“Who?”
“Opperman. He’s renamed the business BWI/Opperman and hired some guy from out of state to act as the general. He bought the land outright, too. No more leasing.”
“Peggy’s sisters sold it to him?”
“I guess after everything that happened, they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.”
“Huh. What do you want to bet he got the fire-sale rate?”
He laughed shortly. “He’s one of those guys who can fall into a pile of manure and come up with a fistful of diamonds.”
She paused. The sun had dropped below the mountains while they had been eating, and the gathering thunderheads were underlined by the dull red glow of the sunset’s echo. The dogs, nosing into a woodchuck hole, were making snuffling noises. She breathed in the smell of the long, ripe grass. “It’s beautiful out here.”
“Yeah.”
“I feel so bad for her.” He didn’t ask her to whom she was referring. “It was like she was poisoned by the contamination in the water. And it spread all around her, like a sickness. Everyone lost. No one won.”
“Opperman did.”
She swished the stalk of Queen Anne’s lace through the tall grass. “Yeah, well, like you said.” She paused. “He did win, didn’t he?” She looked up at Russ. “He’s got total control now—of the business, the land, the project.”
Russ nodded.
“What you said about not knowing how Peggy knew Chris Dessaint?”
“Yeah?”
“Aren’t there any connections between his life and hers?”
“Not that we can see. He worked at Shape Industries, which had no connection to her real estate and development business, he moved in completely different social circles, and, according to witnesses, he didn’t use drugs. Wintour hasn’t confessed, but Dr. Scheeler thinks Dessaint was knocked out by a blow to the head and then injected with an overdose of heroin. The only way in which he and she intersect is that he was one of those hard-core paintball players. But even if he did use her land once in awhile, she only dealt with the league organizers. Just made arrangements over the phone. She never laid eyes on the players.”
She closed her eyes. A refreshing breeze sprang up, the leading edge of the front carrying the storm over the mountains. She shivered, and her arms goosefleshed. She opened her eyes. Looked at Russ.
“Opperman played paintball.”
He looked as if she had slapped him.
“Remember? Stephen Obrowski said so. Opperman stayed in the area lots of weekends. He played paintball.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Jesus, you’re right.”
They stared at each other. It was a horrible feeling, like opening up a nice, neatly wrapped package to find something dead and rotting inside.
Russ strode off, his head bowed. She skip-hopped to keep up with him. “Opperman,” he said. The dogs bounded beside them. “He could have seeded the pond himself before that poor sucker Waxman tested it.”
“The night of the town meeting, Ingraham said something about them being involved once before on a project that had PCB contamination. He said they were still involved with the cleanup.”
“So Opperman has access to some of that sludge. Waxman tests it, comes up with an off-the-chart level, and runs to Opperman, who offers him a job to keep him quiet. Then he makes sure Peggy knows. Maybe he even drops rumors around town.” He stopped abruptly, causing Clare to stumble to a halt. “But there really is contamination in the groundwater. That little bit in the quarry pool couldn’t have caused that.”
She caught at his arm. “Don’t you see? Leo Waxman was right. Even though he thought he was lying, he was right. The PCBs are coming from the Allen Mill cleanup.”
Russ spun on his heel and struck off in another direction. “Peggy thinks she’s about to be screwed out of her deal. Opperman—what? He whispers in her ear? Makes suggestions? If it was just the two of them, he wouldn’t back away from the project? They could split the profits two ways instead of three?”
“And then he points her to Chris Dessaint, who has already proven his mettle by beating up some unlucky soul outside a Lake George bar.”
“She does the rest. She thinks fast; we saw that. He must have known how smart she was.”
“Not smart enough to know she was being manipulated.”
He turned to her and clutched her upper arms. “She got rid of his partner for him. And then he got rid of her. In self-defense.”
The speculation, the whole idea, gave her a sour feeling in her stomach. “Puppets playing puppets,” she said. “And over them all, one puppet master.” She shuddered. “God, it’s vile. And she turned to him in the end. Like an abused woman running back to the man who beats her.”
“Where else did she have to go? Maybe she thought he could protect her. After all, there was no warrant out for his arrest.”
Russ was still holding Clare by the arms. “And now?” she asked.
He leaned forward until his forehead was touching hers. “And now nothing.” His voice was flat. “This is all just you and me talking. I can’t think of a shred of evidence to back up anything we’ve said. And even if we could prove he knew Dessaint, what’s he guilty of? Giving away someone’s phone number?”
She broke away from his grip. “No! That’s wrong.” She walked away, as if movement could bring about a different result. She wrapped her arms around herself. “He can’t play with people’s lives and then take his toys home, the winner. He can’t. It’s not…right.”
“I do law enforcement, not good works. That’s your field. Isn’t ultimate justice supposed to rest with God anyway?”
“Stop it! Don’t say it like that. Like it’s a bad joke on us.”
He moved toward her, the grass swishing around his legs. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s wrong.”
“I know it is.”
They were silent for a moment. Bob thumped into her legs and she bent down to scratch between his shoulders. “I don’t believe that God allows bad things to happen, that He can choose thumbs-up or thumbs-down for us.” She straightened and looked at Russ. “But sometimes it’s very hard to resist asking Him, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ”
His hands moved as if he wanted to hug her, but he stopped himself. “Come on. Let’s take the dogs as far as the cow fence before we go back.”
They walked through the fading light, the long grass rustling around them. Over the mountains, the sky was the color of bruised flesh. The Berns coursed ahead, black-and-white flashes amid the grayed gold and darkening green. The fence, rusty barbed wire and weathered posts, stopped them. They stood side by side, looking at the mountains and the sky. They did not touch.
He took his glasses off and polished them on his shirtfront. “Remember when you were getting me out of the helicopter? You told me to hold on tight?” He replaced his glasses and looked back to the high horizon. “I’m still holding on.” He glanced down at his hand. “I don’t know how to let go.”
“Holding on…” She bit her lip. Cleared her throat. “Doesn’t do you much good when the person you’re holding is falling, too.”
Gal bumped the side of her knee. She reached down to scratch her head. Bob barked once, twice. She turned and looked back along the way they had walked. The house seemed a long way off from this perspective.
“We better head back,” he said. “There’s a storm coming.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know there is.”
Acknowledgments
I would like to first thank my husband, Ross Hugo-Vidal, without whom, literally, this book could not have been written. Thanks to my thoughtful readers, Roxanne Eflin, Mary Weyer, and my mother, Lois Fleming. Thanks to my perspicacious editor, Ruth Cavin, and my inestimable agent, Jimmy Vines. Thanks to everyone who helped me with the details, especially my father, John Fleming, who let me fly his helicopter; Rachael Burns Hunsinger, for information on PCBs in the Hudson River Valley; Lt. Col. Les Smith (USA, Ret.), who taught me about falling; and the staff and clergy of St. Luke’s Cathedral, Portland, Maine, who continue to inspire me.