Chat

Chapter 14

Joe reluctantly turned away from the view outside. It had started snowing again, after too many dry days. He was of a mind that if you lived where snowfall was the norm, then it should come about regularly and heavily, satisfying everyone's worst fears. People were going to complain about it anyway-they should, therefore, have good cause.

He surveyed the small VBI office. Sam, Willy, and Lester were all at their desks, each occupied according to character-Lester on the computer, Sam sorting through case files, and Willy harassing them both.

"What handle do you use when you're chasing little girls online, Les?" he asked his colleague.

"Willy," was Lester's immediate response, to Sammie's appreciative laughter.

"Anything yet?" Joe asked Lester, who was in fact checking the BOLs they'd issued on both unidentified bodies.

Spinney sat back in his chair and shook his head. "Nothing. Guess we still get to call 'em Bald Rocky and Hairy Fred."

"It'll take all the fun out of it when we can't," Willy agreed.

"All right," Joe said, getting them back on track. "You all read my notes?"

There were a couple of nods and a muttered assent, none of them from Willy, of course.

"Well, in addition, I got a call this morning from Rob Barrows," Joe continued. "No big surprise; his boss is as excited about the possible drug dealing by Dan Griffis as he is totally uninterested about the possibility that Les's Bald Rocky is a sexual predator."

"Typical," Willy growled.

"I probably would've done the same," Joe conceded. "Predator cases are a bitch to sell, and this one's not even in his county. The drug case is a gimme. To be honest, I'm just as happy, given my personal connections to the Griffis family."

"That mean you're handing everything over to the sheriff?" Willy challenged him incredulously.

Joe tilted his head to one side noncommittally. "On the record? Sure. Off the record? I have Rob Barrows on speed dial. By the way, since we're talking about it, there's been no evidence yet connecting Steve's Garage to my family's accident. Regular service records only, and nothing about tie rods. Looks like they had several layers of books, though, so it's still early."

He looked at Sam. "In the interests of full disclosure, I should also mention that I asked Sam to look a little beyond that interview the two of you did with Dave Snyder at P and P."

Willy let out a small bark of surprise as he stared at his girlfriend. "No shit? You didn't tell me that."

"Add it to the list," she tossed back at him.

"Now that a part of what happened to my family has become a formal case," Joe said, cutting off Willy's response, "I'd just as soon have everything out in the open. So, Sam, why don't you tell us what you found out."

"Not too complicated," she reported. "I chased down Beth Ann Agostini-we learned about her through Snyder-and she told me that Andy Griffis hanged himself because he'd been raped in prison. At least that's what it boiled down to. Pretty good reason for his family to be pissed at you," she added.

Joe considered that, not for the first time, and suggested, "If he told any of them."

Sam had no comeback, not having considered the possibility.

"I'm guessing nobody in law enforcement knew about the rape at the time, much less who did it?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I checked six ways toward the middle on that. Nobody knows who should know, and nobody's talking who might."

Joe squared his shoulders abruptly, as if shaking off a weight. "Okay. Let's put all that on the shelf for the time being. The other thing Rob Barrows gave me this morning was the name of a guy I'd like you, Lester, to contact directly." He quickly consulted a note lying on his desk. "John Leppman. A psychologist and computer geek out of Burlington-been working with the PD there and the state police, profiling Internet predators and making it easier to flush them out. Burlington's chief said Leppman was their go-to guy on this topic. I have his contact info here. Since it looks like we've stumbled into the middle of something having to do with the subject-at least for the time being-we'll be needing all the help we can get."

He glanced at the notes he'd scribbled down to help keep him on track. "Speaking of just that, let's look at what we've got so far. Two men without identity or background"-he eyed Lester and added-"Bald Rocky and Hairy Fred-both appear in town, both rent motel rooms, apparently to meet up with someone else, and both end up dead. We're pretty confident that one, at least, was immobilized with a Taser before being dumped into the water. The other, we don't know." He looked up at them to explain further. "After we found a small Taser dart hole in Bald Rocky's back, Hillstrom went over Fred, inch by inch. She found nothing similar. She now knows that Tasers don't necessarily need to pierce the skin in order to work, but they usually do, and it's pretty unlikely that you'd get two people in a row with minimal to no markings. My gut tells me that the Taser was used only once."

"He probably only had the one cartridge," Lester suggested, "since it looks like it was stolen."

"I got a question," Willy stated. "You still need a gun to shoot the cartridge. You can get both online. Why buy one and not the other?"

"Too early to know," Joe answered, "but it seems like we're dealing with a very careful guy. We've got to assume that both Fred and Rocky were acting on instructions when they checked into their motels. Too big a coincidence otherwise. And, you've got to admit, every detail was thought out, right down to the extra key being attached outside the room door."

"Plus, the fact that they both came on foot," Sammie commented.

Everyone in the room looked at her, drawn less by her words and more by the leading tone of her voice.

"What're you thinking?" Lester asked first.

"I'm not sure, but when you're talking about coincidence, that seems pretty big to me. Everybody drives around here."

"Bald Rocky's room looked like it might belong to a guy who rode a bus," Willy mused.

"Right," Joe agreed. "If maybe just recently. From his clothes and appearance, he seemed like a man heading down the social ladder, but not like he'd been that way for long." He recalled Hillstrom's appraisal of the man's toenails, but kept it to himself. "Hairy Fred's room was middle-class fare. Did you circulate both head shot pictures to the bus people?"

Sam nodded, adding, "Not to all the drivers, though. That'll take longer." As she spoke, she was pawing through the photographs they'd printed of both crime scenes. She held up a picture of the man who had identified himself as R. Frederick-the body found in the more upscale motel. "Look at the back of his right shoe," she suggested, displaying it for all to see. "Just above the heel, on the leather."

Like trained pets, they all leaned forward in their chairs, including Willy. Lester was the first to notice what she was talking about. "It's worn from where he rests his heel on the floor of a car when he's pushing the accelerator. He drove a lot."

"Nice," Joe said. "Okay. Let's back up a bit. What you just said, Sam, about both of them arriving on foot. Why have them leave their cars behind?"

They knew what he was after-he'd been using this Socratic method for years.

"Identity," Lester chimed in first, just as Willy muttered, "Oh, for Christ's sake."

Lester forged on: "Our cars have everything about us-papers, fingerprints, DNA samples, you name it."

"You're saying Fred pulled a fast one," Sam said, her excitement building. "Disobeyed orders. Either stashed his car and walked, or just took the bus for the last leg of the trip."

"I'm saying," Joe expanded, "that we love our cars and we tend to bend the rules out of habit, especially if we're already breaking the law."

Willy said in a bored voice, "I already checked with the parking division downstairs. No abandoned cars in the last week."

"That still leaves a possible short bus trip," Sam countered.

Willy shrugged, but Joe followed up. "Issue a BOL to all municipalities within fifty miles. What we're after is an abandoned car in a lot or parking space near a bus depot or train station, maybe with out-of-state plates."

Sam began writing herself a note as Joe pointed at Lester. "I'm having Rob Barrows send you a copy of the hard drive we collected from Steve's Garage. Like I said, they'll be concentrating on the drug deal between CarGuy and SmokinJoe, but I'd like you to find out what you can about Rocky from that-retrieve what he said and who he said it to, or at least do the best you can."

Lester looked doubtful. "I'll give it a shot, Joe, but it may be slim pickings. You know that."

"Yeah, Barrows already warned me. But until we can either locate Rocky's computer or find whoever he was talking to in that chat room, we're reduced to grabbing whatever straws float by. Which includes John Leppman, by the way," he added as an afterthought. "If you can pull him on board sooner than later, he might be able to help you profile this guy, even with the little we get off the hard drive. Not to mention," he suddenly added, "that he might have a file with N. Rockwell already on it-this is his line of work, after all, and my guess is that a name like that is a whole lot rarer than Ready Freddy or all the other playful crap out there."

"Roger that," Lester acknowledged.

There was a momentary lull in the conversation, after which Willy asked, "Who do you want me to chew on?"

Joe pressed his lips together. "I haven't forgotten you," he finally admitted, adding, "but I'm of two minds about using you for what I'm after."

"Don't tell me," Willy said with a pitying smile. "It's the car thing up north, right? Your big family drama?"

Joe barely heard the tone in his voice, being so used to the man's unrelenting style. "It may not be only about me anymore, as the Rocky reference just made clear. Still, I won't deny I'd love to get to the bottom of what happened to Mom and Leo."

"Want me to torture Dan?"

Joe shook his head, not doubting for a moment that Willy could and would do it if properly encouraged. "Tempting, but no. Dan's too hot right now. Go after the old man-E. T. Cozy up to him somehow, get under his tent flaps. In his prime, there was nothing that moved in that whole township without his knowledge, and he ran his family like a full-bird colonel. That's changed. I need to find out what happened, and I'm too involved and too well known to do the kind of job you might. And I'm not just after the car crash-think more generally than that. Barrows could benefit from this, too, if you get lucky."

Willy's response was eloquent in its brevity. "Sure."

Volunteering to do the unorthodox was an easy response. What Joe sensed here, however-never to be publicly recognized-was Willy's implicit personal loyalty to him. That was a trickier trait for an avowed hard case to acknowledge.

Joe honored the message with a single nod of the head. "Thanks," he added quietly before addressing them all. "Okay, let's break it down into pieces, so nobody's stepping on anyone else's toes."

Joe parked his car on Oak Street, appreciating that the plows had kept the curbs clear, and got out into the still falling snow. This had turned into an old-fashioned snowstorm. Forecasters were calling for six inches by morning.

He paused by his car, looking up the street, noticing a few forlorn electric candles in windows, and the odd wreath or two on a door, left over from Christmas. This was familiar territory. Not only was it a major backstreet thoroughfare in a town he'd known since his days as a rookie, decades earlier, but he'd once lived a hundred yards to the south, on the corner of Oak and High, before he and Gail even met, when she'd been merely a successful local Realtor and he'd been a lieutenant on the detective squad.

The coincidence was ironic, since he had parked opposite Lyn Silva's address-a two-story, two-apartment Victorian rental. There was an argument in times like this, he thought, for a small world being just a little too tight for comfort.

He glanced up at the upper apartment, its lights blazing behind the soundless, shifting veil of falling snow. She'd given him her phone number, but he hadn't called ahead. For reasons he didn't ponder, he'd merely used the number to cross-index her address on the office computer and driven the one block from the municipal building.

Joe walked up the central path, already softened by the new snow, and climbed the broad porch steps to the front door. That led to a heated, well-lighted lobby with a carpeted staircase, which he climbed to the second-floor landing and an age-darkened oak door.

He pushed the doorbell near the knob and waited, a small part of him hoping no one would be home.

His reaction to hearing her footsteps approaching was hardly disappointment, however. As the knob turned and the door opened, he felt his heart beating as fast as a teenager's.

She smiled up at his slightly reddened face. "There's a sight for sore eyes."

His color darkened further. "Same for me."

She leaned in and brushed his lips fleetingly with her own, a gesture combining friendship with intimacy while overstating neither. "Would you like to come in?"

"Is that okay? I know I should've called."

She took his hand and tugged at it. "It's a pleasure. Plus," she added, looking at him over her shoulder as she led the way through what might once have served as a dining room, "I need a break. I've been spending so much time at the bar, getting ready, that I'm still living out of boxes here. It's a drag to be unpacking no matter where I am."

She wasn't exaggerating. The room looked like a shipping depot, with cardboard boxes alternating with loose bundles of crinkled newspaper and bubble wrap, piled up in almost every nook and cranny.

"Impressive," he said softly, half to himself.

But she heard him. She laughed, still walking toward the front of the large apartment. "It is bad, but you'll find out why in a second. There's method to my madness-at least, I hope so."

They reached the far wall of the cluttered room, and Lyn slid open a pair of double pocket doors to what turned out to be a spacious living room.

"This is why I took the place, even though the rent was more than I wanted."

It was a beautiful room, with hardwood floors and detailed window frames, a coffered ceiling, elaborate moldings, and gleaming antique fixtures. Along the narrow wall, under an intricate mantel, was a built-in wood stove with glass doors, currently alive with a robust fire. The warmth of it all, both physical and psychological, surrounded them both in an embrace.

"Holy smokes," he said, looking around, reaching out to stroke the hardwood door frame beside him. "It's like a museum."

She groaned good-naturedly. "Yeah-of the wrong century, since all my junk is a museum to the eighties."

He saw her point. The setting was deserving of antique knickknacks, overstuffed English furniture, and framed oil paintings. Her belongings, though attractive and comfortable-looking, clearly harkened to a different era.

"Maybe," he didn't argue, "but it's not like you have beanbags and cinder-block shelves."

In fact, she'd done wonders. With all packing materials banished to the room they'd just left, the furniture and rugs had been more or less permanently placed, over half the hangings were already on the walls, and even a few stand-arounds had been distributed along windowsills and shelves.

"You've made it feel like a home," he told her honestly.

Her smile broadened. "Yeah. That's what I was thinking. It kind of works." She waved with a flourish at an oversize armchair near the fire. "Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? Or maybe some tea?"

He hesitated, embarrassed that he'd come by unannounced and caused a commotion, but he yielded to her obvious good mood. "Sure. Tea would be great."

"Deal," she said. "Sit there. The kitchen's still a wreck, so it's better I go there alone. Be back in a sec."

He watched her vanish through a side door leading to a hallway. Suddenly alone, he eyed the armchair momentarily but yielded to taking a small tour of the photographs newly on the walls and lining the baseboards, still awaiting hanging.

Some were family pictures in which he thought he could see, in the freckled face of a laughing child, the woman he was beginning to know, surrounded by a tired-looking mother, two older brothers, and a dark-complected father with a thick mustache, rough hands, and a steady, unsmiling look to his eyes. The pictures, taken at picnics, a restaurant, and-one-on a small, weather-beaten fishing boat, were snapshots only, slightly blurry, the color fading, and, despite their careful mounting and framing, eloquent of an economically marginal existence.

Most of the newer pictures were of a different young girl growing up. She was accompanied by a handsome, distracted-looking man in the early shots only, and then alone or with Lyn. These mother-daughter shots tended to show Lyn with the watchful look of the novice photographer, wondering if the camera's self-timer was going to work-suggesting there was no one either behind the camera or in their lives.

Joe studied the ascent of the child through grade school and puberty, as caught on stage, in a cheerleader's outfit, at the high school prom, and at the desk of what looked like a newspaper office, where she was gazing perplexedly at a computer screen. She was a pretty girl with long hair, slim like her mother.

"That's Coryn," Lyn said from behind him.

He turned and saw her standing by the open door to the hallway, two mugs on a small tray in one hand-a practiced stance for someone used to delivering drinks and snacks to tables.

"She's very pretty," he said, crossing over to take the tray and set it on a coffee table between the armchair and the sofa, by the fire.

"Pretty," her mother agreed. "Also smart, stubborn, opinionated, and private. I love that child like nothing else on earth, but I'm not so sure I'll ever figure out what makes her tick."

"Gave you some troubles over the years?" he asked.

Her answer surprised him. "Never. A completely even keel. Everybody kept expecting her to flip out, especially as a teenager, only because she was so steady, we all assumed she was building up for a huge blow. But it never happened. She's twenty-three now. I don't think it's going to happen."

Lyn sat in the middle of the sofa. Also on the tray were small containers of milk and sugar. "What do you take in your tea?"

He took the armchair opposite and chuckled at the question. "A little of both will work."

But she paused. "You're hedging somehow. How do you usually take it?"

"You're going to think it's like a bad Vermont advertisement. But if there's a choice, I put maple syrup in with the milk."

She immediately rose and headed back toward the kitchen. "I have some, right out in the open. Won't take a second."

She was back in almost that time, unscrewing a glass bottle as she entered. "This I've got to try. I love maple syrup, but I've never tried it in tea."

"Coffee, too," he said, adding, "but I may be alone there. Nobody else I know does that."

She sat again and prepared the mugs, smiling up at him. "You've got a sweet tooth."

He accepted the proffered mug. "Yeah, I've been told that." He took a sip. "Perfect."

She tried her own and nodded approvingly. "That's great. I wouldn't have guessed."

"Where's Coryn now?" he asked, settling into the armchair's embrace, enjoying watching her on the sofa.

"She works for some newspaper in Boston, learning the ropes and hoping for something bigger soon."

"The Globe?"

Lyn shrugged. "No-that she would've mentioned. I did ask her, but that's what I meant. She keeps her own counsel. For all I know, she'll be calling me tomorrow from the L.A. Times. I hope not, though. I would really miss her."

"You see a lot of each other?"

"Not as much as a mother would like, but we talk on the phone pretty often."

"Is she it for your family?" he asked, nodding toward the photographs.

Lyn gazed in that direction, as if the subjects pictured had suddenly stepped into the room, which, after a fashion, they had. Joe kept his eyes on her. He had always enjoyed watching her, from the first time he'd seen her. She had a magnetic effect on him that he was only now beginning to appreciate.

"No," she answered quietly. "I have my mom and a brother, Steve."

"The other boy in the picture isn't a brother?"

She nodded slowly, still gazing off. "He was. He and my father died at sea."

He was taken aback, and felt badly for leading her there. "I'm sorry."

She turned toward him again, her expression sad but open. "I am, too. I loved them both, in different ways. Jose was wild and funny and full of beans; my father was just the opposite. A rock. I see a lot of Dad in Coryn-both of them so steady. Losing them pretty much kicked my family in the head. Steve and my mom never recovered."

"Where are they now?" Joe asked softy.

"Mom still lives in Gloucester," she said briefly.

He considered asking more but realized that either it wouldn't matter or that he'd find out later on. He hoped for the latter, if only because it meant some future for the two of them.

"Steve's in jail," she then added, almost as a challenge.

"Ouch," he reacted. "That's tough. I see what you mean-did all that start after the boat went down?"

She looked at him in silence for a couple of seconds, her mug cradled in her lap. "I guess that's right," she then said. "You're used to these sob stories."

She hadn't said it harshly, but he answered with care nevertheless, feeling his way. "They aren't sob stories, but I wish they were more rare."

She nodded silently and took a meditative sip of her tea. "I'm sorry," she murmured afterward.

"For what?"

"That all came out wrong. My dad and Jose died years ago, when I was still in my teens. It's not like it's fresh-or how Mom and Steve turned out. I don't know why I threw it at you like that."

"No damage done. We've got to get to know each other somehow. It won't always be just right."

"Is it right, though?" she asked. "So far? I don't want to come across as someone I'm not-including how I just showed up out of the blue."

"It feels right to me," he told her simply. "You said from the start where you stood." He laughed before adding, "And that it was basically nowhere in particular. I can live with that. I'm not without my own complications."

Her hand suddenly flew to her forehead. "Jesus," she said, "that's right. How are they doing?"

He smiled back at her, wishing that were the extent of it. "I didn't actually mean that, but they're fine, or at least Mom is, physically, and Leo is still stable."

"But she's taking it hard," Lyn suggested.

"They're very close," he answered.

She got that distant look back into her eyes. "So were Dad and Jose."

"It was a storm?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"Yeah. I almost wish it was something more dramatic, like in that George Clooney movie. But it was just run-of-the-mill, a carbon copy of all the other storms that kill fishermen year after year."

"Did they ever find them?"

"Not them, not the boat. Nothing."

He stared at the fire for a while, reflecting how much harder that must have made it for the survivors, never knowing for sure what had happened.

"God, what a life," he finally muttered.

"How come neither you nor Leo ever got married?" she asked after a while.

"I did," he answered, his eyes still on the flames. "A long, long time ago. She died of cancer. We never had kids."

"What was her name?"

"Ellen," he said, letting the name drift around inside his head like a childhood prayer, never to be forgotten. "I didn't feel like getting married again after that."

He finally shifted his gaze to her. "What about you and Coryn's dad?"

Lyn half smiled. "Nothing quite so romantic. We were no match made in heaven. Barely lasted three years. He stuck around for Coryn for a while after that; then he lost interest. Neither one of us has heard from him in years."

"You still have his photo."

She glanced across the room. "Yeah, well…" She left her thought unspoken.

Joe drained his mug, placed it on the coffee table, and stood up. "Guess I better get going."

She stood also. "You down here because of those two dead men I saw in the paper?"

"Yeah."

"Is it bad?"

He smiled slightly. "Right now it's just confusing. Might get bad, though. We've only started digging."

She escorted him to the pocket doors and out into the cooler, darkened room beyond. "I open next Friday, if you're going to be around."

He cast her a look and draped his hand on her shoulder, enjoying the warmth of her through her shirt. "I can rarely make promises with my schedule, but I'd love to be there. What time?"

"I open at six, but things probably won't warm up till nine or later."

"You expecting a crowd?"

"God, I hope so. It would be a killer to have nobody show up on opening night. I've been spreading the word the best I know how, but in the end…"

He retrieved his coat from where he'd dropped it onto a nearby box, and opened the door to the landing before turning to face her. Now he placed both his hands on her shoulders. "You are so good at what you do, Lyn. I don't think you have anything to worry about."

She took advantage of his gesture to step into his arms and give him a hug. "Thanks, Joe. I hope you can make it, but I'll understand if you can't."

He leaned back enough to look down at her. Under his open hands, he felt where her ribs came in to join her spine, just above her waist, and briefly imagined what it might be like to have only bare skin to explore.

"I'll try my best," he murmured, and kissed her, feeling her lips softening under his, then parting to let him in for the first time. His hands moved up her back, taking inventory, discovering that she wasn't wearing a brassiere.

He enjoyed her body being pressed up against his, and hoped this would eventually lead to where, he now realized, he was finally ready to go.

"This is nice," he said softly as they broke apart. "For me, too," she whispered. "Come back whenever you want.

JMAN: U hav a bf?

Mandi144: no. had 1. loser

JMAN: Y?

Mandi144: 2 yung

JMAN: for wat?

Mandi144: wat do u think?

JMAN: u r hot

Mandi144: I feel hot

JMAN: wanna do something about it?

Mandi144: duh

JMAN: Where in Vermont?

Mandi144: Brattleboro. U?

JMAN: not far — Erving

Mandi144: kool. U sur Im not 2 yung 4 u?

JMAN: ur just rite