The solution turned out to be Al Hammond-the Windham County Sheriff. A seasoned politician, a lifelong law-enforcement officer-with several years in the state police and elsewhere-and, most important, one of Tony Brandt’s best friends, Al was also the owner of a small single-engine plane.
Brandt and I broke out maps and phone books, looking for appropriate landing sites and ways to get from the plane to Wheelock. We didn’t want to use another police agency to help us out. We were still smarting at the fact that a highly visible state police cruiser had tipped Susan to how close we’d gotten to her. If that was to happen again, it was going to be our fault alone.
We found an airfield just north of Lyndonville, and a friend of mine from St. Johnsbury who was willing to have a pickup truck waiting for me-no questions asked. Departure was planned from the grass strip in Dummerston-between Putney and Brattleboro-at 5:30 that afternoon, the soonest that Al Hammond could get away from his office.
Brandt escorted me out to the parking lot when I was ready to leave. “I wish I was coming with you.”
I shook his hand, a formal gesture that belied my casual tone. “If we’ve done this right, I should be back by late tonight-with Susan Pendergast.”
He merely pursed his lips. “You bring a gun?”
I patted my hip, under my jacket.
He pulled the department’s cellular phone out of his pocket.
“Take this, too. You get your ass in a crack, you can at least call in the cavalry.”
The cumulative toll of the attack on Gail, finding Schenk beaten, and just missing Susan Pendergast-on top of very little sleep-had left me jittery and beat. Two hours of flying at several thousand feet above Vermont’s soft, verdant mountains, following the broad, gleaming, sinewy track of the Connecticut River, obliquely lit by a sinking sun, did wonders to dispel the nervousness that had knotted up inside me.
The sun was just touching the hills by the time we landed at the Caledonia County State Airport, leaving a slowly fading golden light in its wake. I thanked Al for his help, then headed north on Route 122 in my friend’s borrowed Ford 150 pickup truck.
A quick four miles later, I came to Wheelock, a pleasant double row of houses lining the road for an eighth of a mile. I drove slowly, the ease of the flight replaced once again by apprehension and doubt. I pulled over in front of a house where an elderly woman was on her knees, fretting over an immaculate garden.
“Excuse me.”
She looked up, pushing her glasses back in place with the back of her gloved hand. “Hi there.”
“I’m looking for Marie Benoit. I hear she lives around here.”
The woman smiled and jerked her head to one side, indicating the north. “The house at the top of the hill, just before you leave town, on the right.”
“Thanks.” I put the truck back into gear.
“She’s not there, though.”
“Oh?”
“Yup. Went to the circus.”
“The circus?”
“Bread and Puppet, up in Glover.”
I nodded. “Right-I’ve heard of it.”
“They’re having a big to-do-lots of people. Too much for me. Besides, I think those people are a little funny, anyway. Nice, but funny. Marie likes ’em, though.”
“Have you known Marie long?”
“Almost twenty years now. Don’t know her well, of course. She’s not here very often, and keeps pretty much to herself, but she’s a friendly thing-just private. You a friend of hers, as well?”
“I met her in Brattleboro. She said nice things about Wheelock.”
The woman glanced back at her garden. “Well, I’m running out of light.”
I looked at her for a moment, suddenly feeling cold and slightly ill. “You asked if I was a friend of hers, ‘as well.’ Was there someone else looking for her today?”
She straightened, again shoving her glasses back. “Yes. Came by about half an hour ago.”
“Thin man? Gray hair tied back in a ponytail?”
“That’s him.”
I thanked her, drove to the top of the hill, pulled off the road into Marie Benoit’s driveway, and switched on Brandt’s cellular phone. If ever there was a need for the cavalry he’d mentioned, this was it-except that there wasn’t much cavalry in this part of Vermont.
Brandt was still at the office, as we’d agreed earlier. “What’s up?”
“Shattuck’s already here-he’s got a half-hour lead on me.”
“Shit. Where are you?”
“Wheelock. Susan Pendergast has gone to the Bread and Puppet Circus in Glover-they’re apparently putting on a big show. I need people-as many as you can round up.”
I started the truck again and began driving as fast as I could up the road toward Glover, some eight miles farther on, cradling the phone in the crook of my neck. I could hear Brandt on the other end shouting instructions to someone in the background.
He came back on. “Joe-how did he do it?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve got a bad feeling about it. Get hold of that clerk’s assistant who helped us out with the birth records. I didn’t give it any thought at the time, but when I was in there last, she seemed a little out of it-under stress somehow. Shattuck trained Susan Pendergast in urban guerrilla tactics. The town clerk’s office would’ve been a natural place for him to start looking for her.”
“I’ll check it out. Keep that phone with you.”
I drove as quickly as I could along the narrow, twisting road. The oddly named Bread and Puppet Circus had been founded years earlier as an alternative to traditional indoor theater. It was socially political in its rhetoric, loosely organized, and supported by volunteers and low-paid workers. It also staged its performances out-of-doors, both locally and in other parts of the world. What made it unique among other vestiges of early countercultural street theater, however, was its use of props. Bread and Puppet-which also made and sold bread to raise money-was famous for its papier-mâché masks, statuary, and “puppets,” some of which were fifteen feet tall and carried on the ends of long poles by white-dressed attendants. The effect of seeing these looming, gaunt, often grim-faced giants high over the heads of the audience strewn across the grass, with only the mountains and the sky as backdrop, was alternately enchanting, mystical, unnerving, and downright ominous.
This, combined with the unique music and the unconventionally delivered social messages-along with the tough but savory bread-made it a very popular attraction. If the Circus was putting on an especially big performance, I expected to find hundreds of people in attendance.
I began seeing cars parked on the shoulders on both sides of the road a half mile from my destination. I continued on more slowly, unsure of the geography. I’d seen photographs of the circus and read articles about them, but I’d never actually been up here before. What also fueled my caution was a conviction that if Shattuck knew Susan Pendergast was here, he knew I wasn’t far behind.
I passed a dirt road on the left with a “Bread and Puppet Circus” banner strung across it and then immediately came to a gathering of buildings by the road-a huge barn attached to a farmhouse on the right, opposite a rough shed and a couple of colorfully decorated but decrepit school buses. In front of the barn was a driveway with a prominent “No Parking” sign. I backed my truck in and killed the engine.
I got out and looked around warily. Up and down the road were hundreds of cars, vans, and trucks. And yet there was not a soul in sight.
I walked over to the barn, a gigantic three- or four-story whale of a building, weather-beaten and sagging, and pushed open a small side door marked “Museum.” It was dark and silent inside. The ramshackle white house attached to one side seemed equally abandoned.