Chat - Archer Mayor [50]
His mother and Gail had been the best of friends and, he presumed, still were. That she could supportively even consider his segue toward Lyn was an act of love he doubted he could have made in her place. But his mother was made of strong stuff and clearly had enough heart to encompass the inevitable changes that both time and people dished up. That included the possibility of Leo’s dying—and, certainly, that Joe might find happiness with someone new.
In that way, his mother and the snow-clad, sun-bleached, timeworn mountains he was passing by were not dissimilar. Both were old, stalwart bastions of tradition and place, around which Joe had found it wise to base his values. He was no stuck-in-the-hills galoot, ignorant and distrustful of the world’s offerings and mishaps. But he had come to recognize the wisdom—at least for him—of admitting his roots and honoring their more admirable customs, of which his mother represented the best.
It was of some comfort to him to reflect on this and to draw strength from it as he considered the possibilities, good and bad, that seemed to be looming before him.
The chief of the Burlington Police Department was Timothy Giordi, the son of a small-town cop who had babysat Tim by driving him around in his patrol car. Tim was the first to concede that he might as well have had a police blood transfusion at birth, given all the chance he ever had of considering a different profession.
Fortunately, he was very good at it and looked as if, like his father before him, he’d struggle to stay on the job until the day he died, even if it meant as a school crossing guard.
He and Joe had been friends for more years than either could remember, which had made Tim’s the first name Joe considered when Sam revealed the possible source of the Taser cartridge.
The PD’s home was a thirty-thousand-square-foot converted factory building dating back to the twenties, half of which had once subsequently housed an auto dealership. It was also the largest, most up-to-date station house in the state, located a few hundred feet from Lake Champlain and bordering a city park—a testament to the hustle and political savvy of those who had preceded Tim Giordi as chief.
Giordi came out personally to collect Joe in the reception area, shaking his hand and patting his back as if he were a long-lost uncle returning from the wilderness.
“Damn, Joe—the field force commander of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation,” he glowed. “That is truly the big time.”
Joe laughed, looking around him as they proceeded toward the back of the building. It was a white-walled maze of hallways, many of them without ceilings, since most of the partitions ended shy of the industrially trussed roof, allowing for a crisscrossing of exposed piping and electrical conduits high overhead. Joe felt slightly like a rat in a box, wondering when a huge pair of fingers might appear from just out of sight to pluck him from its midst.
“I don’t know about that,” he told his guide. “I bet you have three times my budget and manpower, not to mention the autonomy to play all alone in your own backyard.”
Giordi aimed him through an outer office staffed with intense-looking people studying computer screens, and into a large room with curiously small windows overlooking the water below.
“Oh-oh,” Tim said. “Do I sense a little chafing with political realities?”
Joe shrugged. “Not really. We have to play nice and give credit to the locals, including the state police, but that’s only what we wish the feds would do when they come poaching, so I really can’t complain. And it’s a hell of a lot better than when we were brand-new, out of the box. Talk about cold shoulder.”
Tim waved him to a chair near his large desk and sat in one like it nearby. “More than half your people came from the state police, didn’t they?”
Joe nodded. “That helps a lot.” He added with a