Death in the Pines (26 page)

“Butch Cassidy himself,” he said.

I stared at him blankly.

“You haven't seen today's paper.”

“I usually avoid them.”

He picked up the front page of the
Montpelier Times Argus
and displayed it like a banner. F
OREST
S
HOOTOUT
, the headline screamed. F
ORMER
P
RIVATE
D
ETECTIVE
W
OUNDED
.

“You're famous. So if you're wounded, why are you walking around?”

“I was lucky,” I said. “The bullet missed bone, just tore up skin and muscle.”

“Hence the unsightly shoulder bulge,” he said. “Says here three people were shot and killed on your property yesterday,
and you claim another was wounded and disappeared. That the Indian woman you asked me about, the one who wears buckskins?”

“She's the one.”

“I've asked around. Most people think you've been drinking too much. But there's a woman in town, claims to be an Abenaki, who says you saw a—” he closed his eyes. “Let me get this right, a
Nolka Alnôbak
.”

“And what's that?”

“Miss Sarah—she's my informant—tells me that in old stories told by the old folks of her tribe, there are tales about beings who are deer-people. They look like deer, but can take human shape. Usually a
Nolka Alnôbak
is a woman. The forest people send one to the tribe when they need help. They appear as women because that way the young men will listen.” He dragged on the cigarette. “
Nolka Alnôbak
. Deer-people.”

“Deer-people,” I said.

“They can't hold human shape for more than a few hours. There are tales of young men who would fall in love with one, and they'd lie down together, but next morning she'd be gone, with just deer tracks. There are tragic stories—warrior sleeps with a beautiful maiden, wakes in the morning, kills a deer, and it's the woman he slept with.”

“My woman was human,” I said firmly.

“All right,” Bernie said. “And nobody else in town ever saw her or heard of her.”

“I guess so.”

He shook his head. “Life is strange, Oakley. The VC always believed the spirits of their departed ancestors were helping them. There were times when I'd swear they were right”

“Thanks anyway, Bernie.”

“Wait,” he said, leaning forward. “Miss Sarah wanted me to ask you a question. She said it's important. When these deer-people come to humans, it's to impart some great secret, to teach wisdom, to give a prophecy. Miss Sarah wanted to know what message the deer-people have for us.”

“Don't interfere.”

“Huh?”

“That's the message,” I said, and left him looking bewildered.

I went back to Jerry's apartment building. His door was locked, as I expected. I pulled from my pocket the one thing I'd retrieved from my cabin: a leather case containing a compact but useful array of lock picks.

The door opened into the living room of Jerry's obsessively neat apartment. I did a quick walk-through: empty. I looked out the living room window and saw the river. My shoulder was pounding, but I didn't want to take any painkillers. I stood at Jerry's bookcase and looked at his reading material: forestry management manuals, microbiology texts, a college-textbook-looking book titled
The Psychopathic Personality,
and paperback novels. He liked thrillers and stories about serial killers.

In the kitchen I found a small stack of papers on the table. Receipts from a funeral home for Jeremiah's cremation. An oversized brown manila envelope, fat with something. And I found the files that had been taken from my cabin. That put Jerry with Eva. Curiouser and curiouser.

In the bedroom I found that Jerry slept on a raised futon. A side table, a dresser with mirror, and a locked four-drawer file cabinet completed the furnishings. A framed diploma on the wall averred that Jerry had graduated from the University
of Vermont with a Bachelor of Science degree,
cum laude
. The labels on the file drawers read W
RITING
, R
ECORDS
, L
AB
, M
ISC
.

Before I could attempt to pick the cabinet lock, Jerry Smith said behind me, “This is a quiet apartment. Lath-and-plaster walls just soak up sound like a sponge.” He was leaning casually in the doorway. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

“Fungus.”

He laughed. “None growing in here. Come on into the living room and let's talk like civilized people.”

He sat in the chair, I took the sofa. “I know you were up to something with Eva,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“And you shot her,” I said. “I thought it was Darryl, but I was wrong. Why didn't you finish me off? Did you think I was dying already and there was no need for further effort? Or that if I thought it was Darryl that would get you off the hook?”

He shook his head and sighed. “You've lost me. I'm going to put on a pot of tea.” I started to get up, but he motioned me back. “Your shoulder must bother you. I'll bring it in here.”

While he tinkered in the kitchen I counted books. He had seventeen on his shelf dealing with mycology, the branch of biology that deals with fungi.

“Here's our tea,” he said as he returned with a tray bearing two steaming mugs and three small brown bottles, each with a hand-lettered label. He picked up one and shook it, showing me that it contained a powder. “Fungus,” he said. “OK, this fungus is famous in Chinese medicine. It's Cordyceps, and it lives on the cocooned larvae of moths and cicadas. It used to be horrendously expensive, but a few years ago scientists found a way to grow the fungus in a culture.” He opened the bottle and tilted about half a teaspoonful of the powder into the cups.

He picked up a second bottle. “This one isn't a fungus but the root of a plant. Siberian Ginseng, or Eleutherococcus. Cordyceps is the ultimate Chinese tonic, Eleutherococcus the ultimate Russian one. You'll find the effects gentle but stimulating.”

“You were in Eva's car when you killed Jeremiah,” I said.

“He wasn't really my grandfather,” Jerry said, stirring his tea. “I was adopted.”

“You put the flare in his truck and shot at him?”

“That was Bill Grinder.” Jerry smiled. “His phone in the shop call-forwards to his cell phone. Jeremiah never even considered that it could have been him.”

“And Grinder shot at me in the cabin when Eva came to get those files.”

“That was Eva's idea. She wanted to scope your place out and find out what you knew.”

“What happened? How did Lauser get involved?”

“Bad luck. Benson saw me returning Eva's car. Lauser did work for them. He was supposed to scare me away from Eva, that's all.” He grunted in soft laughter. “Benson and Lauser thought I was sleeping with her. They were wrong. I was doing business with her.” His voice got louder. “Lauser was an idiot. He planned to go to the USDA about the mycorrhizae. Benson was an idiot, too. He was running scared and wanted to get his company away from GMOs. I told him I could fix it.”

“You developed the pine fungus,” I said.

“I did,” he said softly. “It was part of my PhD dissertation, actually.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Once I get it right, I can patent it and sell it for millions.”

“Except it kills trees.”

He glared at me. “The next iteration won't! It's a matter of fine-tuning. Benson financed my research, but he cut himself
off from me. Whatever. I don't need his company. I'll sell the next patent for fifty million and Benson's company will go down the tubes.”

“And I can't prove any of it.”

“But it's good to know your guesses were right.” He got up. “I'll be right back.”

He went through the bedroom, into the bathroom, and I heard him urinating. I looked at the two mugs.

Don't interfere.

But I did a little fiddling.

The toilet flushed and I heard Jerry wash his hands. When he came back he said, “Much better.” He sighed. “I spent all morning with the police. Two shootings at your cabin, one tore a chunk out of my grandfather's ear, got them all full of themselves.” He saw I was holding my mug, and he winked and picked up his own. “Go ahead. You'll like the taste.”

I could smell his tea, musty and sweet, with a faint hint of apple. He drank from his mug, first a taste, then throwing back nearly half of it. “Delicious.”

I drank half the contents of mine, watching his smile as I looked over the rim of my cup.

We sat like old friends, drinking until both of us had nearly finished.

Then Jerry laughed. “You switched the mugs.”

“Did I?”

He tenderly picked up the third brown bottle. “This is
Amanita phalloides
. The death cap. One of the deadliest fungi in existence. There is no antidote. It's also a strong hallucinogen. Before a victim dies, he gets a really wild trip. And this tincture has virtually no taste.”

He set it down. “Of course, if I was going to poison one of the mugs, I would have poisoned mine. I could have been
certain that you'd switch them when I was out of the room. I know you're clever. I know your instinct.”

“Like you knew the cleverness and the instincts of your UVM advisor?”

“He poisoned himself.”

“You know, Jerry, I don't believe that,” I said. “I think he saw how crazy you are. I think he knew that letting you play around with genes was like letting a weak-minded twelve-year-old run around with dynamite and matches. I think he had you pretty well pegged.”

His face had turned scarlet. “Summers was an old fool. He was afraid of nothing, afraid of shadows. He had me pegged? I had him nailed. And he poisoned himself.”

“As I just poisoned myself by drinking this tea?”

The tension was ebbing out of him. He grinned, a sick, sly grin, the expression of a rabid fox. “You're too smart. You'd choose the cup that wasn't poisoned.” He rubbed his eyes, still grinning. “But you outsmarted yourself, and you'll be dead in twenty minutes. I put a little bit of wormwood in the cup I gave you—it gives a distinct bitter flavor to the tea, but it's not at all toxic in such a tiny dose. Your tea was totally safe. And when I drank mine, I tasted the wormwood. You switched the cups, just like I knew you would.”

His sick smile broadened, the smart little boy so proud that he'd figured out how to kill, so much smarter than anybody else in the world. He was a god, could control life and death, and even if his GMO experiments didn't work this time, and might even have destroyed every pine tree in the world, they'd work just fine the next time. Stupid humans; we'll never understand his true brilliance.

I leaned forward and poured the remainder of my mug into his. Clear water flowed out.

He blinked as if he were having trouble focusing.

“I could have switched mugs,” I said slowly and clearly. “Or I could have carried both to the kitchen, poured half of each down the drain, and put the rest together in one mug. And I could have rinsed the other one and filled it with plain tap water.”

Jerry's red face was now very pale as he tried to get up, but he was shaking so violently he slipped sideways in the chair. I took my mug to the kitchen, rinsed and dried it, wiped it clean of fingerprints and put it up.

I think Jerry was trying to tell me something when I passed back through the living room, but whatever it was came out as mindless, gobbling, bubbling noises.

I let myself out.

G
ina's friend Elaine had long, wavy chestnut hair and big round wire-rimmed glasses. I guessed her at thirty, plus or minus three years. I liked her voice, a full, rich, modulated contralto, as though she worked in radio or theater, but she was a physician, with a one-woman medical practice in Barre, a nearby town. “God, it's turned cold again and it's snowing,” Elaine said. “How long does this last?”

“It's February, and it's Vermont,” Gina told her fondly. “Ask again in three months.”

We'd kept our dinner date, sitting in a corner table in the Single Pebble, which very well may be the best Chinese restaurant in North America. With a pair of chopsticks I picked off my plate a thinly sliced shitake mushroom and shakily maneuvered it to my mouth.

“Give me a break,” Elaine was complaining. “I haven't been here for a full year yet.” She gave me a professional glance. “You're having some pain.”

I was, but didn't think it showed. “It's not all that bad.”

Then Gina's cell phone went off, a Beethoven melody. She made a face, answered it, covered her free ear with her hand
and murmured a few words. Her eyes grew wide and then she said, “Excuse me.” She headed to the restrooms, away from the murmur of table conversation, with one palm still pressed against an ear.