The Surrogate Thief (21 page)

Chapter 21

K
athy Bartlett had asked Joe if he had anything against Tom Bander—born T. J. Ralpher—beyond his past history as a bad boy and the fact that his rags-to-riches story had been born following Klaus Oberfeldt’s death. Instinctively, he thought he did, and that it also connected the past with the present. But his hoped-for evidence, unlike Poe’s in “The Purloined Letter,” wasn’t hidden in plain sight. If he was correct, it was the only thing actually missing from plain sight.

Upon returning to the VBI office that afternoon, he called the one contact he had in an arcane and much misunderstood profession.

“Court Reporters Associates,” the woman answered on the other end.

“Hi. This is Joe Gunther, of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Is Penny Johnson there?”

Court Reporters Associates was a well-known Burlington-based firm with employees who worked all over the state. Joe’s knowledge of them had been peripheral at best until he’d met the current owner, Penny Johnson, at a party thrown by the Windham County state’s attorney several years back. For some reason, they’d both ended up in the same corner of the room and had passed the time trading résumés. It was a habit he’d practiced for as long as he could recall, and one he was blessing right now.

“Joe, how are you?” Penny’s voice eventually said on the phone. “It’s been quite a while.”

“We haven’t been wallflowers together in quite a while. Guess we both need to get out more.”

She laughed. “After my average workday, the closest thing I want to see to a human being is on TV. What can I do for you?”

“I have some questions about your profession, actually. During a search recently, we came across some old . . . I don’t know what you call them . . . the things that come out the end of your steno machines.”

“Paper tapes,” she said. “Is it indiscreet to ask who typed them?”

“Someone named Hannah Shriver.”

“Oh.” A shocked silence followed her reaction.

“Did you know her?” Joe asked, hardly believing his luck.

“No,” was the slightly stammered reply. “But I read the papers, Joe. She was the poor woman killed at the fair, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said, disappointed.

“And she was a court reporter?”

“Used to be, over thirty years ago. That’s how far back these tapes go.”

“Oh,” Penny repeated, but this time he could hear the relief in her voice, as if by placing Hannah in a time long past, he’d also put her at a safe distance.

“I wanted to ask you how those tapes are produced,” Gunther continued. “They’re completely verbatim, right? Word for word?”

“That’s correct.”

“Just like the typed transcription that follows? Every ‘ah’ and ‘um’ included?”

“Every one, yes, painful as it is to read sometimes.”

“So,” he surmised, “if the typist chose to leave something out of the tape, then there’s no one who would know it had ever been said, unless they were asked to recall the conversation from memory.”

“No,” she said.

Joe was taken aback. “No, what?”

“No, she wouldn’t leave anything out. It doesn’t work that way, Joe. It’s not like taking minutes at a meeting, where you select the relevant parts. We’re on autopilot, sometimes typing two hundred and sixty words a minute. Our fingers bypass our brains, in a way, and connect only to our ears. It’s so much that way that sometimes I can actually daydream while I’m typing. It would be a real feat to interrupt that flow and start picking and choosing what to write down. In fact, I’m not sure it’s even possible. I certainly couldn’t do it.”

Joe furrowed his brow, thinking of alternatives. “The same typist writes the transcription?”

“Yes, especially back then. Now, with computers, it’s a little different, but if you weren’t exaggerating about the time frame, then the whole process was very personalized, especially in how the tape reads. Each reporter had her own way of doing things.”

“I thought it was basically shorthand,” he said. “Once you know how to decipher it, it’s like reading a regular language.”

She sounded embarrassed. “Well, yes and no. We all come up with our own shortcuts, and they sometimes get pretty hard for other people to figure out.”

“Meaning you might not be able to translate what’s on a tape?” He couldn’t keep the disappointment from his voice.

“It could be difficult,” she admitted apologetically. “Although certainly feasible. It would just take a long time. Where was she trained?”

“Hang on,” Joe said, and pawed through the files on his desk. “Champlain College,” he finally announced, holding a sheet of paper before him.

“Oh, that’s great,” Penny said, relieved. “My old school. We probably know the same tricks. That’ll help a lot. I’m assuming you want me to try to read her tape?”

“Would you mind?”

“Not at all. It will take a while, though, like I said. It’s not the same as in the movies. It’s more like solving a jigsaw puzzle without the box top.”

“I have the transcription,” he said hopefully.

“That’ll help.”

“And I even know the exact place I’m curious about.”

Her reaction dispelled all his earlier concerns. “Oh, good Lord. Well, then, I should be able to do something pretty quickly. When can you get it to me?”

“Today,” he answered. “By courier.”

The ringing phone dragged him out of a deep sleep, making him wonder at first where he was. His dreams, as so often lately, had been of ancient history, while the faces populating them were from everywhere and every time.

“Hello?” he asked sleepily, automatically checking the clock by his bedside. In fact, it wasn’t that late. He’d just gone to bed far earlier than usual, yielding to a weariness that he’d been staving off for days.

He half hoped it would be Gail again, maybe even calling from his driveway.

It was not.

“Joe? It’s Katz. You sleeping?”

“Trick question, right? What do you want?”

“A statement. We’re going with a story that VBI is investigating Tom Bander for murder.”

Gunther sat up. “What? That’s bullshit.”

“On the record?”

“Whoa. No. Just a minute. Jesus Christ, Stan. What kind of high school stunt is this?”

“I didn’t think you’d be asleep,” Katz said defensively.

“So you call me three seconds before press time? Give me a break. This is an ambush.”

“So,” Katz drawled, “no comment, is it?”

“Up yours. Tell me what fantasy you and your
Deformer
crew have cooked up this time.”

“I have a solid source telling me you guys are after Tom Bander. You denying that?”

“You said we were investigating him for murder. If that’s your story, it’s a bald-faced lie.”

Katz was enjoying himself. “Interesting answer. Very precise. So, maybe not for murder, but you are chasing him for something.”

“Good night, Stanley.”

“No, no. Wait, Joe. Don’t hang up. I’ll tell you what I got. You arrested a man named Gabriel Greenberg for the murder of Hannah Shriver.”

“That’s public record,” Joe said, feeling his face warm with anger. Couldn’t keep a lid on a goddamn thing around here.

“The same Gabriel Greenberg who works for Tom Bander.”

Joe remained silent. He had no idea how Katz was getting his information. So far, none of this was the deep, dark, secret stuff being shared among investigators, for which he was grateful. That probably meant Stan was just making good use of his standard contacts inside the PD.

“Right?” Katz insisted.

“You asking?”

“No, I’m not asking. I’m looking for a confirmation.”

“No comment.”

“All right, fine,” Katz said heatedly. “Fuck you, too. We’re going with this, Joe, whether you comment or not.”

“Going with what, Stanley? You haven’t told me anything, yet.”

“That you busted one of Bander’s employees for murder and that you’re tearing into all of their backgrounds.”

Joe began feeling slightly better. “That’s it? How do you go from there to our going after Bander for murder?”

He could hear the reporter sigh with exasperation before Katz asked, “How’s Gail taking the news?”

Gunther didn’t answer.

Katz perked up. “Uh-oh. Hit a chord?”

“Stanley, you are such a jerk. I haven’t talked to her about this. I have no idea how she’s taking it.”

“You’re kidding. Bander is Parker’s money bag—the power behind the throne. If he gets mired in this shit, Parker can kiss his ass good-bye.”

In Joe’s continued silence, Katz followed that with, “Come to think of it, that could get Gail in trouble, too. I mean, here you are, busting the guy who’s backing her opponent and all but giving her an election she would’ve been hard-pressed to win otherwise. Talk about a conflict. Wow. You have any thoughts on that?”

Gunther hung up the phone.

At home the next morning, at about the time he imagined the first papers were being delivered, Joe got a call from Susan Raffner. Her opening line substituted for any conventional greeting.

“What the hell were you thinking, talking to that asshole? I thought at least you were a professional.”

Gunther hesitated, struck by his own forbearance. There was a time when he would have let her have it right back. Now he was surprised how little impact such words delivered.

“Good morning to you, too, Susan.”

“To hell with that. I am royally pissed off at you, Joe. You sleep with this woman, goddamn it. The least you could’ve done was make a phone call.”

“Is this making you feel better?”

“You think this is a joke?”

Again Gunther hung up the phone, this time hearing the tinny voice struggling out of the earpiece all the way down until he severed the connection.

Clearly, he needed to read the paper—and leave his house.

In fact, Katz’s article didn’t say much. It mentioned names, drew a few vague connections, and made much ado about the senate race and the fact that the VBI wasn’t talking, as if that implied a Watergate-size scandal in the making. Joe was unhappy to see a passing reference connecting him to Gail, but he had to admit that only the context was painful. Their relationship was widely known. The bottom line, as he interpreted it, was that the article was as harmless for the cops as it was clearly explosive politically. For that, he felt sorry for Gail. She and Parker and Bander were going to be grilled in the media, and it wouldn’t just be local. But for the short run, he could most likely remain safe behind a barricade of “no comments.”

Thus comforted, he was prepared for the reactions he got on entering the basement command center. He waved his hand placidly at the few alarmed or angry faces bearing outrage at a so-called renegade press, and issued a couple of the verbal bromides he’d been telling himself during the car trip over here. No big deal. Just keep on track.

Seeing Willy Kunkle approaching fast, however, as he was setting his coffee on his desk, made him brace for the worst. Willy placed a faxed report beside the coffee mug. “I always knew sleeping with her would get you in trouble,” he said.

“Very tasteful, Willy. What’re you doing up so early?”

“Thought I’d bring you a little good news to balance the bad,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?” Joe picked up the fax.

“Yup. The lab matched not one but two samples of blood on Greenberg’s hunting knife. They extracted them from where the blade meets the guard and at the bottom of the ‘Made in USA’ stamp at the base. Looking at it with the naked eye, you couldn’t see a thing.”

Joe stared at him, a smile slowly spreading across his face. “You going to tell me, or do I have to read it?”

Willy waggled his eyebrows. “Perfect matches to both Shriver and Shea. I love it when bad guys don’t ditch their toys.”

Chapter 22

J
oe Gunther pulled into a parking space and shivered slightly as both he and Kathy Bartlett emerged into the crisp fall air from their heated car. “You know what Harvey drives?” he asked, looking around the lot.

“No clue,” she said grumpily, turning up her collar. Dan Harvey was her federal counterpart from the U.S. attorney’s office in Burlington, and one of the two people they were hooking up with before meeting with Gabe Greenberg. The other was someone from Massachusetts neither of them knew, a Nick Kennedy, from the Essex County DA’s office.

Having gotten directions earlier on how to proceed, Joe set out for a small gate cut into the chain-link fence.

This was not the entrance most visitors used. It was more discreet, and out of sight of the prison’s general population. Meetings between inmates and prosecutors were not something the former liked witnessed by their brethren—it was an excellent way to be labeled a snitch and earn a proper pounding at the first opportunity. As a result, the Joe Gunthers of this world and their lawyerly associates had long ago opted for having such conversations off-site. Kathy didn’t need her bargaining sessions hindered by the man opposite her checking over his shoulder every five minutes.

The brand-new Springfield facility had been built with that in mind, however, allowing her and Joe to enter and depart without undue notice. The decision to meet here, though, had been largely because of Harvey—he had the farthest to travel and the tightest schedule and, if things worked out, would have the least to do.

They met with both Harvey and Kennedy ten minutes later, after negotiating the prison’s security, and then filed as a group into a closed, featureless room where Gabe Greenberg and his lawyer, a thin young man with a permanent scowl, named Randy Nichols, were already waiting.

Nichols smirked as they milled about taking off their coats, opening their briefcases, and choosing seats.

“No choir to back you up?” he asked.

Kathy Bartlett ignored him, making introductions instead. “Okay, Mr. Nichols,” she finally said, “wisecracks aside, we’re here both at your request and to show you that we’re not blowing smoke up your skirt. The States of Mas-sachusetts and Vermont and the federal government are all on board with a death penalty case here, so what you’re offering had better be good. We’re ready to go to trial right now with what we’ve got.”

Greenberg was sitting back in his chair, as unruffled as ever, looking like a bored accountant, despite the nature of Kathy’s comments. By contrast, Nichols leaned his elbows on the table, his expression darkening. “I want assurances that the death penalty not only disappears, but that the whole federal route does, too.” He pointed at Harvey and Kennedy in turn. “This becomes a Vermont case only.”

Kathy smiled, not bothering to glance at the other two attorneys, having anticipated this demand earlier. “Any deal depends on what you tell Special Agent Gunther here. You ready for that conversation?”

Greenberg stirred himself enough to whisper into Nichols’s ear.

“All right,” the attorney conceded.

“Great,” Kathy said brightly, rising to her feet, as did the mute Harvey and Kennedy. “We’ll be outside.”

Joe waited until the three of them had filed out so he could begin the next phase of the minuet. Absurd as it sounded, just as it was necessary for all three legal entities to be present today, it was just as important that none of them fall into the trap of becoming a defense witness because of anything Greenberg might reveal in person. The job of listening to Greenberg fell to Joe alone.

“What’ve you got, Gabe?” he asked after the door had closed.

Greenberg didn’t mince words or waste time. “I did Shriver and the guy in Gloucester on orders from Tom Bander.”

Joe kept his voice flat. “How and when did this happen?”

But Greenberg demurred. “That’s it. You want more—which I have—I want assurances from the three kings out there.”

Joe frowned. A lifetime of dealing with such people had still not immunized him from the outrage he felt at their behavior. That sense of double entitlement—allowing them to kill and then manipulate the system—still infuriated him. “What about Katie Clark?” he asked, exacting a surprised look from Nichols, who clearly hadn’t heard the name before.

Greenberg stared at him long enough for Joe to see the cold-bloodedness behind the man’s bland exterior. “Never heard of her.”

Reluctantly, Joe pushed his chair back. He didn’t believe that for a moment, but he could clearly do nothing about it. His irritation, however, did prompt him to ask, “I don’t suppose Bander told you why he wanted them dead?”

It was a long shot, not one he thought would stimulate a response, so he was halfway to his feet when Greenberg answered, “He said they had the goods on him for a job he’d pulled when he was starting out—a store robbery where some old guy died.”

Joe stared at him, the shadowy figure of Tom Bander finally secured to a reality that made some sense. All this time the man had floated by in conversations with the substance of smoke. Now, at last, he had a pedigree Joe could grab hold of, straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth.

“Did that come as a surprise?” he asked on impulse. “That your boss had that kind of background?”

Nichols looked confused while Greenberg merely seemed amused. “He’s a businessman,” he said. “Of course he’s a crook.”

That was too pat—and explained nothing. Joe straightened, moved toward the door, and tried again. “Did he say he was the one who killed the store owner?

“Not in so many words.”

Joe nodded. Naturally. He grabbed the doorknob and said, “Okay. Be right back.”

In the outer room, the three attorneys faced him as he entered.

“He deal?” Kathy asked.

Joe nodded, still torn by his conflicting emotions. Greenberg’s parting words had fulfilled all of Gunther’s needs. To secure a nontestimonial court order for a DNA sample, all that was needed was something called “an articulable suspicion” that a crime had been committed. What Joe had now was in the suburbs of probable cause—far sturdier ground and a reason for true celebration. Except that now that he was closing in at last on his own personal Holy Grail, he had to wonder what might happen next.

“Yup,” he told her. “He’s giving up Bander, complete with motive.”

Thomas Bander lived outside Brattleboro in an upscale neighborhood called Hillwinds. For the most part, the houses here hovered between upper middle class and the slumming wealthy, depending on whether the section was freshly developed or dated back twenty years, since Hillwinds continued to spread slowly like a living ink blot. Not surprisingly, Bander’s house was off the beaten path, up a long driveway, and secure behind a stone wall and an iron fence—unusual affectations for an area that prided itself on being neighborly, if slightly a cut above.

In a roundabout fashion, the trip here had taken several days, even though, as the crow flies, the VBI office was barely ten miles distant. That was testimony to the lawyer’s art, since the delay was due entirely to that.

Getting the nontestimonial court order had been as simple as expected. Getting Bander to comply had involved a series of grandstanding maneuvers by his attorney, including a press conference in which the police were accused of hounding a poor innocent man to distraction. As a compromise to Bander’s delicate disposition, the order was going to be met, but only discreetly, at his residence, and would involve only a bare minimum of police officers.

In fact, there had also been a bit of back-and-forth on the prosecutorial side of the equation. What Greenberg had given Kathy Bartlett was actually enough to generate an arrest warrant for Bander, rather than a mere nontestimonial order. But just barely. As a result, Bartlett was in no mood to let a fish this size strategize after being prematurely slapped with a double murder charge. She far preferred to let him swim while she accumulated as much damning evidence as possible.

By the same token, and to stretch the metaphor, she wasn’t beyond giving the line a yank or two to remind Bander of his position. Joe’s desire for a DNA sample fit in nicely there. Her earlier proposal, that he not secure the sample surreptitiously, but hit Bander straight on, had now grown to a tactical gambit.

“Jeez,” Sammie Martens said as Joe turned the last curve in the long driveway and came within view of the house. “I didn’t know places like this even existed in Vermont.”

“They exist,” Joe told her. “You just can’t see them from the road.”

“Too bad,” she murmured, craning to take it all in.

It was enormous: multistoried, shingle-clad, wrapped in a porch, and crested with beautiful eyebrow windows and complicated woodwork along a vast roofline. It was less than twenty years old—Joe remembered hearing about its construction at the time—but it had been built as an Adirondack throwback, albeit with modern trimmings.

They rolled to a stop by an expanse of porch steps leading up to a huge front door and got out of the car, their shoes crunching on the pea-size stones of the drive.

Joe gestured to Sam to precede him, bowing slightly.

She smiled. “Thank you, sir. It does sort of set a mood, don’t it?”

“It do.” He smiled back.

The levity died as they reached the top. Across the broad width of the porch the door opened, and Walter Masius III, Tom Bander’s lawyer, stood before them in a three-piece suit with his telegenic mane of white hair. An unknown entity to Joe until Bander’s appearance in this case, Masius had become its media darling in a scant few days—eloquent, dramatic, charismatic, and eminently quotable. The press had taken him to their hearts.

Sam couldn’t stand the man.

“Hey, Counselor,” she greeted him. “They let you in, too?”

Masius smiled broadly. “Indeed they did, Agent Martens.” He nodded graciously at Joe. “Agent Gunther, how are you today?”

“Impatient. Where is he?”

Masius stepped aside and ushered them in. “Mr. Bander’s in the library.”

“You sound like the butler,” Sam commented.

But Masius was beyond such taunts. He merely gestured down a ballroom-size hallway. The man could afford a thick skin, Gunther thought, his footsteps lost in the softness of thick carpeting. Boston-based, with a who’s-who list of shifty, well-heeled clients, Walter Masius hadn’t achieved his stardom by being easily riled.

He passed ahead of them about halfway down the hall and opened a tall, carved wooden door to their left. “In here,” he said, and again stood aside to let them in.

The room they entered was two stories high, with one wall of leaded-glass windows and the other three lined with solid rows of expensive books. A railed balcony ran above them like a suspended horseshoe. Persian rugs were scattered across the floor, fat leather furniture was gathered in clusters around old-looking lamps and low, claw-footed tables, and by the windows sat a desk, huge as a dry-docked aircraft carrier.

The whole room was as sumptuous as a movie set and looked just as fake. Gunther had no doubt that the entire collection of books had been purchased by an interior decorator and remained untouched by the home’s owner.

“Mr. Bander will be right in,” Masius purred. “Make yourselves comfortable.” He backed out, drawing the door closed as he went.

“Christ,” Sam said in a whisper, looking around.

“It’s a
My Fair Lady
knockoff,” Joe told her. “I’ve seen it before, only better.” He sighed in frustration. “I knew he’d pull this kind of crap—soon as I heard we had to come here to collect. Goddamned theatrics.”

Sam watched her boss walk over to the windows and stare out at the vast lawn, its surface flecked with dead leaves, pale and battered by the first frosts of the season. She’d seen him get increasingly tense as the days had crawled by, sitting far from the command post in his upstairs office, poring over files he’d studied a dozen times already. The contrast between that and their own progress downstairs had been palpable, since they’d been successfully strengthening their case against Greenberg with ever-growing piles of evidence, including having located his three colleagues from the Tunbridge Fair. Knowing that they were all involved in a major case was intoxicating, which only made Sam’s awareness of Joe’s isolation that much more poignant. Several times she’d found excuses to drop by to find out how he was doing, and each time, although he’d pretended to be working, she’d known he’d simply been waiting for today—for the evidence, true, but even more, she sensed, for the opportunity to bring a little peace to his spirit.

A different door, off to one side and designed to blend into the bookcases, opened to reveal the man they’d both seen only in news photos, on TV, and as a scruffy youngster in yellowed mug shots.

Walter Masius was on his heels, still acting like a windup majordomo.

“Mr. Bander, Agents Gunther and Martens.”

Seeing his nemesis for the first time in person—a short, pale, unprepossessing man dressed in nondescript clothes—caught Joe unexpectedly. In a way, he’d anticipated something weightier, at least marginally dramatic—someone looking the role ascribed to him.

This was a nobody, a delivery man lost in a mansion, glancing around as if expecting to be thrown out.

Joe knew what Thomas Bander had done, both as T. J. Ralpher and under the guise of legitimate business. He knew that underneath the insipid exterior hid a man capable of ruthless cruelty.

But therein lay the distinction between what Joe had imagined and what faced him now—previously, Bander’s evil had been shrouded with a convenient, though fictionalized, personality. Call it the spider of lore at the web’s center, calculating, seductive, lethally larger than life—a monster deserving of the damage that Joe had carried around inside him for well over half his years.

But now, in this forgettable, unmemorable, utterly ordinary man, Joe suddenly saw the larger insult of simple amorality. Tom Bander was no dark creature. He was simply an opportunistic parasite.

“You can cut the crap, Masius,” Gunther said shortly from across the large room, feeling the heat of pure rage wash over him. “This isn’t
Masterpiece Theatre,
and you’re not Alistair Cooke. Let’s get this done.” He waved at his colleague impatiently. “Sam.”