“There’s the teeth thing too,” Jake said, warming to the conversation now that he’d found an ally. “To me, that signals that someone wanted to avoid identification through dental records, which of course they didn’t have back then.”
Doyle raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, but there’s other reasons he might not have had his teeth.”
“What, like really bad dental hygiene?”
“Actually, a favorite method of avoiding the draft back in those days was to knock out your front teeth.”
“But—why?” Gin asked. “How would that make someone less suited for the service?”
“Pretty simple—you have to have at least four opposing front teeth to open a gunpowder pouch,” Doyle explained, miming the motion. “But that only applied to infantrymen. If you were in the cavalry, you’d use a revolver, so you wouldn’t need gunpowder.”
“Damn,” Jake said. “That would suck—go to all that pain and trouble and get drafted anyway.”
“And then there was battlefield dentistry,” Doyle continued. “They had this device called a tooth key that pretty much ripped it right out of the skull—without any anesthesia in most cases.”
“But that would just be for diseased teeth, right?”
“Sure,” Doyle said, “but I haven’t told you the weirdest one yet. Like you said, in the nineteenth century, dental hygiene wasn’t exactly very advanced. People started losing teeth to decay and disease in adolescence, and it was common to end up in your forties with only a few left. So what do you do if you’re wealthy and vain enough to want a cosmetic replacement?”
“Dentures?” Gin suggested. “I’ve seen pictures of old wooden ones. I can’t imagine they were very comfortable.”
“Or sanitary,” Jake added. “I bet there wasn’t anything like Polident for wood back then.”
“Well, if you could afford it, and if you had the right connections . . . you could buy dentures made from human teeth.”
Jake turned a slightly greenish shade. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, not at all. The practice started at the Battle of Waterloo, and there were even ads in the paper for one hundred percent human dentures. They cost a fortune, as you might imagine, which was all the motivation scavengers needed to raid battlefields for fallen soldiers. They’d sell the teeth, and they’d be boiled and the root chopped off and then set into an ivory plate.”
“They did that here in the US?”
“Well, it wasn’t nearly as common during the Civil War,” Doyle admitted, “but I’ve run across a few mentions in my reading.”
“Something else,” Jake said, changing the subject. “If someone owned an authentic uniform, would they wear it to a reenactment?”
“Not usually for the actual battle,” Doyle said. “People don’t understand how physical it can get. You can end up with bruises, cuts—friend of mine got knocked out cold last summer. But for the ceremonies, the dinners—sure, they might bring them out. Same for parades and historical festivals.”
“I have to say,” Jake said, “you seem pretty normal. I guess I had this impression that most reenactors were zealots.”
“Yeah . . .” Doyle scratched his mustache. “You know, there’s this whole perception that we’re a bunch of lonely, socially maladjusted geeks. I mean, the truth is that reenactors come from all walks of life. We’ve got Sunday School teachers; we’ve got bikers. We’ve got a former Miss Ohio; we’ve got a family with seven kids who are all involved. But I’ve also known guys who took it a little further than I guess you’d call normal.”
“How far?” Jake asked.
Doyle grinned. “Well, further than me, I guess. Everyone’s perception of weird is based on themselves being the norm, right? I mean, I probably put a few hours a week into this, tops. Less time than a lot of guys spend on golf or fantasy baseball. I highly doubt it had anything to do with my divorce. I’ve tried like hell to get my daughter into it, but she draws the line at watching from the sidelines. I’m hoping my son might want to come along when he’s old enough, but if he turns out to be into band or football or chess or something, it won’t kill me. But some of these guys? They’ve got their gear in every room of the house. They stay in character for the whole weekend. They eat, breathe, and shit this stuff.”
“Could you give me the names of some of the really involved people?” Gin asked.
“I could do you one better,” Doyle said. “I’ll introduce you. There’s going to be a casual dinner tomorrow night, since so many people are in town. Why don’t you come along?”
“I’d better not,” Jake said. “I kind of want to keep an eye on the site. My foreman’s there now—tomorrow’s my turn.”
“Well, how about you, Gin?” Doyle asked, winking. “We’re always short of chicks. Got any cute friends who might want to come?”
Gin smiled. “I just might.”
19
Tuck called the next morning around eleven. Jake had left to do an estimate for a job he was bidding, and Gin was reading the news on her phone while she sipped the last of the coffee.
“I’ve been here since six,” Tuck said. His voice was brisk, professional, with no trace of the dangerous attraction that nearly derailed their last interaction. “I’ve put calls in to everyone I know up there, even Wheeler, but no one’s getting back to me. I think they’re tired of telling me to get lost. So I decided to dig around some more on my own.”
“What did you find out?” Gin asked, adopting her own businesslike tone. “Anything helpful?”
“I’d rather discuss it in person,” Tuck said. After a beat, he added, “And that’s not a ruse to get you alone. Look, Gin, I apologize for some of the things I said the other day. I . . . should have handled that better.”
“I accept your apology,” Gin said stiffly, trying to ignore the complicated mixture of relief and disappointment that flooded her. “I’ll even pick up lunch.”
Gin took a quick shower and dressed in leggings, shearling boots, and a long, soft blue sweater. She blow-dried her hair, letting it fan out over her shoulders, and added a light application of makeup. Not, she sternly reminded herself, because she was going to see an attractive man who’d shown interest in her—the opposite, in fact. She’d lead by example and prove it was possible for them both to put the uncomfortable moment behind them and have a professional relationship.
The day was unseasonably warm and sunny, and the snow had melted off the roads and was dripping from the trees. A big droplet landed on her cheek as she stepped out from under the porch overhang.
She felt unaccountably better than she had in days, despite the fact that nothing was resolved. The night out with Jake had done them both good. And she’d texted Rosa, inviting her to the dinner that Doyle had told her about; though she doubted she could learn much more from the reenactors to help make her case, she was looking forward to the outing with her new friend.
She stopped off at the High Test Grill, an outpost of a popular Pittsburgh burger chain, picked up a couple of bacon blue cheese burgers and a mound of curly fries, and arrived at the police station a little after noon. Tuck was standing at a file cabinet, flipping through old files; when he saw her, he pushed his reading glasses up on his forehead and motioned her to follow him.
“They’re like piranhas around here,” he said, shutting the door to his office. “If they see that you brought food, there’ll be a revolt.”
“Maybe you should pay them more so they can afford lunch.”
“Your mother’s already threatened to squeeze my departmental budget,” Tuck shot back. “Talk to her about it.”
They took a break from the banter to eat. Gin made it halfway through her burger before giving up, then licked the salt from her fingers, only to catch Tuck staring. She felt her face flame with embarrassment and crumpled up her trash. So much for her vow to ignore the mutual attraction—things were clearly going to continue to be complicated between them. But they were adults, not kids, and they’d simply dea
l with it.
“So what’s this new development you’re going to share with me?”
Tuck wiped his hands on a napkin and threw it at his wastebasket, banking the shot off the wall. “I found some handwritten notes that Lawrence Crosby made back in the nineties. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if he’d bothered to digitize them—or even if his handwriting were legible. But long story short, he seems to have spent some time hunting down an angle on Marvin Morgensen that never panned out.”
“What angle?”
“After those peeping incidents I told you about, something got under Crosby’s skin. He seems to have followed him pretty closely for a couple of years. At some point, it became clear that he suspected Morgensen could be the Shopgirl Rapist.”
“What? You mean the guy who did all the rapes in the nineties?”
“First one in 1992. Last one they think is linked was in 1996. He was nearly caught then—probably why he stopped. His last victim wasn’t like the others—she was a fighter, and she managed to rip off his mask and gave the cops a good enough description of him that they were able to release drawings.” He tapped his keyboard and brought up a police artist sketch of a middle-aged man with poor skin, a bulbous nose, and dark hair receding in furrows on either side of his head.
“And this is Morgensen,” Tuck said, laying a photograph on the table next to the drawing. “Found it in the files from when he was picked up for peeping. Put a tie on the guy in the drawing and we’d have a possible match. Granted, the margin for error is considerable.”
“What did Chief Crosby find that led him to believe it could be the same man?”
“Well, it’s pretty hard to find a cohesive narrative in his files. There were literally half a dozen notes written on the back of other reports, on pages he tore out of a yellow pad, and in one case, on the back of a paper placemat from a diner. He did do a pretty thorough background check at one point, but it didn’t turn up anything unusual.”
He handed Gin several yellowing, stapled pages. She flipped through the information, but it just contained copies of his birth certificate and social security records, army enlistment and discharge dates, and lists of addresses and employers.
“It didn’t help that Crosby didn’t date anything, so I can’t even construct a timeline of his investigation. But basically it seems to have boiled down to a couple of factors: he was able to place Morgensen near the scene of three of the rapes, using witness accounts. He’d done some digging into the peeping accusations, tracking down several young women who thought he might have followed him. The youngest was sixteen, incidentally. Also, from the notes, it looks like he made a trip to Clarion County, to Morgensen’s hometown, and talked to the sheriff there. Doesn’t help that he’s dead now too.”
“And what was the third thing?” she said. “You said there were three.”
“Yeah, well, not that it would hold up—and I’m not sure I even believe it—but Crosby seems to have had an intuition about it.”
Gin smiled wistfully. “He was kind of known for that.”
“So I’m coming to understand,” Tuck said wryly. “In between telling me every day that Chief Crosby did things differently and making sure I understand how much they’d prefer to be working for him than me, my guys have managed to make it really clear that he was a genius and a savant.”
“Did he base his hunch on anything?”
Tuck picked up what looked like a receipt from a hardware store. On the back, she saw a few lines of Lawrence Crosby’s familiar handwriting and felt a tug of sadness.
“He apparently went to see him after work one afternoon. Didn’t take formal interview notes, so I’m guessing it was the sort of ‘friendly chat’ that’s disappeared in this era of body cameras and cell phone videos.”
“You mean he might have been coercive?”
Tuck shrugged. “Times were different then. Hell, I would have been a twenty-six-year-old cop in 1994—practically still a rookie. We all wanted to be hard chargers. Our training officers would tell us to forget what we learned in the academy. There was an unspoken feeling back then that if you talked to a guy off the record, you might not be able to use anything he said in court but you might be able to pick up something that could lead you to harder evidence.”
“So what did Lawrence write there in his notes?”
“There’s a date—June 25, 1994. An address that matches up with Livingston Hospital, where one of the victims was working at the time. And here, it’s like shorthand for comments Morgensen made to him. ‘Candy striper . . . came on to him . . . had it coming.’ My guess? Crosby probably engaged him in conversation, went back to his car, and wrote down what he remembered. He wouldn’t have taken these notes while talking to Morgensen, especially if he went on some other pretense.”
“You mean . . . like Lawrence didn’t tell him he was a cop?”
“He might have gone in and pretended to need an oil change or something, engaged him that way. No way to tell now.”
“None of that necessarily means he did anything.”
“No, it doesn’t. And eventually, Crosby dropped it—no cop can continue putting resources toward a lost cause forever. But for him to pursue it this far tells me that he was convinced.”
“Did you talk to anyone else?”
“Yeah, I went to see a guy who used to be a deputy.”
“Did he remember the case?”
“His memory’s starting to go, at least about events that long ago, and he couldn’t help. There’s another cop who Crosby mentioned in his notes back then—she’s in Ohio now.”
“Are you going to follow up with her?”
Tuck gazed at her with bemusement. “What, like right now? Because I’m picking up my daughter after school in a couple hours, Gin. And then I’m looking forward to fish sticks and tater tots for dinner, then working on math homework over a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows . . . and after Cherie goes to bed, a beer and falling asleep with Netflix.”
Gin felt her face get hot. “I didn’t say it had to be right now. I only—”
“Yeah, I know. You just want to make sure I make it a priority, right? Not to be insensitive, because I know that you’ve got a personal stake in the outcome, not to mention a frightening incident that took place a couple of nights ago, but I need you to believe me when I say that I’m committed to doing right by you. But not just you—by the whole town.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Do you?” Tuck’s voice gentled. “Look, Gin, the other night . . . I’ve already apologized, and I stand by that. But I just don’t want you to misunderstand. I think you’re a remarkable woman. It seems to me that you’re caught between a rock and a hard place here. You’re trying to fit in back home, but you spent a hell of a long time learning to adapt to a city pace. I did a little digging—call it background investigation.”
“You investigated me?”
Tuck shrugged. “I did a few online searches and made a couple of calls. You’re not exactly difficult to trace, Gin. Let’s just say that I got an education in forensic pathology—you’re obviously well respected in your field. But my old friend who’s a pathologist in Philadelphia made damn sure I understood that you don’t get where you got without putting in a lot of late nights and weekends.”
“I’m . . . dedicated.” Gin tried to shrug off his words. “But anyone who wants to get ahead in a competitive field would do the same. I mean, you must have worked hard to get where you are, right?”
“I was in line for lieutenant,” Tuck said, without a trace of vanity. “It could have gone either way. And you’re right; I was gunning for Wheeler’s job once she moved on. But things didn’t pan out. Look, neither of us came to Trumbull by choice. But I’m finding that I’m better suited to it than I expected. Time with my daughter, a house with a backyard and a view, and neighbors who bend over backward to get to know us—hard to put a price on that, Gin. Question is . . . How does the tradeoff look to you?”
; Gin thought of the way Jake had looked at the bar last night, more relaxed than he’d been in a long time. For a moment, they had recaptured the easy rapport they’d shared all those years ago. She’d loved Jake in high school, and she’d never stopped loving him.
But one night out wasn’t going to erase the weeks of tension between them—or bridge the divide that Jake’s financial troubles had created, a divide Gin could not cross alone.
As for family, while she was grateful to be living closer to her parents, she found herself putting off visiting them. Her mother had been hinting at a future that included grandchildren; she’d begun asking Gin how serious things were with Jake. And Gin was torn between wanting to buy into the fairy tale her mother still believed in for her and wondering if she could ever be a good enough mother.
But she couldn’t tell Tuck any of that.
“I don’t think about it in those terms,” Gin said, aware that she was evading the question. “I don’t feel like I’m giving anything up. I’ve got interesting work.”
“All right,” Tuck said, straightening a paper clip on his desk, not meeting her eyes. “I stand corrected.”
His voice had lost its warmth, and Gin had an inexplicable urge to backpedal. She found that she didn’t want the conversation to end.
But that was a dangerous urge.
“The only thing missing from my life right now,” she said briskly, gathering up her coat and purse and standing, “is peace of mind. Look, I understand that you’re seeking balance in your own life. But I just hope that there’s still room in that equation for you to give this your best shot.”
Tuck leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head, and stared at her with an inscrutable expression.
“If you knew me better,” he said, “you’d know that I never do anything unless I give it my all.”
20
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Rosa said, tugging at the neckline of her top. At Gin’s urging, she’d changed out of her tailored blazer and conservative slacks and into leggings and a soft draped jersey top that showed off her generous curves. Gin had chosen a deep-ruby sweater dress with a twist neckline and tall black boots, hoping she wouldn’t look overdressed.
All the Secret Places Page 20