I checked my watch. “Tell them to hit the trailer in four minutes.”
She turned back to the transmitter and passed the word. We could hear the cryptic replies, the tension in the officers’ voices filling the air like static. The room was deadly silent, each of us listening, balancing what we knew should happen, based on our training and past experience, against what might go wrong. Both Smith and Santos were members of the department’s special reaction team-what used to be called SWAT before Hollywood made the term politically unpalatable-and Dennis, for all his slovenly habits and slow-witted reputation at other times, was at his best in these types of operations, his nature abdicating to adrenaline and years of practice. All of us in the dispatch room would have preferred a more thought-out, coordinated approach, but we were trained to respond to the unexpected, and no one questioned my judgment.
The four minutes came and went; a few more were added to them. I could visualize the trailer surrounded, the area secured, positions and equipment checked, an attempt made to rouse someone from inside, and finally the forced entry, made low and fast, shotguns ready, men fanning out, their hearts hammering under bullet-resistant vests.
The radio finally came alive; Dennis again: “He’s gone, Joe. Nobody’s home.”
12
James Dunn sat at his empty, highly polished desk, staring at his neat, interlaced fingers, as if impressed by their utter stillness. I was, too, actually. I figured the news of Vogel’s disappearance would send him through the roof.
But the SA was no longer the politician scrambling for headlines in the wake of a bad poll; he was in operational mode, in which he was at his best.
He finally looked up from his hands at the three of us-Brandt, Todd Lefevre, and me. “You talk to Boisvert yet?”
I nodded. “She said she confronted him on the illegal driving and that he accused her and the state of a double standard-telling him to earn a living and contribute to society, and then trying to send him back to the slammer for driving without a license when he’d done nothing to deserve it.”
“Is that what she threatened him with?”
“At first. She told me she calmed down a bit after hearing his explanation and gave him till the end of the week to come up with a solution.”
“But she heard about his driving to work from you, right?”
Here it comes, I thought. “Yes. I’d discovered he wasn’t registered with DMV. I had to fly it by her to make sure she didn’t have an explanation, but I didn’t tell her why we were asking. I guess I also hit her at a bad time. Anyhow, she grabbed a convenient deputy instead of one of our guys as an escort-another reason we didn’t know what was going on-and she acted on her own. I should have guessed she might, from her tone of voice. My screwup.”
“True,” was all he said in retribution. After another pause, he mused, “Doesn’t seem like enough to make him run. What else did they discuss?”
“She did say he was pretty paranoid about the rape. He kept connecting her visit to our investigation-which she knew little about and he only suspected we were conducting-accusing her of trying to lock him up on a technicality to buy us time till we could nail him with the big one.”
“Which is exactly what we almost did,” Dunn muttered. “Nice try, by the way.”
His mildness was almost unnerving. It was possible the same cold, logical thinking that made him good in a courtroom had just saved me from being crucified-but it was hard to believe.
“So,” he said in a livelier tone, “where do we stand, having told the world we all but have the cat in the bag?”
Brandt gave him a detailed rundown of the manhunt we’d set into motion-alerting all area enforcement agencies, poring over Vogel’s records for personal references that might tell us where he’d run to, and contacting DMV to put a flag on all inquiries concerning unlicensed drivers who might fit Vogel’s description.
“And,” Lefevre added, “the affidavit for a search warrant’s been finalized by this office and delivered to Judge Harrowsmith for signing.”
Dunn nodded. His voice was almost conciliatory when he spoke. “All right, that’s good for the moment, since we’re still the only ones who know Vogel has gone missing. In twenty-four hours, however, that will probably change, and if we still haven’t located him, I’ll be asking the state police to take over the investigation.” He looked up at Tony Brandt.
Brandt froze. For a moment, I saw them lock eyes like opposing force fields, each apparently hoping pure energy alone would atomize the other.
Tony finally took a discreet deep breath and countered, “I understand the pressure you’re under, but that might not be in your best interest. We know more about Bob Vogel right now than the state police will learn in a week of going through his files-and that’s a week in which Vogel could disappear forever.”
“They have better resources than you do.”
“Perhaps, and if we think Vogel has left the area, we’ll call on those resources.”
Dunn’s voice became the icy knife I knew all too well. “He’s already left the area, Tony. Your staff saw to that.”
Brandt ignored that bullet for the sake of the battle. “People in his position don’t run for distance, James, they run for cover, and they run for places they know personally. We’re not just faxing other departments to keep their eyes open-we’re telling them where to look and who to talk to, according to Vogel’s own files. The state police could do no better.”
Dunn didn’t answer at first. Then, finally, the hands came alive, slipping free of one another as he pointed to the exit. “Good. You’ll have twenty-four hours to prove your point.”
Bob Vogel’s trailer was dark and cluttered and looked like a cyclone had blown through it. And it stank-of dirty clothes, stale sweat, rotting food, and mildew. The small refrigerator oozed the gaseous sweet odor of a biological time bomb waiting to be freed.
To Tyler and Kunkle-Tyler’s unlikely but preferred companion for detailed searches-it was all as rich as an untapped gold mine. The two of them, gloved and masked, surveyed the dim premises with interest. I, in contrast, stood in the narrow doorway, imagining only the owner of this rat hole emerging to violate Gail in her clean, airy, sweet-smelling home. That someone with so little to offer could wreak such damage turned my stomach.
“Let me know if you find anything,” I told them, before returning outside to the relative pureness of the surrounding decrepit neighborhood, where the other members of the squad were foraging around and under the trailer and picking through the abandoned station wagon.
I stood in the middle of the rutted dirt lane, breathing the cool, fresh air so much at odds with the setting. The weather-beaten, broken-backed trailers were strung out along the road haphazardly, as if thrown away, and shared a disturbingly imperiled appearance-as if the earth were swallowing them up in imperceptibly slow bites.
Whether it was the disappointment following Vogel’s disappearance, Dunn’s display of clear self-interest, the unslacking melancholy that had dogged me since the attack on Gail, or just plain exhaustion from too many days without sleep, I suddenly felt overwhelmed by lassitude. The damage to Gail had been done, her attacker identified-to my satisfaction at least-and the subsequent process attending both those facts-her healing and his eventual capture and prosecution-put in motion. My role was soon to be diminished to that of the loyal supporter. I was to be attentive, encouraging, helpful if possible, but essentially useless until forces beyond my control had run their course. Once caught, probably by some other agency than ours, Bob Vogel would be in James Dunn’s manipulative hands, while Gail’s recovery depended mostly on her own abilities to rally and rebuild her life. It all left me feeling strangely empty-handed.
Brandt, who had broken with protocol to join us in the field, came up beside me in the middle of the road.