Gunther wasn't cut from the Marine Corps model of square-jawed law enforcement, although he had that military experience in his past, including time in combat. If anything, given her aggressive style, Sammie fit that image better. Instead, Gunther could almost be fatherly: quiet, thoughtful, slow to anger or to rebuke, and unusually attentive to his people's personal dilemmas. He had periodically gone to extremes to keep Willy out of trouble, but he'd also watched out for Sammie's well-being over the years, as he had most of the people who'd ever worked with him.
Willy had groused to her occasionally that the "Old Man," in his words, was compensating for having no kids or wife, and that he should mind his own business. Sammie not only disagreed, but knew the comment had more to do with Willy's shortcomings than with Gunther's. Joe didn't have kids or a wife, true enough, but he had been married long ago to a woman who'd died of cancer, and was involved with another, for well over a decade now, with whom he had a devoted if quirky relationship-including not only separate residences, but also absences lasting for weeks on end when she was working at her lobbyist job up in Montpelier. Their alliance was obviously something only the two of them fully understood, but it seemed to work quite well.
Sammie could only envy them there. Her love life had been as turbulent and dreary as Joe's had been placid, and her present involvement with Willy hardly seemed proof of a cure.
The front door opened to her knock and Joe Gunther stood before her with a plane in his hand and wood shavings sprinkled across the front of his pants. "Hi, Sam," he said, unperturbed by the late hour. "Come on in. I was just goofing off in the shop."
He'd converted a small barn off the back of the house into a woodworking shop. It was a newfound hobby for a man who used to only read and listen to classical music on those rare evenings he wasn't working late. Sammie found it endearing, imagining her boss as a late-blooming elf, priming his talents to make toys for Santa. Except that she also knew it was largely a front. For all his softspoken ways and seeming imperturbability, Joe Gunther was actually more of a Clydesdale: an unstoppable force who compensated for a lack of genius with a doggedness second to none. Sammie had seen him plow through adversity, pain, and personal loss with stamina and courage she could only imagine.
"You want a cup of coffee?" he asked, ushering her in.
"No. I'm okay."
He took her jacket and hung it on a nearby hook and invited her into the small living room around the corner, whose back door, standing ajar, led directly into the wood shop. He gestured to her to take a seat and, placing the plane on the coffee table between them, settled into an old armchair, scattering a few wood shavings onto the rug.
"You heard from Willy yet?" he asked.
"No," she admitted.
"Which is why you're here," he suggested gently.
She looked at him ruefully. "Yeah. I'm sorry to be a pain. I'm just worried."
"So am I," he admitted, which surprised and comforted her. "I even called Detective Ogden again to see if he knew anything. Which he didn't," he added in response to her hopeful expression.
"So, what're we supposed to do?" she asked.
Gunther shrugged. "There are options. Technically, he's AWOL, so we could act on that. For the moment, I've just put him on bereavement leave, which is stretching things a bit for an ex-spouse. But we're not too busy right now, and the rest of us can handle his caseload, so I don't see the harm, and I sure don't see blowing the whistle on him."
"And in the meantime, we wait?" she asked, her voice rich with impatience and frustration.
He nodded. "Yup. He's got to work this out."
Sammie slapped her leg with her hand. "Work what out? I understand he feels guilty about messing up their marriage, but that was years ago. From what he told me, she wasn't the most stable person in the world to start with, and he wasn't the one who put her on drugs. I mean, Christ knows he's no saint, but it takes two to tango. What's he doing down there?"
Gunther smiled softly. "Seeking absolution, I would guess. He's a man driven by devils. By guilt now, anger when he went to Vietnam, self-loathing when he hit the bottle. Right now, I figure he's hoping he can get himself off the hook somehow, even if he's convinced he'll never succeed. If we're lucky, he'll come home when he runs out of gas."
Sammie stared at him in silence. He laughed and held up a hand. "All right. That's a little too easy, but don't you forget how you felt about him in the old days. I'm really happy you two are together, but our Willy is a handful. You should remember that and protect yourself a little."
Sammie didn't answer, choosing to fix her eyes on the dark fireplace across from her.
"Right?" he repeated.
She glanced at him, slightly irritated. But she knew him well, having worked under him for more than ten years, first at the Brattleboro PD with Willy and then for this new outfit, and she knew he didn't say such things without reason. She swallowed her defensive first reaction and considered what he'd said. It was true that when she and Willy were first on Joe's detective squad, they'd fought like dogs, protecting their turf and taking swipes at each other at the slightest provocation. They laughed a little edgily about that now, when they were feeling sure of each other, but it was hard sometimes not to believe that their current affection was merely the same old passion with a twist. Willy was sometimes hard to love.
That thought process finally made her nod in response to Joe's question. "I guess so. You've known him a long time. Did he ever tell you about Vietnam?"
Gunther thought awhile. "Sort of. I was able to fill in some of the blanks from my own time in combat. He did a lot of long-range recon work, deep into the enemy's back pocket. It got pretty ugly sometimes-guys making up their own rules as they went and not saying much when they got back. I know his nickname was the Sniper, if that tells you anything. I guess it described his attitude as much as any specialty he had. And he wasn't alone there. The war had fallen apart, the American public was sick of it, the rest of the world thought we were the pits. The Kennedys and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had been assassinated one by one. Urban riots were the norm. You're young enough that it all looks kind of quaint and antiseptic now. But there were serious doubts we'd survive as a nation. When Willy went off to fight, returning vets were already being met at the airports by protesters spitting on them and calling them baby killers. Those were very tough years."
"Why did he go, then?" she asked.
"I always thought it was because he was ready to kill somebody-he just had sense enough to want to do it legally."
Sammie stared at him wide-eyed. "He told you that?"
Gunther shook his head. "No. He had a tough time growing up. I don't know all the details, but by his late teens, I guess he was a basket case. He tried the cops first. Apparently, that wasn't enough. The military suited his needs better anyway. It was a post-World War Two army, transfixed by the Great Red Menace-basically the same bunch who'd trained me earlier. They weren't the sensitive guys who let you enlist to 'Be all that You Can Be.' Back then, it was kill the gook. Simple.
"Willy allowed himself to be turned into the equivalent of a human knife blade, probably hoping for some sort of cathartic release. Except that it only complicated things and added to the baggage he was already carrying."
"He is pretty certifiable sometimes," Sammie said.
But Joe shook his head. "My back pocket psychology is that we're all giving him the support today he craved growing up, but since he's literally been to the wars and back, he doesn't know how to accept it. He needs it, wants it, and hangs around to receive it, but he'll flip you the finger when you pony it up because he sees all dependence as a sign of weakness."