Tag Man

by Archer Mayor

  Joe had the crime lab report on his desk, as a painful reminder. “No,” he told her. “It’s a popular trail—too much traffic to tell one way or the other if he was alone.”

  “Well,” she said sorrowfully, registering his disappointment, “I’ll probably be calling it a natural, then, as I suggested, and listing the cause either as presbycardia or ‘old heart.’ It’s not used often, but I like it for this.”

  “All right, Beverly,” he conceded. “Thanks for the update. Take care of yourself.”

  Joe replaced the phone and looked across the VBI office at his entire team, Sammie included, who had once again found a babysitter.

  “Dead end?” Willy asked with a smirk, pun intended.

  Lester groaned quietly.

  “Afraid so,” Joe conceded. “She’ll most likely be ruling it natural.”

  “We’ve worked around that before,” Sammie lobbied. “We don’t necessarily need a finding of homicide to make a case. We still got Dan crawling around Lloyd’s place, stealing his stuff, and planting his stupid Tag Man Post-it. And we got Metelica targeting Dan on Lloyd’s orders before getting killed himself, clearly by Dan and probably in self-defense.”

  She hesitated, gathering her thoughts.

  “Right,” Willy interjected. “And right there, you already got a problem, don’t you? We’re only pinning Metelica on Dan because it suits us. We have no proof. Not only that, but Norm’s death—which I’m still calling a murder—puts us in the same pickle. We think Dan and Sally went after Norm on that mountain, but then what? I mean, I like Dan, and Jordan’s an asshole, but it’s Dan who keeps showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hell,” he threw in, his exasperation plain, “we were the ones who gave Jordan an ironclad alibi by sending him to Boston with a tail.”

  Willy continued, riding his rant to its natural conclusion. “And what about Hauser? What the fuck is that all about? And why is Dan so fired up to find him? It’s all crazy stuff—a complete mess. All due respect, what we really got is Dan sneaking around on a video. Period.”

  In the ensuing dead silence, Joe quietly stated, “Dan is the Tag Man,” his voice startling in contrast to Willy’s stridency.

  There was a telling silence in the room, which Willy filled with, “So what? I just said that.”

  “So, he’s how we got into all this. How many houses has he hit that we know of? Six?”

  “Maybe,” Lester said. “That’s Ron’s department.”

  “Yeah,” Willy answered more confidently. “Six.”

  “All high-security,” Joe recited. “All hyper-rich; all occupied at the time of entry; all left precisely as they were found with the exception of Post-it notes and some eaten food—including the alarm systems, which were as functional afterwards as they were before being breached, except for Gloria’s, of course.”

  Willy was getting antsy. “What’s your point? We’re circling the same hydrant.”

  “Think about it,” Joe pressed on. “We’ve now seen Dan in action—a fully filmed documentary of the Tag Man at work, thanks to Lloyd’s automatic cameras. And what did we learn? That Dan doesn’t just sneak in, eat people’s food, leave a note, and split.”

  “He cases each joint—top to bottom,” Lester suggested.

  Joe looked pleased. “Exactly. He sticks his nose into every drawer, closet, shelf unit, nook, and cranny—like he’s taking inventory. And what’s the result? Nothing. What was reported missing or disturbed in every house except Lloyd’s?”

  “Nothing,” Sammie echoed.

  “Right,” Joe resumed. “I interviewed Merry Hodgkins. She’s a neatnik like Willy and Dan—” Willy scowled at the reference—“and she has an eye for when and how her belongings might have been disturbed. She wasn’t as thorough as Lloyd’s cameras, of course, but she gave me a general picture. Dan went through her place like a hyperactive safety inspector, including reading the contents of her computer. She even thinks he stole her investments homework, to make a little cash on the side. But that’s it.

  “My point,” Joe said directly to Willy, whose body language was nearing explosion, “is that, as far as we know, Lloyd is the only one Dan physically ripped off, and we know that because Jordan totally wigged out as a result.

  “But ask yourselves,” Joe went on, “what other house have we associated with Dan Kravitz that’s also related to our investigation, as Tag Man or not?”

  After a telling silence, Lester said tentatively, “Gloria Wrinn’s?”

  Joe, who’d been walking back and forth before his desk, now settled on its edge. “That’s it.”

  Willy fixed him with a stare, suddenly enlightened. “Shit.”

  “What?” Lester asked.

  “We’ve been looking at what Dan wants us to see,” Willy explained, adding, “Dan Kravitz isn’t just eating caviar and leaving Post-its. He’s collecting data—investment tips, blackmail information, Christ knows what else.”

  He stopped suddenly.

  “Like what?” Lester persisted. “Is this why all the fuss at Gloria’s?”

  “He didn’t leave a Post-it or eat any food,” Sam protested. “We don’t know if he was even there except when he went by with Sally.”

  “Sure we do,” Willy argued, making Joe smile at how fast his brain could adapt. “There was that deal with the broken table and the evidence J.P. found where Gloria’s windows had been messed with, and the damaged door to the top floor. And, Sam,” he suddenly added, “you were the one who told us that Kravitz knew where Hauser’s room was, proving he’d been in the house before.”

  He looked back at Joe. “And the suitcase he asked Gloria about? What was in it?”

  Sam was rubbing her temples. “Dan knows what’s in Hauser’s suitcase? How?”

  Joe shrugged. “That’s what I’m suggesting. Just as Dan stole something from Lloyd, and may have copied information off of Merry’s computer, he could have visited Gloria’s place without leaving his Tag Man calling card. The whole Post-it note thing might be something he does only now and then, for fun. Given how careful he is, he could’ve broken into fifty houses around town without ever leaving a trace, and,” he threw in for Willy, “maybe stealing a little something from all of them—either unnoticed or too embarrassing to be mentioned.”

  He resumed pacing. “Gloria said that Dan, or ‘John’ as she knew him, claimed that he knew about the suitcase because it left a mark in the dust of Hauser’s room. We know that’s baloney because J.P. checked it out when he examined the whole house. Also, J.P. found the empty secret compartment in the floor, the same size as a suitcase, which Dan probably found before him.”

  Willy filled in the rest. “Meaning Dan went through its contents, just like he goes through the contents of everything. I can vouch for that. The man is always touching stuff and rearranging it. I think he counts, too, like trees he passes or parked cars, or people in a restaurant. That’s what made him such a great snitch—he notices everything.”

  “But what did he find?” Sam asked pointedly. “We have to assume that whatever it was, he didn’t take it the first time—or maybe he didn’t take enough of it—’cause he apparently came back for more.”

  “I think he finally got interrupted,” Willy suggested. “The broken table? The beaten-up door? Then all of a sudden, for the first time we know about, Dan masquerades as a state employee to get access to a house he’s already visited. I’m betting he was doing his Tag Man bit, like Joe says, but at long last got caught, probably by Paul Hauser, and they had a knock-down, drag-out fight. I don’t know where Norm Myers fits in, but that would at least explain why Hauser took off without a word and why Dan is trying to find him.”

  Lester let out a small laugh. “Jeez Louise. This thing’s like a kid’s game. Dan’s trying to find Hauser, we’re trying to find Dan, I’ll bet my pension old Lloyd’s wishing he could find Dan, too, and Christ knows what Hauser’s up to, or why he’s running for cover. Did we ever check out his background?”

 
; “Yeah,” Joe answered him. “He doesn’t exist on paper.”

  “Meaning an alias?”

  “Meaning anything you want,” Willy said bluntly.

  “All of which brings up a point,” Joe mused.

  “That we’re up a creek?” Willy asked.

  “We’re in shallow water,” Joe conceded. “I’ll give you that. But I meant that our biggest obstacle is that most of the players have run to ground—Dan, Sally, and Hauser. For those three, we can issue be-on-the-lookouts for law enforcement eyes only, and keep our fingers crossed that someone’ll be seen at a bar somewhere, or picking up groceries, or stopped for speeding, and that we’ll get lucky. In the meantime, we’re left with Lloyd and whatever smoking gun it is that Dan stole from his desk.”

  “We are?” Sam asked.

  “By proxy—Ben Underhill, the Boston mob, everything that Abijah Reed told us. We need to collect enough evidence there so that we can start pressuring Lloyd. He’s our wild card—Dan stole from him, and he’s going after Dan.”

  “While Dan’s going after Hauser,” Lester reiterated.

  “All the more reason,” Joe said, “to get in on the chase.”

  “How?” Willy asked bluntly.

  “We just got Lloyd to drive all the way to Boston PD on some feeble excuse. That tells me that the peace arrangement between Lloyd and Underhill’s bunch needs constant care and feeding, and that Lloyd is twitchy about its overall health. If we figure out how to stir all that up, who knows what might come slopping out?”

  “Or who might get killed in the process,” Willy suggested sourly.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Dan waited for the train to pass and the flimsy gate to lift, drove their latest borrowed car a few hundred feet along the cracked macadam, and veered left onto a broad expanse of remarkably flat pasture, where he rolled to a stop to give Sally a better view.

  Both her hands were hanging on to the edge of the door, the window rolled down, and her eyes wide. “Oh my God, Dad. This is amazing. It’s like a really old movie set.”

  She had a point. Across a weed-choked, picturesque pond was a hunkered-down, enormous shoebox of a building, all glass and weather-stained steel, surrounded by the vast acreage of an empty parking lot large enough to double as a decent-sized airport.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “It used to be the Green Mountain Race Track,” he explained. “And believe it or not, I used to work here.”

  She twisted around to face him. “Here? As what?”

  “Just a grunt,” he said dismissively. “It opened in the early 1960s as a Thoroughbred- and harness-racing track—it had stables enough to put up over eight hundred horses in its day. Quite the deal. Then, in the late seventies, it switched to greyhounds. That lasted maybe fifteen years, and it’s been looking for a purpose ever since.”

  He pointed out the window past her. “We’re parked on the actual racetrack right now.”

  She half jumped in her seat and cracked open the door to better see. “We are?”

  Looking closely, she could just make out the oval outline of the old track beneath them. It made her feel odd, as if a galloping herd of horses might suddenly come thundering upon them from behind.

  “Holy cow,” she said. “This is really cool.”

  He put the car back into gear and slowly drove clockwise around the oval, circling the pond and getting closer to the ever-looming building dominating the scene.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s still the largest indoor stadium in Vermont—over five thousand seats behind glass, in a heated environment. Talk about your creature comforts. Makes sense, though. This far north, why bother building something so big that’s open to the elements, right?”

  “I guess,” she responded vaguely, bending far forward to take it all in. Perched atop the rigidly rectangular structure was something akin to a two-story penthouse, complete with bay windows. She pointed them out. “Those the sky boxes?”

  “In part, before they were called that. If I remember, one of them actually housed the cameras that recorded the races. Not sure about that. Looks a little worse for wear, doesn’t it?” he added, joining in her scrutiny of the place.

  Having rounded the sharp end of the track, they were now parallel to the building’s enormous glass front. Behind its glittering surface, just visible behind the reflection of the Green Mountains across nearby Route 7, they could make out an orderly tiered mass of wooden-backed empty seats—and imagine this now ghostly structure once seething with crowds and exploding with noise.

  Sally glanced over at him, her expression wry. “Our new home, I’m guessing?”

  He smiled brightly through his guilt. “The caretaker’s a pal. Maybe we can talk him into one of the skyboxes. Make it all feel less empty.”

  She laughed without conviction. “I don’t know, Dad. It’s starting to sound like The Shining.”

  He laughed, but he didn’t tell her that his suggestion about using one of the uppermost vantage points had more to do with security than isolation. He glanced around, pretending to be enjoying the flat, empty acreage, while in fact watching for his biggest fear, the malevolent threat of Paul Hauser.

  * * *

  Lisbeth Jordan’s voice had sounded weak and timid on the phone—not at all reflecting the poised young woman Joe had met while kneeling before her tomato patch.

  He understood why when he entered the Thai restaurant in the center of town—built with a vengeance, he thought, on the former site of his beloved if bedraggled Dunkin Donuts. He spied her sitting at a far corner table, her back to the door, and, he discovered as he rounded the table to sit opposite her, wearing sunglasses.

  It was eight fifteen at night.

  He forewent the usual polite amenities, studying her face instead. One cheekbone had too much rouge, especially for someone as careful as she.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “That’s not why I called you,” she answered. There was a bowl of soup before her, untouched.

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  “I want to know why you’re after Lloyd.”

  He chose to wait her out, suspecting that she had something to add.

  She did. “When you and I last met, I said that Lloyd and I didn’t have much holding us together anymore. That problem’s been solved.”

  “I can’t give you ammunition for a divorce, Lisbeth.”

  She glanced down at the table between them, her mouth tightening as she concentrated.

  “I understand,” she then said quietly. “Of course you can’t.”

  “I suspect you already knew that,” he suggested.

  She didn’t answer at first, apparently making peace with the inevitable.

  “I guess I did,” she finally conceded.

  “Which doesn’t mean that you still can’t talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  “You and Lloyd.”

  She smiled thinly. “Now you’re a marriage counselor?”

  “I care about your safety,” he told her, adding, “and I won’t say I’m not interested in Lloyd.”

  “You want me to rat him out.”

  He barely shook his head at the comment. He’d had these kinds of conversations before, in more and less subtle variations. He wasn’t complaining, though. More often than not, they proved worth the effort it took to conduct them, and he needed all the help he could get right now.

  “You called me, Lisbeth,” he said, signaling for the waiter. “I think you’re the one who wants to rat him out. You just don’t know what I might need to hear.”

  He ordered a Thai iced tea, as close as they came here to a milkshake, and very good for all that.

  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.”