The Surrogate Thief (13 page)

“No,” Joe said quietly. “She can barely leave her apartment.”

An embarrassed stillness greeted his remark, although that hadn’t been his intention. He took down another postcard. Again it was to Katie, again sentimental, again unmailed. In the night table drawer, he found an old photo of Katie and Pete, heavily dressed and with their arms around each other, standing before a row of bare trees. They were smiling and dusted with fresh snow. Next to the photograph was a dog-eared Bible, several of its passages underlined in light pencil. Marking one page was a pamphlet from AA.

Joe pointed noiselessly at the single other piece of furniture in the room: a battered chest of drawers. Edelstein caught his meaning. “It’s mostly empty. Forensics took a few things.”

Joe checked its contents, finding nothing beyond a threadbare man’s worn remnants.

He sat on the edge of the rumpled bed. “Not much to go on. How long had he been living here?”

“Here?” Edelstein answered. “Almost eight years. Before that, it’s anyone’s guess.”

“Any friends or drinking buddies?”

Wilkinson answered that. “This was one of the most solitary guys I ever heard of. He worked; he drank; he came up here to sleep it off.”

“Drank downstairs?”

“Mostly. We’re still piecing it together, checking other places he might’ve gone, interviewing coworkers—the whole routine. I hate to say this, given what brought you here, but this may be history repeating itself, Joe—another murder with no solution. We’ve had that before. Guy kills a guy for a one-liner or less. It’s hard to track when there’s no motive. What about this Katie girl? He have anything to do with her not being able to leave the house?”

Joe rose to his feet. “No. He started drinking. They drifted apart. One day he was gone. At least that’s her story. I have no reason to doubt it. She got sick later. Seems clear he was still thinking about her.” Joe looked at the room appraisingly. “What strikes you about all this? I mean, generally speaking?”

“It’s a dump,” Wilkinson said.

But Edelstein got his point. “It’s a hermit’s cell.”

“Yeah,” Gunther agreed softly. “The cave of a self-exile.”

Chapter 13

J
oe returned to the bar that night. The place was utterly transformed—jammed, hot, and noisy. The voices were too loud, the laughter forced, the body language loaded with seduction, anger, or loneliness. Angling through the crowd, he watched the patrons enacting their rituals as he might have groups of wary animals circling a water hole.

He found a place at the end of the bar and prepared to wait patiently for the bartender to notice him amid the confusion. She was a tall, slim, attractive woman, probably in her mid-forties, dressed not provocatively but suggestively. From his vantage point, he could see her traveling the length of the bar, exchanging jokes, taking orders, replacing some drinks before she was asked to, and generally reading her customers like a good air traffic controller—separating the newcomers from the regulars, the easygoing from the boors, making sure everyone at least knew she’d seen them. It took her just forty-five seconds to look directly at Joe and gave him a one-finger be-there-in-a-minute salute. He nodded in response and then watched her bend over the sink, facing her public, and quickly wash a few glasses, giving every man within proximity a fast look down the front of her carefully half-buttoned blouse.

This woman knew the game, the players, and the value of the bar as barricade. Joe imagined she made great tips.

He’d spent the entire day in Gloucester, indulged by Edelstein, Wilkinson, and finally the assistant DA who’d shown up later, following them around as one or the other of them, mostly Edelstein, interviewed a variety of Pete Shea’s acquaintances and coworkers. What they ended up with was the portrait of a quiet loner who told no one of his past, revealed little of his personality, and did his best to stay clear of all groups, cliques, and organizations. In one instance, when he’d worked at a place that was considering unionizing, he quit rather than get involved. In fact, as far as they’d determined, he’d held a half-dozen jobs on or around the docks, always doing menial tasks, always without comment or complaint, always turning down any promotions.

By early evening, as Joe was seeking advice about a reasonable motel, his three colleagues were conceding that they’d probably never find out who’d stabbed their man in the chest. The assistant DA concluded by saying that he’d be reachable by phone from then on, stimulating a dismissive sneer from Wilkinson, unseen by its target.

Unsurprisingly, due as much to his natural instincts as to his personal investment, Joe demurred from agreeing with them. In his gut, he knew there was something here far beyond a hopeless drunk pissing off the wrong guy at the wrong time.

Sitting in Peter Shea’s room that morning, seeing the world Shea had inhabited for so many years, Joe had begun exploring the possibility that this man had gone far beyond simply ducking an antique murder charge. Over the years, Joe had developed a familiarity with the people who committed or aspired to commit such violence. It was that insight now that stopped him from putting Pete Shea in that category too quickly.

Unfortunately, there was no single rationale justifying his reluctance. It wasn’t the Bible in the drawer, for example. Many murderers were religious fanatics. And it wasn’t the sentimentalized affection for a love long out of reach. Nor was it the booze, the lack of social interaction, or the shiftlessness. In fact, the more Joe considered it, the more he began thinking it was the absence of several details that was making him rethink his long-presumed nemesis. There was no violence in the man’s history, no acquisitiveness, no vanity or pride. He’d been a loner but not a sociopath, a drinker but not a bully. Pete Shea, Joe was starting to consider, might possibly have been a man who’d quite simply had the rug yanked out from under him, and forever lacked the emotional wherewithal to recover.

After Wilkinson and Edelstein called it quits for the day and Joe had politely turned down their offer of dinner on the town, he’d walked around Gloucester’s streets for hours, touring the various neighborhoods while weighing several other long-held prejudices supporting the Oberfeldt case.

The focus on Pete Shea had not been capricious. He did have a history as a thief, his switchblade had been found covered with the victim’s blood, his were the only prints found on the knife, his girlfriend, despite her best effort, had failed to supply him an alibi, and he had vanished as soon as he’d heard the police were interested in him. Finally, no single other candidate had fit the bill so well.

Additionally, as a foster child, Shea had been deemed repeatedly “incorrigible,” although Joe’s search through those records had revealed only rambunctiousness, not violence. His run-ins with the police had been triggered by thievery, vandalism, and supplying minors with alcohol—never by any assaultive behavior.

And finally, there was Katie. Beyond telling Joe, back when he’d first met her, that Pete had been sweet and gentle, she’d added, “He’s had a shitty life and I don’t guess it’s getting any better.” She’d also ascribed his flight not to guilt but to his probably finding the entire situation “more than he could handle.”

At the time, Joe had thought those claims predictable and weak at best. What else was a young girl going to say about the man whose bed she’d shared, especially to the cop hunting him? But what if she’d been right?

“What’s your pleasure?”

Joe looked up, startled, into the face of the bartender he’d been admiring earlier. She stood with her hands flat on the bar, her expression pleasant and receptive, her eyes watchful.

“I’m sorry. Daydreaming,” he explained.

“It’s okay,” she replied. “Not such a bad thing now and then.”

He smiled and studied her more closely. She wasn’t beautiful in Hollywood terms. She had a slightly crooked nose, lines around the eyes, and a hollowness to her cheeks that spoke less of glamour and more of hard times survived. She was handsome, he determined, in a way that only maturity and strength can deliver.

Which didn’t make her hard, however. As she gazed at him in those scant few seconds, he saw something in her eyes that drew him in—a vulnerability he’d learned to watch for in hundreds of interviews with people doing their best to conceal it.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked quietly, as if sensing the depths from which he was returning.

“Just a Coke would be great,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows a fraction. “You boys find what you were after?”

He looked at her without comment or reaction.

“You are a cop, right?”

On impulse, he stuck out his hand. “Joe Gunther, from Vermont.”

She took his hand in a firm grip and gave it a single shake—polite but noncommittal. “Vermont?”

“That’s where the dead man was from.”

“Really?”

Joe nodded. “A long time ago. Did you know him?”

Those eyes narrowed slightly. “I knew he was Norm, I knew he liked bottom-shelf Scotch, and I knew he lived upstairs. I’ll get that Coke.”

And she was gone. When she returned with his drink moments later, he merely nodded his thanks and was rewarded with the barest flicker of surprise.

Joe returned to his musings while still watching her work. Upstairs, he’d been struck by Pete’s enormous sense of loss. There was little of the present among his paltry belongings, no hope for the future except what the Bible might have brought him, and only that one picture of Katie to tie him to the past. That and the wishful postcards that he’d tellingly never mailed.

In all his experience, Joe had never seen a killer with that particular kind of melancholy. It seemed to him that Pete Shea had been one of life’s victims, not one of its aggressors.

But if that were true, then who had actually killed Klaus Oberfeldt? And, for that matter, Pete himself?

There was a small spike in the general clamor down the bar. A self-consciously good-looking man—tanned, long-haired, tattooed, and tight-T-shirted—led a small group of buddies through the crowd and addressed the bartender. “Evelyn, you are a babe tonight. Damn. Could you fix these boys up while I admire the view?”

Surprisingly to Joe, she reacted not with the dismissive comeback she’d been handing out to others, but with an embarrassed smile and a tuck of the head, as if the compliment had been tender, gently delivered, and genuine.

His interest piqued, he watched her take the orders and line up the drinks, noticing as she did so that everyone paid except the man with the mouth, who merely winked as he swept the others away to the distant pool table. Her face slightly flushed, Evelyn glanced at the floor, composed herself in a split second, and got back to work.

I’ll be damned, Joe thought. No figuring the people other people find attractive.

For the next several hours, and through a succession of Cokes that he knew would keep him up half the night, Joe watched the dynamics of the one place Pete Shea had used to escape. He didn’t ask any questions, barely spoke again to the bartender, and didn’t learn anything tangible about Pete Shea’s fate. But by the end of the evening, he’d concluded not only that this bar was the one place with any hope of an answer, but that Evelyn the bartender—the casually watchful air traffic controller—was the person he should consult.

The trick would be in finding how to win her over.

Late the following afternoon, he was back on his perch at the end of the bar, looking just like one of the regulars he’d wondered about earlier. Except, of course, that he was still mainlining Coke.

Because of the hour, the place was almost empty. The same standard bearers were there, sitting before the same liquid nourishment, but otherwise the bar looked shabby and forlorn. Evelyn was back at her post, playing gin rummy with a small man who appeared to be a hundred and three, occasionally casting Joe a quick glance, seemingly caught between curiosity and irritation.

Eventually, with a laugh, the game came to an end. The old man stumbled off to the bathroom, and Evelyn sauntered down to Joe’s end of the bar.

“You all set?” she asked, pointing at the glass before him.

“Yup. Thanks.”

She nodded, hesitating, waiting for him to say more, before blurting out in a near whisper, “What’re you doing?”

“Waiting to learn about Norm.”

“How’re you going to do that? You don’t talk to anybody.”

He shrugged.

She pressed her lips together, clearly thrown off balance. She turned halfway around, as if to retreat, and then challenged him directly. “Are you sure you’re a cop?”

He smiled slightly. “You want to see the badge? They really went crazy with this one. Very flashy.”

She smiled despite herself. “No. It would give heart attacks to the few customers I got.” She shook her head. “You sure aren’t like any cop I ever met.”

“Not like the locals?”

She snorted. “Got that right.”

“They give you shit?”

“They have their moments. What’re you doing down here anyhow? What’s this got to do with Vermont?”

Joe needed this woman to feel she was on the inside. He laid his cards on the table.

“There was a murder over thirty years ago. Norm came under a magnifying glass, so he changed his name and disappeared.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow. I always wonder how many of these guys have done that.” She swept a hand to include the near-empty room.

Joe caught her point. “It’s not hard to do, even with all this Homeland Security stuff going on.”

Intrigued, as he’d hoped she’d be, she leaned forward, resting her elbows on the bar. “What was his real name?”

He knew this was a test—an am-I-in-or-out kind of question. Again he didn’t hesitate. “Pete Shea.”

She straightened slightly. “No shit? Really? God, sounds like a little kid.” She seemed to absorb that for a moment before adding, “So, old Norm killed someone.”

Joe smiled, beginning to enjoy how this woman thought. She could have made a good cop. “I didn’t say that.”

She raised her eyebrows. “A drunk loser with no home and no ties? Seems like he’d be an easy hook to hang that on.”

“I thought that way for a long time,” he admitted. “And it may still be true.”

She looked at him carefully. “Were you the cop when the murder happened?”

He merely smiled.

“Wow. This is just like the movies. You been after him for over thirty years?”

“If it were the movies, I’d have to say yes and that I’d sacrificed my health, my sobriety, and my family of three in the process.”

Her expression was touched with a hint of sadness. “Guess not, huh?”

“No,” he conceded. “We thought it was him, he beat feet, we looked around for a better candidate, and then we gave up. It was only a new piece of evidence that got me going again. Otherwise, it would’ve been life as usual—fine health, no drinking, and no family.”

For a split second, he wondered why he’d added that last bit, as if he’d wanted her to know he wasn’t married.

She turned briefly to check on her other customers. The old guy had returned but still had half a glass to go. The few others seemed lost on distant planets. As her face was averted, however, Joe admired her from close up. Despite the hard-earned, well-carried miles stamped on her face, she was a very attractive woman.

Satisfied, she resumed her previous position, elbows on the bar. “So, what changed your mind? You thought he was the bad guy when he disappeared, and now he’s not?”

He paused a moment, staring into his glass, getting his thoughts organized. “When the murder happened,” he began, “there was some pretty damning evidence left behind. He didn’t have an alibi, he did have a record of sorts, he disappeared before we could interview him, and there was nobody who looked better for the crime. He was it, almost by process of elimination. But nobody actually saw him do it, and nobody reported his flashing any cash around afterward, which was relevant since money was the reason behind the killing in the first place.”

Evelyn nodded, clearly fascinated. “Sex and/or money, every time.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Along with anger, drugs, and alcohol. Anyhow, none of that’s changed over the years, so I’m hard put to say why I’m suddenly rethinking it all. It was . . . Hell, I don’t know . . . I was sitting on the edge of his bed yesterday morning, looking around, trying to get a feel for the guy, and somehow, I just couldn’t connect the dots. The reality of that room didn’t fit my picture of a killer.”