The Skeleton's knee

30

I sat alone in the office on the top floor of the Whipple Street house that Susan Pendergast, as Billie Lucas, had lived in and worked out of for the past twenty-odd years, conducting pottery classes, doing charts, and generally playing the expected role of the socially conscious, liberated woman she’d painted herself to be.

It was late-past ten o’clock. For the past five hours, we’d been combing the building for signs of where she might have vanished, for vanished she had. According to the friends and colleagues we’d contacted so far, she’d left in the middle of a meeting several days ago, purportedly to use the phone.

It was the completeness of her disappearance that nagged me the most. By now, we had poked into every square inch of the building. We had found bankbooks, business records, tax papers, personal correspondence, even love letters. In her bathroom and bedroom, everything was still in place, from her underwear to her toothbrush. Her car was still parked by the side of the house.

I had detectives and patrol units all over town interviewing people, rousting judges for warrants, going over phone and bank records, and analyzing the papers we’d found here. Photos and descriptions of her had been circulated all over the state, and to police departments, sheriff ’s offices, and state law-enforcement agencies beyond our borders. But somewhere in my gut, I knew it would all be for nothing, because I knew that it wasn’t the police that had kept Susan’s survival instincts sharp over the years-and would drive her now to burrow deep underground-but the threat of Shattuck’s revenge.

Without a single shred of evidence, I was convinced Susan Pendergast was acting out the nightmare she’d kept bottled up inside her for two and a half decades. She was the last of three fugitives. After Abraham Fuller had died and David’s bones were disinterred, she must have known her own anonymity was doomed, and her life become forfeit.

The question was, where was she now? From the time I’d arrived back in Brattleboro, I’d felt like a racehorse striving for the finish, trying to beat out a shadowy, unseen competitor. But now that I knew Susan was scared and running, how could I keep myself at the head of a race that had suddenly changed from a mad sprint to one of careful strategy?

I was sitting at the same desk I’d seen Billie typing at the first time we’d met. The lights were off now, and only the reflected glow from the streetlamps outside revealed the vague details of the room. Downstairs, I could still hear people moving about, checking and rechecking the contents of the house, frustrated that the policeman’s adage that nobody vanishes without a trace was proving to have an exception.

There was a knock at the door, and J. P. Tyler, who was heading up the search of the house, stuck his head in. “Anyone here?”

“Yeah.”

He stepped inside, wisely leaving the lights off. He knew my moods. “We found a hiding place, kind of like Fuller’s. Two M-16s and several boxes of ammunition, all.223 LC 67 stock.”

“That it?”

“There’s a small fortune in cash, too, the stolen chart, and a book.”

“The Scarlet Letter?”

“Yeah. I was going to box it up for the Waterbury lab, but I thought you might like to take a look first.”

I switched on the desk lamp and he walked forward, gingerly carrying a paperback hanging from a wire like a small piece of laundry from a clothesline, preserving whatever fingerprints it might have on it.

He laid it carefully on the desk. I saw the title on the spine was roughly circled in a rusty brown-the dried blood from Fuller’s pricked finger, just as it was on the photograph I’d seen.

“The inside cover,” Tyler indicated.

I used my pen to pry back the front of the book. On the inside, also scrawled in brown, was the message: “I burned it-Love.”

“I checked the rest of the hiding place; there’s nothing else-at least nothing obvious.”

I nodded and let the cover fall back. “Does it look like anything was removed recently?”

He picked up the book again. “It’s hard to tell, of course, but I don’t think so.”

“How much money?”

“Something like a half-million, all in hundreds.”

“Okay, J.P.-thanks.”

He retired and I switched the light back off, remembering the fresh ashes and the match we’d found in Fuller’s wood stove.

I burned what?

The intercom on the phone buzzed. I picked it up and gave my name.

One of the search team said, “Ron’s on line one, Lieutenant.”

I hit the blinking button. “What’s up?”

“Couple of things I thought you’d like to know. I’m at the bank right now, going through her records-the manager’s madder than hell, by the way, and said he’d let you know what he thought about us rousting people in the middle of the night-but what we’ve found so far is nothing. I took her IRS files from the house to compare them with these at the bank, and they match perfectly-same basic income and expenses. And we opened her deposit box, too-just some jewelry. I know she probably has other accounts under other names, but so far, it all looks regular as dishwater, so I don’t know where she stashed her share of the money, assuming she has one.”

“J.P. just found it hidden in the house-about half a million.”

Ron digested that for a moment. “Then that makes sense. Something else came up a couple of days ago, when you were still in Chicago, kind of through the grapevine. You know the driver of that hearse that was shot up on the interstate? Well, he’s still in the hospital, doing fine, but two days ago, one hundred thousand dollars was deposited anonymously into his account. I just called his wife and she confirms it. They didn’t know what to make of it. You think it might have been Lucas?”

“Probably. Let me know if you find anything else.”

I hung up and dialed Gail’s number. I’d spoken to her earlier, when we’d found Lucas had flown the coop. She’d been stunned at Billie’s duplicity, and perhaps a little hurt at the betrayal of trust.

This time, when I talked to her about the hundred thousand dollars, Gail was more philosophical-and supportive of her former friend. “It doesn’t erase what she did last week-or whatever she might have done in Chicago-but it’s got to work in her favor. It proves that the good things about her weren’t complete lies.”

I didn’t debate the salving of one’s conscience with other people’s stolen money. After all, I, too, had taken an instant liking to Billie Lucas, and I had to admit that her gesture had been generous and thoughtful, especially considering the amount involved. Also, I wasn’t so pure, either, when it came to protecting myself from Bob Shattuck. Like Billie, I’d taken protective measures. Hers had been amateurish, resulting in the injuring of an innocent man; mine, far more devious and subversive, had enlisted the mob, or so I hoped. Putting things in that light, I was in no position to judge another’s desperation.

So I stuck to the task at hand, leaving unchallenged Gail’s understandable loyalty. “You haven’t come up with any ideas of where she might have gone?”

“No. I’ve been racking my brains, trying to remember if she ever mentioned someone or someplace that might fit, but she never did-never talked about her family, where she came from, or anything else private. She’d always turn the conversation around and talk about the here and now. She was so good at it, I never really noticed.”

“I’ve been looking at that chart again, by the way. I’m pretty sure now it’s Billie’s. For one thing, it doesn’t jibe at all with what she told you.”

I made a sour face in the dark. “That figures.”

“None of us thought to double-check it, since she was the local expert, and we ended up focusing on finding the birthplace, anyway.”

I appreciated her not saying that my reluctance to deal with the chart from the beginning had fostered that lack of thoroughness. “I don’t suppose the damn thing says where she is now?”

“No, but it would’ve told you who she was much sooner, I think. Just using my own books and the little I know about chart reading, I picked up a few warning lights tonight.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Like what?”

“The major personality trait isn’t shyness at all, but a need for approval, even applause-the kind a community do-gooder might get. Also, the child-abuse emphasis doesn’t involve the mother, but the father, who has all the typical trimmings of a military man. If you’d known that, you might’ve pegged her when you were in Marquette.”

“Oh, well,” I muttered, by now thoroughly depressed. “Spilled milk, I guess.”

Her voice was sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Joe-this must be pretty frustrating. Got any ideas?”

I reflected back on what I’d been pondering earlier, before Tyler had knocked on the door. “I’ve got one-a long shot-but I need to bounce it off Tony first.”

“He’s here-want to talk to him?”

“What’re you doing there?” I asked Brandt when he got on the line.

“I switched with Sammie. Gail said you had something on your mind. Why don’t you come over? I think she’s getting a little sick of seeing just us. You can give me a full update then, too.”

I agreed and headed out Route 9 into West Brattleboro. Gail lived in a converted apple barn on a hill high above Meadowbrook Road, an isolated but exposed spot, which is why Brandt had found it so suitable a place to trap Shattuck.

I was still some distance away when the radio burst to life with the news I’d been dreading since the drive from the airport. “M-80 from O-1-shots fired; officer down at Meadowbrook Road, Zigman residence. All available units respond to seal the area.”

M-80, radio language for our dispatch, began handing out assignments and coordinating approaches to shut off all exits from Meadowbrook, but I was no longer listening. The chorus of voices, the arcane ten-code synonyms, and the growing excitement crackling from the loudspeaker went by me like so much background music. I concentrated on driving as fast as I could, not giving a damn about anything other than getting to Gail in time.

The house was completely illuminated, like a lighthouse on a hill. I spun my tires racing up the steep driveway and ground to a halt behind Gail’s car. Below me, unseen in the darkened valley, the distant howling of approaching sirens sounded like hungry wolves on the prowl.

The windshield to the parked car was shattered, and the side of Gail’s house riddled by a string of bullet holes. The acrid smell of gunpowder lingered in the air. I bolted up the steps leading to the deck, the sense of dread so heavy on me now it bordered on complete panic. I almost collided with Tony Brandt as he stepped through the shattered double doors at the top.

He placed his hands against my chest momentarily. “She’s fine-not a scratch-in the kitchen,” he said, then let me go by.

I found her leaning against the counter, staring at a slowly filling coffee machine. Her face was pale and drawn, but the smile and the relief it foretold were genuine. She turned, put both her arms around my neck and gave me a fierce hug. “Christ, I’m glad to see you.”

I pulled back enough so that I could see her face, my heart still pounding from fear. “Thank God you’re okay.”

“If I’d known what to expect, I might not have been quite so eager to volunteer.”

I hugged her again. “What happened?”

Shattuck had apparently thrown all caution to the wind, appearing from out of the dark on foot and kicking in the glass front doors. All hell had then broken loose-from inside, where Tony had been joined for the night by SRT member Al Santos, and outside, as the perimeter guards had closed in.

Gail had never been exposed to any direct danger. The Special Response people had insisted that she sleep on the floor of her office, located on the uppermost of the house’s several lofts, and Brandt had positioned himself on a landing just below the only set of stairs leading to her.

Al had not been so lucky. Stationed in the living room, with a view of the doors and most of the windows, he’d been the first to confront Shattuck and had caught bullets in the right hand, the right earlobe, and through the fleshy inner portion of his left thigh, all delivered by a short-barreled, rapid-firing machine gun.

Al’s presence, however, and his single misplaced shot, had done the trick-at least in preserving Gail’s safety. Shattuck had quickly retreated, firing as he went, forcing the SRT members outside to dive for cover. Santos had ended up being the only casualty. The same careless bravado that had stimulated Shattuck to attack in the first place had also served him well in his escape. By the time the shooting had stopped, he’d disappeared back into the night.

The coffeemaker finished its job as Gail reached the end of her account, and she began pouring out cups for the growing number of police officers who were now gathering around the house. Tony Brandt let her finish filling a tray and then suggested that the three of us get the hell out of there and let Billy Manierre and Ron Klesczewski coordinate the mop-up and search operations. “Given this crazy bastard’s style,” he concluded, “there’s no guarantee he won’t try again.”

Since my car was hopelessly blocked in by now, we used Brandt’s, which was discreetly parked on the street below, and drove directly to the Municipal Building. We decided Gail should spend the rest of the night at the police station and then go “on a vacation” to see her folks in New York City first thing in the morning. She had taken the whole experience well, but her willingness to be packed up and sent off without a murmur of protest told me how thoroughly she’d been shaken.

Back at the station, after settling Gail in, I pulled Brandt to one side. “Something occurred to me when I was at Billie Lucas’s tonight. What do you think about using Katz and the Reformer to reach Billie-or Susan-to persuade her to come to us? Shattuck might’ve actually done us a favor. If we tell Katz what happened, Billie is sure to find out Shattuck is in the area, and realize that turning herself in is her only chance.”

Brandt nodded. “Okay. Let’s make a couple of phone calls. Maybe we can convince Stanley to take one last bow before he exits.”

Stan Katz’s resignation officially took effect in one hour-at midnight. As Brandt had guessed, however, the chance to go out with his byline under a front-page lead was more than Katz could resist. He promised to meet us at the newspaper’s offices.

The Reformer’s night editor, Ruth Tivoli, a local woman and a career journalist with a reputation for integrity, was waiting for us. She was a holdover, as was Katz, from the Reformer’s better days.

She rose from her desk and came to greet us as we entered the building. “Hello, Chief-Joe.” She eyed my face. “What happened? We’ve been listening to the scanner.”

“Is Stanley here?” I asked.

She pointed toward the distant coffee machine, where we could see Katz pouring himself a cup. He raised his eyebrows when he saw us and broke into a grin, “This, I’ve got to hear.”

Ruth gave him a baleful look. The four of us filed into a small conference room and settled around a table.

Brandt headed off Katz immediately. “Let me say something before you let fly.” He then addressed them both. “Things have begun to speed up since we found that skeleton and turned Stanley into a war correspondent. We had information that an attempt might be made to kidnap Gail Zigman, and we took precautions to prevent that from happening. We were successful in that action, although one of our officers, Sergeant Alexander Santos, was wounded in an exchange of fire.

“The stimulus for all this activity is a robbery of sorts that took place some twenty-odd years ago in Chicago. The three people involved fled to Vermont to assume new identities. I say ‘of sorts’ because we don’t think the money was from a legitimate source.”

“What makes you say that?” Katz asked. “We haven’t established it for a fact, but we do know there were no complaints of a theft during the same time frame.”

I had to hand it to Brandt. Over the years, he had mastered that bizarre bureaucratic ability to build walls out of words with the practiced aplomb of a mason-taking his time, refusing shortcuts, and saying only what he wanted to say.

“In any case, Abraham Fuller, which is not his real name, was one of those three. The second was the skeleton we unearthed. The third is still at large.”

Katz opened his mouth to ask another question, but Brandt silenced him with a raised hand. “That survivor is running, we think, not because of us but because of the person who suffered the original financial loss-tonight’s shooter.” Brandt laid Shattuck’s mug shot on the table. “His name is Robert Shattuck. His physical description and a brief history are on the back. You see”-he leaned forward for emphasis, perhaps hoping his body language would compensate for omitting that our discovery of the M-16s in Billie’s house directly linked her to the wounding of the hearse driver-“we have no proof this third person was actually involved in any crime, but we do know he or she is in mortal danger from Shattuck. We are offering a safe haven, and we’re hoping you will make that message clear.”

Ruth Tivoli shook her head. “What makes you think a story in the paper will reach this person? Is he still in the area?”

Brandt let me answer. “We’re working on the assumption that this third person will still be reading the paper, looking for news of the investigation.” I slid a piece of paper across the table at them. “We’ve set up this telephone number as a kind of twenty-four-hour, one-person hotline.”

“Who tried to shoot Gail? Shattuck?” Katz asked.

“We don’t think that was his intention. It was probably a kidnap attempt.”

“Why?”

“To tilt the deck in his favor,” I answered. “With Gail as a hostage, he would have had someone to trade if we found this missing third person before he did.”

“So you’re offering sanctuary. Anything else?”

Brandt spoke up again. “If need be, a new identity. There’s a strong chance there may be enough to interest the federal government in offering protection. What we really want is to save someone who did something dumb, but perhaps not criminal, a long time ago from being tortured to death by some crazy bastard bent on revenge.”

A moment’s silence greeted his calculated choice of words.

Katz had stopped writing and was looking at us quietly, perhaps reflecting back on similar instances when he and I had cooperated and had both come out ahead.

He turned to Ruth. “Let’s do it. I want to ask a few more questions, but I think this looks good.”

There was a knock on the door. A reporter poked his head in. “Someone to see Joe.”

It was George Capullo, our night-shift sergeant, looking as uncomfortable in the newsroom as a cat in a dog pound. “We just found somebody named Gary Schenk, beaten up pretty bad. Claims it’s your fault. I thought you might like a ride to the hospital.”

We drove cross town to Brattleboro Memorial in the stillness of the night. The streets were devoid of life, and as empty as a huge abandoned factory, although I knew that somewhere, behind one of these silent walls, Bob Shattuck lay waiting, watching the clock.

“Where’d you pick up Schenk?” I finally asked.

“We didn’t. The hospital called it in. He was brought in by ambulance from his home in Putney. Apparently, he’d worked the late shift at work, gone to a party after that, and was attacked as he was unlocking his front door.”

“He live alone?”

“Yup.”

That explained the timing, I thought. Shattuck had probably discovered Schenk by following either Dennis or me to the bakery where he worked, but he hadn’t been able to move on him until he was by himself.

We found Gary Schenk on his back in a hospital bed, both his arms wrapped in plaster, his fingers strapped to aluminum splints, his split and swollen lips parted, revealing a row of broken teeth. George had outlined his injuries on the drive over-Shattuck had broken up his victim one piece at a time, finger by finger, arm by arm, like some oversized chocolate Easter bunny, no doubt fueled by his frustration at having missed Gail.

Schenk’s eyes gleamed with hatred as he focused on me. “You prick.”

The words were thick and slurred, but no less punishing. I turned to George. “He positively ID’d Shattuck’s mug shot?”

George nodded.

I moved closer to Schenk. “We know who did this to you, Gary. It won’t be long before we get him.”

“Fuck you.”

“What did you tell him, Gary? It might help us nail him.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You told him about our conversation? Was that what he wanted to know?”

“What do you think?”

“Did you tell him anything you didn’t tell us?”

He closed his eyes, perhaps realizing I wouldn’t take a hint. “I knew the girl was Billie Lucas.”

I pursed my lips. That little tidbit wouldn’t do Shattuck much good at this point, but it did mean he now had as much information as we did. “How?”

“I’d seen her around-I remembered.”

“Did she know that?”

“No. I never liked her. Why bother?”

“But you felt a loyalty, nonetheless-when we came to talk to you.”

“Sure-you’re the pigs.” The words were even less distinct; he was beginning to fade.

Old habits die hard, I thought. “Did you tell him anything about her other than her name?”

“That’s all I knew.”

“What about the two men we showed you?”

“You assholes…” He drifted off.

The nurse who’d been standing nearby took his pulse. “That’s it-the injection’s kicked in. He’ll be out for hours.”

George Capullo stood staring at Schenk for a while. “What a mess. Seems like overkill for the little he knew.”

“I don’t think getting information was really the point. This poor bastard is more like a postcard-Shattuck’s way of telling us he’s still out there, still hungry, still capable of getting the jump on us.”