The Company She Kept (11 page)

Gail remained silent.

“Being that this is Vermont,” he forged on, “I doubt the subject will even come up, but certainly that kind of statement would mark the beginning and the end of it.” He held up a finger. “On the other hand, if you do choose to honor her memory as you're suggesting, I think we should be prepared for a national reaction that might do exactly what you're dreading.”

“Go on,” she said without inflection.

“What I'm envisioning has both good and bad aspects. People like Ellen DeGeneres will probably want to give you airtime; the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund might offer advice and funding sources for your campaign; and others will come in to help, too. On the other hand, the Rush Limbaughs, the neo-Nazis, and whoever else you can name will come out of the woodwork and do their best to turn your loving gesture into a three-ring circus.”

He kept going: “What we sometimes forget up here in our isolated woods is that on one level we're fully one-fiftieth of the entire United States. If one of our senators switches parties, like Jim Jeffords did in '01, it can cause as big a ripple as if our governor announced she was gay. People'll take notice. Keep in mind that in dozens of states across this country, you can still be legally fired if you're gay. It's a big deal, and it could completely swamp Susan's memory and your own ability to mourn her loss as you're hoping to.”

As he'd been speaking, Gail's mind had wandered inward, retracing her history with Susan, with Joe, her years in Vermont, and her sometimes tumultuous journey to this office, including the life-changing rape—most of which no one could have anticipated, and none of which had been influenced by the things Rob was mentioning.

Whether it had been privilege or self-confidence or stubbornness or fate, Gail's motivators had never revolved around what people thought of her. She'd been calculating at times, even ruthless, she conceded. She recognized moments when she'd pushed Joe beyond his own moral code, and when her ego had chosen principle over ethics. But throughout, she believed she'd never weighed or protected her own image.

Perhaps noticing her distraction, Rob shifted tack slightly. “Let's talk local for a moment. I know I said that your coming out would have little effect within Vermont, but that doesn't mean we should ignore its impact. There's still a huge number of quiet, pissed off, conservative people in this state—our own silent minority—even if they often don't vote because they think themselves outnumbered.”

“Like the ‘Take Back Vermont' conservative movement a few years ago?” Kayla Robinson suddenly asked. “Their numbers were surprisingly big.”

“Exactly,” Rob seconded her. “The liberals were amazed, as if these thousands of salt-of-the-earth people had all of a sudden sprung out of nowhere.” He waved his hand to encompass the room. “We liberals are constantly forgetting about those folks. We better not if you're dead set on making this move.”

“When I make it,” she corrected him, working to control her resentment at being lectured.

He let that one lie. “I'm talking our equivalent of the soccer moms,” he pressed. “Traditionally minded, churchgoing or God-observant women who feel threatened not just by gender-bending concepts, but even the notion of a woman being unmarried after thirty. I've heard them called ‘ballot box bigots,' although I think that's being overly judgmental, but they and their like-minded friends are a force to consider.”

“May I ask a question, Governor?” Joan Renaud asked, her expression making it clear that she really didn't want to.

Gail nodded, meeting her eyes.

“This is not a legal question. In fact, it's none of my business, but given your apparent conviction and the fact that you seem to be inviting all viewpoints, I was wondering if you were going to announce that you are lesbian or bisexual?”

Everybody stared at her, making Renaud shrug ever so slightly and stammer, “Well, it looked like now was the time to ask.”

Rob laughed self-consciously, aware of how his counsel had approached being a harangue, but not wanting it to be derailed by what he considered a side issue. “If what I'm anticipating happens, then that's the sort of question we should come to expect. Governor,” he emphasized, addressing her eye-to-eye. “Some people get outed, others get caught, still others don't care about the consequences. But you are a high-profile, fast-rising chief executive. We all work for you here, and we've been in the trenches with you. Am I wrong in assuming that you are a woman of ambition? Would you turn down an offer of political advancement? Something beyond the governorship?”

Gail still didn't respond, but her lips were now pursed.

He kept at it, nearing recklessness. “I don't think so. Your ascent has been meteoric. Another reason that the national press is circling overhead—even without hearing what you're considering—is that you've already appeared on the ‘stars to watch' lists of several publications. You'll have to live with this choice forever, 'cause everybody's going to be watching like you wouldn't believe. And with this, you will have given them license to talk about the one thing that's normally awkward to discuss, which is sex.”

At last, he stopped. The void left in his wake caused them all to look up, as if following the footsteps of someone who'd just left the room. Even Rob at that point muttered, “Sorry.”

Gail weighed her response. She was angry, and inclined to show it, as she frequently did. On one level, what she'd just been subjected to was insensitive, belittling, and deserving of rebuke. But even with her grief having reduced her to a shipwreck survivor, she recognized the need not to lose hold of the flotsam that could save her political life—regardless of how unpleasant it might appear.

With that in mind, Gail took her chief of staff off the hook, despite her tamped-down emotions struggling hard to break loose. “No sorries. I couldn't be happier that you're all with me right now. You are my people, my trusted advisers, the reason I sit at this desk. I rely on your support, but even more on your honesty, and that's all I've heard today. I trust you. Susan used to comment that I couldn't get better than what I have in you—all of you—and this is proof that she was right.”

She placed both hands flat on her desk, convinced that Susan would have been proud of her covering her emotions so well. “That being said,” she went on, “I'd like to digest it for just a little bit, if you can stand it. Rob mentioned the luxury of time. I know that the police are trying to figure out exactly what happened. That'll allow us to issue no-comments legitimately at least for a couple of days, in that we supposedly don't want to second-guess law enforcement efforts.”

As her staff began getting up and heading for the door, she concluded, “I do assure you that you'll know of my plans before the first memorial. No surprises. I promise.”

They filed out. In the awkward and voiceless shuffling of everyone's departure, Gail's last four words hung in the air like resonant notes out of chord.

 

CHAPTER NINE

Standing at the window, Joe looked across the street at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, a Second French Empire building housing the town's library and art gallery. It had always reminded him of the
My Fair Lady
set on the inside, and the Addams family's home on the outside—complete with spiral staircases, skylights, leather books, and squeaky wooden floors. There had been times when he'd traveled the hour north from his family's farm in Thetford just to sit in the gallery, enjoy its huge Bierstadt landscape of Yosemite, and feel as if he'd drifted back into the eighteen hundreds.

But not this time. Now he was on the second floor of the courthouse opposite, in the VBI's Northeast Kingdom field office, following up on the Nathan Fellows shooting. Behind him were Lester Spinney, Bev Tetreault, and Robert Whallon—the latter two teammates of Cila Lewis, who was still recovering in the hospital. The three had been assigned to collect what they could on Fellows and see if—after the fact—he fit the bill everyone was hoping he would. Joe had just arrived to be briefed.

“Political influence might still be the force they claim it is,” Les was saying. “The crime lab has come back in record time with a slew of stuff tied to Susan's death.”

Joe kept studying the view, admiring how an overnight dusting of snow had made the buildings before him look like a sentimentalized rendering of a New England long gone—at least the New England where he spent his time.

Lester continued, used to his boss's habit of staring into space when he was thinking. “In no particular order, we've got results on the rope found at the scene, the tire and shoe tracks in the snow, trace from her clothing, scrapings from under her fingernails, more trace collected from her steering wheel, brake and accelerator pedals, and off her car bumpers.” He paused, leafing through paperwork. “I've got stomach contents, blood, urine, vitreous, anal, oral, and vaginal analyses. I also have the contents of two phones and various computers. That's the majority of the scientific junk. We're still conducting interviews with friends, family, and colleagues—both Susan Raffner's and Nathan Fellows's.”

Joe finally turned to face them, sitting on the window ledge. He addressed Tetreault and Whallon, the first of whom was the bureau's sole transfer from Fish and Wildlife; the second yet another investigator poached from the state police. “Obviously, that's all going to take more people and more time to digest. For our immediate purposes, do we have anything connecting her to Fellows?”

Tetreault cleared her throat nervously. “None of it,” she announced in a small voice. “If he'd just stood his ground and talked to us, it probably would've ended as another dead-end lead.”

Joe looked at her silently, waiting.

She explained. “We compared his truck's tire treads to the wheel tracks, any rope we found to the one around her neck, all his tools for blood evidence. There wasn't a single match.”

“We also found no fingerprints on the letter,” Whallon said. “The one Parker and Perry found with Nate's return address. None at all, including Raffner's, which struck me as unusual, given how torn up and manhandled they both were. And the same was true for the DNA test they did on the envelope flap. It was an old-fashioned lick-and-stick, but there was still nuthin—like he used a sponge or something. Who does that anymore? Oh, and for what it's worth, we also compared samples of spelling and penmanship we found in the house to the note Nate supposedly wrote. Not the same. The differences were subtle but consistent. The lab suggested off the record that it looked like someone trying to copy Nate's illiterate style. Whoever did it most likely didn't even actually mail the thing, since the stamp corner was conspicuously missing—they might've just planted it in the recycle box to mislead us.”

“Fellows also carried a Buck knife at all times,” Tetreault picked back up, “according to his coworkers and what we found on his body. So you'd've thought he'd've used that on her chest, but again, there was nothing on the blade. He had lists at his house—hit or hate lists, if you want, although there's nothing labeling them that. Raffner's name appears on one of them, but only once and along with most of the legislature.” She paused before adding, “The governor gets more attention from him than Raffner does.”

“How so?” Joe wanted to know.

“Just that her name crops up more often and in more places.”

“Of course,” Whallon contributed again, “what really puts the kibosh on Nate being our doer is that we found out he has an alibi for when we think she was whacked. He was in Boston, at some kind of convention for like-minded losers. The local PD're saying that from what they found, there's no way Fellows could've slipped out on his buddies and come up here to do the nasty. Times just don't line up.”

“So why did he shoot it out with us?” Joe asked.

Tetreault answered, “I interviewed some of the people he hung with in Newport. They said he was pretty crazy. Talked nonstop about several of the more famous school shooters, and the guy who shot the congresswoman in Arizona. We found a sort of celebrity scrapbook at his place. His preference seemed to be the ones who died in a hail of bullets. He admired guys who didn't make it out alive.”

Joe gazed at the wooden floor, weighing the implications of what he'd just learned.

“We got the wrong man,” Whallon suggested during the silence.

Joe looked up. “I agree. And considering that the letter had no prints, the envelope no DNA, the handwriting was faked, and that he seems to have had a death wish, it's looking more likely Nate Fellows was set up.”

*   *   *

Gail sat with her hands in her lap, dressed somberly, looking like the other dignitaries on stage—serious but not grim, engaged but appropriately reserved. The kind of coaching she'd received from her staff echoed in her head as she suspected it did inside most of the others slated to speak.

This was the second such event held in Susan's honor, but in Gail's view, it was the big one—the Brattleboro tribute to the fallen hometown girl. Its predecessor, in Montpelier the day before, had gone without a hitch. More than a half-dozen people had addressed the crowd, including her, the lieutenant governor, the speaker of the House, the president pro tem of the Senate, and the party leaders. They'd droned on, made all the appropriate comments, slipping in the occasional note of levity at the right times, and escaped without causing a single ripple.

Including her. Gail had spoken last—of her friendship, of Susan's energy and commitment, of her wisdom and political smarts. As Gail's eyes had moved from script to audience and only rarely to her staff offstage, she'd seen universal approval among the latter, happy that her earlier admissions of love and true sexual identity had been relegated to the closet.