by C I Dennis
“You need serious gear if you do. If you go north it’s fifty miles to the Canadian border, and you have to summit Belvidere Mountain, and then Jay. It’s a bitch, and—hey, no offense, but you’d never make it with that limp.”
“How about southbound?”
“Forty miles to Camel’s Hump. My wife and I did it last summer, and it’s the hardest stretch of the whole trail. You summit Whiteface, Madonna, Spruce, Mansfield, and Bolton, and by the time you’re finished you don’t ever want to set foot in the woods again.”
“Do you think that this girl could handle it?”
“Plenty of them do, if they’re prepared. Young legs, you know. But if she’s solo, all she has to do is break an ankle and she’s done. That could be why she’s been gone so long. Let me call this in, Mr. Tanzi. I’ll take care of it.”
“I’m going to give it another day,” I said. “I leave for Florida tomorrow. I’ll let you know, either way.”
He shrugged, and I hoped that I was making the right decision. If Grace Hebert was up on the high peaks with a broken leg, then I was dead wrong. But from the looks of her squeaky-clean dorm room, I couldn’t imagine her on the side of a mountain, or even outdoors, unless it was beneath the umbrella of a sidewalk café. Grace was definitely a “town girl”, as her grandmother had described her, and a bunch of cops and rescuers looking for her in the deep woods would be a waste of resources.
It was time for Step Two, and maybe Step Three: I needed to locate a boyfriend or a best friend and see what I could sweat out of them. In the nicest possible way, of course.
*
The Dibden Arts Center was a short walk across a leaf-strewn lawn that was the center of the Johnson State campus and was dotted with kids leaning against their backpacks, talking, reading, playing Frisbee, and enjoying the day. The 1970’s-era brick building was framed to the south by Sterling Mountain, which was also known as Whiteface, because for a good six months of the year it was draped in snow. People from Vermont enjoy a selective amnesia that kicks in around May after the impossibly long winter, and by the balmy days of midsummer you find yourself thinking—it snows here? Nah, that can’t be. It’s just green and gorgeous like this all the time. Who needs snow tires? And then, come November, it snows, and snows, and snows, until April rolls around, and the woodpile is down to a few sticks, and you’re thinking will it ever get nice again? And you repeat the same cycle, year after year, unless you bail to somewhere warm like I did thirty years ago. Basically, Vermonters are crazy. But it’s a good crazy.
When I entered the building I expected to find the usual purple-dyed, black-clad art majors, but I was pleasantly surprised by a young man in torn khaki shorts who looked like a surfer, and a freckle-faced, pigtailed woman in gray sweats. They were the only people in the entry hall, and I got right to the point.
“Hi there, I’m looking for Grace Hebert. Can you help me out?”
“She took off, I think,” Surf Dude said. “Are you her dad?”
“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “I’m working for her grandmother.”
“Seriously?” the girl said.
“Yes,” I said. “She’s been gone for two weeks, and her family is worried. You know her?”
“You mean the princess?” The girl turned up her nose. “Everybody knows her. This is a small campus. We all know way too much about everybody.”
“What do you mean by princess?”
“Well, she’s ridiculously good looking, for starters,” the girl said. “And she’s, you know. An ice queen. She’s a totally amazing actress—she was the prostitute in the Brecht play we did last year, and it was, like, scary.”
“So, are you friends with her?”
“She doesn’t hang with the students,” the guy said. “Just with the profs.”
“The professors?”
“Yeah,” the girl said. “Like I said—we know too much about the people here.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
They both looked embarrassed. The girl spoke first. “Shouldn’t we be asking for your ID or something?”
“Duffy said it was OK for me to ask people questions,” I said. “He’s helping me look for Grace.”
“Duffy’s cool,” the boy said. They looked at each other, and I said nothing.
“You should talk to Mr. Lussen,” the girl finally said. “His office is upstairs. He’s her advisor.”
“Among other things,” the boy said, and the look on his face finished his sentence for him.
Oh really? Cherchez le boyfriend?
“Thanks, you guys,” I said. “This is a big help. Just one more question. Is it possible that she’d be hiking? Like, somewhere on the Long Trail?”
“Grace wore heels to everything,” the girl said. “She was nice, but she didn’t fit in. I’m not surprised that she’s gone.”
The young woman probably hadn’t meant to use the past tense like that, but if I had smelled trouble before, right now it was like I had just run over a skunk.
*
I located Donald Lussen’s office, but the light was out and his door was locked. A janitor told me that most of the staff was at lunch, so I hoofed it across the campus to my car and checked out the student parking lots. Grace Hebert’s faded-purple Ford Aspire sat in the lower section, just off of the road that led in and out of the college. Her car was parked at the far end of the lot and was covered in leaves. I went back to one of the dorms and borrowed a coat hanger, and a couple of minutes later the door popped open. Keyless entry, so to speak.
The back seat was folded down and a tattered foam mat took up most of the space. A metal bowl was wedged under the dash behind a thirty-pound bag of Taste of the Wild dog food. Maybe this was Chan’s kennel, and she kept him here while she studied? Did that mean that he also slept here overnight? That seemed like a bad arrangement, seeing how the cold weather was just around the corner.
The Ford Motor Company must have named this tiny, cramped model the Aspire because it wasn’t a real car, it only aspired to be one. I twisted myself into a position that a yogi would have admired and got inside. Next to the dog food was a small black overnight bag that I unzipped: two pairs of panties, a rolled-up nightshirt, lipstick and other cosmetics, a three-pack of condoms, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, assorted feminine products, and seventeen crisp hundred-dollar bills zipped into a side pocket. What was this, a hooker’s emergency kit? Maybe Grace Hebert had played the part of a prostitute so deftly because she already knew the ropes. Or, was this simply an overnight bag for a woman who also liked to keep some serious cash around, just in case? There was more money in the zippered pocket than the car was worth, and Grace was taking a risk leaving it around, but that could be why the dog slept here: according to Mrs. Tomaselli, he was a brute.
There was nothing out of the ordinary in the glove box: the service manual, the registration, and a bill from the Montpelier garage where her mother’s boyfriend worked. I combed the area under the seats, looking for any additional items. Sometimes the smallest thing can provide a clue, but all that I could find was a bottle cap, a couple of paper clips, a few bits of the dog kibble, and some wadded up tissues. In other words, nothing.
I popped open the tailgate of the hatchback and lifted up the dog bed and the carpeted floor panel underneath to reveal the tire compartment. The space held three items: a temporary spare, a jack, and something heavy that had been wrapped in a hand towel, which I carefully unfolded.
Inside the towel was a .44 magnum Ruger Super Redhawk, freshly oiled, fully loaded, and with the safety off. What the hell? A gun that size would create so much recoil that Grace Hebert would sprain her wrist if she used it. And no experienced gun owner would ever leave a weapon loaded and ready to fire—during my years as a deputy sheriff I’d seen the consequences of that all too often. I engaged the safety and put the gun in my car. If Grace reappeared, she could collect it at her grandmother’s along with her dog.
If the dorm room had revealed nothin
g, the car had told me too much. Your typical college student didn’t pack heat like that, not to mention wads of hundreds. I decided to go back to the drama building to see if Professor Lussen had finished his lunch. Maybe her student advisor could explain what was going on, or maybe not. Either way, I doubted that I was going to be on the flight home tomorrow.
*
If I were a good-looking, twenty-one-year-old female drama major with a loaded revolver, a cash hoard, a dog, and a dark secret of some kind, and not a fifty-three-year-old ex-cop with a bullet hole in his head, I would have curled up on the rug at Donald Lussen’s Birkenstock-clad feet and purred like a kitty cat. He had the kind of male beauty that would make even the most sensible woman want to strip down to her Fruit of the Looms and start twerking uncontrollably. The professor’s hair was prematurely gray, which only enhanced the appeal of his tanned face, chiseled features, close-cropped beard, and pale blue eyes. He wore one of those perma-smiles that instantly put you at ease, although sometimes people like that will keep smiling regardless of what you say, and it’s unnerving. I told him who I was, why I was here, and that I was deeply concerned for Grace Hebert’s safety, and he smiled back helplessly like he couldn’t turn the damn thing off.
“Tell me your name again?”
“Vince Tanzi. She told her family she was hiking the Long Trail, but that was two weeks ago. Is she taking classes with you?”
“She’s not in the fall production. We’re doing Macbeth, and I wanted her for Hecate, but she wouldn’t do it. I haven’t seen her—I thought she was out sick.”
“But you’re personal friends?”
The smile finally began to fade. “I’m her faculty advisor. We meet a couple times a semester.”
“Here? Or off campus?”
“What do you mean by that?” the professor said. I had him off balance. I was playing the dual role of good-cop-bad-cop, and it was time to reel him back in.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it to come out that way. There’s some scuttlebutt on campus about you and her, probably because you’re both very attractive, and people like to make assumptions that they shouldn’t.”
“That’s right,” Lussen said. “I know where the lines are drawn.”
“What can you tell me about her dog?”
He hesitated. “She has a dog?”
My bullshit alert suddenly went off. Answer a question with a question, lose one credibility point. “Why would she own a gun? And keep a lot of cash handy?”
“No idea,” the professor said. “Guns aren’t allowed on campus. Not even for the campus cops. All they can do is write tickets.”
“Are you married? You live in town?”
“Yes, I’m married, and—listen, this is quite enough. No more questions. You’re not with the police, right?”
“No.”
“I’ll speak to the police if they want me to. I’d be happy to help, but I don’t like what you’re insinuating. So please go.”
I paused for a moment before speaking. “Look, Donald. You can talk to the police, and by the way I’m calling them next, or you can tell me what you know, right now. And if you level with me, we’ll keep your wife out of this, all right? All I want to do is find the girl.”
Lussen sat back in his office chair, which squeaked as he reclined. An old Regulator railroad clock ticked away the seconds on the brick wall behind him while I waited.
“No,” he said. “No deal.”
“Here’s my card,” I said. He waved it away, so I left it on his desk.
“Take a hike, Mr. Tanzi,” he said, and the smile reappeared.
*
Donald Lussen may have not meant it literally, but the idea of being in the woods for a little while to sort things out sounded like a good idea. Afterward, I would call on Lieutenant John Pallmeister, a friend from my Barre days who was now in charge of the Middlesex barracks of the Vermont State Police. The barracks was on the way home, and even if this turned out to be nothing, it wouldn’t hurt to get his opinion. Grace Hebert was old enough to make her own decisions, as her mother had said, and maybe this was nothing more than some kind of intrigue with a philandering professor, and it was none of my damn business. I could almost have bought into that—except for the gun and the money. They didn’t fit, and the dog didn’t either.
Maybe the dorm room was a stage set, and Grace and her dog spent their nights elsewhere. Did the professor have a secret love nest? If the state cops took this one on, they had the tools to find that out in a day or two. Acting on my own, and without access to her phone records and all those other things, it might take me weeks. It made sense to go see Pallmeister whatever the outcome, but for now I was going to steal an hour of the beautiful autumn afternoon and see if my legs and my balance were up to taking a brief hike in the Green Mountains.
The trailhead parking area was two miles outside of Johnson, across the road from an old cemetery that was surrounded by a picket fence. There was only one other car in the lot: a rusty green Subaru like my mother’s, with an empty kayak rack on the top. I parked my rental car and tightened up the laces on my sneakers. I was dressed in chinos and a white golf shirt, and I had nothing at all in the way of hiking gear except for a plastic bottle of water, but my plan was to go no further than a mile each way—I just wanted to get a taste of the outdoors and try some terrain other than the level Florida beach.
White blaze markers pointed me down a path across a field to the wood’s edge, where the trail began a modest ascent over a small hill. I was up one side and down the other without a problem, and the soft breeze and rustling orange-and-gold foliage was lulling me into a quiet contentment that I hadn’t experienced for a long time. Maybe if Grace Hebert really was out on an extended trek, it was a good thing.
The trail led to the side of the Lamoille River, where a suspension bridge had been built specifically for the hikers. It wobbled under my gait, and I was soon on the other side, where I crossed a paved road and reentered the forest. This time the trail was much steeper. A sign pointing to Prospect Rock provided me with a goal, and after a half an hour of sweating and grunting I was rewarded with sweeping a view over the river valley and the farms, church spires and settlements below. I sat on a wide rock outcropping, well away from the edge because I don’t do heights—the third rung of a ladder is the limit before my palms begin to sweat.
I opened the bottle of water and drained it, as I already knew the way back and I wasn’t worried about getting dehydrated. I was pleased with myself for being able to handle the modest climb and was thinking that when Royal was a few years older and we were visiting his grandmother, I should take him into the woods. Close to nature. I filled my lungs with the cool mountain air and was glad that I had taken a break from looking for Grace Hebert. This was heaven, and I was about to lie back on the sun-warmed rock when I fell face forward to the edge and passed out cold.
*
The first of the whiteouts had come in August after I had dropped Royal at his mother’s and was driving back to my house. He and I had walked the beach together that afternoon, part of the time with him in the backpack but most of the time I held his little hands and let him stumble in and out of the shallow water at the edge of the surf. I’d had a bit too much sun that day, and five minutes after I left Barbara’s driveway I started getting light-headed. Everything was too bright, as if the bulb wattage had been increased. I pulled over into the parking lot of the Indian River Mall and checked out my eyes in the rearview mirror: they were dilated, and the brightness became a glaring white flash that made my head throb. The episode was over in less than a minute, but it was good that I had pulled over, because if I’d still been driving I could have killed somebody. It had happened four more times in the month before my Vermont trip, and each time I’d had plenty of warning and had been able to get off the road.
There had been no warning this time.
I had keeled over forward and was now trying to get up, but the back of my neck
was throbbing, and I could feel blood drying on my face. I realized that I had been lying only inches from the edge and that directly in front of me was a hundred yard drop to the treetops and boulders below. I’d had no advance notice, no light-headed feeling, no brightening of the light. This had been a blackout, not a whiteout, and I wondered why the back of my neck hurt so much when it was my face that was bleeding.
A young hiker in dreadlocks came rushing to my assistance and helped me stand. He recoiled at the sight of my bloody face, and after we backed away from the edge of the rock he sat me down and dabbed at my forehead with a towel soaked in water from his canteen.
“You cut the skin at the top of your forehead,” he said. “I think the bleeding has stopped. How long have you been here?”
“Don’t know,” I croaked. My neck was really beginning to throb now, and I wondered if I could make it back down the trail. “Did you see anybody?”
“Just you,” the kid said. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, with leather hiking boots and tall wool socks. His backpack rested near him on the rock. From the look of it he was a through-hiker, not a day-tripper.
“You going north or south?” I asked. The wet towel felt good on my forehead, and I was slowly getting my wits back.
“North, but right now I’m taking you back to your car. Is that your Subaru in the lot I passed? Or the other one?”
“Mine’s the red one,” I said. “Did you see anybody else?”
“Just the Hummer,” he said. “The guy was leaving when I came through.”
“A Hummer?”
“White, with blacked-out windows. Florida plates. It’s illegal to black out the windows on a Vermont car. Plus, nobody around here would drive one of those things.”
“Did you get a look at the guy?”
“Not really. I just saw the car and said, you know, what’s that doing here? Those people don’t hike.”
“I think I can handle getting back. You go on ahead.”
“But—”
“I’m OK, really. Thanks. You go.”
He shrugged, picked up his pack, and started north. I stood up and began walking in the opposite direction. I had no problem at all with my balance, or staying on the trail, and I was back to the parking lot in no time, because I was pissed. That was no whiteout.