David Morrell - The Covenant Of The Flame

'Actually dead child . Infant. Remind me – how old did you estimate Joseph to be?'

'Early thirties.'

'Let's make it thirty-two,' Craig said. 'Because that's how old the other Joseph Martin would be today if he hadn't been killed in a car crash along with his parents in 'fifty-nine.'

'And I'll bet there were no surviving close relatives.'

'Oh?' Craig assessed her. 'You understand how this is done?'

Tess spread her hands. 'Someone who wants a new identity chooses a community at random and checks the obituaries in the local paper for the year in which he himself was born. He looks for an infant who died that year and was either an orphan or was killed along with his immediate family. That way, he doesn't look older or younger than he says he is, and there's no one who can contradict his claim to be that person. The next step is to find out where the child was born. That information is often in the obituary: "so-and-so was born in this-or-that city." The person seeking a new identity then writes to the courthouse in that city, tells its record office that he lost his birth certificate, and asks for a replacement. People often lose their birth certificates. It's not unusual for someone to ask for another copy, and clerks almost never bother to check if the name on the birth certificate matches the name of someone who's dead. As soon as he gets the birth certificate, the person sends a photostat to the Social Security office, explains that he lived abroad for many years and didn't need a Social Security number but now he does. The Social Security office seldom objects to such a request. With a birth certificate and a Social Security number, the person can get a passport, a driver's licence, a credit card, all the documents he needs to appear legitimate, to enter the system, get a job, pay taxes, etc.'

'Very good,' Craig said, continuing northward. 'I'm impressed.'

'Reporters pick up all kinds of information.' Tess certainly didn't intend to add that the real way she'd learned about assuming false identities was by overhearing her father's phone conversations with business associates.

Craig brooded, passing Forty-Ninth Street. 'With some cooperation from the federal government, I've been able to learn that Joseph began to use his assumed identity in May of last year. That's when he first started paying income taxes and Social Security. Since then, he's had two jobs, not counting his present one. The first was in Los Angeles, the second in Chicago. Obviously he didn't want to stay in any place too long, and he felt the need to put a lot of miles between one location and another. In each case, he worked for a video documentary company.'

'Okay.' Breathing too fast, Tess concentrated not to hyperventilate. 'So Joseph had something to hide. Everything about him was a lie. That explains why he didn't want me to get close to him. The question is, what the hell was he hiding?'

'Maybe you'll be able to tell me when you see where I'm taking you. Certainly I can't figure it out,' Craig said.

'Figure out what? Where are we going?'

'No. Not yet.'

'What?'

The problem is… See, first I have to explain some other things.'

Tess raised her arms in exasperation.

'Be patient. When I talked to the accountant where Joseph worked,' Craig said, 'I asked to see the paychecks he cashed. They're too large for a supermarket or a liquor store to accept them. He'd have needed to take them to a bank. And the bank would have sent the cancelled checks to his employer's bank, which in turn would have sent them to the employer's accountant. As it happens, Joseph cashed all his checks at the same bank. Back there.' Craig pointed. 'We just passed the bank on Fifty-Fourth Street.'

'So you went to the bank, showed them a court order allowing you access to their records, and examined Joseph's account,' Tess said.

Craig assessed her again. 'You'd have made a good policeman.'

'Police woman .'

Craig ignored her correction. 'Yes. That's what I did. I went to the bank, and the address they had for Joseph was the mail service on Broadway. That was also the address he told the bank to print on his checks. No surprise. What was surprising is that the microfilm records of Joseph's cancelled checks show that he hadn't made any payments for electricity or rent. Obviously he had to live somewhere and pay his utilities, so how was he keeping his landlord and Con Edison happy? Turns out, every month he sent a check for thirteen hundred dollars to a man named Michael Hoffman. Now take a guess who Hoffman is.'

'An accountant,' Tess replied.

Craig studied her with greater intensity. 'You're better than good. Right. An accountant. Clearly, Joseph was trying to increase the smokescreen that protected his privacy. So I spoke to Hoffman. He told me that Joseph and he had never met. They conducted all their business through the mail and over the phone.'

'But Hoffman paid Joseph's major bills,' Tess anticipated.

'No compliment this time – you're correct.'

'Okay. With Hoffman's records and cooperation from Con Edison, you ought to be able to find out where Joseph lived.'

'In theory.'

Tess frowned. 'Another smokescreen?'

'Right. Joseph's arrangement with his landlord was that the landlord would pay the utilities and Joseph would reimburse him. So Con Edison couldn't help us.'

'But the landlord could.'

Craig didn't answer.

'Whenever you purse your lips like that… What's the matter?' Tess asked.

'The landlord is a real-estate conglomerate that owns thousands of apartments. All their records are stored in a computer. They looked up Joseph Martin's name, gave me his address – in Greenwich Village – but when I went there, I discovered that the agency had given me the wrong address, that Joseph didn't live there. In fact, the real-estate firm didn't even own that apartment.'

'You mean, someone made a mistake and typed the wrong information into the computer?'

'That's one possibility. The agency's looking into it.' Craig scowled toward a traffic jam on First Avenue.

'One? What's another possibility?' The lieutenant's somber expression made Tess nervous.

'Suppose… I keep thinking of smokescreens. I'm suspicious by nature. I keep wondering if Joseph found a way to access the firm's computer and tamper with their records. He might have been that determined to keep someone from finding out where he lived. Or maybe he bribed a secretary to falsify the records for him. However Joseph did it, it makes me more determined to find out why,' Craig said.

'But if you don't know where Joseph lived, where are we going?' Tess rigidly clasped her hands together.

'Did I say I didn't know? I made a few assumptions. One was that since Joseph's bank is on the East Side and he arranged to meet you at Carl Schurz Park - '

'And died there.' Tess squeezed her eyes shut, repressing tears. 'The upper East Side.'

'That maybe Joseph's apartment is in that direction. Of course, his mail service is on the opposite side of town. But given his phobia about secrecy, it's logical for him to break the pattern. So I asked the precincts around here to find out if anything unusual happened from Friday night onward, something that might help us. That's how we caught Son of Sam. While the bastard was shooting his victims, he overparked and got tickets. On the weekend, there were lots of incidents. But after I sorted through the reports and eliminated several possibilities, I read about a fight in an apartment building on East Eighty-Second Street. An apparent attempted mugging. One of the tenants, a man, was assaulted. He ran from the building, chased by several men. They made enough noise that several other tenants woke up and peered out their doors, seeing shadows struggling on the stairs. Someone coming in late from a party noticed what appeared to be a gang chasing a limping man down the street.'