The surrogate thief jg-15

by Archer Mayor

  She heard footsteps running from her left, the same direction of the man who'd blocked her exit earlier. Bolting in blind fear, she sprinted for the distant fence, climbed it at a run, missed her footing, and fell sprawling on the far side, twisting her wrist and skinning her face on the grass.

  "You okay, lady?" a young voice asked from near one of the dimly lit barns.

  She didn't answer. Didn't think to seek safety among the people caring for their animals. Didn't think of all the deputies that she'd avoided with scorn as a teen. She'd been reduced to one mindless goal: to get to her car.

  Stumbling, in pain, she set a straight course now, directly between the barns and toward the footbridge beyond, unaware and unconcerned about what might be happening behind her.

  The bridge loomed into view, empty of people, poorly lit. Here, suddenly things were quiet again, on the fringes of the fair, with shadows cast long and deep by the bright lights behind her. She stopped abruptly, caught up in the contrast, a sense of foreboding catching in her throat.

  Her target within sight at last, she moved only hesitantly toward it, her ears tuned to the slightest anomaly. But all she heard was the canned, repetitive music, the hum of the distant crowd, and the sleepy lowing of an occasional cow.

  Hannah tentatively placed her hand on the bridge's handrail and stopped a final time to look around. One last dash should do it, up the hill to her car and gone. She reached into her pocket and removed her keys.

  Again, the dark outline of a man appeared before her, this time blocking the far side of the bridge.

  "Hannah."

  The voice was quiet, almost otherworldly, coming not from ahead but seemingly from the night itself. She spun around, saw another silhouette approaching from where she'd come. She stared wide-eyed at the gap between the two barns she'd used earlier upon arrival, when she'd been feeling so upbeat and hopeful. A third outline stood there, waiting patiently.

  On sheer impulse she ran east, upriver, where she knew very well there was no outlet. The bluff overlooking the flood plain pinched together with the river and eventually formed a sheer drop into the water. But it was the only way clear.

  The fourth man-the one with the mustache-appeared so fast right before her that she actually fell into his arms, like a lover yielding freely. She didn't feel the knife go in, but merely her legs going limp, as if from simple exhaustion.

  Which wasn't so unreasonable. She was very tired, after all, in all senses of the word. She looked up into his face, saw the gentle eyes, and wondered why she'd put up such a fuss. Now that they were together at last, he didn't seem so bad.

  He carefully lowered her to the ground by the rippling water, moving with her as she lay down. The familiar sound made her smile. So many years ago, that young boy fumbling with her clothes. Such a peaceful, endearing rite of passage. A moment of pure innocence.

  A time to remember.

  Chapter 15

  Joe knew he was fixating. Fully conscious that he'd caused the deaths of Katie Clark and a now presumed-innocent Peter Shea-but ignorant of why or precisely how-he'd tapped every resource to reopen the original investigation. His desk was piled high with files, reports, Internet printouts, phone message slips, and letters, some of them yellowed and worn with age, all relating to people who'd been peacefully hibernating in the boxes he'd retrieved from the basement weeks earlier.

  He knew as a virtual certainty that somewhere in the midst of it all was someone, deemed unremarkable at the time, who now had good reason to keep the past where it usually stayed.

  But finding that someone was proving to be difficult.

  He entered the VBI office carrying more documents from downstairs and was only slightly surprised to find Sammie Martens hard at work, even on a Saturday. So far, Joe had been tackling the Oberfeldt case alone, not wishing to add to anyone else's load. Since the only new activity related to this had occurred out of state, Joe had been hesitant to officially assign anyone to help him out.

  "Just got a call about a murder in Tunbridge," she commented, looking up from her paperwork.

  He stopped in midstride. On average, there were about seven murders in the state every year. Hardly a bloodbath by New York standards, but as a result, any homicide was a real topic of interest up here.

  "At the fair?" he asked, as aware as most locals of this regional tradition.

  "Yeah. They found a woman's body this morning in the river. She was tangled up in the footings of a pedestrian bridge. That's what the report said, anyhow. I have no clue. Fairs aren't my thing."

  Joe smiled and continued to his desk to deposit his files. No, Sam would be more inclined toward a good, competitive paintball battle, he thought.

  "Who's on it?" he asked.

  "VSP's the lead, but we have a couple of our guys from the Waterbury office there."

  "By invitation?" he wanted to know, sitting down.

  She gave him a look, knowing all too well the VBI's cardinal rule of engagement. "Yes, Mother. We're doing the usual, offering money, manpower, and expertise," she added. "And this time we got invited from the get-go."

  He nodded with satisfaction. "Nifty."

  That was a first, and an important one. Where the state police went, others often followed.

  "Usual sex-and-liquor falling-out?" he asked her, sitting behind his desk.

  "A whodunit," she replied. "Guy used a knife. Caught her under the ribs and sliced her descending aorta, according to the ME's office-unofficially, that is."

  Joe stared at her, speechless.

  "You okay?" she asked.

  He held up his hand. "Wait a second." He began rummaging through the piles before him as she watched keenly. This man had been her boss in two different jobs by now and could safely be considered her mentor. The times when she despaired of her abilities the most were those when she feared she'd never acquire his sixth sense. Saying negative things about Joe Gunther was ill advised in her presence. Which was where she and Willy Kunkle sometimes clashed, among other places. Despite the fact that Gunther had saved Willy's job countless times, Willy was not a man to play favorites, although, to be fair, he treated Joe with a tiny bit more respect than he did everyone else.

  Gunther finally extracted a copy of the medical examiner's report done on Pete Shea in Massachusetts, and read aloud, "Trauma was apparently inflicted with an approximately seven-inch-long, single-edged blade, administered in a single thrust, completely transecting the descending aorta at the T-six level."

  He placed the report carefully down before him. "How old was the victim in Tunbridge?"

  Sam felt a tingling at the back of her neck. "Mid-fifties, I think."

  He raised his eyebrows. "You up for a drive in the country?"

  The Tunbridge Fair ran for four days, the most heavily attended being Saturday, which was, naturally, when Joe and Sam headed its way. Joe poked along the narrow two-lane road off of Interstate 89 in a Boston-style traffic jam, enjoying the late summer weather rather than using his lights and siren to save time. Despite the surge of adrenaline that he'd experienced hearing the method of this woman's death, Joe had been around long enough to distinguish between a real emergency and his own excitement.

  Sammie Martens, true to her nature, was disposed altogether differently. Sitting unhappily in the passenger seat, she stared glumly out the window, occasionally cursing under her breath at the drivers ahead.

  When they finally did draw abreast of the uppermost fair-grounds entrance, however-blocked by sawhorses-Joe did pull out his badge to demand entry. The young man at the gate, overwhelmed by the number and variety of police vehicles already allowed through, barely gave the badge a glance.

  Joe parked on a grassy strip behind a string of cruisers, a mobile command truck, and the crime lab van, and walked down toward the low-slung cow barns to the right, casting an eye over the swarm of people roaming the floodplain below him.

  "I can't believe they're still running this thing," Sam commented.

  "B
etter that than send everyone away," Joe said. "At least this way, some witness may still be around to be interviewed." He pointed ahead. "There they are."

  He led the way to the area near the footbridge, by now cordoned off with yellow tape. A young state trooper approached them as they neared.

  "Agents Gunther and Martens," Joe told him. "VBI. Is Paul Spraiger here?"

  The trooper studied their credentials, more out of curiosity than protocol, Joe thought. Word was out by now, especially among younger officers, that to join the VBI was to reach a law enforcement pinnacle. This may not have been the view of its many sister agencies, but Joe got a kick out of it nevertheless. Getting this far had not been easy.

  Returning their badges, the man lifted the tape so they could pass under it, and pointed upstream along the bank. There they could just see a small grouping of men in plainclothes.

  "Hey, Paul," Joe called out as they came within earshot.

  The group opened up; handshakes were exchanged. Not surprisingly in a state so thinly populated by police officers, those within the even smaller tribe of investigators all knew one another well.

  Paul Spraiger, a scholarly man fluent in French, who'd once teamed with Joe on a case in Sherbrooke, Canada, filled them both in.

  He pointed to a small disturbance in the mud by the water's edge. "Looks like this is where she was knifed, and probably died, given the wound. Not sure if she was then pushed or just rolled into the river, but she ended up hung up among the bridge pilings."

  "So we heard," Joe said. "You have a name yet?"

  "Hannah Shriver," intoned the lead VSP detective, a lieutenant named Nick Letourneau with whom Joe had also worked before. "D.O.B. 5/16/49. Lived in Townshend."

  Joe glanced at him, wondering if his having answered for Spraiger meant his nose was officially out of joint. The address he'd mentioned, however, was of special interest. "Just outside Brattleboro. For how long?"

  Letourneau gave him a blank look. "I don't know. Why?"

  "I'm working an old open case, and someone directly related to it just got knifed the same way in Massachusetts. I'm thinking there might be a connection."

  Letourneau's response caught him pleasantly off guard. "Well, that probably makes this one yours, too."

  Joe stammered slightly in answering. "Oh. No. That wasn't what I meant. We're not horning in here…"

  "I know," he replied with a small smile. "Paul's made that crystal clear. But we've been kicking this around since dawn, and I've got a gut feeling it's going to cost a fortune in overtime. What with all the bitching upstairs about money, my ass'll be grass if I turn down free help. So I'd just as soon hand the whole thing over. Happy to assist," he added, almost as an afterthought, "within reason."

  Joe smiled in appreciation. "Okay. Well, we still don't like hogging the trough, so I'll take you up on that-within reason-and we'll still make you look good at the end."

  "Assuming it works out," suggested Letourneau meaningfully.

  Gunther laughed. Too much, he thought. "Gotcha. We end up with zero, we take the heat, despite VSP's best efforts to make us look good."

  The implied irony of the last comment had no effect on his counterpart. "Great," he said. "It's a deal."

  Next to Joe, Sam let out an impatient sigh and walked off toward the bridge, clearly pissed off.

  Joe, on the other hand, was genuinely happy. This was one case he definitely wanted to control. He didn't give a damn who collected the credit later-or the blame. And he had to admire Letourneau's pragmatism.

  "How'd you find out who she was?" he asked, moving on.

  This time, Paul was allowed to answer. "Her car. At daybreak, it was all by itself in the lot across the river." He pointed off into the distance, and Joe could see a hole in the sea of cars on the opposite slope, ringed by more yellow tape and filled by a single vehicle guarded by another trooper.

  "We ran the plate, had a photo ID e-mailed to the command vehicle, and matched it to her. Then we broke in. Didn't find anything of interest, but with your old case, maybe you'll think different."

  "I'll take a look later," Joe told him. "What else?"

  "We've tried figuring out when she got here yesterday and who she might've met with. Her photo's being circulated all over the fair right now, mostly among the vendors and staff. So far, no luck beyond a fried-dough guy who says he noticed someone like her around the bingo barn last night, but he couldn't be sure, since the woman he saw had a cowboy hat. He thought the shirt matched, though-bright red."

  "The Ferris wheel operator remembers a cowboy hat, too," Letourneau added, "but he couldn't swear to the shirt or even to it being a woman. He just focused on the hat because he was afraid it might blow off and he'd get the blame. Said it had happened before."

  "You ask lost-and-found for the hat?" Gunther asked.

  In the ensuing awkward silence, both men revealed not having thought of that. "I'll check it out," Paul said softly.

  "What about her family or friends?" Joe continued. "Any luck there?"

  Letourneau was clearly happier with that. "We've got people chasing it down. So far, just a mother near Brattleboro, in a nursing home. Last I heard, no one had talked to her."

  "And friends?"

  "I had someone check her place in Townshend. Looks like she lived alone, kind of in the sticks. A rental house on some out-of-stater's property. Looks like a custodial deal, maybe, where she got a discount for keeping an eye out in general. We've asked the Connecticut State Police to contact the owners and have them call us."

  Joe nodded. It certainly looked like the basics were being covered. "Did you get anything out of her house? Bank records, letters, a diary?"

  Letourneau pursed his lips before answering. "Not enough manpower. I just have a trooper sitting on it till we can get an investigator there."

  Gunther immediately thought of Kunkle, who, despite his impatient personality, had a paradoxical affinity for painstaking house searches. "I'll get someone up there."

  He glanced around. "I saw the crime lab van. Have they figured out how it happened?"

  "They have a theory," Paul Spraiger confirmed. "Not much to go on, though, what with thousands of people walking all over the place. Because of where she ended up, they think she may have been corralled out here. At night it's pretty dark, even this close to the bridge. Since she was parked on the other side, it's possible she was heading back to her car when she was cut off."

  The radio on Letourneau's belt chattered briefly. He pulled it out and exchanged a few words, finally replacing it and telling them, "They found a couple of more witnesses who maybe saw her. They're at the command post."

  The three of them picked up Sam on the way back to the VSP's mobile office. Standing outside it, looking slightly nervous, were two men, one dressed in a fair official's dark blue vest.

  A uniformed officer made the introductions to his boss, ignoring the rest of them. "Hi, Lieutenant, this is Rick Manelli. Operates a bow-and-arrow booth near the National Guard display inside the oval. And this is Fran Dupont, who sort of backs up security."

  "I'm a roamer," Dupont clarified, shaking hands all around. "We do a bit of everything, wherever we're needed."

  Gunther started with him. "And you saw something we might be interested in?"

  Dupont didn't look that confident. "Maybe. It didn't have anything to do with the lady you're looking for, though. I don't know about her."

  "That's okay. What did you see?"

  "Four guys. They were jumping the fence separating the track from the midway area, between the bingo hall and the grandstand."

  "That's unusual?"

  Dupont shrugged. "No. Happens all the time. Sometimes even when the races are on. Back in the seventies, some woman, high on pot, just walked right out there to wave at the guy in the starting truck. He faces backwards, see, so he can know when all the horses are lined up, and then he operates the fence on the back of the truck and swings it in so they can really open up. It's really
kind of neat to watch. Anyhow, this woman just walked out…"

  Joe had silently placed his hand on the man's forearm, stopping him cold.

  "Sorry," Dupont resumed. "Anyhow, they weren't like that-they were serious. Plus, it's not like it's a good shortcut or anything. Takes some effort to climb, you know?"

  "What do you think they were doing?"

  Dupont finally got to the point. "Chasing someone. I could tell. It was real obvious. They were pretty mad and pushing each other to climb the fence faster. I yelled at them but they just ignored me. It didn't really matter 'cause nothing was going on and they moved off fast. Ran, in fact."

  "Did you see who they were chasing?"

  "No, sir, I didn't."

  "I did, maybe," Rick Manelli spoke up, sounding left out.

  Joe ignored him temporarily by asking Dupont, "Can you describe the men?"

  That seemed to stump him. "Describe them? You mean, what they looked like?"

  "Sure. You could start there."

  He shrugged. "I don't know. Regular."

  "Any of them have a beard or no hair at all or anything distinctive?" Letourneau asked.

  Dupont looked confused. "Like a bald man? I don't think any of them was bald. 'Course, one of them mighta had a hat."

  "What kind of hat?"

  "I don't know. What kind are you looking for?"

  "What did you see, Mr. Manelli?" Joe asked, turning to the other man.

  Manelli's eyes were bright with eagerness. "That woman you been asking about. I saw her run by. She looked bad. Scared. And she threw her hat away. That's why I remember her. I couldn't figure that out. Nice cowboy hat."

  "You have it?"

  "Nope. Gave it to lost-and-found."

  There was a telling stillness among several of the police officers.

  "Did you see anyone following her?" Joe asked quickly.

  But Manelli was very clear about that. "Nope. I looked, too, because that happens sometimes-women being hassled. I try to look out for stuff like that. Don't like it."

  "But there was no one?"

  "Nobody I saw, like I said. That doesn't mean he wasn't there. See, after she ditched the hat, the woman stopped running and tried to walk normal, like she was pretending. So maybe the guy did the same and I didn't notice."