The Surrogate Thief Read online

  Joe had eventually found a steadying mentor in his old, now late squad commander, Frank Murphy. In his heart, he was hoping that he might still serve the same role for Willy, if only partially.

  “Sam tell you what I was working on?” Joe asked, pretending to be scrounging through some files.

  “Something about you being so bored, you had to go back thirty years for a case?”

  That was one way of looking at it. “Yeah, in a nutshell. Who would you go to if you wanted a gun?”

  “Around here, anyone who wasn’t driving a Volvo or didn’t shop at the Co-op.”

  Joe sighed. “Yeah—pretty much what I was thinking.”

  “But you’re not talking just any piece. You’re talking about an ancient hog leg. That smacks of amateur hour to me.”

  Gunther looked up at him, brightening slightly. “I have the name of one of the dead guy’s pals. Worked with him at the lumber mill as a yard gofer.”

  Willy hitched his right shoulder noncommitally. “That’s where I’d start. What’s his name?”

  “Dick somebody. You want to keep me company?”

  Willy snorted and began extricating himself from behind the desk. “Well, shit, since you got it narrowed down to a single Dick, how can I say no?”

  The mill in question was south of the Brattleboro town line—an open complex of sheds, stacks of lumber, and a railroad spur. Again recalling his failed approach with Ted Moore, a wiser Joe Gunther went straight to the office, showed his credentials, and inquired about an employee named Dick who was a friend of Matt Purvis and had a last name starting with “Ch.” The response from the secretary greeting them was happily instantaneous.

  “That would be Dick Celentano. They were quite the duo. I was so sorry to hear about what happened to Matt. That’s what you’re here about, right?”

  Willy had already opened his mouth to ruin this friendly, casual moment when Joe cut him off. “You’re right. Very good. And don’t worry about Dick. We just want to chat with him about Matt. I hate to wander all over the yard looking for him, though, and I sure don’t want to embarrass him any. Is there a way you can page him? Tell him he has a phone call, maybe?”

  Joe gave her a conspiratorial smile, causing her to giggle. “Ooh, that’s clever,” she said. “Okay.”

  She hit a button on the console before her and announced, “Dick Celentano to the office for a phone call. Dick Celentano to the office for a phone call.”

  Gunther thanked her and pulled Kunkle over near the front door, murmuring, “I’ll wait for him here. Go loiter in the parking lot and discreetly shepherd him in. I don’t want him making a run for it once he finds out who we are.”

  “Ooh,” Willy mimicked before heading outside. “That’s clever.”

  They needn’t have worried. Dick Celentano was cooperation personified, and easily impressed. “Can I hold it?” he asked after Joe had shown him his badge. The man was completely unfazed by having been lured into the office by a ruse.

  Willy rolled his eyes as Joe handed it over.

  “Wow,” Celentano said, cradling it as if it were a religious icon. “I’ve read about you guys, but this is a first. You’re like the best of the best, right? Like, way better than the state troopers.”

  “Yeah,” Willy said quickly, before Joe could interrupt. “Way better. Be sure to tell them that.”

  His eyes gleaming, Celentano returned the badge. “Cool. You got it. So, what can I do you for?”

  “We’re here about Matt,” Gunther told him.

  Celentano’s face fell. “Can you believe that? Unbelievable. I heard about it on the news. I was, like, stunned. I mean, I cried, right then and there.”

  “I bet,” Willy muttered.

  “That must’ve been tough,” Joe added, patting the man’s arm. “You didn’t see it coming?”

  “Well, I knew he was bummed out, losing his job here and all. It’s not like any of us has money to spare, you know what I mean? And he had less than most.”

  “Did you know Linda?”

  The man’s expression soured as he joined the general consensus. “That bitch. Yeah, we met once. She must’ve been something in the sack, is all I can say, ’cause she wasn’t much anywhere else. I never could figure that one out—what he saw in her. She treated me like shit right from the get-go.”

  “No kidding?” said Willy.

  Celentano glanced at him, all happy innocence. “Yeah. I mean, what did I ever do to her, right?”

  “So,” Joe asked, steering him back on course, “Matt going to confront her came totally out of the blue, as far as you know?”

  “Oh, yeah. Totally.”

  “He had a handgun. What can you tell us about that?” Willy asked.

  Dick Celentano furrowed his brow. “I only know about a rifle,” he said slowly.

  Both detectives stayed silent. Their guest’s former enthusiasm had abruptly faded. He, too, remained quiet, leading Gunther to suggest, “But he was looking for a handgun.”

  “Yeah,” Celentano mournfully conceded.

  “And you supplied him with one,” Willy added, his voice threatening.

  This time the other man correctly interpreted Willy’s meaning. “No, I didn’t. I swear. I didn’t want any part of that. I told him so, too.”

  “So, you knew what he wanted it for?”

  Celentano squirmed. “Linda was driving him crazy. He said he just wanted to show her who was boss. I said I wouldn’t help—turned him down flat. Just like that. He was drinking again. I wasn’t sure what he’d do.”

  Willy had straightened by now and was looking out the window, his impatience showing. Joe, for his part, leaned in close, still suspicious. “You were best friends, Dick. He was in need. Even if you didn’t want any part of it doesn’t mean you couldn’t help him indirectly. What was he threatening to do? Rob a store and steal a gun? That would’ve gotten him in really hot water.”

  Dick cast his eyes down. Clearly one of the world’s worst poker players. “It wasn’t a store,” he said softly. “It was a friend’s house he was thinking to rob.”

  “So, what did you suggest?” Joe coaxed.

  “I gave him a name.”

  Willy took Joe’s cue and said with unsettling gentleness, “Dick, we didn’t jam you up here. We won’t with the next guy, either. We just have to close all the circles with this. Lay it to rest so life can go on.”

  “His name’s John Moser,” Celentano confessed, looking deflated. He looked up at Joe pleadingly. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Willy abruptly dropped to one knee to better make eye contact, his demeanor hardening yet again. Celentano involuntarily flinched. But Willy didn’t raise his hand or his voice, although the impact of what he said had much the same effect: “You call a priest or a counselor, you moron. You hurt your friend’s feelings so you can keep him alive. That’s what you owe him—not access to a gun.”

  Gunther never did get any closer to finding Peter Shea, although it wasn’t for lack of trying. After collecting what Ted Moore had stolen the night before in exchange for not arresting him, Joe tracked down Katie Clark—Pete’s girlfriend at the time he disappeared—waiting tables at one of the town’s ubiquitous pizza joints.

  He was standing by the back door when she ended her shift.

  “You Katie Clark?” he asked, showing her his badge. “I’m Joe Gunther.”

  “Good for you, pig.”

  Joe raised his eyebrows. She fit the profile for that kind of response: skinny; long, straight, greasy hair; dirty hip-hugger jeans and sandals; the obligatory tie-dye T-shirt with a peace symbol emblazoning one breast—every effort made to diminish a natural attractiveness. But he knew from asking around which social stratum she inhabited, and it wasn’t the protester/college dropout crowd. She was pure working class, a poseur who couldn’t care less about what was happening in Vietnam.

  “I’d like to ask you about Pete Shea.”

  “He’s gone.” She made to brush by him.r />
  “You know where to?”

  “Wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

  He addressed the back of her head. “If we establish he killed that man, you’ll be in shit up to your ears unless you help me now.”

  She turned around to face him. “Pete didn’t kill anyone. You’re the one who’s full of shit.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  She hesitated a split second. “I just know.”

  “You were with him all that night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “From eleven o’clock on?”

  “Right.”

  Joe made up the next line. “After the two of you got together at the Village Barn just before? We have witnesses to that.”

  “Sure,” she said, but her eyes betrayed her confusion at this total fiction, and her doubts about playing into it.

  “Katie,” he said, his voice softening, “Klaus Oberfeldt was assaulted just after nine, and I have no idea if you were at the Village Barn that night. If you think Pete’s innocent, help me prove it.”

  She continued staring at him for a long moment, and then finally let her gaze drop. “I can’t.”

  “You don’t know where he was at that time?”

  “No.” She looked up again, reinvigorated. “But I know he didn’t do it.”

  “He carried a switchblade, right? Used to show off how well he could throw it across a room and make it stick to a wall?”

  She thought that over carefully. The police had withheld mention of the knife from the papers, as they had the missing money.

  “Yeah,” she admitted slowly. “But he lost it.”

  “We found it at the crime scene.”

  Her lips pressed together and she stared at him angrily.

  “Where did he go, Katie?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated, her fists clenched. “He just left. You want to tap my phone and follow me around, be my guest. I liked Pete—he was gentle and sweet and not an asshole. I don’t think he did it, no matter what tricks you want to pull, but I still don’t know where he is. He dumped me like a hot rock and I haven’t heard from him since. I think it was just more than he could handle. He’s had a shitty life and I don’t guess it’s getting better.” She quickly wiped an eye with the back of her hand, adding, “I gotta go.”

  She turned on her heel and walked off into the night. For months thereafter, Joe did keep tabs on her as best he could. But there was never anything to indicate that she ever reconnected with Pete Shea.

  “You know John Moser?” Joe asked Willy as they left the lumber yard. Whereas other people had hobbies like fishing or watching car races, Willy had two: One was pencil sketching, something Joe had discovered by accident and had been sworn never to divulge; the other, known to all, was keeping tabs on the town’s underworld. As other men tracked baseball stats, Willy collected intelligence on the activities, alliances, and interactions among likely law enforcement customers. Every other cop Joe knew was content to deal with the bad guys as they appeared on the radar scope. Willy’s interest was like a connoisseur’s; he liked to be familiar with all aspects of his subjects’ progression, from start to finish.

  “I know he’s not somebody I’d send a friend to see.”

  Joe scratched his head. “It’s not that big a town. You’d think I’d’ve heard of him.”

  “You don’t keep up,” Willy said flatly. “He’s from Mass. Springfield. Got too hot for him down there, so he brought his business to the land of the yahoos.”

  “What business is that?”

  “He’s a middleman. Drugs, girls, guns, stolen goods—you name it. Cagey, though. Rarely touches the stuff himself.”

  “Meaning he’ll be all cooperation when we ask him about Matt Purvis’s gun?”

  Willy laughed. “Fer sher—you can count on it.”

  Gunther took his eyes off the street long enough to cast him a sideward glance. “I’m not sure I like that laugh.”

  Willy stayed smiling. “Then don’t worry your pretty little head about it. I’ll find him for you.”

  It was late by the time Joe finished at the office, having spent several hours catching up on paperwork. Being VBI’s number two man meant that he had not only his own caseload and unit to watch over, but the activities and reports of the other four statewide unit chiefs as well, all faxed or e-mailed to him daily.

  It wasn’t as onerous as it could have been. Since the VBI had been created essentially as a legislative experiment, and run by Gunther and Allard from the start, the two of them had quietly reinvented the standard paper stream common to most police agencies. Each VBI unit was given unusual autonomy, resulting in the correspondence between them being more practical in nature than the Big Brother, from-the-top-down norm. As a result, Joe spent less time checking timesheets, doing cost accounting, and going over case management minutiae, and more time staying up-to-date on investigative progress and results. It allowed him to feel more like a doting nurse checking on vitals than a bureaucrat reducing his colleagues to “little people.”

  Still, it took time, and it didn’t compare to being on the street chasing leads, so by the time he called it quits, he was in the mood for some R & R.

  In the past, that had usually involved Gail in some way, either by phone or through a visit if she was in town.

  He sat in his car, wondering what to do. Dropping by the last time hadn’t been particularly successful. It was later now, of course, after the average dinner circuit or run-of-the-mill Kiwanis or Elks meeting.

  He started up the car and drove over to her house.

  Again, unsurprisingly, it was a mistake. The lights were all blazing and the driveway as jammed as before. He’d set himself up for an avoidable disappointment. Turning around in the middle of the street to head home, he was angry at his own stupidity. Running for high office had been in Gail’s blood for years, essentially since he’d known her. Events, traumatic and otherwise, had delayed the inevitable, but her time had finally come. And he knew this was only the beginning. An ambitious, hardworking, intelligent woman, Gail was a late starter, which further fueled her need to excel.

  Her goals were thus reasonable, expected, even inevitable. But he still found himself resentful. In the midst of revisiting a past he’d assumed was long buried, he was finding the rekindled grief oddly amorphous, as if no longer applicable to just his loss of Ellen.

  He was pretty sure this was a result of frustration and exhaustion. But he also knew that sometime soon the doubts it was raising would have to be addressed.

  Chapter 8

  Hello?”

  “Hi. It’s your firstborn child.”

  There was an infectious chuckle at the other end of the line—old, thin, and inordinately welcome. “Joseph. My goodness, it’s been forever.”

  “It’s been two weeks, Mom. No guilt trips, please. I hope I’m not calling too late.”

  “Guilt’s a mother’s best currency, Joe. You should know that. You’re the detective. And you know the habits around here. Always up until midnight. Hang on. Let me get your brother.”

  Joe visualized her backing her electric wheelchair out of the living room docking station she’d created of card tables, shelving, and benches, all laden with books, magazines, and newspapers, and purring toward the back of the house. The need for a chair stretched back years; the need for it to be electric reflected her increasing frailty. It was a sad reality, with an inevitable outcome that Joe did his best not to think about much.

  “Leo,” he heard her call out, summoning his younger brother. “Pick up. Joe’s on the phone.”

  He also heard the television in the background. The reading material had once been all there was—her window on the world and a symbol of her devotion to the written word. Over the past few years, though, he’d noted sadly that the TV had been growing in dominance. Her eyes weren’t what they had been; her attention span was shortening. She still did read and write, but in shorter spurts and with decreasing retention, more out
of hard-won habit than with true enthusiasm.

  “Joey,” came the perpetually upbeat voice of his brother. “How’s it hanging? Sorry, Mom.”

  “That’s disgusting, Leo,” she countered. “And I didn’t hear it.”

  Both of them allowed for that particular leap of logic.

  “Okay,” said Joe. “I just figured I hadn’t called in a while. A very short while. I was wondering how you were both keeping. Why aren’t you out on a date, Leo?”

  Leo was a lifelong bachelor, a popular and skilled deli butcher in Thetford who wooed the local housewives with charisma, humor, and good cuts of meat. He had a passion for less-than-mint cars of the sixties and for women who saw him as having no promise whatsoever, and a habit of shaking your hand and kneading your arm simultaneously, as if judging both your character and your fat content.

  “Woulda been, shoulda been, but her husband got home early.”

  “Leo,” their mother said sharply. “Enough of that. It’s not even true. He’s not the Casanova he pretends to be, Joe. He spends most of his time with those broken-down cars, making a mess in the barn. If the EPA ever came by for a visit, this place would be on the Superfund list.”

  Leo still lived in the home they’d known all their lives, the farm Joe’s father had worked until his death decades earlier. He’d left behind his two boys, his much younger widow, a few buildings, and little else beyond some free-and-clear acreage, which she’d slowly sold off to pay bills and simplify her life. For some reason, whether habit or a comfortable lethargy, Leo had simply stayed on. His mother had made it easy by leaving him to his own devices, a show of respect that was paying off now that she had a built-in and devoted caregiver.