I knew what had him concerned. “That Busco’s involved and that he’s in the program?” I pointed down the hall. “Those two and me. There’ll be a few others: the sheriff, my boss, our special prosecutor, another of my field agents. We’re not much chattier with the press than you are, but if you want to stay discreet and help us both out, we can keep it that way by working together.”
He looked at me without comment for several seconds, clearly hearing the implied threat behind my offer. “You got it,” he finally said.
I bowed slightly and swept one arm toward the VBI office like a welcoming maître d’. “Then let’s get back to the party and work out a plan.”
That plan, however, was dependent on factors beyond our control for the moment, such as David Hawke’s finding something incriminating in the vacuum bag, and Kathy Bartlett putting together a tightly bundled package with her federal counterparts with which to sway a judge. Not that we were guaranteed success even then, of course-it was within the purview of the U.S. Marshals to take this case over. However, given the implied warning I’d made to Freeman, I was hoping they’d feel it was also not in their best interests.
In the meantime, therefore, I decided to tackle Roger Betts’s concerns once more by looking into Norman Toussaint, the under-the-gun, mechanically inclined environmentalist.
Norman and Abigail Toussaint lived in the hills several miles outside the small Vermont town of Jamaica. There were no landmarks of note indicating the entrance to their property, just a dirt track butting into the paved road. The deputy sheriff who’d given us directions had stressed that point: “No mail box, no road sign, no power lines, not a goddamn thing-they wouldn’t even put a 911 number up, in case they get in a jam. Granola-heads with an attitude.”
It was pretty remote. Sammie looked out the side window as I slowly negotiated the ice-filled ruts, and commented, “I like the countryside okay, but this gives me the creeps. It’s like living in the middle of nowhere. Wonder what they do for entertainment?”
“From what Betts told me,” I answered, “that’s not high on their list right now.”
“Still,” she said softly, “it’s like going to Transylvania or something.”
I empathized with her there. The farther I drove into the woods the more encased I began to feel. No effort had been made to trim or thin out the trees. In fact, it was more like the forest was being encouraged to take back the road, with limbs sticking out to rake against the car, and the overhead canopy low and dense enough to imperil the passage of a regular-size delivery van. Despite the relative brightness of an admittedly overcast day, the tunnel we were traveling was dark enough that I eventually turned on the headlights.
Conceptually, I could see a logic to keeping the approach to a house this overgrown-it would heighten the delight of coming into a clearing fully equipped with a hundred-mile view. I was therefore doubly disappointed when we rounded one last curve some two miles into this journey and almost smacked into a dented, rusty old Jeep Wagoneer parked outside a completely hemmed-in, low-profile, almost windowless log cabin so covered with snow it looked like a bear den. It reminded me of the makeshift shelters thrown up against the elements during the Alaskan gold rush a hundred years earlier. Like the driveway leading up to it, the house was shrouded in gloomy darkness. I pulled alongside the Jeep and killed the engine.
Sammie frowned, imagining the flip side to this frozen, glum setting. “Must be a joy when the bugs’re in full force.”
We got out and tentatively approached the heavy wooden front door, sensitive as always out in the country to the sounds of any dogs readying themselves to attack. I was especially prepared to use my right arm as a defense this time so I could balance out my scar tissue. But all was still, both inside and out.
The term “log cabin” nowadays usually evokes images of a pampered conspiracy between a hormonal Lincoln Logs set and someone with buckets of cash. This was another thing entirely: small, crude, emphatically homebuilt, and almost purposefully oppressive.
Sammie pounded on the door with the heel of her hand, creating a series of dull thuds as if she were wailing on a tree stump.
We waited for half a minute, fully expecting a no-show, and thus gave startled jumps when the door suddenly and soundlessly swung open.
“Yes?”
The woman facing us was small, thin, dressed in heavy layers, wearing a pair of granny glasses and a wool watch cap. She looked dressed for a hike outdoors, although her appearance belied the physical ability to do that.
“Mrs. Toussaint?” I asked.
“I’m Abigail Evans,” she answered tiredly, seemingly without curiosity about who we might be.
I showed her my badge. “We’re from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation-Agents Martens and Gunther. We were wondering if we could speak with your husband.”
She was hollow-eyed and gaunt and merely blinked in response.
“Is he here?” Sam asked.
“He’s on the platform,” she replied finally, gesturing feebly beyond where the cars were parked. “Just follow the trail.”
We both glanced in the direction she’d indicated and discovered in the meantime that she’d quietly closed the door on us.
Sammie raised her eyebrows at me. “And I thought my relationship was under stress.”
The hike up the trail gave new meaning to a walk in the woods. Emulating the drive to the house, it was narrow, overgrown, rutted and uneven, and as dark as a tunnel leading far underground. Sammie and I stumbled and caught our balance repeatedly against the nearby trees before settling down to a slow, steady pace that saw us through the better part of a one-hour trip.
Along the way, I couldn’t resist following up on her one-liner at the cabin. “Things going any better between you and Willy?” I asked, watching the heels of her boots as she marched ahead of me.
She didn’t bother looking back at me. “Yeah, actually. I think they are.”
I didn’t say anything, making the subsequent long pause do my prodding for me.
Her hands flapped out to either side of her in a frustrated gesture-faintly comical when seen from behind. “What the hell do I know, Joe? Out of the blue, he said we ought to get away for a few days after this case wraps up. This from a man who wouldn’t know a vacation if it bit him in the butt.”
“You know where you’ll be going?”
At that, she quickly glanced back at me, laughing and rolling her eyes. “You think I’m picky? I don’t care if it’s Guilford.”
Guilford was the next town south of Brattleboro, and not much more than a crossroads.
“Besides,” she added, “We’re only talking a long weekend, if that.”
“Still,” I said after a couple of minutes of reflective silence. “Must be nice to be back on track.”
I wasn’t sure how that comment would go over. As their recent falling out had established, Willy and Sammie were hardly a match made in heaven. And for all my maternal meddling in their business, which of course I pretended was for the good of the squad, I wasn’t sure if the best thing might not be a permanent breakup.
But the tone in her voice as she spoke straight ahead, leaving her words to drift back and surround me, was soft and hopeful and filled with optimism and let me think that perhaps my efforts weren’t quite so misguided.
“It is nice,” she said. “Feels really great. And I know in my heart we can make this work.”
Finally, mercifully, on the verge of thinking Abigail Evans had just conned us into trekking halfway to New York City, we came upon a wooden ladder heading straight up into the canopy overhead.
Sammie leaned against a nearby trunk and peered into the crisscross of pine and denuded hardwood branches. “There’s a platform, all right-way the hell up.” She kept her voice to a near whisper.
I tested the ladder, obviously homebuilt and covered with the green skin of some slippery fungus. “Feels solid enough.”