Archer Mayor - Three Can Keep a Secret

Shortly, a smiling, upbeat woman with a strong handshake greeted him at the lobby’s inner door.

“Mr. Gunther? Delighted to meet you. I just got the faxed release document we discussed on the phone. Thank you for doing that. So many other police officers have a tough time understanding our need to cover our butts.”

Joe followed her into the building’s embrace and down a long, well-lighted corridor. Belying the place’s exterior, its residents had worked hard and successfully to brighten up its inner spaces. “Believe me,” he told her supportively, “I have been in your shoes. I want to thank you for being clear about what you needed. Did you find what I’m after?”

“Yes,” she said happily. “It took a little digging. Right now, because of Irene, we’ve never been busier in here, duplicating as many records as we can. Our priority, as you can imagine, is to re-create everything lost in the basement of the public safety headquarters-fingerprint files, arrest records, et cetera. State hospital admissions from decades ago were a pretty low priority.”

She looked back at him and smiled broadly, adding, “In a way, it’s a huge kick for me personally-selfishly speaking. All this justifies the requests we’ve made for years to back up hard records with digital copies. I can tell you, it’s been like pulling teeth sometimes, and the process has been far from perfect, but we’ve made inroads, and if there’s one good thing that’ll come of this disaster, I bet it’ll be better funding.”

She led him through a door and down a claustrophobically narrow aisle of opposing shelves. “Okay, here we are. Hospital admissions around the time you’re interested in.” She pointed at a nearby table crowned with a mechanical version of a resting pterodactyl. “That’s a microfiche reader. Know how it works?”

Joe smiled at her. “That’s very sweet. I’m guessing you know damned well I’m probably more comfortable with one of those than with any computer.”

She laughed. “Well, I wasn’t going to mention it. I’ll leave you to it, then. Happy hunting.”

It was onerous work. The cardboard boxes containing Hamer’s cherished microfiches reflected the era before mental health patients were dumped on to the community, often with the rationalization that they’d become assets to society. What he was poring over was the legacy of the “old days,” when people were committed for being eccentric, or offending influential family members-or getting in the way of prominent politicians. There were thousands of entries, loosely organized, haphazardly filed, and all but unreadable without resorting to the cranky, eye-straining reader by Joe’s side. Even then, most of the forms were handwritten, and frequently tough to decipher.

Nevertheless, after several hours, he located what he was after-Carolyn Barber’s official commitment papers. And with them, something he hadn’t been expecting: the name of the person who’d signed them.

“That it?” Lester asked.

Sam checked her notepad. “Yeah. Not much to it.”

In fact, Dolores Oetjen’s realty office looked like a private residence with a shingle hanging out front. “Nice place, though,” Sam added, almost as an apology.

They got out of the car and looked up and down the street, properly called West County Road. There wasn’t much to see, Calais being not much of a metropolis.

“What’s with the town’s name?” she asked, knowing of Lester’s penchant for local history. “I always wondered.”

“Rhymes with palace, ” he said. “After the French port city. It’s a Revolutionary War thing-everybody was crazy about the French back then. You know, Lafayette and all that. There are several villages within the township. The biggest hoot is that one of them was called Sodom for like a hundred years, ’cause it didn’t have a church. Friendly, huh? Love thy neighbor.”

Sam looked across the roof of the car at him in surprise. “Still?” she asked.

“Nah. It’s Adamant, now. They claim that’s because of the stone quarries, but I bet it’s because of their thick skin.”

In fact, they were in another of those small villages-this one named Maple Corner-which prompted Sam to ask, “Wasn’t this where those guys posed nude for a calendar?”

He smiled. “Yup. The Men of Maple Corner . Half a million bucks raised for the community center.” He indicated with his thumb. “Down there. ’Bout ten years ago. Started a rage of imitators. Crazy like a fox.”

They walked up to the modest house and followed instructions to PLEASE COME ON IN.

They found a young woman typing on her computer, seated at an antique desk in a front room arranged to look like an office.

The woman sprang to her feet at their entrance. “Hi,” she said cheerily, rounding the corner of the desk and ushering them in. “Welcome. I’m Dolores Oetjen. Glad to meet you.”

Sam almost felt sorry for having ignited so much enthusiasm. “Hi, Dolores,” she said, shaking hands. “Don’t get your hopes up. We’re cops, not buyers.”

Nice, Lester thought. Too much Willy time.

Dolores’s face fell. “Police? What happened?”

Les spoke up. “Absolutely nothing, Ms. Oetjen. We’re here for a huge favor, is all. Sorry to have alarmed you. Can we all sit down?”

Put to ease but still confused, Oetjen waved at the chairs facing her desk. “Sure,” she said. “How can I help?”

“We’re on sort of a hunting expedition,” Sam explained, fitting her tone to Lester’s. “Much of what we do is chase down leads, just like you see on TV, and one of those leads brought us here.”

Oetjen pointed to herself as she sat back down. “To me? What did I do?”

Les allowed for what he hoped was a comforting laugh. “Probably nothing, Dolores. But your phone number popped up on a list of others, and we wanted to ask you about that.”

“My number?” she parroted.

Sam allowed for a slight edge to creep into her voice. “Yeah, Dolores. Your number-on the phone of a guy we just put in jail.”

Oetjen’s mouth opened in surprise. “What? Who?”

Lester extracted a photograph from his pocket and laid it on her desk. “You ever see him before? His name is Travis Reynolds.”

She stared at the picture without touching it, as if it might be electrified. “No,” she replied, her voice reflecting her growing concern. “I don’t understand. How did he get my number?”

“You phoned him,” Sam said bluntly. “You had his number.”

Oetjen straightened in her chair. “But I don’t know him.”

Lester leaned forward and tapped his finger on the oversized desk pad calendar she had before her. “That’s the date the call was placed from here.”

As she had earlier with Travis’s photo, Oetjen stared at the calendar. “I don’t know,” she murmured.

Sam stood for emphasis and leaned on the desk. “Ms. Oetjen, just so you realize, this is a murder investigation. You might want to start getting your head straight here.”

“What were you doing that day, Dolores?” Lester asked gently, in classic good cop-bad cop style. “Is it written down there, maybe?”

Oetjen looked up at him. “None of this makes sense.”

“The calendar,” Sam said flatly.

The young woman placed her hand to her head and looked around haplessly, saying, “Right, right. I’m sorry. Of course. It’s…,” before seeing her tablet computer lying off to her right, faceup on the table. “I don’t actually use the paper calendar. My mom gave it to me, but I can’t carry it around.”

She hurriedly brought the tablet to life, smiling reflexively at Lester as Sam rolled her eyes.