“Nothing yet, but I’m not finished with my analysis. I’m going to examine this body with a fine-tooth comb, Lieutenant. Human death by rabies is extremely rare in this country and essentially nonexistent in urban settings. I’ll do everything I can to find out how this happened.”
I had a patrol car pick up Danny and Phil and transport them to the hospital to be cleaned, inoculated, and quarantined. Not trusting them to return for the series of five shots required, the county health officials gave them no choice but to remain as wards of the state. It was a far cry from the cheap beds, ready beer, and curbside deposits of secondhand fast food they preferred. I doubted they’d ever want to set eyes on me again.
It was mid-afternoon when I nosed my car into Arch Street, off of Main, and rolled down the steep, downhill curve that ended behind downtown’s distinctive twin row of stolid red-brick buildings parallel to the railroad tracks. Arch Street was a perfect example of Brattleboro’s unique personality. Down at the heels, littered, and ignored, it was thirty feet below and a stone’s throw east of the town’s vibrant business center, cut off by a rampart of intricately joined old buildings. And yet, just across the tracks and beyond a narrow swath of choking vegetation was a spectacular view of the glittering Connecticut River, and of towering, snow-capped Wantastiquet Mountain on the far bank-the very best scenery the town had to offer, enjoyed primarily by homeless alcoholics and dope-hungry teenagers. Both the contrast and the proximity of these settings spoke volumes about the character of a town at once embracing and bristling, seductive and cranky, charged with staunch conservatives and new liberals. It was not a place conducive to falling asleep at the wheel.
I got out of my car, locked it, and retraced my route partway up the hill toward Main Street. There, I left the pavement, cut through the tangled weeds, jumped down a small retaining wall, and found myself in a narrow gorge where the Whetstone emptied into the Connecticut. Upstream, the brook echoed loudly under the dark and looming bridge, now high overhead.
Picking my way carefully through the brittle underbrush along the bank, avoiding the ice-slick patches nestled among the rocks, I slowly made for the bridge’s gloomy shelter, its darkness emphasized by the dull roar of the water’s rush and the rumbling of the traffic above.
The vegetation petered out at the shadow’s edge, making progress easier, and I walked to the midpoint under the overpass and looked north, along the axis of Main Street. Before me was a five-foot-tall cement wall, topped by a narrow ledge, with a cement and stone abutment above it reaching all the way up to the bridge’s support beams. Just as George Capullo had described it, a roughly-cut entrance, not more than four feet in diameter, was located just above the ledge, looking much like the cave of some wild animal. It was the outlet of the Main Street storm drains, and the last place Milo had called home.
I gingerly placed both hands on the rim of the ledge, watching for broken glass, and hefted myself up. Standing amid the charred debris of Danny’s erstwhile campsite, I peered straight into the jet-black void of the tunnel, squinting against a steady breeze of surprisingly warm air.
I dug a flashlight out of my pocket and turned it on. Some ten feet ahead of me, beyond a rough-hewn ice-encrusted lobby of sorts, there was a bifurcation, with a narrow, tile-lined, twenty-four-inch drain angling off to the right, and a much larger, forty-two-inch cement culvert straight ahead, curving up and away, paralleling the street above.
Haunted by Phil’s harrowing images of Milo’s demented, spasmodic crawl toward the firelight, I headed for the wider of the two drains. There I came to a pleasant discovery. The misgivings I’d been harboring of a smelly, sewer-like environment were displaced by a dry, smooth, clean cement tube, wide enough for me to comfortably proceed in a low crouch.
Locked in the earth’s deep embrace, the tunnel radiated a steady, even temperature-cool in the summer, warm right now. And fed as it was by the gutter inlets in the street, the circulating air was clean and fresh. As I moved rapidly along its length, I had to admire Milo’s aesthetic pragmatism. Aside from the utter lack of light, this was private, protected, and comfortable.
It was also totally empty. For well over a hundred feet, I followed my flashlight’s halo, the monotony of my surroundings only occasionally punctuated by the pain of hitting my spine against the tubular roof. Mercifully, just as my legs were about to collapse from their confined range of motion, I came to a service shaft-a vertical junction of the tunnel I’d been in, and another of the same size, heading the same way, about six feet above it. A manhole blocked an outlet some fifteen feet above. A steel ladder lined one side of the small silo.
I paused to stretch and get the circulation back in my legs. I also killed my flashlight momentarily to get a feel for the dark. The sudden loss of sight was absolute, and oddly liberating. I found my hearing abruptly enhanced and became aware of new sounds that had been accompanying me from the start-the muffled thunder of a busy town going about its daily life. I could hear and distinguish the differing types of traffic, the dulled thumps of tires passing over the manhole cover, even the muted scrapings of shovels working to free the sidewalk of packed snow and ice. It was all seductively womb-like and added to the place’s aura of safety.
That, however, was because I was healthy and alert. Had I been in Milo’s condition, craving fluids while dreading the taste of my own saliva, my body racked by agonizing paroxysms and my head feeling as if it were about to explode, this haven must have seemed like a tomb, and the long crawl out of it a hopeless, frustrating, suffocating torture.
Tempered by this new insight, I climbed the ladder to the next tunnel and kept going-essentially up the middle of Main Street-alone, silent, and utterly beyond reach.
Finally, after another 150 feet, I found what I was after-a piece of plywood, laid along the tunnel floor, allowing for the occasional water to pass beneath it. Perched on its edge was the earthly sum total of a man who had slipped from this life with barely a ripple.
Standing my flashlight on end, so that its beam reflected off the pale, curved ceiling, I removed my winter gloves, replaced them with latex ones, and carefully began dissecting Milo’s belongings.
As with the contents of his pockets at the funeral home, there wasn’t much to see. Clothing for the most part, along with rags, towels, and blankets, in various shapes and stages of disintegration. There were several candle stubs and, surprisingly I thought, a couple of paperback books, albeit on the level of Conan the Barbarian. There was also a plastic bag filled with more personal items-letters so old and worn as to be basically illegible, photographs of people who meant nothing to me, a couple of pocketknives, one of which seemed an old and treasured heirloom. There was a stopped watch with a broken strap, a woman’s tortoiseshell barrette, a blank diary with leather covers. As I spread these items and more before me, I knew each must have been as eloquent to Milo as they were meaningless and mute to me. I imagined him occasionally laying them out by candlelight, and losing himself in reflection, tucked away in the bowels of a town that paid him no heed whatsoever.
The bottom of the bag held less interesting debris-petrified chewing gum, rusty paper clips, stiff rubber bands by the dozen, odd scraps of paper. There was also an assortment of pencils, long and short, and a hodgepodge of cheap ballpoint pens, some of which had been dismantled as makeshift cigarette holders.
Finally despairing of finding anything of value in all this, I began preparing to bring it to the office, where brighter light and more time might yield better results. It was then, almost by happenstance, that I focused on the writing along the shaft of one of the ballpoint pens.