Gare’s defense lawyer tried to argue that the young man was the real victim of these events. “My client and his friend just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
But prosecutor Harv Witlock latched on to the phrase for his own and used it liberally during his summation, saying excuse me but wasn’t it Sheriff Runyer and the murdered passerby who’d had the bad luck here? A question that took the jury all of thirty-two minutes to answer. Gare is presently a long-term guest at a piney resort near the Canadian border known as the Tohana Men’s Colony.
Hal Runyer elected to take sick leave for the first time in his decade of wearing the sheriff’s badge. And after that fortnight he took another batch of time: vacation, which he’d also earned plenty of. Not that he had much choice about going back to work. Mentally, he was a mess. He couldn’t sleep for more than an hour without waking in a torrid sweat. And he was plenty skittish when he was awake, too. Noises especially would send him bouncing off the walls. His wound took forever to heal and he could barely move on damp days.
So he spent his time puttering around the house, learning to cook, helping Lisa Lee with her realtor paperwork, shaving wing struts with a razor knife and painting fuselages. Petey had the classiest RC model plane in the county that fall.
A month after the robbery Runyer woke up early one frosty Tuesday and called the mayor at home. He quit the force. No explanations given or asked for. And when he hung up the phone he felt great. That night he took his family out to dinner and while they ate Houlihan’s prime rib special he told them the news. He tried to gauge his wife’s reaction and didn’t have a clue.
It was a week later that a small package, no return address, was delivered to the house. Runyer started to open it, then noticed it was addressed only to Lisa Lee and he passed it over to her. She opened it with mixed suspicion and anticipation and gave a brief gasp. The black velvet box held a gold ring set with a big blue topaz. No name of a store, nothing other than a card that said, “For Lisa Lee.”
Runyer was a generous man but his gifts leaned more toward the practical or, at best, decorative. A luxury like this was quite a jolt for her. She threw her lengthy arms around his neck. “But we can’t afford it, honey.”
Gazing at the anonymous note, piecing things together, he said, “No, it’s okay. It’s a thank-you present.”
“From who?”
“Those people in the cabin.”
“The ones you saved after the bank robbery? The couple and their daughter?”
“The wife... she had one of these rings and I told her it reminded me of your eyes. I guess she remembered that.”
“It must’ve cost a fortune,” Lisa Lee said, dazzled by the stone.
“He runs some kind of business. Bet he got it wholesale.”
“We’ll have to send them a nice note.”
“I’ll take care of that,” he said. If he sounded evasive, she didn’t seem to notice.
Life’s a funny thing, Runyer found himself thinking as he stood in that hot kitchen with his wife in his arms. Sometimes every soul in the world but you seems to know what’s what and is more than happy to tell you so. And most of the time you go along with them. But if you live long enough — maybe thirty years, maybe fifty — you get to the point when you’re just not willing to hand off certain choices anymore. The important ones anyway. You do what you think’s best and go on about your business.
“Which finger should I wear it on?” Lisa Lee asked.
“Well, let’s see where it looks right.” Runyer took his wife’s hand and gratefully endured the hug despite the loving pain she inflicted on his torn belly.
The next day Hal Runyer climbed the stairs to the Sheriff’s Department office, moving a little slower than he had before the shooting.
“Well, look who it is,” Hazel said, eyeing his starched khakis. “You didn’t call. We heard you were quitting.”
“Naw, just a mix-up. I straightened it out with the mayor last night.”
He snagged the report log from the desk in her cubicle and asked, “What’s going on ’round town?”
“Not too much. Pretty quiet morning.”
Runyer lifted aside a stack of files from his chair and sat at his desk. He started to read.
Brendan Dubois
Netmail
from Playboy
By the time my guns were cleaned and the dinner dishes were put away, it was night. I went upstairs to the spare bedroom that I’ve turned into an office, carrying a glass of wine. The office is lined on all sides with bookshelves, and between the two windows is a metal desk I picked up at a yard sale last summer. I flipped on the computer and dialed into the Mycroft-Online computer service.
E-mail waited for me.
I sat back in the chair, wineglass in my hand. With my other hand I reached for the mouse. Something was wrong. I shouldn’t be getting e-mail. My phone number was unlisted, I picked up the mail — usually addressed to Occupant — at the post office once a week and no one at all had my e-mail address. But there was a little blinking icon in the center of the menu screen, showing a chubby mailman waving a letter at me.
I looked out the windows at the darkening fields and woods. Relax, I thought. It was undoubtedly spam, electronic junk mail sent to everyone who subscribes to my online service. I sipped from my glass and clicked on the icon, and after a confusing jumble of letters and numbers came this message:
TO: Sopwith 12
FROM: Anon666
Sopwith 12, you’ve been a bad boy. We have the evidence we need and if you don’t do exactly as we say, we will go public. This is no joke. Reply within one day or you’ll regret it.
A tingly feeling raced up my arms. Sopwith 12 was my online ID. This wasn’t an anonymous spam. I put the glass down and thought for a moment, then clicked on an icon shaped like a New England town hall, complete with white pillars. A message came up that said MEMBER DIRECTORY and I typed in ANON666. Within a second or two, the answer came back: No such member is listed on Mycroft.
I logged off, shut down the computer, and stared out the dark windows for a while.
It was spring in Pinette, Maine, and the next morning I was outside, working. I had chainsawed down a dead oak a few weeks back and had cut logs in two-foot lengths. I was now splitting each log for firewood. It was satisfying work, and I soon stripped off my sweatshirt and T-shirt, keeping on only my work boots, jeans, and the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson, which was strapped to my side.
With each fall of the ax, I thought about my brief electronic message. I had been in Pinette for a while, and had gotten used to my new life. There was always work to be done on the dozen or so acres I owned, and I had the television and the public library and mail-order books. Still, I sometimes woke up at two or three in the morning, imagining I could hear the far-off sounds of Boston or New York or London or Tokyo.
It was the computer that saved me from turning into an unshaven recluse who cut paper dolls in his off-hours. Sitting in my tiny upstairs room with the computer linked to the Internet, I was wired to the whole globe. It wasn’t the real thing, but with me exiled to this little Maine town and forbidden from traveling, it was the next best thing. I explored colleges, universities, museums, and scientific laboratories. I saw the view from cameras set up in Bombay, Antarctica, and at the top of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. I visited the home pages of college students, X-rated film stars, and bagpipe players. It was intoxicating, traveling down those little bundles of fiber. But I had one hard-and-fast rule: Thou shalt lurk — thou shalt not contact.
There are chat rooms, discussion areas, and mail server lists along the tangled wires of the Internet, and while I poked my head into these areas every now and then, I never said hello. I’ve read enough amusing stories of frat boys pretending to be sex-crazed housewives on the Net to know that I should never trust anyone on the other end of a computer terminal.