Tag Man (22 page)

“You okay, Bryn? Where’re you goin’?”

Huxley-Reicher ignored him, perhaps didn’t even hear him. He placed his feet on the floor and tested it momentarily, as if gauging the sea swell beneath a deck. He grunted approvingly and began shuffling toward the booth across the aisle. The barkeep, his mouth open and hands dripping, stared as if the moose head on the wall had begun to sing.

It was a bit of a journey, and Sally even helped some by placing her hand on their new friend’s elbow, not that she could have done much had he started to fall.

But Bryn’s expression told of his satisfaction and sense of achievement as he lowered himself before the table with the grace of a large ship sidling up to the dock. He sighed happily as his companions slid in opposite him.

The bartender continued watching in amazement for a moment before offering, “You guys want something?”

“A couple of Cokes?” Sally asked.

“On my tab,” Bryn added.

“You kidding?” the man asked without thought, before immediately adding, “Got it, Bryn. No sweat. Comin’ right up.”

The big man’s smile broadened as he looked at Sally. “You’re a smart girl.” He shifted over to Dan at last to say, “You’re a lucky man.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Comfortably situated at last, Huxley-Reicher studied them inside a single angle of view, without having to move his massive head.

“So, what do you want? It’s not to say hi from Norm. He can do that himself.”

“It does involve him, though,” Sally continued, having figured out that this conversation was now hers to carry to the end. “You two go pretty far back, right?”

“That’s something you already know.”

She laughed suddenly. “This is cool—like
Law and Order.
”

He looked baffled. “Why’re you people here? You’re not cops.”

Dan’s impatience got the better of him. As grateful as he was to Sally for winning Bryn over, his own anxieties were beginning to well up.

“We’re after Paul Hauser. You know him?”

“Paul?”

“Yeah. I need to talk with him.”

Bryn shook his head. “Peter, not Paul.”

“What?” Sally asked.

“I know
Peter
Hauser,” the big man explained.

“A brother?” Dan asked.

“Yeah. I never met Paul. I heard about him, like a thousand years ago, but Peter was the one I hung out with. Peter’s dead. Well, not dead-dead, but he’s in a home, totally out of it. A vegetable.”

“Why?”

“Some blood-shortage thing. I guess it was an accident or something. Starved his brain. Anyhow, it messed him up big time. He just sits in a wheelchair, staring at wherever they point him. Pathetic.”

“How long ago did you see him last?” Sally wanted to know.

Bryn pushed out his lower lip. “Years. It’s not worth the effort, and it takes everything I got just to cross the street nowadays.”

“Back in the day, though,” Dan asked, “when you and Peter hung out, what did he say about his brother?”

“He didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“Pete thought he was weird.” Bryn tapped his temple with his fingertip. “Talk about the elevator not reaching the top. I guess he tortured animals and shit like that.”

Dan was scratching his forehead, in need of details. “Can we start with some basics? I’m just trying to get a full picture here. What do you know about the family? Mom, dad, siblings—stuff like that?”

“Dad was a postal worker. Mom was a teacher. I think there was a car crash or something. Whatever it was, Mom was pretty messed up and Dad ended up a drunk, cheating on his wife, losing his job, abandoning the family. Peter was fine but Paul went through the wringer. I think Pete told me that his brother was messed up before then anyhow, though, so maybe that had nothing to do with it.”

Dan thought back to the pictures of the young women, tortured and splayed, and was inclined to differ.

“How old were the boys when this happened?” he asked.

“Little enough. I don’t know. Under ten, maybe?”

“How bad did it get at home?” Dan persisted.

Sally turned to look at him, struck by his urgency. She’d been told that her mother had died in childbirth, and had wondered about that, although never actually asked, as she gathered was typical of kids like her. At times like these, however, given the father she’d been handed, she had to wonder if some of his questions weren’t rooted in a more dramatic story than the one she’d been told.

“I think it was pretty bad,” Bryn was saying. “Pete and I met in high school, near Castleton, and I guess a lot of this was still happening at home.”

Sally would have left it at that, but her father kept right at it. “A lot of what, exactly? The drinking?”

Bryn played with the mug between his hands before answering. “The drinking wasn’t it. Hell, both my folks drank—my dad till he passed out every night. I don’t think Pete’s father was the only one stepping out.”

“Mom cheated as well?”

Bryn sighed before admitting, “I came over to their house once. Pete hadn’t showed up when he said he would, so I rode my bike to his place to find out why. He wasn’t there, but his mom was, and she came on to me pretty strong. It was really awkward.”

“You talk to Pete about it later?”

“Nah. Too embarrassing. But he asked me if I’d come by, and I fessed up then—kind of. He just came right out with, ‘Sorry if she put the moves on you,’ or something like that. He said she was sick and did that a lot to people. That’s what made me think that Pete’s home life must’ve been pretty tough.”

Sally had rested her chin in her palm, mesmerized. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“What was Pete like?” Dan asked.

“He was a good friend.”

Neither Dan nor Sally said a word, respecting his meditation.

Bryn eventually continued. “He was a little driven, like he had something chasing him down.”

“A risk taker?” Dan inquired.

“Yeah. Right. Jumping off rock quarries when he didn’t know what was under the surface; running onto the ice without checking how thick it was; driving too fast. Just basically pushing the envelope. But he was fun, and he watched your back, and he was the best friend you could have.”

“And you needed a friend like that,” Dan filled in. “Given your own situation.”

Bryn stared at the beer before him. “Yeah,” he said almost soundlessly.

“What happened to Paul?” Sally asked. “Weren’t you all in school together?”

“No. He went somewhere else. I never knew why or where. No one ever talked about it.”

“But you and Pete kept in touch,” Dan proposed.

“Kind of. We tried. You know how it is. I’d visit him when he lived in Claremont sometimes. That’s how I met Norm.”

“Norm doesn’t remember him.”

“Yeah. No doubt. Pete didn’t live there long, and didn’t like Norm much anyhow. I’m the one who hit it off with Norm. After Pete left, I kept coming back just to visit.”

“Did Norm ever meet Paul?” Sally asked impulsively.

“I think he did, yeah,” was the surprising answer. “I don’t think he knew his name. Hell, he forgot Pete’s soon enough. But he told me once—actually, it was kind of strange … You remember when all those women were being murdered along the Connecticut River?”

Dan felt his face flush as he leaned forward. “Yes.”

“Well, nobody knew who was doing it, and the cops were running all over, getting nowhere. Norm and I were sitting out front of his place, just watching the world go by, when he said that he wouldn’t be surprised to hear that my buddy’s brother had done the deed, or something like that. Even then, he’d forgotten Pete’s name. But that’s who he was talking about.”

“So he’d met Paul?” Dan sought to confirm.

“Must’ve. And it must’ve been more than just in passing.”

Dan looked at his daughter, who supplied the words, “So he knew Paul, after all.”

“I guess.”

“We need to talk to him again,” Sally said.

“At that conversation you had with Norm,” Dan asked. “Did you follow up about Paul being the Connecticut River Valley killer?”

Bryn shook his head. “I don’t think so. I would’ve forgotten all this if you hadn’t brought it up. It wasn’t a big thing, and I didn’t give it much thought. I just assumed they’d bumped into each other one time when Paul was visiting Pete. I mean, you meet people all the time you think might be capable of walking into a restaurant with a gun, right?”

Dan’s memory returned to meeting Leo Metelica and his gun right after leaving a restaurant. “Right.”

“Did Pete ever say anything like that about his brother?”

“He might’ve. I don’t know.”

Sally laid her hand on his forearm again, urging him on. “Bryn.”

“What do you people
want
? The guy was a friend of mine.”

“Peter or Paul?” Dan asked.

But Bryn didn’t vary.
“Pete,”
he emphasized. “I
told
you.”

“All right, all right,” Sally soothed him as the bartender looked over from across the room. “We’re sorry. For what it’s worth, we’ve never met Paul, either, but we think he may have done something frightening, and we want to make sure everybody’s okay.”

“This is all pretty crazy, you know?” Bryn complained.

“I know, and it’s not fair to put you through the wringer because you happened to know a guy once.”

“And maybe you’re feeling a little guilty for not visiting him much now that he’s down and out,” Dan suggested, reading into Bryn’s mood.

Huxley-Reicher looked up at him, slightly startled. “You’re right, you know? I think about him—the times we had. I didn’t have many friends.” He waved his hand around. “I sit here all day, people come and go and say hi. They’re good guys, maybe, but they don’t give a damn. I’m just the fat man at the bar. They all pat me on the back like I was a damn Saint Bernard. Not one of them knows me.”

“But Pete did,” Sally filled in.

He looked incredibly saddened by that. “Yeah. He did. And now it’s all inside him, and it’ll never come out.”

This time, Dan stuck his hand out for a shake. “We’ll get out of your hair, but I want to thank you for your time, Bryn. You didn’t have to talk to us.”

Bryn nodded silently, shook Dan’s hand without great interest, and didn’t look up as they slid out of the booth and took their leave.

“It’s so sad,” Sally commented as they hit the sidewalk.

But her father wasn’t listening. He was rooted in place, watching a small truck leave its parking place a short distance down the street. Its license plate was too dirty to read.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, seeing his suddenly pale face.

“I think that was Paul Hauser,” he said. “I know it in my gut. He was watching us.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lisbeth Jordan saw him crossing the broad expanse of lawn—a slightly rumpled older man with a nonthreatening manner. She straightened from her gardening but didn’t get to her feet, simply resting her gloved hands on her thighs, a trowel dangling from her fingers.

“Hi,” she greeted him. “May I help you?”

He crouched opposite her, a row of tomato plants between them, and nodded with a smile. He had a kind face. “I hope so. My name’s Joe Gunther. I’m with the police.” He stuck out his hand. “Don’t worry about the glove. My father was a farmer.”

Nevertheless, she removed one glove and shook his hand, enjoying the solid feel of his palm against hers—an impression mirrored by his overall appearance.

“Is this about the break-in?” she asked. “Have you found who did it?”

It was a reasonable question, but stated without urgency. Despite what Joe and his colleagues had learned since Lisbeth had first met Ron Klesczewski, she had no reason to know how much the stakes had grown, especially in terms of her husband’s involvement.

“No,” he said candidly, reaching into the warm dirt and sifting it through his fingers. “I’m a woodworker, myself,” he added, watching the dark soil pouring back into the bed. “But I used to love to watch my father when he was out in the field, surrounded by his land. He reminded me of a sailor, all-knowledgeable of the currents and the weather and the movement underfoot. The land really spoke to him. He could hold a handful to his nose and decipher its contents. He even tasted it sometimes.”

He shook his head and wiped his hands together, smiling in a slightly embarrassed way. “Sorry. Suddenly brought me back. You do all the gardening yourself?”

“I try to. Lloyd keeps telling me to hire somebody, but I enjoy it.”

Joe glanced around. “You’re doing very well, from what I can see. This all shows a lot of care.”

Now it was her turn to reach out and grasp a handful of soil. Her voice was wistful. “It makes me feel like I’m doing
something
constructive, even if it’s a tiny thing like growing a plant.”

Joe looked beyond her at the huge house looming like a wanna-be Tara. He took a slight chance interpreting what he thought he heard in her voice. “This can all get a little overwhelming, can’t it?”

She followed his gaze, as if expecting the house to have inched toward her while her back was turned. “Sounds kind of stupid, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Poor little rich girl.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “You’re not like any policeman I’ve ever met.”

He laughed. “I get that sometimes. Probably been at it too long. You met a lot of cops?”

“No,” she conceded. “Enough. You are kind of everywhere, when you think of it. Not a day goes by when most people don’t see a police officer somewhere.” She added, laughing, “Usually when they don’t want to, of course.”

He joined her. “You think I don’t slow down when I see a cruiser by the side of the road? We all do it.”

Her eyes dropped then, drawn by a passing thought. “All creatures of habit, aren’t we?”

“We create habits,” he qualified. “And make assumptions about who and what we are. Until the rug gets pulled out from under us.”

“That’s happened to you?”

He shifted his weight and got down on his knees, as she was, so that they looked like they were praying to each other. He was enjoying her effect on him. Virtual strangers could be comforting that way, he knew, which maybe explained some of the confessional’s appeal.