Archer Mayor - The surrogate thief

He was standing by the back door when she ended her shift.

"You Katie Clark?" he asked, showing her his badge. "I'm Joe Gunther."

"Good for you, pig."

Joe raised his eyebrows. She fit the profile for that kind of response: skinny; long, straight, greasy hair; dirty hip-hugger jeans and sandals; the obligatory tie-dye T-shirt with a peace symbol emblazoning one breast-every effort made to diminish a natural attractiveness. But he knew from asking around which social stratum she inhabited, and it wasn't the protester/college dropout crowd. She was pure working class, a poseur who couldn't care less about what was happening in Vietnam.

"I'd like to ask you about Pete Shea."

"He's gone." She made to brush by him.

"You know where to?"

"Wouldn't tell you if I did."

He addressed the back of her head. "If we establish he killed that man, you'll be in shit up to your ears unless you help me now."

She turned around to face him. "Pete didn't kill anyone. You're the one who's full of shit."

"How can you be so sure?"

She hesitated a split second. "I just know."

"You were with him all that night?"

"Yeah."

"From eleven o'clock on?"

"Right."

Joe made up the next line. "After the two of you got together at the Village Barn just before? We have witnesses to that."

"Sure," she said, but her eyes betrayed her confusion at this total fiction, and her doubts about playing into it.

"Katie," he said, his voice softening, "Klaus Oberfeldt was assaulted just after nine, and I have no idea if you were at the Village Barn that night. If you think Pete's innocent, help me prove it."

She continued staring at him for a long moment, and then finally let her gaze drop. "I can't."

"You don't know where he was at that time?"

"No." She looked up again, reinvigorated. "But I know he didn't do it."

"He carried a switchblade, right? Used to show off how well he could throw it across a room and make it stick to a wall?"

She thought that over carefully. The police had withheld mention of the knife from the papers, as they had the missing money.

"Yeah," she admitted slowly. "But he lost it."

"We found it at the crime scene."

Her lips pressed together and she stared at him angrily.

"Where did he go, Katie?"

"I don't know," she repeated, her fists clenched. "He just left. You want to tap my phone and follow me around, be my guest. I liked Pete-he was gentle and sweet and not an asshole. I don't think he did it, no matter what tricks you want to pull, but I still don't know where he is. He dumped me like a hot rock and I haven't heard from him since. I think it was just more than he could handle. He's had a shitty life and I don't guess it's getting better." She quickly wiped an eye with the back of her hand, adding, "I gotta go."

She turned on her heel and walked off into the night. For months thereafter, Joe did keep tabs on her as best he could. But there was never anything to indicate that she ever reconnected with Pete Shea.

"You know John Moser?" Joe asked Willy as they left the lumber yard. Whereas other people had hobbies like fishing or watching car races, Willy had two: One was pencil sketching, something Joe had discovered by accident and had been sworn never to divulge; the other, known to all, was keeping tabs on the town's underworld. As other men tracked baseball stats, Willy collected intelligence on the activities, alliances, and interactions among likely law enforcement customers. Every other cop Joe knew was content to deal with the bad guys as they appeared on the radar scope. Willy's interest was like a connoisseur's; he liked to be familiar with all aspects of his subjects' progression, from start to finish.

"I know he's not somebody I'd send a friend to see."

Joe scratched his head. "It's not that big a town. You'd think I'd've heard of him."

"You don't keep up," Willy said flatly. "He's from Mass. Springfield. Got too hot for him down there, so he brought his business to the land of the yahoos."

"What business is that?"

"He's a middleman. Drugs, girls, guns, stolen goods-you name it. Cagey, though. Rarely touches the stuff himself."

"Meaning he'll be all cooperation when we ask him about Matt Purvis's gun?"

Willy laughed. "Fer sher-you can count on it."

Gunther took his eyes off the street long enough to cast him a sideward glance. "I'm not sure I like that laugh."

Willy stayed smiling. "Then don't worry your pretty little head about it. I'll find him for you."

It was late by the time Joe finished at the office, having spent several hours catching up on paperwork. Being VBI's number two man meant that he had not only his own caseload and unit to watch over, but the activities and reports of the other four statewide unit chiefs as well, all faxed or e-mailed to him daily.

It wasn't as onerous as it could have been. Since the VBI had been created essentially as a legislative experiment, and run by Gunther and Allard from the start, the two of them had quietly reinvented the standard paper stream common to most police agencies. Each VBI unit was given unusual autonomy, resulting in the correspondence between them being more practical in nature than the Big Brother, from-the-top-down norm. As a result, Joe spent less time checking timesheets, doing cost accounting, and going over case management minutiae, and more time staying up-to-date on investigative progress and results. It allowed him to feel more like a doting nurse checking on vitals than a bureaucrat reducing his colleagues to "little people."

Still, it took time, and it didn't compare to being on the street chasing leads, so by the time he called it quits, he was in the mood for some R amp; R.

In the past, that had usually involved Gail in some way, either by phone or through a visit if she was in town.

He sat in his car, wondering what to do. Dropping by the last time hadn't been particularly successful. It was later now, of course, after the average dinner circuit or run-of-the-mill Kiwanis or Elks meeting.

He started up the car and drove over to her house.

Again, unsurprisingly, it was a mistake. The lights were all blazing and the driveway as jammed as before. He'd set himself up for an avoidable disappointment. Turning around in the middle of the street to head home, he was angry at his own stupidity. Running for high office had been in Gail's blood for years, essentially since he'd known her. Events, traumatic and otherwise, had delayed the inevitable, but her time had finally come. And he knew this was only the beginning. An ambitious, hardworking, intelligent woman, Gail was a late starter, which further fueled her need to excel.

Her goals were thus reasonable, expected, even inevitable. But he still found himself resentful. In the midst of revisiting a past he'd assumed was long buried, he was finding the rekindled grief oddly amorphous, as if no longer applicable to just his loss of Ellen.

He was pretty sure this was a result of frustration and exhaustion. But he also knew that sometime soon the doubts it was raising would have to be addressed.

Hello?"

"Hi. It's your firstborn child."

There was an infectious chuckle at the other end of the line-old, thin, and inordinately welcome. "Joseph. My goodness, it's been forever."

"It's been two weeks, Mom. No guilt trips, please. I hope I'm not calling too late."

"Guilt's a mother's best currency, Joe. You should know that. You're the detective. And you know the habits around here. Always up until midnight. Hang on. Let me get your brother."

Joe visualized her backing her electric wheelchair out of the living room docking station she'd created of card tables, shelving, and benches, all laden with books, magazines, and newspapers, and purring toward the back of the house. The need for a chair stretched back years; the need for it to be electric reflected her increasing frailty. It was a sad reality, with an inevitable outcome that Joe did his best not to think about much.