The air was so cold, it felt brittle and was bathed in a full moon turned up to full wattage. As I drove between the dark mountains leading up to Tucker Peak, I kept twisting in my seat to look around, overwhelmed by the deep stillness of the snow-shrouded trees, which were tinted a faint, lunar blue by the shimmering radiance overhead. At times like these, I felt irrelevant in the world’s grand scheme, and totally powerless. I knew that we humans were wholly capable of burning, polluting, stripping, and altering the landscape to a lethal extent. But on special occasions, under just the right lighting, I trusted that the winner in this struggle would be the same force that had preceded us in history and which would, in the long run, treat us as a minor blip in time. The car I was in, the road I was traveling, and the few house lights I could see in the distance seemed as impermanent as snowflakes on a hot stove.
I drove to the equipment yard as Linda had instructed on the phone and was met by the same crooked-toothed, bearded snowmaker named Dick who’d tossed me the crowbar when I was stranded in the chairlift.
He gave me a big smile as I got out of my car. “Boy, you sure had us goin’, pretending you were a carpenter. Good thing you never got one of us pissed off. We mighta pounded you good and never known you were a cop.”
I looked at his eyes, watching for some double meaning there, but he seemed to have merely uttered a bizarre statement of fact.
He did, however, suddenly step back and give me a more careful appraisal. “Where’s your arm?”
I’d put my coat on with the left sleeve empty. “I still got it. It’s in a sling.”
“Cool,” was all he said, before taking my good elbow and steering me toward an idling Yamaha snowmobile. “Linda said to get you up there pronto. Hope you’re dressed warm.”
He got on first and gave the throttle a couple of hormonal revs. I tucked in behind him and had just looped my hand through the thick strap binding the seat when he took off with a jolt that should have sent me ass-over-backward. So much for not pounding on a cop.
The trip was the exact opposite of my drive over: windy, freezing, lurching, and noisy. I held on for dear life, seeing little beyond the hairy nape of Dick’s neck, feeling my face and hand going numb and the muscles in my back and legs beginning to spasm as I unsuccessfully tried to anticipate which way to lean and when to brace for a bump. By the time we came to a sudden, sliding stop, I felt like simply falling into the snow and asking someone to cover me up.
Instead, I was grabbed under the right armpit and hauled to my feet, where I found myself staring into Linda Bettina’s face. “It’s over here,” was her greeting.
I followed her as best I could, regaining my land legs and trying not to stumble in the thick snow. Ahead of us, surrounded by tall, somber trees as if cupped in a pair of hands, was a pile of red embers, against which human shadows moved back and forth like black specters. In the distance was a wide, featureless opening, flat and opal pale in the moonlight, which I took to be the frozen pond.
Linda stopped as we entered the warm air bubble engulfing the glowing remnants of the pumphouse. She pointed at a large, round man in a white fire coat who was giving orders to a group of others.
“That’s the fire chief, if you want to talk to him.”
“He know what started it?”
“He just showed up with his crew and put it out.”
I looked around as someone started a generator and ignited a ring of bright lights on tripods.
“And destroyed any chance of finding tracks,” I said half to myself.
“Wouldn’t have been any anyhow,” Linda said. “It’s a construction site-was a construction site. A dozen guys have been stomping around here for weeks. Too bad, too-I’ve really been cracking the whip on this project. We were about to get this done two months ahead of schedule.”
“Who reported it?” I asked.
“Snowmakers saw the glow. We hit it right off with water from some portable snow guns and called the fire department to back us up. Didn’t make any difference. It was going full blast from the start.” She turned to face me. “You smell anything?”
I took my time before responding, sniffing carefully. “Gas?”
“That’s what I think-this was torched.”
“Did the snowmakers notice anyone or anything unusual when they first arrived?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Same as the dye job on the other pond, the generator sabotage, the water main break, and the chairlift accident, not to mention all the other shit that’s been going on. Whoever’s doing this is luckier than hell.”
I didn’t voice the other obvious possibility of it being an employee.
“Linda?”
We both turned as Phil McNally loomed into the light, squinting slightly, stopping in his tracks as he recognized me. “Oh. Are you all right?”
Linda looked at me more closely. “What’s wrong with you? Break an arm?”
“Dog bit it,” I explained, realizing just how isolated this bunch could be in their closed-off world. As far as I knew, no paper or radio or TV station in the state had failed to run the story, and yet nobody here seemed to know about it.
Nor were they particularly interested, since both Linda and Phil went back to staring at the remains of the pumphouse.
“TPL?” McNally asked.
“We don’t know,” Linda told him, jerking a gloved thumb at me. “That’s why I called him.”
He passed a hand across his neck. “Great, one damn thing after another. This morning, somebody chained about eight snowmobiles together-took an hour to untangle them. I guess I messed up big time being too friendly with those guys.”
“They may not have done this,” I suggested.
They looked at me.
“You kidding?” McNally asked. “It’s perfect for them-nobody hurt, and the whole pump project delayed for months, not to mention the money we already spent on pumps that have nowhere to live now. I’ll have to tell the manufacturer to hang on to them and probably end up paying a storage fee to boot. Christ. What next?”
It was an interesting question, and one I wanted answered before it caught me by surprise.
My next meeting with Roger Betts didn’t have to take place in a clandestine motel. Phone calls by Phil McNally to my boss had forced the TPL case off the back burner, if only briefly, and the fire the night before now made it reasonable for me to invite him to my office in Brattleboro.
I did, however, want Gail in attendance, as before, hoping her presence would show how I wanted us all to work together against a common foe.
They arrived as a couple, Gail having picked Betts up at Tucker Peak on her way in, and entered the office chatting amiably.
The others were out, so the office was ours. I dragged two chairs across the room, and we all sat in a circle, like three card players in search of a table.
“Roger,” I began, “I really appreciate your coming down. I know it’s a hassle with everything you’ve got going.”
“Not at all,” he countered, his voice once again reminiscent of some old-world gentleman. “I understand entirely. You must have questions concerning the fire.”
I nodded. “True enough. But you should know that the ground rules are a little different this time. We’re no longer off the record, and I am less inclined to settle for a pledge of cooperation from you. Things are getting out of hand.”
“I agree entirely,” he said, to my surprise. “These events are not reflecting well on us either. I am scheduled to meet with Mr. McNally in two hours, and I suspect that will not go well.”
“I saw him last night,” I admitted. “He ain’t happy.”
I reached for a file on my desk and opened it in my lap. “Which leads me to the point of this meeting. Last time you said you feared one or more people within your ranks might be doing these things, but you had no names to suggest. This time I have some names, and I’d like you to react to them.”
He studied me passively for several seconds before saying, “That may not be ground I wish to tread.”