Archer Mayor - St. Albans Fire

“I know there was an accident. That Bobby died when he shouldn’t have. That was nobody’s intention.”

“I killed John Gregory, too.”

He wished she hadn’t said that. The finality of it worried him. “I’m not so sure that was all your fault, either,” he told her.

“I killed him with a baling hook. The one your people took.”

He nodded, unsure if she was watching him. “True, but that doesn’t have to mean much-there were mitigating circumstances. Life isn’t as black and white as you’re painting it, Linda. It’s not that simple.”

“Simple?” she burst out.

He pretended to laugh. “Yeah. I know what you mean. But that’s the beauty of the law. It takes things like that into account. Plus, you’ve got your dreams, your ambitions. Reasons to keep going regardless of what any lawyers might say.”

“All gone.”

“Your kids… Jeff.”

“They might as well be gone, too.”

He continued staring out at the vastness before him, stretched like a black sheet punctured with hundreds of tiny, light-leaking holes. Personally, her finality struck Joe like an all-too-familiar chord-Gino’s decision to die at the hands of strangers, Marie choosing the legacy of a dead father over her own family’s happiness, John Gregory killed because of his own greed, and Peggy dead because of loyalty.

Which thoughts, as they so often did, brought him back to his own life’s watershed moment. “I had a wife once, long ago. I loved her like I never loved anyone. I thought losing her would kill me, too.”

Linda remained silent.

As did Joe. He was no longer just negotiating with her, he realized. This last admission made that clear. For while it was true that losing Ellen to cancer had knocked his legs out from under him, it had done more permanent damage than he’d ever comfortably acknowledged. It had killed a vital response deep inside him, stunting his ability to love with abandon forever after. It occurred to him now, with sudden conviction, that Gail’s increasing estrangement, while fueled by her own ambitions and fears, had also been abetted by his own reluctance-inability, really-to fight for their continuing union.

It was an admission of his own form of cancer-emotional in his case-that he’d been staving off for most of a lifetime.

He pressed his hand against his forehead, overwhelmed by the feelings this released in him, and murmured, “God almighty.”

“What?” Linda asked.

He turned to her, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be talking you out of doing something foolish, and instead, I’m thinking about myself.”

“Your wife?” she asked, surprised to not be the topic of conversation.

“Her-and the woman in my life now. Things aren’t going too well with us. They say life never turns out the way you expect, but they make it sound like it’s all because of outside forces. That we have nothing to do with it, like it’s preordained.”

“You said your wife died,” she argued. “You didn’t make that happen, did you?”

“No. She got sick.”

“Then you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“And you had everything to do with Bobby dying?” he countered, bringing the conversation back around.

“I hired the guy who burned the barn.”

“Why?”

“Christ,” she let out, her reticence falling away. “Count the reasons: being buried in debt and cow shit, having a crazy mother and a henpecked father and a husband whose head is so deep in the sand, he wouldn’t recognize daylight if it hit him in the face. You talk about my kids. What the hell do they have to look forward to?”

“What you set in motion,” he tried to explain, “you were doing for everyone’s sake. Except that Bobby died by accident and screwed everything up.” Joe turned toward her suddenly, as if struck by a revelation. “Don’t you see what that tells you? If you’d been coldhearted and selfish, thinking only of yourself, you would have kept going-collected the money, sold the farm, rebuilt a life. But you didn’t. You loved Bobby. You love them all. You’re a good person, Linda,” he stressed, ignoring the patent absurdity of the assertion in the hopes that, this time, at least, he might prevent another death.

“This accident,” he continued, “this horrible miscalculation-it meant nothing to John Gregory or to the arsonist. They took it in stride. But to you, who had everything to gain by having the same attitude, it stopped you cold. You couldn’t go on. You had to set things right and balance the books. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that why you’re here with that gun?”

She took a while before conceding, “I guess.”

“Well, then,” he said, working with that small opening, “that’s it. You’ve got one last thing to do, and you’re done.”

“What?” she asked, startled and clearly confused.

“Get it all out. Tell them what happened-everything.”

He could hear the scowl in her voice. “That’ll make a good impression.”

“What kind of impression do you think you’ll leave by blowing your brains out?” he asked, challenging her. “What’ll Jeff and the kids be left with then? Gossip and rumors generated by people who’ll have no clue what really happened. You think you’ve messed things up now. Take a wild guess how they’ll turn out after you’re gone.”

“I’ll be in jail. How’ll that be any good?”

“It’ll show you held yourself responsible. Your grandfather drank himself to death. Look what that did to your mother. You want the same thing to happen to the people in your life? Cindy and Mike? Or are you going to own up to your mistakes and show them how it’s done?”

She didn’t respond. The silence stretched out between them for a long time.

He spoke one more time, very quietly. “You made a mess of things, Linda. I’m not saying otherwise. It’s your choice whether that stops now and you own up, or you end your life and cripple your children.”

After another half minute of not saying a word, she finally shook her right hand free of the blanket’s folds and laid a large handgun on the ground between them. He could see in the half-light that it was fully cocked.

“Okay,” she said, her resignation clear.

That sense of defeat, so at odds with the tone of his sales pitch, left him wondering what favor he might in fact have done them all.

Joe pulled up to Gail’s condo around midnight, not surprised to find people still milling about and all the lights on inside. Fatal shootings in Vermont were not the routine they were in large urban areas. Even the experienced cops here took extra time to get it right.

He cut the engine and swung his legs out tiredly onto the driveway, pausing to watch a crime scene tech in the distance set up a photograph that included both the pool of blood and a ruler he clearly didn’t want dirtied.

“Anything wrong, sir?”

Joe glanced to his immediate right, where a uniformed Montpelier patrolman was standing in the shadows.

“No-been a long day,” he told him. “The senator inside?”

“Yes, sir.”

Joe rose to his feet and watched the photographer a moment longer, all the while thinking of both the conversation ahead and the one he’d just left behind. He recalled the first time he’d set eyes on Linda Padgett and how her youthful beauty had so struck him. Now she, in a living parody of Peggy DeAngelis, was done with a life she’d barely begun to taste.

“The choices we make,” he murmured.

“Yes, sir,” came the voice from the darkness.

He smiled and shook his head, making a mental note to stop thinking out loud.

He didn’t use the entry code on the condo’s front door lock, but rang the bell instead.

Gail opened up a minute later. She was pale and exhausted. She also looked resolved.