Chat - Archer Mayor [109]
Gartner shifted her weight. The gun wavered.
“Go away, John,” she said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“Of course it does,” he said gently.
Joe slipped his oar into the water, hoping to normalize the mood. “Mr. Leppman? Your wife and I were starting to sort all this out. My name’s Joe Gunther.”
Leppman picked up his cue. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Gunther. Sorry about the intrusion.”
“That’s okay. I was planning to talk with you both anyhow.” He made the smallest of gestures with his hand. “Would you like to sit down?”
That was too much. Sandy Gartner poked the gun at him. “Don’t move. I told you.”
Joe remained silent. Leppman took two silent steps farther into the room. “Sandy? I wouldn’t mind sitting down. I’m very tired. I bet you are, too. There’re two chairs—one right beside you.”
She glanced to her side, which Joe took as a good sign. Apparently, so did her husband, since he finished approaching, grabbed the other chair, and sat down. In a typical mental aside, so often rued later, Joe hoped this shrink knew his business and wasn’t acting without a single thought toward Joe’s survival.
Gartner hesitated, seeing her husband unbutton his coat and get comfortable. She glanced at Joe, who did his best to appear the genial host, and finally folded at the knees, perching on the chair’s edge. The gun stayed pointed at Joe.
“What are you doing here?” she asked Leppman.
“I followed you,” he said simply. “I overheard the phone call you got from the stable, telling you the police had been asking questions, I heard you say the same had happened at your office, and I saw you take the gun.”
“Where’s Wendy?”
“She’s at home,” he reassured her. “She doesn’t know anything. She’s fine, Sandy. Like I want you to be.”
Gartner looked down at the gun and watched it slowly lower to her lap as if it belonged to someone else.
“What did you want to have happen here?” her husband asked her.
With her left hand, she reached up and touched her forehead fleetingly. “I wanted some peace and quiet. I thought maybe we could talk this out.”
Joe saw what he hoped was his opportunity. “I’m listening,” he said.
“I am, too,” her husband echoed, which struck Joe with its implied ignorance.
“You had your police consulting,” she said to him, her eyes fixed on the floor. “You had a way to channel losing Gwennie.”
Joe saw her husband’s brow furrow. He imagined what was going on inside the man’s brain. The psychologist battling with the spouse and fellow mourner—one wishing to counsel and soothe, the other urging to argue and fight for turf.
Joe was having some of the same problem. Intrigued as he was with the direction this was taking, his right arm, as slowly as a minute hand, was also moving to where he could casually drop it into his lap—and closer to his holstered gun.
“You could get your revenge,” she was saying. “Putting all those men in jail. I had nothing. I had to put on a brave face for Wendy, keep running my office, listen to all my patients complaining, even encourage you as you bragged about how you nailed this guy or the other. I wanted to find some relief, too. But no one was listening.”
The husband in Leppman slipped out for a moment. “You never told me.”
“You never asked. You never looked. John, we left our home on your recommendation, to ‘leave it all behind us,’ you said. We were supposed to get a fresh start in Vermont. Well, I tried that, but you didn’t. You started right up with all this Internet police work. That wasn’t leaving it all behind. You were the only one of us who never even tried.”
She suddenly straightened in her chair. “My God, John, you planted the seeds of all this. Remember that night you went riding around with your cop friends? You came home with a Taser—like it was a talisman you’d found on the edge of Gwennie’s grave, instead of something you’d stolen. What were you thinking? That damn thing took on a life of its own. You moved on—forgot all about it. But I kept thinking about it, wondering how a Taser had so cleverly worked its way into our home.”
Leppman’s brow furrowed. “My God,” he said.