One of the young men leaned toward the other slightly. “Is that the one that was raped?” he asked quietly.
His companion muttered, as if muted in awe. “Yeah. Third from the left.”
“Pretty,” whispered the first, “I’d fuck her in a minute.”
Bob Vogel’s station wagon was a twisted, rusting, spring-shot heap, the standard ornament on a run-of-the mill backwoods Vermont lawn, and reminiscent of his next-door neighbor’s. Except it was parked in the Jamaica lot of New England Wood Products, where Vogel worked the four-to-midnight shift.
Willy Kunkle and I were in my car far to the rear of the lot, beyond the reach of the anemic floodlights attached to the distant warehouse’s corrugated walls. We were completely wrapped in a couple of thick wool blankets I kept stashed in my trunk for just such occasions. It was 11:45, and I was having serious problems keeping awake, even with the cold. Willy was snoring peacefully, wedged in the corner, looking utterly content.
For me, unlike for Gail and her colleagues, the parade had been a melancholy affair. They had been pleased by the attendance, the coverage-by several outside papers and radio stations, and even WNET-TV from White River-and by the overall tone of the evening. Among other luminaries, Jack Derby-Dunn’s opponent in the SA’s race-made a speech, suitably brief and stirring, which hit home all the more by highlighting Dunn’s absence.
Afterward, there’d been a song or two sung by the crowd, and then, on cue, all the candles but Gail’s had been extinguished-over three hundred all at once-and Gail had quietly placed hers on the steps of the courthouse. It had been both theatrical and magical and had left many of the spectators wiping their eyes.
And yet I had left feeling depressed, the voices of those two young men still echoing in my ears, enhanced by several other comments I’d heard in the crowd. Gail and her supporters had their cause to rally around and their enthusiasm to maintain their faith. I just had a thorough working street knowledge of the odds stacked against them.
Naturally enough, Gail had been unapproachable following the rally. Flushed by their perceived success, her supporters had surrounded her like an enveloping cocoon and had virtually carried her away to Susan’s house to celebrate. Stimulated as they were-or, perhaps, depressed as I was-I felt they were ignoring the look in her eyes, which I saw only from afar as she was whisked by. She appeared wrung out and haunted. I hoped Susan would find time to focus on her friend, and not get swept up in the fervor of making a well-timed political point.
It was in this bitter mood that I decided to personally step up the investigation of Bob Vogel-starting that night.
Willy Kunkle stirred next to me, peered at the watch on his right wrist, and let out an exaggerated sigh. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? This schlunk is going to get in his car, drive home, and hit the sack, leaving us with bupkis.”
I checked my own watch-just a couple of minutes shy of midnight. “Maybe. You’re getting overtime.”
He grumpily buried himself slightly deeper into his blanket. “That’s no shit.”
A flow of people began spreading out over the surface of the parking lot from a small door in the building’s side, to be absorbed here and there by dozens of cars. Vogel’s heap remained ignored for some ten minutes before a narrow shape, otherwise indistinguishable from this distance, finally hesitated by its side, worked the lock, and then settled inside. A black, oily cloud erupted from the station wagon’s tail pipe and drifted over the rest of the car on a gentle breeze, making the subsequent appearance of head-and taillights look like the distant glimmerings of a lighthouse on a foggy night.
“Jesus,” Willy muttered, “couldn’t we bust him on that alone?”
I waited for the car to make its way to the lot’s entrance before I started my own engine and followed discreetly. There was enough traffic around that I wasn’t overly concerned about being spotted, but we were a long way from West Brattleboro, and I didn’t want Vogel to get a fix on my headlights too early.
Jamaica is located near the Stratton Mountain ski resort, a couple of state parks, and a scenic reservoir, all of which make it a magnet for “seasonal visitors,” in chamber-of-commerce parlance-“flatlanders” to the locals so dependent on their money. As a result, the road passing through it, Route 30, is wide and well maintained-a quick and pleasant way to meander through several quaint villages on a forty-five-minute trip to Brattleboro. It was anticipating this trip that we eventually pulled out onto Route 30 and headed southeast, a good half mile and several cars behind Bob Vogel’s belching, poisonous, but fast-moving vehicle, easily identifiable even at this distance because of its mismatched taillights, one of which had been made vaguely legal by covering a bare white bulb with pink-tinted cellophane.
We hadn’t gone more than a mile, however, to the center of Jamaica village itself, before our travel plans were abruptly revised.
“Where the hell’s he going?” Willy asked as Vogel turned right off of Route 30 and then almost immediately left at a fork in the road.
I slowed down at the corner and waited until the taillights ahead were over the crest of the hill he’d taken. “Beats me-that goes to Wardsboro.”
Willy’s voice became peevish as he realized that his hopes of a quick trip back to Vogel’s place were about to be thwarted. “I know that, but if he took Route 100 farther down, it would take him half the time.”
“Maybe he plans to stop along the way.” My interest, unlike Kunkle’s, had suddenly sharpened, dissipating my earlier fatigue. “Who do we know around here?”
Willy hesitated a moment, grasping the gist of my question. “How ’bout Freddie Gibbons?”
I shook my head. “I think he moved to New Hampshire. Besides, he was a car thief.”
“Well, if anyone needs a car, this guy does.”
We continued in silence for a while, keeping far enough back to catch only occasional glimpses of our quarry. After a quarter of an hour, the first houses of Wardsboro village slid by on either side of us, quickly joined by the church, the town hall, and a typical New England group of white-sided, green-shuttered homes. Willy muttered, “Better close up-Route 100 is just ahead.”
I sped up slightly, saw Vogel slow down at the stop sign, and then watched him turn left. “He’s going the wrong direction, back north toward Route 30.”
Now Willy’s curiosity matched my own. “Did we miss something? A drop-off, maybe?”
I shrugged. “It’s possible.”
A few hundred feet beyond, Vogel veered right off of Route 100, crossed a bridge, and headed for Newfane, five or six miles farther along. At that point, nervous that even infrequent glimpses of us in his rearview mirror might tip him off-especially along this much more isolated dirt road-I killed my headlights and drove by moonlight alone.
This proved easier in theory than in fact. The moon was not full, the sky smeared with occasional clouds, and the air thick with the dust kicked up by the car ahead of us. Both Willy and I ended sitting bolt upright in our seats, craning forward in a futile effort to better see into the gloom, all while traveling at the breakneck speed set by our unsuspecting target. Several times I had to swerve at the last moment to avoid the ditch, and once, despite Willy’s last-second warning, I ran over something large and furry which made me break into a thirty-foot skid that almost put us into a tree.
We both knew this road ended up turning back into pavement above Newfane village, where thicker traffic would allow us to turn on the headlights and stop driving like two suicidal blind men, so our disappointment was keen-and in Willy’s case vocal-when Vogel turned right onto Grout Pond Road, thwarting our hoped-for relief.