Occam's Razor (36 page)

“Give you a lift back?” I offered again.

I could barely hear his voice, it was so low. “I’ll walk.”

· · ·

I was watching TV when Gail got in that night, not too late. I heard her dump her briefcase in the kitchen, as usual, and kick off her shoes in exchange for the slippers she kept by the back door.

“Hot water’s on,” I shouted and heard her preparing one of the curious-smelling concoctions she called tea.

A few minutes later, she entered the living room balancing a steaming mug and a plate of cookies on a tray. I cleared the coffee table in front of the couch.

“My kind of hors d’oeuvres,” I said, grabbing one of the chocolate chips. “How was your day?”

“Pretty good,” she said noncommittally. “What’re you watching?”

I hit the mute button and reduced two people to reading lips over a greasy pan and a dishwasher. “The news. Just finished. I was trying to make up my mind to either veg out or make some dinner. I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

She laid her head back against the cushions. “I know. And I have a pizza being delivered. So you’re off the hook. What did the news say?”

“Hot topic’s our esteemed speaker, Mark Mullen, who’s doing what everyone thought he would. Now that the Reynolds Bill is in his hands—which he never refers to by name—there’s a whole bunch of hemming and hawing going on. The clip they showed had him touting the virtues of all us heroes in blue, and how the worst thing we can do to this precious resource we call Vermont is to overreact to an admittedly egregious situation, et cetera, et cetera. I smell some wicked deal-making in the air.”

Gail sipped her tea. “There will be that. He has to pay lip service to the popular support that came out of those town meetings, while he replaces Reynolds’s name with his own as the author of a solution.” She sighed. “Pretty predictable. Even if he weren’t competing with Reynolds for governor, he’d still be inclined to gut the bill and start over. It’s his nature. He’s been in the House for more years than anyone can remember, cutting deals, bringing opposites together, making or breaking friends and enemies—and in the process completely forgetting that sometimes you don’t need to do all that crap. Sometimes a situation is so simple and obvious that it’s worth your while not to mess with it.”

“Occam’s Razor,” I muttered, remembering Reynolds’s words in a different context.

“Exactly. But it ain’t going to happen, ’cause even if it weren’t his nature, Mullen
does
want the governorship. The point’s moot.”

“So what’s he going to do?” I asked.

She munched on a cookie. “He can’t bury it in committee or kill it legislatively. It’s too popular. Somehow or other, he’s got to make it his own. How is beyond me. He’s been putting in some late hours with his cronies, though. How did it go with Walter Freund?”

“I think we shook him. He associated DNA with semen only, and maybe blood. I let slip at the end that it works with tissue also, and that we had a sample from under Brenda’s nail. When I left him, he was looking like he wanted to throw up. I also described the kind of knife we found in his bag as the murder weapon. That caught his interest.”

“Good,” she said as the doorbell rang.

We rose to take in the pizza, pour drinks, break out a bag of chips, and bring everything back to the living room, which was still being entertained by a silent television set.

“Things back to normal between you and Jack?” I asked before taking a large bite.

“Pretty much.”

“Is something up?” I asked with my mouth full, struck by her distracted tone.

She hadn’t begun eating yet and now looked at me squarely, as if bracing for a shock. “I got a job offer today—from Vermont StayGreen. They want me as part of their legal counsel.”

My chewing slowed down. Vermont StayGreen was the state’s biggest environmental group. A powerful combination of gatekeeper and lobbyist organization, it appealed to all sorts of nature lovers, from those wandering the hills with sandals and a guidebook to the more combative, who liked bringing the battle to the Legislature’s door. They published books, periodicals, and pamphlets, organized grass-roots campaigns against everything from gas pipelines and condo developments to snowmaking ponds and nuclear energy—and, to be fair, in support of forest management, nature trails, municipal conservation projects, and a raft of other things—and had political and financial connections as far-flung and diverse as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Given Vermont’s cuddly image in the national consciousness, they had no trouble attracting a steady stream of backers.

They were, despite their detractors, a major political force in the state.

They were also headquartered in Montpelier.

I swallowed what I had in my mouth half-eaten, sensing at last that all the issues Gail and I had been circling lately were about to be addressed, if in an unexpected way. “That’s quite an offer. What’s it entail?”

“Be part of their legal staff. Maybe do some lobbying. A lot of travel.” She smiled halfheartedly. “Not to the Grand Canyon or anything. More like Washington and New York and places like that. Still, it’s a pretty big deal.”

I wiped my fingers on a napkin and sat back, my appetite gone. “You must be feeling on top of the world.”

“It is flattering. I didn’t commit myself one way or the other, though. There’re a lot of things to consider.”

There was an awkward silence. The people on the screen yammered soundlessly on, looking like the chorus of voices in my brain—and just as effective.

“The timing’s not bad,” Gail said. “I mean, not overall. I have to see this case through, of course. I did tell them that, and they said they’d taken that for granted. But I can’t deny, the SA job hasn’t worked out the way I’d hoped.”

“Maybe you should run against Derby,” I suggested lamely, irritated with myself that now that the moment had come, I didn’t know what to say. While she was talking about a job, I kept thinking of us, although I knew that with time, we’d end up on the same page.

She laughed politely and played out the game. “Yeah, right. No—he’s a little frazzled right now, but only because he’s nervous about being reelected. He’s so much better than Dunn was, it isn’t funny, but he’s the last to realize it. He’ll win in a landslide, and things’ll settle down. I bet in the long run he’ll become one of the best SAs this state’s ever had.”

She thought a moment before adding, “He’s not the problem—it’s me. I think I got into this line of work for the wrong reasons. I’m not designed for it—all the God-like manipulations. It bothers me to cut a deal to avoid the cost of a trial, or to dismiss one person’s crime so we can go after someone else. I understand the rationale behind it. But it doesn’t feel right. And I’m not sure it does anything for the victims.

“And there’s a glee to it that bothers me, too,” she continued, making me realize how heavy a burden she’d been carrying all this time. “We talk about nailing people or hanging them out to dry, like they were rabid animals. It reminded me of why I stopped coming to police department picnics years ago—I hated hearing the people you work with reducing the world to scumbags and losers and bringing down bad guys. It sounded like a bunch of nasty kids playing with lethal toys. Part of the reason I became a prosecutor was that I thought I’d be standing above all that, helping put things back on an even keel by looking at them in a compassionate, measured way.”

She stopped to smile, presumably embarrassed by her own naïveté.

I couldn’t argue against her. I’d never heard any prosecutor speak with that kind of idealism. In fact, it was usually disparaged as missing the whole point of the job.

“Not very practical,” she concluded, as if reading my thoughts. “Derby’s made that pretty clear. I’m sure he kicks himself nightly for hiring me.”

“I doubt it,” I said supportively. “He probably sees the same potential in you that you see in him.”

She stared out the window without comment.

“Are you going to take StayGreen’s offer?” I asked.

“It’s probably the right thing to do,” she conceded. “It’s taken me a long time to get my feet back under me. I know going to law school and joining the SA’s office were mostly in reaction to the rape. I wanted to get even, I wanted to stop hurting, to become sane again. I even wanted to do something that would bring me closer to you—to what you did. I was feeling so disconnected from the world around me.”

She looked at me again. “But that’s been changing. I’ve begun to care again about the things that interested me before—politics, the environment, people’s welfare—and it’s made me feel a little trapped by some of the decisions I made to survive in the short run.”

We were at that watershed point again, but now I finally understood what had brought her there. “Like our living together.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, and as I said it, I took her hand in mine. “To be honest, it was always a little weird having you in the SA’s office, knowing you like I do. It was fun talking shop, and I was incredibly proud of everything you did. But deep inside, I kept asking myself why you were doing it—and when it might wear off. Just like this arrangement.” I waved my other hand toward the ceiling.

She sat there, seemingly unable to speak.

“It’s been a healing process for both of us,” I continued, feeling strangely at ease, “and with this StayGreen offer, it just brings us back full circle—the hippie and the cop. The Velveeta-man and the granola-head. The couple nobody can cook for, or explain to their friends. Let’s face it, we’ve been working against nature lately—way too conventional.”

She laughed, if only feebly. “God, it feels good to get it out.”

I kissed the side of her head, the smell of her hair so familiar.

“You know,” she said, snuggling closer, “if I do take this job, it would probably mean spending most of my time in Montpelier, at least to begin with. I asked them about working from down here later, what with computers and all. They said that would be fine when the Legislature’s out—like having a branch office.”

She tilted her head back to look at me. “A while ago, you said that the reason we worked so well together was that we gave each other lots of space. You want to try turning the clock back a little—live apart like we used to, and see if we can’t sort this out? I want this new job to be a
part
of making life normal again—but I want us there, too.”

I hesitated, wondering how much we should tackle at one time.

But she seemed so much like her old self again. “Since we’re laying our cards on the table, I gotta admit, I have sort of missed having a place of my own.”

She gave me a long kiss and then said, “I know. And I know this house was never really a home for you. But I’m going to hang on to it. Maybe you’ll like it better as a place to visit.”

I let out a long, bottled-up sigh, stretched out on the couch alongside her, and hit the off button on the TV remote, plunging the room into darkness.

The pizza would taste just as good cold.

THE GOOD NEWS WAS THAT BOTH THE MEDICAL EXAMINER
and the crime lab eventually confirmed that everything we’d sent them connected Walter Freund to the death of Brenda Croteau. His DNA matched the tissue under her fingernail, minute traces of oilstone grit were identical to those found on his Bowie knife—and made matching the various wounds to the two knives that much easier—and the soiled clothes had been stained by Brenda’s blood.

The bad news was that Walter Freund had disappeared, influenced, no doubt, by my all-too-clever conversation with him.

A general be-on-the-lookout order was issued throughout the country and entered into the NCIC computer, and Freund’s background was analyzed for leads on his whereabouts. But no one I knew was holding their breath. We knew Walter would resurface in the long run—people with his habits always did—but we also knew our efforts would have little to do with it. Sooner or later, he’d rob a store, beat up a girlfriend, buy some dope from an undercover cop, or even run a red light, and he’d be back among us.

None of which made me feel any better.

At least as far as Gail was concerned, things improved immeasurably. She and Reggie McNeil worked out a proposal lessening his client’s charges at Walter’s expense—pending Owen’s full explanation of his role in Brenda’s death—and Derby was forced to admit that, Walter’s disappearance notwithstanding, this deal made him look a whole lot better than if he had crucified Owen and never given Freund a second’s thought.

Which was just as well, since when Stanley Katz broke the news of the deal prematurely, Jack Derby was able to claim almost full credit. And at this point, with her future discreetly in her pocket and the two of us back on track, Gail couldn’t have cared less.

Unfortunately, the hinge pin for success was Owen Tharp, and nobody knew if he’d play along.

Gail and I drove up to the Woodstock correctional facility in early April to meet with Reggie and Owen and see if he’d help decide his own fate. Reggie had been spending weeks with him, revealing the evidence against Walter and telling him how Walter had manipulated him into sacrificing himself—trying, with time and effort, to wean Owen from his loyalty to the man who had killed his girlfriend and ruined his life. But according to Reggie, it had not been easy going.

The room we met in was bland, bare, windowless, and small, adorned with a single table and a few chairs, two of which were already occupied by Reggie and Owen when we were ushered in.

It was odd meeting Owen after all this time. The first and last time I’d seen him was in the middle of a snowstorm when we’d all been dying of hypothermia. Despite his importance in my life since then, he’d almost become an abstraction. Watching him sitting there now—pale, thin, and nervous—helped reduce all our machinations to a pathetically human level.

Introductions were made all around. No one bothered shaking hands. Owen didn’t look like he had the energy for it anyhow.

Gail placed a tape recorder on the table and depressed the record button, raising her eyebrows at Reggie. He shrugged his agreement without comment.