The Throat (44 page)

Clean
white sheets pumped out of the copier. "Do you know Paul Fontaine or
Michael Hogan?" I asked.

"I know
a little bit about them."

"What do
you know? I'm interested."

Keeping
an eye on the machine, Tom backed away and reached for his glass. He
perched on the edge of the chesterfield, still watching the pages jump
out of the machine. "Fontaine is a great street detective. The man has
an amazing conviction record. I'm not even counting the ones who
confessed. Fontaine is supposed to be a genius in the interrogation
room. And Hogan's probably the most respected cop in Millhaven—he did
great work as a homicide detective, and he was promoted to sergeant two
years ago. From what I've seen, even the people who might be expected
to be jealous are very loyal to him. He's an impressive guy. They're
both impressive guys, but Fontaine clowns around to hide it."

"Are
there a lot of murders in Millhaven?"

"More
than you'd think. It probably averages out to about one a day. In the
early fifties, there might have been two homicides a week—so the Blue
Rose murders caused a real sensation." Tom stood up to inspect the
progress of the old records through his machine. "Anyhow, you know what
most murders are like. Either they're drug-related, or they're
domestic. A guy comes home drunk, gets into a fight with his wife, and
beats her to death. A wife gets fed up with her husband's cheating and
shoots him with his own gun."

Tom
checked the machine again. Satisfied, he sat back down on the edge of
the couch. "Still, every now and then, there's something that just
smells different from the usual thing. A teacher from Milwaukee in town
to see her cousins disappeared on her way to a mall and wound up naked
in a field, with her hands and legs tied together. There was an
internist murdered in a men's room stall at the stadium at the start of
a ball game. Paul Fontaine solved those cases—he talked to everybody
under the sun, tracked down every lead, and got convictions."

"Who
were the murderers?" I asked, seeing Walter Dragonette in my mind.

"Losers,"
Tom said. "Dodos. They had no connection to their victims—they just saw
someone they decided they wanted to kill, and they killed them. That's
why I say Fontaine is a brilliant street detective. He nosed around
until he put all the pieces together, made his arrest, and made it
stick. I couldn't have solved those cases. I need a kind of a paper
trail. A lowlife who stabs a doctor in a toilet, washes the blood off
his hands, buys a hot dog and goes back to his seat—that's a guy who's
safe from me." He looked at me a little ruefully. "My kind of
investigation sometimes seems obsolete."

Tom took
the original stack of papers from the copier and put them back into the
satchel. One of the copies he put on his desk, and the other he gave to
me.

"Let's
leaf through these quickly tonight, just to see if anything will set
off some sparks."

I was
still thinking about Paul Fontaine. "Is Fontaine from Millhaven?"

"I don't
really know where he's from," Tom said. "I think he came here about
ten-fifteen years ago. It used to be that policemen always worked in
their hometowns, but now they move around, looking for promotions and
better pay. Half of our detectives are from out of town."

Tom left
the couch and went to the first workstation and turned on the computer
by pressing a switch on the surge protector beneath it with his foot.
Then he moved to the second and third workstations and did the same at
each and finally sat down at his desk and bent over to turn on the
surge protector there. "Let's see what we can come up with for that
license number of yours."

I took
my notebook out of my pocket and went over to the desk to see what he
was going to do.

Tom's
fingers moved over the keys, and a series of screens flashed across the
monitor. The last one was just a series of codes in a single line. Tom
put a plastic disc into the B drive—this much I could follow from my
own experience—and punched in numbers on the telephone attached to his
modem. The screen went blank for a moment and then flashed a fresh
C
prompt.

After
the prompt, Tom typed in a code and pushed
ENTER
. The
screen went blank again, and
LC
? appeared on the
screen. "What was that number?"

I showed
him the paper, and he typed in the plate number under the prompt and
pushed
ENTER
again. The number stayed on the screen. He
pushed a button marked
RECEIVE.

"You're
in the Motor Vehicle Department records now?"

"Actually,
I got to Motor Vehicles through the computer at Armory Place. It runs
on a twenty-four-hour day."

"You got
directly into the police department central computer?"

"I'm a
hacker."

"Why
couldn't you just get the Blue Rose file from the computer?"

"The
computerized records only go back eight or nine years. Ah, here we go.
It takes the system a little while to work through the file."

Tom's
computer flashed
READY RECEIVE
, and then displayed:
ELVEE
HOLDINGS, CORP   503 s 4TH ST. MILLHVEN, IL
.

"Well,
that's who owns your Lexus. Let's see if we can get a little farther."
Tom pushed enter again, rattled through a sequence of commands I
couldn't follow, and typed in another code. "Now we'll use the police
computer to access Springfield, and see what this company looks like."

He
bounced past a blur of options and menus, going through different
levels of state records, until he came to a list of corporations that
filled the screen. All began with the letter A. The names and addresses
of the officers followed the corporate names. He scrolled rapidly down
the screen, reducing the names and numbers to a blur, until he got to
E.
EAGAN CORP EAGAN MANAGEMENT CORP   EAGLE
CORP   EBAN CORP
. When we got to
ELVA CORP
.,
he bumped down name by name and finally reached
ELVEE HOLDINGS
CORP
.

Beneath
the name was the same address on South Fourth Street in Millhaven, the
information that the company had been incorporated on 23 July 1973, and
beneath that were the names of the officers.
ANDREW
BELINSKI 503 s 4th st MILLHAVEN, P
LEON CASEMENT 503 s 4th st MILLHAVEN, VP
WILLIAM WRITZMANN 503 s 4th st MILLHAVEN, T

"Mysteriouser
and mysteriouser," Tom said. "Who is the fugitive LV? I thought one of
these guys would be named Leonard Vollman, or something like that. And
does it seem likely that the officers of this corporation would all
live together in a little tiny house? Let's take this one step further."

He wrote
down the names and the address on a pad and then exited back through
the same steps he had used to access the state records. Then he
switched from the modem to a program called network. He punched more
buttons and pointed at the computer at the first workstation, which
began to hum. "I can use all my machines through this one. To keep from
having to use a million different floppies, I have different kinds of
information stored on the hard discs of these other computers. Over
there, along with a lot of other stuff, I have reverse directories for
a hundred major cities. Now let's punch up Millhaven in the reverse
directory."

"God
bless macros." He punched in a few random-looking letters, typed in the
South Fourth Street address, and in a couple of seconds the machine
displayed:
EXPRESSPOST MAIL & FAX
, along with a
telephone number.

"Damn."

"Expresspost
Mail?" I said. "What's that?"

"Probably
an office where you rent numbered boxes—like private post office boxes.
Considering the address, I think it's a storefront with rows of these
boxes and a counter with a fax machine."

"Is it
legal to give a place like that as your address?"

"Sure,
but we're not done yet. Let's see if these characters ever popped up in
the ordinary Millhaven telephone directory over, let's say, the past
fifteen years."

He
returned to the network slogan, punched in the same terminal code and
more internal directory files. He keyed in the number 91, and a long
list of names beginning with A followed with addresses and telephone
numbers floated up on the monitors of both the first workstation and
his desk computer.

"Go over
to that station and make sure I don't miss one of these names."

I sat
down before the subsidiary computer and watched the screen jump to the
B listings. "We want Andrew Belinski," Tom said, and rolled down the Bs
until he came to
BELI
. Then he dropped line by line
through
BELLIARD, BELLIBAS, BELLICK, BELLICKO, BELLIN BELLINA,
BELLINELLI, BELLING, BELLISSIMO, BELMAN.

"Did I
miss it, or isn't it there?"

"There's
no Belinski," I said.

"Let's
try Casement."

He
scrolled rapidly to the Cs and flipped down a row of names to case,
casement followed,
CASEMENT,
ARTHUR;
CASEMENT,HUGH; CASENENTM ROGER
.
There was no Leon.

"Well, I
think I know what we're going to find, but let's just try the last one."

He
jumped immediately to W, and rolled electronically through the pages.
One Writzmann was listed in the 1991 Millhaven directory, Oscar, of
5460 Fond du Lac Drive.

"What do
you know? Either they don't exist, or they don't have telephones. Which
seems more likely to you?"

"Maybe
they have unlisted numbers," I said.

"To me,
no numbers are unlisted." He smiled at me, proud of his toys.

"Maybe
they're hiding—you can get a phone under another name, which makes it
impossible to find you this way. But five years ago, maybe they didn't
know they wouldn't want anybody to be able to find them in 1991. Let's
try the listings for 1986."

Another
series of backward steps, another keystroke, and all the listed and
unlisted telephone numbers in Millhaven for 1986 came up on both
screens.

There
were no Belinskis, the same three Casements, and Oscar, but not
William, Writmann.

"Let's
zip back to 1981, and see if we can find them there."

The 1981
directory contained no Belinski, Casement, Arthur and Roger but not
Hugh, and Writzmann, Oscar, at 5460 Fond du Lac Drive.

"I think
I get the picture, but just for the hell of it, let's take a look at
1976."

No
Belinski. Casement, Arthur, without the company of Roger. Writzmann,
Oscar, already at 5460 Fond du Lac Drive.

"We
struck out," I said.

"Hardly,"
Tom said. "We've made great strides. We have discovered the very
interesting fact that the car you saw following John is the property of
a company incorporated in the State of Illinois under a convenience
address and three phony names. I wonder if Belinski, Casement, and
Writzmann are phony people, too."

I asked
him what he meant by "phony people."

"In
order to incorporate, you need a president, a vice president, and a
treasurer. Now somebody filed the papers for the Elvee Holding
Corporation, or there wouldn't be an Elvee Holding Corporation. If I
had to guess right now, I'd say that the person who filed for
incorporation back in 1979 was good old LV. Anyhow, filing only takes
one man. The filer can make up the names of his fellow officers."

"So one
of these three people actually has to exist."

"That's
right, but he may exist under some other name altogether. Now think,
Tim. During the past few days, has John ever mentioned anyone whose
name began with the letter V?"

"I don't
think so," I said. "He hasn't really talked about himself very much."

"I don't
suppose you ever heard Alan Brookner mention anybody with the initials
LV."

"No, I
haven't." This was a disturbing question. "You don't think these
murders could have anything to do with Alan, do you?"

"They
have everything to do with him. Who are the victims? His daughter. His
best graduate student. But I don't think Alan is in danger, if that's
what you mean."

I felt
myself relaxing.

"You're
fond of him, aren't you?"

"I think
he has enough problems already," I said.

Tom
leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and said, "Oh?"

"I think
he might have Alzheimer's disease. He managed to get himself together
for the funeral, but I'm afraid that he's going to fall apart again."

"Did he
teach last year?"

"I guess
so, but I don't see how he can do it again this year. The problem is
that if he quits, the entire Religion Department at Arkham goes with
him, and John loses his job. Even
Alan
is worried about that—he
struggled through last year partly for John's sake." I threw up my
hands. "I wish I could do something to help. I did make arrangements
for a private duty nurse to come to Alan's place every day, but that's
about it."

"Can he
afford that?" Tom was looking thoughtful, and I suddenly knew what he
was considering. I wondered how many people he helped, quietly and
anonymously.

"Alan's
pretty well set up," I said quickly. "April saw to that."

"Well,
then, John should hardly have to worry, either."

"John
has complicated feelings about April's money. I think it's a question
of pride."

"That's
interesting," Tom said.

He
straightened up and looked at his monitor, still displaying Oscar
Writzmann's name and address. "Let's run these names through Births and
Deaths. It's probably a wild goose chase, but what the hell?"

He began
clicking at keys, and the screen before me went momentarily blank. Rows
of codes marched across the dark gray background. John typed out
Belinski, Andrew, Casement, Leon, and Writzmann, William, and the names
appeared on my screen. More codes that must have been instructions to
the modem replaced them. The screen went blank, and
SEARCHING
rose up out of the background and began pulsing on the screen.