The Surrogate Thief Read online

  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.�
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  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.”

  He leaned back, stretched his shoulders, and took a deep breath, smiling at her with his head slightly tilted to one side. “Impressive, huh? Not the kind of thing I’d admit to another cop, but that’s how I feel. Leaves me kind of empty-handed, in more ways than one.”

  There was some noise at the front door, and five men entered, talking loudly to one another. Evelyn straightened and glanced at them, assessing whether they would head to the jukebox, the pool table, the bathroom, or the bar, and then returned to Joe as they split up and did all but the last for the time being.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said, speaking more quickly now that their quiet was about to end for the evening. “For thirty-plus years, nothing happens with this case; then you get lucky, find out where Norm’s been hanging his hat, but as soon as you get here, he winds up dead. Only now you’re not so sure he was the right guy to begin with. Is that it in a nutshell?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You don’t think there’s something weird about that?”

  He looked at her seriously. “I most certainly do.”

  “What’re you going to do about it?”

  He didn’t respond. He just kept his eyes on hers.

  “Right,” she finally said. “You’ve been sitting here for two days waiting to talk to me.”

  “Hoping to talk to you,” he corrected her. “I know the spot you’re in—the credibility you need to keep working here. I’m not asking to jam you up.”

  She took a couple of steps backward. The men were beginning to sort out their priorities and were heading for the bar.

  “How the hell have you stayed a cop for so long?” she asked. “Don’t other cops drive you crazy?”

  He smiled and shrugged instead of answering. That wasn’t something he wanted to try explaining.

  Turning away to tend to her other customers, she glanced over her shoulder and said, “I get off at two this morning. Meet me at the end of the pier directly opposite.” She pointed at the bar’s entrance.

  “Thanks,” he said, watching her shift gears and fire off a one-liner as she approached the first man to grab a stool.

  Gloucester was still a busy town at two in the morning, at least in comparison to Brattleboro, so Joe sat thoroughly entertained on a strategically placed bench at the end of the designated pier. Across the narrow harbor, what he thought might be a packing plant was still open full throttle, its lights blazing and its mechanical heart throbbing deep within. On Main Street, traffic flowed periodically, often accompanied by boisterous shouts and the occasional horn blast. And in the distance, across the decks of several bobbing fishing boats, he could make out a man still working on some piece of equipment by the harsh light of a halogen lamp, the music from his softly playing radio barely audible on the gentle waves of a surprisingly warm, salt-flavored breeze.

  And yet, there was quiet amid the groaning of docked vessels and the slap of taut lines against unseen masts—even an unsettling sense of isolation. It wasn’t hard to imagine how easily a man could be waylaid, not a hundred yards from where Joe was sitting, and have a knife silently slipped into the center of his heart.

  She emerged from the neon lights like a shadow detaching from the night, at first more a sensation than an actual outline, her footsteps covered by the soft lapping of the tide against the pier’s pilings.

  He smiled to himself as she drew into the feeble glow from across the water. Out of the bar’s embrace, she was dressed in light sweatpants and a shirt, her physical attributes no longer available to any poss
ibly good tipper.

  She sat next to him without ceremony or greeting, stretching her legs out before her and sighing deeply. “God, it smells good out here, especially after eight hours in that dump.”

  “You come out here often after work?”

  “Sometimes. It’s a mood thing. There’re nights it gives me the creeps just to walk from the front door to my car. Lot of strange people in this town.”

  “How was it tonight?”

  She glanced at him, her expression covered by the darkness. “That’s right. You left early. It was okay—average.”

  “I couldn’t take two nights of straight Cokes in a row.”

  She liked that. “You on the wagon? Must be tough hanging out in a bar.”

  “No,” he admitted. “I just gave it up. I never drank much to begin with, but I finally got tired of seeing what it did to people.”

  She grunted softly. “Christ. Got that right.”

  “You hungry?” he asked suddenly, offering her a small paper bag.

  She straightened quickly and turned toward him, accepting the gift. “You kidding? Starving. I usually go to the diner after I get off.”

  He smiled. “I know—lobster roll and a strawberry shake. I heard you trading eating habits with your gin rummy partner.”

  Surprised, she tore open the bag and reached inside. “I don’t believe it. That’s right.” He saw the flash of her teeth in the gloom as she laughed. “You are too much. Thanks.”

  Without further ceremony, she took a large bite and settled back onto the bench, contentedly chewing, her eyes on the stars overhead. “God,” she finally said, “that hits the spot. You want a bite?”

  He held up his hand. “No, I’m fine. I might take a hit off the milkshake later, though. Big sweet tooth.”

  “Oh, right,” she responded, diving into the bag again and extracting the waxy cup. “Take the first sip.”