Plymouth Voyager

The Plymouth Voyager is at once an unremarkable family vehicle and the material instrument of Burke Devore’s attempt to kill Herbert Coleman Everly without being identified. Its familiar appearance helps Burke imagine that it will pass unnoticed; after the attack, its damaged left front turns it into evidence that police can connect to a hit-and-run.

Appearance and Use

Burke describes his gray Plymouth Voyager as the sort of vehicle that blends into ordinary traffic, a quality he depends on while taking a circuitous route across state lines to avoid being seen near home. He worries that a neighbor or the parent of one of the children might recognize the vehicle and notice that it is traveling in the wrong direction for his supposed plans. The car’s ordinariness is therefore not merely convenient: it is part of Burke’s effort to make his movements appear routine and to keep suspicion at a distance.

That effort collapses when Burke uses the Voyager itself to strike Everly. Seeing Everly cross the street in the rain, Burke accelerates toward him. Everly jumps toward the curb, but the vehicle hits him and carries him against its front before he slides beneath it. Burke brakes, reverses, and drives over him again; then he shifts back into drive and deliberately passes the left tires over Everly’s head. The car’s weight, movement, and repeated changes of direction make it an active instrument of the killing, while the sequence also exposes the distance between Burke’s careful plans and the violence required to carry them out.

Damage and Identification

By morning, the Voyager’s left front carries the physical aftermath of the attack: the glass covering its left parking light is gone, the chrome rim around the headlight has disappeared, and the bodywork is dented. The headlight still works. Burke checks the damage beneath the motel’s roof overhang while steady rain continues, and reasons that any blood on the vehicle has been washed away. What had served as an anonymous shape in traffic now bears a distinctive pattern of injury.

Burke understands that investigators may use tire marks, the missing parking-light glass, and the headlight rim to identify the make and model. He expects the damage to point them toward a Plymouth Voyager with injuries to its left front, although he thinks they may lack the paint needed to establish its color. He also counts on the working headlight and the rain: with the lights on and water falling, he believes passing police will have difficulty seeing the smaller dents. His plan is to travel far enough south for his route to fit the job interview he had claimed was in Binghamton, then use the rain to deal with the damage. Repair, an insurance report, and an explanation to Marjorie become practical necessities alongside the risk of being found; even if investigators call the death a hit-and-run rather than murder, Burke knows the vehicle will be sought.

The vehicle’s damage eventually matches the description given by an officer who stops Burke. The officer says that a few days earlier there had been a hit-and-run in upstate New York involving this type of vehicle, with expected damage to the front left. Burke says he was in Binghamton, but the officer nods toward the Voyager and advises him to get it fixed. The encounter makes the car’s double role unmistakable: its familiar form had helped Burke rely on anonymity, but its broken light and scarred front have made it recognizable evidence.

The Car as a Field of Vision

During the attack, the Voyager is more than the means by which Burke reaches Everly: its mirrors repeatedly return the consequences of his actions to view. After striking him, Burke brakes, switches on the headlights, and shifts into reverse; Everly appears in all three mirrors, still moving. Burke then drives over him again, and finally aims the car at Everly’s head, passing first the front left tire and then the rear left tire over it. The sequence turns the vehicle’s ordinary controls and sightlines into part of the killing’s grim procedure: Burke acts from the driver’s seat, while the mirrors make the injured man visible from several angles. When Everly no longer moves, Burke drives back to the motel weeping, carrying the knowledge of the violence in the same car whose damage he will later have to explain.

After the Collision

The next morning, Burke puts his overnight bag, with the Luger at its bottom, into the Voyager before inspecting its damaged front. The car’s role in the crime thus continues after the killing: it carries the pistol as he drives away, at once an ordinary means of travel and part of the material chain linking the attack to his escape.