I glanced at George and began walking back to the cars. “I don’t know, but my gut tells me we’re in for a lot worse than that.”
3
Several weeks later the snow vanished completely, replaced by the first crocuses poking up through the remnants of winter’s drab coat. The days became longer and warmer in fits and starts. The town of Brattleboro, sprinkled across a crazy quilt of hills, ravines, and twisting streams in Vermont’s southeastern corner, turned gradually leaf-green, hiding its two-century-old industrial grit under a brand-new flourish of spring-fresh foliage. Its residents, shut inside for months, began trickling out into the streets and playgrounds and parks, to look around at the world like newly awakened bears-a small segment of whom were eager for a first square meal.
In response to them, our business began its seasonal adjustment.
Petty vandalisms, car break-ins, graffiti rampages, parking-lot parties, back-street drag races-all the warm-weather crimes endemic to a large quasi-rural town of thirteen thousand people made their annual reappearances. The self-styled teenage homies came out feeling restless, and got busy venting the cabin fever they’d been storing up over the winter. All according to established routine.
And all of which made the phoned-in report of an explosive car fire in the middle of Route 30 enough to empty the office of almost everyone who didn’t have to stay there.
Especially since the driver was reportedly still in the car.
Route 30 is the main artery from town heading northwest into Vermont’s interior. It is a favorite route of skiers in winter, leaf-peepers in the fall, and kayakers and canoeists in the spring, the last of which are attracted by the broad, shallow, rock-strewn West River, which hugs the road along the valley floor for over twenty-five scenic miles, north of Brattleboro.
But this time, negotiating the breakdown lane alongside a growing line of stalled drivers, my attention wasn’t drawn to the rushing water. Violent deaths in this area were still rare enough to get the adrenaline pumping, and regardless of what had caused it, I knew this fire was going to be front-page news, and a number-one concern of the town manager, the selectmen, and the press, until we put it to rest.
About two miles out of town, pinched between a fifty-foot-high cliff to the west and the river to the east, I found a flattened, still-flaming, blackened hulk of a car, seemingly pinned in place by a tall, thick, tapering column of black, oily smoke.
Parked around it, looking paradoxically festive, stood a shiny collection of fire trucks, rescue vehicles, and police cars, all festooned with variously colored flashing lights. A few firefighters dressed in turn-out gear and breathing apparatus were casually hosing down the wreck from a safe distance. It was clear neither the car nor its driver would benefit from any more heroic effort.
The initial excitement over, the other responders were killing time, standing together near one of the trucks, waiting until things could be cleared away and the road reopened. A maintenance crew and a flatbed truck had already been requested, and traffic was being rerouted along the Upper Dummerston Road, which luckily paralleled Route 30 along this one stretch, above the cliff to my left.
I found an unobtrusive place to park and approached the group. Patrolman Sol Stennis, an enthusiastic one-year veteran of our force, was among them.
“Some mess,” he commented quietly.
I glanced over at the smoking car. In the few gaps the breeze created in the acrid cloud surrounding it, I could clearly see the charred skeletal remains of the driver, slumped over the blackened steel hoop of the steering wheel.
“You find out anything?” I asked him.
He removed his hat and rubbed his forehead. “I asked around when I first got here, but I couldn’t find any witnesses to the actual explosion. I talked to the people who called it in on their car phone-a couple from Williamsville-but they came up on it after it was already burning.”
“There was no other car?”
“Not that anyone knows of, and there’s no impact debris that I could find. I tried looking at the blacktop for skid marks, but by the time I got here, it looked pretty much like this.”
We were standing on a thin film of foul-colored water extending in all directions, obliterating anything that might have been underneath. The road was straight and flat along this section, well paved and wide-shouldered. It was the middle of the afternoon, the weather was clear, and there were no trees, telephone poles, or boulders nearby that the car might have struck. And yet, it looked like it had lost a fight with a freight train. Beyond the damage the flames had done, it was twisted and bent beyond all reason.
Stennis followed my gaze. “Think it might have been a car bomb?”
I shook my head. “It looks more pushed in than blown apart. I wish we could get close enough to read the plates.”
I looked up at the nearby cliff. It was a mix of beige rock and clinging vegetation, the latter of which thickened near the top, becoming a row of spindly trees that peered down at us like quiet, elderly onlookers.
Except for one of them. I crossed the road toward the river, glancing over my shoulder until I had a flatter angle.
Stennis tagged along. “What is it?”
I pointed to the cliff ’s distant edge. “See how that tree’s been torn up? Lower limbs ripped away on one side, bark stripped near the bottom? And a little below it, caught on that bush about halfway down. See that branch?”
“Damn,” Stennis muttered next to me. “The son of a bitch must’ve come off the Upper Dummerston Road.” He studied the otherwise unblemished cliff, visualizing the arc the car must have taken to end up where it was now. “Jesus. He must’ve been flying.”
I ignored the unintended pun. “Where’re you parked?”
He pointed to a patrol unit just north of the logjam of emergency vehicles.
“Good. We’ll take your car and circle around from the north.”
We were threading our way between trucks when I looked over my shoulder for one last glance at the scene. The Brattleboro Reformer’s Alice Sims, just leaving her own car, caught sight of me and came running, waving her note pad.
“Shit,” I muttered. “Hang on, Sol. I better make a no-comment.”
“Joe,” Sims called out as she caught up to us, “what happened?”
Alice Sims was the local newspaper’s “courts-’n’-cops” reporter, a job she’d inherited from Stanley Katz, who’d since been bumped upstairs to editor-in-chief. Like Katz, who in his prime had defined the word shark, Alice could be fiercely tenacious. Unlike him, she didn’t find it necessary to be personally offensive in the process. Dealing with her-especially with memories of him-was a comparative pleasure.
“Don’t know yet. I just got here.”
“Was it a bomb?”
I raised my eyebrows, feigning surprise at the very subject that had come up not two minutes earlier. “Whoa, Alice, this isn’t Detroit. We’re starting with the premise of a car accident. There is absolutely nothing to indicate a bomb at this point.”
She turned to face the still-crackling fire, her voice incredulous. “You saying that was a fender-bender?”
I shrugged and pointed to the fire chief standing by the largest of the trucks. “Ask him. He was here first. We’re just beginning our homework. I’ll let you know what we find out.”
She followed my advice, and Sol and I resumed our way, but I could already hear the clock ticking. Whatever this was, we already knew Alice was at least partially correct-this had been no simple accident, even if it hadn’t featured a bomb.