Tag Man (26 page)

She didn’t argue his point, countering instead with one of her own. “How can I know, if you’re not going to tell me what you’ve got on him?”

Joe shifted his approach. “I take it he wasn’t very happy with your giving us access to the house.”

Instinctively, she brushed her cheek with her fingertips, as if checking to see if her makeup was still in place. “No.”

“What did he say?”

“Relevant?” she asked. “Not a lot. He basically concentrated on my overall intelligence and the sum total of my importance to his life, neither of which came to much.”

Joe liked this woman. Earlier, he’d been struck by the image of someone who’d sacrificed too much of her integrity and pride for the material comforts she seemed to be enjoying. But he was beginning to reassess. She had spine, and—beneath her hurt and pain—he suspected she also had a longing for freedom, and maybe for just a bit of revenge.

He could work with that.

“You mentioned that you thought he was seeing another woman,” Joe said. “Any idea who?”

“No,” she answered flatly. “I intercepted a message—handwritten, like a note in school. I thought it was almost childish, and kind of rare in this electronic world. Especially with Lloyd. He’s into the gadgets.”

Unsurprisingly to Joe, who figured that Lisbeth had put more thought into this meeting than she was letting on, she reached into her pocket and slid a small piece of paper across the table to him.

Simultaneously, the waiter returned with Joe’s iced tea and asked if either one of them wanted anything more. They didn’t.

Joe ignored his drink and picked up the note. “‘Make it the Sunoco,’” he read. “‘Same time and place.’ Where did you get this?” he asked.

“Jacket pocket,” she answered simply. “Not too original. I think he just forgot about it.”

He held it up between them. “Any ideas?”

She shrugged, frowning. “I was guessing they hooked up at a gas station somewhere and shared a ride to a motel, like a routine. But there are Sunocos everywhere.”

“Does—or did—Lloyd have a schedule?” Joe asked. “Like a regular weekly event or outing that he might’ve used as a cover for this?”

Again, she shook her head. “He didn’t need an excuse. He does pretty much what he wants and doesn’t bother explaining. I stopped asking a long time ago. It just pissed him off anyhow.”

Joe mixed the cream and tea together before taking a sip through his straw. He used the time to think for a moment.

“Lisbeth,” he asked, licking his lips, “did you tell him you found the note, or that you suspect him of cheating on you?”

“No.”

He nodded. “Good. If it’s okay, I’d like you to keep it that way. Can I keep the note, incidentally?”

“That’s why I brought it.”

“Do you have access to the phone bills in the house?” he then asked.

“Cells or house?”

“Whatever.”

“I pay my own cell bills; he does everything else.”

“And he keeps the bills to himself?”

“Yes. Sorry. I bet those would be interesting, wouldn’t they?”

“They often are. You wouldn’t be able to get to them?”

She laughed bitterly. “Not likely. My guess is he’s attached a grenade to his office door by now.”

Joe took another sip and slid the note into his breast pocket. The phone bills weren’t a big issue, assuming he could persuade a judge to issue a search warrant for them. “That reminds me,” he said to her. “I think you should know about something that we discovered at your house. It’s a safety issue, really.”

“What?”

“Your husband has a very sophisticated camera system throughout the house, which he monitors from his office. I tell you this so you won’t try to do anything at home that you don’t want him to know about.”

Her brow furrowed and she looked stunned. “Where are they?”

“Pretty much everywhere.”

He left it at that, and his brevity gave her what she needed to know.

“Oh my God,” she murmured. “That bastard. That means the bedroom, too, doesn’t it?”

“Among other places.”

She reflected on that for a moment before saying, “I knew it. I just had a feeling. The things he had me do—like there was a mirror. Only there wasn’t one.”

She slipped her fingers up under her dark glasses and rubbed her eyes briefly. “Jesus, I wish this would end.”

He thought about reaching out and patting her arm, or extending some other sign of sympathy, but he didn’t. As solidly as he was in his professional mode at the moment, he couldn’t ignore his nearly perpetual grieving. While Lisbeth Jordan in no way resembled Lyn Silva, she was roughly the same age, and of similar build. To see her distressed brought Joe back to those intimate moments he’d had with Lyn, including ones where she, too, had expressed pain or confusion, and he’d been able to render some solace.

The mere thought of that sharpened his sense of loss.

“It will,” he said blandly instead, and moved on. “Was there anything else you thought might be helpful?”

She straightened slightly at his change of tone, dropped her hands back to the tabletop, and looked at him. “What?”

“I was just wondering if you had anything else?”

She appeared momentarily confused. “I, ah … No. Will the note be helpful?”

“Maybe.” He forced himself back onto even keel. “It might give us something to work on. If you could keep your eyes open for anything else, without endangering yourself, that would be very handy.”

“I doubt that’ll happen,” she said. “He’s left.”

Joe’s eyes widened slightly. “Where to?”

“You think he told me? Ever since he found out about you people, he’s been tearing around the house like his feet were on fire, either locked in his office or making whispered phone calls on his cell. Then all of a sudden, it was a fat duffel bag and out the door with tires squealing. I have no idea where he went or when he’ll be back. He didn’t say one word to me.”

“What’s he driving and what’s the license plate number?” Joe asked.

She told him the registration. “It’s his stupid Hummer. Like driving a battleship. Wherever he’s going, it’s not the city.”

Joe looked up from writing in his pad. “He considered that his country car?”

“I guess,” she said dismissively. “Although he’s so paranoid about every nick and scratch, I don’t see him actually leaving the pavement in it.”

“That’s interesting, though,” Joe continued. “The implication being that he’s headed somewhere rural. What’s he use for his trips to Boston?”

“The Bimmer.”

“And it’s still here?”

“Sure.”

“You have the keys?”

“Sure.”

Joe smiled slightly. It was a good bet that Lloyd’s office was now as clean as the proverbial pin, and that his computer was safely tucked into the Hummer beside him. But Joe knew from experience that when you were under pressure to head out the door, you didn’t often think of those surrogate homes away from home that too often got filled with the trash and details of everyday life.

“Lisbeth,” he asked, “when Lloyd was preparing to leave, did he go to the Bimmer at all, maybe to get anything like a GPS or a map?”

“Not that I know of, and the GPS is built in anyhow. The only time I was aware of his using the garage was when he left. He might have grabbed something then, of course…” She hesitated before correcting herself. “No, then the BMW keys wouldn’t have been in the kitchen, and I saw them there before coming here. Why?”

“Specifically?” he answered. “I have no reason whatsoever. But to help figure out what Lloyd’s been up to and where he’s been, I’d like to get into that car, if you’ll allow it. Most GPS units keep a record of past trips.”

“Of course.”

*   *   *

The bartender at the Emerald Isle in Lowell looked balefully at Willy, who this time was accompanied by Big Al Davis instead of Lester. Typically, counter to official protocol, Willy had traveled south alone.

“What do
you
want? I already gave him my phone records.” He pointed at Al, who merely smiled.

Willy pulled a photograph from his pocket. “Don’t get cranky now. I came all the way down here just because you were such a sweetheart last time.”

“Fuck you.”

“See? It’s all about attitude.” Willy looked at Big Al with a bright expression. “Just what we were talking about, wasn’t it? People who help people are the happiest people in the world.” He looked back at the barkeep, adding in a far darker tone, “Because they don’t fuck with the people who can make their lives a living nightmare. Especially over nothin’ at all.” He laid the picture on the bar. “Like this. Ever see him?”

The bartender stared at Willy, ignoring the snapshot. “This gonna get you outta my hair?”

“In fact, it is.”

The other man smiled bitterly and picked up the photo. “Then I’ll give you everything I got.”

He squinted at a face shot of Lloyd Jordan in the dim light, holding it close, as if he were trying to discern a counterfeit twenty.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?” Willy asked him.

“Yeah, he was here. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Cute. So you have no clue.”

The barkeep rolled his eyes. “Fuck. Can’t win for losin’. He came in here with Leo, all right? Made a big fucking deal about my not having Glen-something-or-other for a single-malt scotch. La-di-fuckin’-da.”

“You remember when this was?”

The man simply stared at him.

“How ’bout the circumstances?” Willy persisted. “Any details.”

“Middle of the day. Slow time—’nother reason he stuck out.” The bartender pointed to a far booth. “They sat there, talked quiet. Shut up whenever I got near, like they were planning a bank heist.”

“You overhear anything at all?”

He shook his head.

Willy tapped the picture with his fingertip, content that what the bartender had told him matched what they’d extracted from the GPS unit in Lloyd’s BMW. “He ever here before or since?”

“Nope.”

“They look like they knew each other well?”

“How the fuck would I know?”

“When they met; when they walked in. Body language. You know.”

He actually did know, and nodded. “They knew each other. The snotty guy was here first, sat at the booth, did his bullshit with the scotch. Leo came in after and they greeted like they went back a while—casuallike. No big deal.”

“You said you didn’t hear anything,” Willy stated. “You see anything happen between them?”

“An envelope,” the bartender answered without hesitation. “Rich guy slid it over to Leo, who just put it in his pocket. Not the first time I’ve seen that here.”

“In general or with Leo?”

“Leo. You already know he used this place like an office. What did he do, anyhow?”

Willy was surprised. “What did Leo do? I thought that was against some bartender code of ethics, asking questions like that.”

The man shrugged. “He’s dead, right?”

“Right,” Willy agreed. “Which means I’d have to kill you, too, if I told you. What a shame, huh?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Julie Johnson unlocked her office, removed her damp raincoat, and hung it on the clothes tree by the door, spreading it out slightly so that it might dry more quickly. She was a careful, fastidious woman, which helped explain her success as the school’s comptroller, and the happiness of her well-tended, if unambitious, husband at home.

She frowned slightly at the scene outside her second-floor window. She wasn’t fond of rainy days. She appreciated what it did for the grounds—and nature in general—but remained unhappy at the untidiness of it all.

That having been said, she saw no irony in her next gesture, which was to check on the moisture of the rubber plant adorning her desk. It was, of course, perfect.

Wiping her fingertip carefully on a tissue, she circled the desk, deposited the tissue in the trash can, settled into her chair, and turned on the computer before her, content in the sense of order so compulsively mirrored in the entire room’s layout. It was one of the school’s prized humorous tidbits, how the custodians never had to dust and vacuum the comptroller’s office, since she did the job herself with the care of a cleaning crew.

She listened with satisfaction to the computer waking up, enjoying the orderly rhythm of all its components getting ready to observe her commands.

In the process, however, she failed to hear the slight sound of the small bathroom’s door opening just out of her line of sight.

She did, however, feel the sharp sting of a knife being held against her throat.

“Mrs. Johnson, do not move. Do you understand me?”

The voice was male, adult, and bone-chilling in its calmness. Despite her normal readiness to criticize or at least question, Julie knew enough now simply to pay attention.

“Yes. What do you want?”

She could just make out the shape of a man wearing a hood over his head in the thin reflection on the polished computer screen.

“We’ll get to that. Are you expecting any visitors?”

“No.”

“Does your secretary have a habit of walking in without knocking at this time of the morning, maybe to offer you coffee or deliver the mail?”

Julie frowned. What in Lord’s name? She struggled to stay focused. This was absurd. It was eight o’clock in the morning, for heaven’s sake.

“She will come in sometimes. I don’t drink coffee, and I pick up my own mail.” She moved slightly and complained, “What is going on here? What do you want?”

The response made her squirm in her chair. The knife bore down harder and she could feel a trickle of warmth course down past the collar of her blouse.

She began to shiver.

“Page the outside office,” the man’s voice said, “and tell them that you’re about to place a very important phone call and that it’s crucial that you are not to be disturbed—that it’ll only be about a quarter of an hour.”

“That’s crazy,” she protested. “I never do anything like that.”

The knife moved painfully. “Then you better make it believable.”

“Right now?”

The voice showed its first impatience. “Are you that stupid?”

“Okay, okay,” she protested, and reached for the phone.

She did as she’d been told, wrestling to maintain a normal tone, her brain beginning to fill with increasingly wild notions of what was about to happen. She was actually grateful when her secretary simply acknowledged her comment and hung up, so she didn’t have to worry about her rising panic giving her away.