Smugglers Notch Read online

  “No, nothing special,” she heard him say, and not even a wink in her direction. “Why, what’s doing?”

  Her nerves were jangling. She craved a joint, but was in no condition to roll one. She turned her back—his favorite love-making technique, wasn’t it?—and listened. This had better be good, she thought. This had better be a major catastrophe for the whole village of Stowe, or sure as hell it was going to be one for Larry St. Germain. Press her, and she would admit that she was jealous—of his job, of the immediacy she never seemed quite capable of inspiring in him. Not even the baby, her baby, would fill that corner of her emptiness. She switched on the lamp, but quickly turned it off. Excitement had entered his voice; she didn’t want to have to see it on his face.

  He put back the phone and reached for her. Screw you, she wanted to say, if you think I’m like a book you can put down and go back to where you left off. She shrugged off his hand and rolled to the edge of the mattress. Looking up at the clock, she saw it was close to eleven. Soon he would be heading out the door in that ridiculous uniform, leaving her to dangle so that she’d be lucky to be asleep before three. “Oh, crap,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Ann, you sore?”

  “Sore?” she said. “Not at all. Actually, soreness would be nice for a change, a little exuberance on your part. Neglected, ignored, frustrated, that’s how I feel. But sore, Larry—”

  He didn’t interrupt. Not really listening, he was using the time to marshal his facts. He put his hand out to her again, and she ducked under it and sat up against the headboard. “What did they want this time?” she asked.

  “They?” He sounded surprised. This was not the question he had anticipated.

  “The hospital. What’s so important they had to call at such an hour?”

  “It wasn’t the hospital.”

  Great, she thought, just great. Soon she would be sharing him with the rest of the known world. “Who was it, then?”

  “John.”

  She hesitated. Damn, but she needed that joint. “John Marlow?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When he hasn’t had the decency to look you up once to find out how you’re doing?” She was furious, really getting into it now that she had an outlet for her hurt. “What’s eating him? Don’t tell me it’s his conscience.”

  “He called to …” St. Germain cupped her breast to gauge her response to what he was going to say. “He wanted to let me know Paul Conklin busted out of prison tonight.”

  The gentle tapping in his hand accelerated into something violent.

  “He … how could that have happened?” Relenting, she turned toward him. “They put him away in maximum security and threw away the key.”

  “He must’ve found it,” St. Germain said, not smiling. “John says he got into the prison chapel that’s been sealed off for a good quarter-century. From there he just had to saw some bars, run around a roof, and climb down the wall.”

  “I thought that sort of thing went out with George Raft movies.”

  “Evidently so did the prison administration. After they were discovered missing—”

  “They?”

  St. Germain nodded. “Four, all told. But the others are angels compared to Conklin.” He reached over the side of the bed and pulled a quilt over their hips. “After they were found missing from their cells, the warden wasted hours searching the prison on the assumption they were still inside. When they didn’t turn up, he requested state police with tracking dogs and a helicopter to shine its light in the yard. Even called in the Shaftsbury fire department. Had their pumper train floodlights on the wall till he got word a clerk had been kidnapped from a convenience store in Bennington and was spotted with some men in a dusty blue van.”

  Annie shuddered and tugged the quilt under her chin. “That doesn’t explain why John called. He wants you to join the manhunt, doesn’t he? Because you know Conklin as well as you do?”

  St. Germain put his arm out and she pulled it around her, slid closer to him. “Just the opposite. He was thinking I’d hide under the bed if I heard about it on the news. He wanted me to understand I have nothing to worry about, that Conklin and his band of merry men are headed for the Massachusetts line and are odds-on favorites to be back in prison for morning count.”

  “You almost sound disappointed.”

  “Why should I give a damn where they are?” he said louder than he meant to. “It’s not my job anymore.”

  “I’m glad,” she said. “That awful boy … it’s hard for me to think of him as just a boy after what he did, but … he still gives me the creeps. He isn’t normal.”

  “I should hope not.” St. Germain laughed halfheartedly. “Sorry, Ann, but I can’t see what John’s making a fuss about. Southern Vermont Correctional is a hundred and fifty miles away. The last place Conklin needs to show his face is Cabot County, where no one’s forgotten him or what he’s done.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course I am,” he said.

  “Then why do you look as relaxed as I feel? That call bothered you, didn’t it?”

  St. Germain put a leg across hers, kissed her. He reached for the receiver again and took it off the hook. “Now where were we?” he said.

  “Didn’t it?”

  He drew away, hovering over her. “I thought by now John’s opinion of me would have started to change. But as far as he’s concerned I’ll always be something used up and soiled.”

  “Why must you care what he thinks?”

  “Because I …” The answer, so simple until he had to articulate it, eluded him. “I do, though.”

  “And it’s not only him. Why do you look to others to measure the kind of man you are? You make yourself unhappy trying to win the esteem of people who aren’t nearly as good as you.”

  “I care what you think, Ann,” he said. “And John may have shafted me, but you can’t say he’s not a decent sort.”

  “Forget John. I’m talking about the Dick Vanns and Art Grays, and even the Paul Conklins.”

  He laughed at her, amazed that he had managed it. “You’re really reaching there.”

  “Am I? If Conklin had diminished you only in your own eyes, you could have dealt with that, told yourself you’d take it out on the next loony who raised a hand to anybody. What’s bothering you is there’s a single person who’s found out you’re human, who’s not the least bit impressed with you. It’s Conklin’s approval you’re after, not mine.”

  He had no answer for that, was glad when she started talking again.

  “Larry, when are you going to grow up?” She pushed away from him. “I used to think it was being a cop that made you so … so brittle. I had it backwards; it’s why you became one.”

  “Is it?” He was trying to sound interested while he tried to remember what it was he wanted to tell her. “But I’m not a cop anymore. I’m an ambulance driver and I’ve gotten to like it. And the best part of the job, the perk I didn’t anticipate, is that Conklin’s running around loose tonight and frankly, my dear, I don’t give a shit, or whatever the expression is.” He kissed her. “So where’s the harm if I worry too much about what people think of me?”

  She shook her head in defeat. “I just know it’s not healthy.”

  He kissed her again. “You’re getting yourself bent out of shape over nothing.”

  She took a deep breath. “I also know this,” she began slowly, “that if ever again you do something reckless that might get you killed, I’ll leave you. Even if it’s not your fault, if the situation seeks you out I expect you to run away and be happy doing it—for me and for the baby. Things are different now. You can’t put your warped notion of honor ahead of everything else anymore.”

  His mouth came down over hers, so that she felt he was forcing the words back inside. Then he whispered, “You’ve made your point. Can’t we stop?”

  Before she could reply he was floating over her again, so
light, she thought, so tender. Stop, she wanted to say, when I haven’t even gotten started? Instead she pulled him on top of her, answering to his body, the quilt around their ankles, thinking, Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop nooooo …

  St. Germain squared the eight-pointed cap on his forehead, tucked a wisp of blond hair under the brim. He turned away from the mirror for a second opinion. “Well, how do I look?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about any of your customers refusing service, if that’s what you’re trying to find out.”

  “I’m serious, Ann. How do I look?”

  “Good enough to … no, we’ve already done that.” She giggled. Not like a little girl, not coy, he thought, but so inviting she’d have to boot him out of the cabin. “I’ll keep your place warm,” she promised, patting the bed.

  “You’re no help.” He went back to the mirror.

  “Busy night tonight?”

  “Not likely. Working the graveyard shift is mostly traffic accidents and—”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” she said. “You drive an ambulance, not a hearse.”

  “About half the time it’s the same thing. Too many of the people I see, the only reason we bring them in is for the autopsy. Medical science is pretty much overmatched when it comes to raising the dead.”

  She grimaced. “Sounds like fun.”

  He walked over to the bed and kissed her, and she swept her hand over the mattress. “The offer still stands, you know,” she said.

  “See you for breakfast.”

  “Drive carefully.”

  Ground fog seeped out of bare woods and tumbled along the road in ragged billows. He took his time to the interstate. If Annie had gotten on his case with unreasonable demands, it still wasn’t asking too much of him to keep his car out of the trees. He wondered what was making her so jumpy, and decided that it had been the baby talking.

  He pulled into the staff lot and parked away from the other cars, vaguely embarrassed that his plates did not carry the magical MD designation. In the emergency room two interns were standing at the coffee maker with a nurse known around the hospital as Miss Roundheels. Funny, he remembered telling her the one brief time they had spoken, you don’t look like an Indian. Both doctors had bags under their eyes and stubbly cheeks. St. Germain knew they had been on duty for fifteen hours and were groggy from an assembly line of broken legs and ruined knees. Till dawn there would be little to keep them from catching some sleep unless someone racked himself up on Blood Alley, the lonely stretch of Route 100 looping into the mountains. He went down to the garage where 786, the Big Ford ambulance with the fuel-line problem, had just returned with the evening crew.

  “What’s doing out there?” he asked a man in a uniform identical to his save for a stethoscope spilling out of the hip pocket.

  “Quiet as you could want. Couple of heart attacks in Moscow and Colbyville.”

  St. Germain looked under the hood. He kicked the tires. He polished some chrome and then climbed onto the seat, picked up a day-old Free Press, and kept busy with it for most of an hour.

  Around one o’clock one of the interns came into the garage. Steve Brownfield was a Stowe native who had gone off to Middlebury College and then Yale Medical School and had returned to Vermont to take over his father’s family practice. “How’s it going, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  Though the intern was five years younger, it seemed to St. Germain that generations separated them, that Brownfield, with his future mapped out like a battle plan, had evaded the false starts that had put his own coming of age on indefinite hold. “That’s Larry to you, Dr. Brownfield.”

  “Mind if I crawl in and cop some Zs?” the young doctor asked. “I’m whipped.”

  “What’s wrong with the doctors’ lounge? Bedbugs?”

  Brownfield turned down the radio that monitored police and fire calls in a two-county area. “Uh-uh. Can’t sleep without some static to soothe my frazzled nerves.”

  St. Germain smiled at him. “Dr. Greeley’s in there tossing it at Roundheels, isn’t he?”

  Brownfield shut his eyes. “It was unpardonable, what we did, telling you she was a full-blooded Abenaki.”

  “Yes, it was,” St. Germain said.

  “Wake me if you hear anything good.”

  St. Germain went back to the Free Press and was rereading the front page when he homed in on a voice above the emergency clutter. Washington County was reporting an accident on Route 100 in Colbyville with a request for the nearest ambulance to bring two bodies to the morgue. St. Germain whispered into the microphone and poked the sleeping intern in the ribs. “Reveille, Dr. Brownfield,” he said. “Got to run.”

  Brownfield brought his hand to his face, tried to coax the exhausted features into shape. “Something horrible, I take it.”

  “For the parties concerned,” St. Germain said. “Myself included. Double fatal down to Colbyville.” He slapped the newspaper into the doctor’s lap. “Out. Sleep in your own bed. Maybe Greeley and Roundheels are done.”

  “They’ll be at it till one or the other needs CPR. It’s why interns look the way we do.” He stretched, his fingers leaving smudges on the windshield. “Let’s roll,” he said. “I can use the fresh air.”

  St. Germain twisted the key and they coasted through the sleeping village. At the Route 108 light he came to a full stop and looked up the desolate Mountain Road. Past the covered footbridge over the Little River there was no traffic from Mount Mansfield or Smugglers Notch, which would remain snowbound for another month. He gunned the engine and ran through the gears, throwing Brownfield against the back of the seat. He switched on his flashing lights. “Keeps the blood flowing,” he said to the doctor.

  Beyond the bed-and-breakfast places, the farmhouses transformed into country inns, working barns intruded on picture-postcard Vermont. Brownfield opened the vents and let the cold air revive him. The ambulance swerved to avoid a porcupine plastered to the asphalt, and he reached for something to hold onto. “I’m starting to feel better already,” he said weakly.

  St. Germain nodded in agreement. “Great handling on these Fords.”

  Near Moscow the road dropped and straightened, and they ran by new factories growing out of rocky pastures. St. Germain pressed the needle close to eighty, then frowned and came off the gas. The exhilaration of pure speed, he had discovered, wore quickly when its purpose was the retrieval of dead meat; he’d been happier at the wheel of a cruiser halting traffic to allow a school bus to make a left turn. He killed the flashing lights. A mile ahead, red and blue beacons staved off the darkness.

  “Looks like the local ghouls beat us to the merchandise,” Brownfield said.

  St. Germain flicked on his high beams. “Doesn’t make sense. The Washington dispatcher said the crash was in Colbyville. Those lights are Arnold’s Crossing, and that’s the Cabot County panhandle.”

  A couple of tan police cars blocked the northbound lanes. Squeezed between them was a Winnebago trailer and on either side a Cabot deputy. St. Germain recognized Dick Vann and Art Gray and approached them, riding his brake. Without pulling his head from the Winnebago, Vann waved the ambulance on.

  St. Germain came even with the cruisers and stopped. “G’evening, Dick.”

  Vann whirled around, knocking his cap askew. “Why, if it isn’t the … Hello, stranger.”

  St. Germain’s fingers tightened around the wheel, but his face gave nothing away. Vann grunted. He adjusted his cap and leaned in the Winnebago again, and Art Gray walked over and rested his elbows inside St. Germain’s window. “How’ve you been, Larry?” he said uncomfortably.

  “Can’t complain. What’s all this?”

  “John’s got a bug up his ass about … you heard about Conklin yet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “About him trying to make it to Malletts Bay by swinging through the county.”

  “I heard he was headed south.”

  Gray shrugged. He looked over his shoulder at the Winnebago, where a m
an with a white crewcut flicked a thick butt onto the pavement and steered through the roadblock. Then Vann came over and stood beside Gray, and St. Germain smelled cigar smoke on his clothes, saw two panatelas in his breast pocket. “… You know John,” Gray was saying.

  Thought I did once, St. Germain wanted to say. “That’s why you’re out at one in the A.M., looking in Winnebagos? You think Conklin’s gone camping?”

  Gray laughed in spite of himself, not stopping until Vann said, “You’re the Conklin expert. You tell us.”

  St. Germain gave him a hard look. The deputy poked inside, showing lieutenant’s bars on his collar. “This is what you’re doing these days? Seems slow.”

  It occurred to St. Germain that verbal sparring bored him when it wasn’t prelude to the real thing. He lifted his foot off the brake and started to move away.

  Vann said, “But if it keeps you out of trouble …”

  St. Germain stomped on the brake. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He started to open the door, but then changed his mind. He hit the siren and Vann jumped back with his hands over his ears as the ambulance roared off.

  “Those men seemed to resent you,” Brownfield said. “Didn’t they serve under you when you were with the sheriff’s department?”

  “Uh-huh.” Still not giving anything away.

  “They were so tense you could smell it. The big one, anyway.”

  “The job’ll do that to you sometimes,” St. Germain said. “They’re under a lot of pressure.”

  “Is that why you switched careers?”

  “Not really. I wasn’t aware of the pressure till it was off of me and I was mostly missing it.”

  “You seem relaxed enough now.”

  “Well, it’s taken some doing.”

  “I still don’t understand about those two. Did you have reason to discipline them? Weren’t they good officers?”