It also helped explain Willy Kunkle’s presence here.
An ex–New York City patrolman, a Vietnam vet, and a dedicated alcoholic, Willy had ended up in Brattleboro first because he’d needed gas on his way to someplace— anyplace—he hadn’t been to before, perhaps Canada. It hadn’t been love at first sight or like having a revelation, but the double discovery of Brattleboro’s busy downtown and a poster advertising openings at the police department had conspired to make him stay.
He’d begun by walking the streets, shunning patrol cars in exchange for the traditional beat, and had honed a talent for making contacts and connections in those parts of town few upstanding citizens cared to acknowledge. In the process, he’d become the one cop who most reliably could extract information where others came up emptyhanded.
Thus, a serendipitous stop for gas and a job had led to a personal and professional progression he’d tried since to forget. Marching less to his own drummer and more as if on autopilot, Willy went through the standard evolutionary motions, watching himself like a spectator at a private parade. He met a local girl more confused than he, married her without much thought from either one of them, got transferred to the detective bureau in reward for his good work, and began hitting the bottle as never before.
Over a long, slow, agonizing period of years, he became like a gambler, his stake eroding to nothing, fully aware that his chances of winning were nil, but unwilling to change strategies and unable to leave the table. The alcohol abuse and disillusion led to self-loathing and anger, to wife abuse and a preordained divorce. He was crippled by a bullet in the line of duty, transferred off the police force, and came within half a step of joining the people he’d once been paid to arrest.
Then, in defiance of the gravitational pull he should have followed straight to the bottom, and with much the same disappointed bewilderment experienced by a drowner miraculously pulled back from a death finally become soothingly seductive, he was put back on the police payroll, told to fill in the proper paperwork, and accepted as a member of a newly created, statewide investigative agency called the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, with five regional offices, including one in Brattleboro.
Thus encouraged—almost cajoled—he’d gone from the edge of oblivion to getting on the wagon by his own sheer willpower, finding himself romantically involved with a female co-worker, and being regarded as one of the elite in his profession.
A roller-coaster ride of mixed and paradoxical emotions, and a happy, bittersweet end result entirely due— as he saw it in a typically angry dismissal of his own personal efforts—to a man named Joe Gunther.
Willy frowned and sighed heavily at the thought, cresting the top of High Street as it descended to intersect Main downtown, nearby Mount Wantastiquet in neighboring New Hampshire looming over a wall of buildings directly before him like a sleeping giant.
Joe Gunther hung on Willy’s mind almost as much as the dead arm now resting in his lap.
Willy had read somewhere—unless he’d seen it at the movies—that in certain cultures, if you saved someone’s life, that poor bastard was stuck having to return the debt and therefore keep you company until the day he could make good. If ever.
Well, much as he hated to admit it, Willy probably owed his life to Joe Gunther. Joe had been his boss on the police department’s detective squad, had hovered sympathetically when he’d wrestled with booze and the divorce. He’d threatened to invoke the Americans with Disabilities Act and sue the town to get Willy back on the force after his injury. He’d cut him slack time and again, hadn’t taken offense when Willy did his damnedest to give it, and had acted as a go-between when Willy had fallen in love with Sammie Martens—the other detective who’d made the move from the PD to the Bureau. Finally, after the legislature had created the VBI and the commissioner of public safety had tapped Joe as its field force commander, he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t take the job unless Willy’s application was given a fair review, after which he’d persuaded Willy to apply.
Why? Because Joe was a decent guy who acted the same way with everyone, and because, while he might not have been the life of any party, he was like a dog with a bone when it came to doing the right thing.
There were times, lots of times, when Willy raged at this man.
He waited at the stoplight, preparing to turn left up Main. There was a shorter route to the office, but driving through downtown every morning had become a ritual.
The pedestrian walk sign began flashing, accompanied by an obnoxious chirping sound designed to help the blind cross safely. Willy shook his head. Only in Brattleboro, capital city of granola heads, where nothing ever happened without everyone worrying about how everyone else felt about it. There was enough hot air in this town to pop the Titanic back to the surface like a cork.