The Ragman's memory

10

I moved a pile of books from one of the chairs in Gail’s study and took their place. She was sitting in her armchair again, with her laptop computer, taking notes from the man on the videotape. But this time, despite it being eleven o’clock at night, she wasn’t dozing off.

She looked at me warily. “What’s up?”

Taking the hint, I skipped the preliminaries. “What do you know about Mary Wallis?”

“Why?”

“Because as far as we can tell right now, she was the last person to see Shawna Davis alive.”

Gail shifted the computer off her lap and tucked her legs up under her, hitting the pause button on the VCR remote, her veiled irritation becoming concern.

“A mailman saw Shawna standing on her front lawn last spring,” I continued. “Mary confirmed this evening that she met the girl at Mother Gert’s, and that Shawna came by to say good-bye on her way out of town a few weeks later.”

“You think she had anything to do with her death?”

“I don’t have any proof of it, but she’s not being straight with us. She was crying when she answered the door. She claimed she had just heard about Shawna’s death. But by the time she threw us out fifteen minutes later, she was all bluster and fury and being very careful about what she told us. She also referred to the death as a murder, with no prompting from us.”

Gail cradled her chin in her hand and looked thoughtfully at the floor. “I’m not surprised she struck up a friendship with the girl. From what you’ve told me, they have a lot in common.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear more about,” I murmured.

“Mary’s originally from Pennsylvania-a single child. Her father was a drinker-very rough on her mother and her. I don’t know if he sexually abused her, but all the hallmarks are there.”

Gail hesitated, obviously uncomfortable. “I normally wouldn’t tell you this, but you’ll find it out anyway. She killed her father. He was beating her mother, and Mary slammed him on the back of the head with an iron skillet. He was dead before he hit the floor. She was fifteen.”

“She do any time for it?” I asked.

Gail shook her head. “No. The mother was in the hospital for a month. The neighbors all knew what was happening. The DA didn’t even indict. Everyone figured her father got what he deserved… Except Mary, of course. She had to live with it, and she didn’t know how.”

“The mother was no help?”

“No more than before. One of life’s born victims. She married again-same type of guy-and this time I know Mary was sexually abused. She left home almost as soon as the new husband moved in.

“She wandered to New York City, began drinking, doing drugs, God knows what else. She pretty much hit bottom. And then she became pregnant.”

I listened with growing fascination, reminded of how much we assume we know of other people’s lives. I never would have guessed at such a background to the Mary Wallis I thought I knew.

“The baby died a week after birth. Mary was convinced she’d poisoned it with her own drug abuse and malnutrition, and I wouldn’t argue the point. But it was the second death she’d played a part in, and she thought she’d better put an end to a dangerous habit.”

“By committing suicide,” I suggested, familiar with the pattern.

“You got it.”

“How?” I asked.

Gail looked at me quizzically. “I’m not sure… Sleeping pills, I think. Yeah, because she checked into a shelter and somehow or other got into the dispensary and stole the stuff. She almost pulled it off. She was in a coma for a week or more. That, typically, is what eventually saved her. People finally took notice. A women’s crisis organization was called in and helped turn her around. She began to fight back. She’s been fighting ever since.”

“What brought her up here?”

“Her mother’s been in a vegetative state for years. Mary heard about the Retreat’s geriatric care unit and moved both of them up here about a decade ago. She visits her twice a day. Her mother’s the only person I know who gets that much of Mary’s attention, even though she hasn’t said a word to anyone in all that time.”

“Jesus,” I said. There was a long silence while I thought about how to phrase my next question. “Her mother, in a way, is permanently asleep. And when Mary tried to kill herself, she took sleeping pills-”

“And Shawna’s hair,” Gail finished for me, “was full of phenobarbital. Does make you wonder.”

I’d expected some reproach for my suggestion and was surprised at Gail’s seemingly detached response. “You think it’s possible?”

She didn’t smile as she said, “I’ve come to think everything’s possible.”

There was a telling pause as we both reflected on the toll of her own recent trauma.

“Shawna was about Mary’s age when she attempted suicide,” Gail mused. “They met in a shelter, and for all we know, Shawna might’ve been pregnant when she came to see Mary the second time. She might’ve killed the girl, except you’d expect some noticeable psychological change-some behavior modification.”

I returned to a thought I’d had earlier that evening. “But she did change. Remember how hard she fought the convention center? Tooth and nail up to last spring. Then, all of a sudden, she dropped out of sight. The suit she’d threatened never materialized, and the opposition she’d almost singlehandedly organized collapsed.”

Gail frowned. “I was so buried in my own problems, I never paid any attention to that, but I guess you’re right. And she also missed a golden opportunity to sink the project last month, when Gene Lacaille ran into financial trouble, and the bank ended up holding the bag.”

I glanced at the morning newspaper, lying by the wastepaper basket, its headline still mocking my efforts to make Shawna the day’s number one item. “Interesting,” I murmured and rose to my feet.

Gail looked up at me. “What’re you going to do?”

“For starts,” I answered, “I’m going to put Mary Wallis under a microscope.”

The new day’s first business, however, involved none of what Gail and I had discussed. By dawn’s gray light, I was standing in the McDonald’s on the Putney Road, ordering enough coffee and food to feed a large horse.

In a car steaming with an aroma no doubt carefully conceived in some sterilized Midwestern laboratory, I then drove north to just shy of the Dummerston town line and took a right onto Old Ferry Road, past UPS, the dump, and the corporate offices of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, to the trailer yard of Ferguson Trucking-where George Capullo had told me Danny Soffit and Phil Duke were camping out.

They were there by permission, more or less. Roger Ferguson had once kept his trailers under lock and key, protected, he hoped, behind a tall chain-link fence. But the attraction of all those huge, empty, romanticized eighteen-wheeler bodies had proved overwhelming. Nightly, people had climbed that fence-bums looking for a place to sleep, teenagers hot to smoke dope or play doctor, and graffiti artists in search of more canvas. There’d been accidents, a couple of small fires, one boy had died of an alcohol overdose. Years ago, Ferguson had finally given up, thrown open the gates, and left them that way ever since. The boxes, when being readied for use, still had to be cleaned out of bottles, cans, and condoms, but the strategy-such as it was-had worked. No longer on the list of forbidden places to go, the yard had lost its appeal. Now the bums alone still considered it prime real estate, and Ferguson’s people were under orders to leave them alone.

George had told me which trailer Phil and Danny were camped in, so I drove slowly over the frozen, rutted yard until I’d drawn abreast of a box with both rear doors all but completely shut.

I killed the engine, got out and paused a moment to listen. Everything appeared utterly still. To the loud moaning of cold-stiffened hinges, I swung one of the doors back and peered inside.

The box was almost empty, its cavernous interior stark and resonant. Far to the back, however, jammed into one of the corners, was a rounded pile of rags, blankets, and cardboard-reminiscent, in a crude fashion, of an oversized cocoon.

“Phil. Danny,” I called out. “It’s Joe Gunther. Bratt PD. I got breakfast for you.”

The vapor from my breath hung motionless before me, glistening in the pale light of the new sun. These people were not early risers, unless they were living in some building’s furnace room and trying to avoid detection, so I wasn’t surprised that all I got for my effort was a slight shifting from deep inside the bundle.

Encouraged, I returned to my car, retrieved the cardboard trays I’d just purchased, and slid them onto the edge of the trailer floor before struggling up to join them. Once inside, I carried the food halfway down the box and sat down, my back against the wall.

“Okay, guys, open your nostrils if nothing else. This stuff won’t stay hot for long.”

Slowly, the cocoon lost definition, coming apart in odd ways-a chrysalis of dubious origin yielding inhabitants not known for their glory. Shaggy heads topped by dirt-flecked wool hats emerged, blinking and bewildered in the intensifying sunlight.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“Joe Gunther,” I repeated. “Bratt PD.”

Some recognizable forms began to appear-an arm, an outthrust leg, a gloved hand working out the cramps instilled by a night spent in near-hibernation. One of them rose unsteadily, leaning for support against the wall.

“Joe Gunther?”

It had been a while since I’d last seen either one of them, and right now they were not at their best. I ventured a guess at the more alert of the two. “Hey, Phil. Tough night?”

“Had worse,” he said suspiciously, only his eyes visible between a scarf and a pulled-down watch cap.

“Well, you can refuel with some of this if you want.”

The homeless inhabitants of Brattleboro, especially those we called the “regulars,” were a pretty predictable tribe. Mostly men in their mid-thirties or older, they kept to themselves, were respectful of us, and largely sought to be ignored. A few of them panhandled, a few-when they had the money-went for a rare meal at a restaurant, much to everyone else’s distress, but most of them merely existed on the town’s periphery. They ate out of Dumpsters, slept out of sight, and lived off what was either given them through charity, or from the money they redeemed for the beer cans they emptied in copious amounts. Regardless of their other sanitary shortcomings, they rarely left a can or a bottle lying around-they were among the best recyclers in town.

They were also remarkably law-abiding. They did their drinking in private, kept their disagreements off the street, and had even been known, now and then, to help us out with some information. Generally, when investigating a burglary, even in the town’s poorer neighborhoods, we didn’t bother with the bums-however isolated and despairing it might be, theirs was not a life of crime.

All of that, however, also made them wary, and having a cop arrive on their doorstep with a hot catered meal was not something they took easily in stride.

Phil’s voice changed to that of a mildly affronted homeowner being disturbed too early in the day. “Excuse me, sir, but what do you want?”

“First, I want you to eat this stuff before it turns to ice. Then I want to talk to you about Milo. George Capullo told me where to find you.”

Danny Soffit, the slower of the two, had by now also emerged, but he stayed, splayed out and dazed, on the floor.

“Milo’s dead.” Phil straightened his neck out, as if to gain a better view of my offerings. The smell of the hot food had already filled the trailer.

“I know that. I guess it was just his time. I went down to the funeral home to pay my respects. Milo and I were friends-at least we were friendly.”

“So what do you want?”

“I need to know how he died.” I waved my hand at the food. “It’s a straight swap-breakfast for a little conversation. No strings attached.”

Phil crossed back over to where Danny was still staring at us and kicked him in the leg. “Move your butt. Food’s on.”

Danny swiveled around and began approaching me like a shambling bear, on hands and knees. Phil shook his head in gentle embarrassment and walked over to sit opposite me. “He’s not too good this early.”

I pushed a tray at him. “Me neither. Dig in.”

He did just that, as did Danny a minute later, eventually dusting their beards, gloves, and clothing with small fragments of Egg McMuffin, hash-browns, toast, jelly, and coffee.

I let them eat half the meal in peace before exacting my price. “You told Sergeant Capullo that Milo had a seizure before he died.”

“Yeah,” Danny spoke for the first time. “He twitched a bunch.”

Phil gave his friend a look over the top of his Styrofoam cup but otherwise kept quiet.

“The three of you were hanging out together, around a fire, and he suddenly up and died-just like that?”

Phil nodded and began to speak but was drowned out by Danny’s, “Oh no. Not like that.”

“Shut up, Danny.”

We both looked at Phil, Danny’s eyes growing wide. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot.” Then he looked at me with childlike sincerity. “Yup. He died just like that.”

Milo’s appearance at the funeral home returned to me once more, along with the memories it had evoked. This was the moment I’d been anticipating and dreading both, and I wanted to make sure I handled it right. “How did his beard get all wet, Danny?”

Danny looked at me in startled silence.

“He foamed at the mouth,” Phil answered. “They do that with seizures.”

“Sergeant Capullo reported that you two were living under the bridge, and Milo was camped out in the drain tunnel. Is that right?”

They both nodded.

“Why weren’t you staying together?”

“Didn’t like Milo,” Danny blurted.

“So why gather around a fire like a bunch of Boy Scouts?”

Neither man answered.

“Look,” I finally said, “let me get something out in the open. The doctor who examined Milo thought he’d died of natural causes-because of your seizure story and the fact that Milo was on heart medication. Turns out the heart condition wasn’t fatal, and Milo never had a seizure in his life. I checked on that. I think Milo died of something else. Not anything you did-you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you made up the seizure story to make the whole thing go away. Isn’t that about right?”

Danny’s mouth fell open, dropping a few half-eaten scraps.

But I focused on Phil. “Yesterday afternoon, I called your old landlord. You can have your room back, as long as you don’t start another campfire. But I need to know what really happened.”

“We won’t get in trouble?” Phil finally asked.

“Not unless you did something against the law.”

“We didn’t do nothing,” Danny complained.

“What happened, then?”

After a long pause, during which the food lay ignored before them, Phil finally said, “We didn’t think people would believe us. We weren’t all around the fire-that was just Danny and me. We didn’t even know Milo was in the tunnel.”

“We heard him, though,” Danny said, excited now that he could say what he knew.

“Yeah. He was making all kinds of weird noises-shouting and yelling-sounded like he was fighting somebody.”

“We were scared.”

Phil frowned. “We wondered what was goin’ on, so we shouted into the tunnel, you know? We didn’t know it was Milo. Didn’t recognize his voice or anything. ’Course, the echo didn’t help. After a while, the noise stopped, and we could hear somebody moving-”

“Yeah-shhhhh.”

“Right, like he was dragging himself along. We weren’t about to go in there-”

“Too scary.” Danny was alive with excitement by now.

“But that’s when Milo came out, crawling on his belly. His eyes were huge, and he had spit coming out of his mouth-tons of it-all thick and gooey. Scared the shit out of us.”

“Yeah.”

“He looked real sick, and just when we could tell who he was, he started spazzing out, flopping all over, banging himself against the walls… And spitting. That was the weirdest part-he kept spitting.”

“What did you do?” I asked, feeling the cold much more than I had a minute earlier, a long-dormant horror now thoroughly awake.

“We didn’t know what to do.”

“I ran,” Danny admitted candidly.

Phil made a face. “Yeah, well, I didn’t think he was going to hurt anybody-’cept maybe himself. I figured it was the DTs, you know? But I guess I knew it wasn’t, too. Anyway, he was sort of reaching out for me, so I offered him a drink-I had a can in my hand-and that’s when he just flipped out-”

“He was crazy,” Danny said.

“And then he died,” Phil added flatly. “Just collapsed, right in the middle of one of those… Things he was having.”

“So they weren’t really seizures?” I asked.

Phil shook his head. “I had a cousin who had seizures-fall on the ground and get all stiff and then fall asleep-pee all over himself. Milo wasn’t doing that. He was gasping and shouting and flopping around… Like when you get hit with freezing-cold water-you know how you dance around and breathe hard and slap yourself? It was kind of like that.”

“What did you do after he died?” I asked.

“We didn’t know what had happened,” Phil said. “First I thought we should just leave him there-let somebody else find him. But Danny said that was wrong. So we cleaned him up a little, invented the seizure story, and called you guys.” He paused for a moment. “Are we in trouble now?”

I thought he might be, but not in any way he could possibly imagine. “You’ve done nothing illegal, Phil.”

His face relaxed, and he looked down at the cardboard tray before him, poking among the fried potatoes.

“But,” I added, “I’d like you to do me a favor. Hang out here for a few more hours, okay? I want to make sure your landlord’s going to hold up his end of the deal, and I want to know where to find you. Okay?”

Both men shrugged simultaneously. “Sure,” Phil said and motioned toward the two trays. “We’re in good shape now, anyway.”

I left them and drove straight back to the office. Still wearing my coat, I reached for my phone.

Decades earlier, while in the Army in Asia, we were shown a cautionary training film about some of the perils of our new environment. It was a silent film, with no voice-over or music, featuring a middle-aged, bearded Indian man sitting on a straight-backed chair in a small, bare room. On a table beside him was a single glass of water.

For twenty minutes the camera watched as the man, his face contorted and his body twitching, made every effort to take hold of the glass. His eyes huge, rolling, and totally focused on the water, he seemed desperately thirsty-and yet utterly incapable of simply seizing the glass before him. Finally, in a spastic lunge, spilling most of the water, he succeeded, although he still couldn’t bring the glass to his lips.

Thick saliva poured from his mouth, impregnating his beard and dripping down his front. His body thrashed against the opposing forces tearing him apart as he fought to bring the now empty glass almost to his lips. Then, finally, mercifully for those of us watching the film, he suddenly stiffened and rolled off the chair, dead of hydrophobia.

Beverly Hillstrom answered on the second ring.

“Lieutenant. You’re in earlier than I expected. I was going to call you later. I have disappointing news on Mr. Douglas. I can find nothing to contradict the opinion originally rendered on his death certificate.”

“Doctor, I just interviewed the two men who found him. They invented the seizure story to make the whole thing go away, but from what they just told me, I think Milo died of rabies.”

Her answer was short and precise. “I’ll call you back.”