Chapter 5

A cold chill went through me. I said nothing to Chazzy. I wanted to do some checking just to prove my thought wrong. I was slow running back home. Not because I was tired, but because I was thinking. I dug around and found the note that I had jotted down about September 4th and 5th. I had six entries. Then I remembered what Delores had said about it raining very hard at that particular time. Should I have made a seventh entry?

How could I find out if that was the date the old road became totally impassable. I went over to the Dummerston Town Clerk's office and posed the question. "Do you have any record of when the old portion of the Ravine Road became impassable? If there isn't a record, would you know anyone on the town road crew that would remember back twenty years?"

I was put in touch with a pick and shovel man that had been on the work detail at that time. "Yep, the road was there on the third of September because we scraped the new section. When we were bringing in gravel to fill the washouts where we had scraped the Tuesday before, we discovered that the old road had disappeared. We put up a new sign saying the road was no longer open. That was on the following Monday. That any help to you?"

"Maybe. I was just curious. I used to go up that road when I was a kid and I was always afraid the stones above that road would come down on us when we drove by."

"Could have happened, boy. The town had struggled for years to keep that from happening and that's why they built the new portion. There was a lot of townspeople against making the change. They did see it was a smart move when the whole side of the mountain let go and took the road with it." I left him after listening to several odd things that had happened in the years he had worked on the road crew.

So during a period of six days an event had happened, but no one knew just when. Had Big Tony gone down that road? He might have if he was short of gas as it was a little closer to Leppolli's gas pumps. What next? How could I discover or disprove the fact that Big Tony might have found his final resting place?

You couldn't dig for him and the car. What had slid down had to be earth, rocks, sand, clay and trees all jumbled together. I came to this conclusion when I carefully went down to the bottom of the ravine. The slide had damned up the brook and made a small pond for awhile. Over the twenty years, the backed up water had drained away, washing all of the clay, sand and soil away, leaving just the larger stones and criss-crossed trees. Nothing to be seen I was interested in. If a car was in there, it had to have stopped further up the hill.

I came to the conclusion that if Big Tony was buried somewhere on the hillside, his remains were forever lost. I crawled back up to the newer section of the road, climbed into my van and went home. There had to be some way to determine if there was a car down there.

You know when you are trying to remember something and then you can't? You are trying to think of a word or a name and you are reading a newspaper and there is what you are looking for. My answer came that evening as I was thumbing through a new Harbor Freight catalog that came in the mail. On one page, up in the top right-hand corner, there were metal detectors for sale. Would they work? Worth a try. A car is a large metal object. It might. I went online and ordered two of the most expensive ones listed. $299 plus handling. I placed an order and checked the box for overnight shipping.

It was eight p.m. the next evening when UPS delivered my purchases. After the delivery truck left, I unpacked the metal detectors, explaining that I had a thought about where Big Tony might have ended up and how. Why he and his car had never surfaced.

I didn't know if the detectors were strong enough to pick through the detritus that had come down in the mud slide. A car was a large metal object and I was hoping I might get an outline of it. It would be about six feet wide and twenty feet long.

Chazzy was excited and wanted to go first thing in the morning to search for it. I said there was no hurry and we would wait for the weather to warm just a little. In the morning Chazzy took her Subaru and drove over there. I was in the cellar getting a coil of half-inch rope I could use to hang onto while we went down into the ravine. Delores was in her room speaking on the phone and didn't hear me. I heard her through the floor, much as I had Chazzy the year before.

"Johnny, my son-in-law thinks he knows what happened to my husband. If what he is looking for is where he thinks it is, I think we can go forward and have a life together. We should know by this evening. I'll call you as soon as I can." There was a long pause while she listened to the person on the other end of the phone speak. "Okay, I promise I will call. I love you too. Bye." The Johnny that Delores was speaking to was her boss. There seemed to be a lot riding on my finding the car later today.

I made it easy for Delores and also Chazzy when she returned. "Let's get started. It will be pretty cool down in the ravine, but I guess you both are anxious to find out if the metal detectors will work or if we can find anything."

I parked the van where the old road branched off of the new section. (New twenty-three years ago.) It had taken me twenty minutes to go down alone last time. I had run down the old road and went down beside the landslide. This time it took a little longer, because it was quite a bit further. We went down from where we parked the van, angling toward the end of the slide. It wasn't as steep by going this way. I carried the rope and Delores and Chazzy each had one of the metal detectors.

We approached the slope about a hundred feet up from the bottom of the ravine thinking that the car would possibly hang up. As I had inspected the very bottom before, this made sense to me. Besides there was a section where the slide had divided and I wanted to inspect that first. I tied the rope to a tree slightly above, which was still standing nearest the slide. I worked myself out across the face of the talus.

The minute I turned the metal detector on, the detector gave a response. It was loud and clear. I moved it around and yes, the buried object could be a car for it was large enough. The place I was working seemed to be mostly rotted trees that had piled up and most of the soil had washed away. You could peer down between some of the trees and trash for a couple of feet.

My wife and her mother were standing on the steep bank waiting for my report. "I think there is a car under there. Whether it is Big Tony's or not, there is no way to tell. It may be a car that was dumped over the bank at some time. I think our next move would be to talk with the police to see if they will do anything about it. After all, Big Tony is still missing and several agencies were looking for him."

There were no questions really answered, but there was a possibility of the major one being resolved at some later date. We discussed this as we slowly made our way back up the side of the ravine to the van. It was noon, but we didn't stop at the house for lunch. We went on by and down to the State Police barracks in West Brattleboro.

All three of us stood waiting for someone to speak to us. Finally an officer asked what he could do for us. Delores spoke up. "Twenty years ago a man went missing in this area. I'm sure you have his name in your records as the FBI was searching for him at that time." Following was a long, lengthy explanation of who, when and where.

Then she introduced me as her son-in-law and said I was the one that had possibly figured out where her husband's remains might be. Being a local and only living three miles from the barracks for most of my life, carried some weight as to my veracity.

I produced the note with seven items that I had jotted down.

1. Big Tony sent Delores home on a Thursday, September 4th.
2. That same day he had given Dad a box of Chazzy's toys.
3. Big Tony left the house about ten in the morning of the 5th.
4. He didn't get gas at Leppolli's.
5. No trace of him or his car were ever found.
6. Big Tony's associates disclaim any knowledge of his disappearance
7. It was raining hard the day Delores left and for two more days.

To this I added the statements given me by the workman on the Dummerston road crew. "Two days ago I climbed down and looked the situation over. Thinking about the metal that the car was constructed of, I ordered a metal detector. Just a couple of hours ago, I used it and there is a large enough metal object trapped in the slide to be a vehicle. Whether it is the Anthony Smith vehicle, there is no way of telling unless it is excavated."

"So you want this unknown object excavated on just your suppositions? The way our budget is, I doubt that will ever happen."

This pissed Chazzy off. I herded Delores and Chazzy out of the police barracks and we sat in the car for a few minutes. "Let's try the Sheriff's Department. Maybe we will have better luck there." We had more interest there, although again no one agreed to do any excavating. One of the deputies did want to see the site we were talking about. I took the women home and met the deputy at the junction of the old and new roads. I followed my original path where I had gone down the first time.

He agreed with me that there definitely was a large metal object somewhere under the surface. "This would be damned slow digging. There are all kinds of trees and branches buried here and who knows how many rocks and boulders would have to be moved. It looks impossible to me. You better forget it." I didn't want to forget it, but bowed to the inevitable.

I shook my head when I came in the door at home. Tears flowed from Delores' eyes and it was a sad and frustrating evening for us. "Can't you do something, Marv? I hate to think of my husband down there under all of that stuff."

"What do you think, Chazzy? We're both pretty strong. Do you want to try digging for the car?"

"I'd like to. Do you think it possible?"

"Won't know until we try. I'll make a list of what I think we will need. We can cut away the trees and branches. The stones didn't look too big from what I could see." Delores would be working, so we didn't share our intentions with her for tomorrow.