w.i.l.l.y hesitated before answering. Since the moment he'd returned to this city, he'd been tiptoeing through a minefield of other people's good graces. He'd kept his true nature from Mary's apartment superintendent, Ward Ogden, Rosalie Coven, Louisa Obregon, even his brother, Bob, presenting to them all a measured, even muted front.

Doing so had bordered on agony. Ever since he'd begun his recovery from alcoholism, he'd gotten used to using honesty with surgical precision, regardless of how it was received. Total candor had been the Stateside equivalent of his Vietnam-born contempt of adversity-a showy conviction that he had nothing left to lose. He'd known even then it was merely a mask, of course. His chilling aloofness in combat was mostly self-loathing and despair, and his plain speaking nowadays was largely to stave people off, but there was no denying the advantages the mask had over the reality. There were times, in fact, when his self-deception was running strong or his confidence hitting bottom, when even he believed that his crippled arm and verbal bluntness were somehow things to be proud of.

Which was why right now, with his entire past overtaking him, he so urgently wanted to speak honestly- truly-and tell Andy Liptak of all the anger, contempt, nostalgia, even love and confusion that he felt welling up inside him as he watched his friend smiling from across the table.

But once more, he kept his guard.

"It's been a long time," he said blandly instead. Andy gestured to the waiter, an older man with an ap.r.o.n tied around his waist. "Give me a Brooklyn Lager, and a..."

"c.o.ke," w.i.l.l.y finished for him.

The waiter disappeared as Andy shook his head. "Yeah, long time. Who would've thought way back that we'd end up where we are? The Sniper and me, after all these years. Jesus. How's life in Vermont? Didn't I hear through the grapevine you got a new job?"

Now that the conversation had begun, especially along such superficial lines, w.i.l.l.y felt more comfortable biding his time about his true purpose for being here. The brief emotional flurry of a moment ago was snuffed out by the hard, cool veneer he called on so often.

"Yup. Kind of a crazy deal. It's like a statewide detective unit, except n.o.body knows about us and no local cop wants us around stealing his cases. Typical bureaucratic bulls.h.i.t."

"Sounds fancy, though."

"Till they pull the plug on it," w.i.l.l.y admitted. "We're so new, no one would notice. Things going okay with you?"

Andy made an expansive gesture, like a lord displaying his acreage. "Pretty good. Got a lot of irons in the fire. Never could resist a deal, and this town's full of 'em. Real estate around here is like trading pork bellies: it's fun and a little scary and when it pays off, it's like knocking off a bank. So, I do some of that, and I own a few businesses I don't even know what they do, and a bunch of other stuff. When we were in 'Nam and I was wrestling palletloads of condoms and s.h.i.t like that, I never figured I'd be swimming these waters. But I've gotten into it, and I can't complain. It's almost like a sport, like rock climbing or white-water canoeing or something-full of unpredictables. No day's like the last."

Their drinks came, and after that the traditional Peter Luger meal of porterhouse steak, onion and tomato salad, and creamed spinach. w.i.l.l.y didn't have to do much to keep Andy going, especially as the beers kept pace. Like most self-made social scramblers, Andy Liptak loved talking about himself, and the more he did, the more w.i.l.l.y learned, and the less he had to worry that the tables might be turned.

But the substance, and eventually the point of it all, finally became elusive. The more Andy rambled on, the less w.i.l.l.y paid attention, until he finally realized he'd been subliminally avoiding the very reason he'd contacted this man. The purpose here was Mary, as it had been when he'd arranged this reunion. But seeing Andy again, and being hit by a wall of meaningless chatter, w.i.l.l.y felt hunkered down as in a trench. He became loath to break cover by asking questions that would only speed up his revisiting the past. He had expended such effort in closing off those years, and had lost so much in his blind, enraged fumbling, it felt like leaping off a cliff merely to ask a simple leading question.

But ask it he finally did.

It wasn't out of context. Andy by now was expounding on family values and the benefits of settling down. He apparently had a wife who preferred their Long Island beach house to the city place he favored and used as an office. He was bragging about yet a third home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire-a huge, blue-blooded estate, reminiscent of the Astors summering by the sea- that he'd picked up in a roundabout way, and implying he might have a girlfriend or two on the side, when w.i.l.l.y casually asked, "Did you ever keep up with Mary after you two split up?"

That brought on a pause, and an expression touched with both sorrow and guilt. Finally, Andy chewed his lower lip briefly and leaned forward, his elbows on either side of his after-dinner coffee.

"Did Bob or anybody give you the scoop on Mary and me?" he asked.

w.i.l.l.y wasn't about to suggest they had, and he was surprised that Bob's name had cropped up. He didn't realize they knew one another, although he now remembered Bob saying Andy "sounded" like a decent guy.

"Just that you'd gone separate ways," w.i.l.l.y said.

"You didn't keep up with her?"

He shook his head. "Too many ghosts."

Andy nodded sympathetically. "I know the feeling. She told me you two had it pretty rough toward the end."

w.i.l.l.y couldn't stop himself. "What'd she say?"

"That you fought a lot, that you had a drinking problem and a lot of anger. That you kept obsessing about 'Nam. I hope this doesn't sound wrong, but she really loved you. She brought that up so much, I kinda got sick of it. That might've had something to do with why her and me didn't work out. She was still stuck on what happened between you."

w.i.l.l.y regretted having broached the subject, and tried to get back on track. "Why did you break up, though? You said that was only part of it."

Andy put on a philosophical look. "Part of it, all of it. Hard to tell, when you think back. I mean, I'm no shrink, and she had a lot of issues, probably before you ever met her, so who knows where all that c.r.a.p comes from? And I wasn't in such a great place, either-a super bad choice for her, looking back. But you know how she was: all that energy... hard to resist. And I don't resist too well anyhow."

He toyed with his coffee cup a little before adding, "I always felt weird about that, you know? Her being your ex. I hope that never p.i.s.sed you off too much."

Here, at least, w.i.l.l.y could be perfectly honest. "Never did. I thought you'd be a good match."

Andy smiled ruefully. "So did I. We might have been, if she'd gotten you out of her system. And even with that, the first two or three years were great, after she finally moved in with me." Suddenly he laughed with embarra.s.sment. "That's pretty good, huh? Turns out I was more ticked off at you than you were at me, and I was the one living with her. Boy."

After a moment's stilted silence, w.i.l.l.y asked, "How'd she get hooked?"

Andy looked pained. "Know what I said about my being a bad choice for her? That was no lie. I didn't see it coming...I guess that's nothing new. What with the divorce and living with me and her mom rejecting her, I should've known better. But I was too busy doin' deals and living hard. By then, I'd taken her for granted, too. She was just sort of there all the time."

He was having trouble forming his words. He pa.s.sed a hand across his face as if to clear it of cobwebs. w.i.l.l.y thought the beer might be having both a liberating and a fogging effect by now.

Finally, Andy sat up straight and admitted, "Look, you got good reason to punch me out for this, but I guess I got her into that s.h.i.t. I was doing a little myself then-pills and some heroin, and the booze like always. I hate to admit it, but that's what got her started. She didn't want to be left out more than she already was, and since I was doin' it anyhow, I didn't see any harm. I know it sounds bad-I mean, it is bad-but we were clueless. It was fun, felt good, the money was startin' to roll in. By the time I woke up, she was pretty far gone. Heroin's a hard habit to break."

He didn't add anything for a while, concentrating on the empty coffee cup as if it contained nitroglycerin.

w.i.l.l.y prodded him in a quiet voice. "What happened, finally?"

Andy didn't meet his eyes. "Well, we did break up, of course. Her talking about you, me b.i.t.c.hing that she was either zoned all the time or out trying to score. It got pretty ugly, and I didn't have the patience for it. I never been too good with that, either."

"You threw her out," w.i.l.l.y suggested, paying him back a little for the you-broke-her-heart refrain.

Andy looked at him then, an almost pleading expression on his face. "No. I mean, she did move out and we did have one last big fight. But I was too screwed up to be that decisive. It just sort of fell apart. I guess, though," he added after a pause, "that I didn't stop her, either. And I didn't go after her."

"How long ago was this?"

Andy rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. "Years. A few years. s.h.i.t, I don't remember."

"You ever keep up with her?"

He shook his head. "Nah. d.a.m.n, this sure doesn't look good, does it?"

w.i.l.l.y pursed his lips, thinking, it's not about you, but said instead, "When she was out trying to score, do you know who she dealt with?"

Andy was obviously confused by the question. "Who she got her stuff from?" He scratched his head. "Jesus... I don't ... she started with people I introduced her to, but after things got crazy, I put the word out to shut her down. I don't know who she used after that. It doesn't matter anyway-even my old dealers are all dead, gone, or in the joint by now. Why all the questions?"

"You heard she'd cleaned up, though, right?" w.i.l.l.y persisted, ignoring him. "You said you'd talked to Bob. You knew about my new job."

Andy squirmed in his seat. "d.a.m.n, you really are a cop, aren't you?" He smiled guiltily. "Okay, yeah. I did hear. I mean, I asked and Bob told me. I was curious, you know? You reach a certain age, you get married, settle down, begin to think back-you and me, 'Nam, Mary... I started to wonder. The stuff you did when you were young starts to mean more."

"You called Bob out of the blue?"

"I had his number from when Mary was still around. She used to call him to find out about you. p.i.s.sed me off, actually. I told her to cut it out, but I kept the number. He was surprised to hear from me-I think even a little embarra.s.sed-but he sort of gave me the condensed version of what was going on. I felt bad about putting him on the spot."

Which explained why Bob hadn't admitted to the phone call, w.i.l.l.y thought.

He noticed Andy was looking at him with a pointed seriousness all of a sudden, his drunkenness apparently evaporated.

"Enough, w.i.l.l.y. Why the third degree?"

w.i.l.l.y hesitated, pondering the value of his information and when its release could serve him best. Now seemed as good a time as any.

"She's dead. That's why I'm down here."

Andy stared at him in silence for a moment, his mouth half open, his hands tight around the coffee cup.

"Jesus," he finally murmured, barely audible amid the noise around them.

"They found her with a needle in her arm," w.i.l.l.y added for effect, wondering why, right after the words left his mouth. Andy had been helpful and straightforward, undeserving of such brutality. But by his own admission, he'd also taken a fragile woman, introduced her to drugs, and then tossed her out. Regardless of his sensitivity now, he'd been as bad as w.i.l.l.y on this score, if in a different manner, and w.i.l.l.y didn't see treating him any more lightly than he treated himself.

Andy sat back in his seat and swallowed hard. After taking a shuddering breath, he said softly, "That's pretty cold, Sniper. Just like the old days."

"I didn't introduce her to the s.h.i.t in that needle," w.i.l.l.y said.

Andy's face turned dark red. He awkwardly rose to his feet and glared down at him. "The h.e.l.l you didn't. You don't know the basket case I inherited. You f.u.c.ked with her head so good not even the heroin had any effect. s.h.i.t...I was just the poor dumb slob standing between what you did to her and where she ended up. She was like on autopilot all the way." He leaned forward, his anger climbing. "Don't you lay that s.h.i.t on me, you G.o.dd.a.m.n cripple. You don't get off the hook that easy."

He stood there breathing hard for a moment, before finally straightening and adding as he left, "The meal's on you, jerk. I hope it wipes you out."

w.i.l.l.y sat at the table for a long while afterward, almost motionless, trying to do what he'd done so well for years: batten the hatches and bottle up the turmoil.

But as he'd suspected they might even before he'd arrived in this city, certain survival techniques were beginning to fail.

Chapter 8.

Sammie Martens parked in the narrow driveway behind Joe Gunther's car and killed the engine. Gunther lived in a converted carriage house tucked behind a huge Victorian pile on one of Brattleboro's residential streets. The town was littered with such ornate buildings, in both the high-and low-rent districts-remnants of a past industrial age when New England and its dozens of sooty redbrick communities pumped their commodities into a growing, hungry, affluent society. Now the former showpiece homes of bosses and middle managers ran the gamut from private residences to run-down apartment buildings, depending on how the town's neighborhoods had settled out.

It was late, and Sammie knew she had no real reason for being here, that nothing could be gained from it, but the lights showing through Gunther's windows encouraged her nevertheless. After all, it was the nature of Joe's character, and of how he'd encouraged them all to speak freely with him, that had prompted her to come here in the first place.

She swung out of the car into the sharp evening air and closed the door softly behind her. The carriage house was small enough that it reminded her of a toy railroad model, or something designed for dolls-seemingly an odd kind of place for an old cop to live, unless you knew him.

Gunther wasn't cut from the Marine Corps model of square-jawed law enforcement, although he had that military experience in his past, including time in combat. If anything, given her aggressive style, Sammie fit that image better. Instead, Gunther could almost be fatherly: quiet, thoughtful, slow to anger or to rebuke, and unusually attentive to his people's personal dilemmas. He had periodically gone to extremes to keep w.i.l.l.y out of trouble, but he'd also watched out for Sammie's well-being over the years, as he had most of the people who'd ever worked with him.

w.i.l.l.y had groused to her occasionally that the "Old Man," in his words, was compensating for having no kids or wife, and that he should mind his own business. Sammie not only disagreed, but knew the comment had more to do with w.i.l.l.y's shortcomings than with Gunther's. Joe didn't have kids or a wife, true enough, but he had been married long ago to a woman who'd died of cancer, and was involved with another, for well over a decade now, with whom he had a devoted if quirky relationship-including not only separate residences, but also absences lasting for weeks on end when she was working at her lobbyist job up in Montpelier. Their alliance was obviously something only the two of them fully understood, but it seemed to work quite well.

Sammie could only envy them there. Her love life had been as turbulent and dreary as Joe's had been placid, and her present involvement with w.i.l.l.y hardly seemed proof of a cure.

The front door opened to her knock and Joe Gunther stood before her with a plane in his hand and wood shavings sprinkled across the front of his pants. "Hi, Sam," he said, unperturbed by the late hour. "Come on in. I was just goofing off in the shop."

He'd converted a small barn off the back of the house into a woodworking shop. It was a newfound hobby for a man who used to only read and listen to cla.s.sical music on those rare evenings he wasn't working late. Sammie found it endearing, imagining her boss as a late-blooming elf, priming his talents to make toys for Santa. Except that she also knew it was largely a front. For all his softspoken ways and seeming imperturbability, Joe Gunther was actually more of a Clydesdale: an unstoppable force who compensated for a lack of genius with a doggedness second to none. Sammie had seen him plow through adversity, pain, and personal loss with stamina and courage she could only imagine.

"You want a cup of coffee?" he asked, ushering her in.

"No. I'm okay."

He took her jacket and hung it on a nearby hook and invited her into the small living room around the corner, whose back door, standing ajar, led directly into the wood shop. He gestured to her to take a seat and, placing the plane on the coffee table between them, settled into an old armchair, scattering a few wood shavings onto the rug.

"You heard from w.i.l.l.y yet?" he asked.

"No," she admitted.

"Which is why you're here," he suggested gently.

She looked at him ruefully. "Yeah. I'm sorry to be a pain. I'm just worried."

"So am I," he admitted, which surprised and comforted her. "I even called Detective Ogden again to see if he knew anything. Which he didn't," he added in response to her hopeful expression.

"So, what're we supposed to do?" she asked.

Gunther shrugged. "There are options. Technically, he's AWOL, so we could act on that. For the moment, I've just put him on bereavement leave, which is stretching things a bit for an ex-spouse. But we're not too busy right now, and the rest of us can handle his caseload, so I don't see the harm, and I sure don't see blowing the whistle on him."

"And in the meantime, we wait?" she asked, her voice rich with impatience and frustration.

He nodded. "Yup. He's got to work this out."

Sammie slapped her leg with her hand. "Work what out? I understand he feels guilty about messing up their marriage, but that was years ago. From what he told me, she wasn't the most stable person in the world to start with, and he wasn't the one who put her on drugs. I mean, Christ knows he's no saint, but it takes two to tango. What's he doing down there?"

Gunther smiled softly. "Seeking absolution, I would guess. He's a man driven by devils. By guilt now, anger when he went to Vietnam, self-loathing when he hit the bottle. Right now, I figure he's hoping he can get himself off the hook somehow, even if he's convinced he'll never succeed. If we're lucky, he'll come home when he runs out of gas."

Sammie stared at him in silence. He laughed and held up a hand. "All right. That's a little too easy, but don't you forget how you felt about him in the old days. I'm really happy you two are together, but our w.i.l.l.y is a handful. You should remember that and protect yourself a little."

Sammie didn't answer, choosing to fix her eyes on the dark fireplace across from her.

"Right?" he repeated.

She glanced at him, slightly irritated. But she knew him well, having worked under him for more than ten years, first at the Brattleboro PD with w.i.l.l.y and then for this new outfit, and she knew he didn't say such things without reason. She swallowed her defensive first reaction and considered what he'd said. It was true that when she and w.i.l.l.y were first on Joe's detective squad, they'd fought like dogs, protecting their turf and taking swipes at each other at the slightest provocation. They laughed a little edgily about that now, when they were feeling sure of each other, but it was hard sometimes not to believe that their current affection was merely the same old pa.s.sion with a twist. w.i.l.l.y was sometimes hard to love.

That thought process finally made her nod in response to Joe's question. "I guess so. You've known him a long time. Did he ever tell you about Vietnam?"

Gunther thought awhile. "Sort of. I was able to fill in some of the blanks from my own time in combat. He did a lot of long-range recon work, deep into the enemy's back pocket. It got pretty ugly sometimes-guys making up their own rules as they went and not saying much when they got back. I know his nickname was the Sniper, if that tells you anything. I guess it described his att.i.tude as much as any specialty he had. And he wasn't alone there. The war had fallen apart, the American public was sick of it, the rest of the world thought we were the pits. The Kennedys and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had been a.s.sa.s.sinated one by one. Urban riots were the norm. You're young enough that it all looks kind of quaint and antiseptic now. But there were serious doubts we'd survive as a nation. When w.i.l.l.y went off to fight, returning vets were already being met at the airports by protesters spitting on them and calling them baby killers. Those were very tough years."

"Why did he go, then?" she asked.

"I always thought it was because he was ready to kill somebody-he just had sense enough to want to do it legally."

Sammie stared at him wide-eyed. "He told you that?"

Gunther shook his head. "No. He had a tough time growing up. I don't know all the details, but by his late teens, I guess he was a basket case. He tried the cops first. Apparently, that wasn't enough. The military suited his needs better anyway. It was a post-World War Two army, transfixed by the Great Red Menace-basically the same bunch who'd trained me earlier. They weren't the sensitive guys who let you enlist to 'Be all that You Can Be.' Back then, it was kill the gook. Simple.

"w.i.l.l.y allowed himself to be turned into the equivalent of a human knife blade, probably hoping for some sort of cathartic release. Except that it only complicated things and added to the baggage he was already carrying."