Tucker Peak

Chapter 14

Willy Kunkle appeared in the doorway between my woodworking shop and the rest of the house, having let himself in, as everyone did who knew me. I lived on Green Street, across from an elementary school, in what had once been the carriage house tucked behind a truly exotic Victorian showpiece, now my landlord’s residence. It was quiet, affordable, with lots of light, and it had a postage stamp-size yard beside a small attached barn I’d converted into the woodshop.

“Hey,” I said. “Come on in. There’s coffee on in the kitchen, if you want.”

He waved his one good hand in the air dismissively. “I’ve had a gallon of that shit already today. Heard you tried to replace me as token gimp.”

I turned away from the workbench where I’d been ineffectually but meditatively sharpening a chisel on a water stone and showed him my slinged left arm. “No cigar, though. Doc said I should be in good shape in a week or two-no broken bones, not too much muscle damage. Just an interesting scar. What brings you by?”

He reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew an envelope, which he placed on the bench beside me. “Snuffy Dawson’s report on all TPL members with any kind of record. I took a look. It’s mostly predictable, protest-related stuff, but a couple of ’em got a harder edge. Guess not even the tree-huggers can deny human nature.”

It was a throwaway line, typical of the man, but perhaps because of the late hour, or my encounter with Ben the Rottweiler, or even my recent conversation with Sammie Martens, I challenged him on it.

“And what is that nature, Willy?”

He pointed at my injured arm. “You should know-dog eat dog.”

“Dog eats man, at least,” I conceded. “I’m serious, though. What’s your take on the human race?”

His expression soured. “This the shit I gotta put up with for seein’ how you’re doin’?”

I didn’t see any value arguing the point. “Yeah.”

His eyebrows arched. “You must be pretty dense if you don’t already know what I think.”

“I don’t believe it.”

He slapped his forehead. “Oh, I get it. You know me better than I know myself. ’Cause deep down inside me, there’s a goddamn saint struggling to be free.”

“If there were, he’d have committed suicide long ago,” I told him. “I’m just saying that if you really believed all the crap you hand out, you wouldn’t be doing this job. Nor would you care about Sammie.”

He scowled at me darkly, didn’t answer immediately, and finally admitted, “She said you’d been by.”

I picked up the envelope and dropped it again. “Which is why you’re here now-this could’ve waited till tomorrow.”

He didn’t answer.

“Right?” I pushed him.

His mouth twitched angrily, and he turned away. He walked over to a table saw and brushed its cool, smooth surface with his hand. “I don’t… Damn.”

“You didn’t break up, did you?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.

“No,” he said heavily. “I just can’t… We probably should, for her sake.”

“Isn’t that her decision, too?”

He glared at me. “What’s this? Amateur shrink time?”

“All right,” I agreed, getting a little angry myself. “Then straight talk. She loves you, you love her, but you’ve fucked up before and you’re scared you’ll fuck up again. You think she doesn’t know that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Find out, then. Tell her. Ask her questions. Open up a little. You’re wrapped so tight your eyeballs’re bulging. And if you don’t know she hasn’t called you a total asshole a few dozen times over the years, you’re living in a dream. Except,” and I held up a finger for emphasis, “that she chose to be with you anyway, at least for the moment. Give her some credit for that. Honor her taking a risk by taking one of your own. If it falls apart then, it falls apart. At least you won’t have to blame yourself for not trying. Is that non-psychobabble enough for you?”

He took a long time to say, “Yeah,” in a quiet voice.

More advice boiled inside me, more ways of saying roughly the same thing, but despite my eagerness to unload years of pent-up frustration, I realized it wasn’t my time.

“Go talk to her, Willy… Now,” I said instead, and turned back toward my sharpening stone.

I was in bed when Gail came in, both the day’s trauma and the painkillers having finally taken hold. I sensed her standing there before I opened my eyes and wasn’t startled when I saw her outlined against the dim light from the window.

“Hi. I didn’t expect you.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and kissed me. She smelled of fresh, cold night air. “I didn’t, either. I’ve been thinking about us ever since the motel room, feeling happier than I have in a long time. I finally decided, the hell with it, and came down. I’m sorry I woke you, though. I thought you’d still be up. I guess surprises like this aren’t ever a really good idea.”

I extracted my hand from beneath the blanket and laid it on her thigh. “I’m not complaining-and your timing couldn’t be better.”

She leaned over me again and accidentally brushed my left arm with her elbow. I shut my eyes and winced. She straightened abruptly and stared at me, her face barely visible in the gloom.

“What’s wrong?”

I pulled out the bandaged arm.

“Joe. What happened?”

I shook my head and touched her cheek. “Nothing. I got fanged by a dog today-nothing bent, folded, or mutilated. It’s more embarrassing than anything.” I flexed my left hand to show her it worked fine. “Right up there with a firefighter falling off a ladder-occupational hazard.”

The toll on me hadn’t been purely physical, of course, nor was my pleasure in seeing her as lighthearted as I was pretending. Being shot at by another human being and seeing him die as a result was not something I could shrug off casually, no matter how many times I’d been exposed to it in the past. But I decided to spare her the details until later.

“You’re sure?” she asked, visibly relieved.

“Yes, and really happy you’re here.” I sat up and returned the kiss. “Try and deny we’re kindred spirits now.”

She smiled then and stood back up. “Stay there.”

She undressed slowly, playing to the half-light, letting me see her in carefully measured degrees. Finally, totally naked, she leaned forward and gently pulled the covers off me, trailing her fingers down my body as she went.

“What a great way to end the day,” she said softly, climbing into bed.

Little did she know.

The next morning, over an early breakfast, I told Gail the rest of the story, grateful she’d chosen to listen to music instead of the news in the car on the drive down. In a state with Vermont’s low crime rate, where simple vehicular manslaughter routinely made the front page, my OK Corral imitation with Lester was at the top of every hour.

“And this happened in the afternoon?” she asked. “I still don’t understand why I didn’t hear about it.”

“They didn’t release it till after the post-shoot. The AG’s office sent two guys down to make sure we hadn’t assassinated Richie and had the dog attack me to cover it up. After that, I met with Snuffy to quiet the politician in him, and then drove to Waterbury to offer my head to the boss and the commissioner.”

“With that?” she asked incredulously, pointing at my arm, now back in its sling.

“I could’ve done it later,” I admitted. “But I knew they were feeling the heat. Spinney was happy to do the driving. It let him blow off some steam. He went code three all the way-probably took us forty minutes, if that, so it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”

She pursed her lips, bit into her toast, and said as she chewed, “Always the team player.”

“Most of the time,” I agreed. “When do you have to be back in Montpelier?”

She instinctively checked her watch. “I have a meeting at ten. Why? What’s up?”

I retrieved the envelope Willy had delivered the night before and opened it. “I asked Snuffy to give me a list of all the TPL people with rap sheets. I was wondering if you’d give it a look, see if any of them ring a bell-unofficially, of course.”

I placed the sheaf of documents I’d extracted before her on the breakfast table. She looked at it dubiously for a moment, not touching it. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

I shrugged. “That’s fine. It was a straight question. I’ll go over it with the folks at the office.” But I left it where it was as I crossed over to the stove for more coffee.

Not subtle, but effective. “You are such a twerp,” she said. But I heard the fondness in her voice and was all the happier we’d had a chance to talk in that motel room. Over the years, we’d had our rough spots, some of our own making, others inflicted by outside events, and certainly her move to Montpelier had contributed to a vague sense of estrangement. But for the first time in quite a while, I felt I was totally back in sync with her-and knew she was feeling the same.

She picked the papers up.

We didn’t speak for a while, as I let her do her homework, but eventually she put the last sheet down and looked at me. “That’s a lot of people. Most of them are friends.”

“I thought they might be. Actually, I was hoping that would make it easier.”

“How’s that?”

I pointed my chin at the documents. “Because you could give me a gut reaction on eighty percent of them and tell me not to waste my time. Save us the effort and maybe stop somebody from getting killed.”

“That supposed to be a delicate guilt trip to help me along?” she asked, smiling.

I shook my head. “Just the truth. Only thing that saved that woman on the chairlift was dumb luck.”

“You think one of these people did that?”

“It’s a possibility; even Betts seems to agree.”

“Maybe management did it to put the finger on TPL-get the sympathy vote.”

I couldn’t argue with her. “True.”

I sensed that a combination of curiosity, friendship, and a feeling of responsibility made Gail pick up the top sheet again. But her tone of voice betrayed her discomfort. “Roger you already know. If you think he’d put someone’s life at risk to make a point, this conversation just ended.”

“Gail,” I said soothingly, knowing I was pushing her, “that list was generated by hitting a few computer keys. That’s why there’re so many names.”

Her mouth made a rueful twist as she relented. “I know. I’m being thin-skinned and close-minded-two things I hate about most of the people I work with. It’s catching. I’m sorry.” She took up the entire batch and weeded out three sheets that had obviously caught her eye early on. “If I were you, I’d start with these. One I don’t know, one I don’t like, and the third has the reputation of being as cold-hearted as anyone he’s ever opposed.”

I studied the three. “Toussaint, McPherson, and Davis,” I read.

“Toussaint’s the wild card,” she told me. “Looks like he’s been around: Seattle, Philly, San Francisco, Boston. All the right places for all the right causes. ‘Resisting arrest’ could mean anything, but he does have one assault on a police officer.

“McPherson is a flamer, if you ask me-super-opinionated, super short fuse. He’s a self-righteous, pompous, stuck-up little creep. He’s also British and an ex-Greenpeacer-claims to have been where it counted when it counted, like hassling those French ships that were trying to set off the atomic test in the Pacific. But anyone can say that-there’re loads of liars in this business. It’s just that no one wants to be so un-PC as to check them out and call their bluff.”

“Let me guess,” I suggested, “he’s the one you don’t like.”

She saluted me with her cup, “Two points. Davis has a reputation that does stand up. Tough as nails, very persuasive, a committed fighter for the cause. I’ve never seen any proof of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’d broken a few rules to get what he wanted.”

I put the three on the top of the pile and returned them all to the envelope. “Why just them?”

She swallowed some coffee before answering. “You asked for a gut reaction. It could be one of the others, but from what I either know of them or have heard about them, they’d be unlikely violent types. I’m not sure what made me pick Toussaint-maybe because in all the places he was busted things turned ugly and people were hurt. Left a bad taste in my mouth. When you meet him, he’ll probably turn out to be a Don Knotts look-alike, scared of his own shadow.”

“You also picked people who either have been or claim to have been all over the place geographically. Most of the rest of them seem to be pretty home-grown.”

“Maybe, but from my brief career as a prosecutor, I found rap sheets can be misleading. If you don’t get busted out of state, it looks like you never left home. Still, there aren’t as many hard-core radicals here-typical of Vermont, they tend to be more pragmatic.”

That sounded about right and made me think back to when that attitude had led to a private meeting in a motel room recently. “You think Betts might be willing to talk to me after I do a little homework with all this?”

“He did the first time, for reasons I don’t pretend to know. My bet is he’s expecting a call, and I’d be happy to be the go-between again.”

Gail checked her watch one last time, stood up, washed her cup and plate in the sink, and set them in the drying rack. “I better take off. Hope that helps.”

I escorted her to the door and gave her a kiss. “Thanks for coming down.”

She looked at me and touched my cheek, her eyes soft. “That was pretty weird, almost like I knew you’d been hurt. One doozy of a relationship, huh?”

I kissed her again. “Yup. One in a million.”