The Skeleton's Knee, page 29
part #4 of Joe Gunther Series
“Shattuck’s a loose cannon—the one who could cause the most damage. It’s his treatment of Shilly versus your treatment of Penny Nivens, if you want. If I have to have either one of you dogging my heels, I’d just as soon it be you.”
He chuckled softly. “So you want us to handle Shattuck for you? That’s pretty good.”
“He knows you’re interested in all this, and he’s not discriminating.” I pulled Shattuck’s mug shot from my pocket and handed it over.
Bonatto released his grip on the railing, taking the picture without comment. Finally, he turned to face me. “Where did you work before Vermont?”
“I saw action in Korea—did a couple of years of college in California on the way home. That’s it. Why?”
He hitched his shoulders ever so slightly. “You have a peculiar way of doing business. I doubt we’ll meet again.”
He left me then, alone on the pier, to enjoy my last view of Chicago, my mind full of doubt and self-recrimination, my heart longing to get back home. This was not my town, and I had not navigated its waters well. Instinct had filled in where procedure and practice had been wanting, and that was rarely a good basis for sound police work.
I didn’t know how my last chat with the locals would play out in the long run, but it couldn’t be any worse than what Shattuck had done to Shilly. And now, if my guess was right, Shattuck was heading for my turf.
I therefore took comfort in one telling detail—Bonatto had left with Shattuck’s picture in his pocket.
Part Three
29
GAIL STOOD ALONE inside the Keene, New Hampshire airport terminal, looking at me with wide, sad eyes as I limped through the double set of glass doors from the apron.
She reached up and hugged me tightly, without saying a word. I rubbed her thin muscular back with my free hand, enjoying the clean odor of her hair. When she finally stood back, she smiled unconvincingly and touched my cheek with her fingers. “What have you done to yourself?”
I raised my eyebrows, painfully aware of how I looked—bandaged, burned, nicked by dozens of glass cuts. “I think we better find somewhere else to vacation.”
She laughed, if only for a moment. “Are you all right?”
For an instant, I thought back again to Shattuck’s revolver hammer slamming home on an empty shell casing. “Sure. I might end up with a small scar from this one.” I tapped the bandage on my forehead.
Gail took my arm and walked with me toward the exit. “I had such a bad feeling when you left here—almost a premonition. When Tony told me you were in the hospital, it was like hearing the other shoe drop.”
I squeezed her hand and kissed her. “It’s good to be back.”
We left the terminal and stepped into the small parking lot.
“Tony came with me,” she said, pointing.
Brandt came out of her car and greeted me, shaking my hand and staring into my eyes as if checking to make sure everyone was at home. “You look awful.”
“Thanks.”
“Did Shattuck do all that, or did the Chicago PD chip in?”
“That pissed, are they?”
He took my bag, put it into the trunk, and opened the front passenger door for me. “I don’t think I’ll be sending another of our finest over there any time soon.”
We got into the car, with Tony in back. I fished Pendergast’s photo out of my coat pocket and handed it to him, along with the snapshot of him and Fuller at the Marquette fair. “That’s David Pendergast on the left; Fuller on the right.”
He looked at them carefully. “That anthropologist of yours was right on the money—Pendergast’s quite the beautiful boy.”
“Only skin-deep; I hear he was a nasty son of a bitch.”
Gail had pulled into traffic and was headed west toward Vermont and Brattleboro, twenty minutes away. “We got the longitude and latitude on that chart.”
“You’re kidding.” My incredulity was instinctive and immediately regretted. Gail turned and gave me a steely look. “I told you it would work—you never believed in it from the start.”
Brandt, ever the politician, steered for a middle course. “So tell him the bad news.” Her expression turned rueful. “It’s near New York City.”
“Somewhere around White Plains/Mount Vernon,” Tony added.
“Not exactly the boonies,” I muttered doubtfully. I was having difficulty believing a fanciful, color-coded, hand-drawn chart of someone’s stars could accurately yield up something as concrete as birthplace coordinates.
Brandt was much more accepting—or diplomatic. “No, it’s not, but it is worth a look. By the way, I told your people to be at the station for an informational meeting as soon as we get there.”
“There is something I ought to warn you about, Tony. I have a feeling Robert Shattuck will be showing up here, sooner than later.”
I heard the stillness in the car.
“What does that mean?” Gail finally asked. “Who’s he after? You?”
“Not specifically, although I think he sees me as the someone who can lead him to the person he’s after. The three people who came here in ’69 or ’70 with those famous hundred-dollar bills did Shattuck some damage he never recovered from. Stole the money he was pinning his future on and ruined his dreams. He’s been nursing that ever since—I think it’s fair to say he’s after blood.”
“Where did the money come from?” Brandt asked.
“I still don’t know.”
“He knows who this third person is?”
“I’m sure he does. His problem isn’t who; it’s where. I think that’s where he hopes I’ll come in—by leading the way—and his ego has it that he’ll succeed even if I don’t want him to.”
“Maybe,” Tony said thoughtfully, “or Shattuck could try forcing you to cooperate.”
I saw him looking at Gail, who immediately grasped his point. After a few seconds’ silence, she pulled off to the side of the road and put the brake on. She sat staring at the instrument panel before her. Her voice was neutral, almost cold, in an obvious effort to keep her emotions at bay. “Do you agree with Tony?”
“He does have a point,” I admitted. “If Shattuck does come to Vermont, he’ll be a complete outsider. He knows we’ll be watching for him, and he doesn’t have the connections or the hiding places he has in Chicago. He’ll have to work hard just to keep out of sight—and try to make every shot count. If he finds out about the two of us…”
She nodded silently.
“I’d feel a whole lot more comfortable giving you around-the-clock protection,” Brandt said to Gail, “or suggesting you take a small vacation.”
She stunned me with her own alternative. “If I stayed in town, and the police protection was discreet, I could be useful getting this guy out into the open.”
“I disagree,” I blurted out, horrified at the idea.
“Why not? It’s perfectly logical.”
“This guy’s not sane, Gail—”
Tony interrupted. “She does have a point, Joe. And we could control it so she wouldn’t really be exposed.”
“This is dumb, and it misses the point. What we need to focus on is the identity and location of the third man.”
“From what you’ve told me, Shattuck’ll do anything to gain an edge; it might pay to take advantage of that.” Brandt turned to Gail. “You have call forwarding on your office phone?”
“Office and home both.”
“So you could work out of your home?” She shrugged. “For a while, I suppose. I do need to get out—show properties, that sort of thing. Plus, there’s the board and my other activities.”
“But for a few days? We could set you up at home and have the place covered while you posed as bait. You could tell people you had the flu.”
I scowled at him. “Thanks a hell of a lot. One innocent person’s already been killed because of this.”
Gail said quietly, “By killing me, he’d be killing his leverage.”
“That’s rational—he’s not.” I turned from her to Brandt, who merely smiled and raised his eyebrows. The terror I had felt at Shattuck’s hands was mine alone. I could try to impress upon them just how cold-blooded he was, but I knew the end result would be the same, and that only I would feel reduced by the experience.
All that was left, therefore, was to concede to her logic—reluctantly. “I hate this.”
Gail smiled sympathetically, squeezed my hand, and put the car back into gear. “He probably won’t even show up.”
I didn’t bother answering.
“There is another problem,” she said after a while. “You better cook up something for the board explaining what Joe’s been up to this last week. If they find out I knew before them, we’re all going to feel the heat.” She glanced over her shoulder at Brandt. “I don’t know how specific you want to make it, but maybe you could have a little conversation with the town manager, and let him be your messenger.”
He nodded. “Good point. I also need to update the State’s Attorney. I won’t say anything to the selectmen about Shattuck or the stakeout—just that you were in Chicago, Joe, and stirred up a few wasps in the process.”
· · ·
The meeting Brandt had arranged with the squad had the elements of an awkward homecoming, prefaced as it was by the ritual number of jokes about my battered appearance, and offset by several quizzical sideward glances I was not intended to see.
“I didn’t get all the answers in Chicago that I’d banked on,” I began. “But I did get a few. I’m hoping that with the information you’ve been gathering in my absence, we’ll be able to wrap this case up fast. And speed, unfortunately, is now of the essence. It turns out we are no longer the only ones interested in finding out who opened up on us with an M-16. For that reason, I want to stress that what is said in this room stays here. There will be no interoffice memos, no casual chats by the coffee machine, and no late-night pillow talk with wives or significant others. If anyone questions what we’re up to, your answer should be we’re trying to put a name to the skeleton and find the person who did the shooting. Don’t tell anyone how we’re progressing. Our advantages in this race are knowledge and speed. If we give those away, we lose. It’s that simple.”
“Who’s our competition?” Ron asked.
I held up a mug shot. “This man—Robert Shattuck.” I then passed it to Ron to make a tour of the table.
“That photograph was taken about twenty years ago, so age the face in your minds and add gray hair—last seen tied back in a ponytail. Shattuck is just over six feet, trim and fit—one seventy-five to one eighty—and fifty-five years old. He is armed and violent. These”—I tapped my bandages with my finger—”are the results of some of his handiwork. He’s a dangerous man.”
I held up the two shots of Pendergast. “And this is our skeleton—David Pendergast, born in Marquette, Michigan, aged twenty-nine when he died. From what I could find out, he was charismatic, reckless, manipulative—and also dangerous. Not unlike Shattuck. I’ll have copies made of all these.”
I leaned forward on the table, choosing my words carefully. “Mr. Shattuck knows who we’re after—as far as I can make out, it’s someone from his past—but he doesn’t know where he’s hiding. Which means Shattuck may end up, one way or another, depending on us to supply that information. If he does show up in Brattleboro, he should stick out like a sore thumb, so he’ll probably act quickly and ruthlessly.
“He might try to get to me through Gail Zigman, since our friendship is common knowledge. If that happens, we hope to use that opportunity to lure Shattuck out into the open. The chief will fill you in.”
Brandt didn’t bother standing. In his familiar unemotional style, he told them of the plan he and Gail had worked up in the car. Gail would be under discreet guard at home, and would make outings only if absolutely necessary, and then always with a man on the floor of her car and another team tailing. The stakeout would be coordinated by the department’s Special Response Team—our version of SWAT—of which both Ron and Sammie were members. Brandt told them there would be an SRT meeting following this one. Given my involvement with Gail, he added, it had been agreed that I would concentrate on the other aspects of the investigation.
Kunkle spoke up after Brandt had finished. “Why not just pull in our snitches and spread the word about this guy? It’s not like he has a million places to hide.”
I nodded in agreement. “We need to shake the bushes, but until we know Shattuck’s in the area, the main thrust of this investigation should be to find the shooter. Again”—I raised my hand for emphasis—“the stakeout has got to be kept under wraps. Should Shattuck turn up, he’ll expect a minor manhunt, but he may not think we’re bright enough to set a trap.”
I stepped away from the table and began to pace at the head of the room. “Mr. Dunn has kindly made available to us a list of former residents of so-called Hippie Hollow, dating back to the time of Fred Coyner’s wife’s death. The list is fairly extensive, and we don’t know how many—if any—of them are still living in the area. But we need to find the ones who are and question them about Fuller, Pendergast, and anyone else who might have been with them. That means telephone directories, phone calls, the computer, and so forth. If you get a hit, follow it up in person and let me know as soon as possible. Remember: We want to do it right, but it’s got to be fast, and it’s got to be discreet. We don’t want to tip our hand, so watch your backs, and take note of anything or anyone unusual.
“Our second job is to locate the subject of the astrology chart that was stolen from Fuller’s house. We now know from an evaluation we had made of a copy of that chart that the subject was born at 10:55 P.M., eastern standard time, on April 7, 1946, in the Mount Vernon/ White Plains area of New York, just north of Manhattan. I know a lot of you are probably as skeptical about this as I am, but it is a lead, and we need to see if we can match a name to those statistics.”
DeFlorio let out a whistle. “Christ. Does that mean we got to call every hospital?”
“No,” Kunkle growled scornfully. “County or town clerks have those records, assuming they’re cooperative.”
Brandt stirred in his seat. “Actually, there may be an easier way—bypassing the clerks and the fees and the paperwork. When I took the FBI Academy refresher course a few years ago, I got friendly with a state police investigator from that area who might be able to help us out. Let me give him a call. If I make it sound urgent enough, we might get something in a couple of hours instead of waiting days for the bureaucrats to get stimulated.”
I nodded my agreement. “Okay, that’ll allow us to concentrate on the ex-Hippie Hollow residents. Sammie, you were the one who interviewed the old mortician at the Retreat, right?”
She paused in gathering her papers together. “Yes, for what it was worth—he was pretty far gone.”
“He probably had an assistant back then. Maybe he or she might remember something.” Sammie reddened slightly, perhaps feeling I was finding fault with her. “I’ll call and find out.”
“Okay. If there is such a person, set up an interview ASAP. We can do it together.”
I turned my attention to the rest of them, who were beginning to head for the door. “We’ll reconvene here at 1630.”
· · ·
Sammie stuck her head into Brandt’s office a half hour later and announced she’d located the mortician’s ex-assistant. I made my apologies to Billy Manierre and Brandt and joined her with a sigh of relief. The three of us had been discussing how to juggle the schedules of both the Special Response Team and Billy’s three patrol shifts, and I’d been finding the process difficult to deal with objectively.
Roland Bennet—the name Sammie had gotten from the mortician—was part owner of the Chameleon Café on Flat Street, Brattleboro’s one forthright gay bar. There was a large “Closed” sign in the window; Sammie pounded on the door as she’d been instructed on the phone, and in a few moments we heard rapid footsteps approaching from the inside.
Bennet greeted us like a long-lost aunt; he was expansive, gregarious, and utterly unfazed by our official status. “I apologize for the smell in here—too many cigarettes and too many bodies. You don’t mind if I leave the door open, do you? I have a fan going in the back, but it takes forever without a cross current.”
He ushered us though the small lobby to a twenty-foot oak and brass bar that lined one wall of the place and pulled out a couple of stools for us. He then circled behind the bar. “Can I get you anything to drink? Juice? Maybe a mid-morning snack?” At the back of the large room, beyond a cluster of small tables and a door leading to the kitchen, the dance floor was being vacuumed by a young man wearing bib-top overalls and no shirt.
We both shook our heads.
Bennet looked me over. “So, you’re Joe Gunther. I’ve seen you around—I just never put the name to the face. You wanted to talk to me about my days in the body business?”
I returned his smile, not knowing—or caring—if his slightly campy tone was natural or just for my benefit. “We understand you worked for Ed Guillaume in the late sixties, early seventies.”
“That’s right—I made ’em look good one last time.”
“Do you remember making Hannah Coyner look good in 1970?”
He laughed. “Good God, no—none of them had names as far as I was concerned.”
“She died of cancer. Her husband was Fred Coyner. He might’ve visited the parlor with two hippies—bell-bottoms, long hair.” I laid the photos of Fuller and Pendergast on the bar.
Bennet took a long moment studying them, especially the one of David Pendergast. A slow smile spread across his face. “I remember this one. He took my breath away—God, that was so many years ago.”
I felt Sammie, as conventional as most cops, struggling to maintain her composure.
“Do you remember anything specific? Anything he said or did?”
“Don’t I wish. I never even spoke to him. I saw them through an open door. I worked mostly in the back; old Guillaume did the soft-shoe stuff. But I remember seeing this one and just staring—he was so beautiful.”
