The Last Place

CHAPTER 21

“I charge for missed appointments. I thought I made that clear at our first meeting. You must cancel twenty-four hours in advance, or you will be billed in full.”

“But in the case of an emergency-” Tess protested.

“I do not consider driving to the Eastern Shore at the last minute to be an emergency.”

“Sorry,” she said, sullen as a child, reduced once again to pulling on the strings of the old wing chair. “I’m just trying to track down a serial killer, so I came in on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. God forbid that should make me a day late for this court-ordered charade.”

She had been more authentically contrite when their session started. But Dr. Armistead had been maddeningly indifferent to her explanation, which struck her as much more interesting than most of the mundane utterances made in therapy. Carl had a point: It was all my-mother-this, my-father-that. Yet Dr. Armistead had been downright incurious about her work. All he wanted to know was why she had not thought to call, how she could have forgotten her appointment.

At times he had seemed more like an aggrieved suitor than a doctor.

“We all think our work is important, Tess,” he began now.

“Yes, only I’m right. My work is important, okay? This man has killed at least two women and stolen two identities. He could have three-four victims by now. He could be in another relationship, weeks, even days away from killing a new woman.”

Armistead had a habit of clasping his hands and holding two index fingers to his lips, where he tapped them softly. A tell, Tess thought, but what was he telling?

“Let’s talk about you and impulse control, Tess.”

“Impulse control? I don’t think I have a problem with that.”

“I didn’t say you did. I’m not here to say you have this or that problem. But can you identify any patterns in your behavior when it comes to impulsive action? Do you think you are more prone, or less prone, to following every novel idea that pops into your head?”

“No. No, I don’t.” But her own body language made her realize what a brat she was being. She had slumped in the chair until her chin was on her chest and her legs were stretched out in an adolescent’s defiant posture. Sheepishly, she straightened up and made eye contact with the doctor. Although eye contact was a bit of misnomer, for she was always distracted by those bristling eyebrows, so much more compelling than the small deep-set eyes beneath them.

“I think I have a lot of self-control,” she said, but her voice was more tentative.

“How about the night you attacked Mickey Pechter?”

“I didn’t attack him.”

“Excuse my use of the term, then. But can you see any way in which your actions were impulsive, that things escalated from what I’ll call emotional momentum. Is it fair to say you got carried away?”

“Carried away by what?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. I might describe it as… a sense of righteousness, perhaps. A certitude that your actions were justified.”

“But they were.”

“Perhaps. The question of whether you did the right thing doesn’t interest me as much as whether you have a tendency to think you’re always doing the right thing.”

He was accusing her of being like the people she had described to Carl, the ones who thought they could always justify their own actions. But she wasn’t one of them. Was she?

“I’m trying to catch a killer.”

Dr. Armistead’s index fingers tapped faster on his lips. “I thought the state police were in charge of the investigation and you were merely assisting them.”

“Yes, but-”

“Tess.” She did not like to hear her name on his lips, although she couldn’t say why. It sounded presumptive, as if he thought he knew her, and this was only the third time they had spoken. He did not know her, could not know her, not after three sessions, not after thirty.

“Tess, I’m trying to get you to think about your own actions. I’m not saying you are right or wrong. But you need to look at your behavior as part of a larger whole, that’s all. It could be helpful to you.”

She did not agree but it seemed easier to placate, to pretend. “I know.”

“Now, how do you feel when you think about this serial killer?”

“I feel that there are two people who ask people how they feel-psychiatrists and television reporters.”

“What are you inferring?”

“Nothing.” It amused Tess that even an educated person would confuse infer with imply. Then again, she had heard smart people, people she actually liked, misuse hopefully and comprise. It drove her mad. Now there was a thought: A serial killer motivated by poor grammar. She imagined Eric Shivers/Alan Palmer whiling away his days in domestic bliss, only to have Tiffani or Lucy come in and say between you and I.

She smiled at her own folly, then remembered these were real women, real victims, and regretted her black humor. A coping device, one used by reporters and cops alike. She often thought Jonathan would have a lot of funny things to say about his own death.

“Do you have any idea,” Dr. Armistead asked, “how much happens in your face in the span of a few seconds?”

“No.” She always imagined she had a poker face, but perhaps that was only when she was playing poker.

“If your feelings-sorry I keep returning to that topic, but it is what I do-if your feelings were any clearer, you’d be a danger to yourself.”

“I guess I’ll have to work on it.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.” He smiled, as if he had won a point, although Tess wasn’t sure of the game they were playing. Continual one-upmanship? “I’ll waive the fee for the missed appointment this one time, given that you rescheduled so promptly. But don’t let it happen again. If it’s a true emergency-and we’ll have to reach a mutual understanding about what constitutes an emergency-we’ll work it out.”

“What about the terms of my probation? Do I get reported to Judge Halsey if I miss a session?”

“Not this time. But if it were to become a pattern-” Dr. Armistead did not need to finish this congenial threat. He wrote the time and date of their next appointment on a small card and handed it to her. “I’ll also have my secretary leave a message on your voice mail the day before, just to nudge your memory.”

“Why not? The dentist does.”

“And, as I keep trying to convince you, I’m a doctor like any other.”

His voice was soft, persuasive. If she didn’t have to look at him, Tess thought, she might like him better. It was such a nice voice, deep and rumbly. A doctor like any other. Yeah, sure. Frankly, she’d rather have leeches applied to her body.

“Can you tell what I’m thinking?” she demanded of Carl, when she arrived at the state police barracks twenty minutes later.

The question seemed to make him irritable. “I barely know you. If I’m doing something that bugs you, just say it right out. I can’t stand the way women hint about stuff.”

“No, I mean in general. Does the expression on my face betray what’s going on in my head?”

“That’s a lot to put on any face. I’m not sure that a mouth and one set of eyes could convey everything that goes on in there.” He tapped his own ginger thatch of hair. “For example-I never saw that question coming, and I have no idea why you asked it.”

“Good. Now, what happened while I was gone? Any calls come in?”

“None that mattered.” Carl looked around, as if he expected someone was eavesdropping. “Close the door.”

The state police had given Tess and Carl a makeshift office in a corridor that was en route to, but rather distant from, where the real investigation was under way. Tess thought it might be a mark of respect. Carl was convinced it was a way of keeping tabs on them.

One theory, Tess decided, didn’t rule out the other. She glanced into the corridor and, seeing no one, shut the door.

“Officially,” Carl said, “I’ve been manning the tip line. Major Shields seems a little suspicious about our whereabouts yesterday. And when I told him you had a doctor’s appointment this morning, he thought I was kidding.”

“Why? Did you say what kind of doctor’s appointment?”

“You ashamed of being in anger management?” Carl looked genuinely curious.

“No, but-it’s private.”

“Well, I told him you were at the podiatrist. Sounds like psychiatrist, you know. Head doctor, foot doctor-how would a dumb country boy know the difference?”

Tess gave him a crooked grateful grin. “So did the tip line yield anything?”

“Mainly crackpots. But what do you expect when you put up fake MISSING PERSON signs in convenience stores?”

“You expect-hope, pray-that someone’s going to see Alan Palmer’s photo and say, ”Hey, I know that guy and he’s definitely not missing.“ ”

The state police had thought the plan through, in Tess’s opinion. Palmer’s family, which had been questioned at length about their son’s associates, had been told not to worry when the signs went up. The idea was to tease out a local woman who may have had a near-miss with the man. And if the man himself saw it? The poster was designed to appear as if it had been made and distributed by one of Lucy Fancher’s nonexistent relatives, for it intimated that they had information about her estate that would be relevant to Alan Palmer. The call even had a fake Cecil County prefix, which was set up to ring in this office.

“What about Becca Harrison?”

“I can’t find a trace of anyone with that name. But women get married, change their names. Women are hard to find.”

“And her father?”

“A Harold ”Harry‘ Harrison with an appropriate date of birth died thirteen years ago, according to the Social Security database. Last known address was upstate New York. If he ever did write a book, I can’t find it, not on Amazon.“

“My guess is that Harry Harrison’s work, assuming it ever existed, is long out of print.”

“What about the high school yearbook? Did that yield anything?”

They looked at the copy of the Crisfield Courier, the usual slender volume, bound in green, a gold seal stamped on its front. They had found it in the Crisfield library. It was a noncirculating reference book, but it had been easy enough to pilfer it. Tess planned to FedEx it back, with an anonymous note of apology and enough cash to buy a few new novels.

“It’s too easy for people to disappear these days,” Tess said. “We think we have all these tools, but if you really want to vanish it can be done.”

“Well, Becca did it in the good old days. Turns out Harry Harrison did file a missing persons report with Talbot County, which patrols Notting Island.”

“You tease! Where’d you get that?”

Carl patted the side of the old IBM clone they had been given. “There’s more software on here than you know. You just have to know how to use it. And I do. It was April, around fifteen years ago.”

“A few months after Eric Shivers died.”

“Yep. Her father told police he thought she might have gone swimming.”

“Swimming in April?”

Carl nodded. “I know. Pretty cold in the bay that time of year. Besides, it’s hard for the bay not to let go of a body. Eventually.”

“So, Becca disappears two months shy of her high school graduation-and, coincidentally, a few months after Eric Shivers dies. Her father files a missing persons report, but people on Notting Island think she’s gone off to become a singer or an actress. Her dad moves away not long after. Is he heartbroken or covering up? Does he think his daughter drowned or ran away? We can’t ask him, and we already tried to ask everyone we could find on Notting Island.”

Tess sometimes liked to sit very still when thinking. Carl, on the other hand, rocked in his chair, teetering wildly until she was tempted to kick the legs out from under him. Maybe she did have a problem with impulse control. Instead, she got up and opened the door. Closed doors invited suspicion.

“You think they got anything new, after talking to the Guntses and the Palmers?” Carl jerked his chin toward the open door, indicating the world of official police just beyond their threshold.

“Possibly.”

“You think they’ll tell us when they do?”

“Probably not.” Tess grinned. “They made it clear this is not a two-way street. We’re tenant farmers. We owe them our yield, but they don’t share anything with us.”

As if to prove her point, Sergeant Craig rushed by, eyes averted, as if he was worried they would try to engage him.

Carl rubbed his knee. “Weather’s going to change.”

“You feel the weather changing in your bum knee?”

He shrugged, as if it baffled him too.

“Look, I’m hungry. Want to blow this pop stand and get some lunch?”

“You know I only eat at the end of the day.”

“Yeah-I know that’s idiotic. Come on, let’s go eat something, see if it jars anything loose in our brains. I can’t stand sitting in this room anymore, pretending to work.”

“Seafood?” he asked hopefully. Great, Carl had finally consented to eat a midday meal, only to choose her least favorite thing on the planet.

“If you’re willing to drive a ways.”

“Sure.” Then as an afterthought, almost suspicious. “Why?”

“I’m not a big seafood fan, but I like the setting at Jimmy Cantler’s, especially this time of year. Let’s go there.”

“You don’t like seafood, but you like to sit next to water when you eat?”

“Yeah. Do you think that makes me crazy?”

“I don’t know. Ask your doctor. He’s the one who’s getting the big bucks to figure you out.”

They were a few miles north of the turnoff to Annapolis when Carl said, “Someone’s following us.”

“What-”

“Don’t look,” he said, catching Tess’s neck with his right hand before she could turn her head. “Car’s been on us since we left Pikesville. It didn’t seem too weird at first-a lot of folks head into the city down Reisterstown Road. But he’s following us.”

“He?” Tess asked.

“I think it’s a he. With the glare on the windshield, all I can be sure of is that there’s only one person in the car.”

Tess flipped open the mirror on the visor above her seat, as if to check the makeup she wasn’t wearing. Carl was right-it was impossible to see anything except a shape. The shoulders and the suggestion of a baseball cap indicated it was a man, but that’s all she could say for sure.

They were in Carl’s car, a not-old, not-young Saturn. Gradually, he pushed it to seventy, then eighty, and finally ninety mph. Interstate 97 was sometimes called Maryland’s autobahn, for its smooth, easy curves seduced drivers into higher-than-legal speeds. But the Saturn was almost vibrating as its odometer needle climbed. It felt as if Carl could lose control at any minute. Tess knew the road, knew there was a big curve coming, where 97 turned east and the straightaway led down an old state highway.

“Carl-” she began.

He didn’t seem to hear her. He drove as if all the other cars on the road were stationary objects, and his only goal was to move between them. He slid in the far left lane, pushing the speed higher still.

“He still with us?” Carl said.

“He-”

“Don’t look,” he hissed.

Carl’s Saturn went faster still. Tess looped her hand in the handle above the door and braced the other hand against the dash. They were coming to the turnoff, where the road split and the highway had a long tapering curve that required even the best drivers to slow down. Carl showed no signs of doing this. He seemed to be counting to himself, grimly.

“Almost, almost, almost-now.” With one quick, precise turn of the wheel, he sailed back into the right lane, edging in front of an eighteen-wheeler and taking the straightaway, while a dark blue car- Tess was not sure of the make or model, it was just another foreign sedan, a Toyota or a Nissan-continued down the highway. Carl, belatedly prudent, had taken his foot off the accelerator and was letting his car slow down gradually.

“Do we need to double back to 97, or can you get there from here?” he asked, as if nothing had happened.

“Jesus, Carl, what kind of boneheaded move was that? If someone’s following you, just lead him along, take him to the fucking police station. But don’t try to drive a Saturn like you’re the king of fuckin‘ NASCAR.”

He stiffened, hurt. “If I were alone, I might have risked a confrontation with the guy. But I thought it was better, with you in the car, to lose him.”

“Hey, no fake chivalry bullshit, okay? I’m licensed to carry a gun. I’m good at taking care of myself. My boyfriend doesn’t pull this kind of macho shit on me. Where do you get off?”

“Well, maybe he should.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying-” He paused for a breath, and whatever adrenaline kick he had derived from the little chase was beginning to ebb. “I’m not saying anything. I know you can take care of yourself. But that guy was definitely following us.”

“I never doubted that part,” Tess said. Although, come to think of it, maybe she did. Carl Dewitt was about as paranoid as anyone as she had ever met. “I just didn’t like the way you handled it.”

He was slowing, looking for a place to turn around. “You made your point. Do you have to make it in that tone of voice?”

“What tone?”

“That superior I’m-the-boss tone. I’m a pro too, you know. I deserve to be treated like one.”

She started to point out that he was not, that he was the most amateurish of amateurs. He wasn’t making a nickel off this case, while she was able to bill her time to her consortium of nonprofits. But the thought brought her up short. Why was Carl doing this? What was in it for him?

Instead, she asked, “How do you support yourself, since you stopped working for the state?”

“My knee.”

“Your knee supports you?”

“I fell at work, in the parking lot. I probably was headed that way anyway, but the fall meant I had to have replacement surgery. I’ll live long enough to need at least one more, maybe two. The rehab was hard, and I ended up screwing up my back as well, needing disk surgery. By then, I’d been out six months. I retired at age thirty-five on full disability.”

“Some folks probably envy you that.”

“Yeah, well, in the land of the no-knee men, I guess the one-knee man is king.”

Tess laughed. “That’s pretty good. Is it yours, or is that another movie line?”

“I don’t know.” Carl was driving with an old man’s deliberateness now, as if to make up for scaring her. “Maybe. It should be, don’t you think?”