitting in a secular church; it reminded me a bit of Sarris’s lair. “She kept to herself, all right, like a volcano with a loose lid.” The image startled me mostly because it fit my image of Bruce Wingate to a T. “Did you ever meet her parents?” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. The kid had my sympathies.”

%169 His expressions and outlook reminded me a lot of the young jaded ynics who’d grown up in the sixties, the ones who hadn’t trusted people over thirty and still didn’t, despite being ten years beyond that hemselves.

“What were they like?” His expression turned bitter. “Martinets, both of them, although e was the bandleader. She just sort of tagged along.

It was the damnedst parent conference I ever had. You know, some of them just want 0 know how their kid is doing, others are worried because the little enius isn’t painting like Picasso-or maybe he is painting like Picasso nd they hate it-but most of them are looking to the teacher for some nput. Not this duo. The old bastard basically told me what the kid hould be doing and let me know that if she wasn’t, it was because I as a shitty teacher. He told me he taught her himself how to paint nd how to read and write, and tell time, and do math, and everything Ise. I got the feeling he sat on her like a mother hen, telling her how 0 do everything but pick her nose. It was incredible. I tried to encourge them to let her go a little, let her try some things on her own. He amn near bit my head off.” His eyes were blazing by now.

Mullen, who presumably had reeived the same treatment from Wingate, hadn’t given a damn. Petrovic ad probably cared too much. I wondered how many times he’d taken ulie aside and encouraged her to fly on her own while her parents ere holding on for dear life. “You said Julie was like a volcano with a loose lid. Did she ever xplode?” Petrovic’s eyebrows shot up. “You bet. We had to call the ambuance once.” “Why?”

“She flipped out. She took the place apart, smashing equipment, icking the furniture over. She stuck a palette knife in her arm. It was cary.

I was in the room with her, doing something in the far corner; he’d been painting for a couple of hours, wrestling with something. She alked to herself when she got mad, although never loud enough for me 0 hear what about. Anyhow, this time, all of a sudden, she hit the roof. didn’t even get near her ‘til after it was over, you know, to see what could do for the arm she’d have taken my head off.” “Did she do this other times?” “I heard she did. I only saw it that one time.” “What kind of paintings did she do?” “Mood stuff, at least that’s what I call it. Some of her work would e normal, everyday landscapes, portraits, whatever.

But then, every %170 once in a while, she’d tuTn out soTnctlting dark at’d pessiult’stic, Ii something out of a concentration camp, you know?

Introspective 1 ,”,FJ ~” “You keep any ofit?”’ “I wanted to, but she kept track of it; destroyed it all. She on brought the bland stuff home.” “Did you ever talk to her about all this?” He hesitated before answering, and I wondered again how mu< he wasn’t telling me. There was an edginess to the man, an element caution in his eyes. My instinct wasn’t to imagine the worst, howev~ for I’d seen the same expression in other teachers, especially the go’ ones. Their concern for their charges often overran pure educatio spilling over into the personal and becoming possessive. Their frustr tion with poor parenting often made surrogate parents of them, wi all the worries, despair, and occasional pride that entailed.

His voice was hard. “I tried, but she wasn’t very receptive. I thi her parents had her on too short a leash. Being open with people, herself, had pretty much been bred out of her.” Before leaving Natick, I stopped by the Police department. T Chief was a man whose Italian name was so complicated, I never d catch it. He was short, wiry, and nervous, with a quick smile and efficient manner.

He led me into his office, a spacious, well-lit affair with comfo able furniture and good lighting. I grimaced at the thought of the offi I’d occupied during the six-month leave of Brattleboro’s Chief, direcz over the ancient basement boiler that shook the pencils in the cup my desk.

“So you have no warrant? This is purely courtesy?” “That’s right.” He thought about my request for all of three seconds and th turned to his computer. “Bruce Wingate, right?” “Right.” He tapped away for a while, paused, tapped some more. I visu ized other computers across the state waking up to his knocks on th door, blinking a few times, and then pawing through their own fil Finally, he leaned back in his chair, his eyes on the screen. “Red tered as owning a Smith & Wesson 9 mm, purchased about eight ye; ago, and a Colt.38, purchased two months ago.”

I stared at him for a second, my mind suddenly crowded w voices. “No reports of anything stolen or lost?” “Nope.” %171 I thought about that for a moment. Wingate had told me he’d ticed the 9 mm was missing when he’d wanted to do some target actice two months ago.

He’d then changed that to three years ago. had struck me an odd mixup to make. Now I understood-the.38 d been bought two months ago, a fact he hadn’t wanted to reveal. I scratched my head. Also, he hadn’t said the 9 mm was missing; ‘d said he’d lost it. “Do you have any record of his reporting the loss theft of anything else of value?” The Chief leaned forward and tapped a few keys. “Not directly, his insurance company let us know, just in case they surfacedoks like someone broke into his car once a few years back; took the dio, a camera, a coat.” He paused and scrolled the screen. “His wife ported a lost ring last year; according to this, it came off her finger the cold and fell in the snow.

We never got any of it back.” What did that tell me? That he either lied about losing the 9 m-in which case, why did he buy a.38 to replace it?-or he feared at by reporting the loss, he’d get someone in trouble.

Someone he was ways protecting.

I found Mel Hamilton in his office, talking on the phone. From hat I could hear, he was still running the manhunt for Rennie, collectg additional troops from every barracks he could. He hung up and looked at me. His bloodshot eyes were resting on rk, tired pouches. “What’s up?” I handed him my report on the Natick trip. “No luck on Rennie, guess.” He just shook his head.

I then gave him the postcard Julie Wingate had written to Mrs. rissom and explained where I’d gotten it. “It’s a few years old, so the ndwriting may have changed a bit, but it might match the writing that envelope Wingate received the night he died. I want to dig into lie Wingate a little bit-background material. We may not have paid enough attention to her. Who have you been using for your background formation on the Order? Was that a single source?” He rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “No, but I know what %172 you’re after the human interest angle. What the hell’s her name? A Dartmouth prof, bit of a nut, according to Appleby… Kaufman, Ruth Kaufman.” “What department?”

“Religious Studies or Religion… Something like that. She has a degree in anthropology, too, but I don’t know how that plays in.” I wrote down her name. “How about a consultant shrink, someone you use for criminal profiling?” “Barb Barrett, out of Burlington. Good lady.

Maybe a little uptight ‘til you get to know her. The front desk’Il have their numbers.” I thanked him, picked up the numbers, drove to Potter’s office, and asked Flo if she could set up a teleconference between Burlington and Hanover, New Hampshire. Two hours later, the earliest convenient time to all parties, I had a phone in my hand and a blank note pad before me.

We introduced ourselves. It turned out the two professors didn’t know each other. Kaufman had a surprisingly low voice and a nice laugh; Barrett was more precise-professionally neutral, giving credence to Hamilton’s description. I explained what had led me to call them up, that I was faced with a town confronted with several violent deaths and torn by the presence of a cultlike organization. That the possibility existed that at least one member was involved. I then gave details of the Natural Order and of the situation in Gannet.

I laid out my opening question so that both of them might address it from their different vantage points. “What does an outfit like the Natural Order do to encourage a kid to join?” Barrett spoke first. “I’m not going to answer that until I know more about the Order.” “No problem; that’s why Dr. Kaufman’s here.” “Ruth, please. Unless I’m grading your papers, call me Ruth.” I noticed Barrett did not extend the same invitation. “I gather you’ve studied this… is it a cult, by the way?” “I have studied it, and no, I wouldn’t call it that, although technically, you could call the Catholic church a cult, or the Republican party, for that matter.” I laughed. Barrett did not. I started regretting I hadn’t done this In person.

Kaufman resumed. “But the word has negative connotations, involving rituals, psychological abuse, and a generally unappealing attitude.”

“Like Jonestown,” I interrupted.

“Right. I’ve studied The Natural Order for about three years now, %173

nd it’s a far tamer beast. It still carries a lot of cult baggage, but I’ve und it to be more benign somehow. Edward Sarris, the leader, is a irly typical megalomaniac-a man with a mission and he has surounded himself with a hierarchy in which only he holds the absolute ower. But there is a mitigating element to it all that softens the hard ngles.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“The environmental aspect, for one. Unlike many of these organiations, which proselytize themselves as alternatives to the establishent, the Order throws in the added backdrop of saving the world. their enemies are polluters and consumers, rather than religious blashemers. It’s an interesting, off-beat and curiously pragmatic choice. It ives Sarris’s group added appeal.” “Okay, but what about the down side? I mean, this isn’t Greeneace.” “Oh no, far from it. That’s the beauty of this group.

It’s either opelessly cynical or bizarrely idealistic; I suspect a little of both.

I do hink Sarris’s environmental concerns are quite genuine-he was once fully tenured professor with an activist background but I also think e found a way to practice them that makes him the master of a virtual arem. His contention is that humans do not mate for life; that they re designed, emotionally and biologically, to mate at random, as much or sex as for replication. So Sarris breaks up any shows of strong ffection, especially between male/female couples. He often takes a emporary fill-in role himself with the woman. As a male, he must have 0

pinch himself at night, wondering if this is a dream come true.” She chuckled a little at that. “The treatment of the children bolters this.

They are brought up by the group as a whole, rather than y their natural parents. That way, they are more easily influenced by he group ideology and are removed from the adult male/female bondng process. The children are continuously shuttled around from couple 0 couple for lodging. And, of course, the couples themselves are in onstant flux.

The idea is to reduce adult relationships to the purely exual or communal, as in working together for the common good.” “What about the other men? Where do they fit in?” “It’s like a pyramid, with Sarris at the top, holding power over hem all-males and females. Below him are what you might call lders or lieutenants, people who have stuck with him a long time and ave accumulated a certain amount of power, some of it official, some of.

Below them, you get a kind of new guys-old guys hazing relationhip, where people who have been inside awhile hold sway over the ewcomers.

Now the males higher in the hierarchy exercise control %174 over the lesser males by taking their women and by assigning menial tasks; the women, who are essentially without official status in this setting, achieve status by sleeping with powerful males, and supplanting one another in the process. It’s an incredibly complex society, almost entirely directed by interpersonal relationships rather than, say, competence, rank, or age, barring Sarris and a few of his inner circle.

It’s kind of like saying that only the blond can lead in a world of redheads. ‘Course, I’m trespassing here.” “How about it, Dr. Barrett?

Any arguments?” There was a small pause.

“I think it’s always misleading to superimpose our own values onto a personality like Mr. Sarris’s. People in his position-that is, leaders who live among their followers on a day-to-day basis-usually can’t afford our cynicism. It would trip them up sooner or later. What we see as opportunism might well be a form of spiritual expression.”

Kaufman laughed, which made me wince, but Barrett joined her. “I know, it’s a little hard to swallow, and it may not be true in this case. You disagree, Dr. Kaufman?” “No, no… Well, maybe a bit. I think a good part of him is just plain horny and self-serving.” “Okay,” I said once the laughter died down. “That takes care of Sarris.

Now what about the people he recruits?” “That covers a lot of territory,” Barrett hesitated. “Well, try it in general terms first, and then I’ll get very specific, down to one person, in fact.” “Okay…”

There was a moment’s silence as she collected her thoughts.

“The kind of people we’re talking about, the ones that stick it out in a cult, or whatever you want to call this group, tend to seek an authoritarian environment, be it military service, or a state hospital, or a cult. The irony is that they’re often looking for exactly what they’ve run away from at home.” I perked up at that. “From authoritarian parents, you mean. “Stern, overprotective, or downright abusive parents. In any case, the kids you’re talking about-although they aren’t all kids often come from stifling homes, homes in which the parents exercise absolute control over their children. These kids, as a result, yearn for independence, but are incapable of making decisions on their own. So they run from home and head for a life on the streets, or to outfits like The Order, places where they can just be, without having to be responsible, and where they can focus on an authority figure-orderly, street cop, drill sergeant, cult leader, whatever-who is not their parent. Indeed, cult recruiters often comb the streets for just these types.” %175 “And the college campuses.” “Yes, there, too, but for slightly different types. The college reuits share many of the same characteristics as the people I mentioned, they’re less apparent-the mental illness aspects have often been dden by other, more socially acceptable sobriquets, like ‘high-strung,’ oody’.

“Or ‘uptight,’” I said, remembering Petrovic’s word for Julie.

“Precisely. The higher educated, wealthier elements of our society e sometimes far more deluded and dishonest about these things than e street people.” “Okay, I have a specific person in mind, a single child-a girl.

e’s in her early twenties, is now in the Order, and her parents have me looking for her. From what I could interpret from people who ew her in high school and before, it sounds like life at home was ffocating: She didn’t have friends; her father was constantly hovering er her, and she had chronic headaches and explosive temper tanmns, times when she would just flip out. Her art teacher said she was tremely moody, sometimes painting normal scenes, sometimes turng out what he called concentration-camp art, which she then appartly destroyed. “She even stabbed herself once. In fact, that was interesting. The teacher witnessed that-and called the ambulance-and he seemed imply that the self-stabbing calmed her down. Can you make anying of that?” “Not legally.” “This is off the record; just the three of us.” There was a heavy sigh at the other end. “I almost hate to say Nothing. On the face of it, without knowing this girl or anything more bout her, I’d guess you might be dealing with a borderline personality. hat’s a very strong ‘might,’ by the way. I have no way of knowing for re. I’m merely going by the vague signposts you described.” “What’s a borderline personality?” “A pretty unpleasant type, actually. It’s a little unclear whether ey develop or are born with their personality disorder, but their rimary driving force is rage.

“Sounds charming,” Kaufman said softly.

“Hardly. Your mention of the violent temper tantrums would fit ere, as would the headaches and the suffocating, isolated home life.

hey are often hyperactive, difficult to manage and impulsive, and hen their fuse is lit, they blow sky-high.” “Doesn’t sound like someone like that would last three days in a ult.” I also had never heard any mention of hyperactivity in Julie; in %176 fact, my reading had been that she was unusually repressed and quiet.

“On the contrary; a cult might be just the place. Borderlines are not happy with their condition. Their lives are often solely directed at finding a solution. But without proper guidance, they’re likely to seek help from strong disciplinarians. You remember when the solution to a ‘problem child’ was to send it off to the French Foreign Legion or the Marines? The old ‘They’ll straighten you out’ school? Often the borderline himself will try to apply the same sort of medicine. They have the sense that since they can’t control their own rage, they ought to find an environment that will do it for them.” “So how do they function?” Kaufman asked, by now thoroughly caught up in the conversation. “Request regular beatings? Sounds like they’re in search of accommodating sadists.” “Quite the contrary. They internalize their rage. Usually the peopIe around them haven’t the slightest idea that they are half-consumed with anger. Remember, having chosen their surroundings, they try to conform; they follow the rules and regulations precisely and often stand out as exemplary citizens. The cost of all this is on the inside. They hate themselves growing up, they’ve often been told repeatedly that they’re bad, even ‘evil’ and so once in place in their chosen society, they often turn their rage on themselves, sometimes even cutting themselves again and again as self-punishment.

Your mention of the selfinflicted wound thus becomes relevant. But I would like to stress again, Lieutenant, that this is all hypothetical.

We may be talking of someone who’s hysterical, schizophrenic, clinically depressed, or any number of other things.” I was listening, but I didn’t want to get sidetracked. “Are borderlines suicidal?” “No, well, they can end up that way, but generally pain is the goal, not death. Often, they regularly slice themselves, usually in places that can’t be seen; they become quite adept at it. I’ve had borderline patients who were literally covered with scars, but not where it showed when they were fully dressed. Incidentally, since the subject of sex has been mentioned, these people often also engage in painful sex.” “Can this desire for pain be turned around? Can they harm others?” “Anyone can.

Little old ladies have been known to summon homicidal instincts at just the wrong moment. Obviously, someone who whittles on her arm or leg every night is going to have a violent personality. Do borderlines kill? No more than other people.” After I hung up the phone, I pulled Julie Wingate’s picture from my pocket and studied it. That bland, sullen face merely looked back at me, unanswering.

%177 I’d spent the day far from the center of action in this case, and yet elt now that new possibilities had been introduced like a truckload bricks at a building site; they weren’t part of any clearly defined ucture yet, but they had the makings of a firm foundation. Now Wingate’s death was the possible accumulation of years of nt-up anger.

If Wingate had killed Fox and the others, and if Fox and lie had been lovers, Julie’s motivation for revenge was iron-clad. Wingate had told me his 9 mm had gone missing just about the e Julie left for college.

Had that been a coverup, or had Julie stolen r father’s gun? Wingate’s recent purchase of the.38 certainly bolred that theory.

But if Julie had the 9 mm, and killed her father in the ravine, why d she used a knife? And why had a 9-mm shell, with Wingate’s print, rned up in the fire-gutted house? And who were the other people in at ravine? I turned away from my desk and stared out the window. Edward rris controlled the lives of almost half the population of Gannet. Was behind all this? Did he use Julie to lure her father to a meeting, and en take over from there? That might explain Julie’s vanishing act; she ight be under lock and key somewhere. Or she might be dead.

And what did Rennie have to do with any of it? And if he had been Iiberately framed, then by whom? And why?

I rubbed my eyes with my palms. The problem was, that even with e additional facts I’d dug up on the Wingate family, we still didn’t ve enough information to draw any conclusions. The truckload of icks I’d visualized earlier were still jumbled in a useless pile.

We needed more to go on-to find the missing pieces that might as a blueprint. I knew for a fact that Rennie was in the middle of I this for some reason I didn’t understand.

It suddenly occurred to me there was at least one man from whom might get some answers.

Pete Chaney’s place wasn’t hard to find. His store was advertised with a big Sign-PETE’s ~~~xET-right on Route I I 4 in East Burke. he place had the shopworn look of a local hangout, its outside walls pered with posters of local events, new and ancient, its entrance uttered with several sleeping dogs, the parking area half-filled with %178 pa~che~-up pickup Irucks. The mai’ke~ pare was ac~uany the

ron1 o~ a residence, an aggravated hallway extending the breadth of the building, each wall jammed with sagging shelves of boxed and canned goods.

Opposite the creaking front door, there was an ice-cream freezer with a counter behind it supporting the cash register, a large coffee maker, and a wide assortment of plastic-wrapped, inedible-looking doughnuts.

There were several men in stained work clothes standing around the coffee machine chatting and drinking coffee, making passage to the rest of the place a challenge. Considering the instant but brief attention my entrance made, I mentally pitied any good-looking shy woman who might blunder in here unprepared.

Behind the counter was a small, round man with an enormous nose and a single eyebrow, who greeted me with a friendly wave of a beefy hand. “Hi there, what can I do you for?” “You Pete Chaney?” One of the other men let out a whoop. “Watch it, Pete you’re in trouble now.” The others laughed as Chaney nodded, his smile fading. “I’m with the State Attorney’s office. I was wondering if we could haveachat.” More hoots followed that. “Better call your lawyer, Pete chats from those guys last from five to ten years.” Chaney made a face. “Sit on it, you clowns.” He gestured to me to follow. “We can talk back here.” He led me behind the counter to a door which opened to the rest of the house.

We stepped into an evil-smelling, ill-lit den of sorts with a TV in one corner, a half-smashed coffee table listing in the middle of the room, and an assortment of stained, disemboweled stuffed furniture shoved up against the walls. There might have been a rug, or even a floor underfoot, but it was invisible under the layers of old newspapers, magazines, paper plates, discarded clothing, and various mysterious piles, the identification of which was impossible in the gloom.

“Have a seat.” Chaney sank back into a sofa that damn near swallowed him whole.

I settled more gingerly on the edge of an armchair. I didn’t want to call for a winch later to help me to my feet. “You’ve spoken with the State Police a couple of times already.” “Yeah.” “Well, this is a followup.” He looked at me quizzically, but with very watchful eyes.

“You guys don’t talk to each other?” “Your problem is we talk too well to each other.” I’d decided on the way here that bluffing was about the only trick left in my bag.

%179 “I’m going to ask you roughly the same questions you’ve been ked before, but you’re going to give me totally different answers. ay?” His tongue quickly passed across his lips. “Why would I do that?” “Because you’ve been lying so far.” Chaney’s face darkened. Otherwise, he didn’t move. “One more thing: You have the right to remain silent, because anything you say might be used against you in a court of law.”

His mouth fell open. “Am I under arrest?” I put my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “You’re that se. You want to talk?”

“Sure, I got nothing to hide.” “Was Rennie here last Wednesday?” “No.”

“Where was he?” “How would I know?” “Why did you claim he was here?”

“He’s a friend. I thought it might help.” “Pete, you’re on a slippery bank, heading toward deep shit. Coverfor Rennie is stupid. He’s wanted on a murder charge now, which kes you a possible accessory. Covering yourself will just cause a lay that I’ll make sure you pay for.” “I didn’t actually say he was here last Wednesday.” “You said he was here Wednesdays. How about that? Is that e?” He turned his head and scratched an ear, crossed his arms, shuffled feet.

“Was he ever here on a Wednesday night?” “No.” “So where was he?”

“Around. It depended… sometimes on the weather, you know.” I stood up, grateful I could do it with a certain controlled violence, tead of having to ask for a rope out of the seat. “Okay, you want talk weather?

Fine. Let’s close this place down and spend the next days talking about it somewhere less comfortable.” He looked up at me, his hands spread out and his eyes pleading. hat do you want? I’m talking; I’m telling you what I know.” “You’re giving me grunts and groans, playing twenty questions. on’t have the patience for that. You start talking now, or I’ll hand u more legal problems than you’ve ever dreamed of.” “He got his rocks off every Wednesday night, all right? He was king around on his wife and he got me to cover his ass in case anyone ed.” %180 “Who was he seeing?” “Hell, I don’t know. Different people.” “Give me some names.” “They don’t got names-not normal ones.” The effect of his words was like being hit with cold water. “Rennie was fooling around with women from the Order?” “Yeah.” A crucial and for me, a feared connection had just been made.

Was this enough motive for Rennie to stab Bruce Wingate at the bottom of that ravine? I sat back down. “Did anyone else know his affairs?

Anyone in the Order?” “Sarris knew.” “Sarris?” “Sure, he set it up.

Rennie made a deal with him.” “What kind of deal?” “I don’t know exactly. Rennie wouldn’t tell me. He said he had something on The Elephant, something that could shut him down. Rennie told me he was set for life; any of those cunts he wanted he could have.” “Did you ever meet the women?” Chaney did his shuffle routine again instead of answering. I tried a friendlier, more companionable tone. “Rennie and I grew up together, Pete. He’s one of my oldest friends. Now right now, the state cops are crawling all over the place looking to nail him for that stabbing the other day. You think he did it?” “Murder a guy?

No way.” “I don’t think he did, either,” I said with false conviction.

“But we’re a minority, and unless I can find out who did, they’re going to nail him, and maybe you with him.” “That’s bullshit.” But he didn’t say it with much assurance. “You think so?” I stood up, my voice suddenly harsh. “Then let’s stop right now. You can deal with the State Police yourself.” He wearily motioned me to sit. “Yeah, he brought one of ‘em here.” “Why here?” “Maybe I told him I didn’t want to cover his tail when he was getting’ all the action. So he brought the first one over, like a peace offering.” “Who was she?” His voice went up a note. “How do I know? I sure wasn’t going’ to mess with her.” I was becoming impatient. “What the hell’s that mean? You were the one who asked for her.” %181 He glared at me sulkily. “She was a real nut into S&M. She liked be hit, had scars all over her, like she’d been in an accident. They d it and I watched for a while, but I finally threw ‘em out. Told ennie to keep ‘em all to himself.” “So there were others?”

“Hell, yes. He dumped that one later, but he was hooked. I told m I wasn’t interested anymore.” Chaney looked half-embarrassed by e admission. There was a lull in the conversation as Pete Chaney studied his rty knuckles. I felt weighed down inside. Part of my early enthusiasm this case, I suddenly realized, stemmed from my desire to establish ennie’s innocence. Subconsciously perhaps, I’d seen myself as the odigal returning, showing my affection for the town of Gannet by eeing one of its prominent citizens from scandal.

Reluctantly, I pulled the xerox copy of Julie Wingate’s picture from my pocket and showed it to Chaney. “That the woman?” He peered at it in the gloomy light. “Yeah, I think so. She looks little fatter here.

There wasn’t much to her when I saw her.” He shook head.

“Did you ever see her again?” “Not her or anyone else. Rennie took me at my word and never ought any of ‘em around again.” “How long ago was all this?” “I don’t know-a while.” “A month? A year?” “Half a year.”

“Are you sure he dumped her?” “That’s what he said. He had his pick. No need to get hung up on e of ‘em.” “And how did this little cover work, the Wednesday night thing?” “Usually he took them to the firehouse in Gannet. That way, if someone called him here, I could say he was taking a shit and would II right back, or something like that, and then I’d call him at the ehouse and let him know.” “That happen often?” “Not too much-sometimes.” “And he always went to the firehouse? What about if they had a e all of a sudden?” “Didn’t matter. He had a deal set up in the attic. A mattress on e floor, pillows, stuff like that. If the siren went off, he’d just stay put. ever happened anyway.” I made a face. “I know that attic-must have been hotter than hell the summer.”

%182 “He said it was sexy. Anyway, he had a fan set up in the back window, where you couldn’t see it from the street. Before he figured out about the attic, he used to go out in the woods-he had a spot.”

“Where?” “Offthe end of Lemon Road. There’s a kind of rock point that sticks out of the mountainside. You gotta go through the woods a few hundred feet to reach it it’s like a picnic rock. Nobody knows about it.” “You do.” “It used to be hangout of mine. I told him about it when he was Iookin’ for a place to get laid. At the beginning I took my phone off the hook and claimed it was out of order, or I took a message and then said I forgot to give it to him. It didn’t happen ‘cept once in a blue moon.

He didn’t really even need the attic deal and me calling him up. I just think it made him feel smart, that he had all the angles covered…

Asshole.” I stood up, feeling like hell. It was almost as if the Rennie I knew had died a long time ago. How could he have done that to Nadine? I was struck by a sense of bewildered loss. “You’ve helped yourself a lot with this, Pete. The police or I or somebody will come back and get it all down for the record later.” He didn’t look too pleased at the prospect. I paused as I headed for the door. “What about your end? What did you get out of it?” He was still sitting there, like a fat egg on a pillow, his hands in his lap. He seemed as bereft as I was. He shook his head. “I didn’t get shit out of it none of it was worth it. We used to play cards together way back. He was a good guy. But all this stuff ruined everything. I hardly knew him anymore.” It gave me little satisfaction to have finally solved the riddle of Rennie’s involvement with Bruce Wingate that there’d been something more than a brief flare-up between the two of them. Had Rennie’s affair with Julie continued without Pete Chaney’s knowledge?

Maybe Rennie had taken care of Wingate as a favor to Julie. And what did Rennie have on Sarris that Sarris would kowtow to him in the first %183 lace? Maybe Rennie was innocent of Wingate’s murder and Sarris set im up-killing two birds with one stone, as it were. Much as I’d been isillusioned by Rennie’s behavior, I still hoped the latter scenario ight be closer to the truth.

I was walking into State Police barracks to file the report on my hat with Chaney when Mel Hamilton met me in the lobby. “I just alled your office your secretary said you were headed this way. You ight like to come along.” “What’s up?” I handed the report to the receptionist.

“They found Rennie Wilson’s truck west of Hartwellville on emon Road.

They think whoever was in the truck headed off into e bush. I’m having Fish and Game send a tracker to meet em.

The trip was fast and lugubrious. Hamilton took a patrol car so e could use his blue lights and siren as necessary. He also had to use is headlights, although it was still midafternoon. The air was misty, reasing the road and reducing visibility, and the clouds hung so low at the hilltops vanished from view. The light was gray and dull, and dden patches of ground mist lingered menacingly in odd places, as dropped by accident from the bruised and glowering sky. It suited y mood and helped color my expectations of what we might find in e vicinity of Rennie’s truck. During the trip, I filled Hamilton in on hat I’d discovered at Pete Chaney’s. Lemon Road doesn’t really lead anywhere.

It branches off Radar oad out of Hartwellville, starts out paved, turns to dirt, and then just eters out on the heavily wooded slope of East Haven Mountain. It’s of very long, has only a house or two at its start, and leaves the pression of some half-forgotten municipal project whose planners n out of both ambition and funds. Rennie’s truck was parked at the d, its right wheels in a shallow ditch and its body half-covered with oken branches and dead leaves, a camouflage job either half-corneted or half-cleared away.

Spinney’s unmarked sedan and a patrol car were parked in a line the opposite side of the road. We pulled in behind them to lessen e number of extraneous tire marks in the dirt. A trooper I didn’t ow was standing nervously near the pickup, his right hand picking the yellow stripe that ran down the outside seam of his dark green iform pants; Spinney was stretched out on the hood of his car, his ck against the windshield. He snapped a salute from that position as amilton and I got out of our car. I could tell from Hamilton’s expresn he wasn’t pleased with the informality. %184 Obviously, even Spinney got the message. He slid off the car and gave a boyish smile to both of us. “Car hood was keeping me warm.” Hamilton smiled back and placed his hand on the car, warm vapor escaping from his mouth as he spoke. “I hadn’t thought of that. Fish and Game ought to be here pretty soon; you come up with anythiznew?” “Not here. We looked in the truck without disturbing anything, but there’s nothing unusual. You can see where the grass has been flattened leading into the woods. I didn’t want to risk messing things up.” Hamilton nodded. “No, no. I think that’s right. How long do you think the truck’s been here?” “Hard to tell. Engine was cold; there was frost on the windshield. A blind guess would be last night sometime, but that’s mostly because I figure Joe saw him last around 2300 hours and he must have driven here soon after.” The lieutenant nodded again and shivered slightly.

“Cold,” he muttered, and wandered over to the truck, greeting the trooper as he passed.

“You get any sleep?” I said.

“Some-still feel like shit, though. You figure this mess out yet?” “No, but it prompted me to talk to Pete Chaney again.” I gave Spinney the abbreviated version.

Hamilton came back as I finished. “Makes you wonder how many other people are involved in this case.” I laughed at that, but without any humor. I was just grateful that both of them had restrained from saying, “I told you so.” My conversation with Chaney put Rennie right in the middle of this case: He wasn’t the framed local bystander anymore, even in my own mind. While there still wasn’t proof he’d killed Bruce Wingate, it wasn’t so farfetched to assume Rennie might’ve had a serious personal grudge.

My bitter ruminations were interrupted by a muffled, grinding, metallic sound from down the road.

“That must be Fish and Game.” A somewhat battered Ford 150 four-wheel drive lumbered up the road and stopped behind my car. The Fish and Game emblem-what hadn’t been scratched off by too many encounters with brush and low branches-was emblazoned on the door. A man in a dark green unIform with black epaulettes and breast-pocket flaps piped in scarlet stepped out onto the road. He was somewhere in his forties, tall, very lean and muscular, and wore a.357 Magnum on his belt. Looking at him, I felt like Elmer Fudd next to a young Burt Lancaster. He nodded %185 us, looking around briefly, seemingly cataloging the scene in his ind.

Then, still not having said a word, he walked silently and graceIly up to us and shook hands, barely murmuring his greeting. His eep-set blue eyes, contrasting with a tan face and dark brown hair, ere startlingly sharp. If I hadn’t seen him drive up, I would have ought him capable of just appearing from the woods, much like the eer that were pictured on both his shoulder patches. Hamilton made the introductions. “This is Lieutenant John ishop. He’s been with Fish and Game for over twenty years and is Probably one of the best trackers they have.” Bishop shook his head slightly, downplaying the compliment. hat’ve you got?”

Hamilton waved at Rennie’s truck. “Owner of that’s wanted for estioning in a murder. He disappeared yesterday. Wiley here,” he dded at the trooper, “found the truck about an hour ago.” Bishop nodded and walked a few steps toward the truck, his head nt, watching the ground. He stopped a few feet from it and crouched, oking underneath. “Any of you walk around here?” Wiley spoke up first. “I went to the driver’s door, then around to e other side, just to see if anyone was maybe in the ditch. But that as it.” “You walk around the front or the back?”

“Front.” “Anyone else?” “I did about the same thing,” Spinney admitted.

“I also looked side, using the driver’s door.” Bishop placed his hand on the truck’s hood and then stepped ay, coming back toward us. “Well, it was parked here last night.” e looked at both Wiley and Spinney. “Could I see the bottoms of your oes?” Both men turned and lifted their feet up for Bishop to see. He dded after a few seconds of study. “Thanks, I just want to rule them t-don’t want to mix them up with other prints.”

He walked out to the middle of the road and crouched again, arming the surface with those careful eyes. He got up, moved a bit, ouched. He did that several more times before nodding to himself. e nodding was something I learned he did a lot, the gesture of a man ho spends much time alone in serious conversation with himself. He crossed over to his truck and retrieved a camera, a large knife at he attached to his belt, and a tape recorder, into which he muttered veral notes. He glanced over at us, clustered together, looking back him. “Saves on time and paper. I type it up at the office.” %186 He pointed to the road. “You had two vehicles here last night. On’ of them parked over there, and then turned around later and left in n< big hurry.” He returned to Rennie’s truck, this time from the rear, and go down on one knee near the exhaust pipe. He muttered something to himself I didn’t catch and strode quickly to the driver’s door again, thi’ time opening it and looking in. He slammed the door and faced us.

“Well, that explains why the branches and leaves were taken off the front-the engine was running and whoever did it didn’t want too much heat to build up and cause afire.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Why run the truck half-coverec with leaves and junk?” “The lights are on, or they were until the gas ran out and the battery died, and they’re aimed right to where the tracks lead off int< the woods. I guess he was lighting the way, or maybe just showin~< which way to go. That’s not a good sign, by the way.” Hamilton said it. “Why not?” Spinney answered.

“‘Cause it means he meant to come back and turn off the engine and never did.” I’d understood instantly, too, and it opened a void deep within me Over the last several days, I’d had to relinquish much of what I’d helc dear of my memories of Rennie and of Gannet. What had been plannec as a spiritual homecoming was fast becoming a wake.

Bishop gave a small smile and ducked his head slightly. “Righ you are.”

He followed the erstwhile path of the headlights to the edge of the woods, where the road petered out. “More bad news. Three sets 0 prints head off here; only two come back, both leading to where the other vehicle was parked.” We walked toward him as a group, but he stopped us.

“Tell y01 what.

I’d like your company-all except Wiley-but I’d like you t( follow my tracks and not these.” He pointed at the ground where, to be honest, I hadn’t seen much from the start. “Wiley, I’d like y01 to stay here to watch the truck and to act as liaison between us and you] car radio.

That okay, Lieutenant?” Hamilton nodded. I noticed Wiley seemed relieved as he trampec back to his unit-and its heater. Hamilton, Spinney, and I tuckec ourselves into Bishop’s wake as he led the way into the woods.

Now in his element, and in obvious control, Bishop became a’ talkative as he’d been quiet earlier. Bending over at the waist, frez quently dropping to one knee, switching suddenly from one bearing to %187 there and back again, he chatted freely about what he was seeing, his rarely leaving the ground. I was tempted to think of him as a ting dog on the scent, but somehow the image didn’t stick. The gun, quiet, unemotional voice, and the sheer Iitheness of his movements him a more lethal air.

There was an element of limitless determinato him-a rare thing in a human being, and a potentially dangerous “The owner of the truck went first-alone. The other two followed r, and not too well at that; not too used to walking in the woods. ok at this-you can see where one of them tripped. And over there, other one did it; looks like a woman or a small, light man, maybe enager. The lights must have been left on for them, although they uldn’t have been much good for more than a few feet.

That part still sn’t make much sense to me.” I was staring at where he was pointing. All I saw were minute turbances in the leaves, a slightly rolled twig, a tiny smudge in the t. “How can you tell the other two followed later?” Bishop pointed to a spot on the ground. “Heel marks are the iest to spot. All the weight comes down on them, at least when ‘re on flat ground or going down hill. And you see where there’s a tiny skid mark from the top of the heel mark to the bottom? That icates the direction they’re taking… It’s a little hard on this partly zen ground. Okay, there’s another one, but it’s on top of the first, obviously it came along behind.” “I can see that, but the time thing-“

Bishop straightened and pointed behind us, back toward the road.

e how we’ve been walking? All in a line? That’s normal in the ods, especially stuff that’s pretty thick like here. Now the first guy e pretty much like we did straight ahead, and along that row of all, white birch trees there. The other two wandered some. They to the other side of those trees, and over there they got into a bit angle, so they backed out and went the other way. All that indicates, the way, that they were in tight formation, the little guy following larger one. Here they crossed the first guy’s tracks, but they didn’t p on ‘em; they wobbled off instead slightly to the left. They wouldn’t that if all three had been in Indian file. I also think the first guy knew area like the back of his hand, while the second two obviously n’t, but that might be stretching things a little.” We came to a depression, a wet-bottomed swale that might have e been a small creek or a runoff during the rainy season. Bishop held his hand and went ahead, going up and down the edge of this area.

stopped suddenly, far off to the left, and straightened, looking ahead %188 and behind. Then he took his knife out and slashed a foot-long blaze on a small tree beside him.

“What the hell’s he doing?” Spinney muttered next to me. Bishop, now bent almost in half, had begun walking slowly in circles around the tree he’d marked, reaching out in an ever-wIdening spiral. Around and around he went, slowly and purposefully.

Spinney pointed to the damp depression ahead. “Even I can see the tracks through that, coming and going, even on the rocks where they left muddy footprints.” Hamilton smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ve worked a lot with this guy.

He’s so good it’s creepy.” Bishop had stopped his circles. He seemed to be backtracking on a parallel course, about twenty feet away from ours, frequently marking trunks as he went. Through the forest of bare trees, we could see him heading back toward the road, his green uniform barely distinguishable from his cold and gloomy surroundings. I looked up at the dark, swollen clouds, seemingly just beyond the reach of the uppermost branches. I didn’t like the additional clammy feeling that was beginning to creep inside me, like a confirmation of my fears.

Finally, he came back to us, returning to the edge of the swale. “Found a fourth guy.

We all looked at one another, but stayed silent. If he’d had more to add, we knew, he would have.

We followed him across some stepping stones, slightly above the tracks Spinney had pointed out. On the far side, where the trees clustered together again, he stopped and let out a grunt of surprise.

We followed his look. Tied to a tree, about chest-high, was one of those mini-mag lights. Its reflector top had been entirely removed, so that its halogen bulb stood exposed at the top, making it look like a miniature lighthouse. The bulb was not burning.

“I’ll be damned,” he said, looking back the way we’d come. “That explains the truck lights.” He twisted and pointed ahead. “If I’m right, we’ll either find more of these, or something like it, until we get to the place they intended on meeting.” We could no longer see the end of the road from here; the trees had accumulated enough to totally block the view, but we could have seen the glow from a pair of car lights at night. “He was guiding the way, I muttered.

Bishop grinned. “Right-back and forth. That’s why the top’s off this light, so you can see it from both directions. The first guy must have told the second two to bring a flashlight, and to pick their way from light to light.” %189 “Why not just escort them from the road? Or just meet at the road d have done with it?” Hamilton asked, half to himself.

“He’s a wanted man,” I answered. “This rig allows him to see if re’s more than his guests coming.” “And it lets him fade away into the night while the other two’re king their way back,” Spinney added.

“It didn’t work, though,” Hamilton said. “There’s the fourth y.

There was a moment’s silence. Bishop filled it quietly. “I think t’s because the fourth guy was trailing the first one, not the other 0. He didn’t need this,” he pointed at the light in the tree, “because could see the first guy’s flashlight as he set this whole thing up. Also, ‘s a natural: From what I can find of his tracks, he’s spent a lot of e in the woods; knows just where to walk. He barely left a single n behind, even in that muddy area he rigged a rope with a grapng hook on one end from one tree to another and went hand over nd there.” Bishop headed off at a faster clip, surer now of what he was iling. He still made occasional side trips, but obviously for confirmation only. In fifteen minutes, we stepped out of the woods onto a large, ss-covered rock outcropping, stuck like a giant’s foothold onto the e of the mountain slope. To our left, the slope continued up; to our ht, it angled past and below the rock ledge, creating a twenty-foot p straight down to a tangle of thick brush and small trees. The entire e had taken us almost an hour, although we had probably covered more than four hundred feet.

The view extended due west for almost a mile, its dramatic effect omily heightened by the low, threatening cloud cover. Bishop had stepped ahead, not far from the edge, and now dropped one knee. “You better stay where you are for a bit here, while I look und.” Hamilton picked up on his cautious tone. “What’d you find?” “Blood.” Again, he began moving in ever-widening circles around the spot ‘d marked with a red handkerchief. I noticed he had several more of er colors sticking out of his two back pockets. He stopped right at the edge of the cliff and looked over for a while. you want, why don’t you stand over here and keep an eye on me. going to cut around to the bottom and see what I can find.” The three of us did as he asked, as he moved left toward the untain, gained the slope, and then cut around to the area below us. went very slowly, muttering into his tape recorder, once or twice %190 A7c~~

Mo9~ taking a picture, while we scanned the bushes and undergrowth for any movement. None of us had missed the possibility that if two people had come and gone, and another was fatally lacking the blood Bishop had found, then the fourth, whose return to the road still hadn’t been documented, might still be out here, watching.

Bishop finally stopped directly below us, where the brush was particularly thick. Had it not been for his movements, we might have lost sight of him entirely. We saw his face look up at us.

“Lieutenant, I think you better get down here. You, too, Lieutenant Gunther.” During our slow-motion trek through the woods, we had filled him in on our suspicions about Rennie, along with the fact that he and I had almost grown up together. There was little doubt in my mind now that Bishop wanted me as well as Hamilton because I knew best what Rennie looked like. I was no tracker, but I had seen the torn moss at the cliff’s edge, and had recognized from the broken shrubs and twigs sticking from the rock face that something heavy had brushed against it on the way down.

It was Rennie, of course, at least most of him. His body had been sliced from belly to mid-chest, giving him a crude similarity to a gutted deer.

He was lying on his side, facing me, his head pointing downhill, his eyes half open and dry. There was brush and dirt in his mouth and left ear, and I noticed a tiny insect crawling across his pupil. Even during the war, where I’d seen more dead people than I’ll ever see again, I didn’t remember anyone appearing quite so lifeless. Rennie looked tossed away, like some ancient discredited rag doll that had been thrown from a passing car.

Bishop was watching my face. “Wilson?” “Yup.” I squatted down, my forearms on my thighs. Because of his position, the blood had pooled to his head, giving him a florid color, much as he’d had when he’d gotten angry in the past.

I’d been preparing for this, certainly since I’d heard his truck had been found and maybe, subconsciously, even before. But this was a death in fact. I realized, watching this dead body, that I’d been mourning his loss long before that knife had ripped him open. Still, now that it was real, I missed him, and what he represented to me, terribly.

“You okay?” Hamilton asked.

I nodded. Dead people have such a different look to them, even if they’ve been tidied up. I could see where the concept of the soul had won acceptance over the centuries; it really did look as though something had fled this man, something that had once given him more than %191 hat lay before me now. N0~~ he was something busted up and filled with dirt; then, he’d been an active, cantankerous, opinionated, obscene d very honest friend. That man was gone and maybe had been gone r years.

I stood back up. “Yeah, I’m okay. What do you think happened?” “The tracks of the two that came together never show any speed.

ey stumbled around a lot, not being used to the dark and the woods, they came in slow and left slow. Remember their tire marks? They ove away slow, too. I’d guess they had their meeting with your friend re, and then left him alive, picking their way back to the car following ose lights. It wasn’t ‘til after they’d gone that the fourth guy came of hiding.” Bishop pointed to the rock shelf above us, from where Spinney was ill watching us. “They didn’t have much of a fight up there. It looks etty much like the fourth guy just came up and let him have it with enough force to pitch him right over the edge.” “From the front or the back?” “I didn’t want to move him or mess around much, but I don’t see y blood on his back. ‘Course, he may have a big hole on his right e the M.E.’II have to tell you that.” “What else?” Hamilton asked.

“The killer came down here, probably to check his work. His acks lead off back toward the road, but lower down the mountain than e way we came. While there’s light left, I’d kinda like to find out here he headed. I’m betting we’ll find tire tracks further back on the ad than where the other two cars were.” Hamilton gestured in that direction.

“Be my guest.” We returned to the ledge and Hamilton told Spinney what Bishop d found. We radioed Wiley and told him to activate support troops, e Crime Lab, and the local medical examiner. The three of us then turned the way we’d come. I figured if everyone got here in an hour, which would be pretty surprising, they’d only have an hour or two left daylight in which to work.

Some unhappy troopers were going to wind up pulling all-night and duty in the cold, in the dark, and in the middle of nowhere. As r Rennie, he was beyond caring. The gloom and the frost would settle him and lay claim to a body whose soul, I now believed, had been ing for a long, long time.

%192 It had been dark for over two hours before Hamilton and I finally left Lemon Road ourselves and headed back to St. Johnsbury. He wasn’t a man prone to chattiness, but I could tell by his grim demeanor that Hamilton was distinctly unhappy. The hope of nabbing Rennie and putting this entire case to bed had just turned into smoke, and the latest crime promised to whip the press into a frenzy. Indeed, it was partially in an effort to control what information might reach the media that he’d called a mandatory, all-hands meeting at State Police barracks.

But before we even pulled off Route 5, I knew the lid had already blown sky-high. The entire front of the barracks was bathed in television lights, and a crowd of people was standing around the parking lot, forming a gauntlet I would have paid money to avoid.

Hamilton gently nosed the car into a space, moving through the crowd like a farmer among chickens. As soon as we’d slammed our doors, the lights swung over to blind us.

“Lieutenant, apparently you and the deceased were old friends.

How are you taking his death?” “What about the cult, Lieutenant? This murder was reported as having ritual overtones.” “No comment.” “Are you close to solving this? Or are you still all in the dark?” “Is anyone under arrest yet?” “How is the cult involved?” We finally made it to the door and stepped into the front foyer. A trooper was standing guard, keeping people out. “Everyone else here?” Hamilton asked.

“Yes, sir-conference room.” We walked down the hallway to the conference room. The smoke, the noise, and the smell of too many bodies stopped me dead at the door; Hamilton plowed ahead to the front of the room. The place was packed; every chair around the long table was full, others had been brought in from every corner of the building, people were lining the walls. The shades were drawn across the windows-the nervous lights and shadows outside played across them like gigantic moths wanting in.

%193 I parked myself next to the door with my back against the wall.

from that distance, Mel Hamilton was wreathed in a mist of tobacco moke.

Beside him sat a uniformed State policeman with more bangles nd baubles than I’d seen since the service, obviously a bigwig from aterbury. I noticed Ron Potter nearby, too, which gave me a jolt. while I’d been dropping by the office to help FIo Ginty keep things unning and write reports, I hadn’t actually seen him over the last orty-eight hours. It made me wonder whether he’d been busy, or trying 0 avoid all this.

Hamilton surveyed the room, checked his watch, and banged on he table with a glass. “Quiet down everybody. Sorry I was late let’s et this started.” What had been a roar shrank to a general muttering and finally ubsided altogether.

“Thank you. Before we start, I’d like to welcome Major Imus, ead of the Criminal Division. He came down here from Waterbury on ery short notice and would like to say a few words. Major Imus?” The man I’d thought of as a human Christmas tree stood and miled. Being head of the Criminal Division put him about third or ourth from the top of the State Police hierarchy, the kind of guy the ower ranks saw either at ceremonies, or after the shit had truly hit the an.

“Gentlemen, you have a great deal of work to do here and I don’t ant to get in your way. This has become as heated a situation as some f you will see in your careers, and it’s liable to get worse. I am not here 0

breathe down your necks or to supersede your present chain of ommand.

You have all been doing an excellent job so far, and I am nly here to let you know that we are aware of your efforts. Please nderstand you have our full support. Whatever you need, we will ttempt to supply.

Keep up the good work and thank you. You make proud.” He sat back down.

Had the audience been larger still, or had it een comprised of fresh Academy graduates, I would have expected pplause.