There were times I found the whole debate both insoluble and overwhelming, and certainly nothing to chat about idly at the end of a long day. Ironically, Roger Betts’s arrival at that point rendered the point moot and now struck me as fortunate.
Settling in gingerly, so his knees didn’t smack against ours under the tiny table, Betts apologized for being late. Gail put him at ease and tried to catch the increasingly busy waitress’s attention. As she did, he told me how distressed he’d been at hearing of my encounter with Richie Lane-or more properly, Rossi’s dog-and asked how I was feeling.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Gail tells me you’ve come to some sort of decision.”
He ducked his head slightly and smiled. “Yes, well. Why don’t we get down to business?”
I didn’t react, although Gail cut me a hard look.
“The reason I took this long to tell you what was troubling me,” Betts began to explain, “was because the nature of what caught my eye was so obviously embroiled in a human drama I didn’t want to add to the agonies this man was already suffering, at least not without being more sure of myself.”
“And now you are more sure?”
He looked crestfallen. “Sadly, no. But I can no longer take the responsibility of possibly risking another life by staying silent. There was a time my idealism would have lent me comfort and resolve in such a dilemma, but age has a way of eroding such self-serving certainties.”
It was like hearing a confession on Masterpiece Theatre, his diction was so precise and his choice of words so antique. However, I clearly sensed beyond it the pain of his decision, so while I’d been irritated by his earlier wavering, I couldn’t fault the thoughtfulness that had put him here at last, and I stayed silent to allow him to continue.
“Eight years ago a dear colleague and friend of mine married a younger woman with whom he’d fallen terribly in love. He’d believed himself beyond such happiness after losing his wife to cancer fifteen years before and had thus given himself totally to the environmental cause. There are many different types of people in our ranks-as I’m sure is true everywhere-but we may have a disproportionate number of true believers, even romantics. Norman Toussaint is such a person. But he is also dedicated, idealistic, passionate, and vigorous in standing up for what he thinks is true.”
The waitress had come within hailing distance by now, but none of us cared. Betts was staring at some focal point near the middle of the table, and Gail and I were hanging on his words like kids listening to a bedtime story. I remembered Gail’s mentioning Toussaint and thinking at the time that he seemed the least defined of the three we’d discussed: a well-traveled man with a minor record of resisting arrest, who always seemed to be where the action was hottest among the environmentalist battlefields.
“Norman and I met over two decades ago, when he and his first wife were young and recently married. They were absolutely devoted to the cause, to the point of choosing not to have children until the world was made a healthier place to live. An extremist position, of course, and a naïve one, especially in retrospect, but not uncommon at the time. In any case, you can imagine how that made Norman feel when his wife was then taken by cancer.”
I could, in fact, since my own wife had met a similar fate even longer ago than that, a distance in time that had in no way dulled my memories of her and the happiness we’d shared. It wasn’t something Gail and I often discussed, but she knew about Ellen and now cast me a sympathetic look.
“Norman dealt with the loss the same way Joan of Arc seems to have taken to those famous voices she heard.” Betts continued, “He became absolutely driven, even obsessed. All his energies were given to environmental protection. When I’d known him first, I’d wondered about his apparent inability to break off from a task and relax a little. Lord knows, the rest of us knew the value of a vacation. But there were others enough like him that what might have been identified as a form of mental imbalance was merely dismissed as zealotry.”
He paused and sighed gently. “And then he met Abigail-a wonderful girl, light-hearted, broad-minded, and generous. She was like a magical elixir, cleansing his soul of the dark clouds within it. It wasn’t quite like a Hollywood movie, of course. In fact, it was quite rough going to begin with. He was very resistant to a much younger woman trying to reintroduce him to life. It was almost comical at times to see her loosening him up, making him laugh despite himself. But the transformation succeeded; he began to melt like an iceberg in the sun, and finally, after much hemming and hawing, they announced they were to be married.”
He smiled sadly. “Looking back, I wouldn’t doubt a part of Norman now hates that day, when he sacrificed his own twisted logic and committed himself to another human being. He probably feels that had he stayed the course, his and Abigail’s world wouldn’t now be so haunted and crippled by misery and debt. He’s just the type to take responsibility for the simple vagaries of fate.”
“I’m losing you here,” I told him quietly. “What happened?”
He laid his hand on mine. “I’m sorry. I ramble, given half a chance. Going against all his earlier instincts, Norman agreed to have a child with Abigail. That child, in the cruelest of ironies, has developed leukemia. It has driven Norman and Abigail apart and perhaps pushed Norman over the edge.”
Roger Betts turned and fixed his tired, pale-blue eyes on mine, and added, “I have no idea if he is the man you are after. I do know that suddenly, he’s been able to pay for medical treatments that were previously beyond his means. I only know this because Abigail told me about it in confidence. I have never asked him outright to what he owes this good fortune, but the rumor is a rich relative left it to him in a will.”
“And you don’t believe that.”
He sighed again. “I’m ashamed to say, no.”
“Implying there’s something you’re leaving out.”
He nodded without speaking, seemingly at odds again about being here.
“Is it something he’s done?” I tried.
That got him going again. Again, he patted my hand. “No. I mean, not actually. I’m not accusing Norman of anything. But he’s been erratic lately-moody, forgetful, quick to judge-but most of all, inconsistent, which he’s never been in the past. He’s as driven as ever, but not by our mutual interest. It’s as if his concentration is elsewhere… ”
“With his sick child, perhaps,” Gail suggested.
But Betts disagreed. “It’s different. Now you can understand why I was so loath to bring this to you. Something is eating this man up from within, beyond the guilt of his family situation. And given his almost maniacal sense of purpose, it frightens me. I truly no longer know of what he may be capable.”
The wash of noisy, clashing conversations swelled around us in the silence following Roger Betts’s last words. I looked up and around in mild surprise and saw that the after-work, pre-dinner crowd was at its max, laughing, drinking, making deals, and eyeing one another with a variety of intentions.
“Roger,” I finally asked, “given the timing of the various accidents and Norman’s schedule, do you think he might have been involved in any of them-specifically?”
Betts looked at me helplessly. “I wish I knew. It’s not the kind of organization where we use a time clock. People show up at odd hours, work for however long they can. It’s terribly fluid, and to be honest, I haven’t pried into it.”