The surrogate thief jg-15 Read online

  "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.

  "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 amp; 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 o
f 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.

  "You working on any big cases, Joe?" Leo asked, clearly hoping to deflect their mother's attention.

  "Not really," Joe admitted. "Just reopened one that goes back a bit. It's interesting but probably academic by now." He generally downplayed his job-a veteran cop's inbred discretion.

  "We heard about the shooting down there," Leo continued. "The hostage thing that turned inside out? The TV loved that one. You have anything to do with it?"

  "Leave him be, Leo."

  "No, that's okay, Mom," Joe answered. "The PD handled it, Leo. Remember Ron Klesczewski?"

  "God," Leo said. "He caught that? Poor guy. Sounded like a mess."

  Joe couldn't argue. "Just another offering from our so- called dominant species."

  "Ouch. That doesn't sound good."

  "How's Gail?" Joe's Mom asked, revealing her intuition.

  Leo wasn't as sensitive. "Yeah. Boy, she's really making headlines. You think she'll pull it off? That Parker guy could smile the chrome off a fender, and he's well funded, too. I heard what's-his-name-Tom Bander-has thrown in with him. Isn't he, like, the richest guy in the state?"

  "I don't think he's that big, Leo," Joe answered. His heart wasn't into talking politics, although he would have had to admit he knew little about the man, aside from his wealth. "It's a famously liberal county. She might have a shot."

  "Not much of one, from what the pundits're saying. But hey. I'd vote for her. Guess that's not kosher, though, right?"

  "No. Probably not. I'll tell her you offered, though."

  "Say good night, Leo," his mother said quietly. "I need to speak with Joe alone."

  Leo took no offense. "You got it, Ma. I'm in midautopsy with a carburetor anyhow. Come up and visit, Joe."

  "Will do, Leo. Keep out of trouble."

  "Ha. That'll be the day."

  There was a click on the phone, a momentary pause that often followed Leo's departures, before his mother said, "You don't sound well, Joe."

  "I really am. Promise. Maybe a little tired."

  "Then what is it?"

  Joe's mother had been a parent and a half to him and Leo, since their taciturn and older father had spent most of his days working the fields in stolid silence. He'd been a generous and gentle man, not at all cold, but he waited for people to come to him, and then responded only to direct questions he felt he could answer. It fell to his wife to fill in the blanks, something she did with animated conversation, an avalanche of good books, and an honesty that combined respect with openness.

  Joe conceded defeat, which he now realized was why he'd called in the first place. "The old case I mentioned was the one I was running when Ellen died. It's brought a lot of stuff back."

  Her voice softened. "Oh, Joe. I'm so sorry. That's got to be very tough, especially with Gail being so busy."

  She'd put her finger on it, as she so often did. Years before, after Gail had been raped and her life turned upside down, Joe had almost died trying to bring the perpetrator in. Then, as now, Joe's mother had helped him see clearly through the tricky emotional maze.

  "Does Gail even know what you're working on?" she asked.

  "No," he confessed. "I haven't had a chance to tell her."

  "Because of her schedule or because it involves Ellen?"

  He hesitated. "Both, maybe. Mostly the schedule, but I do feel a little weird about this. I haven't thought about Ellen so much in a long time."

  "Her death changed your life, Joe. It took years before you allowed someone like Gail to get close, and even then it only worked because she didn't replace what Ellen was for you."

  "A wife?"

  "More than that," his mother pursued. "Ellen would have been the mother of your children, if you two had chosen to adopt. You've been mourning that all this time, too, whether you admit it or not."

  Joe remained silent, pondering the truth of her argument, looking for flaws he realized might not be there.

  "Are you feeling a little widowed all over again?" she asked after a few moments.

  Joe was caught off guard. "I'm not sure I'd put it that way."

  "Maybe you should. It might help you see things more clearly."

  "That's a little dramatic."

  "Is it? You're not married. You live apart. Your quiet moments together are shoehorned in. What's left if you lose those? I wouldn't downplay the importance of this."

  Joe hesitated again, somewhat at a loss. "I can't tell her to stop running. She wouldn't do it, anyway."

  "That's not the debate to have. There may not even be a debate. But this has got to be put on the table between you, Joe. You're not going to be able to settle this in your own head. People don't have good conversations in the mirror, not ones that count, anyway."

  This time the ensuing silence
was respected by both of them, allowing her words to find their proper nesting place.

  Finally, Joe sighed. "Thanks, Mom."

  "I love you, sweetheart."

  Willy Kunkle pointed through the windshield. "That's your man."

  Sitting behind the wheel, Joe watched as a thin young hustler with a struggling beard swung off the porch of one of Brattleboro's ubiquitous decrepit wooden apartment houses on Canal Street and began walking west, his body language at odds with itself, hovering between watchfulness and cool indifference.

  "John Moser?" Joe asked.

  "The one and only."

  "You have anything we can use to squeeze him?"

  "Not much. Like I told you before, he's cagey that way. I do have a bluff that might work, though. Remember Jaime Wagner?"

  Gunther thought back, his brain, like those of most in his profession, filled with a gallery of people no one else would choose to know. "Pimply guy who ripped off the Army Navy store a few years back?"

  Kunkle nodded. "I've got him parked at the PD right now on something unrelated. But he works for Moser off and on, and I hear he helped Moser on a job just a few days ago. I'm thinking we can use him for that bogus lineup thing old Frank used to pull."

  Gunther laughed. "Father Murphy's rolling, walk-by beauty show? Jesus. God knows what the legalities are of that nowadays."

  "Who cares?" Willy answered, opening the door. "It's not like we're busting either one of them."

  Joe didn't argue, if only because, in one fluid movement peculiar to this very asymmetrical man, Willy Kunkle had launched himself from the car and was already following their quarry down the street.

  Joe cranked the engine, eased into traffic, and drove to a second parking spot about a block ahead of John Moser. He waited, watching Moser approach in the rearview mirror, Willy quietly closing the distance behind him, before he, too, got out of the car.

  "John Moser?" he asked the young man, whose face instantly froze. "I'd like to ask you…"

  Predictably, he didn't get to finish. But he didn't have to break into a footrace he wouldn't have won, either. Moser spun on his heel to bolt and ran right into Willy's powerful right hand, which grabbed him by the throat like a farmer snatching a chicken.