Borderlines (16 page)

“How are you doing?” This time, a stunned silence preceded any words, and I rued the banality of my question. Her delayed response had the predictability of the pain following a slap. “How the hell do you think I’m doing? I’m angry. I feel like you walked out on me without ever telling me why. I thought grown-ups talked through their problems-you just ran away.” “I told you I wanted time to think.”

“That’s bullshit, Joe. What good is thinking in isolation? This problem belongs to both of us. I’m not interested in what you come up with on your own. Christ, we’re friends; you’d think this would be the time to work together.” Her precision undermined any defensive maneuvers I might have attempted. She had hit on the exact subconscious motivation behind my dialing her number in the first place.

“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do now.” Her frustration boiled over. “On the phone? I hate the goddamn phone. It’s a business tool, Joe, something you use to fire people you can’t look in the eye.” “I don’t want to fire you.” Only after I’d said it did I realize how idiotic it had sounded. The realization prompted a more accurate rejoinder. “But I’m not sure I want to look you in the eye, either.”

She sat on that for several long seconds. This was not an impulsive, highly charged individual. Gail had walked a long, experience-paved road, from the free-love, drug-stimulated sixties to a middle age of thoughtfulness and reflection. Her answer echoed that, and made me glad I had phoned. “That’s fair, but only if you’re coming back so we can talk properly.” I was surprised by the implication. “Of course I’m coming back. I won’t deny I ran for cover, but I didn’t run away. Your anger scared the hell out of me. It was like standing too close to a hot stove.” Again, the reflective pause. “I didn’t mean to put you down.” It was a classic Gail line, a little bit of psycho-talk, of I’m-okayyou’re-okay. It was an extraordinary and endearing trait, her ability to nail down unstable emotions so they wouldn’t run amuck and cause undue injury. She, unlike anyone else I knew, understood when it was time to put down the weapons and make peace long before I ever did.

“You felt I was that angry?” she asked.

“Weren’t you?” “I think it was more frustration. I felt totally cut off from you.

The time you left my house, I felt like a hooker who’d been underpaid.”

“Good Lord, Gail.” “Hey. You weren’t even there. You were God knows where, at the ce, feeling sorry for yourself, waiting for Tony Brandt to get back you could retrieve your freedom, or whatever the hell it was.

When said you were going up north, it was like hearing the other shoe p.

It was the predictability that made me mad you had totally cut off.”

“I’m sorry.” “I don’t want to hear that. I’m sorry, too, but is that going to get anywhere?” “I hope so. It’s a start.” The thoughtful pause. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” “You’re sorry I’m sorry, or you’re sorry you’re sorry? Or are you ry you said we shouldn’t be sorry?” She laughed, and I realized I’d been clenching the phone. I relaxed grip.

“God, life is such a bitch.” She was right there, and by making the choices we had, we hadn’t de it any easier. We’d taken an ideal situation, one as potentially nsient as a burst of laughter, and had tried to freeze it in place. She single, as was I; she had a career, just like me; we both liked owing the other was there, available sexually and morally, but not endent.

How long, in a world crammed with other people and nts, could such a static emotional state exist? “So what do we do about it?” she continued. “I’d like to do something-have I done any permanent damage e?” She sighed, and I could hear the pillow rustling against the headShe was right again: Times like these are not good on the phone.

onged to be next to her. “No, and nor have I, at least I hope I en’t.”

I picked that up quickly. “I made the call, and you didn’t hang She laughed again gently. “All right. That proves something, but on’t want this to happen again. I can live with the fact that things ght change and we might choose separate paths, but not this way, y?” “Sounds good to me.” But she wasn’t going to let me off that lightly. “I thought it might, but I mean it, Joe. You’re good at talking to people in trouble, or giving them the third degree. You’re even pretty good at snowing the Selectmen, but you’re not that great talking to me. I think you hope all our little problems will just die natural deaths of their own.” Despite the urge to do so, I couldn’t deny it. “You know that’s not the way it happens, right?” The hint of maternal superiority suddenly irritated me. “I may not be the only guilty party here.” There was a long, dead silence, followed by, “Ouch.” This time I chuckled.

“This may work, after all.” “You are a bastard and I hate the phone and I wish you here.” “I love you, Gail.” “I love you, too, Joe, but it can’t stop there.” I had to give her high marks for persistence. “I know. I’ll try to do a better job. The Chief coming back is bound to help-at least my professional life will be back to normal.” “How’s your professional life doing now? From what I heard on the news, it sounds like you stepped into it again.” “Did my name come up?” “I could arrange for it to.” “Oh, please, spare me that. What did they report?” She told me what she’d heard, which didn’t vary much from what I’d seen on Greta’s TV. I told her the details and the cast of characters. I also told her of the changes that had come to Gannet, and of the damage they had wrought.

She listened and asked questions and heard the sadness in my voice and became again, as she had been for years, my best friend. She reminded me before we hung up that we had work to do, that things were going to change between us, for the better if we paid attention, and that she was looking forward to that.

So was I, although as I replaced the phone on its cradle, I thought of Laura, opening her coat to show me her curves. It made me doubly glad Gail and I had talked, before I’d been tempted to try something that was preordained to fail. But then, that had probably been my driving stimulus that in the midst of a complicated case, in a town whose memories were becoming at best bittersweet, I needed to connect with a person whose motives were clear and clean, and whose alliance was unquestioned. Laura had said of Gail, “Skinnier than me, I bet.”

Skinnier, more complicated, more intellectually demanding, more emotionally precise, but only a small part of me wondered why I’d reached out to Gail, when getting her back meant so much more work.

Early the next morning, none of us had any doubts a crime had n committed. Bruce Wingate was found stabbed to death. A breathless, half-frozen teenage boy had been dispatched by Renon a bicycle to fetch me. Buster’s only comment had been, “Better b a coat. Cold’s back.”

There was frost on the grass; the surrounding bare trees looked old d withered in their icy, silver sheaths. The “warm snap had ended e the slam of a door, leaving the air brittle and raw, almost painful breathe too deeply. In the low spots-the ditches, the dips in the d, the hollows between the hills-ground fog lay as if clinging to dry The three of us piled into Buster’s pickup, placing the boy’s bike 0 the back.

Dulac’s ravine, where Wingate’s body had been found, a mile north of town, bordering a road off of I II. Dulac had been armer in the region years ago, and the road had once led to his house. th he and the house were long gone, but the road remained, a major raction to those who had to opt for backseats over bedrooms for their ments of intimacy.

Rennie’s pickup-green, battered, and flamboyantly splotched th dark red Rust-Oleum spots-was listing like a sinking rowboat at edge of the road.

We parked behind it and got out. A good twenty below us, at the bottom of a treacherously steep and ice-slicked pe, wreathed in a smokelike mist, stood Rennie Wilson and a man fluorescent orange carrying a rifle.

Between them, barely visible, lay uce Wingate, looking like the fallen ghost of a bird, dropped from air in midflight, with one wing still outstretched. The ravine was dry, walled in on the opposite side by a gentler, ch taller, heavily wooded slope that curved away above us. To my right, a footpath angled down from the road to the misteathed bottom, a time-worn pedestrian trail used by anyone who nted to climb the hill on the other side. The boy who had driven back th us was already running off toward it to join Rennie and to ogle body.

“Buster. What’s his name?” “Jimmy.” I shouted after him. “Jimmy! Hold it. I don’t want any more prints around there. Stay up on the road.”

The shout caused both Rennie and his companion to look up at us. I waved them toward the path. “He’s dead, right?” Rennie answered. “As a doornail.” “Then come on up. I want to keep that scene as clear of people as possible.” I walked down the road a bit and met them at the top of the path.

Rennie introduced us. “This is Joe Gunther, with the State’s Attorney’s office; Joe, this is Mitch Pearl. He found the body.” We shook hands.

Pearl was about thirty-eight years old, with brown hair and eyes, a clean-shaven square face, and a respectable beer gut. He wore a worried look on his face. “When did you find him?” I asked.

“About a half hour ago. I was following a set of deer tracks along the bottom of the ravine. I drove back to town and told Mr. Wilson here.”

“Anyone else know yet?” “I called Wirt, so I guess he’ll be here soon.

“Okay. Let’s try to keep this under our hats until the State Police show up. It’d be better if we could keep the road blocked off, as well as both slopes. So far, only you two have been to the bottom, is that right?” Both Rennie and Pearl nodded. “What’s the ground like down there?” Pearl answered. “Crusty, but pretty soft still from the last few days.

That’s why I went down there; I figured I’d find some tracks.” “Crust isn’t enough to hold you,” Rennie added. “By the end of the day, it should be like concrete.” “All right. All the more reason to keep people away. Where do you live, Mitch?” “Connecticut.” “You staying nearby?” “Lyndonville the LynBurke Motel.” “Can you stick around to give a statement to the police?” “Sure.” “Okay. Who’s got some paper something to write on?” The words and gestures were all automatic.

Despite the location, and my being far from my home turf, I was still a cop, and this was something, unfortunately, I knew all too well how to do.

Buster pulled a couple of large receipts out of his pocket and handed them over. “Back sides are blank.” “Thanks. I’m going down to have a look. Just keep everyone away and let me know when the troops arrive.”

Everyone nodded. I started down the path, tendrils of mist shroudg my feet and legs. The more I immersed myself between the two nks and into the fog, the more I felt like I was being sucked into the rth, surrounded by smoke without odor. The effect was heightened my concentration on the path, muddy and slick with the passage of veral pairs of feet already. In a few hours, unless the cold really set ,we were going to have to set up ropes to save people from skidding raight down to the bottom.

I stopped at the foot of the path and looked around. Above me, could hear muffled voices, the occasional scrape of a boot on gravel; here, in the ravine, I felt as if I was underwater. I was as aware of y breathing as if I were wearing a scuba tank. I took Buster’s receipts and my pen out of my pocket and began sketch what I found: the number of footprints and their directions, er cans, food wrappers, an occasional condom, assorted other trash. owly I walked, taking inventory, aware all the time of Wingate’s body ining definition the closer I got to it.

Finally, we were together, the only sharp-edged objects in the iddle of a cloud. I looked up and saw the hazy outlines of people oking down at me. It made me think of the gladiators in the center a locked arena. I turned my attention back to Wingate, trying to ncentrate.

He’d been stabbed many times by the look of it. His upper back d neck were covered with slash and puncture wounds. One ear as severed, lying two feet off to the side. He was wearing khaki nts, sneakers, and a pale windbreaker-not enough for the present Id temperature, but enough for earlier last night, when we’d last lked.

I studied the ground. There was a lot of blood, particularly from e left side of his neck. I bent over, trying not to move my feet and us add to the confusion of tracks. There was a gaping laceration just the left of the trachea: a bull’s-eye to the carotid. He would have died ithin a minute of receiving that wound alone.

I looked over my shoulder and examined the grassy slope behind e, the one leading up to the road. There were no gouges, no scrapes, prints, no bent vegetation. No body had rolled down it on the way the bottom.

I slowly began to separate the footprints: Wingate’s sneakers, my n shoes, Rennie’s and Mitch’s lug soles, which I’d made a point of entally cataloging at the top of the path. There were others, what oked like one more pair of small smooth-soled sneakers and a third of lug soles.

Besides ourselves, at least three other people had shared this spot with Wingate. But that was far from certain; there’d been a lot of activity, much of it from Rennie.

“Hey, Rennie, how long were you down here?” I didn’t bother looking up to distinguish one shape from the others.

“Not long. Just enough to check it out. Why?” “Looks like you tap-danced all over the place.” It was said at half volume, more to myself than to him, but I shouldn’t have said it at all.

“Fuck you, Joe.” “Sorry, out of line.” “I didn’t know if the son of a bitch was dead or not.” “I know, I know.” The entire exchange had been pointless, reflecting more my own frustration than any anger toward Rennie. It irked the hell out of me that I’d been speaking to Wingate just hours before, too dull to sense something in the offing. The fact that I wasn’t clairvoyant never seemed an adequate explanation at times like these. This, I kept thinking, had been preventable somehow.