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“Sounds pretty arrogant,” I said.

“He is that,” she agreed. “He’s also a real believer, which is why Laura’s going to have to make up her mind to either make her peace or run for the hills.” She paused and then added, “Not that it’ll ever reach that stage-not with Mark Mullen standing ready to clip Jim’s wings.”

“The speaker?” I asked, surprised. I’d never heard Mullen’s and Reynolds’s names in the same sentence before. “What’s he got to do with it?”

“They’re eyeing the same gold ring. You watch. He’s not going to let Reynolds ride that bill to the governorship. Somehow or another, when it gets to the House, Mullen will take it over-kill it, amend it, abandon it in committee-‘let it hang on the wall,’ as they say up there. But he’ll remove Reynolds’s fingerprints from it. Mullen hasn’t spent thirty-plus years in the House without knowing how things work. And with Howell retiring, he feels he’s earned a promotion.”

I wiped the sweat from my face with a wet hand. “This may be more than I need to know right now.”

Gail smiled and returned to more immediate issues. “So you think Laura may be trying to hobble Jim’s horse?”

I laughed. “By framing her own husband? Interesting idea. I suppose she has the means to set it up-she said she was rich.”

“Very. All inherited. Believe it or not, they met on a ski slope. He was the rugged, handsome instructor, on vacation from law school. She was the wealthy snow bunny working hard to drive her father nuts. That part probably worked, but she hadn’t banked on Jim having dreams of his own.” She paused and then added, “I doubt she figured on falling in love with him like she did, either. She may hate the life, but she’s devoted to the man. That’s where your theory hits the rocks.”

I laughed. “My theory? This is your little movie. I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. I do know Stan Katz has his nose in the wind, though, so whatever it is, it’s not going to stay private for long.”

She made a disgusted face. “Great. That’ll really help clear things up.”

“He called me to ask if Reynolds had any ties to illegal dumping.”

She surprised me by not rejecting the notion out of hand. “As in hazardous materials?”

“Yeah. Why?”

She answered slowly-and enigmatically-“He’s represented a lot of people over the years. One of them might be thinking he didn’t get his money’s worth. That’s where I’d look.”

The thought had crossed my mind. As had the fact that Jim Reynolds-despite Gail’s opinion and his own wife’s support-might be a whole lot less pure than the driven snow.

Snow, as it turned out, was on everyone’s mind the next morning. Having held off entirely through a bitterly cold, bleak Christmas season, it seemed winter was trying to make amends all in one day. Looking out the window as I dressed, I couldn’t even see the garage. Slowly falling in thick, heavy flakes, it reminded me of a flurry of cherry blossoms torn suddenly from their stems. But a flurry without end.

I went downstairs and paused on the back doorstep, taking it in. This kind of snowstorm-dense, silent, and windless-has an effect unlike any other weather phenomenon. Rather than producing sound, it absorbs it; instead of displaying great havoc, it cuts off your sight. And yet it permeates every sense, less like an act of nature and more like a spiritual event. Most people walk around in such a snowfall as if blessed with new insight-or at least lost in childlike wonder.

Gail, on the other hand, was having none of it. Appearing next to me moments later, she merely glanced up, scowled, and said, “This’ll sure screw up traffic,” and disappeared into the whitewash like a thought fading from memory, heading for her car.

I followed her example a few minutes later, driving off without working my windshield wipers. The snow was dry, and the motion of the vehicle was enough to clear the glass, which allowed me to enjoy the snow-clad stillness unimpeded. I could almost imagine not being in a car at all, but traveling in a dreamlike state through some hopeless romantic’s version of utopia.

Except, of course, that Gail had been right. Not far from the house, I passed the first abandoned car in a ditch and after that was confronted by a series of traffic jams, confused drivers, and irritated plow operators. The scanner in my car murmured an endless stream of directives to ambulances, wreckers, and squad cars to aid those lost, hurt, and broken-down. The town I’d left the day before had been visited by a quiet, otherworldly, beatific disaster.

When I finally reached it, the office was a command center under siege, the dispatch room manned by a double shift, the hallways filled with milling, snow-dusted officers tracking muddy footprints behind them, and the air resonating with the sound of ringing phones and squawking radios. And yet, beneath it all, there was a lightheartedness. No one, it seems, can really take a storm like this too seriously, even in the midst of chaos and discomfort. Too many memories of sledding, snowballs, and the taste of it on your tongue get in the way.

Predictably, the detective squad was sparsely populated. Harriet was there, as was Ron. Willy, as expected, was not. Sammie, the sudden enigma, was also missing, no doubt bundled up with her newfound joy under a comforter.

My one concern was Tyler. “Where’s J.P.?” I asked Harriet.

“Returning from Waterbury. He radioed in a while ago. He’s on the interstate, not far north of here, but he’s having a tough time. Things are almost at a standstill. The weather report’s predicting three feet-a record-breaker.”

“He did say the lab came through big time,” Ron added from his desk. “’Course, he was up there all night bugging them.”

He looked it when he arrived an hour later-disheveled, in need of a shave, and with bloodshot eyes. But smiling.

He dumped an overstuffed briefcase on his desk and collapsed into a chair without removing his coat. “The print on the knife belongs to one Owen Tharp, aged nineteen. Last known address: Brookside Terrace. Supposedly lives there with an aunt, Judith Tharp Giroux. He’s unemployed, was being monitored by SRS until two years ago, and has been tested ADD, among other things. SRS told me his parents never married, his father’s unknown, and his mother died of alcoholism about eight years ago. He’s been in foster homes since he was three, never stayed in one for more than a few years, and didn’t finish high school.”

He paused to take a breath.

“Any criminal record?” I asked, saddened by the familiarity of this litany.

“You bet. Burglary, destruction of private property, criminal trespass, assault, possession of malt beverages, public disorderliness, and a shit-load of other stuff, mostly committed in Springfield and Bellows Falls, where he grew up. He did juvie time, too, but I couldn’t find out what for. My contact would only bend the rules so far.”

SRS was the state’s Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, largely designed to help those of Vermont’s children who were in peril. It was a swamped organization that was predictably either lauded or damned, depending on one’s viewpoint. I wouldn’t have worked there to save my life. They got my respect, though, even if their procedures sometimes drove me crazy.

“One other thing,” J.P. added with a broad smile. “Just in case you were thinking of an arrest warrant. The lab pegged that plaster cast I took of the tire impression to a cheap Taiwanese brand, sized to fit something small and equipped with the kind of knobby tread a teenager might put on a pickup. Aunt Judith is registered as owning an ’88 Chevy Luv pickup, pale blue.”

I turned to Ron Klesczewski. “The names Owen Tharp or Judith Giroux appear in any of those lists you been tabulating?”

He nodded, reaching for a thick folder. “Tharp’s does. I remembered it ’cause it sounded funny.” He started pawing through sheets of paper, pausing now and then to read. “Here it is,” he finally said. “Janice Litchfield mentioned him as a hanger-on. Nothing beyond that.”