On the soft breeze, I heard the muffled thumping of distant drums. I crossed over to the dirt road with the banner. It, too, was lined with cars, and led downhill, curving to the right. The sounds of music-pipes, more drums, instruments I couldn’t identify-had grown louder.
At the bottom of the curve, around a small outcropping of trees, I came within sight of a broad field, some distance off, that had been cut into the side of a hill years before-perhaps as an old gravel pit. Now, softened and disguised by grass and passing time, it had become a perfect amphitheater, its three green walls gently sloping toward the flat, circular “stage” at the bottom.
I stopped close by the trees, still under their protection, and surveyed the scene. The Bread and Puppet Circus was in full swing, its many members dancing and carrying their trademark towering puppets to the accompaniment of odd and exotic-sounding musical instruments. But they were facing the same way I was-directly into the crowd of well over a thousand people. If I continued the way I was heading, I would come out into full view of the crowd as I followed a well-worn trail that swept up and around the right side of the back of the amphitheater. For several minutes, I would be clearly visible to everyone watching the show.
I retreated up the road a short way and cut into the woods that bordered the left side of the amphitheater, hoping to come out above and south of the old pit, where my appearance would pass largely unnoticed. It was becoming darker-I guessed the half-light following sunset would be completely gone in about forty-five minutes-and I was becoming pessimistic about ever locating Susan Pendergast.
I was almost to my goal, but still in the woods, when the soft chirping of the cellular phone brought me to a halt. I pulled it out and answered.
“We found the assistant town clerk,” Brandt said, his voice thin and distant. “She’s dead.”
“Oh, Christ.” I was suddenly seized with a violent anger, directed both at Shattuck’s casual bloodthirstiness and my own inability to bring it to an end.
“She was at home. It looks like a broken neck. She probably told him what he wanted to know, and then he killed her so she wouldn’t talk. I guess you were right about him staking out her office-maybe he’d already gotten to her and was holding something over her… Coercing her somehow. If so, all he had to do was wait ’til we’d done his research for him, before driving up to Motor Vehicles in Montpelier for a current address, no questions asked… Where are you now?”
“I’m just about to start searching the crowd. You got backup coming?”
“There was a domestic brawl somewhere in your general area. It’s got almost everybody tied up, but they’re trying to break people loose. They’re moving as fast as they can, but they got to cover the distance.”
“Have them block off the roads when they arrive. If they get here before the show ends, they should have everybody stay where they are. That’s got to play to our advantage. And tell them to bring lots of lighting. It’s going to be dark soon. And, Tony?” I added as an afterthought. “Get hold of Al Hammond at the LynBurke Motel. He was planning to spend the night there. Maybe he can help out.”
“Right.”
I switched off the phone and stepped out of the woods into the mowed swath that curved around the upper semicircle of the amphitheater. What I saw filled me with hopelessness and frustration-a thousand people, many of them with their backs to me, sitting on the grass, jammed together in a solid sea, amid the rapidly failing light.
I joined a fringe of people at the back who were mostly standing, many of them equipped with either still or video cameras. I walked up to an older man with several Nikons around his neck.
“Excuse me. Could I ask you a big favor?” I said in a low voice.
He looked at me with a startled expression. “Sure-what’s up?”
I pulled my badge out and discreetly showed it to him. “My name is Lieutenant Joe Gunther; I’m from the Brattleboro Police Department. I’m looking for someone in this crowd. I know it sounds a little crazy, but I was wondering if I could borrow one of your long lenses so I could see better.”
He stared at me for a moment, the smile fading from his face. “Are you putting me on?”
“No-I’m quite serious, and I’m running out of time.”
Something in my voice or expression must have done the trick, because he bent down to the bag at his feet and came out with a monstrous telephoto lens that he quickly snapped onto one of the camera bodies around his neck. He then slipped it off and handed it to me. “It’s the biggest one I’ve got. You’re not going anywhere with it, are you?”
“Only along the edge here. Stay with me. If I spot the person I’m after, I’ll pass you the camera and get out of your hair.”
He nodded and stepped back slightly to give me more room.
I hefted the camera up to eye level and began scanning the faces of the crowd on the bank opposite me. Beyond them, across a distant, overgrown field, I could see the dimly lit top of the barn where I’d parked my truck.
It was an impressive lens-high-quality, one thousand millimeters, very clear. Even in this light, it functioned well, allowing me a distinct close-up view of even the most distant faces. As I moved from one person to the next, carefully sweeping from left to right, I began to feel more optimistic. Given enough time and enough light, finding Susan Pendergast again became a possibility-assuming she was here at all.
Of course, hers wasn’t the only face I was seeking, and I knew that if Shattuck was also searching for her, he, too, would be on high ground, studying the crowd. I had therefore begun my sweep with the people on the crest of the amphitheater.
That, as it turned out, was a piece of incredible luck, not for what I saw on that crest but in the distance behind it. Over the shoulder of one of the spectators I’d focused on, in the field separating the distant road from where we stood, I caught the blur of something bobbing up and down.
I refocused the lens. The bobbing turned into a man, his back to me, running toward the barn, a telltale ponytail swinging from side to side.
“Shit,” I muttered, and handed the camera back to its owner.
“You found him?”
I didn’t pause to answer. I was sprinting off as fast as I could, a good quarter mile behind.
I hadn’t seen Susan, but the absolute certainty that Shattuck had beaten me to her was utterly clear to me. The quiet, almost unnoticed death of a backwoods hermit with a false name and a secret stash of money had led me here with fate’s inexorable momentum. I had stood by in ignorance while Kevin Shilly had been cruelly murdered. Was I again too late to stop the murder of the one person left I had the power to save?
I discovered a narrow trail that cut through the field and the line of trees that bordered the road, making my progress better than I’d expected. Nevertheless, when I reached the road, it was empty.
I crossed the road to my truck, listening, my gun now in my hand, hoping for some sign to tell me where Shattuck had gone. Instinctively, as if drawn by its magnetic mass, my eyes went to the huge dark barn and to the museum door I’d pushed open earlier to look inside: I had closed that door behind me. It now stood open.
I went up the steps silently, pausing just outside, my back against the wall, trying to remember the layout I’d only just glimpsed before. Directly opposite the door was a broad set of stairs leading up to the museum; to the left was a gift-shop area, with bins full of prints, metal postcard racks, and various T-shirt displays. Beyond that had been three other doorways too dark to see into. To the right of the entrance was either a wall or another door-I couldn’t remember.
I took a deep breath, gripped my gun with both hands, and swung inside, pivoting on my heel so that I ended up crouching at the foot of the stairs, my back against the wall, facing both the upstairs and the darkened gift-shop area. Almost immediately, I heard the single soft scrape of a foot somewhere above me.