"That sounds pretty strong," his mother suggested.

"On the face of it," he agreed. "My problem was that he'd never done anything like that before and there was nothing in his private life to explain why he would-except for having a loser brother who happened to be facing what his type calls 'the b.i.t.c.h.'"

Her eyebrows shot up. "I beg your pardon?"

"That's the habitual offender label that can turn a standard sentence into a lifetime in jail. The SA will slap it on you if he's had enough of giving you second chances, and I happen to know that Dan was nose to nose with it big-time back then. I couldn't prove it, but I always bet Dan was in Brattleboro when all this happened-that he'd done the job and convinced Andy to take the fall because he'd get off light."

"Three years doesn't sound light."

Joe didn't argue with her. "It was an election year, the SA had been accused of being too easy on criminals, the old lady was a charmer, complete with bandaged head, and did I mention that Andy copped to having done it? According to statute, he was looking at fifteen years. I figured-and I swear this is what Dan sold him, too-that he'd get a suspended sentence and probation. But that's not how the SA saw it, and for some reason, the judge let it fly, too. It was pure Russian roulette on Andy's part, with five out of six chances of being lucky."

Joe sighed heavily, remembering his irritation at the unusual outcome. "That's what upset me when you said Dan had confronted you in the grocery store," he added. "If Andy's death does have anything to do with my quote-unquote sending him to jail, then Dan better not look into any mirrors, 'cause he won't like what he sees."

"But you don't know any of that for sure," she half asked.

There he had to concede defeat. "No."

The pager on his belt began vibrating quietly. He groaned and removed it from his belt and saw Sam's callback number on the display, along with the message, "ASAP."

"I better answer this," he muttered, getting up.

"A problem?" she asked.

"Don't know. It's Sam." He moved toward the door.

"Joe," his mother said, stopping him.

He crossed back over to her and kissed her forehead. "Don't worry, Mom. We'll figure this out." He pointed at the bowl. "You better hold off cooking that till after this phone call, though."

He went into the living room to give both of them some privacy, more from instinct than any notion that his mother needed shielding.

"Hi," he said to Sam after she'd picked up the phone. "What've you got?"

"Sorry to bother you, boss, but we found another dead guy with no ID and no obvious signs of what did him in, just like the first. This one's in Brattleboro."

Joe felt his stomach rumble. He'd stop at a gas station for a sandwich on the way.

"I'll be there in an hour."

Bordfem: hi hicsawurm: your cute your cute Bordfem: Bordfem: thanks thanksBordfem: asl aslcsawurm: 23 male vermont 23 male vermontBordfem: kool - 14 f vermont kool - 14 f vermontcsawurm: whoa your 14? whoa your 14?Bordfem: is that bad is that badcsawurm: Im pretty sure thats jailbait - you look older in your pic Im pretty sure thats jailbait - you look older in your picBordfem: well its my school pic well its my school piccsawurm: what school? what school?Bordfem: brattleboro middle school brattleboro middle schoolBordfem: u there u therecsawurm: yep yepBordfem: u want to chat u want to chatcsawurm: yeah but I have to go soon yeah but I have to go soon Bordfem: Bordfem: k kcsawurm: bye youngin bye youngin

Chapter 8.

Joe paused on the threshold, completely clad in a Tyvek jumpsuit, and surveyed the room. What crossed his mind immediately was less the scene before him-a motel room remarkable only for its blandness-and more the fact that the dead body draped across the foot of the bed didn't seem particularly unusual.

Being in situations like this, whether they were homicides, suicides, or undetermined, had by now become a habit.

There were four others in the room ahead of him, all dressed as he was. The smallest of them turned as he closed the door behind him.

"Hey, boss," Sam greeted him. "You made good time."

He nodded in response. "Still no ID?" he asked.

"He might as well've been dry-cleaned," another of the figures answered, turning to reveal himself as Lester Spinney, Sam's exact opposite in both height and demeanor-he, laid back and tall; she, high strung and diminutive. Standing beside each other, they looked like an antiseptic comedy act. The two other detectives, both on their hands and knees, worked for the Brattleboro PD. One, surprisingly to Joe, who had spent decades in that department, he knew only slightly, and not by name. The other, by contrast, was Ron Klesczewski, the chief of detectives, anointed by Joe on his departure, and a close friend. The first man did no more than glance in Joe's direction before resuming work, scrutinizing the rug inch by inch. Ron, for his part, leaped up and shook hands like a long-lost relative, making Joe realize guiltily that, in fact, they hadn't seen each other in months, despite their having offices one floor apart.

After pleasantries-and apologies-Joe looked into the bathroom to his right and the open closet door immediately beyond it, making sure not to step off the ribbon of butcher paper laid down from the doorway to the far wall for scene preservation. Both areas appeared untouched, all the way down to the toilet paper end still folded into a point.

Ron caught the meaning of his survey. "He did check in," he rea.s.sured him, "but paid cash."

"No luggage?" Joe asked.

"Supposedly a small bag. If so, it's missing," Lester suggested.

Joe stepped deeper into the room. The body lay facedown on the made bed, fully clothed. The TV was off, the lights on, the curtains drawn. Aside from the dead man, the room looked ready for rental.

There was a knock on the door, and Alan Miller stuck his white-hooded head in. "Okay to come in? I'm all decked out."

Joe looked to Ron, who was the nominal lead investigator until or unless he ceded control of the case to the VBI.

"Good by me," he said. "I want to see what he looks like."

Alan stepped inside cautiously, lugging his metal equipment case. "Any idea who we've got?"

"None," Sam told him. "What you see is everything. I checked his back pockets already, since they were staring at me, but so far, nothing. Feel free to do the honors."

"No weapon?" Miller persisted.

"We don't even know if he was murdered," Lester volunteered cheerfully. "Could be a natural."

"Or another parachutist," Sam muttered darkly.

Miller looked at her doubtfully but didn't ask for an explanation. Instead, he opened his case on the butcher paper, extracted a camera, and took a few shots that would later accompany the body to the ME's office in Burlington. Beverly Hillstrom liked seeing what her customers looked like in place.

He then began carefully examining the body, first by simply placing his gloved hand on its abdomen to feel its temperature, before moving to the hands, arms, and legs to check for stiffness. A vague rule of thumb had it that rigor mortis takes some twelve hours to reach its peak, before a body's flaccidity begins rea.s.serting itself. But everyone in the room was experienced enough to know that such rules were notoriously unreliable.

"Okay to move him?" he asked.

Klesczewski nodded, and Miller rolled the body onto its back, farther up onto the bed. A gentle sigh escaped its lungs as it settled into its new position.

They all studied the man's face, as if expecting him to deliver a name. He was about five feet ten, on the edge of going fat, dressed in jeans, a chamois flannel shirt, and sneakers. He had thick, curly hair, a narrow, neatly bearded face, and absolutely nothing to say to any of them.

To satisfy Sam, whose habits he knew all too well, Miller checked the decedent's front pockets first. "Nothing," he announced.

The rest of his examination came to about the same conclusion. Clothing was opened and shifted, but not removed-again according to the ME's wishes-but no wounds, telling tattoos, or interesting artifacts surfaced. Whoever this was, he remained, for the moment, simply a corpse in a motel room.

They'd been told in the middle of Miller's procedure that the funeral home had arrived for transportation. The body was, therefore, eventually sealed in a heavy plastic bag and handed over to the hea.r.s.e and its police escort, leaving the original team alone in the room.

In the momentary silence following their host's departure, Joe scratched his cheek through his Tyvek hood, feeling claustrophobic. "How many key cards did he request at the desk?"

Sam and Ron exchanged glances-a throwback to when Sam was also on the local squad. Lester picked up the hint and moved to the phone, made a quick call, hung up after asking the same question of the clerk, and reported, "Two."

"That's interesting," Joe said. "How many cards did you find here?"

"None," Ron admitted in a monotone, adding, "I should've thought of that."

"Call me a pessimist," Joe then mused, "but I'm guessing our buddy didn't die of natural causes."

Sam paced the short distance to the far wall and came back again, staying on the brown paper but agitated by the same oversight Ron had owned up to. "Okay. Let's put it together. He checks in, presumably looking for anonymity . . ."

"And for love," Lester added.

"Right. But no sooner has he entered this room than his date arrives and whacks him somehow, stealing all his stuff, including both key cards."

"He arrived alone?" Joe asked.

"Yeah," Lester answered. "We did get that much. I had the manager get hold of the night clerk for a positive ID and a short interview."

"Then why the two cards?" Joe asked again. "Wouldn't you just tell your date what room you were in and open the door when he or she knocked? Or maybe leave the second key at the desk? Why ask for two and then take them both into the room?"

There was no answer from any of his colleagues. Joe tapped the wall beside him. "Any neighbors?"

"One," Ron answered. "The other room's empty. And that neighbor didn't hear a thing."

"How did he get here?"

"That's another thing," Lester said. "We don't know. Every car in the lot's accounted for. He didn't list one on his registration card."

Joe made another survey of the room, standing still and scanning slowly in a circle. At the end, he said, "One of you is meeting someone in a motel. You want it nice and anonymous-no real names, no credit cards, an out-of-the-way place. How do you set it up?"

As usual, Sam spoke first, after only a momentary hesitation. "I either call the other party with my room number after I check in, or I tell them to ask at the desk."

"Right," agreed Lester, catching the spirit of Joe's question. "But we already ruled out that he used the phone, and if you're trying to be secretive, you don't then tell that other party to ask at the desk. You tell him to come straight to the door. Plus, this guy took two key cards. He could've just left the second one at the desk, if that was the plan."

"How does the visitor know what door to go to?" Sam challenged.

"A signal out the window?" Ron mused. He stepped around his subordinate, still working on the rug, and opened the curtains. The room had a full view of the parking lot.

"Or a sign outside the door," Sam suggested. "Even a large piece of blank paper would do, Scotch-taped in place."

"Maybe the second key card itself," Lester added, "stuck in an envelope."

He walked to the door, opened it, and scrutinized its exterior surface, aided by a penlight. The others watched him, his nose almost touching the door, until he finally paused, brushed the area before him gently with his latex-gloved fingertip, and announced, "There was some tape here, recently enough that the residue's still tacky."

Joe was nodding all the while. "So our person of interest gets here, opens the door himself to avoid the noise of a knock or the risk of nonadmittance, then what?"

"Kills our guy," Lester said immediately, adding just as quickly, "but how?"

In the meantime, he left the door, crossed to the desk, opened the drawer, removed the cardboard folder he found there containing writing paper, a cheap pen, some postcards, and a single envelope. Holding up the latter, he said, "Two postcards, two sheets of paper, one envelope."

"But no Scotch tape," Sam said. "He either brought it with him or just used the glue on the envelope flap to hang it on the door."

"Suggesting some DNA transfer from tongue to envelope to door," Joe mused.

"Yeah," Lester agreed. "But from the victim, so who cares?"

"Right," Joe conceded before waving his hand in a semi-circle. "So, possibly apart from the envelope, nothing's disturbed, the dead man's clothes were neatly tucked into place, and there wasn't a mark on him." He paused to address Ron's detective. "You find anything yet?"

"No, sir," he answered.

"And," Joe concluded, "we found him lying across the bottom of the bed, facedown."

"As if stretched out for a nap," Lester said.

"Or pa.s.sed out," Sam proposed. "You take a nap, you position yourself properly; you use a pillow, take off your shoes. Plus, you don't even go there if you're waiting for someone. The adrenaline's pumping. Naps don't come into it."

The four of them contemplated what all that might mean.

"Be a b.u.mmer if the ME said it was a heart attack," Lester said.

Joe smiled, knowing the unlikeliness of that. His response went to the crucial point none of them had yet addressed. "The real b.u.mmer would be if both both our dry-cleaned John Does turned out to be naturals. This is number two, after all." our dry-cleaned John Does turned out to be naturals. This is number two, after all."

Sam grunted softly. "Christ. I hope they end up with something more in common than this."

"Like the same poison?" Lester asked.

"I don't know. Anything."

"No local connections to the first one yet?"

"No," she said gloomily. "We're still asking around."

"We might have to ask for some help there," Gunther suggested. "Get the newspaper involved, especially if this fellow turns out not to be from around here, either. You know: 'Have You Seen This Man?' Run them both. And if that fails, go wider, reach across New England. There's got to be somebody who'll recognize at least one of them. What was the name this one used at the desk?"

"R. Frederick."

Gunther laughed.

"What?" Ron asked.