The Last Place

CHAPTER 11

North East was what it said it was, a compass point to the north and east of Baltimore. But it wasn’t much else.

Tess caught herself. She was being unfair to this little town at the head of the Chesapeake. It had a sleepy down-to-earth charm, despite the weekend homes and the proliferation of those baffling gift shops found in tourist spots. North East was a real town, a place where people lived and worked year-round. Water was a source of work and leisure here: The marinas outside of town were filled with sailboats and small yachts from as far away as Philadelphia and New Jersey. But it wasn’t as built up as some beach resorts.

Tess realized she was cranky because Cecil County was so much farther than she had remembered and she had hoped to finish today. This was her last stop. She was torn between wanting to have some-thing-anything-to tell her clients and yearning to be done with the whole mess. She felt as if she had been on the hillbilly tour of Maryland. So many sad, tired houses. So many sad, tired lives-except for Dr. Shaw, of course. But even his death had spooked her a little.

She had started the day with the doctor, driving south from Baltimore to the stretch of highway where Michael Shaw had been killed while jogging. It turned out he lived on Gibson Island, the ultimate gated community. It was a literal island, a private patch of land with a gatehouse where the guard was vigilant about keeping the uninvited away.

Using Michael Shaw’s name to try and gain entrance only made him more skeptical.

“He hasn’t lived here for some time,” the guard said. Tess noticed he didn’t say that Shaw was dead. He was cagey, this guarded guard.

“I know. But I wonder if his family-”

“Doesn’t have any family.”

“Doesn’t have any family living here.” But her voice had scaled up in spite of itself, and the guard caught the uncertainty.

“You didn’t know him, did you?”

“No, but-”

“Well,” the guard said. “It’s too late now.”

The Anne Arundel County cops were more welcoming, at least, if not more helpful. They provided copies of the reports filed when Shaw was killed, late last year, and sent the investigating officer out to speak to her. Detective Earl Mutter-who defied his last name by speaking in clear, ringing tones-appeared downright cheerful about how little he knew about the Incident, as he insisted on calling the fatal hit-and-run.

Mutter explained that Shaw was a serious runner training for the Marine Corps marathon in Washington. He had been hit in a blinding rainstorm and his body was thrown clear of the highway into a ditch, where he remained for hours. The accident was classified as a hit-and-run, but Mutter believed the driver never realized someone had been struck and killed.

“Rain was so heavy that day you could barely see your hand in front of your face,” Detective Mutter told Tess. “There was no sign of anyone losing control of his vehicle, no swerve marks, no tracks in the mud along the highway. My guess is the doc was hugging the road pretty close and was thrown so far that the driver wouldn’t have seen his body even if he stopped and looked around. Driver probably came up over a rise and-whomp.”

“They say that’s the way the world will end,” Tess said. “Not with a bang but a whomp.”

“Huh?” Mutter asked.

“Never mind.”

Actually, she understood Detective Mutter’s willingness to take the driver’s side. She thought about the times a human form had suddenly emerged from the darkness when she was driving-careless pedestrians trying to cross busy highways, cyclists riding toward the traffic instead of with it. She had wondered why people weren’t hit more often, given their stupidity. She glanced over the report that the department had provided her.

“It says here he was wearing a bright orange reflective vest.”

“It does?” Mutter turned the report back around so he could read it. “Yeah-but it was morning. Driver has to have his lights on in order for the vest to have something to reflect.”

“I thought state law said you had to have your lights on if you have your windshield wipers on. In rain that heavy, you’d be using your wipers, right?”

“You don’t have to tell me what the law is. But people out here in the country are different, you know? A little more independent in their thinking than you city folk.”

Tess found this rationalization hilarious. There were a few rural pockets between Baltimore and Annapolis, but the area had long ago run together, like a batch of failed cookies spreading over the pan. Anne Arundel County was nothing more than a big suburb. Besides, independent thinking had never been one of its hallmarks.

“Still, technically it’s a homicide, right? So the case stays open.”

“Sure. And we did everything we do with a hit-and-run. We took it to the media, in case anyone saw anything-or in case the driver could be persuaded to come forward after the fact. We checked with body repair shops in the area, to see if anyone brought a car in, claiming they had hit a deer or something like that.”

“Did you look into the doctor’s personal life?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was he married, did he have a girlfriend, did anyone come into money because he died?”

“There was a guy who kept calling himself the doctor’s partner, but I don’t think they were in business together.” The detective didn’t bother to hide his smirk. “I guess the doctor considered himself married, even if the state didn’t. But the doctor forgot that death doesn’t always make an appointment. There was no will, so everything bounced into orphan’s court. It’s still there, I think. I mean, it was five months ago that he died.”

Tess looked at her notes. According to his obituary, Dr. Michael Shaw had been a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he had been involved in several groundbreaking studies, including one on chemical castration. He also had worked at Clifton T. Perkins, Maryland’s prison hospital for the criminally insane.

“But you looked at the partner, right? You checked his alibi, ran records checks, made sure there was no ongoing strife in the relationship.”

“That guy? Jesus, if you met him, you’d know he couldn’t pull off something like that. Not even if he hired someone to do it. He was a mess. Said they had a fight right before it happened-”

Tess looked up from her notes.

Mutter shook his head. “About running in the rain. He told him not to do it. And then he felt bad, because that was the last conversation they ever had. I never understand why people feel so bad about those things. I mean, if your life really passes before your eyes, then you remember the happy stuff too, right?”

“I don’t know,” Tess said. “I imagine a lot of people die grumpy. I know I will. So what happened to the partner?”

“Moved away. To California, I think, some place he has family. A lawyer is trying to untangle the estate. The doctor had money, but not as much as you’d think. Most of his net worth was in the house. They sold it and put the profits in escrow. You got a will?”

The question startled her. “I’m only thirty-one.”

“I’m thirty-eight. Had one drawn up when my first kid was born, when I was twenty-five. It’s inconsiderate, not looking after your affairs. Think of it that way.”

“I guess I don’t want to think of it at all.”

“Exactly,” Mutter said, waggling a finger in her face. “That’s what the doctor did. Which is why his partner had to move back to California without a cent.”

Back on the highway, heading toward Baltimore and then beyond on I-95, Tess wondered who else on her list had forgotten to make a will. Tiffani Gunts had nothing, but she did have a daughter. Did she have a life insurance policy, a trust? Whatever Hazel Ligetti owned had probably gone to the state, to become one of those mysterious unclaimed accounts advertised by the comptroller’s office. Julie Carter was alive and, if she kept going down the reckless path she appeared to be set on, wasn’t likely to leave much behind for her heirs. Four down, one to go.

Lucy Fancher, you are the last remaining hope of my hopeless amateurs. If I can’t find a domestic angle to your death, it’s a shutout.

Still, she should have thought to ask about wills, Tess admonished herself, pulling off in Perryville when she saw a Dairy Queen sign beckoning to her. Here she was, grading local cops on their ability to investigate homicides and she had neglected a basic check.

By day’s end, she’d regret not making another basic check. But at least she had considered, however fleetingly, pulling the autopsy reports for her victims.

It just hadn’t occurred to Tess that someone who died of a gunshot wound might have been discovered in pieces.