Tag Man (18 page)

“Shoot,” she said softly.

“What did you find?” her father asked.

“Probably nothing. It’s kind of stuck against the wall.” Sally tentatively began to reach out in order to grab hold of it, hoping her sleeve wouldn’t rub up against anything.

“Hold it,” Dan said, moving to the head of the bed and easily shifting the whole thing away from the wall. He sidestepped into the open gap, bent over, and straightened with a postcard in his hand.

“I’ll be damned. I remember seeing this tacked to the wall last time. I thought he’d taken it with him. It must’ve fallen here.”

He circled back around to her as she got to her feet and showed her a postcard of a lake. He read aloud, “‘Hey there! Greetings from the boonies. Remember how cold the water was here? Shrink your you-know-what. Hope you’re not doing anything I wouldn’t do. Bryn.’”

“Wow,” Sally said. “There’s a loaded message. It’s addressed to P. Hauser at an address in Claremont, New Hampshire—apartment nine.”

“The sender’s name is certainly unique,” Dan said quietly. “That could be helpful. What’s the date on the postmark?”

Sally held the card closer and squinted. “Old. Looks like 1988, unless that’s a six.”

“And the lake? Where’s that?”

She studied the faded legend in the upper left-hand corner. “Bomoseen.”

“Western Vermont,” Dan finished. “Not far from Castleton. Popular place to ice fish. Let’s take that.”

The postcard, it turned out, was the sum total of their relevant findings, assuming the DVDs came up empty as expected. A half hour after they’d hesitantly entered they killed the lights in Paul Hauser’s abandoned room and made their way back upstairs.

They found Gloria Wrinn in her living room, having prepared a fully loaded tea tray.

She looked up smiling as they appeared, their small collection of Hauser’s belongings in a plastic bag.

“I thought you might enjoy some tea, after all your work,” she said, gesturing them toward the couch opposite hers. “How did you fare?”

Dan answered for both of them, surprising his daughter. “Not all that well. He either didn’t have much to start with or took everything he valued and left the rest.”

Gloria was pouring two cups of tea and now handed them out, indicating the cookies, cream, and sugar by twiddling her fingers over the tray. “Feel free, please. I don’t want to have to eat those myself. I’m not too surprised by what you say. When he moved in, he was carrying everything in a backpack.”

“And a suitcase?” Dan asked leadingly.

She looked at him anew. “Yes. And a suitcase.”

“I could see where he’d stored one, from the dust mark it left on the floor,” Dan said easily.

“You’re very observant,” Gloria commented quietly, her gaze steady.

“That’s why we keep him around,” Sally said brightly, suddenly concerned that Dan had overplayed his hand. “Lord knows, it’s not his personality.”

“Nancy told me Hauser didn’t talk about himself much,” Dan said, remembering the name Sally had used in her introduction an hour earlier.

“No,” Gloria agreed. “He was a loner, all right.”

“Estranged from his family, or what there was of it?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“What about friends? Did anyone ever drop by when he was living here, or did you ever see him with anyone?”

Gloria, still smiling, merely shook her head.

“How about Lake Bomoseen? Did he ever mention that? Or maybe Castleton or Fair Haven? Those’re both in the same area.”

Gloria sat back on her sofa and studied them with a kindly expression. Sally braced for the worst, for the first time missing the usually taciturn father she was forever urging to talk more.

“Where did you say you both worked?”

“Agency of Human Services, Division of Indigent Residents,” Sally recited, her heart skipping.

Gloria nodded. “Ah yes. Indigent Residents. Such a very Vermont thing, to have a branch of government solely devoted to the homeless. It’s such a wonderful state that way.”

“Well, ma’am,” Sally said, feeling her smile brittle and false. “We like to think we try.”

“And hard, too,” Gloria concurred. “You’ve been spending so much time on just one, and he’s not even around anymore.”

Dan, the perpetual worrier, started laughing. “You’re not buying this, are you?”

Gloria’s smile broadened. “Not really, but I am intrigued.” She pointed at him. “You could be the police, but your partner is far too young. You might be criminals, but you’ve been too obvious, and nothing about you strikes me that way. I can’t figure it out. Is it Paul? Are you after him for some reason?”

“We think he may have committed a crime,” Dan said simply, hoping it would be enough. His daughter was speechless, staring at him.

It was. Gloria nodded thoughtfully. “You may be right. I did mention that he struck me as a bit odd. What do you think he’s done? Or can’t you say?”

Dan was grateful for the out. He shrugged and gave her an apologetic look. “I am sorry, but you apparently know how that works.”

He felt his daughter’s gaze on him as he continued. “That being the case, Mrs. Wrinn, is there anything you can remember about him that might help? Some comment about his past or his family or any friends he might have mentioned? Or where he came from, for example?”

“Well,” she answered, “as I told your sidekick…” She interrupted herself and pointed a finger at Sally. “You were very good, by the way. Very convincing.” She returned to Dan. “He didn’t go in for that much. For what it’s worth, whenever we did speak about the weather or local events—maybe an election or something—he always spoke like a native, as if he’d been familiar with the region and the locals all his life. You know how most people refer to their origins pretty early on in a conversation? He didn’t do that. I always got the feeling this was home.”

“Brattleboro?”

“No. Not quite,” she disagreed. “More generally than that. Maybe even from New Hampshire, since he said a few things about Vermont that were less than generous.”

Sally’s memory returned to the postcard with that reference and snapped her out of her trance. “Claremont?”

“Could be,” was the response. “I don’t know that for sure, but it would fit.”

There was a slight lapse in the conversation before Dan stood up, prompting the other two to follow suit, and walked to the entrance.

“I want to thank you for your time, Mrs. Wrinn, and apologize for our discretion. I am so glad you understand the position we’re in.”

“I understand no such thing,” Gloria said pleasantly, pointing again at Sally. “If it weren’t for her, I never would have spoken with you. But I knew she was a straight shooter, even if she was following a script.”

“What made you suspicious?” Sally asked, shaking her hand but feeling a little stung.

“You assumed I knew nothing of state government,” Gloria told her. “In fact, I do, or certainly enough to know that there’s no such thing as the Division of Indigent Residents, much less enough money to fund two investigators to work for it.”

“And yet you let me keep going.”

Gloria patted Sally’s hand. “I was curious.”

Dan was shaking his head. “All kidding aside, I’m very worried about this man. I think he may be dangerous, and I definitely want him held accountable.”

Gloria nodded. “Will you ever tell me what it was all about?”

“I will,” Sally quickly answered, seeing her father frown slightly. And, as if to drive home an unspoken subtext, Sally leaned in and gave Gloria a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thank you. Mrs. Wrinn.”

The old lady smiled and fixed Dan with her eyes. She had understood their pecking order if not their goal. “You take care of her,” she ordered.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered fondly.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was quiet in the squad room, despite the small crowd, with everyone looking at the desk nearest the window, featuring as it hadn’t in months the one man each of them liked to think of as a mentor, publicly acknowledged or not.

Joe Gunther took a sip from his coffee mug and gave them all a small, somewhat sad smile. “Long time,” he said softly.

“Welcome back,” Lester responded quietly.

The full VBI squad was there, including Sammie, who’d found a babysitter, and Ron Klesczewski, J. P. Tyler, and their chief, Tony Brandt, from downstairs.

“I’d like to start off by thanking each of you for your support,” Joe told them. “Throughout all this, it’s been a pretty big thing for me to know you were there, on the job.”

“You’ve done it for us enough times,” Sammie said.

“Whether we liked it or not,” Willy grudgingly added.

Joe raised his eyebrows. “Point taken.” He took another sip and put his cup down. “But now we’ve got a small problem to solve.” He nodded at Ron. “Which is no longer as low-key as just running a background check on a victimized local resident.”

“I guess that’s fair to say,” Ron acknowledged.

“Guy’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg,” Willy groused.

“True?” Joe asked.

“Not if what we’ve been told is accurate,” Lester said. “He
was,
if we believe Abijah Reed, but assuming that Jordan did take out a little insurance against his former playmates, in exchange for retreating from Boston and that business, I’d think he’d be working overtime to walk the straight and narrow.”

“Old dogs and new tricks,” Willy shot back. “No way he’s straight. It’s in the blood. He’s definitely up to something.”

“That’s what you always say,” Sammie told him.

“And I’m usually right. Besides, if he’s so lily-white, why did his old Boston buddies sic a triggerman onto him?”

“Before we all get ahead of ourselves,” Joe interrupted, “what do we actually know? That Metelica is dead and appears to have been a hit man on assignment, targeting someone who frequents Bariloche.”

Willy sighed wearily.

“That Metelica got a phone call from Ben Underhill while he was on that assignment,” added Ron, well used to his old boss’s Socratic style.

“That Jordan and Underhill once had a relationship,” Sammie joined in.

“And that Jordan eats at Bariloche,” Willy said, returning to the fray. “I got a look at the restaurant’s receipts. Turns out Jordan and the trophy wife eat there a lot.”

“That night?” Joe asked.

Willy grimaced, slightly caught out. “If he was, he paid cash, but he did that too, sometimes. I asked, once I got them to remember that he came there at all. He’s a lousy tipper, big surprise.”

“Not to be obvious,” Tony Brandt said from the back of the room, “but since you’re writing a checklist, you might want to add that somebody killed Leo Metelica.”

There was general laughter to that. “Oh, yeah,” Lester cracked. “Knew we were forgetting something.”

“Good point, though,” Joe said. “We shouldn’t lose sight of our primary purpose here. All this chatter about the mob and Underhill and our obsession with Lloyd Jordan.”

“Not an obsession if Jordan killed the guy,” Willy said sourly.

“Granted,” Joe agreed, while Sammie silently rolled her eyes. “Your hypothesis is that Underhill took out a contract on Jordan but that Jordan got the jump on his killer instead.”

“Just because it’s straightforward doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” Willy told them.

“Why now?” Ron asked. “Hasn’t this hands-off arrangement between Jordan and his mob pals been in place for years?”

“Maybe Jordan’s running low on funds and put the squeeze on,” Willy said. “What the hell do I know? Maybe Underhill got tired of having a pebble in his shoe.”

“But why ambush him at the restaurant?” Lester asked. “Downtown, high visibility, not sure of the timing—or even if the target would be eating out that night.”

Willy was scowling by now. “Hey, these guys are fucking animals. All of a sudden, they gotta think rationally?”

“Someone was rational enough to hire Metelica,” Joe said quietly.

Willy shook his head. “Fine. One of you can come up with something else. I heard somebody wanted to hang this on the restaurant owner.”

Joe held up his hand. “Hold on. Let’s not get derailed. There is something rising to the surface with all this—something we’ve been missing.”

He rose from his chair and perched on the windowsill—a position they’d all grown accustomed to and were pleased to see him resume.

“We mostly agree that Metelica was hired to kill somebody and that whoever that was turned the tables on him. Any arguments there?”

Silence greeted him.

Joe continued. “So, what follows is that one planned surprise resulted in an unplanned surprise replacing it.”

Willy murmured “Jeez” loud enough for everyone to hear it.

Joe smiled. “Bear with me. We’ve talked about a few variables that Metelica had to deal with. Would his target come to the restaurant that night? Who might be with him? What time might he leave? How would he leave? By car parked right outside the front door, or by walking a distance into the darkness, which might make him available to being picked off?”

“Making the whole proposition look weaker and weaker,” Brandt commented. Even Willy’s expression had changed from angry to merely sullen.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Joe reacted. “That’s less my point than the fact that so many variables mean more time needed to address them.”

Willy suddenly looked up, his mood instantly reversed. “The motherfucker had a motel room.”

Joe laughed. “Bingo. If Metelica was caught off guard, and not even a toothbrush was found in his car, it suggests he has a room somewhere in town with all his stuff still in it.”

Lester was already getting to his feet. “Assuming it isn’t all in a Dumpster by now.”

*   *   *

It took them most of a day to locate Leo Metelica’s motel. Not that they actually located his room. Lester had been right about that. Metelica’s possessions had been removed a few days earlier, once management had concluded that he’d skipped.

But they weren’t in a Dumpster. They’d been placed in a large garbage bag and relegated to a storage room, following the motel’s policy of keeping such items for a month before disposing of them.

Joe, Willy, Ron, and Lester made for a large group in such a space, so Joe asked the counterman if the empty breakfast nook off the lobby might be used for a preliminary inventory of the bag’s contents.