He looked up, startled to hear the familiar voice. "Hey, yourself. What're you doing here already? You hate driving in this junk."

Gail gave him an awkward smile. "I came down just before it hit. I heard he was doing better and hoped I'd get lucky."

"So, you were here when he woke up?" he asked, giving her a quick one-armed hug as they fell into walking side by side.

"Yes. What a relief. Your mom started crying."

They quickly reached the building's central, mall-like first-floor corridor, which towered several stories overhead to a skylight a city block long. The Dartmouth-Hitchc.o.c.k Medical Center was cla.s.s A, from the ground up-at least, that was the way Joe was feeling about it right now.

"Were you just walking by and happened to see me?" he asked her. "n.o.body knew when I'd make it."

"I've been waiting awhile," she confessed. "I figured it would take you a couple of hours after you got the call. I wanted to see you before we went up."

"Oh?" he asked. "What's up?"

She seemed to take a small breath before speaking. "I just felt badly about how you met Francis . . . Martin. You know, the man who picked me up here last time."

"Yeah," he said lightly. "The Bimmer."

She seemed slightly fl.u.s.tered by his response. "Oh, the car. Right. He's thinking of getting rid of that. Not very practical."

Joe reached out and touched her elbow. "I was surprised, Gail, that's all. I think it's great. I'm happy you found someone a little less hazardous to be around."

"It's not just that, you know."

He thought back to the mood that had carried him here, and decided to do what he could to maintain it, even if slightly at her expense. "Gail, it doesn't matter. It's just semantics now. I've found someone else, too."

She stopped in her tracks, her smile at odds with the look in her eyes. "That's great."

He touched her elbow a second time, this time to get her going again. "Yeah," he said, looking down the vast hall. "She runs a bar in town. Is Leo still in ICU?"

Gail took the out. "No. They moved him. I'll show you." She moved ahead and led the way to the elevators.

Upstairs, they found Leo and Joe's mother and the ever-present Dr. Weisenbeck all in a regular-looking patient room, with Leo lying in bed without a single tube hooked up to him. He was as pale as the sheet underneath him, about twenty pounds lighter, and, ironically, looking as if he needed a good night's sleep, but he gave Joe a broad smile as they entered, which, to Joe, made all the rest of it irrelevant.

He crossed over to the bed, ignored his brother's thin outstretched hand, and planted a big kiss on his cheek instead. "Welcome back, you crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Leo laughed softly and patted Joe's shoulder. His voice, when he spoke, was hoa.r.s.e. "You, too. Weird to have the tables turned for once, huh?"

The reference bore weight. Joe had been in such a bed any number of times during his career, and while Gail was correct that it hadn't been the sole reason she left him, it certainly played a big role.

Joe looked him over. "Not even an IV?"

Weisenbeck spoke up from the back of the room. "He's not off meds completely, but we thought he'd enjoy at least the sensation of being free. And while he probably won't admit it, he has a terrible sore throat, so try not to make him talk too much. The breathing tubes take awhile to recover from."

Weisenbeck checked his watch, which, by now, they'd all come to know as more of a nervous gesture than a real consultation. He walked to the doorway, adding, "I'll leave you be. Congratulations to everyone."

He left to a chorus of thank-yous as the small group cl.u.s.tered more closely around the bed, most of them unconsciously touching some part of its occupant, as if still unbelieving that he had appeared back among them.

A hundred miles away, Matt Aho was buried in his office in the depths of the Burlington Police Department, far from any windows and oblivious to any snowstorm. He made a tidy pile of some printouts and a couple of logbooks and trudged down the hallway toward the chief's office, feeling like a penitent heading to church.

He knocked on the open door and stuck his head in. Tim Giordi was sitting at his desk, scrutinizing his computer screen.

"Chief?"

Giordi looked over his reading gla.s.ses at his supply officer. "Yeah, Matt. Come in."

Aho waggled the pile he had clutched in his hand as he approached. "I've been researching the missing Taser cartridge situation."

Giordi raised his eyebrows. "And?"

"I think I have at least part of it figured out."

"Oh?"

He laid out some of his doc.u.mentation, upside down, so Giordi could read it. "When this first came up, I consulted only the dispersal log, which showed that Officer Palmiter had been a.s.signed three cartridges. He, of course, said he only got two and didn't think anything about it. That left me trying to figure out not only how it might've gone missing, but from where. The biggest flaw I've found so far is that after I've bar-coded what's headed out to the airport, the stuff's actually carried over there in bulk. It gets signed out by the individual officers who requested it, but the airport log and mine aren't connected electronically. I think I might've discovered this sooner or later the old-fashioned way, but that's why that one cartridge fell through the gaps."

Giordi, knowing his subordinate's meticulous style-one of the reasons he'd been given this job-nodded patiently.

Aho continued. "So I went over the outgoing transfer manifests and the airport receiving logs, totaled everything that I'd signed out against everything that everyone I interviewed claimed to have received, and I found that the missing cartridge never made it out of my office-at least not officially."

"Meaning somebody walked in, when you weren't there, and swiped it?" Giordi asked, thinking privately that was what he'd a.s.sumed from the beginning, even though he was sympathetic to Aho's resistance to the idea.

As if reading his mind, Aho flushed slightly. "It seems that way, yes."

"Yeah," Giordi mused. "That's not too surprising. Your office is off of a high-traffic corridor. What's your suggestion for a more secure setup?"

Aho brightened considerably at that. "I've already put in a requisition for a security Dutch door kind of arrangement, with a grilled upper half. It shouldn't be much more inconvenient than the present system, and it'll make things much tighter. But that's not actually where I was headed."

"I see." Giordi smiled. "And where was that, exactly?"

Aho didn't react to the question's wry tone. "Well, having narrowed down the where where part of the puzzle, I now had to find out the part of the puzzle, I now had to find out the when when."

"Right," his boss coaxed.

Aho pointed to an entry on one of his logs. "As you know . . . Actually, maybe you don't . . . but I try to do things like receiving, unpacking, and cataloging at regular times, so that I have a routine I can follow. It helps keep me on track. As a result, I have a pretty good idea at what time of the day I probably set the cartridges out to be shipped to the airport division, putting them on the corner of my desk, as usual . . . well, as usual in the old days."

"Right," Giordi repeated.

"Not to make a big deal out of it," Aho continued without irony, "I pretty much identified a half-hour time slot when somebody could have taken that cartridge-right here, between eleven thirty and noon."

"Okay."

Aho straightened triumphantly. "Well, the rest was easy. We know what shifts were in the building then, and we have the visitors' log for people from the outside." He laid a final sheet before his chief. "So, there you have it-a complete listing, as best I can figure it, of everyone who had access."

Giordi glanced at the list-a significant number of people-and sat back in his chair. "Nice job, Matt. Above and beyond the call. I'll make sure to check this out and share it with Agent Gunther and his people, and I'll also make sure that your new door gets priority treatment."

Aho smiled nervously, gathered up his exhibits, and headed out the door. Giordi waited until he'd left before getting out his bottle of aspirin.

An hour later, Lester Spinney crossed the VBI office in Brattleboro and retrieved the fax that had just arrived.

"Who from?" Sam asked from her desk.

"Burlington PD," he answered vaguely, reading its cover sheet and contents. "It's a list of all the people who were in their building when that Taser cartridge went missing."

"Huh," she reacted. "I thought that was a lost cause."

Lester stopped in the middle of the floor, bringing the sheet closer to his eyes. "I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"What?"

"One of the visitors was John Leppman. Small world."

Chapter 23.

Deputy Sheriff Ted Mumford drove his cruiser gingerly down the narrow lane. It was banked with walls of fresh snow, no doubt disguising parallel ditches that would strand him for sure, and it hadn't been plowed in hours or sanded at all. On top of that, it was late, he was tired, this was the middle of nowhere, and he was responding to his least favorite type of call-a noise complaint.

With the worst snowstorm of the season at last behind him, ten hours of accidents, traffic control, domestic disputes, a lost child, no time off, and G.o.d knows how many cups of coffee, Mumford was in no mood to deal with some barking dog or loud stereo. He'd done an uncountable number of these in his years as a deputy, and only a few times had the complainant actually deigned to call the source of the problem and simply ask them to stop it. "I won't call that son of a b.i.t.c.h" was the usual reply. "That's what you cops are for."

Ahead, Mumford made out the glimmering of two houses among the thick tangle of trees-one doubtless belonging to the complainant, the other to the subject. Now that he was near, he could imagine the scenario all too easily: the sole two neighbors inside a square mile of wilderness, hating each other and using every excuse to exchange mutual misery.

He rolled down his window as he drew abreast of the first driveway, or at least the car-size furrow of snow leading to the house, and listened. He would have to give the complainant that much, if nothing else-there was a dog barking down the road, loudly and nonstop, with the same dull rhythm as someone repeatedly thumping the side of your head with a finger.

On the other hand, if Ted were a dog chained outside in this weather, he might have done some barking of his own. Maybe he'd be able to slap an animal cruelty charge on top of the disturbance citation.

Often he would stop at the complainant's on such a call, both to placate and to work up a little departmental PR, but he was too tired and p.i.s.sed off to bother this time. Instead, he kept crawling down the road, his snow-encrusted headlights doing their feeble best to lead him along, until he reached the second house's blanketed dooryard. Or what he could find of it-there were already three white-shrouded vehicles filling the s.p.a.ce. Informing dispatch of his arrival before getting out of the car, Mumford figured he'd have to back all the way to the first driveway in order to turn around later. Great.

The dog, of course, had climbed to a new plateau, having discovered something real to complain about. Also, to be safe, Ted had shined his powerful flashlight right at it to make sure it couldn't suddenly break free and come at him from across the yard. That had done nothing to calm things down.

Holstering the light and relying on the glow from the house's windows to show him the way, Mumford shuffled through the thick and slippery snow, careful of any obstacles possibly lurking beneath it.

He reached the bottom of the front porch steps, and was two treads up when the door above and ahead of him abruptly flew open, revealing a man in a checked shirt, holding a beer in one hand and a joint between his lips. A handgun was shoved into his belt. Although only ten feet separated them, the man missed seeing Mumford entirely, swung on his heel, faced the length of the porch, and bellowed, "Rollo, you stupid mutt. Shut the f.u.c.k up."

Mumford stared through the gaping open door into the ramshackle log house-and directly at two more men who were sitting at a table, placing carefully measured amounts of white powder into small transparent gla.s.sine envelopes that they were holding up to the light.

One of them was Dan Griffis.

That's when the man on the porch saw Ted Mumford.

"Who the f.u.c.k're you?" he blurted, reaching for his gun and drawing the attention of the other two.

Mumford instantly inventoried the trouble he was in. His own gun was hard to reach, half hidden by his winter jacket, he was wearing nonregulation woolen gloves for their warmth, and he'd just found out how poor his footing was.

As a result, on pure instinct, and seeing the other man's gun starting to level in his direction, Mumford charged up the steps like a linebacker.

Checked Shirt was caught by surprise. Mumford tackled him around the middle, lifted him off his feet, and propelled him backward, flying into the cabin beyond. They both landed on the floor in a heap, with both of Mumford's gloved hands anch.o.r.ed around his opponent's gun.

As plans went, of course, it was short-term at best. Dan Griffis leaped to his feet at the violent intrusion, grabbed the back of his chair and swung it over his head in the same movement, and brought it crashing down onto the back of the deputy's head.

Mumford let out a groan and stopped struggling. Checked Shirt wrestled free, scrambled to his feet, readjusted the gun in his hand, and took aim. Griffis smacked him across the mouth with the back of his hand, sending him staggering.

"Hey, genius," Dan yelled at him, "why don't you blow your own brains out instead? And ours, too, for that matter. You wanna kill a cop cop? Get the f.u.c.k out there and find out who's with him. For all we know, he's got the DEA with him."

He then quickly knelt by Mumford's slowly stirring body, pulled the man's handcuffs from his belt case, and secured his wrists behind his back, commenting as he did so, "Always wanted to do that. Hope they're too G.o.dd.a.m.ned tight."

Checked Shirt, for his part, angrily replaced his gun in his belt and sat in a chair in the far corner of the room, growling, "Up yours. I already been out there. There ain't no raid."

The third man in the room, sitting dumbfounded at the table, a gla.s.sine envelope still in his hand, finally spoke. "Jesus, Dan. What the f.u.c.k was that all about?"

Griffis looked up at him. "What was it about about? What the f.u.c.k do I know, Charlie? How many times have you had a cop fly through the door and fall on your floor?"

Charlie seemed to consider the question seriously.

"We need to get out of here," Griffis said. "Mike," he ordered the man in the corner, "get your a.s.s out of that chair and go outside. Humor me, okay?"

Without a word, Mike rose and stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

Griffis rolled the deputy over onto his back, removed his gun from its holster, and pointed it into Mumford's face. Mumford blinked a few times, slowly regaining his wits. A large knot was already growing on his forehead where the blow from the chair had driven his face into the floor.

"What's your name, cop?" Griffis asked.

"You know me," Mumford told him.

Dan straightened and looked at him more closely, trying to put him in context. "Mumford!" he finally exclaimed. "You sorry son of a b.i.t.c.h. I should've let Mike kill you. What the f.u.c.k were you doing out there? You're no drug cop."

"I wasn't here for drugs. Your stupid dog was barking."

The gun was lowered, already half forgotten. Griffis rubbed the back of his neck with his other hand. "You are s.h.i.tting me. You came for a dog complaint? What? From the neighbors?"

Mumford merely gave him a wilting look.

Dan stared back at him, muttered, "Up yours," and got to his feet, adding, "f.u.c.king Mike and his f.u.c.king mutt. I told him to shut it up. But, oh, no-he's a good guard dog." He began pacing. "G.o.dd.a.m.ned guard dog just about put us in jail."

"Are we going to jail?" Charlie asked.

Dan kept going in circles. "You can if you want, but I'm never getting out. No f.u.c.king way I'm sticking around for that."

Mike reentered the cabin. "Nothing," he reported. "He was alone, just like I said."

Griffis confronted him. "He was alone, Michael Michael, because the neighbors called in a barking-dog complaint. I thought you should know that. a.s.shole."

Mike laid his hand on his gun b.u.t.t but otherwise remained silent.