“A little shaky-determined as hell. How many people know she was the victim?”
She looked slightly apologetic. “Probably everyone in the department. She’s like family because of you; it hit people hard. Are you worried her name will get out?”
I began walking toward the door leading to the building’s central hallway. “Tony says it’s just a matter of time. It might help if we can nail this guy first.”
I left her staring at the information I’d typed up, sadly shaking her head.
I crossed the hallway to the police department’s other half, where Dispatch, the officers’ room, and the chief ’s office were located. I was buzzed through the main entrance by dispatcher Maxine Paroddy and walked straight to Tony Brandt’s door. A fog bank of pipe-tobacco smoke told me of his presence somewhere within.
Brandt squinted up at me from his computer console like a distracted mad scientist surrounded by toxic fumes. “You back?”
“Have been for a while-just wrote up the MO for distribution.”
“How was Gail?”
The ever-present question. “She’s hanging in there. She insisted on giving Todd a full statement; he said he’d have a transcript to you this afternoon.”
“Learn anything?”
“The method was thought out, careful. Off the bat, I’d say he’s smart, doesn’t want to be caught, and she knows him. He took too many precautions to avoid being identified. That probably means he’s local, too.”
Brandt made a sour face. “Great. What did J.P. come up with?”
“Don’t know yet. I was about to head back up there, but I thought I’d check in first.”
He looked glumly at the computer screen for a second and then checked his watch. “Todd at his office?”
“He was headed there when I saw him last.”
“All right.” He hit a couple of keys on the computer and stood up, reaching for his jacket. “I’ll come along.”
“There’s no need; J.P.’s probably almost done anyway. I just want another look around.”
Tony was putting the jacket on. “Sounds like a good idea.”
“I’ll be right back,” I tried one last time.
He stopped, one arm in a sleeve, and looked at me levelly. “Get used to this, Joe. Trips to the can you get to take by yourself. Everything else, you have company.” He waved a hand at my obvious irritation. “I told you that at the start. I want you babysat.”
We walked to the rear parking lot in silence and got into my car. The temperature was merely cool by now, warm enough to unlock those smells of earth and trees that Brattleboro managed to retain despite its urban appearance.
“You having problems with this arrangement?” he asked.
“No; it was more for your sake.”
He went along with the lie. “Don’t worry about it-I could use the break.”
But I’d seen his wary expression just before he’d insisted on coming, and I remembered the meeting he’d had with the board of selectmen while we were interviewing Gail. Before that meeting, he wouldn’t have been so compulsive about following the guidelines he’d arranged with Dunn. “I take it the board’s not too happy with my being on the case.”
He hesitated slightly. “They have their political concerns.”
“Which are high-pitched enough to put you in this car.”
He was silent for a minute, as I got us out onto High Street, headed toward West Brattleboro. “Let’s call it preventive maintenance,” he finally said. “A down payment of good will. If the shit hits the fan, maybe they’ll remember how we kowtowed. Besides, that was the deal with Dunn.”
I sighed at the familiarity of it all-how every major investigation came fully loaded with politicians, press people, and “concerned citizens” with ulterior motives. I was grateful Tony Brandt seemed content with his hybrid role of half cop, half politico, catching most of the flak so we could focus on our jobs.
But I sensed an additional factor in his reasoning-one that explained why he wasn’t putting too much blame on the board. I was the potential loose cannon in all this, not our predictable, hand-wringing town leaders. I carried the gun, gathered the facts, and it was my lover and friend who’d been raped. Despite his apparent support, Tony Brandt was obviously less trusting of my state of mind than he was letting on, and happy to use politics as an excuse to keep me company.
“You having second thoughts about me?”
He gave me a surprised look. “No. Why?”
“Everyone else sounds pretty dubious. That’s a lot of people to ignore.”
“They don’t know you.”
I left it there, forcing him to listen to the echo of his own doubts. He finally shifted in his seat to better face me and added, “I’d be an idiot if I wasn’t concerned, Joe.”
I smiled for his sake. “True-so ask.”
“All right. Now that you’ve talked to her, how’re you handling it?”
“Not well, at first, but I think I’m getting it. The one way I can help her and myself is to do the job.”
“That simple? And what happens after we catch the guy?”
I shrugged. “None of it’s simple-it’s just all I’ve come up with. I guess I’ll see what happens next-to both of us.”
Gail’s property loomed ahead on the left as we climbed the road, its entire two acres encircled by a single, pathetic-looking yellow ribbon, repeatedly stamped, “Police Line-Do Not Cross.” At the entrance to the driveway, which now held only a handful of cars, we were stopped by one of our own patrolmen, and by a woman emerging rapidly from a parked Volvo, who ran to cut us off. Brandt groaned.
“Want me to keep going?”
“No,” he muttered, rolling down the window. Mary Wallis was one of the women who’d been attending Gail at the hospital, and one of Tony’s prize antagonists. An outspoken advocate of women’s rights, she was dedicated, hard-working, and utterly dependable when it came to the cause, but she could also be dogmatic, narrow-minded, and combative-the type of partisan that made feminists like Gail and Susan Raffner true connoisseurs of a gift horse’s mixed value.
“Hi, Mary,” Tony called out. “What are you doing here?” She was obviously not in a sociable mood.
“I’ve been looking for you. What’ve you found out?”
Brandt looked apologetic. “We’ve got everybody working on it, Mary-”
Her eyes narrowed, “Which means you’re stuck. What about Jason Ryan?”
Tony turned briefly and looked at me. I merely raised my eyebrows. Jason Ryan was well known to us-and anyone else who regularly read the letters to the editor in the Reformer. A local restaurant owner, he was a major town crank, finding conspiracies under every rock and proclaiming his discoveries from any available pulpit. The police department was one of his supposed regular dens of iniquity, apparently a clever cover for a major drug ring, among other things.
“What about him?” Tony finally asked.
“Have you questioned him? He threatened Gail at the last selectmen’s meeting-said he knew exactly what she needed to get her off her high horse.”
Gail hadn’t mentioned it to me, although that came as no surprise-it sounded like the kind of thing Ryan leveled at almost everyone he met. But this was no time to be dismissive. I leaned forward to better make eye contact. “What was the nature of the disagreement?”
“He was there to protest the wording of a sexual-harassment clause in the new town employment guidelines. He got ugly over it, raving about the dykes and fags and whatnot.”
“Sounds pretty typical,” Tony said softly.
It was the wrong response. Wallis stuck her face closer to his. “You should know, considering how long it took you to upgrade the wages of your own female employees.”
Brandt’s voice went flat. “That was years ago. I had to follow the town attorney’s rules of procedure. You can’t change everything overnight.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but I interrupted. “Mary, this run-in with Ryan, did Gail get into it with him, or did he just foam at the mouth a little and take off?”
She let go of the door, shaking her head in disgust. “Jesus. One of your own men had to come in and escort Ryan from the room. He was threatening her, for God’s sake, and you don’t know a thing about it.”