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Chapter 8

Joe paused on the threshold, completely clad in a Tyvek jumpsuit, and surveyed the room. What crossed his mind immediately was less the scene before him-a motel room remarkable only for its blandness-and more the fact that the dead body draped across the foot of the bed didn't seem particularly unusual.

Being in situations like this, whether they were homicides, suicides, or undetermined, had by now become a habit.

There were four others in the room ahead of him, all dressed as he was. The smallest of them turned as he closed the door behind him.

"Hey, boss," Sam greeted him. "You made good time."

He nodded in response. "Still no ID?" he asked.

"He might as well've been dry-cleaned," another of the figures answered, turning to reveal himself as Lester Spinney, Sam's exact opposite in both height and demeanor-he, laid back and tall; she, high strung and diminutive. Standing beside each other, they looked like an antiseptic comedy act. The two other detectives, both on their hands and knees, worked for the Brattleboro PD. One, surprisingly to Joe, who had spent decades in that department, he knew only slightly, and not by name. The other, by contrast, was Ron Klesczewski, the chief of detectives, anointed by Joe on his departure, and a close friend. The first man did no more than glance in Joe's direction before resuming work, scrutinizing the rug inch by inch. Ron, for his part, leaped up and shook hands like a long-lost relative, making Joe realize guiltily that, in fact, they hadn't seen each other in months, despite their having offices one floor apart.

After pleasantries-and apologies-Joe looked into the bathroom to his right and the open closet door immediately beyond it, making sure not to step off the ribbon of butcher paper laid down from the doorway to the far wall for scene preservation. Both areas appeared untouched, all the way down to the toilet paper end still folded into a point.

Ron caught the meaning of his survey. "He did check in," he reassured him, "but paid cash."

"No luggage?" Joe asked.

"Supposedly a small bag. If so, it's missing," Lester suggested.

Joe stepped deeper into the room. The body lay facedown on the made bed, fully clothed. The TV was off, the lights on, the curtains drawn. Aside from the dead man, the room looked ready for rental.

There was a knock on the door, and Alan Miller stuck his white-hooded head in. "Okay to come in? I'm all decked out."

Joe looked to Ron, who was the nominal lead investigator until or unless he ceded control of the case to the VBI.

"Good by me," he said. "I want to see what he looks like."

Alan stepped inside cautiously, lugging his metal equipment case. "Any idea who we've got?"

"None," Sam told him. "What you see is everything. I checked his back pockets already, since they were staring at me, but so far, nothing. Feel free to do the honors."

"No weapon?" Miller persisted.

"We don't even know if he was murdered," Lester volunteered cheerfully. "Could be a natural."

"Or another parachutist," Sam muttered darkly.

Miller looked at her doubtfully but didn't ask for an explanation. Instead, he opened his case on the butcher paper, extracted a camera, and took a few shots that would later accompany the body to the ME's office in Burlington. Beverly Hillstrom liked seeing what her customers looked like in place.

He then began carefully examining the body, first by simply placing his gloved hand on its abdomen to feel its temperature, before moving to the hands, arms, and legs to check for stiffness. A vague rule of thumb had it that rigor mortis takes some twelve hours to reach its peak, before a body's flaccidity begins reasserting itself. But everyone in the room was experienced enough to know that such rules were notoriously unreliable.

"Okay to move him?" he asked.

Klesczewski nodded, and Miller rolled the body onto its back, farther up onto the bed. A gentle sigh escaped its lungs as it settled into its new position.

They all studied the man's face, as if expecting him to deliver a name. He was about five feet ten, on the edge of going fat, dressed in jeans, a chamois flannel shirt, and sneakers. He had thick, curly hair, a narrow, neatly bearded face, and absolutely nothing to say to any of them.

To satisfy Sam, whose habits he knew all too well, Miller checked the decedent's front pockets first. "Nothing," he announced.

The rest of his examination came to about the same conclusion. Clothing was opened and shifted, but not removed-again according to the ME's wishes-but no wounds, telling tattoos, or interesting artifacts surfaced. Whoever this was, he remained, for the moment, simply a corpse in a motel room.

They'd been told in the middle of Miller's procedure that the funeral home had arrived for transportation. The body was, therefore, eventually sealed in a heavy plastic bag and handed over to the hearse and its police escort, leaving the original team alone in the room.

In the momentary silence following their host's departure, Joe scratched his cheek through his Tyvek hood, feeling claustrophobic. "How many key cards did he request at the desk?"

Sam and Ron exchanged glances-a throwback to when Sam was also on the local squad. Lester picked up the hint and moved to the phone, made a quick call, hung up after asking the same question of the clerk, and reported, "Two."

"That's interesting," Joe said. "How many cards did you find here?"

"None," Ron admitted in a monotone, adding, "I should've thought of that."

"Call me a pessimist," Joe then mused, "but I'm guessing our buddy didn't die of natural causes."

Sam paced the short distance to the far wall and came back again, staying on the brown paper but agitated by the same oversight Ron had owned up to. "Okay. Let's put it together. He checks in, presumably looking for anonymity…"

"And for love," Lester added.

"Right. But no sooner has he entered this room than his date arrives and whacks him somehow, stealing all his stuff, including both key cards."

"He arrived alone?" Joe asked.

"Yeah," Lester answered. "We did get that much. I had the manager get hold of the night clerk for a positive ID and a short interview."

"Then why the two cards?" Joe asked again. "Wouldn't you just tell your date what room you were in and open the door when he or she knocked? Or maybe leave the second key at the desk? Why ask for two and then take them both into the room?"

There was no answer from any of his colleagues. Joe tapped the wall beside him. "Any neighbors?"

"One," Ron answered. "The other room's empty. And that neighbor didn't hear a thing."

"How did he get here?"

"That's another thing," Lester said. "We don't know. Every car in the lot's accounted for. He didn't list one on his registration card."

Joe made another survey of the room, standing still and scanning slowly in a circle. At the end, he said, "One of you is meeting someone in a motel. You want it nice and anonymous-no real names, no credit cards, an out-of-the-way place. How do you set it up?"

As usual, Sam spoke first, after only a momentary hesitation. "I either call the other party with my room number after I check in, or I tell them to ask at the desk."

"Right," agreed Lester, catching the spirit of Joe's question. "But we already ruled out that he used the phone, and if you're trying to be secretive, you don't then tell that other party to ask at the desk. You tell him to come straight to the door. Plus, this guy took two key cards. He could've just left the second one at the desk, if that was the plan."

"How does the visitor know what door to go to?" Sam challenged.

"A signal out the window?" Ron mused. He stepped around his subordinate, still working on the rug, and opened the curtains. The room had a full view of the parking lot.

"Or a sign outside the door," Sam suggested. "Even a large piece of blank paper would do, Scotch-taped in place."

"Maybe the second key card itself," Lester added, "stuck in an envelope."

He walked to the door, opened it, and scrutinized its exterior surface, aided by a penlight. The others watched him, his nose almost touching the door, until he finally paused, brushed the area before him gently with his latex-gloved fingertip, and announced, "There was some tape here, recently enough that the residue's still tacky."

Joe was nodding all the while. "So our person of interest gets here, opens the door himself to avoid the noise of a knock or the risk of nonadmittance, then what?"

"Kills our guy," Lester said immediately, adding just as quickly, "but how?"

In the meantime, he left the door, crossed to the desk, opened the drawer, removed the cardboard folder he found there containing writing paper, a cheap pen, some postcards, and a single envelope. Holding up the latter, he said, "Two postcards, two sheets of paper, one envelope."

"But no Scotch tape," Sam said. "He either brought it with him or just used the glue on the envelope flap to hang it on the door."

"Suggesting some DNA transfer from tongue to envelope to door," Joe mused.

"Yeah," Lester agreed. "But from the victim, so who cares?"

"Right," Joe conceded before waving his hand in a semi-circle. "So, possibly apart from the envelope, nothing's disturbed, the dead man's clothes were neatly tucked into place, and there wasn't a mark on him." He paused to address Ron's detective. "You find anything yet?"

"No, sir," he answered.

"And," Joe concluded, "we found him lying across the bottom of the bed, facedown."

"As if stretched out for a nap," Lester said.

"Or passed out," Sam proposed. "You take a nap, you position yourself properly; you use a pillow, take off your shoes. Plus, you don't even go there if you're waiting for someone. The adrenaline's pumping. Naps don't come into it."

The four of them contemplated what all that might mean.

"Be a bummer if the ME said it was a heart attack," Lester said.

Joe smiled, knowing the unlikeliness of that. His response went to the crucial point none of them had yet addressed. "The real bummer would be if both our dry-cleaned John Does turned out to be naturals. This is number two, after all."

Sam grunted softly. "Christ. I hope they end up with something more in common than this."

"Like the same poison?" Lester asked.

"I don't know. Anything."

"No local connections to the first one yet?"

"No," she said gloomily. "We're still asking around."

"We might have to ask for some help there," Gunther suggested. "Get the newspaper involved, especially if this fellow turns out not to be from around here, either. You know: 'Have You Seen This Man?' Run them both. And if that fails, go wider, reach across New England. There's got to be somebody who'll recognize at least one of them. What was the name this one used at the desk?"

"R. Frederick."

Gunther laughed.

"What?" Ron asked.

He held his hand up. "I don't know. It just flashed through my mind-R. Frederick, Ready Freddy. Wonder what the 'R' stood for."

"You serious?"

Joe shrugged. "I don't know. I guess not. It's possible, though. You check into a motel for illicit purposes, maybe you're feeling playful. Anyhow, doesn't matter. We have to do this by the numbers, even if it turns out he used his real name. BOL, canvass, AFIS for the fingerprints, the whole smorgasbord. And we need to figure out how he got here-train, bus, cab, hitchhiking."

He paused to address Ron. "Anything you need from us?"

Klesczewski shook his head. "No. We're okay. We'll do a forensic vacuuming later, maybe use the luminol. Since the Bureau's paying, the sky's the limit, right, even though it's a motel room and guaranteed to give us too much and therefore nothing at all?"

Joe raised his eyebrows. "That mean you're giving us the case?"

Ron bowed slightly. "With our compliments. We're drowning in work right now, the budget's hemorrhaging, the chief's on the warpath, and Sam and Ron were telling me you might be working a related case anyhow. It makes sense."

"Then our wallet's your wallet," Joe told him. "And thank you. You going to want the crime lab at all?"

The state forensic lab usually did such work, traveling to assist almost every department in Vermont. But not all of them. The bigger PDs liked to lay claim to being just as good on their own. Brattleboro had been known to go either way.

"I think we got it," Ron said. "We'll keep you posted."

Joe headed toward the door. "Okay, then, I'll leave you all to it."

In the hallway outside, he began climbing out of his Tyvek suit, leaning against the wall for support. Sam had followed him outside.

"Thanks for coming down. I hated bothering you. How're things up north?"

He hesitated, one foot in the air, and pursed his lips, trying to pay the question its due. "Complicated," he finally said.

She tried reading between the lines. "Medically?"

"Not really, although Leo's not out of the woods." He resumed removing the overalls, continuing, "I'm helping the sheriff's office look into the car crash."

"You're kidding me," she exclaimed.

He shook his head. "I'm not saying there's anything to it-not necessarily. But I have some questions."

He held his hand up as she opened her mouth, her eyes wide. "Sam, that's all I've got right now. If I hit on anything, you'll be the first to know. In fact, you'll probably have to take the case over 'cause of my personal involvement. Right now I'm just sniffing around."

He bundled up the white suit and shoved it into a transparent bag for disposal. "You could do something, though, come to think of it," he admitted.

"Shoot," she answered.

"Run down what you can about Andy Griffis. I don't remember his birth date, but he was from Thetford originally. I busted him in Bratt a few years ago, and he committed suicide late this summer, so he shouldn't be hard to locate. Everything you can find."

She was already scribbling a few notes in her pad. "Got it. Reach you at your mom's?"

"Generally, or use the pager. And don't punch a case quite yet, okay? Off the books."

Joe stood on the sidewalk, his hands buried in his coat pockets, looking across the street at the bar. It was a far cry from the place in Gloucester where he'd first met Lyn Silva, whom he'd known then only as Evelyn. That had been a notorious dive, well known to the local cops, and literally home to an ever-changing tide of anonymous people who lived on the top two floors in rented rooms that looked like jail cells. Included among those residents had been the dead man Joe had come down there hoping to interview.

This was a serious step up. A handsome, elaborately carved sign over the door advertised "Silva's," the bay windows to either side of the door had been framed with nicely worked wooden casings in the style of a century ago, and he could see, behind the glass, tables placed on raised platforms to afford patrons a better view of the street.

He crossed over and saw a paper sign on the door reading "Not open yet, but hold that thought."

He paused at the foot of the three steps leading up, startled at how well that phrasing reflected his own situation. His attraction to Lyn was not at issue, nor was her clear interest in him, despite his wondering at that good fortune. What was stalling him was old baggage-his age, his past with Gail and its lingering emotional fallout, his near miss at losing his mother and Leo. He was gun-shy and unsure and more inclined to pulling in than to exploring a new relationship. His one night with Hillstrom had been a defining moment, though in large part appreciated precisely because it had no future.

Proceeding through the door ahead of him could be much more than he wanted to handle right now-if ever again.

"Does he dare?" came from behind him.

He turned around sharply, struck as much by the wording as by the voice. Lyn Silva stood in the street, carrying three precariously balanced cardboard boxes, a half smile on her face.

"I serve Coke, too," she added.

He wondered if her opening line, as insightful as it had seemed, had in fact meant something more mundane. It was possible, given the Coke follow-up, but he'd learned not to sell her short. Her canny instincts about people-including herself-had struck him all the way back in Gloucester. She was just as possibly allowing them both a little leeway.

"Looks like it's really coming along," he said blandly, instinctively reaching for the top two boxes of her stack.

She nodded, glancing up at the sign. "I was about to ask if you wanted to come in, but if you don't now, you'll be stealing my stuff."

Almost surprised, he looked down at what he'd just taken into his arms. "Sorry. That was a little-"

"Much appreciated," she interrupted. "Come on. It's open."

She cut around him and led the way, bumping the door open with one slim blue-jeaned hip.

The interior was warm and smelled of old wood and leather, with a scattering of tables and upholstered stools paralleling the long bar stretching into the gloom ahead. The room was narrow, high-ceilinged, and deep, with an unusual balcony high and to the back, overhanging what seemed fated to become a small stage for musicians. The decor largely consisted of more wood detailing, old mirrors, and framed photographs and portraits, some of which were still propped against the baseboard. There were also several dartboards.

"Just dump those on the bar," she told him, doing the same. "Would you like a Coke? I'm about to have one. Long day. Take your coat off."

He pulled over a stool and settled down as she circled the bar to get to a small fridge tucked under the counter near the cash register. "Lucky you have a thing for Coke. I had a deal with the Pepsi distributor until we got into a fight, so I dropped them for the out-of-town Coca-Cola dealer. Not that I've gotten the equipment and supplies yet, so we'll see. Anyhow, I keep a few basics on hand, just in case. Be crazy not to have anything except water, even if the place isn't officially open."

She quickly crouched and extracted two cans of soda from the fridge in one clean movement, reminding him of how habituated she was to this environment. Looking around again at the boxes and the gentle disarray, he thought this might be like visiting a magician backstage, before the curtain rose and the lights blocked out all but the main attraction. He recalled sitting at the end of the bar in Massachusetts, admiring how she simultaneously worked the clientele while balancing the multiple tasks of her profession-taking orders, pouring drinks, making change, washing glasses, refilling nut dishes, keeping the bar top clean and free of clutter-all without missing a beat. And by Vermont law, all bars had to serve enough food to supply at least 20 percent of overall sales, so he knew she had the basics of a kitchenette somewhere, as well.

She popped the tabs on both cans simultaneously and poured the contents into two ice-filled glasses she'd conjured up, seemingly out of thin air.

"Lime?" she asked.

He laughed at the automatic request dovetailing so perfectly with his line of thought. "No, I'm fine. Thanks. How long till you open?"

She took a long pull on her own drink and looked around, as if at a museum exhibition under construction. "Couple of weeks, tops. It's been an amazing haul-just filling out paperwork for over a month, for one thing. Inspections, license applications, tax forms, contracts-none of which had anything to do with the actual work of painting, sanding, buying furniture and fixtures, rigging the sound system, you name it. And there's still a ton of piddly stuff left. But most of the heavy lifting is done. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel."

"It must be like reaching a life goal," he suggested. "Being able to work for yourself."

By now she was leaning with the small of her back against the counter behind her. "I wouldn't go that far. It is just a bar. But it's nice to be out of Gloucester. I was way too long in that place."

He smiled and suggested, "Things look good after a few years, but maybe for all the wrong reasons?"

She nodded. "Yeah, exactly. A bunch of habits you start thinking are a life." She gave him a thoughtful look. "I have you to thank for waking me up, at least partly."

He was genuinely surprised. "Me?"

"That night we met at the end of the pier, after my shift. You were looking for the guy that killed poor old Norm, so you bought me a lobster roll and a milkshake to butter me up-you probably don't even remember that."

"Sure I do," he said, his own memory being much sharper than she could know.

"Well, call it the right gesture at the right time. I don't know," she mused. "But that hit me right where it counted. Made me think how I was about to make a really big mistake and probably take a huge step backward."

He looked at her inquiringly.

She frowned and stared at the floor for a moment. "I'm not making much sense. You remember seeing a kind of slimy guy at the bar earlier that night-long hair, tattoos?" she asked. "You commented about him-how I gave him a free drink to make him look good to his buddies."

"Kenny," he said.

Her mouth dropped open. "You remember his name?"

His face reddened. "I might've been a little envious."

She touched her lips with her fingertips, assessing this revelation, which he now wished he'd withheld.

But her conclusion set him at ease. Her face softened and her shoulders slumped slightly. She stepped up to the bar and laid her hand on his. Their faces were close together as she said, "You had nothing to worry about."

He didn't know what to say.

"I kissed you that night to thank you for being nice to me," she explained. "But there was more. I had almost decided to make a play for Kenny, even though every bone in my body told me I shouldn't. You woke me up."

"With a lobster roll?"

She laughed and stepped back, accepting his offer of humor to regain her balance.

"That's when I decided to pull up stakes. Coryn, my daughter, was out of the house and on her own; I'd saved up enough money to make a new start. It was time. When this place came on the market, and it was in your hometown, I couldn't believe it. The coincidence was too much to ignore."

"Like a sign?" he suggested.

She made a face. "I don't believe in that junk. But I wasn't going to ignore it, either."

"Christ," he told her, waving a hand around at the clutter, "I'm going to feel pretty bad if it goes belly-up."

"It won't," she said simply. "I did my homework, too. I'm not a total romantic."

"But a bit of one."

"Yeah," she conceded after a pause. "I guess." She was silent before adding, "That's why I drove up to Thetford to find you, after reading about the accident. I wasn't really going shopping."

"I wondered," he admitted, sitting very still.

"I did want to offer any help I could," she said quickly. "I meant that. Still do. But I suppose I wanted you to know I was in the area, too, for what it was worth."

"A lot."

She'd been staring into the middle distance at that point, but his rejoinder made her look at him directly. "Really?"

"Yeah," he said simply.

She pursed her lips. "Wow. I thought for sure you'd already have someone in your life…" She abruptly held her hand to her forehead. "Hold it. That came out wrong. I mean, not that you wouldn't, but that if you don't, that I wouldn't be-"

"I don't," he said, hoping to end her embarrassment.

Her face was by now bright red. "Okay. Sorry. I'm not a stalker or anything."

"I know."

"I just-what with the bar being in Brattleboro, and what I said about your getting me to leave Gloucester-sort of-well… it just seemed stupid not to get in touch somehow."

Now it was his turn to stand up and at least lean in her direction, since the bar was between them-the very safety barrier she'd once told him was a blessing for most barkeeps. "I'm glad you did, Lyn. It means a lot to me. Kind of a right time, right place thing, if you know what I mean."

"Those aren't too common, right?" she asked, taking a half step toward him.

"So they say."

They stood there for a few seconds, seemingly frozen by in-decision, before he finally moved back, undraped his coat from the back of the adjacent stool, and said, "Well, I've got to get back north."

"Oh, sure," she said, leaving her post and heading back around the end of the bar to meet him. "Give your mom my best."

He was close to the door, moving reluctantly, slipping his coat on. "I'm glad you came up when you did, when I was on the sidewalk."

She reached him and laid her hand on his arm. "You've got a lot on your mind right now."

He nodded silently, welling with emotion that he'd been suppressing for days.

"That's okay," she said. "I'll be here." She took his hand, removed a pen from her breast pocket, and wrote a phone number on his palm. "That's my home. Call anytime. I mean it."

He opened the door with his other hand, letting in a sharp sliver of cold air. "I will." He quickly leaned forward, kissed her on the cheek, and let himself out.

RadMan: so wut u do for fun

Suze: soccer and shop

RadMan: ur parents strict

Suze: there assholes

RadMan: oh why

Suze: cause they r

RadMan: i drive

Suze: i cant no licens

RadMan: so wut do u like to chat about — do u have any wishes

Suze: yeah i wish i had a car

RadMan: why Suze: so i could drive ya

RadMan: well i got a car

Suze: can i have it

RadMan: only gfs can use my car

Suze: so what does that mean

RadMan: u really want my car

Suze: for real

RadMan: what do i get then