I ducked that debate. “What’s the victim’s name, by the way?”
“William Manning. Flatlander, of course-New York.”
This time, I was the one to let silence fill the room. Snuffy knew the political realities. Not to use us would be foolish, given the circumstances. But he had his pride, and I didn’t want him claiming later that I’d twisted his arm.
Finally, he rubbed his chin with one large hand, stared at his shoes for a moment, and then slowly looked up at me. “So, how’s this work exactly?”
Willy Kunkle stared incredulously at me from across the office, his coat still on and his standard dour expression darker by several degrees. “A stolen watch? It’s Saturday, for Christ’s sake. I thought we were like the Un-frigging-Touchables-murder and mayhem only. We’ll be ticketing cars next.”
We were on the top floor of Brattleboro’s Municipal Building, two flights above the police department we both used to call home. Only now, instead of sprawling across half the ground level and most of the basement in a cluster of mismatched rooms and windowless caverns, we and two other so-called special agents shared a single large office, our desks backed like wary opponents into all four corners. Willy and I were alone for the moment, making the room look emptier than usual. This sensation was only enhanced by a general barrenness. Nothing had been hung on the walls yet, and while we’d been given a few file cabinets and computers, the use of things like a copier and a fax machine could only be had through the good graces of our downstairs neighbors. VBI’s budgeting and equipment needs were still works in progress.
“It’s the latest in a string,” I said, not really expecting to win him over. “This last victim suspects the rent-a-cops are in on it.”
Kunkle waved his hand dismissively in the air. “Hell, they all say shit like that. Rich guy in a fancy condo, leveraged up the wazoo-probably pawned his junk for the insurance. Why can’t Dawson handle it, beside the fact that he’s too dumb?”
“We got it, Willy,” I told him, my tone indicating the conversation had run its course. “Saturday or not.”
He studied me for a moment, perhaps reflecting on how many times we’d jousted in the past. Proud, judgmental, cynical, dismissive of others, and incredibly rude to almost everyone he met, Willy was also a workaholic who’d used law enforcement as a lifeline to pull himself free of a coterie of devils, from the Vietnam War, to alcohol abuse and a self-destructive, violent divorce, to a crippling bullet wound he’d received when we’d both worked downstairs, which had left him with a withered, useless left arm. Through it all, and despite many who’d urged me to cut Willy loose, I’d made it a point to ensure he was measured by his abilities instead of his attitude. Which is how he’d paradoxically ended up among the VBI’s first recruits. The Commissioner of Public Safety had tapped me as the Bureau’s field force commander and the Southeast Division’s agent-in-charge. I’d accepted both jobs, but only in exchange for Willy’s being considered on his merits, and not his personality.
Which had resulted in my being, once more, his immediate boss.
Willy finally raised his eyebrows. “Guess that means we’re supposed to risk our lives, drive out to Tucker Peak in the middle of a snowstorm, and see if we can’t help the good sheriff tell the difference between his butt and a hole in the ground?”
I rose to my feet and crossed over to where my own parka hung on the wall. I noticed that the snow had pretty much stopped falling. “Right.”
Chapter 2
Tucker Peak lies in Southern Vermont, which for a ski resort is both good and bad news. Like its sisters-Stratton, Mount Snow, and Bromley-it’s closer to the money states of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and to New York City, but unlike more northern mountains, such as Stowe, Killington, and Jay Peak, Tucker suffers from the south’s chronic climatic stinginess. As with almost every other resort, it’s piped for snowmaking, if only partially, but even artificial snow requires freezing weather, and there are winters in Vermont, especially recently, when that kind of cold, not to mention plain old-fashioned, natural snow, has been a precious and rare commodity.
Of course, that’s one reason the pipes appeared in the first place, and with them other, less winter-dependent options for financial survival. Golf courses, tennis courts, horseback riding, summer alpine slides, swimming pools, old-car shows, antique fairs-along with the requisite hotels and condos-have slowly crowded around base lodges all across the state to help make Vermont’s occasionally threadbare skiing a smaller piece of the economic pie.
Which is not to say that this type of mixing and matching isn’t still a tricky recipe, conditional as it is on such imponderables as customer loyalty, community and governmental support, and the ability of a resort to turn its customers into its own best ambassadors. In fact, while I’d heard of Tucker Peak’s ambitions to diversify, this last ingredient was something rumored to be in short supply.
“You’re close to the grapevine,” I told Willy as we left Brattleboro for the Green Mountains that ran up the state’s middle like a spine. “Give me the lowdown on Tucker Peak.”
Willy was staring glumly out at the barely falling snow that was both dry and sparse enough to make windshield wipers unnecessary. “Bunch of bored people sliding down a mountain so they can drink too much and jump each other’s bones after a night at the disco. Never made much sense to me.”
I ignored the preamble, knowing there was no information about his fellow human beings Willy didn’t find interesting, and waited patiently for him to address the actual topic.
“According to the barflies I know who work there,” he admitted after a pause, “up to last year, no one could count on being paid for the full season-attendance was down, equipment was falling apart, and maintenance was sucking hind tit. Now, it looks like they’re betting the farm.”
I knew they’d added condos, boutiques, and a nightclub, to negligible effect, but this was obviously something bigger. “How’s that?”
“They’ve lined up some big investors to spruce up everything at once. Summer and winter stuff both: a hotel, twice the condo units, tennis courts, and a golf course. They’re talking over fifteen million dollars, which is huge on our piss-ant scale.”
“Why haven’t I read about it in the paper?”
“They haven’t hit stride yet. They got a fancy model in the base lodge, a few contracts out for hardware and engineering studies, and surveyors and guys cutting trees for new trails and a lift line, but basically they’re limping through this winter so they can make a big splash in the spring.”
I absorbed all this without comment. Willy took my silence as encouragement.
“My sources are hardly Wall Street types, but they see no reason this should work.”
“Why not? A total mountain makeover might be a home run.”
He was shaking his head. “My people feed these wannabes, clean their toilets, change their sheets, pick up after ’em. They hear the bitching about ticket prices, lousy service, how boring the slopes are. It’s the proverbial pig’s ear, according to them. You can gussy it up all you want, you can’t change the basics.”
I drove through the tiny village of Lifton in three seconds flat and then turned onto Tucker Peak’s access road a couple of miles farther on. It was identified by a slightly weather-beaten sign next to a small cluster of retail buildings, including a bar. “So you’re not buying stock?”
“How’re they going to pay for it, even with investors? Prices’ll have to go up, and the mountain’ll still be what it’s always been, a mole hill with attitude, just like the rest of this woodchuck state.”
Sad to say, even if untrue, but that had a ring of familiarity to it. Vermont’s economy wasn’t far different from the rest of the country’s, but it was miniaturized to where it looked quaintly third-world. No matter what we did commercially up here, or how well, our best was always a blip when compared to places budgeted in the billions. The one exception was maple syrup, where we topped the nation by a fat margin, but even there, who really cared? A half-million gallons a year still only supplied a demand less than that for caviar. So, I understood what Willy was saying about little Tucker Peak. Spend what it might, it could never hold a candle to resorts in Utah and Colorado. Worse still, it couldn’t even compete in sheer size and height to the best in Vermont. In a market rewarding bigger, steeper, faster slopes, Tucker didn’t look slated for survival, much less rebirth.