"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 csawurm: your cute Bordfem: thanks Bordfem: asl csawurm: 23 male vermont Bordfem: kool – 14 f vermont csawurm: whoa your 14? Bordfem: is that bad csawurm: Im pretty sure thats jailbait – you look older in your pic Bordfem: well its my school pic csawurm: what school? Bordfem: brattleboro middle school Bordfem: u there csawurm: yep Bordfem: u want to chat csawurm: yeah but I have to go soon Bordfem: k csawurm: 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 reassured 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 reasserting 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 hearse 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."