The Surrogate Thief

by Archer Mayor

  The population shifts reflect this latter aspect. From a year-round total of some 30,000 locals, the region bloats up to three times that number over the summer.

  But he couldn’t really blame either tourists or part-timers. Even if addicted to the latest trend in vehicle or cell phone, the most hopeless among them could only be impressed by Cape Ann’s simple, breathtaking charm. It is a perfect commingling of history, good food, soothing scenery, and proximity to Boston. Despite the traffic, the boutiques, and a cheek-by-jowl crush of million-dollar homes, the whole place remains wedded to the basics preceding them: the gulls, the fishing boats, the smell of salt in the shifting air, and the huge, swelling, slightly ominous sea supporting it all.

  Not surprisingly, there is a parallel arc of economic extremes, from the mansion owners spending most of their time away to the dock and fish-factory workers inhabiting Gloucester’s ancient heart. It is the latter who continue the traditions of lore and trade and who occupy, in a feudal comparison, the role of peasants on whom the lords rely for food. Similarly, they also bear the brunt of a dangerous and unstable profession and are as exposed to the vagaries of the sea as their landlocked medieval forebears were to drought, disease, and foreign invasion.

  In light of all this, it almost goes without saying that Gloucester is a hard-drinking town, run through with a steady stream of nameless people of no particular address.

  An ideal place for someone on the run.

  The Gloucester Police Department is perched along with the county’s district court in a modern, largely windowless redbrick atop Main Street’s modest humped back. Joe parked on the street, noticing as he did how the crest of the hill marked a social watershed of sorts, with the eastern slope leading toward the wharves, the older businesses, and some of the cheaper housing, and the western slope hosting more upscale, trendy shops and outlets. The majority of the pedestrian crowd, still clad in summer brights, was clearly weighted toward the latter.

  Joe found the police department located off the building’s lobby, in a dark room fronted by a bulletproof glass panel. He could just dimly make out what looked to be a dispatch center beyond. A phone was mounted to one side of the window.

  “Hello? Gloucester Police.”

  “Hi. My name’s Joe Gunther. I’m from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, in town running a check on an outstanding warrant.”

  There was a pause from the other end, followed by “Hang on. A detective will be right out.”

  In three minutes, a barrel-shaped man in a polo shirt and khakis appeared at the far door. His expression was guarded as he stuck out his hand. “I’m Sergeant Wilkinson. May I help you?”

  Joe reintroduced himself, presenting his credentials at the same time.

  “Long way from home,” Wilkinson said, opening the door wider and smiling thinly at last. “Come on back.”

  Joe followed him down a couple of dark, cluttered hallways and into a tiny office. For all its exterior clean lines and modernity, the building’s innards seemed cramped and oddly designed. Wilkinson waved Joe to a guest chair wedged between his desk and a side table loaded with portable radios in chargers. Joe had to watch out for his knees as he sat.

  “They told me you’re looking for someone,” Wilkinson stated.

  Joe pulled an updated arrest warrant from his pocket and placed it before his counterpart. “Peter Shea. Suspected of homicide thirty-two years ago in Brattleboro, Vermont. I got an AFIS hit last night that you folks arrested him for unpaid parking tickets a couple of months ago.”

  Wilkinson’s whole expression changed from reserve to bafflement. “You’re kidding me.”

  Joe smiled. “Yeah—long story. Talk about a cold case. You have him in your files under the name—”

  “Norman Chesbro,” Wilkinson finished.

  Just hearing the name out loud was a relief. After all this time and his own misgivings and self-doubt, Joe suddenly began to believe that the end might be within grasp. He wondered how it would feel to finally speak with the elusive ghost of half a lifetime.

  “I guess you two met.”

  But Wilkinson was looking unhappy. “You could say that. We fished him out of the water early this morning. With a hole in his chest.”

  Gunther stared at him.

  The Gloucester cop opened a file before him and slid a Polaroid picture over without comment.

  Joe picked it up and saw a drenched man, his face pale as bleached rubber, lying on a stretcher on a dock. In one of those moments when shock calls out for distraction, he also noticed how the body was ringed by the tips of people’s shoes, all caught in the margins of the photographer’s frame.

  “Sorry to ruin your day,” Wilkinson said. “Was that your guy?”

  Joe returned the picture. “I don’t know. Last I saw him, he was barely twenty. His fingerprints checked out, though, right?”

  “Yeah. And I was the one who arrested him for the tickets.”

  Joe sat back in his chair, struggling with the sheer mass of his disappointment. “Any idea when he was killed?”

  “Must’ve been last night. He was seen alive around one this morning, at a bar—no surprise. He was a major-league juicer.”

  One in the morning, Joe thought. Long after when he would have been here had he chosen not to spend the night with Gail.

  Unwittingly, Wilkinson then added exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. “Too bad his prints weren’t in the system. If I’d gotten a hit when I booked him for the parking tickets, I would’ve held on to him.”

  “That’s true,” Joe admitted mournfully. “It’s always what you don’t do that bites you in the ass later. Damn.”

  Wilkinson was looking sorry for him. “I wish I had some good news to balance the books, but we’ve got nothing so far. No clue on who killed him—or why, for that matter.”

  Joe rubbed his face vigorously with both hands and took a deep breath. “Okay, maybe there’s some other angle. What was behind the parking ticket thing?”

  Wilkinson made a dismissive gesture. “Like I said, he hit the bottle, hard and regular, along with a few hundred other people in this town. He had a car stolen a while back and claims he didn’t know it was missing. It was being ticketed all over town; notices were being sent to Chesbro’s address, but he never got them. That part, I half believe. He never collected his mail, including the final letter that told him to show up in court or else. I was the ‘or else.’ He was pretty surprised to see me. I’ll give him that.”

  “Maybe more than surprised?” Gunther asked. “Did he act nervous you might find out he was flying under different colors?”

  “I didn’t notice it if he was,” Wilkinson answered. “And we never did tumble to that. He had a license, a social security number. We were happy. It’s still pretty easy to get a new identity in this country, especially if you’re living low-profile.”

  “He have a job?”

  “At a fish-packing plant. Don’t ask; don’t tell. We talked to them. Barely knew who he was. Just another face.”

  “Are you the investigator?” Joe asked.

  “One of them. We have a team approach on these—one each from our department, the state police, and the DA’s office. For all practical purposes, the state police take the lead.”

  Joe nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose there’d be any way I could look at where he was living? Check out his personal belongings?”

  Wilkinson stood, taking his keys off the desk and pocketing them. “I don’t see why not, assuming you fill me in on why you’re here and what Chesbro meant to you. Could be we’re after the same thing somehow.”

  Driving anywhere in Gloucester doesn’t take long. It’s more the traffic than any distance that usually gets in the way, and in this instance, neither was a factor. The place Pete Shea had been calling home as Norman Chesbro was a rooming house above a bar located only a couple of blocks down from the police department, on the “wrong” side of Main Street, assuming you preferred boutiques to dead
fish. Joe barely had time to explain his interest in Shea before Wilkinson pulled his car over hard by the harbor and killed the engine.

  “Home, sweet home.” He gestured across the street at a largely windowless, stucco-clad blockhouse of a building, capped by two floors of a completely different type of construction. It looked as if a motel had been airlifted onto a warehouse, except that the warehouse in this case had a Budweiser sign decorating the door.

  “He lived up there?” Joe asked.

  Wilkinson hefted himself out. “Yup. The anonymous Dew Drop Inn. People live there from half an hour to ten years, and nobody knows nuthin’. It’s a cold fact that half the people upstairs and down are wanted for something somewhere, but anytime I step inside, they all pretend they’re in a library.” He pointed to a collection of moored fishing boats of various sizes and shapes. “That’s where he was found this morning by a local fisherman about to head out.”

  “Any guesses on how he was killed?” Joe asked. “You said he had a hole in the chest.”

  “The autopsy’s being done in Boston, as usual, but I’m guessing a knife—a big one. Looks like the killer caught him under the ribs and aimed straight up into the major vessels.” Wilkinson squinted at him in the bright sunlight. “Anybody you know who might’ve wanted to get that up close and personal?”

  Joe thought back to the morning’s Brattleboro Reformer, which had run an article on the old Oberfeldt killing on the heels of the radio reports the day before. But all he could give Wilkinson was a hapless look. “It’s all such ancient history.”

  The other cop nodded thoughtfully. “So, it’s probably just a drunk getting knifed. Most of the people we find in that shape have a bad history—doesn’t mean any of it played a part in making them dead.”

  He glanced across the street at the bar and waved to a man who’d just stepped out onto the sidewalk and was putting on dark glasses against the sudden light. Even at that distance, Joe pegged him as cop, from the shoes to the haircut.

  “Hey, Rick,” Wilkinson shouted.

  The man waved back and trotted over to them between cars.

  “Rick Edelstein, from the state police. Joe Gunther from Vermont. Joe has an arrest warrant for the late Mr. Chesbro, known to him as Peter Shea.”

  Edelstein shook hands and arched his eyebrows, “Really? What for?”

  “A thirty-two-year-old homicide,” Joe admitted.

  Edelstein’s expression didn’t change. “Moved right on that, didn’t ya?”

  Gunther hoped he was plugging into the man’s sense of humor when he answered, “Well, you know how things pile up.”

  Edelstein laughed. “Shit. And I thought my desk was bad. Welcome to Gloucester. You have anything to add to this mess?”

  Wilkinson answered for him. “Not a thing. He’d like to see the room, though.”

  “Sure,” Edelstein said. “Right this way.”

  He led the way back to the bar, saying over his shoulder, “The place is barely full, it being so early in the morning.”

  He was only half joking. Gunther was surprised by the six or so people who were in fact sitting at the bar, grimly facing their first beer and shots. It was a dark, cavernous, ill-smelling place, its walls covered with a predictable chaos of photographs, mounted fish, maritime paraphernalia, and irreverent to crude signs. The lighting was poor and mostly supplied by battered brass fixtures along the walls, aided by a single wagon-wheel chandelier and a smattering of neon beer ads. The TV and the empty pool table stood ignored. The place was as quiet as a church on Monday morning.

  “Stairs are over here,” Edelstein said, still leading.

  They climbed a narrow wooden staircase next to the bathroom and reached a dingy hallway running the length of the building.

  “This is it,” he announced, and knocked on a bruised hollow-core door. It was opened from within by a uniformed police officer, his face dulled with boredom.

  “Welcome to chez Chesbro—or whatever. Crime scene people have come and gone, so feel free.”

  It wasn’t much, and Joe couldn’t help noting that its one window didn’t even overlook the utilitarian harbor. The room was in the back, and the view was of the Dumpsters in the alleyway.

  He glanced about. No surprises concerning cleanliness. The bed was a mess; clothes were strewn about in a dropped-as-you-stand fashion; the decor was minimal. The forensics team had been unusually delicate, leaving the place largely as he imagined they’d found it.

  “No bathroom?” he asked, noticing that the only door led to a half-empty closet.

  “Down the hall. Nothing of his there that we could determine.”

  Joe squatted down where he stood, not wanting to further disturb the spirit of the man who’d once lived here. The three other cops, instinctively understanding, stayed quiet and still.

  Joe began absorbing the room, following Pete’s habits by the clues he’d left behind: the single pillow, the way the night table’s light was tilted over one side of the bed, indicating solitude. There were a few postcards taped to the wall, not of exotic places or naked women, but of Gloucester Harbor and the statue dedicated to those lost at sea.

  Joe stood and crossed over to the small pictures. “You mind?” he asked the others, indicating his interest.

  Edelstein said, “Go ahead.”

  Joe peeled a postcard from its mooring and looked at the back.

  “‘Dear Katie,’” he read aloud. “‘It’s beautiful here. Wish you could see it. I got a nest all ready and waiting for you to move in.’”

  “Damn,” Edelstein commented. “Hope she never took him up on that.”

  Wilkinson laughed. “Maybe she killed him after she saw this dump.”

  “No,” Joe said quietly. “She can barely leave her apartment.”

  An embarrassed stillness greeted his remark, although that hadn’t been his intention. He took down another postcard. Again it was to Katie, again sentimental, again unmailed. In the night table drawer, he found an old photo of Katie and Pete, heavily dressed and with their arms around each other, standing before a row of bare trees. They were smiling and dusted with fresh snow. Next to the photograph was a dog-eared Bible, several of its passages underlined in light pencil. Marking one page was a pamphlet from AA.

  Joe pointed noiselessly at the single other piece of furniture in the room: a battered chest of drawers. Edelstein caught his meaning. “It’s mostly empty. Forensics took a few things.”

  Joe checked its contents, finding nothing beyond a threadbare man’s worn remnants.

  He sat on the edge of the rumpled bed. “Not much to go on. How long had he been living here?”

  “Here?” Edelstein answered. “Almost eight years. Before that, it’s anyone’s guess.”

  “Any friends or drinking buddies?”

  Wilkinson answered that. “This was one of the most solitary guys I ever heard of. He worked; he drank; he came up here to sleep it off.”

  “Drank downstairs?”

  “Mostly. We’re still piecing it together, checking other places he might’ve gone, interviewing coworkers—the whole routine. I hate to say this, given what brought you here, but this may be history repeating itself, Joe—another murder with no solution. We’ve had that before. Guy kills a guy for a one-liner or less. It’s hard to track when there’s no motive. What about this Katie girl? He have anything to do with her not being able to leave the house?”

  Joe rose to his feet. “No. He started drinking. They drifted apart. One day he was gone. At least that’s her story. I have no reason to doubt it. She got sick later. Seems clear he was still thinking about her.” Joe looked at the room appraisingly. “What strikes you about all this? I mean, generally speaking?”

  “It’s a dump,” Wilkinson said.

  But Edelstein got his point. “It’s a hermit’s cell.”

  “Yeah,” Gunther agreed softly. “The cave of a self-exile.”

  Chapter 13

  Joe returned to the bar that night. The pl
ace was utterly transformed—jammed, hot, and noisy. The voices were too loud, the laughter forced, the body language loaded with seduction, anger, or loneliness. Angling through the crowd, he watched the patrons enacting their rituals as he might have groups of wary animals circling a water hole.

  He found a place at the end of the bar and prepared to wait patiently for the bartender to notice him amid the confusion. She was a tall, slim, attractive woman, probably in her mid-forties, dressed not provocatively but suggestively. From his vantage point, he could see her traveling the length of the bar, exchanging jokes, taking orders, replacing some drinks before she was asked to, and generally reading her customers like a good air traffic controller—separating the newcomers from the regulars, the easygoing from the boors, making sure everyone at least knew she’d seen them. It took her just forty-five seconds to look directly at Joe and gave him a one-finger be-there-in-a-minute salute. He nodded in response and then watched her bend over the sink, facing her public, and quickly wash a few glasses, giving every man within proximity a fast look down the front of her carefully half-buttoned blouse.

  This woman knew the game, the players, and the value of the bar as barricade. Joe imagined she made great tips.

  He’d spent the entire day in Gloucester, indulged by Edelstein, Wilkinson, and finally the assistant DA who’d shown up later, following them around as one or the other of them, mostly Edelstein, interviewed a variety of Pete Shea’s acquaintances and coworkers. What they ended up with was the portrait of a quiet loner who told no one of his past, revealed little of his personality, and did his best to stay clear of all groups, cliques, and organizations. In one instance, when he’d worked at a place that was considering unionizing, he quit rather than get involved. In fact, as far as they’d determined, he’d held a half-dozen jobs on or around the docks, always doing menial tasks, always without comment or complaint, always turning down any promotions.