“And junk mail,” I added. I moved over and began gently peeling apart the various catalogues, flyers, and ad sheets, looking for something more personal that might have become mixed in with them. It was the usual haphazard collection, from local grocery-store inserts to mail-order brochures, along with three tantalizing offers from Ed McMahon to make “Robin Vogle” a millionaire.
Fifteen minutes and about half the stack later, I sat back on my heels, a barely perceptible buzzing pressing against the inside of my temples. “Bingo.”
Tyler looked at me, his eyes narrowing. “What?” I showed him a damp and incongruous Victoria’s Secret catalogue, my finger pointing to the mailing label. “Damn,” he muttered, surprise mingling with embarrassment. Smeared but still legible were Gail’s name and address.
10
My timing couldn't have been worse. Delayed by the meeting with Jim Catone and pawing through Vogel’s garbage with J.P., I didn’t arrive at Susan Raffner’s until shortly before 7:00 p.m., long after any anticipated quiet moment with Gail had been overrun by the stress and commotion leading up to the march. When I was brought upstairs by a distracted Raffner, still clutching a cordless phone in her hand, Gail was in the company of several intense women, including Mary Wallis, who cast me a startled and embarrassed look.
Gail was speaking in a hard-edged staccato to a harassed-looking woman with a note pad. “Damn it all. I thought we’d made that clear from the start. It doesn’t matter if we march around the courthouse from the left fork or the right-either way we look like a herd of goddamn cattle. The point is to divide there so that we meet at the common. We want to envelop the courthouse.” She made a vase-like gesture with her arms, “Not walk around it like it was some puddle in the road. Where the hell’s Susan?”
She turned to the doorway and saw me there. Susan was back in the hall, talking quietly on the phone. Gail’s face crystallized briefly-hard and angry, both too pale and too flushed in parts; and her eyes were red-rimmed and haggard-gleaming almost feverishly. She seemed totally thrown by my appearance. Her mouth opened slightly and her hand vaguely touched the side of her head, but for a moment nothing was said. I realized with dread that showing my face-especially this close to an emotionally charged public event-served only to remind her of why she was here, and undermined the protective, hard-driving persona she’d adopted for herself. Like a strong breeze on a house of cards, my appearance-for a brief but telling instant-was threatening and unwelcome.
She finally managed to mutter, “Joe.”
“I know you’re busy. I just wanted to wish you luck and tell you I’ll be out there. I’ll get out of your hair now.” I waved awkwardly, turned, and bumped into Susan Raffner, who’d seen enough to understand what had happened.
She grabbed my arm and gestured to Gail, who was only slowly recovering her composure. “Why don’t you both take five in my office? I’ll sort things out here. I think we’re in pretty good shape-not to worry.”
She ushered us both out and down a short hallway, steering us into a large, comfortable corner room filled with bookshelves, overstuffed furniture, and an enormous, cluttered antique desk. She closed the door behind her, leaving us alone.
Instinctively, I reached for Gail’s elbow, startling her and making her pull away. “I’m sorry. I should’ve called or given you some warning. I just wanted to see you, to wish you good luck tonight-let you know I was here… ”
She held up her hand, shaking her head. “It’s okay. You just caught me by surprise. I hoped you’d come by-I guess I thought it would be earlier, and then I forgot all about it.”
She looked at my face and half smiled, moving closer and taking my hand in hers. “I didn’t mean to flip out on you. I feel a little like a juggler on center stage… I just lost my concentration for a second.”
Her voice was still taut, but at least the cause of her tension was no longer me. She was one of the strongest women I’d ever met, but I knew-and I half suspected she did, too-that in the long run she was going to have to let down her defenses, allow the pain and the anger and the loss to flush through her, and then rebuild herself from the inside out.
But that wasn’t now. This time she needed all the stamina she could muster.
Still, I felt bound to ask if she was thinking ahead. This was someone, after all, who was fully aware of how deep rape cuts the soul, even before she’d experienced it personally. “You sure you want to do this? So soon after?”
She gave a lopsided smile and shook her head. “I’d really like to escape to a deserted island for a few months.”
“That could be arranged,” I said quickly. She turned and settled into the huge, soft armchair near the window, looking exhausted. Again, she shook her head, but with no smile this time. “I can’t, Joe. I need to stick this out.”
We’d debated her beliefs too often for me not to understand what she meant. In her view, leaving town, even though wounded, would be to concede to her attacker, abandoning the very principles in which she and her colleagues put their faith. Besides, the die was already cast.
All of which left me with few options. “Would you like to know how the investigation’s going?” She didn’t react at first and then answered slowly, almost shyly.
“Do you have a suspect?”
“We’re looking at someone. He doesn’t know it yet.”
“Someone I know?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
Her eyes widened. “It could be a stranger?”
“Possibly. If this is the guy, that’s how he’s worked before.” I probably should have tried Vogel’s name out on her, but something told me she didn’t want to know-not yet.
She nodded, studying the floor. After a few moments, she pushed herself slowly and awkwardly out of the chair, like a woman twice her age, and came to me. “Thank you-that did help.”
“One question?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“Are you on the Victoria’s Secret mailing list?”
She actually laughed then and looked slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t ask for it. It was sort of an inside joke-feminist black humor. You found a copy at the house?”
I nodded and lied. “Yeah-it seemed a little out of character.”
She touched my cheek then, and I was careful not to react beyond smiling.
“Thanks for being there, Joe.”
I nodded. “Good luck tonight.”
“Where’re you going to be?”
“In the background.”
She nodded wistfully, and as she turned toward the door, her face became more composed, a little harder-a face for the outside world. She smiled at me one last time as she left the room. “I like the eau-de-Vicks, by the way-very subtle.”
Two hours later I was standing in front of the darkened Municipal Building, high on the slope overlooking where Main Street split in two at the tip of the courthouse lawn like the water before a ship’s bow. Heightening the image, a long, wide, undulating stream of flickering candlelight slowly flowed down Main from the south, breaking before and surrounding the building like phosphorescence, a credit to Gail’s dramatic flair.
I crossed the steep lawn diagonally, seeing that Gail, Susan, and the other leaders of the march had opted for the route closer to where I was. I joined the crowd at the curb.
Illuminated as they were by the gentle flickering of their hand-held candles, the women seemed both serene and somehow otherworldly, like harbingers of some truth only they fully comprehended. Certainly some of the people watching them were at a loss. As Gail drew near to us, her face upheld and her long hair loose and flowing down her back, I found myself next to two young men dressed in jeans, work boots, and denim jackets. They’d been chatting quietly together before I arrived, their hands buried in their pockets against the evening chill. The three of us-I standing slightly back of the other two-watched those women, united in a common cause, making a statement all the more powerful for its silent and symbolic eloquence.