Tag Man

by Archer Mayor

  “Just saying we shouldn’t hold our breath,” he said dully. “Not that we shouldn’t try.”

  The room was quiet as everyone absorbed both what had happened and the evidence that had stimulated it. The sheer mass of the albums and their contents—even if eventually proven fictitious—were enough to make each of them wonder. The perversity behind their creation lingered like a cold draft.

  Joe walked to the door and flipped the lock. “We need to get out of here. It’s almost o-eight-hundred now. It’s been a hell of a night and we all need sleep. If those women are dead, they’ve been that way a long time, and if Paul Hauser killed them … well, that’s been taken care of, too. Let’s get a little rest and then we can do some homework.”

  “What about Norm Myers?” Willy asked sharply, still smarting. “You goin’ to write him off as one of Hauser’s, too?”

  Joe stared at him. “As far as anyone knows, Willy, Myers was a fluke—a natural death in unusual circumstances. I even consulted Hillstrom again. It happens.”

  “Maybe in your world,” Willy said, walking out.

  As the others began following suit, Sammie asked Joe, “What did you do with the girl?”

  “Sally? She’s upstairs watching TV. Either that or taking a nap.” He rubbed his eyes. “I hope so, anyhow.”

  Sam scowled at him maternally. “Meaning you aren’t going home right now.”

  He smiled. “Oh, no. I’ll be keeping her company. I just wanted to come down to check this out and see what we’d found. She called her father, and he’s heading in.”

  “You going to arrest him?”

  By now, they were alone, the others having left. Joe kissed her cheek and said, “Go home to Emma, Sam. How’s it worked out, coming into work now and then?”

  “Weird,” she admitted. “I thought I’d like it better.”

  “You’re a mom now,” he said. “You’re in love for the rest of your life, whether you know it or not. Get used to it. Enjoy it.” He smiled broadly. “We’ll still be here when you’re ready.”

  But her face remained serious. “Will you be?” she asked. “Here?”

  He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah. This is what I do, and some smart people have been telling me I better stick with it for the time being.”

  She patted his chest. “Now I’ll go home to my daughter.”

  * * *

  The insides of Joe’s eyelids felt covered with sandpaper as he stood just outside the interview room on the first floor of the municipal building. The VBI didn’t have one of these—that remained among the Grand Plans that management was still pondering—so Joe and his crew borrowed the PD’s when they needed to apply a little pressure.

  Not that there was a demand for the space at the moment. It wasn’t quite nine in the morning.

  He took a breath, cleared his mind, and opened the door.

  “Where’s Sally?” Dan Kravitz demanded, sitting with his knees together and his back rigid. He, too, looked utterly drained.

  Joe crossed the tiny room to the one available chair, and sat down, trying not to display his exhaustion. “Upstairs, safe and sound,” he said.

  “I would like to see her,” Dan said softly.

  “I know you would, Mr. Kravitz,” Joe sympathized. “But we’re going to have to clear up a few things first. You’ve been a busy man.”

  In response, Dan removed a crumpled two sheets of handwritten paper from his pocket and placed them on the scarred tabletop. He didn’t actually slide them across to Joe, so the latter restrained himself from reaching for them.

  “What’s that?” he asked instead.

  “My bargaining chip,” Dan said.

  Joe smiled. “Isn’t that like putting money on the table for an item you haven’t identified yet?”

  Dan stared at him. “We both know what’s going on here. A few hours ago, you gunned down a man in Pownal. According to the news, you found another one dead on Hawks Mountain, and we all know about the murder downtown—off the bridge and into the river.”

  He sat forward anxiously and asked abruptly, as if suddenly reminded, “Did you find the suitcase? With the albums?”

  Joe shifted and crossed his legs. This was not the traditional route for an interview, where the cop tries to coax, cajole, or finagle the truth from a suspect. This man was at once smart and distressed, clear-sighted and confused, and in any case eager to be free and clear of the mess he’d taken on.

  Joe could only sympathize.

  But he wasn’t going to show it. They had a good idea of what had gone down. Kravitz was correct about that. But Dan still had a lot of explaining to do, to Joe and the state’s attorney. People weren’t let off the hook simply because they were good at heart and loved their children.

  Still, there seemed to be wiggle room here, certainly in regard to the question Dan had just asked.

  “Tell me about that,” Joe answered obliquely.

  “I will,” he said. “But tell me first: Are they real? I looked and looked and I couldn’t find anything. I spent hours on the computer, but I only had a quick look at a couple of the pictures.” He added, “They made me sick.”

  “We don’t know,” Joe told him. “We’re still checking. Now talk to me.”

  Dan was looking down at the table, carefully arranging the two sheets of notepaper atop each other, tidying the edges and aligning them in turn with the table’s edge.

  “I found them by mistake.”

  “Where?”

  “You know where.”

  Joe stretched his neck and cleared his throat. “Okay. This is how we’re going to do this. You say you have a bargaining chip. Great. We’ll get to that. You know what it is, and it looks like you’re pretty sure it’ll be a solid-gold, get-out-of-jail card. Let’s go with that. I’m totally game. I like you. I like your daughter, and as you said before, we all pretty much know what the big picture is here. So, what you’re going to do right now—so that you can present me with that chip—is take me through your whole adventure, from the time you left a Post-it note on Lisbeth’s K-Y jelly bottle, to what you’ve been up to until the moment you crossed the police department’s threshold. Is all of that crystal clear?”

  “What about Sally?” was the predictable response. “When do I get to see her?”

  “That’s my bargaining chip,” Joe told him. “You have to tell me the truth—straight down the line. You don’t know what I know, and that’s a shitload by now, so if you lie or screw up or jerk me around, I hope you have a good photograph of Sally, ’cause that’s all you’re going to see of her in a jail cell.” Joe then fed the man’s well-known paranoia by throwing in, “You have got to be smart enough to know that I can drop the ceiling on you if I want to.”

  Dan was staring at him glumly. “You’d do that?”

  Joe let him stew for a couple of seconds before stating, “You bet your ass. I’m old, I’m tired, and I’m pissed off at the world—more than you’ll ever know. I got dead people, missing people, and people who might not’ve even existed but who need checking out.” He took a breath before adding, “And one bird in hand. Start talking.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Dan wearily, almost mumbling, pushed Susan Rainier’s letter over to Joe and said, “Now will you take this? It proves she cooked up his alibi for the night his first wife died.”

  “It doesn’t prove he killed her.”

  Dan sighed heavily. “That’s your job. I just want my daughter back.”

  Joe touched the letter. “And you think this’ll do that? You killed a man, you’ve admitted to a series of burglaries, you’ve been running around conducting your own criminal investigation. Once I replay the tape we just made for the state’s attorney, we’ll be able to charge you with a half-dozen offenses.”

  Dan placed his forehead in his hand, nearing his limit of social interaction. The man needed solitude like fish need water.

  “I was trying to do the right thing. I know being the Tag Man was ou
t of line. I’ve stopped that. I was between a rock and a hard place. I had to investigate on my own. Would you have just said ‘thank you’ if I’d dropped by and said, ‘Oh, hey, when I was in Gloria’s house in the middle of the night, I discovered a monster’? You would’ve busted me for being there in the first place.”

  Joe couldn’t deny it. He knew how things tended to work.

  But he also knew that based solely on the tape of Dan wandering around the Jordan house, the prosecutor wouldn’t be too thrilled to nail him for the Tag Man rap. Therefore, getting Dan to spill his guts was a must. To Joe’s mind, however, that was exactly the problem.

  He happened to agree with Dan. He had done the right thing—at least from his viewpoint.

  Joe stood up, his entire body complaining. “I see you as a man of honor, Dan. You’ve acted that way with Willy for years; you’ve done proud by your daughter, who thinks the world of you; and you showed a sense of responsibility and conscience through all of this. I think you’re one of the oddest guys I’ve met in a while, but by itself, that isn’t illegal. In fact, it’s probably why Willy likes you.

  “So, here’s the deal: If you swear on Sally’s head that you won’t skip town and that you’ll come in to meet me about this whenever I ask, and,” he emphasized, tapping the table with his finger, “that you’ll stop this Tag Man bullshit—now and forever—then I’ll let you go. You have to tell me where you’re living and working at all times, until the dust has officially settled, but other than that, I’m happy to know you’re just hanging in the neighborhood while we figure out what to do with you. Now, if the state decides I’m being too soft-hearted, there’s nothing I can do about that, but I’ll do my best to recommend everything but jail time for you. You understand?”

  Dan looked up at him, his eyes dark-rimmed and bloodshot, but grateful. “I do, and I appreciate it.”

  Joe studied him for a moment, comparing their fates. He, as Joe saw it now, was looking at a life of solitude with his books, his woodworking, and his job. Dan Kravitz—the self-imposed social hermit—might just be spared a life of solitude in a cell, if he was lucky, in exchange for the company of the love of his life.

  Funny how things sometimes worked out.

  He crossed to the door and opened it. “I’ll take you to your daughter.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Sammie sensed more than heard someone’s presence at the living room door, at the precise moment that Willy’s voice gently reassured her, “Just me.”

  Typical, she thought with a smile. He even enters his own home like a cat burglar, silently and through the least-used entrance. She’d known him to park a block over as well, not for her sake but to throw off the neighbors.

  No wonder he kept company with the likes of Dan Kravitz—a man she’d barely heard of until recently.

  She turned her head only slightly, so as not to disturb Emma, who was fast asleep in her arms, her eyes firmly shut, her face still, aside from the reflexive churning of her jaw muscles as she massaged the pacifier in her mouth.

  Willy floated silently across the room and crouched beside them, murmuring, “Hey, little girl.”

  Sammie thought she could see a tiny extra relaxation touch the child’s face at her father’s voice. Not many would believe that Willy Kunkle could have that effect.

  “You’re home early,” Sam said to him, slightly concerned.

  “Yeah,” he said simply.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Oh, sure.” He was watching Emma intently, but smiling.

  “Then what?” Sammie pressed him, knowing his moods well enough by now to read them reliably, at least most of the time.

  He tilted his head thoughtfully, before admitting, “It’s just goofy. Nothing serious.”

  She laughed, and her moving chest made Emma smile and hunker down a little more into the crook of her arm.

  “You are too much. Spit it out.”

  Willy kissed her cheek. “I missed you guys.”

  She flushed with pleasure. “Then you did the right thing.”

  He rose, stroked Emma’s smooth forehead once, as was his habit, and retreated to the doorway, where he stopped to look back at them, mother and child, rocking by the window overlooking the sun-dappled lawn.

  He had been missing them. That much was true. But of course—considering his complicated psyche—the motivation hadn’t been purely sentimental. He’d been sensitive to what had almost befallen Dan, when Sally had been grabbed. He’d embraced the man’s panic.

  It had taken Willy a long time to reach this point in life—a long time, a lot of luck, and an inordinate amount of kindness and patience from people who—had they been remotely reasonable—wouldn’t have expended the effort.

  And now he had a daughter. Tiny, frail, and utterly dependent.

  He’d come home in the middle of the afternoon to be reminded of that, and to bask in the proof of his good fortune.

  But he’d also come home to refresh his memory of them. Because he knew—was haunted by the knowledge—that life could change faster than it takes a teardrop to travel a cheek.

  * * *

  That night, late as usual, Joe walked down Main Street from the office, swung right on Elliot, and walked into a bar named Silva’s, created and named by his much-missed companion. When Lyn had been alive, it had become a routine for him to drop by during her shifts, just to sit on the last stool, hard against the wall, and watch her work the crowd. He had first done that in Gloucester, Mass., several years ago when he’d gone to the local bar to gather information on a case, before he’d even known her name.

  He’d admired her then, and had never stopped.

  The place wasn’t busy. It was midweek. Maybe twenty people were spread about, chatting, laughing, and enjoying their time off.

  As he paused in the doorway, taking in the scene, the woman at the bar, reminiscent of Lyn in fact, if far younger, slapped a can of Coke before his usual place, flashed him a wide grin and a thumbs-up, and went off to tend to a man calling out from the bar’s far end.

  Joe felt a double pang of pain and relief, walked over to his spot, and settled in before the cold can, admiring how Lyn’s daughter Coryn, who’d inherited the business, had so quickly adapted to a life she’d never anticipated.

  Like her mother, she had a knack with people.

  * * *

  Later still, long after most of the town had gone to sleep, Dan Kravitz settled down to enjoy the quiet of the night—his favorite time of day. He was feeling more kindly disposed toward the world and its inhabitants, if perhaps only for the moment—a mood no doubt helped, just hours earlier, by his addressing the lingering problem of what to do with Leo Metelica’s dark and ominous Colt .45. He’d dropped it into the Connecticut River.

  Not surprisingly, he did know himself well enough to realize that his fears and mistrust would eventually take him back. But for now, life could be worse. He wasn’t in jail—always a plus; his daughter was safe and sound and back to doing the things that gave her pleasure; Hauser—whoever or whatever he’d been—was no longer a concern; Jordan would be dealt with by the police, assuming Ben Underhill hadn’t already acted, which Dan guessed he had; and his dealings with the state’s attorney had led to an acceptable arrangement with the state’s department of corrections—specifically their parole and probation unit.

  He now had a corrections handler with the unlikely first name of Clark, who seemed delighted to be dealing with someone who wasn’t a drug dealer, a pervert, or a hardhead disposed to punching people’s faces.

  They saw each other once a week.

  Dan had a new job as a lawn-care and landscape-maintenance assistant, according to the official listing. It put him outside and working alone, often mowing cemeteries or tending to parks and green spaces that lay far off the beaten path. Clark had proven sensitive to Dan’s needs.

  And he had a new apartment, too, as sparsely furnished as always, and as neat as an operating room. It was quiet an
d on the top floor, and had a separate entrance, which mattered a great deal to him.

  He also still had his secret lair. No one had known about that, after all. Not even Sally. So why give it up?

  Compromise was a good thing, after all, now and then. Joe Gunther had shown that, as had the prosecutor.

  And as Dan was showing now.

  He rose from the armchair he’d been enjoying and crossed over to the couple in the large bed at the far end of the bedroom, pausing to pet the cat that lay stretched out on the Turkish rug.

  Dan wasn’t going to leave a Post-it note behind, after all, or remove anything from the fridge downstairs.

  He’d told Joe that he was done with the Tag Man thing.

  And so he was.

  OTHER BOOKS BY ARCHER MAYOR

  Red Herring

  The Price of Malice

  The Catch

  Chat

  The Second Mouse

  St. Albans Fire

  The Surrogate Thief

  Gatekeeper

  The Sniper’s Wife

  Tucker Peak

  The Marble Mask

  Occam’s Razor

  The Disposable Man

  Bellows Falls

  The Ragman’s Memory

  The Dark Root

  Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

  The Skeleton’s Knee

  Scent of Evil

  Borderlines

  Open Season

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  TAG MAN. Copyright © 2011 by Archer Mayor. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mayor, Archer.

  Tag man : a Joe Gunther novel / Archer Mayor. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  e-ISBN 9781429984430

  1. Gunther, Joe (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Vermont—Fiction. 3. Burglars—Fiction. 4. Murderers—Fiction. 5. Brattleboro (Vt.)—Fiction. I. Title.