The Disposable Man

Chapter 7

John Rarig looked around my office early the next morning, no doubt struck by its small size and state of disarray. Brattleboro was once described as a champagne town with a beer income-a reference to its population’s affinity for catering to all causes while being hard-pressed to pay for them. The police department, along with all the other municipal services, was allowed no fat in its budget, as my office decor amply testified.

I gestured to a plastic guest chair. “Please, have a seat.”

He stayed standing in the doorway. “No, thanks.” He reached into his back pocket and extracted a folded sheet of paper, which he handed to me. “That’s a list of my employees. My lawyer wanted me to tell you to pound sand, but I disagreed. If someone who works for me has broken the law, I want to find out about it. The guests are another matter, at least until you can get a warrant, but this one’s on me. I did put out a memo, though, that I was cooperating with the police, so they know you’ll be coming. I thought that was only fair.”

I glanced over the sheet. “That’s fine, and I appreciate the cooperation. It’s not like we’re loaded for bear, anyhow. We’re just hoping to solve a puzzle. It could be your place had nothing to do with any of this.” I smiled and added, “That we’re barking up the wrong ginkgo tree.”

He smiled weakly. Turning to go, he paused. “Try to respect their privacy, okay? These are good people-at least I think they are. They’ve helped me enormously-kept a dream alive. I don’t want anyone to think I’ve abused their trust.”

I rose from my desk and escorted him down our small hallway to the building’s central corridor. “Mr. Rarig, we do this a lot. For every thirty or forty people we interview, only one ends up holding the bag. We’re not out to abuse people.”

He nodded and shook my hand. “Will you let me know how things are going?”

“I’ll keep you informed,” I said, solely to pacify him.

I stood in the doorway, watching him walk toward the exit where the parking lot’s located. His shoulders were slumped and his gait hesitant. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked his seventy-odd years.

Despite the circumstances that had led me to him, and the deep suspicions I had concerning him, I’d also been touched by his asking me to watch out for his employees. The reference to their helping him achieve his goal had struck a chord-at once poignant and lonely-the comment of a single man who’d made the best he could of the end of his life, to the point of calling it a dream come true.

We were in the conference room, just the three of us, making the table look larger than it was. My office would’ve worked also, but I’d wanted space enough for all of us to take notes comfortably.

I passed out copies of Rarig’s employee list, noting with amused satisfaction how it was received. Sammie picked it up in both hands and stared at it, as if willing it to confess. Ron aligned it squarely before him on the tabletop with his fingertips-a document worthy of preservation and respect.

“Twenty-six names,” I said, “including John Rarig’s, to be split between the three of us. The chief won’t give us any more manpower, since it doesn’t look like we’ve got a tiger by the tail. But chances are we can whittle the numbers down pretty fast. Start with the usual criminal record checks-NCIC, Vermont CIC, and the in-house criminal files of VSP and all bordering state police agencies. Check our own archives, and as soon as you peg a home address for each name, call any contacts you might have in other municipal departments to see what they have-you never know who might be on a snitch or suspect list. And don’t forget the sheriff’s office.”

Both of them were writing this down, so I paused briefly to let them catch up. “If we don’t get lucky with any of that,” I continued, “we can check out public records. Start with Motor Vehicles. They’ll give you a lot to go on-description, address, date of birth, what’s been registered, and so on. From there, you can go to the appropriate town clerks for more. Push comes to shove, and they don’t own a car, use the phone book to at least get an address. All we’re after at this point are the basics-name, rank, and serial number. As individuals begin standing out, we can dig a little deeper, just so we know more than they think we do when we talk to them. Right now, though, nobody gets the third degree,” I added, remembering Rarig’s plea. “If there’s a bad guy in the bunch, chances are he’ll pop up before the others even know we’ve been snooping around.”

“What’re we going to do about the guest list?” Ron asked.

I sat back in my chair. “Not much. When we get to talking with the employees, we should ask for any names, hometowns, and anything else they might remember. Maybe they’ll be a little less discreet than Rarig.”

“They’re going to know that’s against the rules,” Sammie cautioned.

“True,” I said, standing up. “But there’re all kinds of ways to extract information. They don’t have to see you coming.”

Around one that afternoon, by now immersed in the details of chasing down my nine allotted names-to little effect-I got a telephone call from Stan Katz, the editor of the Brattleboro Reformer. Katz and I went back many years, from when I was just a detective, and he was the paper’s distrustful cops-’n’-courts reporter. It had never been a friendship-far from it, on occasion-but we’d grown toward a mutual respect. When the paper had almost hit bottom a few years back, briefly becoming a sensationalist tabloid under the misguided management of an out-of-state owner, Katz had led the charge in an employee buyout. Now laden with a financial burden as well as his editorial responsibilities, he was a far more thoughtful and forgiving human being, which, given his start, made him just bearable-some of the time.

“Joe,” he said, “long time, no harassment.”

“Which makes me very happy. How’s life?”

“Lousy. Don’t let anyone tell you that when the nuts take over the nuthouse, things run any smoother. No wonder the Communists went belly-up. I was calling about the dead guy in the quarry. Anything new?”

“What happened to Alice?” I asked. Alice Sims was the current police beat reporter.

“I gotta take a break from this management crap once in a while. Alice’ll write it. I’m just helping her out.”

“I don’t know what she’ll write,” I said. “We still don’t have a name, a motive, a weapon, or anything else. The last press release still says it all, including the Boris Malik pseudonym.”

“Does that mean the guy was Russian?”

Through the sheriff’s initial inquiry, the rental car’s existence had finally leaked, along with its connection to Logan Airport, but we’d still managed to keep the tattooed toes and the buckle knife under wraps. “Could be. But we got nowhere checking flight manifests into Boston, and the car rental people were a dead end.”

I paused a moment, reflecting on my present efforts, and considered how this conversation might be turned to my advantage. “To be honest,” I added, “there’s a growing feeling the body was just dumped here. We haven’t found any neighborhood ties-no reports of strange sightings or sounds or missing persons that might fit. And the fact that the car was abandoned on one of the busiest roads in southern Vermont supports the theory. We’ve shared everything we got with the appropriate agencies, including the Canadians, and nothing’s come back.”

I was hoping he wouldn’t conjure up Kunkle’s logical question about the knowledgeable choice of the quarry as a dumping spot. He didn’t, opting instead to pounce on my purposefully bored tone of voice. “Meaning you’re doing nothing?” he asked incredulously. “It’s a murder, for Christ’s sake.”

“Of course we are, Stan,” I said wearily. “We’re conducting interviews and digging up what we can, but let’s face it, we don’t have a hell of a lot to go on, and off the record, the troops aren’t all that enthusiastic. There’s nothing to charge them up.”

“I can sympathize,” he conceded after a moment, sounding disappointed. “I thought when you found him we had something hot.”

“Not so far, and I don’t see anything on the horizon.”

We hung up after a few closing comments, and I leaned back in my chair, thoughtfully staring at the phone. With any luck, tomorrow’s article would reflect my lack of enthusiasm. It wouldn’t make us look like the FBI, but it would take the edge off the interviews we’d be conducting over the next few days. If the people we were talking to thought we were just going through the motions, the chances of one of them letting something slip increased.

It was a long, tedious two days before Sammie, Ron, and I reconvened at the same conference table. Instead of three copies of a single sheet of paper, we each now had folders bulging with information about John Rarig and his employees, most of which, I knew, would eventually prove useless. But our business was like the orchid breeder’s in one sense-founded on the knowledge that success only comes after endless disappointment.

Which certainly described my results. I’d uncovered no “hits” whatsoever, a fact I thought it politic to keep private until later. “Okay,” I said, “what’ve you got?”

They’d apparently exchanged notes earlier. Ron spoke up first, “One for me, two for Sam. I’ve got a woman with a small string of offenses-shoplifting, check bouncing, operating an illegal day care. Name’s Marianne Baker. She’s been clean for five years, employed by the inn for three of them as a housekeeper. Lives in Jamaica.” He placed the piece of paper he’d been reading from flat on the table. “Hardly on the Most Wanted list. Worst thing about her is the company she keeps. She’s living with a guy with a history of violence, including some he did down here. Ever hear of Marty Sopper?”

I had. “Petty theft, assault, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “among others. He did a couple of years for a drug deal-beat up the kid he was selling to. Like Marianne, not a headliner, but he likes to use force.”

I cocked an eyebrow at Sammie.

“Bob Manship and Doug DeFalque,” she said. “Bob was nailed for assault four years ago and given probation. Apparently nobody liked the guy he totaled, so the SA just went by the numbers, but the cop I talked to said Bob could’ve earned himself a murder rap if someone hadn’t stopped him. It was over a woman-the victim’s wife. He used a hammer.”

“Jesus,” I murmured.

“Been clean since,” Sammie resumed, “and was a good boy up till then. Might’ve been just a flash in the pan, but the weapon impressed me, too. He works as the inn’s dishwasher. The same cop admitted he was a nice guy-normally very quiet. I talked to his probation officer, too. Same basic report-steady, quiet, dependable, and remorseful about what he did. The woman in the case moved away, by the way. Manship lives alone.”

She picked up another document. “Douglas DeFalque. No criminal record, but multiple mentions as a fellow traveler. Born in Quebec, he’s lived on one side of the border or the other all his life, and from what I could find out, makes a tidy sum on the side as a smuggler. Both the Quebec Provincial Police and the U.S. Border Patrol have him on their hot sheets, but nobody’s ever caught him red-handed.”

“What does he smuggle?” I asked.

“Cigarettes and booze going north, aliens, drugs, and bear gallbladders going south-gallbladders are a hot item in Taiwan and China. They use the bile for medicine. It’s pricey and it’s regulated, so the black market demand is pretty high. I asked the Mounties to check him out, see who his associates are. They’re still looking into it, comparing notes with other agencies, but it looks like he’s a free agent, probably working with the biker gangs, and increasingly with the Russian mob.”

There was a brief silence in the room as Ron and I digested that. Sammie smiled. “I thought you might find the last bit interesting.”

“What does he do at the inn?” I asked.

“A waiter. The people I talked to say he’s very smooth-good-looking, nice French accent, well liked by the ladies. He’s seasonal, though. Only works during the crunches. That’s what gives him time with his other pursuits.”

“Is he working there now?”

“No, but he was two weeks ago. He left four days after we think Boris got whacked. He’s around, though. Lives in Jamaica. I got the address.”

I propped my chin in my hand, looking at them both. “Top of our list?” Ron shrugged. “Looks that way. He’s got everything except a known propensity for violence.”

“Unless he contracts it out,” Sammie suggested. “Didn’t J.P. say Boris was probably spying on the inn from under that tree, hiding in the shadows? If DeFalque knew about that, he might’ve set him up.”

I shook my head. “Whoa. That’s a long way from finding a seed in Boris’s hair. You may be right, Sam, but we need to sniff around more first. Do we have anything at all on the other names?”

They both shook their heads, Ron adding, “A few vehicular citations-DWI, speeding, a minor accident or two. Two of the women I checked live together and got cited for disturbing the peace after an all-girl party a few months back. Nothing stands out, though. What did you find?”

I didn’t even bother opening my file folder. “Nothing, really. Same as you-parking tickets, whatnot. John Rarig seems to be legit. Career Washington bureaucrat. Like he said: gray office in a gray building.”

I asked Sammie, “How long before the Mounties report back on Doug DeFalque?”

“Should be today-noon at the latest.”

“Okay. Let’s get more background on him in the meantime. Locate any co-workers or neighbors who might be willing to talk. If he’s as smooth as you say, he’s either rubbed a few people the wrong way or titillated the gossipers. Ron, I don’t want us to forget that a guest might’ve been involved in this thing. See if you can find out who was staying there at the time. And don’t just interview the employees. If we can find a chatty guest who’ll rat on the others, that would help, too.”

Ron Klesczewski appeared at my door several hours later, a smile on his face. “I may have discovered the snitch from Heaven.”

I peeled off my reading glasses and tossed them with relief on a pile of paperwork. “Do tell.”

“Dottie Delman, eighty-three years old-rules the counter at the general store just outside West Townshend. Her brother owned the inn before it was an inn, her family tree rivals Moses’, and from what I heard, she’s both wailing wall and oracle for half the people in a ten-mile radius, meaning she probably knows more about what’s happening at the inn than the owner.”

“You haven’t talked to her yet?”

“No, but I will unless you want first dibs. I got a lead on somebody else, too.” He checked a note he was carrying. “Marcia Luechauer-however you pronounce it. She’s a teacher at Deerfield Academy, in Mass. She was a guest during our time slot. Rumor has it she was very outgoing, made a lot of friends, and might be willing to talk.”

“You take one, I take the other?” I suggested.

“That’d be great, if you have the time.”

It was a typical equivocation, and a glimpse of the self-effacement that was also his best asset. It disarmed the very people who clammed up before the likes of Willy Kunkle, or even Sam, and gave Ron the upper hand in any interview demanding a delicate touch.

“I’ll go down to Deerfield,” I said.

Deerfield Academy epitomizes the blue-blooded image of the Yankee aristocracy. Like Eton in Great Britain, or a dozen other WASP-sounding schools around New England, it has stood for generations as the springboard to the Ivy League and the world of high finance beyond. I’d heard from a southern friend of mine that boarding schools in his neck of the woods were places to lock up rich juvenile delinquents, which had made him wonder why New England had so many of them. I’d set him straight on the difference, but the dichotomy had stuck with me. My interest in traveling the half hour to Deerfield was partly to discover whether my friend hadn’t been closer to the mark than I’d been led to believe.

Initial impressions were mixed. The academy is located in the heart of a near-perfectly preserved historic village of the same name, both of which straddle a broad, straight, tree-shaded avenue. Taken together, they look like a cross between a movie lot and a museum exhibition-not bad for a reform school. But driving past one classic, cedar-roofed icon after another, I began wondering if so rarefied an atmosphere might not in fact be a little confining.

The school itself, at two hundred years old, is more monumentally imposing than the village, with brick buildings, ancient beech trees, and acres of manicured lawns, so that as I parked in front of an Independence Hall look-alike, I was beginning to feel thoroughly intimidated.

Getting out of the car, I caught sight of a skinny, mop-topped young man walking away from me, wearing gray trousers, a wrinkled blue blazer, and flaming red canvas high-top sneakers.

“Excuse me,” I called out.

He swung around and approached smiling, revealing himself to be a she-a perfect tomboy. So much for being confined.

“Hi. Can I help you?” she asked, her lively, gleaming eyes making me smile in turn.

“Yeah. I’m looking for someone named Marcia Luechauer. A teacher? She told me to ask for Mather dorm.”

“Oh, sure-Ms. L.-that’s what we call her. She’s cool. Mather’s where I live. I can take you there, if you’d like.”

I bowed slightly to this touch of courtesy. “I’d be delighted.”

We fell in side by side as my guide headed for a crosswalk.

“What grade are you in?” I asked.

“I’m a sophomore.”

“And you like it here?”

“It’s neat. I wasn’t sure at first. I thought it might be too stuck up-two hundred years of grand tradition. But the teachers are cool, the kids come from all over, and I’m having a great time. They work your-” she abruptly paused and glanced up at me. “They work you hard, though.”

We crossed the street to a pathway between two old wooden dorms.

“I thought this was a boy’s school,” I commented.

She let loose that infectious smile again. “Used to be. Girl-power won out.” She pointed to the building on the left. “That’s Mather.”

We entered, and I followed her up one flight of stairs to a closed door with a hand-lettered wooden sign reading “Ms. L.-Knock if You Dare.” Behind us I could hear girls’ voices echoing down the hall, interlaced with snatches of music and the occasional slamming of doors.

My companion knocked, saying as she did, “You’ll like her. She’s really nice.”

The door swung back to reveal a small, round-faced woman in her fifties. “Scout,” she exclaimed to my friend, “who’ve you rounded up here?”

Scout looked nonplussed for the first time. “I don’t know. I forgot to ask.”

I stuck out my hand. “Joe Gunther. We spoke on the phone.”

She smiled and ushered me in. “I thought so.” And she winked at Scout. “Just pulling your leg. Thanks for playing tour guide.”

Marcia Luechauer escorted me through a colorful, sun-filled apartment to a living room facing the street where I’d parked, and pointed to a sofa under the window. “Tea or coffee?” she asked.

“Tea would be nice,” I said. “I need a break from coffee. Cream and sugar, too, if you’ve got it.”

She laughed. “They’re the only reason I drink anything hot.” She crossed through to a door leading into a small kitchen, still speaking as she set to work. “On the phone you said you wanted to ask me some questions about my trip to Vermont. That certainly was a mysterious invitation, especially from a policeman. I’m not in trouble, am I?”

I spoke to her as she passed back and forth across my line of sight. “No, no. I’m actually hoping you can give me some help. It concerns your stay at the Windham Hill Inn.”

She appeared at the door, looking startled. “The inn? What happened there?”

“That’s what I’d like to ask you. I just found out by accident that you’d been there. Mr. Rarig would want me to make it clear he didn’t divulge your name, by the way.”

“Oh, good Lord. I don’t care. I had a wonderful time.” There was a loud ding from behind her, and she vanished again.

“I don’t know how I can help you, though,” her voice said from the kitchen. “I don’t remember anything happening that might be of interest to the police.”

She reappeared carrying a tray, which she placed on a low table between us, perching herself on an armchair opposite me. “I’ll let you do the honors. There’s sugar, but I prefer maple syrup-one of my many Vermont afflictions. I love your state, incidentally. It’s one of the reasons I work here.”

I poured both syrup and cream into my tea, having, like Ms. L., an unapologetic sweet tooth. “What dates were you at the inn, exactly?”

“The fifteenth through the eighteenth. I left at noon.”

For simplicity’s sake, we’d settled on the sixteenth for Boris Malik’s death. “And which room did you have?”

“It was a little thing on the top floor, facing the front.”

“And the ginkgo tree?” I asked, startled.

She paused, her cup halfway to her lips. “Yes. Why?”

“John Rarig said he’d closed off all those rooms because of the smell.”

She laughed, something I now realized she did all the time, obviously to the delight of her young charges. “I have almost no sense of smell left. That’s about the only time it’s worked to my advantage. I told him I really wanted the sun through my window, so he made an exception. It had the fringe benefit of making my room very quiet as well.” She cocked her head toward the dorm. “Not that noise is a big problem with me.”

“On the night of the sixteenth, then,” I asked, “do you remember hearing anything unusual-voices maybe, a shout, the sound of a car very late?”

She paused to reflect. “There was a car. I don’t know what time it was when I heard it, but it was the middle of the night. I’m afraid I didn’t look out the window, though. I just rolled over and went back to sleep.”

“Was the sound familiar? Had you heard that particular car before?”

She shook her head. “No. It was just a car. I am sorry.”

“No. That’s all right,” I assured her. “We ask a lot of questions, but they’re not all important.” I handed her a picture of the rental car. “Was this car ever parked in the lot, or anywhere else that you noticed?”

She made a face, considering the photo. “I’m not doing very well here. It might have been, but I’m not big on cars. They all look like this to me.”

I passed her the retouched mug shot of Boris Malik. “How ’bout him?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ooh. He doesn’t look very good. Is he dead?”

“Yeah. Sorry about that. The photographer tried to fix him up a little, but it’s hard to do well.”

She returned the pictures to me. “No, he doesn’t look familiar. I don’t suppose you could tell me what this is all about, could you?”

I sighed involuntarily. “Don’t I wish. It’s a bit of a mystery, and to be honest, the Windham Hill Inn may not play into it at all. We’re doing a lot of fishing right now, hoping to get lucky. Rumor has it you got friendly with several of the other guests.”

“Oh, yes,” she smiled, more comfortable now. “That’s partly why I take these trips. Every short vacation, I choose a different inn, usually in Vermont. Maybe it’s being surrounded by kids all the time, but to me a vacation means meeting other people, preferably from far-off places. And inns are good for that, especially if you can’t afford to travel far. The kinds of guests they get are often world travelers. They’re fun to trade stories with.”

I thought of our hoped-for Russian connection. “Did you meet any globe-trotters at the Windham Hill Inn?”

“Several. There were the Widmers, an elderly couple from New Jersey. They’d spent an enormous amount of time in Saudi Arabia. He used to be in the oil business-”

“How elderly?” I interrupted as gently as possible.

But she cocked an eye at me nevertheless. “Ah. I see what you mean. No geriatrics need apply. How strong a person are we talking about?”

It was my turn to smile. “Pretty strong. On the other hand, we’re not sure we’re just talking about one person, either.”

She nodded. “Okay. Well, in any case, better scratch the Widmers. They were both pretty feeble. Let’s see… There was Roger and Sheila Brockman. They were middle-aged, and in good shape, too. Played tennis all the time. Sheila had the eyes of a tiger, I thought. One of those professionally skinny women, complete with tummy tucks, face-lifts, and all the rest. Roger was the traveler there. Sheila mostly stayed home and shopped, from what I could tell. But he’d been to the Far East quite a bit-Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing. An investment banker. Not what I’d call a nice man, but an observant one. He noticed things, and he had a wonderful way of describing them.”

He mention Russia at all?”

She frowned. “No, not that I recall.”

“Anyone else?” I asked. She thought a moment. “There was another couple. I don’t think they were married, but they didn’t seem like sweethearts, either. I didn’t see much of her. She was either feeling poorly, or just not very social, but she kept to their room for the most part. Her name was Ann, I think. I never did catch a last name. His was Howard Richter, and he’d definitely been to Europe. We got into a long conversation about traveling the canals over there, and he was quite knowledgeable. Otherwise, he struck me as a little aloof. In fact, I kind of wondered why they were even there. They didn’t seem like the type.”

“Does the inn serve breakfast?” I asked suddenly.

“Yes.”

“The morning of the seventeenth, did you notice any of these people-or anyone else, for that matter-acting differently, or missing altogether?”

Marcia Luechauer had placed her cup on the table earlier and now steepled her fingers before her chin, her eyes fixed on some distant object out the window. “Let’s see, that would’ve been my last full day there. Ann didn’t show-no surprise there. The Brockmans were there, in tennis whites. Howard… Let’s see… He did come down-late-and I waved to him from across the room. He acted as though he hadn’t seen me. I remember thinking he and Ann must’ve had a fight, because he looked pretty ugly. But like I said, he was naturally a little moody.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Actually, the one who struck me oddest of all that morning was Douglas, my waiter. He was French-Canadian, and normally as smooth-talking as a bad commercial-one of those God’s-gift-to-women types. He was downright cranky that morning and didn’t look as if he’d slept at all.”

I couldn’t suppress a small laugh. “You have a phenomenal memory. You should be a cop.”

Her eyes gleamed. “I think that would be fascinating. Has any of this helped?”

“Absolutely. We may have gotten a little sidetracked, though, when we focused on the world travelers. Was there anyone else who stood out, for any reason at all?”

“The Meades,” she said instantly. “They were from New York City. She was a lawyer, he was a doctor-Ed and Linda. They both had cell phones, briefcases, perpetual creases between their eyes. I’ve run into people like them, using the inn circuit to try to get back together-try a second honeymoon, I guess. I don’t think it works. It certainly didn’t in this case. They barely spoke to one another. He’d go hiking, she’d borrow a bike. Their dinners were almost totally silent. But there was an odd quality to them that really struck me. It wasn’t hostility. It was coldness. They treated everyone the way they did each other-no favorites. They gave me the creeps. They might have been robots.”

A brief silence settled between us as I continued scribbling notes in my pad. “Other than that,” she resumed, “it was a pretty typical group-couples making the fine foods tour, people just getting away for a few days, some old folks enjoying their retirement… and me,” she added brightly, “the spinsterish busybody.”

“Bless you for that,” I told her. “I wish everyone I interviewed was as observant.”

I rose to my feet and headed toward the hallway. “Are there any last thoughts before I go? Anything more about Douglas, for instance?”

She joined me, shaking her head. “No, I’m afraid not. Other than that one morning, he was his oily self from start to finish.”

“And no one else with overseas baggage?”

She laughed. “Not that I could tell, aside from John Rarig, of course. But him you know about.”

I tried to pause as nonchalantly as possible in the doorway. “How do you mean?”

She looked up at me, surprised. “That he’s been to Europe-speaks fluent German.”

“He told you that?” I asked.

“He didn’t have to. We were talking about wine one evening, and he pulled out a bottle of Gumpoldskirchen Veltliner. It’s Austrian, from the Wachau district, and he pronounced it like a native.”

“Sounds like you just did, too,” I commented.

She burst out laughing, “With a name like Luechauer? I should hope so. I was born over there, and I’m the German teacher here. Anyhow, there’s all sorts of German, I suppose, like anywhere else. His wasn’t the school-taught kind. It was regional. He could only have picked it up by living there.”

I reached for the door and pulled it open, letting in a flood of youthful noises from down the hall. “How did Rarig look the morning of the seventeenth?”

She paused reflectively and then answered, “Tired. He had bags under his eyes.”