The Last Place

by Laura Lippman

  “What about Becca Harrison?”

  “I can’t find a trace of anyone with that name. But women get married, change their names. Women are hard to find.”

  “And her father?”

  “A Harold ”Harry‘ Harrison with an appropriate date of birth died thirteen years ago, according to the Social Security database. Last known address was upstate New York. If he ever did write a book, I can’t find it, not on Amazon.“

  “My guess is that Harry Harrison’s work, assuming it ever existed, is long out of print.”

  “What about the high school yearbook? Did that yield anything?”

  They looked at the copy of the Crisfield Courier, the usual slender volume, bound in green, a gold seal stamped on its front. They had found it in the Crisfield library. It was a noncirculating reference book, but it had been easy enough to pilfer it. Tess planned to FedEx it back, with an anonymous note of apology and enough cash to buy a few new novels.

  “It’s too easy for people to disappear these days,” Tess said. “We think we have all these tools, but if you really want to vanish it can be done.”

  “Well, Becca did it in the good old days. Turns out Harry Harrison did file a missing persons report with Talbot County, which patrols Notting Island.”

  “You tease! Where’d you get that?”

  Carl patted the side of the old IBM clone they had been given. “There’s more software on here than you know. You just have to know how to use it. And I do. It was April, around fifteen years ago.”

  “A few months after Eric Shivers died.”

  “Yep. Her father told police he thought she might have gone swimming.”

  “Swimming in April?”

  Carl nodded. “I know. Pretty cold in the bay that time of year. Besides, it’s hard for the bay not to let go of a body. Eventually.”

  “So, Becca disappears two months shy of her high school graduation—and, coincidentally, a few months after Eric Shivers dies. Her father files a missing persons report, but people on Notting Island think she’s gone off to become a singer or an actress. Her dad moves away not long after. Is he heartbroken or covering up? Does he think his daughter drowned or ran away? We can’t ask him, and we already tried to ask everyone we could find on Notting Island.”

  Tess sometimes liked to sit very still when thinking. Carl, on the other hand, rocked in his chair, teetering wildly until she was tempted to kick the legs out from under him. Maybe she did have a problem with impulse control. Instead, she got up and opened the door. Closed doors invited suspicion.

  “You think they got anything new, after talking to the Guntses and the Palmers?” Carl jerked his chin toward the open door, indicating the world of official police just beyond their threshold.

  “Possibly.”

  “You think they’ll tell us when they do?”

  “Probably not.” Tess grinned. “They made it clear this is not a two-way street. We’re tenant farmers. We owe them our yield, but they don’t share anything with us.”

  As if to prove her point, Sergeant Craig rushed by, eyes averted, as if he was worried they would try to engage him.

  Carl rubbed his knee. “Weather’s going to change.”

  “You feel the weather changing in your bum knee?”

  He shrugged, as if it baffled him too.

  “Look, I’m hungry. Want to blow this pop stand and get some lunch?”

  “You know I only eat at the end of the day.”

  “Yeah—I know that’s idiotic. Come on, let’s go eat something, see if it jars anything loose in our brains. I can’t stand sitting in this room anymore, pretending to work.”

  “Seafood?” he asked hopefully. Great, Carl had finally consented to eat a midday meal, only to choose her least favorite thing on the planet.

  “If you’re willing to drive a ways.”

  “Sure.” Then as an afterthought, almost suspicious. “Why?”

  “I’m not a big seafood fan, but I like the setting at Jimmy Cantler’s, especially this time of year. Let’s go there.”

  “You don’t like seafood, but you like to sit next to water when you eat?”

  “Yeah. Do you think that makes me crazy?”

  “I don’t know. Ask your doctor. He’s the one who’s getting the big bucks to figure you out.”

  They were a few miles north of the turnoff to Annapolis when Carl said, “Someone’s following us.”

  “What—”

  “Don’t look,” he said, catching Tess’s neck with his right hand before she could turn her head. “Car’s been on us since we left Pikesville. It didn’t seem too weird at first—a lot of folks head into the city down Reisterstown Road. But he’s following us.”

  “He?” Tess asked.

  “I think it’s a he. With the glare on the windshield, all I can be sure of is that there’s only one person in the car.”

  Tess flipped open the mirror on the visor above her seat, as if to check the makeup she wasn’t wearing. Carl was right—it was impossible to see anything except a shape. The shoulders and the suggestion of a baseball cap indicated it was a man, but that’s all she could say for sure.

  They were in Carl’s car, a not-old, not-young Saturn. Gradually, he pushed it to seventy, then eighty, and finally ninety mph. Interstate 97 was sometimes called Maryland’s autobahn, for its smooth, easy curves seduced drivers into higher-than-legal speeds. But the Saturn was almost vibrating as its odometer needle climbed. It felt as if Carl could lose control at any minute. Tess knew the road, knew there was a big curve coming, where 97 turned east and the straightaway led down an old state highway.

  “Carl—” she began.

  He didn’t seem to hear her. He drove as if all the other cars on the road were stationary objects, and his only goal was to move between them. He slid in the far left lane, pushing the speed higher still.

  “He still with us?” Carl said.

  “He—”

  “Don’t look,” he hissed.

  Carl’s Saturn went faster still. Tess looped her hand in the handle above the door and braced the other hand against the dash. They were coming to the turnoff, where the road split and the highway had a long tapering curve that required even the best drivers to slow down. Carl showed no signs of doing this. He seemed to be counting to himself, grimly.

  “Almost, almost, almost—now.” With one quick, precise turn of the wheel, he sailed back into the right lane, edging in front of an eighteen-wheeler and taking the straightaway, while a dark blue car— Tess was not sure of the make or model, it was just another foreign sedan, a Toyota or a Nissan—continued down the highway. Carl, belatedly prudent, had taken his foot off the accelerator and was letting his car slow down gradually.

  “Do we need to double back to 97, or can you get there from here?” he asked, as if nothing had happened.

  “Jesus, Carl, what kind of boneheaded move was that? If someone’s following you, just lead him along, take him to the fucking police station. But don’t try to drive a Saturn like you’re the king of fuckin‘ NASCAR.”

  He stiffened, hurt. “If I were alone, I might have risked a confrontation with the guy. But I thought it was better, with you in the car, to lose him.”

  “Hey, no fake chivalry bullshit, okay? I’m licensed to carry a gun. I’m good at taking care of myself. My boyfriend doesn’t pull this kind of macho shit on me. Where do you get off?”

  “Well, maybe he should.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying—” He paused for a breath, and whatever adrenaline kick he had derived from the little chase was beginning to ebb. “I’m not saying anything. I know you can take care of yourself. But that guy was definitely following us.”

  “I never doubted that part,” Tess said. Although, come to think of it, maybe she did. Carl Dewitt was about as paranoid as anyone as she had ever met. “I just didn’t like the way you handled it.”

  He was slowing, looking for a place to turn around. “You made your point
. Do you have to make it in that tone of voice?”

  “What tone?”

  “That superior I’m-the-boss tone. I’m a pro too, you know. I deserve to be treated like one.”

  She started to point out that he was not, that he was the most amateurish of amateurs. He wasn’t making a nickel off this case, while she was able to bill her time to her consortium of nonprofits. But the thought brought her up short. Why was Carl doing this? What was in it for him?

  Instead, she asked, “How do you support yourself, since you stopped working for the state?”

  “My knee.”

  “Your knee supports you?”

  “I fell at work, in the parking lot. I probably was headed that way anyway, but the fall meant I had to have replacement surgery. I’ll live long enough to need at least one more, maybe two. The rehab was hard, and I ended up screwing up my back as well, needing disk surgery. By then, I’d been out six months. I retired at age thirty-five on full disability.”

  “Some folks probably envy you that.”

  “Yeah, well, in the land of the no-knee men, I guess the one-knee man is king.”

  Tess laughed. “That’s pretty good. Is it yours, or is that another movie line?”

  “I don’t know.” Carl was driving with an old man’s deliberateness now, as if to make up for scaring her. “Maybe. It should be, don’t you think?”

  CHAPTER 22

  Tess had taken to sleeping with the case files of Tiffani Gunts and Lucy Fancher, although not intentionally. She crawled into bed each night, intent on reading and rereading the complete files to which she finally had access, only to nod off with the light on. She had done this every night since the trip to Notting Island, and she did it again on this balmy Friday night. The next thing she knew, Crow was kissing her awake, gathering up the photocopies spread around her and placing them in a neat stack on her bedside table.

  “How—was—” She groped for the word, her mind blank—“work?”

  “It was okay. We brought in the Iguanas for a late Cinco de Mayo celebration. We couldn’t get them for the real thing.”

  “Very cool,” she said on a yawn. She adored the Iguanas.

  “Yeah, but all these frat boys kept screaming Happy Independence Day.”

  “So?”

  “It’s not.”

  “Well, it’s Mexican Independence Day, Crow. Their independence counts too.”

  “It’s not anyone’s independence day.” He stacked her papers, clearing a space for himself, turned out the light, and slid into bed next to her. She liked the warm, smoky smell he brought to bed after a night at work. It made her feel as if she had been out clubbing and dancing.

  “Huh?”

  “Cinco de Mayo,” he said, reaching around her and finding her breasts, as if she might have misplaced them during the day, as if he needed them to anchor himself at night. “It commemorates a naval battle against the French, near Puebla. Mexican Independence Day is September sixteenth—diez y seis.”

  “I love you for knowing that,” Tess said.

  “Then show me.”

  She did.

  Sex, usually the perfect sleeping pill, served only to make Tess more wakeful. There was too much stimulation in her life these days, she thought, staring at the ceiling, where shadows flowed like water. She had been having trouble sleeping for a while now. She tried to pin the beginning of her insomnia down. Since she had taken the case? No. Since she had met Carl Dewitt? No.

  Since she had kicked Mickey Pechter in the ribs? Maybe. Or maybe a few weeks later, when Dr. Armistead had started nosing about in her head.

  She thought Crow was sleeping, but he suddenly turned and placed his hand on her abdomen, her least favorite body part. No matter how strong she got, or how lean, this was always soft and round, untamable. He liked it, though.

  “Have you ever been pregnant?” he asked.

  “God, no. What a strange question.”

  “Not so strange. It happens. Even to people like us, who are careful. Yet in all the time we’ve been together, you’ve never been late by even a day.”

  “How do you know? Do you keep track of my cycle?”

  “Not exactly. But I’ve just observed that there’s a five-day period each month when you become so unpredictable, so volcanic in your emotions, that it’s a given what will follow. After all, if a woman’s premenstrual, she’s definitely going to be menstrual.”

  She bumped him with her shoulder. “I’m not that bad.”

  “You’re horrible. Even the dogs have figured it out. I can’t swear to it, but I think Esskay has scratched out a calendar in the backyard, where she crosses off the days.”

  “Why are you thinking about this stuff anyway?”

  He was behind her, so she couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded sheepish. “I sometimes think I should be able to tell when you’re ovulating, but I guess that’s just a fantasy.”

  “I’d imagine so,” Tess said. “Unless that’s a thermometer between your legs.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a method of testing fertility.”

  “Oh, yeah. I knew that.”

  “Of course. You know everything, Mr. Cinco de Mayo.”

  They laughed and luxuriated in the pure sensation of a laugh rippling through two naked bodies at once.

  But the laugh died so abruptly in Tess’s throat it sounded as if she had inhaled a piece of food and choked on it.

  “What?” Crow asked.

  “The files. Grab my files.” She didn’t give him a chance to do what she asked; she turned on the reading light next to the bed and found them first.

  “I never thought to ask for a catalog of items taken from Tiffani’s house after she was killed. I don’t know if the Frederick cops found anything there, although they must have photographs of the scene. But Carl made a list. He showed me a calendar, one with markings that indicated when Alan Palmer was on the road—or so we thought. Every month, two to three days would be circled. He found it in a drawer and assumed the killer had put it there, to throw him off. Which made sense when we thought an outsider might have killed Lucy. But Alan wouldn’t have bothered to hide it. Not if the calendar was part of his alibi, right?”

  “So who put it in the drawer?”

  “Lucy. She was keeping track of her cycle, trying to figure out when she was fertile. Which is old-fashioned and incredibly unreliable, but some people might still do it that way.”

  Tess had found the place in the file where Carl had inventoried the things he took from the rental house. Yes, there was the calendar, with a description of the markings that appeared over the last three months of Lucy Fancher’s life. They had assumed these notations showed Alan’s travel days, when he had chosen the time of Lucy’s death.

  But Lucy’s body had, in effect, chosen those days. From the moment she began keeping this record, probably at her beloved’s request, Lucy had begun her own countdown to the day she would die.

  “Women do that?” Carl asked, blushing redder than Tess had ever seen him.

  “Some do, I guess. It’s not mandatory. They don’t hand you a calendar when you turn thirteen and say, ”Hey, get cracking.“ ”

  “Jesus, Tess.” Carl dropped his head so low in embarrassment that his nose was almost touching the place mat at the Suburban House. Tess had convinced him to leave the barracks for lunch a second time in a week, a great triumph. Getting him to this Jewish deli was an even bigger coup. Carl seemed mildly alarmed by everything here, from the mock-tough waitresses to the Yiddish witticisms on the paper place mats. And he hadn’t even seen the pots of schmaltz.

  “Actually, from what I know of friends who have been seized by the desire to reproduce, it’s not a very good method. I’m surprised they were using it. I’m surprised they were using anything.”

  Carl lifted his head warily. “What do you mean?”

  “This was a pretty newly minted relationship.”

  “So? Not everyone waits ten thousand years to h
ave a baby.”

  Was he making some veiled reference to her and Crow? Tess let it pass. “Yes, but even if they had decided to conceive a child, they wouldn’t have needed a calendar.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Carl, I’m trying to be respectful of your apparent delicacy when it comes to such matters, but when you’re young and allegedly in love, you don’t need to keep a calendar of the best time to try to conceive a child.”

  “Why not?”

  Tess’s voice was louder than she intended. “Because, Jesus Christ, Carl, when you’re in a new relationship you have sex all the time.”

  That got everyone’s attention, especially the waitress who was standing over them, waiting to take their order.

  “Y’all want anything?” asked the woman, a tall, solidly built black woman. “I mean, from the menu.”

  Carl meekly ordered a roast beef sandwich, adding a bowl of matzoh-ball soup when Tess promised him it was really just chicken soup with a bonus. She asked for the kreplach and kishkas with gravy.

  “I don’t think you can make generalizations about people’s sex lives,” Carl said, barreling through the sentence as if he just wanted the topic to go away. “And in the case of a serial killer, you have to recognize that he derives a great deal of sexual satisfaction from his crimes. The man we’re looking for may not be able to function normally. He may not be able to function at all.”

  “Did you ask any of Lucy’s friends about her sex life?”

  Carl’s face was now redder than his hair.

  “Not straight on, the way you would. But I gave them open-ended opportunities to discuss the relationship. You know the rest—everyone said he was perfect. She never confided the least bit of doubt about him, except to wonder how she had gotten so lucky.”