“What’s that stupid son-of-a-bitch doing? We’re going to get killed because this dumb bastard doesn’t know where the hell he is.”
But I was beginning to see a pattern. “He’s avoiding the village-and Route 30 again.”
Kunkle grabbed the dashboard as I half slid off the road on a curve, my rear wheels spattering gravel as they groped for some traction. “Why? He doesn’t have any warrants.”
“The car must be uninspected. If he gets caught while he’s on probation, he could get his ticket punched-at least I think that’s what he’s afraid of. And at the speed he’s going, I’d guess he takes this route every night-looks like he knows every curve by heart.” We both hit our heads against the roof as I lurched over a half-buried boulder.
Whatever his reasons, Bob Vogel was wending his way home, by as straight a route as such linked dirt roads as Hobby Hill, Baker Brook, and Sunset Lake would allow. By the time we finally reached Route 9 in West Brattleboro and unobtrusively merged our headlights with those of the steady trickle of late-night traffic, the effects of a smooth road and clear vision were almost anticlimactic. We were so tired from trying to keep the car on level ground through sheer will power alone that we barely noticed such effort was no longer necessary.
I went beyond the turnoff for Vogel’s trailer park as he pulled in, and parked in the lot of an abandoned garden center, across from an exhausted-looking motel with a stuttering, half-lit Welcome sign.
Kunkle sat back cautiously, as if unsure the seat was still behind him. “So what the fuck did that do for us?”
I flexed my stiff fingers. “We have to check his habits-same as you did with Harry Murchison. And this may have given us something to squeeze him with, if we need it.”
He turned away and stared out the side window. I didn’t blame him for being irritated. Above and beyond the danger of the wild goose chase we’d just survived was the fact that Willy was here purely to babysit me, as both Brandt and Todd Lefevre were unavailable. That might’ve been all right if Vogel had done something other than take the scenic route home, but now Willy obviously felt it well within his rights to make me pay for his disappointment.
Until I spotted a lone figure on an ancient bicycle wobbling away from the trailer-park entrance. “I’ll be damned.”
Willy followed my gaze. “That him?”
“It’s the same bike he had chained up next to his trailer.”
We watched him laboriously grind away at the pedals, his body bent over the handlebars, heading east toward the anemic glittering of West Brattleboro’s outermost inexpensive restaurants, motels, and bars.
“What the hell’s he doing on that thing?” Kunkle wondered out loud.
“If we’re right about the car, he’s keeping a low profile.” I pointed to a long, nondescript building set back from the road slightly. “We are, after all, cutting right across the front door of a state-police barracks.”
I followed him in several stages, moving only once I was about to lose sight of him. Within a mile, he wheeled up to the front of one of the town’s more decrepit bars and leaned his bike against the wall.
Kunkle chuckled beside me. “The Barrelhead. At least I’ll be able to find out what he’s up to in there.”
That the Barrelhead was one of Willy’s listening posts came as no surprise. It was the Rainbow Room for Brattleboro’s down-and-out. In constant jeopardy of losing its license, it was also where we found Willy himself in the old days when he’d still had both arms, a marriage in shambles, and been in a headlong rush toward alcoholism.
I killed the lights again and found a parking space far from the bar’s front door. We got out of the car and stretched in the refreshingly cold night air. There were about six other cars in the lot, enveloped in the red-and-blue glow from the Barrelhead’s neon sign. Jukebox music leaked from the building like secondary smoke.
We moved to the shadows by the side, where a small window decorated with a flickering beer sign allowed us a dim view along the length of the bar inside. Bob Vogel had just seated himself on a stool and was struggling out of his windbreaker, talking to the bartender. There were two other men at the bar itself, neither one of them close to Vogel, and several more in the booths along the opposite wall. A fat waitress in a black-satin uniform, complete with cap, lounged at the far end of the bar in an overloaded long-legged director’s chair, either uninterested or unable to tend to her flock.
“You still come here?” I asked Willy.
“Fuck you.” He suddenly pointed at Vogel. “Well, look at that.”
Having finally removed his jacket, Vogel revealed a filthy but solid-red wool shirt underneath.
“Did J.P. come up with a final analysis on that fiber sample yet?” I asked, knowing that Kunkle, despite his seeming disregard for everyone but himself, actually made a clandestine effort to keep up on every detail in a case.
“Yeah-said it showed engine oil and dirt stains, just like that,” he said, pointing at Vogel, who by now was working on his first shot and beer.
We stood by the window for several minutes more to determine that Vogel was there for his own entertainment and not to meet anyone. Then, after Willy relieved himself against the wall, we retired to my car to wait him out-again.
Willy settled into the folds of his blanket, awkwardly tugging it up around his neck, and fixed his eyes on the sporadic traffic passing by on Route 9 before us. “So-assuming we’re only farting around with Jason Ryan because of Gail’s dykey friends-we’ve got two real suspects, right? Harry Murchison and old Bobby in there?” He jerked a thumb at the bar.
“I remember six others from Gail’s list of possibles, and two from the intelligence meeting.”
He didn’t hide his contempt. “Very diplomatic. You could throw yourself in there, too-you were the last one with her. And from what I hear, the DNA analysis won’t come up with anybody else.”
I didn’t bother responding. His style aside, he was essentially correct. “So how close are we to doing more than sniff through their garbage?” he persisted.
Willy was not a chatty man, nor was he given to seeking the counsel of others. It occurred to me therefore that he was curious about my reasoning. He wanted to know whether Vogel-whom we’d almost broken our necks tailing for no apparent reason-was becoming an obsession with me, to the detriment, perhaps, of Kunkle’s assigned target, Harry Murchison.
I turned the tables on him. “You’re the Murchison expert. What’ve you got?”
“He had motive, opportunity, and means-”
“What motive?” I interrupted.
“He’s a grab-ass generally, and he made eyes at Gail enough for her to put him on her list.”
I conceded the point with a nod.
“He also had the opportunity to preplan the attack when he was in her house fixing the windows. He might’ve even rigged one of them then. I interviewed the guy he worked with that day. He said they were out of each other’s sight off and on the whole time. On both those points alone, he’s stronger than Vogel. We don’t know if Vogel and Gail ever set eyes on each other.”
“Why did he wait a year between rigging the window and breaking in?”
Willy shrugged. “Why does any guy jump a broad? Something snaps. Maybe he rigs windows all over town. And it looks like it could’ve been Murchison’s truck on Gail’s street that night. Plus he has no alibi.”
“We haven’t talked to him yet. Faced with a rape charge, he’ll probably come up with some explanation, even if it shows he was cheating on his girlfriend.”
Kunkle scowled at the window for a moment. “So you’re not buying Murchison?”
“Not like I buy Vogel. Like with the red shirt tonight-every time we take a look at him, he gives us something new. Did J.P. tell you we found a catalogue in his garbage with Gail’s address on it?”