The surrogate thief jg-15 Read online

  Back in the lobby, he repeated his effort with the bell and again got no satisfaction.

  He jogged back to the window, only to find it empty. She'd left, presumably to speak to him on the intercom.

  "Goddamn Marx Brothers routine," he muttered, running back.

  Once he got there, however, there was no voice on the speaker, and no answer to his third push of the button.

  He stood motionless for a couple of minutes, wondering what to do next, when suddenly, making him jump in surprise, an angry and exhausted voice inquired, "What do you want?"

  "Katie Clark?"

  "Who's that?"

  He'd thought about this moment, knowing the wrong approach might stop him from even getting through the door. Now, God only knew where he stood. A little incongruously, he tried keeping his voice upbeat. "My name's Joe Gunther. From Brattleboro. You and I met more than thirty years ago. I was driving through town, and I heard through the grapevine you were living here. Thought I'd just take a chance and see if you were in. I'm sorry about the confusion with the doorbell. I didn't mean to upset you."

  "What was your name?" The voice had become no more energetic or friendly.

  "Joe. Joe Gunther."

  There was a long pause, followed by "Did you say Brattleboro?"

  "Yes. That's right. A long time ago."

  "What was a long time ago?"

  Joe looked at the intercom quizzically. "That we met," he said, his voice trailing off.

  The white noise of the speaker stretched out, eventually followed by a weak "Oh, what the hell" and the buzzing of the entryway lock to let him in.

  He stepped into a hallway and turned left, toward where he knew the apartment to be. He knocked on the only door with a number on it.

  "Come in," said the same weak voice.

  Gingerly he tested the knob and pushed the door open. "Katie?" he asked hesitantly.

  There was no answer. He peered around the edge of the door and saw a small, thin woman sitting on an upright chair in the short hallway before him, her back against the wall as if she'd collapsed there following some shocking news.

  "Are you all right?" he asked, stepping inside.

  She gave him a deadpan stare with hollow eyes and sighed. "Peachy. What do you want?"

  "Nothing, really," he lied. "Like I said, I'd heard you were here. Actually, that was a while ago, but then, all of a sudden, I'm driving through town, and I remembered it, so I thought I'd drop by. Maybe not such a good idea, though, huh?"

  "What?" she asked.

  He approached slowly, looking at her, again caught off guard by her apparent confusion. "Maybe I shouldn't have bothered you today. You seem a little tired."

  She looked at the floor and laughed weakly, doubling over with the effort. He feared she might fall off her chair.

  "That's good," she almost whispered. "A little tired. Jesus Christ."

  While she caught her breath, he asked, "Can I do anything to help?"

  "You'd be the first if you could," she answered, and then went through an agonizingly slow process of standing up, using the wall and chair back for assistance, during which he fought the impulse to reach out and help, sensing that it would be poorly received.

  The odd thing was that she looked fine. Nothing bloated or bent or altogether missing. She was just a slim woman in her late forties who moved like an ailing octogenarian. He remembered the lithe, attractive, quick-moving girl she'd been, and could still see the ghosts of all that, but in extreme slow motion.

  He followed her into the apartment's main room, filled with soft music but also cluttered with magazines, newspapers, clothing, cast-aside mail, odds and ends, all looking as if it had been dropped in the midst of some military retreat. Dominating it was a chair by the window, overstuffed, crammed with pillows, and circled by small tables stacked with more junk. It made him think of the nest of some large flightless bird, reduced to being fed and cared for by others.

  Laboriously Katie Clark worked her way toward this resting place, her hands slightly out to her sides like a tightrope walker's, her gait uncertain, as if negotiating a rain-slicked icy pond.

  By the time she finally reached her goal and sank in among her pillows, Joe was as grateful as she appeared to be.

  "Who are you, again?" she asked, squinting at him in concentration. "I know you told me, but I forgot."

  He decided to keep it simple this time. "Joe, from Brattleboro."

  She nodded thoughtfully. "Right. Brattleboro. Long time."

  She didn't add anything to that, leaving him groping for a follow-up.

  "Yeah. We actually met, you and I. Decades ago. You weren't even twenty yet." He was about to add that he was a cop and that their connection was Peter Shea, but then held back, deciding to let things evolve a little first.

  She glanced out the window at a brief spurt of traffic, unleashed by the intersection's changing light. "Not even twenty," she murmured. "Christ, to be there again."

  He sensed a small opening. "What happened, Katie?"

  She turned to look at him, the exhaustion on her face ever more pronounced. "You ever hear of Yuppie disease?"

  He nodded. "Chronic fatigue, right?"

  She smiled bitterly. "Well, I'm one of the Yuppies who's got it. Yuppie, my ass. You know that's bullshit."

  He grimaced his embarrassment. "Actually, I don't know much of anything. Just the name, really. I read about a woman with it who took several years to write a history book. That put it in the headlines."

  Katie nodded. "Damned if I know how she did that. I change my sheets and it's lights out for the rest of the day. The name's crap anyway."

  "What name?" he asked. "'Yuppie disease'?"

  She frowned dismissively. "Sure, and the other one. 'Chronic fatigue.' Makes it sound like we're a bunch of sleepwalkers. It's more than that. Sleep's a bitch, in fact."

  "You don't sleep?" He was surprised.

  "Not well. In fits and starts. We never feel rested. That's one of the… whatchamacallits they use to tell this from something else."

  "Symptoms?"

  "Yeah. Fatigue's only one. There's swollen glands, headaches, lousy sleep, achy joints and muscles, sore throat. You can't remember shit and you can't do anything right… fucking checklist. I've got it all and then some," she said regretfully. "You want to sound cool," she then added, looking at him sharply, "you call it CFIDS. Stands for something." She passed her hand across her forehead. "Whatever. I can't remember."

  They both listened to the street sounds leaking through the windows for a while before he asked, "Are you in a lot of pain right now?"

  "You bet your ass I am."

  Gunther had expected none of this, and was at a loss how to proceed. Katie Clark was locked in a whirlpool of her own misery, which seemed to have consumed all her attention.

  He decided to work backward.

  "How long have you had this?" he asked.

  She'd been gazing at him for a couple of minutes, and now continued doing so without any sign of having heard him.

  He waited a couple of moments before softly saying, "Katie?"

  She blinked. "What?"

  "How long have you had this?"

  She set her head back against a pillow and closed her eyes. "Twelve years."

  "Do you know what brought it on?"

  "Nobody knows. Some people think it's depression gone crazy; some say it's a virus or Lyme disease. One woman told me it was polio vaccinations we were given as kids. But everyone's clueless-don't know where it comes from, don't know how to get rid of it."

  "How do you support yourself?"

  "I don't. I'm on disability. I tried doing stuff a few years ago, but it didn't last. You can't keep a schedule. I feel it coming on, know I've only got an hour or two to reach home before I can't move anymore. People don't understand. Think you're faking it. I'd be better off if I had cancer."

  Joe was caught off guard by the comment and had to bite back disabusing her of cancer's attractions. Ins
tead, he kept her going, sensing he was making progress. "What did you used to do?"

  Katie gave another of her short laughs. "Worked at a nursing home. Good, huh? Took care of old people sitting in chairs, drooling. Boy, I used to pity them."

  It was like tugging a narcissist away from her own mirror. "You ever go back to Brattleboro?" he continued trying.

  She tilted her head forward and looked at him. "Brattleboro? How did you know I came from there?"

  He didn't miss a beat. "That's where we met, a long time ago."

  She smiled, a lascivious glint in her eye. "Sorry. Guess you didn't make a big impression. I knew a lot of guys a long time ago."

  He shrugged. "That's okay. There was a lot going on back then. Easy to get lost in the shuffle. Is there anyone in your life now?"

  She laughed again. "I'd fight 'em off with a stick if I had the energy." Her face settled in upon itself again, revealing the sadness that defined her features. "I've tried it a couple of times. There's not much point. I have to sit down when I brush my teeth. That give you an idea how much fun I am in bed?"

  He pressed on, determined to get something from her, as addicted to his elusive goal as she was to her chronic problems. "I remember a few other people from back then," he said. "Didn't you used to hang with Pete Shea? Wow. There's somebody I haven't thought about in a while."

  She was giving him another of those strangely vacant stares. "What's your name again?" she finally asked.

  He hesitated a split second, fearing she'd finally put the pieces together. "Joe," he answered simply.

  She set her head at rest again. "Right. Sorry. Not good with names."

  He didn't respond, waiting for her to react to his earlier question, before realizing she had no clue what he'd just said.

  "Not a problem," he said. "I was wondering if you'd ever kept up with Pete Shea. You were friends once, right? We all lost track of him."

  "No shit you did," she acknowledged. "He got the hell out of Dodge. The cops were after him."

  Joe nodded agreeably. "Nothing new there. Why this time?"

  "They thought he murdered some guy. He didn't-he said it was a frame-but he took off anyhow."

  Despite having heard variations on this before, Joe suddenly saw it in a completely different light. He'd always assumed that Pete had disappeared because they were interested in him from the thumbprint on the knife blade. Now, feeling foolish, he wondered for the first time how Shea could have known of that interest. When they'd set out to question him, he was already long gone.

  "What made him think the cops were after him?" Joe asked carefully.

  "They weren't," she explained tiredly, as if to a slow child. "Not yet. He just knew they would be. It was the gun that set him off."

  "The gun?" Joe prompted after a pause, both puzzled and relieved that they'd finally reached his purpose for being here.

  "He found it under our mattress. Had blood on it. The papers said the man had been beaten with a gun, and Pete somehow figured this was probably it. He'd put his fingerprints on it by handling it, so he knew he was screwed. That's why he ran. Good thing, too."

  "Why's that?"

  "He was right, wasn't he? They did come for him. Funny thing was, they didn't ask about any gun. It was all about that stupid switchblade he played with. Guess they found that, too. Sort of pissed me off at the time-the risk I took with that gun."

  She took a rest, pausing to breathe as if she'd just sprinted up a set of stairs.

  "What happened to it?" Joe asked quickly, not wanting her to lose this train of thought.

  "I cleaned it up and gave it to my brother. He hid it under the floorboards of his house. Made me nervous as hell bringing it to him."

  "And you never saw Pete again?"

  She looked incredulous. "He lived here with me for a few years. Later on. Nobody had a clue. You'd think they'd put out one of those bulletins or something. Pathetic. Maybe they pinned it on somebody else and stopped looking. I guess that could happen and you'd never know it, right? There's something for you-be on the run your whole life and not know there's nobody after you. Kind of like The Fugitive in reverse."

  Joe tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. "He lived here with you?"

  She'd had her eyes closed through all this and now merely exhaled wearily. "Not here, here. In Orange. I live here because of the disability thing. This was before. Years ago."

  "You guys split up?"

  "Yeah. You drift apart. You know how it goes."

  That he did. "You keep in touch still?"

  "No," she said wearily. Her voice had been steadily losing whatever strength it had. By now she was almost whispering.

  "That's too bad," Joe conceded, more truthfully than she could know. "I always liked him. What makes you think that he was innocent? The evidence seems pretty damning."

  "You just know a guy," she answered simply.

  "Wish I could look him up," Joe lamented.

  "Can't help you. By the time we split, he was drinking every day. And then, all of a sudden, he was gone. Left everything behind, even his toothbrush."

  Again she seemed to be purposefully tantalizing him with leading inferences. It was like water torture. "Really? That's weird. Must've been a bummer being stuck with all that."

  "No. I threw most of it out."

  Joe rubbed his forehead. Naturally. He looked at the woman across from him, her eyes shut, her body limp and draped across the chair's pillows as if she'd been poured there from a glass. He tried one more time, pushing a little since he had so little left to lose.

  "Most of it?"

  But instead of growing suspicious of all the questions, she merely smiled. "Yeah. Stupid, I know, but I kept his shot glass collection. Wherever we'd go-Maine, New York, wherever-he'd buy a souvenir shot glass. Funny, the things some people collect and other people hang on to, always for different reasons."

  She opened her eyes then and slowly straightened her head, frowning at the exertion. Joe figured he had less than five minutes left before she passed out right in front of him.

  "They're over there," she murmured. "On the wall."

  He glanced toward the bathroom door and saw attached to the wall next to it a glass display case, its every shelf filled with small glasses, each one decorated with some image or motto or decoration. He rose from his seat and crossed over to it.

  He scanned its contents, tracking the couple's travels all over New England, again struck by the fact that Pete Shea had done all this with an open arrest warrant out on him.

  The case had a door. He opened it noiselessly, seeing that Katie had once again settled down, and took a closer look. On one of the glasses directly before him, there was a fat fingerprint visible in the light slanting in through the window.

  "You ever use these?" he asked.

  In the answering silence, he turned to look at her again. This time it appeared she was fast asleep. He placed the glass gingerly in his handkerchief and slipped it into his pocket.

  He crossed back over to her. "Katie?" he asked quietly.

  She didn't stir.

  He touched the crown of her head with his fingertips, as a parent might a sleeping child's after a long, hard day. "Take care, Katie Clark," he whispered, and showed himself out.

  Chapter 11

  What good's a print going to do?" Willy Kunkle asked Joe. "We already have his prints on file."

  Joe was back in Brattleboro, staring at the shot glass nestled amid a small, ignored stack of pink call-back notes in the middle of his desk. It was his sole trophy so far in what was starting to look like a repeat exercise in futility.

  "And didn't you say she'd moved since he split? That means she must've packed all that crap, touching each and every item. The print's probably hers."

  Gunther shrugged. "It was something she said. She was impressed we never caught him, even though he was wandering all over New England. Made me think that if we'd missed something as obvious as his living with his old girlfrie
nd, maybe we were missing something just as obvious now." He stood up, preparing to follow Willy out the door. "I'm going to run Shea's old prints through AFIS. We never did anything like that when we were looking for him, you know? Never sent them to the FBI, never circulated them anywhere. We just kept them here, relying on a physical description for the all-points." He scratched his head. "It was so long ago. It never crossed my mind he could've been busted somewhere else and his prints entered into the system. That would've waved a red flag right off the bat."

  Willy looked at him. "Jesus, you're cracking up, you know that? Who says the guy's even alive, much less that he was printed someplace else? You're dreaming."

  Joe walked out into the hallway with him, still distracted. "Maybe, but I never even thought of it. That's what's getting me. From the start, my head wasn't in this case."

  Willy made for the staircase at the end of the hall, his meager counseling abilities exhausted. "You win some, you lose some. Shit happens. Get some sleep."

  With a rattle of shoe heels on stair treads, he was gone.

  Joe smiled and murmured, "In a while."

  "You get what you were after?" the AFIS operator asked him an hour later.

  Joe stared at the printout in his hands, incredulous. "You could say that."

  The cell phone in his pocket chirped. He thanked the technician and moved out into the deserted hallway, only half visible in the after-hours lighting.

  "Hello?"

  "Joe. It's me."

  He smiled at the sound of her voice. "Gail. Where are you?"

  "I'm driving into town. I have to go from one something to something else, but I was hoping I could see you for a couple of minutes. Are you nearby?"

  "The Municipal Building. Is everything all right?"

  "I'm eating too much and I've lost track of who I'm meeting when or why sometimes, but I'm fine. It's something else. Can you stay put for five minutes? I'm almost there."

  "Sure. I'll be in the parking lot."

  She was faster than she'd thought, and drove up only ninety seconds after he'd stepped outside. He leaned on her door as she rolled down the window to kiss him.