The Skeleton's Knee (41 page)

“I’ve got an idea,” I told Brandt. “I think Susan—or Billie, or whatever the hell she’s calling herself now—has a backup plan, another identity she’s been saving for a rainy day. She was worried about the Mob and Shattuck on the phone, but she didn’t seem that worried about us, and she’d obviously planned an escape from that general store beforehand. This is not a woman running blind, Tony. I want to check the records again at the town clerk’s.”

The same clerk’s assistant who’d helped us the day before watched me come through the door with obvious dismay. I remembered we’d caused her to stay open way past normal closing hours. “Sorry we loused you up yesterday.”

Her eyes dropped to the counter. “It’s okay.”

I made my way back to the same oversized books we’d searched before. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

She followed me back and gave me a weak smile. “Would you like some help?”

I didn’t want to pull in my people from the field, who were still out checking leads to Susan’s whereabouts; accepting her offer might both speed things up and make her feel a little better about having her office invaded again. She also knew the records intimately.

I put her to work on the death records, while I combed the birth certificates. One by one, I called out the names of female children born in the mid-1940s, and she checked if there were any corresponding death dates. Each time there was, I gave the name to Brandt over the phone and he typed it into his computer, which was linked to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I was hoping we could conjure up another fifty-year-old ghost with an up-to-date driver’s license.

An hour later, we struck gold with the name Marie Benoit.

It had been a long shot, and for a moment, I had difficulty accepting my luck. “You’re shitting me. Where does she live?”

“Wheelock, Vermont—the Northeast Kingdom. I know that area; it’s northwest of Lyndonville.”

“Damn.” I slammed down the phone, thanked the assistant clerk profusely, and ran back to Brandt’s office.

· · ·

With success came concern that we might lose our advantage. Neither one of us had forgotten what had happened to Gary Schenk, whom Shattuck had obviously found by putting a tail on either Dennis or me. Now that we were hoping we’d located Susan Pendergast, we didn’t want to make the same mistake twice, nor did we want to involve another police department.

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.

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.”