I extracted my hand from beneath the blanket and laid it on her thigh. “I’m not complaining-and your timing couldn’t be better.”
She leaned over me again and accidentally brushed my left arm with her elbow. I shut my eyes and winced. She straightened abruptly and stared at me, her face barely visible in the gloom.
“What’s wrong?”
I pulled out the bandaged arm.
“Joe. What happened?”
I shook my head and touched her cheek. “Nothing. I got fanged by a dog today-nothing bent, folded, or mutilated. It’s more embarrassing than anything.” I flexed my left hand to show her it worked fine. “Right up there with a firefighter falling off a ladder-occupational hazard.”
The toll on me hadn’t been purely physical, of course, nor was my pleasure in seeing her as lighthearted as I was pretending. Being shot at by another human being and seeing him die as a result was not something I could shrug off casually, no matter how many times I’d been exposed to it in the past. But I decided to spare her the details until later.
“You’re sure?” she asked, visibly relieved.
“Yes, and really happy you’re here.” I sat up and returned the kiss. “Try and deny we’re kindred spirits now.”
She smiled then and stood back up. “Stay there.”
She undressed slowly, playing to the half-light, letting me see her in carefully measured degrees. Finally, totally naked, she leaned forward and gently pulled the covers off me, trailing her fingers down my body as she went.
“What a great way to end the day,” she said softly, climbing into bed.
Little did she know.
The next morning, over an early breakfast, I told Gail the rest of the story, grateful she’d chosen to listen to music instead of the news in the car on the drive down. In a state with Vermont’s low crime rate, where simple vehicular manslaughter routinely made the front page, my OK Corral imitation with Lester was at the top of every hour.
“And this happened in the afternoon?” she asked. “I still don’t understand why I didn’t hear about it.”
“They didn’t release it till after the post-shoot. The AG’s office sent two guys down to make sure we hadn’t assassinated Richie and had the dog attack me to cover it up. After that, I met with Snuffy to quiet the politician in him, and then drove to Waterbury to offer my head to the boss and the commissioner.”
“With that?” she asked incredulously, pointing at my arm, now back in its sling.
“I could’ve done it later,” I admitted. “But I knew they were feeling the heat. Spinney was happy to do the driving. It let him blow off some steam. He went code three all the way-probably took us forty minutes, if that, so it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”
She pursed her lips, bit into her toast, and said as she chewed, “Always the team player.”
“Most of the time,” I agreed. “When do you have to be back in Montpelier?”
She instinctively checked her watch. “I have a meeting at ten. Why? What’s up?”
I retrieved the envelope Willy had delivered the night before and opened it. “I asked Snuffy to give me a list of all the TPL people with rap sheets. I was wondering if you’d give it a look, see if any of them ring a bell-unofficially, of course.”
I placed the sheaf of documents I’d extracted before her on the breakfast table. She looked at it dubiously for a moment, not touching it. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”
I shrugged. “That’s fine. It was a straight question. I’ll go over it with the folks at the office.” But I left it where it was as I crossed over to the stove for more coffee.
Not subtle, but effective. “You are such a twerp,” she said. But I heard the fondness in her voice and was all the happier we’d had a chance to talk in that motel room. Over the years, we’d had our rough spots, some of our own making, others inflicted by outside events, and certainly her move to Montpelier had contributed to a vague sense of estrangement. But for the first time in quite a while, I felt I was totally back in sync with her-and knew she was feeling the same.
She picked the papers up.
We didn’t speak for a while, as I let her do her homework, but eventually she put the last sheet down and looked at me. “That’s a lot of people. Most of them are friends.”
“I thought they might be. Actually, I was hoping that would make it easier.”
“How’s that?”
I pointed my chin at the documents. “Because you could give me a gut reaction on eighty percent of them and tell me not to waste my time. Save us the effort and maybe stop somebody from getting killed.”
“That supposed to be a delicate guilt trip to help me along?” she asked, smiling.
I shook my head. “Just the truth. Only thing that saved that woman on the chairlift was dumb luck.”
“You think one of these people did that?”
“It’s a possibility; even Betts seems to agree.”
“Maybe management did it to put the finger on TPL-get the sympathy vote.”
I couldn’t argue with her. “True.”
I sensed that a combination of curiosity, friendship, and a feeling of responsibility made Gail pick up the top sheet again. But her tone of voice betrayed her discomfort. “Roger you already know. If you think he’d put someone’s life at risk to make a point, this conversation just ended.”
“Gail,” I said soothingly, knowing I was pushing her, “that list was generated by hitting a few computer keys. That’s why there’re so many names.”
Her mouth made a rueful twist as she relented. “I know. I’m being thin-skinned and close-minded-two things I hate about most of the people I work with. It’s catching. I’m sorry.” She took up the entire batch and weeded out three sheets that had obviously caught her eye early on. “If I were you, I’d start with these. One I don’t know, one I don’t like, and the third has the reputation of being as cold-hearted as anyone he’s ever opposed.”
I studied the three. “Toussaint, McPherson, and Davis,” I read.
“Toussaint’s the wild card,” she told me. “Looks like he’s been around: Seattle, Philly, San Francisco, Boston. All the right places for all the right causes. ‘Resisting arrest’ could mean anything, but he does have one assault on a police officer.
“McPherson is a flamer, if you ask me-super-opinionated, super short fuse. He’s a self-righteous, pompous, stuck-up little creep. He’s also British and an ex-Greenpeacer-claims to have been where it counted when it counted, like hassling those French ships that were trying to set off the atomic test in the Pacific. But anyone can say that-there’re loads of liars in this business. It’s just that no one wants to be so un-PC as to check them out and call their bluff.”
“Let me guess,” I suggested, “he’s the one you don’t like.”
She saluted me with her cup, “Two points. Davis has a reputation that does stand up. Tough as nails, very persuasive, a committed fighter for the cause. I’ve never seen any proof of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’d broken a few rules to get what he wanted.”
I put the three on the top of the pile and returned them all to the envelope. “Why just them?”
She swallowed some coffee before answering. “You asked for a gut reaction. It could be one of the others, but from what I either know of them or have heard about them, they’d be unlikely violent types. I’m not sure what made me pick Toussaint-maybe because in all the places he was busted things turned ugly and people were hurt. Left a bad taste in my mouth. When you meet him, he’ll probably turn out to be a Don Knotts look-alike, scared of his own shadow.”
“You also picked people who either have been or claim to have been all over the place geographically. Most of the rest of them seem to be pretty home-grown.”