by Thomas Zigal
He brought her the extra glass of wine. “Peace,” he said, a conciliating toast.
They clinked glasses. “Hear hear,” she said.
In this light he could see that she was indeed older, though remarkably unchanged in all these years. Her dark eyes and long black lashes were still as enchanting, but now strands of silver laced her hair, one for every thousand. There was a small V-shaped scar just below her left ear where a bomb fragment had grooved her jawbone.
“Have you and Randy been swapping old cop tales?”
“The Big Boy wants to know what I’m doing here,” Randy said, sliding chopped vegetables into the salad bowl with the edge of her knife.
“Randy is every woman’s aspiration,” Kat smiled. “A great cook with firearms training.”
The limp he had noticed on their walk back from the bath seemed more pronounced as she escorted Kurt through the dim cabin and out to the rear deck. Summer was another month away in these mountains and the evening air had settled misty and cool over the croquet lawn, the wall of spruce trees along the creek now darkening into shadows. Kat sank down in the cushy pillows stuffed into a wicker rocking chair and propped her leg on an old Austrian milk stool. Though the bombing had taken place two years ago, it was clear that she still hadn’t recovered completely. Perhaps she never would.
“Are you comfortable?” Kurt asked. “Can I get you anything?”
“How about a hip replacement? You any good at surgery?”
He sat in a lawn chair beside her and listened to the jays screeching in the distant pines. “I was very sorry to hear about it,” he said, “especially what happened to your husband.”
She dropped her eyes. “I got your card and the flowers. What a sweet thing to do. Imagine my surprise when I saw the name Muller on the envelope,” she said. “Your mother was wonderful too. She sent a Care package of sweets and paperback romances. I got so bored in rehab I actually read a couple of them.”
“We were thinking about the beautiful letter you wrote when Bert was killed,” he said. “We never forget our old friends.”
She rested her chin on a fist. “The Pfeils and the Mullers,” she said wistfully. “We had it all. So what happened to the dream?”
He wondered where her brother, Jake, was now. Mexico, Colombia, Tahiti—still running from federal prosecutors for drug smuggling and murder. Some people even blamed Jake for Bert’s death. He hadn’t pushed Kurt’s brother off Maroon Bells, but Kurt knew Jake’s hand was somewhere close behind Bert’s tragic dissipation and that final despairing plunge.
“It was a pretty fragile dream from the start,” Kurt said. “And then the accountants and lawyers took over.”
They sat in silence, mulling over their losses. Her parents were both dead, her husband. Kurt’s father and brother. He could remember sunnier days out here on the deck, Rudi Pfeil’s barbecue chicken and their elaborate summer picnics. An unspoken bond between privileged people who believed that the laughter would never vanish.
“This morning I was about twenty yards short of the morgue myself, Kat,” he said, “when that explosion killed Ned Carr.”
Her face grew somber. “My god,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t like the way things are adding up,” he said. “Nobody in Aspen was happy about Ned bulldozing through a wilderness area to cut his road. I imagine you weren’t too keen on it yourself, which is why you and Miles went out there to blowtorch Ned’s grader.” He sipped wine and studied her face in the evaporating light. “I want you to tell me you didn’t take it one step farther, Kat.”
She tapped the wineglass impatiently with her nails. “You want to know if that crazy bomb-throwing bitch has gone after another old earth raper,” she said. “Is that what you’re asking, Kurt?”
“I’m a cop now, Kat. It’s my job to ask what you know about it—if maybe you’ve heard that somebody in the local green movement was pissed enough to take Ned out.”
She stared coldly into his eyes. “You’ve turned out to be quite a prick, Sheriff Kurt,” she said. “I think this visit is over. It’s time for you to leave.” She used both hands to lift her stiff leg from the milk stool and set her foot down on the redwood deck. “Or did you plan to wait around by my window until I’m undressed again?”
Heat bristled his face and he could feel himself glowing with embarrassment. He knew he deserved that. “The last thing I wanted was for us to get in a fight,” he said.
“You should have thought about that before you accused me of murder. Or asked me to rat out my friends.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Kat. But I have to find out what happened in that mine so that someday, when Ned’s grandson is old enough to look me in the eye and ask how his grandpa died, I can tell him something we can both live with.”
She stood up awkwardly, testing the weight on her leg. “I wish you the best of luck in your noble endeavor,” she said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going inside to help Randy. You know the way out.”
He put his wine aside and rose to his feet. He wasn’t going to let her off this easy. “Would you like me to unload the caltrops and rebar spikes before I go?” he said. “I’ve got your stash in the back of my Jeep.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I liberated that box of night tools from Miles,” he said sarcastically. “The stuff he’s been storing for you in his bunker. If you want it back, give me a call sometime. I’m in the phone book.”
He turned to leave but she grabbed his arm and spun him around, an impressive move for a lean woman with a bad leg.
“I have never made a bomb in my life, Kurt Muller,” she said, her fingers digging into his bicep. “My husband and I gave up monkey-wrenching a good two years before the bombing. We even held a news conference to renounce tree spiking and make a public declaration of nonviolence,” she said, suddenly overcome with emotion, “but the media never bothered to run it because the story wasn’t fucking sexy enough for the six o’clock news.”
He understood her frustration. For eleven years and counting he had had his own problems with the media.
“If you’ve given it up, Kat, why did you try to sabotage Ned’s road grader?”
She released his arm with a shove. “I went along for the ride,” she said, raking hair out of her eyes. “I thought I could talk Miles out of it.” She shook her head, puzzled. “I didn’t know he still had that box. I gave it to him for safekeeping about ten years ago, long before I met Michael.” Her late husband. “I was worried about an FBI raid on this cabin.”
He wanted to put aside all of this animosity and hug her the way he’d hugged her on Hyman Avenue the last time they’d seen each other. Two old friends spinning round and round in the street. “Why did you come back?” he asked her, something hurried and impatient in the inflection, a hint of his disappointment that she hadn’t written or contacted him in twenty years.
The darkness was falling quickly and he could scarcely read the expression on her face. “A little R and R in the woods is good for the soul,” she said. “You ought to try it sometime.”
He smiled. An entire year of R & R hadn’t made his sleepless nights any shorter. “Does anybody know you’re out here?” he asked. He didn’t want Tyler Rutledge to find out where she was staying.
“Nobody around here. I would appreciate it if you’d keep it confidential.”
“You can trust me, Kat. You know that.”
They stared at each other in silence while the first evening stars appeared above the valley curtain. This had not gone well.
“If you need police assistance for any reason,” he said, “give me a call.”
“I appreciate the thought,” she said woodenly. “But Randy and I are used to taking care of ourselves.”
Bouncing back down the rugged four-wheel Jeep track, he was angry with himself for being so clumsy and mindless and unprofessional, for failing to uncover any useful information during their
discussion. Bright headlights torched into view about thirty yards ahead, a vehicle approaching at reckless speed. Kurt honked his horn and pulled over against the trees, giving the fool room enough to pass. “Idiot!” he yelled as the muddy Land-Rover gunned past him, swirling up clouds of dust into the open Jeep. Spitting a mouthful of grit, he caught a glimpse of the driver lighting a cigarette, tossing the match out the window at him. Miles Cunningham on his way to visit an old friend.
Chapter eleven
Meg had separated the two boys after their scuffle and sent them to different parts of the house. “Would you please talk to your son?” she said when Kurt came in. “He’s gotten very territorial.”
Kurt rapped lightly on the closed bedroom door. “Hey, buddy,” he said, “how are you doing in there? Can I come visit?” Hanging from the doorknob was a KEEP OUT, VARMINTS sign with Yosemite Sam brandishing cartoon six-guns.
Lennon was playing quietly on the floor with a motley brigade of plastic, detachable-limbed superheroes, leading them in battle against one another. He paid little notice to his father now sitting cross-legged on the carpet beside him.
“Did you have supper?” Kurt asked.
“Mom tried to poison us,” Lennon said without looking up from the two warriors clashing in mortal combat on a shoe-box lid.
“Give her a chance,” Kurt said. “Her food’s a lot healthier for you than mine. I’m going to borrow some of her recipes.”
“Guuuhhh,” the boy said.
Kurt rested his back against the bunk bed and watched his son play. His headache had finally gone but he still felt beat up and tired. “Mom says you and Hunter were fussing at each other,” he said, running his hand affectionately through his son’s silky hair.
“I don’t think Hunter is going to make a very good brother,” Lennon said, humming now, rearranging warrior positions. “He doesn’t know how to take care of toys.”
“Well, sweetie, he doesn’t have very many of his own,” Kurt said. “I suppose he needs to learn proper toy maintenance. Maybe you’ll just have to show him.”
He couldn’t imagine Ned buying any of the crap that parents were forced to buy for their kids. The old man hadn’t had the money or the inclination. The Carrs didn’t even own a television.
“He was smashing my rain stick against the wall,” Lennon explained. The rain stick was a long slender gourd from Chile that made a gentle rain sound whenever you twirled it, a thousand tiny pebbles hissing down a stairway of needles. “He started jumping on my bed in his dirty shoes.”
“Hmm.”
Lennon required a tidy world. He was an only child used to order and tranquility.
“We’ll have to teach him the house rules,” Kurt said. “But let’s not forget that he’s our guest right now, and that guests get extra special attention in the Muller home.”
“Yeah, right,” the boy said cynically. “If we don’t watch him, he’s going to mess up the whole place.”
“I don’t understand this, Lennon. This afternoon you were very excited about him coming to live with us.”
“That was before he tried to smash my rain stick.”
Kurt wrapped his arms around his son and gave him a rough squeeze, rocking him back and forth, and Lennon’s small hand reached up to pat Kurt on the ear. He turned his head and kissed his father’s chin.
“I think Hunter’s going to be with us for a while,” Kurt said. At least until Kurt could meet with Corky Marcus, Ned’s lawyer, and find out what legal provisions he had established for the child. “Let’s not forget he lost his grandpa today, okay? That’s got to be the worst feeling in the whole world. He needs us to be his family now. We can’t let him down.”
Lennon’s forehead wrinkled in deep thought. “Okay, Dad,” he said at last. “I’ll give him another chance.”
Kurt left the boy to his game and went to the kitchen, where Meg was preparing him a plate of salad, chick peas, and ratatouille. “I’m sorry there’s no candlelight and Cat Stevens,” she said, offering a tired smile. Copper-colored tails of hair curled with perspiration on her long neck. “I’ve got to run them a bath. Hunter smells like a goat.”
“This is delicious,” he said, forking food into his mouth. “Thanks for going to all the trouble.”
“No trouble at all. Would you like me to spend the night?”
Instantly she realized how ambiguous it had sounded and blushed deeply, averting her eyes. “The boys—”
“There’s nothing more appealing,” he teased, “than a woman who can cook like this and is willing to stay all night.”
She glanced up at him through a wave of hair that had fallen in her eyes. “I know how the couch works,” she said dryly. “I’ve had lots of experience, if you’ll recall.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I thought I was the one who always took the couch.”
Perspiration beaded her top lip. She fluffed her shirt, fanning herself. “I’m very happy we didn’t have twins, Kurt,” she said with the hint of a smile.
“You’re out of training, Peaches.”
“Huh! Excuse me while I go run the bathwater, Colonel.” She mock-saluted. “Hunter’s out on the deck looking at the stars. I’m sure he could use some company.”
Kurt made a quick phone call to locate Muffin Brown and, receiver at his ear, opened the French doors onto the dark deck. The temperature had dropped to forty-five degrees and the crickets had surrendered their night music to seek deeper shelter. Hunter was sitting on a bench by the hot tub, gazing upward at the crystalline constellations, his legs drawn tightly against his chest. The sight of this small motherless boy alone in the dark formed a hard lump in Kurt’s throat.
“How did it go with Tyler?” he asked Muffin when she finally picked up her line. She was still at the office, clearing out paperwork.
“Pretty much a wash. He agreed to go up to the Ajax with two of the deputies and then managed to disappear on them.”
Kurt sighed. “That little jerk.”
“Got a strange phone call from Dan the Man Davenport a little while ago.”
Dan Davenport was the sheriff of Garfield County, a serious, mustachioed lawman who had deputied under Kurt for four years before moving downvalley and running for office in a place more suited to his saddle-horn style. They were on good terms, mentor and student. A couple of years ago Kurt had helped him track down two drifters who had robbed and pistol-whipped a convenience store clerk in Carbondale.
“Something about an exploding Dumpster. He wanted to talk to you.”
“Hmm. I’ll give him a call,” Kurt said. But not anytime soon. “Is our man in from Denver?”
“I’m leaving in a half hour to pick him up at the airport.”
“I’ll check back with you in the morning after I pay a visit to Lee Lamar,” he said. Leighton F. Lamar III was the president of the Roaring Fork Ski Corporation and its majority stockholder. “I don’t expect to learn much, but I figure somebody’s got to talk to him about Ned. I’d like to know what kind of lease agreement the Skicorp had with the old man.”
“Give my fond regards to Leighton F.,” Muffin said. “Good luck getting past the hair spray.”
Kurt picked up Hunter’s padded jacket and walked out on the deck he and his brother had added to the house in the late ’70s, when their mother still lived here. “Evening, Hunter,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”
“Hi, Coach,” Hunter said, his voice theatrically glum. He had been their leading scorer on the indoor soccer team Kurt had coached this past winter. An agile kid, smart on his feet, tireless. Lennon had played, too, but was less interested in kicking a ball than in wearing a cool uniform and drinking Squeezits after the games.
“It’s pretty cold out here,” Kurt said, bundling the jacket around Hunter’s shoulders.
“It’s okay, I’m used to it,” the boy said.
Kurt straddled the bench and pulled Hunter into his lap. “How are you doing, champ? Everything okay?” he asked, enclosing the ch
ild in his arms. He was noticeably heavier than Lennon, a wild musky smell to his thick brown hair.
“Lennon’s mad at me,” he said. “He doesn’t want me to live here.”
Kurt gave him an affectionate squeeze. “He was upset about his toys getting broken,” he said. “Sometimes friends have a misunderstanding over something. They fuss at each other and then make up. I’ll bet he’s already forgotten about it and if you walked back to his room right now he’d be happy to see you.”
“He’s got too many rules.”
An unfettered boy, his backyard Queens Gulch and the Snowmass Wilderness, where only the laws of nature applied. No fences, no signs, nothing but you and the Big Outside. Live free or die.
“Even soccer’s got rules,” Kurt reminded him. “We don’t have very many in our house, only a few for damage control. But let’s not worry about rules tonight, okay?”
“Okay, Coach.”
They watched the stars together in silence, that vast dark mystery of winking lights so sharply real at 8,000 feet, the Milky Way as stark and awesome from this cold perch as it was from few other places on earth. Kurt remembered lying on his barracks roof as a young soldier in Germany, homesick for the breathtaking clarity of this mountain sky.
“It’s time for us to go back inside,” he said. “Lennon’s mom is running a bath for you guys.”
The boy’s breathing had become deep and somnolent, and Kurt wondered if he was falling asleep.
“I don’t think I can stay here tonight,” he said in a small sad voice.
“Why not, champ? Lennon’s not angry anymore.”
“I can’t sleep without Sneak.”
“Sneak? Is he your special friend?” Lennon had one, too, a stuffed white monkey named Jerry.
“Sneak the Snake. My pet garter.”
“You sleep with a garter snake?” Kurt was relieved it wasn’t a copperhead.
“No, silly,” Hunter giggled. “He’s in a terrarium.”
“I’ll go pick him up tomorrow.”