He could almost hear her thinking, examining the angles. Gail was a lawyer, a legislator, someone with ambition who knew how to organize things. After ending her relationship with Joe, she'd moved altogether from Brattleboro to Montpelier, the state capital, so she could fully concentrate on her new political career. If Joe were to bet on it, she had the governorship in her sights.
"What are your plans?" she asked.
"I'm on leave until I get a handle on this."
"Would you like some company?"
He had a split second to respond correctly, and almost inevitably chose poorly. "It would mean a lot to them."
Her comeback drove home his error. "I know that's not true for you, too, but I won't get in your way. I promise. I would just like it if you said it was okay," she said. "I feel so awful about this."
He scratched his forehead, thinking a rap with his knuckles might have been more appropriate. "Gail, you'd never be in the way. They both love you, and I could do with the help. I'd really appreciate whatever time you can spare."
"You're sure?"
"Absolutely. I'll clear it with the hospital, too, in case they have rules or something about visitors."
Her voice was soft, almost tearful, in response. "Thank you, Joe. I'll be down as soon as I clear a couple of things up here. Give them my love."
Despite his fumbled comeback to her offer, it remained true that Gail's presence would be helpful, even if painful. He hadn't been the one to end what they'd shared, but it had certainly been his profession, in large part, that had precipitated her decision. He'd been a cop for enough decades to have made a few enemies, and survived enough bullets, knives, and explosions to understand anyone's desire to gain a little distance from him. But he did miss her, and having her nearby again was going to be tough.
He rose and stood before the window, looking down on the snow-dusted trees that circled the hospital.
It would allow him to be practical, though, and perhaps a little self-preserving. Leo was in good hands, and their mom was out of reach, at least for the time being. There wasn't much of a role for him here. Gail's arrival would guarantee that someone he could trust was nearby while he did what he could to find out what had happened.
He didn't actually suspect much, of course. He was acting more from professional paranoia, or perhaps habit born of witnessing bad things. But it would keep him busy, and perhaps on the edge of the double emotional tar pits represented by Gail and his family's plight. Besides, there was always the nagging possibility that this had been more than a simple car accident. littledk: Marvel's really better at selling incredibly random merchandise kay: Yeah. They sell Marvel perfume littledk:…WHAT littledk: see, DC should really get on this. I'm sure they have better-smelling superheroes kay: Hee. Yes. Exactly. kay: I mean. Do*you* want to smell like the Hulk? littledk: ewwww littledk: clearly they need to make Hal Jordan perfume kay: Clearly! kay: Drives the ladies NUTS! littledk: Warning: May Cause Spontaneous Subconscious Puberty. kay:*giggles* littledk: I can't believe it. they make Spider-man perfume, and the fanboys STILL don't smell better kay: Well. You've never smelled the perfume.
Chapter 4
It was snowing in a Bing Crosby sort of way-fat, lazy, photogenic flakes that, in the end, wouldn't amount to much. Under normal circumstances, it was the kind of weather that Joe loved to stand in, designed for kids to catch snow crystals on their tongues.
Except that he was no longer a kid, and was staring at a scene where no sane parent would let any child run free. He was standing in an auto graveyard on the eastern reaches of Thetford Township, a few miles north of where Leo went off the road, confronting a long, low wall of precariously stacked cars, piled like absurdist bricks and extending from one edge of the property to the other.
The snow cover had softened some of the visual carnage, but there wasn't much hope for the raw materials-a virtual billboard of the crushed, sharp-edged, broken detritus of an all-consuming industrial juggernaut. It was a vision only enhanced by its otherwise bucolic surroundings. All around the yard, gently vanishing into the blur of falling snow, were tree-crowded hills, fields, and forestland.
This section of the Connecticut River Valley was absurdly pretty, slicing between New Hampshire and Vermont, and decorated with covered bridges, backwater bays, and cow-sprinkled farms. The background of ancient mountains behind the massive, undulating, dark river told a tale of humanity's struggle with nature, since both these weather-beaten New England states had eschewed their peaks for the water's edge and turned the river into a commercial highway for over two hundred years, luring pioneers, aboriginal and white, who had forged far inland and upstream for reasons benign and not.
Held up against such a portrait of heritage and beauty, not even a car graveyard stood much chance of becoming a significant eyesore.
"Who're you?"
Joe turned at the voice coming from the low building to his left. A man had appeared at a door haphazardly cut into the sheet metal siding. He was bearded, long-haired, and dressed in the standard-issue green uniform of mechanics and road crew workers everywhere, complete with name tag stitched above his breast pocket. The man was labeled "Mitch."
Joe pulled his badge from his pocket. "Police. I was looking for a car brought in last night. A Subaru."
"That's sealed up. Can't get to it. Sheriff's got the key."
That's one of the things Joe had wanted to hear. It seemed Deputy Barrows was efficient as well as accommodating. "You ever get a look at it?" he asked.
Mitch shook his head. "I wasn't on. You here to pick it up? The boss wants it gone. It's taking up space."
"The sheriff not paying you?"
"Sure, but we're not a storage unit. We got work to do. We need the bay." He waved at the picturesque falling snow, adding, "'Specially in this shit."
"Won't be much longer," Joe reassured him with no basis whatsoever. "Who's the boss?"
"E. T. Griffis."
Joe had turned toward his parked car, getting ready to leave, but he faced Mitch again at this. "E. T.? No kidding."
"You know him?" Mitch asked.
"Everybody knows him."
Mitch cocked his bushy head to one side. "Everybody local. That you?"
Joe smiled before heading back to his car. "Used to be. I'll tell the sheriff to get that car out of here soon."
Joe continued up the road. It had been a poignant and disturbing journey so far-from the hospital, to the crash site, to where the car was stored, and now on to the family farm-perhaps exacerbated by the very beauty he'd been admiring earlier. The familiar name of E. T. Griffis commingled with his sentiments to form a curious mixture of comfort and pain. One generally revisited one's place of upbringing for support, not to wonder if it might become the watershed where everything falls apart.
Because that was a distinct possibility: His entire family was so small that the present situation had the potential of leaving him all by himself.
The mention of E. T. also served to highlight what few degrees of separation there were within Vermont's scant population. A small, square man with blunt hands and a manner to match, E. T. had been a near mythological fixture in the greater Thetford area for as long as Joe could think back. He seemed to own at least a piece of every rough-edged business around. And his impact on Joe hadn't stopped with nostalgic memory-years earlier, Joe had also arrested his youngest son, Andy, for a crime committed in Brattleboro, revealing an abrupt fragility to E. T.'s aura of indomitable feudal lord.
Joe could sympathize. He had received such reversals himself over time, starting as a young man, when he lost his seemingly indestructible father. After that, life had never seemed quite so secure, and the more of it he'd seen, from combat to police work to the vagaries of the daily grind, the more he'd been confirmed in his skepticism. His wife had been taken by cancer; colleagues had died in the line of duty; Gail, years ago now, had been raped and forever transformed. His personal experience had not been lacking in drama, nor his emotional wariness left wanting for evidence. That a local monolith like E. T. Griffis had begotten a son who would later end up a jailbird was mere proof of the futility of denying humanity's clay feet.