The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [21]
Those weren’t the only important differences between Vermont’s two southern corner towns. Unintentionally, Sam had revealed an instinctive and time-honored common prejudice that had favored her home over Bennington for hundreds of years.
Brattleboro, after all, had the interstate and the Connecticut River—commercial conduits, new and old, that had all but guaranteed its label as the Gateway to Vermont—along with a solidly anchored middle-class population, while Bennington remained merely another ex-mill town to the west, host to several small industrial plants and a large medical center, forever regretting the erosion of its own middle class and the fates that had spurned it when Interstate 91 had been drawn elsewhere on the map in the 1950s.
Bennington County regarded itself as Vermont’s black hole, and its populace instinctively looked inward to solve most of its own problems. This was an area of practical-minded, largely working-class people who didn’t pay much heed to what was going on in a state they figured didn’t have much time for them in the first place.
Sam suddenly laughed. “I heard somewhere that in the old days the Indians wouldn’t bury their dead in Bennington because of the ill winds. Guess the place has always kind of sucked hind tit.”
His mind having wandered already, Joe reacted only halfheartedly. “I like it. It stands on its own two feet.”
She snorted. “Stands more in Mass and New York, from what I hear. And what’s the deal with that weird bypass? Their politicians live and die by whether they support an interstate traffic circle that’s supposed to go completely around the town? That is really bizarre.”
Joe glanced at her. He wasn’t about to argue the point one way or the other. For years almost uncountable, Bennington had, in fact, had a huge bypass on the books that would ease the pressure from the all-important intersection of Routes 9 and 7 in the heart of downtown. One side of the debate called it financial suicide; the other touted it as economic salvation. Only one leg of it had been completed thus far—a beautiful quarter circle running from New York State to Route 7 due north of Bennington, complete with sweeping panoramas of the valley and bordering mountains. But since it didn’t accomplish the overall goal, most outsiders—and a few locals—were still hard pressed to figure out what it foretold.
Joe only knew, as apparently did Sam, that unless you held an opinion on the matter, you were clearly overlooking one of the area’s touchstone topics.
Without comment, he returned his attention to the road, although he found his thoughts focusing neither on the scenery nor on the condition of Bennington’s battered self-image.
It didn’t take long for Sam to notice the change. “You all right, boss?” she eventually asked him. “You’re kinda quiet.”
He turned briefly to glance at her. “Sorry. A little distracted. Something about this case has gotten under my skin. Don’t know why.”
“She didn’t seem old enough to die of natural causes,” Sam ventured.
Joe burst out laughing. Sam was the youngest of his squad, and an interesting clash of boldness and hesitation, ambition and self-doubt, experience and naïveté, which her taste in men helped exemplify. Currently, and for the past couple of years, she’d been discreetly but determinedly involved with Willy Kunkle, a hookup that boggled Joe’s mind, although he tried to show his support.
“Very diplomatically put, Sam. Nicely done,” he finally said.
Sam was looking flustered. “I didn’t mean you were at death’s door . . .”
He waved her off. “I know, I know. I’m just pulling your leg—an old man’s prerogative. That is part of it, actually—she was young in my book—so you’re right. But there’s a whole element of pathos around this, plus a hint of something darker.”
“Newell Morgan?” she asked, having already read the file.
Joe pursed his lips before responding. “The ME sees nothing wrong, Matthews is happy to move on, and nothing jumped out at me at the scene, so I’m hardly planting a flag in the ground here. But Morgan is definitely a man I want to look at