Presumption of Guilt (21 page)

There was a telling pause in the room, prompting Joe to say, his frustration clear, “I'll reach out to New Hampshire—see about getting Lucas out from behind his front door. Somebody's got to know something, for Chrissake. What about the other two on our list—Greg Mitchell and Stringer?”

“I went by the cabins to see Mitchell again,” Willy said. “No luck this time, but I'll go back. I got a feeling when we talked first that he was holding back. I'll find him.”

“Stringer was mine,” Sam reported. “I found him as usual in Carlo's bar, his home away from home, but he told me to drop dead. Wouldn't give me squat about his whereabouts when BB was killed.”

“That can be changed,” Willy said menacingly.

Sam took it in stride. “No need. He was showing off 'cause he knew he was safe. I rounded up Carlo and Lacey later—individually—and they both accounted for him being at home or at the bar during our time slot. Lacey even said she wished she couldn't cover his ass—her words—but there it was.”

Joe looked disappointed. “Okay. Thanks. Let's keep digging, then. But please”—here he looked pointedly at Willy and Sam—“no more dancing around the letter of the law. This is tough enough without opening up another can of worms.”

“Yes, boss,” Sam said.

Willy, as befit his style, stayed silent.

*   *   *

“God, I felt uncomfortable at that squad meeting,” Sammie said later, placing a bag of groceries onto the kitchen counter, next to the fridge. “It was like lying to Joe's face.”

“Oh, please,” Willy protested. “And that was worse than getting fired? What he doesn't know won't hurt him. I told him about the cameras.”

He was sitting at the kitchen table, Emma in her portable playpen nearby, contentedly whacking at a plastic keyboard with a wooden spoon. Outside the window, a neighbor was mowing his lawn, taking advantage of the day's extended light. Sammie had just walked in, having stopped by the store on the way home. Willy had been there several hours already, with proof of his labors scattered across the tabletop.

Sammie cast it a glance. “I take it that's from Dan Kravitz's midnight outing?”

Willy laughed, making Emma look up and smile. “I like that. Right—the inner life of Johnny Lucas.”

Sam crossed to the pen and scooped her daughter up into her arms, making the child chortle happily. She buried her face in Emma's neck, blew a raspberry, and twirled her around the room.

“Find anything interesting?” Sam asked, still dancing.

“Yeah. I don't know if he's in witness protection—it's not like they give those guys a special ball cap or anything—but I'll guarantee he wasn't born Johnny Lucas. For one thing, can you lay your hands on your social security card? Right now?”

Sam stopped to stare at him. “I don't know. Maybe. I haven't seen it in years.”

“Right,” Willy said, holding up a copy of one. “And if you could, it wouldn't look like this—pristine as the day it was printed, which sure wasn't in the 1940s. Just like exhibit number two.” He held up another document. “His birth certificate—also fresh off the press, by the looks of it.”

Sammie kissed Emma and returned her to the playpen, where she began foraging through her plush animals. Sam pulled a chair alongside Willy's. “Cool. What else?”

“Usual stuff—insurance records, tax receipts, utility bills, bank statements. It's what's missing that's interesting—no photo albums, no old letters, no framed pictures pre-dating the early 1970s. He married Linda Lucas—making her sound like a sitcom character to me—but that was seventeen years ago, after he made most of his dough. So, there's junk in this pile relating to them, but nothing like most people have—keepsakes, pictures of parents, grandparents, shit like that. My gut tells me that if someone went wandering around some small-town cemetery somewhere, they'd eventually find a headstone for a John Lucas who died at the age of three months, or something. That's how people used to steal identities back then—ask the local town clerk for a reissued birth certificate—” Here he held up Lucas's version. “—and then start building from there—social security, eventually a passport. After you finally got something with a photo on it, you were off to the races. The resurrection of Johnny Lucas.”

Sammie was looking intrigued but skeptical. “How many of those old documents do any of us have? If you didn't like where you came from, or maybe grew up in an orphanage, you wouldn't have any mementos, either.”

Unusually for him, Willy didn't argue. “Maybe. Linda has items going back to her childhood, but there's nothing for him—no high school yearbook, no old favorite toy or baseball or hat, no beaten-up books or knickknacks with a sentimental value. You and I have some of that. Both of us do.”

Now it was her turn. “You're right.” She reached out and pushed some of the papers around haphazardly. “So what do we do?”

“Well, the boss is right about squeezing Johnny. That's an obvious first step. But if I'm right that there's something wrong about him, he's gonna clam up.”

Willy leaned back, staring thoughtfully at Dan Kravitz's stolen treasure trove. “I'd be more inclined to go after the lovely Mrs. Lucas—see what pillow talk she and the hubby might've shared.” He let out a sigh and checked his watch. “But that's the boss's turf now. Me, I'm gonna see if ol' Greg's decided to come home.”

*   *   *

Tony Tribuno had been Chesterfield's police chief for more years than even he could remember. A mostly picturesque rural patch of New Hampshire, located between the Connecticut River and Keene, and bisected by the heavily traveled Route 9, Chesterfield was also host to a couple of large parks and a popular boating, fishing, and swimming magnet named Spofford Lake. As a result, Tribuno and his officers routinely had their hands full with rowdy tourists, reckless drivers, and a steady diet of thieves and burglars who used Route 9 as a quick getaway after filling their trunks from the seasonal homes dotting the map.

It wasn't New York City, but nor was it some modern version of Mayberry, North Carolina. And Tony Tribuno—an old friend of Joe's—was no rube.

They agreed to meet at one of the gas stations on Route 9, overlooking the twin bridges spanning the river, connecting West Chesterfield to Brattleboro. The two parallel, metal arch bridges—one rusted, closed off, and dating back to the Depression; the other a wider copy, but not fifteen years old—represented the almost farcical end result of years of political wrangling.

Instead of simply tearing the old one down and replacing it with its safer but equally attractive replacement, the powers that be decided to keep the old-timer as a pedestrian span, but not to maintain it. They gave it a new name, dubbed it a historical artifact, and watched benignly while some locals struggled to transform it into a “bridge of flowers.” To Joe, the fact remained that a structure once deemed too dangerous to travel had been sanctified in order not to pay for its dismantling. Now, glowing like a postcard in the setting sun, the end result was a bizarre double image, one half of which looked ready to fall into the water.

Joe was reflecting on all this when Tony pulled up in his threatening black Dodge Charger police car, his open and pleasant face at odds with the vehicle's hormonal growl.

“You liking how it feels to be in a non-Socialist state?” Tony asked, rolling down his window.

Joe shook hands. “I'm a happy Vermonter, Tony. Give me taxes and tree huggers over a state motto that reads, ‘Live, Freeze, and Die' any day.”

Tribuno laughed and waited for a convoy of loud motorcycles to roar past, headed east. “Right. Meantime, all your countrymen come blasting over here, where they can eat cheap, avoid taxes, and not wear helmets.”

“Cruel, Tony. Cruel.”

Tribuno wrapped it up, the subject as threadbare as the jokes. “But not that off base. So, you want to roust one of our fine citizens without a warrant?”

“You hear about our Concrete Man?” Joe asked him.

“Who hasn't? That's what you get for living in that slum.”

“Well, West Chesterfield resident Johnny—or more properly, John—Lucas used to work with the guy in the old days, before everybody thought he'd headed for California to enjoy the fun and sun.”

“Ouch,” Tony said sympathetically. “So much for Plan A. And you think Lucas had something to do with his becoming part of a building slab?”

“For starters. Lucas used to work for the guy who got shot a few days ago.”

“No kidding? Clearly not a guy to stand next to in a storm.”

“Nope. Which is why we wouldn't mind having a chat with him,” Joe confirmed. “So far, though, all we've talked to is a speaker by the front door, telling us to disappear. I thought having you and the Batmobile along might make a better impression than my out-of-state badge.”

Tony nodded. “Glad I wore a uniform today. Let's go be intimidating.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, the two cops pulled up alongside the Lucas house in separate vehicles, Joe not willing to leave his back at the gas station. The stark, sharp-edged building remained as silent and still as an abandoned bunker. As Joe got out of his car, he studied the trees across the road—having earlier asked Willy precisely where the mystery cameras were located.

“What're you looking at?” Tony asked him, walking up.

“Nothing,” Joe answered. “I'm supposed to be seeing some discreetly placed surveillance cameras. Up there.” He pointed.

Tony followed his gaze. “‘Discreetly' must be the operative word. I don't see anything.”

“They're gone,” Joe said.

Tribuno let that sink in. “Huh. Weird. Were they trained on people like us, or your shy pal inside?”

Joe gave him a look. “That's one of our growing list of problems—we think they were there to watch him.”

“And now they've disappeared.”

“Apparently.”

Tribuno pondered that before asking, “What the hell have you dumped on us, Gunther? Being your next-door neighbor used to be a lot more fun.”

Joe wasn't so sure that was true. Back when Hank Mitchell was entombed, Brattleboro had been like a western bar town, straight out of the movies.

He turned and indicated the forbidding house. “Shall we?”

“Absolutely.” Tony Tribuno shifted his gun belt slightly and marched toward the front door.

“Yes?” a female voice asked over the speaker, moments after he'd pressed the bell. “May I help you?”

Tony's voice was suddenly lower and more authoritative. “This is the Chesterfield Police, ma'am. We'd like to have a word.”

“What about?”

“Please open the door, ma'am.”

There was a moment when Joe thought they'd hear only a variation of the familiar theme, when the voice responded, “Yes. Okay. I'll be right there.”

“Miracles'll never cease,” Joe said in an undertone.

Tony smiled and rocked slightly on his heels. “It's the uniform, man.”

“Of course it is.” On a more serious level, however, Joe did wonder about the change.

The door swung back to reveal a worried-looking woman, her hair tousled and her eyes wide. “Oh, my God. Did you find him? Is he okay?”

Both men hesitated before Joe asked, “Is Johnny missing?”

She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then asked in turn, “You didn't find him?”

“We didn't know he was lost,” Tony explained. “Did you call the police?”

She stared at the ground, touching her temple with her fingertips. She shook her head. “He wouldn't like that.”

“When did you last see him?” Joe asked.

“When we went to bed. He must've left in the middle of the night.” She slumped against the doorframe and began crying. “What's going on?”

Tony looked at Joe, who shrugged and answered, “Fair question.”

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Have a seat, Mrs. Lucas.”

Joe had found an office down the hall from the VBI, on the Municipal Building's second floor, whose occupant he knew to be out of town for the week.

“Could I get you a cup of coffee or a soda?”

The still distraught Linda Lucas settled nervously onto a padded metal chair and shook her head. “No. I'm fine. Thank you.”

Joe sat across from her and laid a small recorder on the table nearby. “With your permission, I'd like to record this, so there are no misunderstandings later on. That okay?”

She barely glanced at it and nodded. “Like I care.”

In that context, Joe recited his and her names out loud, along with the day's date, before asking her, “How long have you known Johnny Lucas, Linda?”

“We've been married seventeen years.”

“Any kids?”

“No. Johnny didn't want them.”

Joe gave her a sympathetic look. “Was that hard to hear?”

Her response was unexpectedly honest. “At first. Do you know where Johnny is, Mr. Gunther?”

“No. I wasn't misleading you, Linda. I have no idea. What did he do for a living?”

“Now? Or what did he used to do?”

“Both, if you don't mind.”

“Will this help find him?”

“I hope so. It's like being asked to find a missing child. You have to know what they look like, what their interests are, their friends. All of that. If you want our help, everything and anything might be useful.”

She considered that for a moment. “Okay. Is he in trouble, though?”

“Not as far as we know,” Joe answered truthfully.

“Why did you want to talk to him?”

He paused, impressed by her asking questions, instead of just following his lead. At this early stage, he wasn't sure if that reflected a native intelligence, or past experience of being too open with law enforcement.