The Last Place

CHAPTER 16

“Did anything about that strike you as unusual?”

Carl stopped in his tracks on the sidewalk outside the photography studio. “Wait, I know that line. It’s from a movie. Don’t tell me. I can see the guy who said it, all serious and stone-faced. He’s a really famous actor.”

“No, I mean-”

“I said, don’t tell me. I’ll get it in a second. God, I’m so close. 48 Hours? No, no, that’s not it. One of the Godfathers?”

“Carl-” Tess was not inclined to touch people she did not know well, but she grabbed Carl Dewitt’s left arm and swung him around. “I’m not playing movie trivia. I am not asking a rhetorical question. Let me repeat: Did anything about that strike you as unusual?”

“Yes,” he muttered, yanking his arm from her and rubbing it, as if she had left a stain on his sleeve. “You called me your apprentice, which is one step above flunky. Why’d you do that?”

Tess got into her car, waited for Carl to do the same, then started the engine and began to drive, although she had no destination in mind. They weren’t done with Spartina, she was sure of that much.

“The guy was clearly paranoid about state authorities. It was his first question: ”Are you from the state?“ I wanted him to feel safe with us, at ease. I told an expedient lie. I wasn’t trying to demean you. You’ve got no ID. What were you going to show the guy, your Blockbuster Video card?”

Carl folded his arms across his chest and thought about this. After several quiet minutes, he nodded, satisfied. “Just so it’s not what you really think.”

“He said five years.”

“What?”

“He said his father died five years ago ”I think.“ ”

“Five years, four years, six years.” Carl shrugged. “Not everybody is exact about dates.”

“When did your mother die?”

“Eight years ago February.”

Tess didn’t bother to say anything, just let him listen to the precision of his own words.

“If his dad died around the time Eric was here, it would be sharper in his mind. The two things would be connected.”

Tess nodded. “I think so, yes.”

“So why would he lie about it?”

“Because he doesn’t want us to associate him with Eric. And, by extension, Tiffani. The guy back at the motel couldn’t have been chattier about Eric, and Eric apparently was pretty chatty his ownself. That Ashe guy lied to us. People usually lie for a reason.”

“So let’s go back, jack ‘im up.”

Tess winced a little at the slang, picked up, no doubt, from a movie or a television show.

“We’re not cops, remember? We can’t drag Ashe to an interrogation room and keep him there for hours, playing mind games. My intuition about people is pretty good, but it doesn’t give us any legal standing.”

“So what do we do?”

“I know of only one place to go when I’m stumped.”

The Spartina Public Library was plain, with an emphasis on bestsellers, but it had the Internet connections Tess needed. Using the wireless modem that Dorie had installed for her at an astronomical price, Tess booted up her laptop and began searching the on-line archives of the Spartina Messenger, while Carl flipped through the bound paper versions. Like most newspapers, the Messenger had an on-line database, but it charged for retrieval of articles more than thirty days old.

“So what are you going to do?” Carl asked, distracted momentarily by a page of movie ads.

“Hey, that’s what per diem expenses are for.” Tess signed up for the archive service and began downloading the articles that popped up, beginning with an obituary on Ashe’s father.

“Look at the date.”

Carl leaned over her shoulder. “Son of a bitch. It’s seven years ago.”

“So he wasn’t doing any business with anyone six years ago.” Other Ashes came up, but not the ones Tess wanted. She noticed the Spartina paper had a police log, where petty crimes were listed by address. She tried the address of the photography shop. She found a dozen listings over the past ten years, but they were the kind of petty property crimes one would expect in a depressed business area: smashed shop windows, car break-ins. And the addresses were not precise, so it was impossible to tell if the crimes had affected Ashe’s Studio Portraits or its downtrodden neighbors. She narrowed the search to the months before and after Tiffani Gunts’s murder. Here she found three calls to the fire department for “suspicious odors,” which was mildly interesting but didn’t explain why Ashe Jr. had lied to them about knowing Eric Shivers.

A subdued voice on the PA system reminded them that the library closed at 5 P.M. on Friday nights. Tess checked her watch and quickly plugged Ashe’s name into the form for the local telephone directory. The number popped up, along with a link offering to map the way. Modern life was almost too easy.

“Let’s go,” she said to Carl, then winced, lest this prompt another cinematic reverie on his part. But his mind was elsewhere.

“I thought you said there was no reason to go back and talk to Ashe if we didn’t know anything.”

“Yeah, I know what I said. But people get squirrelly, sometimes, when you show up at their houses. They don’t realize how much of their lives”-she patted the computer-“are inside these babies. It’s one thing to drop by a man’s business, another to go to his home uninvited. Total power play.”

“You showed up on my doorstep, and it didn’t bother me at all.”

Tess didn’t have the heart to tell Carl Dewitt that this was only evidence of how odd he was.

Ashe lived in a raw new development surrounded by shiny fields of mud. A sign at the main entrance promised LUXURY HOMES STARTING IN THE $200s, which seemed a lot to pay for the shoddy skeletons under construction here. It was as if the first two little pigs went into the building business, Tess thought, and let their brother come along at the end and slap brick veneers on these palaces of sticks and straw.

Ashe’s house was the only completed one on his cul-de-sac. Two cars were parked in the driveway, a midsize Japanese car and the inevitable SUV. A child’s Big Wheel had been left behind the SUV, and Tess knew it was destined to be crushed beneath the SUV’s wheels one morning.

A tired-looking blonde still in her day-job clothes answered the door. A television was blaring in the background, and a child appeared to be trying to outscream it. The presumptive Mrs. Ashe looked at once apprehensive and hopeful. The corners of her mouth lifted, as if she had not quite outgrown the fantasy that Publishers Clearing House would show up on her doorstep. But her eyes drooped with the knowledge that all news was bad news.

“Henry’s in the family room,” she said.

This suited Tess. Family rooms were now customarily built alongside the kitchen, creating vast cavernous spaces that offered no privacy. Ashe would have to talk to them in full view of his wife-or risk her suspicions by asking them to go somewhere else. Tess didn’t know what secrets Ashe kept from his wife, but it was a good bet that he had at least a few going.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, lifting his eyes from the television set. It was tuned to one of the financial networks, a summary of the day’s stock market gyrations flowing across the bottom.

“Your father died seven years ago,” Tess said.

“You don’t have to tell me when my father died.”

“I think I do. Because when we stopped by your studio, you said he was the one who dealt with Eric Shivers. Well, Eric last visited here six years ago.”

Ashe turned his gaze back to the television, which was just a way of not making eye contact. “Gee, pardon me. I’m sorry that in the confusion of settling my dad’s estate and getting married and having a child I forgot when I met with some guy named Eric Shivers. I guess I’m just a bad, bad guy.”

Ashe was in a stuffed chair, his feet propped up on an ottoman. Carl walked over and kicked Ashe’s legs from their perch.

“Hey!” Ashe’s yelp made his wife turn from the kitchen, where she had been pretending not to listen while she tended something on the stove. Tess stepped forward, angling her body so she was between the two men. She hated this kind of macho posturing. It was so unproductive and so phony. Just more movie shit.

“You didn’t forget when you met with him,” she said. “You forgot that you met with him at all. That’s why we came back. We’re curious about why you’d lie about such a little thing. Unless it’s real important to you to distance yourself from Eric Shivers for some reason.”

“Look, I don’t know what Eric Shivers has stepped in, but I haven’t seen him for years. We did a little business together. That’s all. He told me he would follow the regs, and I believed him. Did his price seem too good to be true? Yes. Could I afford someone else? No.”

Tess was confused. “Follow the regs?”

“When my dad died, the only thing I inherited was a photography studio. An old-fashioned, run-down, behind-the-times photography studio that wasn’t worth as much as the land it’s sitting on.”

“So?”

“So I paid Eric to clean it up, get rid of all the crap on the premises. There were gallons of chemicals and fixes, things I had no use for, things so old even people backward enough to be using them wouldn’t want to buy them. Eric said he would do it right, and I’d never have to worry about this.”

“This?”

“Investigators up my ass, trying to bust me for improper disposal of chemical waste. He promised.”

“So the last time you saw him six years ago-”

“He came to pick up his last payment.”

“In cash?”

“In cash.” Ashe shrugged. “He was a bargain. And he did what he said he would do. He cleaned the place out so I could put it on the market. Too bad the market went south. But if I ever do get a contract on it, I won’t have to sweat the inspection.”

“Except for the lead paint and the asbestos in the insulation,” his wife said matter-of-factly from the kitchen, as if she wanted to remind Ashe that she was there, within earshot, and she knew some of his secrets, if not all of them.

Carl frowned. “Doesn’t the law say you have to make full disclosure? Won’t you have to tell a prospective buyer that you once stored all sorts of chemicals and shit on the site?”

“What are you, anyway, real estate cops? It’s a photography studio. If a buyer wants an environmental inspection, he can fuckin‘ well pay for it.”

Tess took the lead back. Carl was too prone to tangents. “The last time you saw Eric-do you remember the day?”

“It was March, and winter was still hanging around. That’s the best I can do. Sorry.” His tone indicated he was anything but.

“Did he ever talk about his personal life?”

“We were in business. I never asked about his life and he never asked about mine. Do you show your baby pictures to the garbageman?”

Could be a lie, Tess thought. Ashe had shown himself to be a liar, and he might be the jealous, vindictive man they sought. But his very posture spoke of an endemic laziness. It was hard to imagine him mustering the energy to kill someone for any reason.

“And all he did was come by for his money. How much?”

“I dunno. Couldn’t have been more than three hundred dollars, because I got it from an ATM.”

“You said you don’t remember the date,” Carl put in. “What about the time?”

“Night, after dark. I was the only one left on the street.”

Carl glanced at Tess, and she nodded. Eric had checked in at the motel at midday and gone on his “rounds.” He had returned by evening, and the van had been parked there the rest of the night, according to the observant manager. The Maryland state troopers came for Eric the next morning and roused him from sleep to tell him that his fiancée, and his life, had been shot through the heart. One trooper drove Eric’s van home because he was too upset to drive himself.

“What was he driving?” she asked.

“Driving? I don’t know. What does it matter? There was nothing left to haul.”

“Tell us again.”

“Tell you what?”

“What time did he get there? What time did he leave?”

Slumped in his chair, his chinless face receding into his neck, Ashe looked like a turtle half in his shell. “I don’t know. It was six years ago. It was dark, it was late. How much more do you need to know?”

“We need to know,” Tess said, “if there’s a car rental place within walking distance of the motor court, the one near the river.”

“A car rental by that dump? Jesus Christ, I doubt-”

“But there is, Henry,” his wife interrupted. “You probably never noticed, but there’s one of those combination gas station and convenience stores with a car rental franchise in it. If you want to rent a car after six P.M., it’s pretty much the only place in town. Remember when you cracked up the Explorer and we had to get a rental for a whole month, while it was in the shop? I called around and-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ashe said. “So there’s a car rental. So what?” Tess already had a pen out and was turning over the map she had used to find Ashe’s home. “Could you give us directions? Real explicit ones. Because we’re strangers here, and it’s getting dark.”

“A convenience store with a car rental and a car wash and video rentals,” Carl said. “What’s next? How many more things are they going to put under one roof?”

“Everything,” Tess said absently. “I’m surprised the big hospital companies haven’t started buying up those corporate funeral home chains and started advertising ”birth-to-earth‘ service.“

“That’s from-”

“West Side Story. I know. But I bet I know something about that movie that you don’t.”

“What?” Clearly, Carl didn’t think this was possible.

“In the stage version of West Side Story, the character said they would be friends ”from sperm to worm.“ But you couldn’t say that onscreen, not in the sixties.”

“Really?”

“Really. No sperm, not in the sixties. I don’t even think they could say womb to tomb.”

“And now every other word on HBO is fuck this or fuck that. But you don’t really need that hard-core language. In The Wild Bunch-”

But they were in the store now, so Tess was spared any more discussion of William Holden and the opening shot of the scorpion.

The manager at this multidimensional convenience store was a veteran-he had been there for a staggering three years, “two years longer than anyone else on staff,” he told them proudly. Which was an impressive feat, no doubt, but of no help to Tess and Carl.

“Unless-” Tess said, drumming her fingers on the change mat.

“Unless what?” Bright-eyed and eager to please, he was one of those rarities, a young man in the service industry who wanted to provide service. “How can I help you?”

“We’re screenwriters.” The lie just popped out, a by-product of their West Side Story conversation. “And we try to be as accurate as possible. We’re working on a thriller for-”

“A director we dare not name.” Carl jumped in, sensing that Tess was about to falter. “But trust me. It’s someone you know.”

“Are you going to film here in Spartina?” The manager’s eyes were wide.

Carl held a finger to his lips and smiled conspiratorially.

“Well, gosh, what do you need to know?”

“Do you keep records of your car rentals? If you had someone’s name going back, say, six years, could you find him in the system?”

“Maybe with a date-”

“How about-” Carl had taken complete charge, and Tess let him go, impressed by his skills. In day-to-day life, he was an odd little fellow. But when he snapped into cop mode, he could be effective, as long as he stopped short of kicking people’s legs off their ottomans. “How about March nineteenth, six years ago. And use the name-oh, Eric Shivers.”

“That’s kind of an odd name.”

“It’s the name of our major character,” Carl said, winking at him. “Know about clearances? We can’t use the name if it turns out there really is an Eric Shivers renting cars in Spartina.”

The starstruck manager pounded the keyboard with those one-note clicks peculiar to car rental clerks and ticket agents, but found nothing. “You’re in luck. No Eric Shivers, not even a Shivers in all this time. I told you it was an odd name.”

“So you can search by name?” Tess asked.

“Yeah, most of the time. We put people in the computer so we can call up their stats, remember any preferences they have. Company pretends it’s a service, because it cuts a few seconds off the time it takes to do the paperwork. But just between us, I think they sell the information to direct-mail firms.”

“What about by date? Could you print out every car rented from here on that particular date?”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t do that.” More clicks. “No, we changed computer systems since then, and we never reconciled the records. Maybe back at corporate.”

“Oh.” Tess leaned against a rack of chips, disappointed. They had seemed to be on to something. What, she wasn’t sure. The fact that Eric Shivers had left his van at the motor court all evening, and taken a different vehicle to see Ashe, had seemed fraught with significance, the way jagged pieces of information often do. But he might have taken a cab. Or the motor court manager could be mistaken. What would have prevented Eric from going out for half an hour and coming back, with no one noticing?

As for the fact that he had fudged the nature of his work here in Spartina-well, he probably was in photography supplies and saw an opportunity to pick up some extra cash from Ashe. For all they knew, he had recycled some of the chemicals he had transported. She picked up a package of potato chips, studying the label as if the calories and the list of ingredients could dissuade her from wanting them. Talk about chemicals. Maltodextrin, dextrose, wheat starch, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil-

“Palm oil,” she said.

“Bad stuff,” Carl said. “Do they have anything with canola oil?”

“I mean”- her mind was playing a word association game, one that seemed improbable and stupid-“palm oil. Palmer.”

“You think-?” His eyes widened.

“Try Alan Palmer,” Tess told the manager.

“Is that another character?”

“Just do it.”

“Okay. But, man, I can’t believe you guys do all this research and the movies turn out as silly as they do.” Click, click, click. Click, click, click. It seemed to take forever.

“Well, what do you know? Alan Palmer did rent a car that day. And he was from Maryland too, same as y’all.”

“You need a valid driver’s license to rent a car, right?”

“Oh, yes, indeedy. Driver’s license and credit card, a real one, not a debit.”

It was all Tess could do to find her voice, thank the young man, leave the store, and make it back to her car. It felt as if the small parking lot was a mile wide. Carl followed, just as dazed. They did not get in the Toyota but just leaned against it, looking up at the night sky. They were far enough out in the country so the sky was riotous with stars.

“What’s happening here?” Carl asked at last. “Did Eric and Alan Palmer know each other? Was it some Strangers on a Train scenario? You kill mine and I’ll kill yours?”

“No,” Tess said, surprised by her own certainty. “Alan Palmer hadn’t met Lucy Fancher by the time Tiffani Gunts died. They wouldn’t meet for another year, remember? Their relationship began the spring of the following year.”

“Then it makes no sense.”

“There’s one way it makes sense.” Her mouth was dry, and she had to lick her lips to get the next sentence out. “Eric Shivers and Alan Palmer are the same person.”

“No way. That’s not possible. You heard the guy. Alan Palmer had a driver’s license and a credit card. How can he have those things if he’s really Eric Shivers?”

“Such things can be faked,” Tess said, thinking of the forger to whom Mickey Pechter had referred her just a few weeks ago. “Don’t you get it? By the time Tiffani Gunts died, Eric Shivers had already made the preparations to disappear, already had his next identity picked out. Alan Palmer could have done the same thing-had his new identity ready to go, rented a car, leaving his van where it would be seen, where his whereabouts would be presumed.”

“Alan Palmer is in a hospital in Connecticut.”

“Oh, I’m sure someone named Alan Palmer is in a hospital in Connecticut. And I bet he has a broken neck from a car accident. But did you check to see when he was admitted, or did you just take the word of that caseworker who called you?”

Carl looked down at the ground. “Didn’t seem like something a person would lie about. He was in the hospital. Never occurred to me to ask when he got there, because I thought I knew.”

“Eric is probably a real person, too. He’s just not the Eric Shivers who courted and wooed Tiffani Gunts.”

“Do you know what you’re saying?”

“The same man killed Tiffani Gunts and Lucy Fancher. And he’s still out there somewhere, probably in a new relationship. He’s found another dark-haired girl, a girl with a history of bad relationships, and he’s changing her life for the better. He’s getting her teeth fixed, helping her establish credit, urging her to go back to school and find a better job. Her friends and family love him, swear he’s the best thing that ever happened to her. They’re happy, they’re in love, and they’re going to get married.”

“You think-”

“I think this guy is the perfect boyfriend-up until the day he kills you.”