The Identity Man (24 page)

He got out of the Charger. There was a gate in the schoolyard fence. It was padlocked and an older man, a janitor in dirty greens, was sitting in a chair beside it in lieu of a guard. Ramsey showed the man his shield through the diamond links. The janitor rose creakily and opened the padlock.

As Ramsey walked across the yard toward Teresa, the children chased each other all around him. Their surflike roar broke into individual voices, cascades of laughter and wordless cries. These seemed to feed the melancholy in him somehow, seemed to increase his brooding awareness of the evil fate arrayed against him. So, too, did the sight of Teresa as he came closer and closer to her, as she reminded him more and more of his wife.

She had moved from the doorway to settle a dispute between two boys over a kickball. She was turned half away from him and didn't see him approaching. She was bending forward to talk to the children. His eyes went over the curves of her body, and over her profile.
Why isn't she teaching in the Northern District public schools where they really need her?
he thought—because he wanted to resent her for something other than the fact that she reminded him of his wife, as the laughing children reminded him of his son and daughter.

"Ms. Grey?" he said. He flashed his badge again as she straightened and turned to look at him. As she came around to face him close up—gave him the whole cornball valentine-shaped face with its high cheekbones and warm brown eyes—the jolt of his attraction to her was startlingly sharp. He was painfully aware that he had once been the sort of man she would have held out for, that now he only seemed to be that man—as his wife had finally understood.

"
Mrs.
Grey, yes," she corrected him—which he also resented, without quite knowing why.

Then her eyes went to his badge, and they were startled and filled with worry. She hadn't expected him, hadn't known he was coming. The old man hadn't called her—or maybe he'd tried to and she kept her phone off at work. Conor hadn't contacted her either. Which meant she probably didn't know about Gutterson yet. The news wouldn't have made it onto TV—in fact, there was only one television station and maybe a website or two where anyone still thought a murder in this city
was
news.

He said, "I'm Lieutenant Ramsey," and she turned to him expectantly. He couldn't tell whether she recognized his name or not. Was it possible Conor had never mentioned him to her? Or was she just pretending that he never had? He couldn't tell.

"Mrs. Grey, do you know a man named Henry Conor?"

"Yes, I know Henry. He did some work for my father. Why, is something wrong?"

"What sort of work?" he asked her. "Carpentry?"

"Some ... carving work, that's right."

The little hesitation gave him everything he needed. She was not thinking about Conor's carpentry. She was thinking about the man himself. She was the girl in question, all right.

"Is that it? Is that your whole relationship to him? He worked for your father?"

"Well, I'm not sure what you mean," she said reluctantly. And then—in case he already knew—she confessed: "We were friendly. In fact, he took me and my son to the fair yesterday."

"To the fair."

She made the classic female defensive gesture, defiantly brushing her hair back with her hand. "What's this about?"

"We're looking to question Mr. Conor about a police detective who was found dead in his apartment this morning. He was killed with one of Conor's hammers."

He said it brutally and got the effect he wanted. She was staggered, her lips parting, her pupils becoming pinpoints. For a moment, he thought she might actually swoon to the asphalt.

So Ramsey thought he had the whole picture now. A lonely widow with a man in the house, a man who would include the boy when they went to the fair. She had been falling in love with Conor, her feelings flowing powerfully, maybe only checked a little by the memory of her husband and by some mental wrangling a girl like her would do out of obligatory protectiveness toward her son. But hesitation or no, mental wrangling or no, she'd been falling for him. And now here was Ramsey telling her there was a dead detective, that Conor was on the run, being hunted by the police. Telling her, in effect, that Conor was just the sort of damaged criminal-type she had been avoiding all her life, just the sort of bad, needy boy she had fended off while waiting to meet the real man she married—the sort of man Ramsey seemed to be. He sensed all this in a second and sensed he had a moment of psychological power over her here, a moment when all her instincts would tell her to turn away from bad boy Conor, to turn toward the nice policeman who reminded her of her dead husband, and tell him everything.

"That's ... Henry wouldn't do anything like that," she said.

"Really. You know him that well?"

"Well, I..."

"You know where he came from? What he was doing here?"

"He was a carpenter, working as a carpenter."

"Did he ever tell you why he came to this city in particular? Doesn't seem like a very nice place to come to. A lot of people are leaving, as I understand it."

"He said he came for the work. He said there's a lot of work here—because of all the rebuilding."

"Did he ever mention a man named Peter Patterson?"

"Peter ... Uh ... No. I don't think so."

"What about Jesse Skyles? The Reverend Jesse Skyles."

"I don't think so. I've heard of him. The story in the paper—about him and the girl. Henry and I talked about a lot of things. We may have talked about Skyles. I don't remember."

"You may have, though."

"I'm sorry. I just don't remember."

"But you talked about a lot of things."

"He would carve out in the backyard. I would go out there and talk to him sometimes. To keep him company."

"You and your son or just you?"

"No, and my son. And my father, too, sometimes."

Ramsey thought he had the whole picture. "But you can't remember what you talked about?"

"Not everything. It was just conversation. You know."

"Did he ever mention my name? Ramsey? Did he ever mention me?"

"No. Why are you asking me these things?"

"Mrs. Grey, do you have any idea where Conor is now?"

"No. No, I don't. I thought he would be at work."

"He's not at work. He's gone. A police detective has been murdered in his apartment, and Conor has disappeared. If you know where he is, it would be a good idea to tell me."

"I don't know. I already told you. I don't know. Henry wouldn't do anything like that, I'm sure."

Ramsey felt a strange flutter of doubt. Something was wrong here, very wrong, but he couldn't place it. For one thing, he couldn't tell whether the girl was lying or not. His instincts told him she wasn't, but he thought she had to be. Would Conor have kept all his purposes secret from her? As they became close, as they became intimate even, wouldn't he want to share with her the burden of his mission? It didn't make sense that he would ask questions and jabber freely on the street and suddenly become secretive with the girl he was romancing. Something here, anyway, didn't make sense. Ramsey felt he had a bright, clear picture in his mind of what had passed between this girl and Conor, but he couldn't quite put that picture together with the Conor he thought he'd come to know. It was as if, outside the bright clarity of his understanding, there was deep shadow—shadow that hid a hunkering disaster. Nemesis.

"Ms. Grey—
Mrs.
Grey—I feel you're keeping something from me."

"I'm not. I'm really not. Why would I?"

"Are you certain Conor never said anything to you? About why he came here? Why he came to this city?"

"For the work, that's all. He said he came for the work."

"All that time you talked to him, and your father talked to him, and your son, that's all he told you." He couldn't stop himself. He couldn't let go of it. Something didn't make sense.

"Look ... Henry didn't murder anyone," she answered. "He wouldn't do that."

"That isn't what I'm asking you."

"I know, but..."

"He never mentioned Patterson? Or Skyles? Or me?"

"No. I don't think so. No. I'm almost sure."

"I find that difficult to believe," he said, looking hard into her eyes, his doubt mixed with anger now because she reminded him so much of his wife.

A bell rang in the big old cathedral-like building, a long, loud rattling bell. The laughter and shouting of the children came back to Ramsey as if it had been gone, as if the volume of it had dropped to nothing while he talked to Teresa Grey.

"I—I have to go," she said. "Recess is over. I have to go back to work. You're wrong about Henry."

But he could see she was uncertain as she turned away—uncertain enough, he thought, that she would have told him what she knew. Or was it all a performance? Was she hiding Conor? Protecting him? Was she that good a liar? She could have been. No one lies better than a good girl in love. And Conor
would've
said something to her. He must've. It didn't make sense.

Ramsey stood there another moment, aware of the woman's peculiar valence—the way she touched on his personal sorrows—and yet unable to distinguish it from that lingering suspicion of a shadow zone outside the zone of his understanding, that strange darkness sheltering nemesis and disaster.

He stood there and watched her walk back into the building, her skirt swishing as the children rushed past on either side of her, as they crowded before her through the schoolhouse door.

For the first time, he felt afraid of what he was about to do.

"
ALL RIGHT,
" said Shannon. "Tell me."

They were in the green Crown Victoria now. The bald guy was driving. The bald guy's name was Foster, it turned out. Foster glanced over at Shannon and laughed.

"Where'd you think you came from, dog? Your mama's tummy? You think the stork brought you? You think you were born again through water and the spirit? Or maybe someone told you one time that dirt-bag thieves get brand-new lives for free."

Shannon faced forward, expressionless, looking out the windshield at the miserable boulevard. Stores boarded up. Hollow-eyed whores. Predators slouched so deep they were shaped like question marks. All this on a bright spring Monday afternoon.

"I guess I wondered..." he said glumly.

"Yeah, I'll bet you did. I'll just bet you did. But you're all alike, you bottom feeders, every one of you. You think someone's gonna hand you the moon on a platter. You think someone
should,
like they owe it to you.
Oh, I'm so poor. Oh, I'm so put upon. Where's my money?
Like you earned it somehow by virtue of being a worthless piece of shit. Every time I wanna round up a fresh batch of dumb-ass bail jumpers, all I gotta do is tell them somebody's giving them something for nothing. Free tickets to the Super Bowl. Free house. A new car. Never did shit for nobody nohow, but out of the woodwork they come like it's only their due."

Shannon could've said it wasn't like that for him. He could've said he had been desperate, on the run, wanted for murders he hadn't committed and a break-in that he had. He could've said a lot of things, but he just said: "So this whole new identity thing was—what? Like, a setup?"

"Of course it was a setup! Why should anybody give
you
even the smell of his ass?" Foster shook his head and snorted. "I don't know whether to be amazed or amazed that I am still amazed."

The car turned a corner onto a side street of shattered houses, some no more than dust and lumber piled on dead grass. Shannon stared out at them but hardly saw them, immersed in what the man was telling him, still all murk and confusion. His sluggish effort to work out the truth of the matter was getting him nowhere. This was way beyond his powers.

"So what was it then?" he said. "What was it—some kind of scam to steal money?"

Foster let out a big guffaw. "A scam to steal money? Son, I work for the federal government. We don't need a scam to steal money. We
are
a scam to steal money. Look up 'scam to steal money' in the dictionary, there's a picture of the federal government right there. Scam to steal money! God save me from an uneducated public."

Slowly, Shannon turned to face him. Close up, Foster's aura of seediness was even more apparent, the threadbare shine of his suit and the wasted-junkie thinness of his frame even more painful to look upon. Close up, he had a fidgety, watchful junkie demeanor, too, something frantically alert in the smart, bright eyes.

"That cop," said Shannon. "Gutterson..."

"Gutterson!" Foster spat back the name as if the dead detective had been a bill for back taxes.

"He was never after me, was he?"

"Ah!" Foster took one hand off the steering wheel and tapped a finger against the side of his own head. "Now the clock is beginning to tick."

"He was after Henry Conor."

"The mist is parting. Finally."

The fields of rubble and dead grass fell away as the car turned another corner. Here was a long side street of antique office buildings with elaborate cast-iron facades. Between their tiers of pillars, arched windows, some broken, some just dark, exuded emptiness like a vapor, an atmosphere of abandonment coiling above the entire block. Vaguely, Shannon recognized where they were, realized they were not that far from his own brownstone.

"Who is he then?" said Shannon. "Who's Henry Conor?"

"Henry Conor is you," Foster answered, turning the wheel. The Crown Victoria slid to the curb, into the shadow of a building bleak with ruin. "Least, he's you—or he's no one."

Shannon waited for more. Foster shut the car down with swift, jerky movements, scoping the area all the while, his head turning back and forth, his sharp eyes darting here and there. He pulled the car keys out of the ignition and fiddled with them nervously.

"I made Henry Conor up," he said with a quick, mirthless smile. "I invented him, dog. And then I got you to take his place."

Into the louring building. Up four flights of dark stairs. Graffiti on the gray, abandoned walls and chips and scars in the paint where the plaster showed through like an exposed nerve. Down the gutted hallway to a carved wooden door where Foster knocked out a quick code, then used a key.