The Same Mistake Twice

by Albert Tucher

  “I know,” she said. “The rest is Andrews.”

  There went her first line of defense, if Otto had a weirdo inside him waiting to come out.

  “So what should I tell him about how I know you? I mean, you probably don’t want to broadcast what you do for a living. Neither do I, come to think of it.”

  Diana should have thought that one through before calling. One idea occurred to her. Otto looked reasonably fit, but she had never felt any real muscle on him.

  “Would it be too ridiculous to say you’re trying to get into shape? I do some personal training. But if you’d rather die than work out, and everybody knows that…”

  “No, that’s a good idea.”

  Otto paused.

  “Does this mean you’re through with me?”

  “I hope not, Otto. I always figured you for a guy I could trust.”

  He grunted, but it came out sounding pleased. She had met few men who didn’t enjoy feeling special.

  “Hold on a second.” He set the phone down on a hard surface. A minute later he picked it up again. “Here’s his work number. He works at the DMV, but I’m hoping you won’t hold that against him.”

  “Furthest thing from my mind, Otto.”

  “I’ll call him right now, let him know you’ll be in touch.”

  She thanked him again and hung up. She decided to wait a half hour and try Paul Riemenschneider.

  Otto’s cousin picked the phone up after one ring.

  “Hi. This is Diana Andrews. We were in high school together…?”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” said Paul. “I remember you. I almost hope you don’t remember me, because I was pretty annoying.”

  Diana made a face. His words meant that she could have skipped the call to Otto.

  “I, um, doubt you were that bad.”

  “Thanks for the white lie. I was the little guy with the pimples—the one you bumped into every time you turned around.”

  “I’m definitely drawing a blank on that.”

  “That’s cool. It means maybe I have a chance.”

  He put a joking tone into his comment, but something serious lurked underneath.

  Oh hell, she thought.

  She reminded herself to keep that thought to herself. She needed his help.

  “I need to ask you about a guy from Driscoll. You might have known him better than I did.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Dexter Grogan,” she said.

  Silence.

  “Not my favorite topic.”

  He sounded ready to hang up.

  “You know him from football, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He might be a problem for me. I’m hoping you’re willing to help.”

  “A problem? That I can believe.”

  “How so?”

  “You know,” he said, “I’m not comfortable talking about this in the office. Too many people around.”

  “Have you had lunch yet?”

  She looked at the clock. It was almost two, and she realized she was hungry.

  “I don’t usually get away for lunch.”

  “Could you? On me?”

  “I guess. I wouldn’t have time for anything but the food court at the mall, though.”

  They hung up. Paul hadn’t argued about who was treating. It must cost him to think about Dexter Grogan.

  She drove down Route 15, past the diner, to the mall in Jefferson. The food court was two-thirds full, which would produce enough noise to cover their conversation.

  Five minutes later Paul arrived. He had filled out since high school, but she recognized him. She must have seen more of him than she remembered.

  He stopped and looked uncertain how demonstrative he should be. She reached her hand out and shook his before he had completely extended it.

  He felt like pizza, which was okay with her. They got on line.

  “How’s your grandmother?” he asked.

  His smile looked genuine, and she gave him points for it.

  “Not so good. I had to find a nursing home a few years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I always looked forward to lunch, and not for the food. I probably don’t have to tell you—that could be pretty disgusting. But everybody always looked forward to kidding around with Mrs. Petroski. She always had the latest slang down. It was hilarious, coming from her.”

  Diana laughed.

  “She got more attention from the boys than I did.”

  They spent more than enough time waiting for their slices to exhaust the people they had both known in high school. It was true—she had paid little attention to younger boys.

  “When you broke the school record for the backstroke? I was there.”

  That tone was back in his voice.

  “You and about eleven other people,” she said.

  She usually knew how to lighten things up when a client got too serious, but this time her effort fell flat.

  She paid for the pizza, and they took their trays to a nearby table near the windows overlooking the parking lot.

  “So you knew Dexter Grogan. I get the idea that you weren’t happy about it.”

  “You got that right.”

  “What was his problem?”

  “His problem was, he liked beating people up. Notice I didn’t say fighting. I said beating people up.”

  “Were you one of the people he beat up?”

  “Mostly I stayed under his radar. One time in the locker room, I tried making a joke when he was talking, and he offered to punch my head off. But that was the only time he noticed me.”

  Diana watched Paul brood.

  Nobody ever gets out of high school alive, she thought.

  “But other guys weren’t so lucky?”

  “No, he beat the hell out of a couple of guys on the team. Which really pissed me off. That’s not what a team is supposed to be about.”

  “So Don Rennert put up with it? I thought the quarterback is supposed to be the team leader.”

  “Hell, he was afraid of Dexter.”

  “I heard they were friends.”

  “As much as jerks like that know how to have friends. Don was the kind of guy who sucked up to bullies, like he wished he could be one of them. Matter of fact, that’s…What kind of trouble is he giving you?”

  Diana decided to keep it vague for the moment.

  “Something he did back then might be coming back to life.”

  “That I can believe,” said Paul. “You mean about James?”

  A strange mixture of dread and eagerness radiated from him.

  “Right, James.”

  She restrained herself from wincing at the phoniness of her tone, which he obviously noticed.

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  She wanted to shake him, but he looked as if he regretted saying even that much. She tried to draw it out of him with her eyes.

  “Paul, just tell me. I’m guessing he messed this James up.”

  Paul stared down at the tabletop.

  “Or maybe he did more than that?”

  She could see him editing his memories and deciding what to say, but there wasn’t much she could do to stop him.

  “Did you know James Zakrewsky?” he said.

  The words rushed out, once he had decided to name the name.

  “I’m thinking.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m not coming up with anything, but if he’s your age, I wouldn’t, would I?”

  Whoops, she thought.

  Paul looked offended, and she wanted to shake him. Instead, she leaned toward him until she felt the warmth of his face, which meant that he would feel hers. If she knew men, he would stop thinking and start trying to get even closer.

  “Paul, this could be important.”

  “I didn’t really know him well,” Paul said. “I don’t think anyone did.”

  “So what about him and the other two?”

  “I heard Dexter and Don messed him up.
That was the rumor. He never came back to school for sophomore year.”

  There it was. She almost ran to the pay phones to call Tillotson, but she decided to get the whole story first.

  “So this was the summer of ’eighty-seven?”

  “Right. We were having ‘voluntary’ practice, because supposedly the coach couldn’t call official practices until September. Voluntary, my butt. Nobody who missed them would ever get to play. Not that I ever played anyway. One year of JV was enough for me.”

  Again she felt like getting rough with him. Instead she waited for him to finish.

  “How did it happen?”

  “I told you what Dexter is like. He’s a bully. Don wanted to be just like him, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t brutal enough, and he didn’t know how to pick his shots.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “He didn’t know how to avoid a guy who could give him a real fight. Dexter never made that mistake. Don picked James, and it turned out James was the wrong guy. That was the rumor, anyway.”

  “So Don got his butt kicked and went crying to Dexter?”

  “That would be my guess. And they went looking for James. And the rumor was, they found him. Since nobody ever saw him again, they must have gone too far with him.”

  Shooting him in the head was definitely going too far. Unfortunately, it made sense.

  “You never told anybody?” said Diana.

  “Would you?”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “Kids that age get pretty tribal, as I recall. Adults aren’t in the tribe.”

  And the moment she graduated, she had joined the adults.

  “But you’re not a kid anymore, Paul. Since you’re here, I think you know it’s time to speak up for James.”

  He was closing down. She could see it.

  “And it’s time to make Dexter and Don take responsibility. I think that’s also why you’re here.”

  Paul sat sullenly for another moment.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” he said.

  He lurched to his feet, as if he couldn’t wait to get away.

  “It won’t go away, Paul.”

  She watched him go. After a moment she got up and bused their trays, which she hadn’t expected to do. A well-mannered young man who also wanted to get into her pants would normally have taken care of that chore.

  I blew that one, she thought.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tillotson’s cell phone rang.

  He had crossed four names off Rennert’s list without leaving his desk in his apartment. Maybe there was a point to this whole Internet thing.

  On the other hand, nothing that kept him in this apartment was entirely a good thing. He had furnished the apartment in Separated Middle-Aged Man Modern, which meant the few pieces of furniture that his wife had let him take. Only his desk was really his own. His wife had taken one look at his face and let him have the desk.

  The paint on the walls was a shade of yellow that should never have been born, but doing something about it would be a commitment to staying awhile.

  And so he concentrated on his list, futile as it was.

  All four men were still living. Three had left the area completely, and the fourth was the owner of record of a pizzeria with mob connections. That meant something. Rennert seemed to straddle the border between government and business, if there really was a line at all. In New Jersey, that would make it hard to ignore the Mafia. Rennert must have some kind of arrangement with them, but unless that proved to be part of the John Doe murder case, Tillotson didn’t plan to go there.

  “Hello.”

  Immediately he grimaced. He was a cell phone veteran by now. When was he going to learn to glance at the caller ID and spare himself these nasty surprises?

  But it didn’t really matter. He couldn’t refuse a call from his divorce lawyer. Her voice told a story of years of martinis and menthol cigarettes. She sounded as tough as any cop of the old, male school.

  “Your wife filed an amended complaint.”

  “She can always find more to complain about.”

  “Yeah, well, if it’s true, it could be a problem.”

  “What?”

  “An investigator for her attorney has you on film visiting a prostitute.”

  She gave Diana’s address.

  “This woman is known to be in that line of work.”

  “Which is why I visit her.”

  “Great. You admitting it is just what we need. Dale, this is no way to get custody of your son.”

  “She’s a source. Diana Andrews has solved more cases than I have.”

  That was an exaggeration, but he felt like exaggerating. His wife, soon but not soon enough to be ex, brought out the competitive streak in him.

  “Is she a registered confidential informant?”

  “Nothing that formal. And if she was, I couldn’t say.”

  The lawyer paused, and he knew she was lighting a cigarette.

  “Okay, we tough this one out. Which is my cue to remind you that hiring me is the smartest thing you ever did.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Diana left the mall through Macy’s. In the parking lot she unlocked her Taurus. With one foot in the car and one still on the ground, she paused and looked across the blacktop to the satellite stores that flanked the mall. The CompUSA outlet was the one that caught her eye. She kept looking at it as she finished climbing into the car.

  Twenty minutes later she drove away from the store thinking, what have I done?

  The cardboard box riding on her passenger seat told her nothing except “Compaq” in bold lettering. She already knew that.

  At home she made coffee in the kitchen. She had left the box on her bed. If she put her new toy someplace out of the way, she might lose her nerve and leave it there.

  But setting the computer up was easier than she had feared. The hardest part turned out to be clearing the top of her desk in the spare room. She had never thought much about the extra phone jack clinging to the baseboard, but it was right where it would do the most good. She hooked a few cables up, inserted the AOL disc that came with the computer, and followed the instructions. In minutes she had the familiar Yahoo screen in front of her. She searched for James Zakrewsky.

  And found nothing. He didn’t exist.

  Just for something to compare, she searched for “Diana Andrews.” There must have been over a hundred women with the same name, but she found herself among them with little effort. She read about her successes in high school swimming. Her grandmother’s retirement from the high school cafeteria had earned a story in the weekly local newspaper.

  But the Internet had never heard of James Zakrewsky. It wasn’t proof, but it suggested that his life had stopped before it got started.

  She tried to find someone who could be a parent or sibling or some other relative, but the surname brought up no one local at all. Maybe his parents had died, or his mother had remarried, but wouldn’t there still be some mention of James?

  It was time to call Tillotson. She might have enough to interest him.

  But when she had finished her story, his silence lacked enthusiasm. He didn’t even ask her for the name of her informant.

  “There’s a problem. The ME’s findings are only preliminary so far, but he thinks our skeleton is much older than, what, sixteen?”

  “Is he sure?”

  “No, that’s my point. He’s not sure, but for now, I’m going with it. I need that list.”

  “I’ll get it to you.”

  She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but that was what happened when she didn’t plan an escape route.

  He hung up. She sat at the kitchen table and wondered what to do next. Maybe she was just being stubborn, but it seemed impossible to her that the disappearance of James Zakrewsky had nothing to do with the case.

  When in doubt, she thought, go back to the yearbook.

  There must be some kind of rule about that.

  She o
pened it and found that James had a tiny underclass picture. She studied it, but it refused to summon a single memory. He looked vaguely familiar. That was probably his epitaph.

  She made herself think. James Zakrewsky seemed to have had no local ties at all, and yet he had attended Driscoll High School for a while. He must have lived in town, or been able to make it look as if he did. Diana knew every inch of Driscoll. The town didn’t offer many ways to come up with a spurious address.

  But one possibility did occur to her. The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

  She went back to her car and drove to the Regina Motel. The clerk, a gaunt middle-aged man named Sven, sat behind the desk. He didn’t seem to have moved an inch since the last time she had seen him weeks earlier, and she had never seen anyone else in the chair.

  “Hey, Di,” he said in his low-key way.

  Early in her career she had used the Regina often, before she learned to keep some distance between her business and personal lives. The motel was just blocks away from her home. These days she went there mostly for a few veteran clients. She suspected that some of them knew more about her than they let on, but as long as they respected boundaries, she would pretend that her professional identity was intact.

  She opened the yearbook to the page she had marked and turned it toward him.

  “This one of your flock?”

  Diana kept her tone free of mockery. She had no use for religion, but she didn’t mind Sven’s beliefs. He lived them.

  “James,” said Sven. “I wondered what happened to him.”

  “Did he live here?”

  “Sometimes, when he had the money. I would have let him crash, but the boss wouldn’t go for it.”

  “But you let him use this address for mail and stuff, right?”

  “Sure. He needed to go to school, didn’t he?”

  “No argument there, Sven.”

  “I was disappointed when he didn’t finish.”

  “I think somebody didn’t give him the choice.”

  Sven looked sharply at her.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I’ll let you know. That’s a promise.”

  “You found his girlfriend yet?”

  “News to me. What was her name?”

  “Patty something. From what he said, she worked at the mall, I think maybe in the multiplex.”