She booted up her computer and plugged the next two names, Alan Palmer and Charles Chisholm, into a phone directory that searched every listed number in the nation. Dozens of hits came up, unusual names were harder to come by in this day and age. So if there ever was any confusion-if anyone ever said, “Hey, I knew an Alan Palmer back home”-EAC could laugh and say, “Yes, I’ve met a few Alan Palmers in my time too.”
Did he laugh? Did he smile? How normal-seeming was he? Very, according to his last girlfriend, Mary Ann. The perfect boyfriend. Until he killed you.
“He needs relatively common names,” Tess said, thinking out loud. “Names of people who have no connection to him. The men also have to be a certain age-they all had the same birth year-and have a physical description he can more or less fit. Caucasian, around six feet, light eyes. Hazel helped him get those. Why?”
“Beats me. If she knew what she was doing, it made her an accomplice to some pretty awful stuff. And from the way you said she lived, it doesn’t sound as if she was blackmailing him or anything.”
Tess chewed the inside of her mouth. “We can’t just sit here, speculating. We need to drive out to the office where Hazel worked, find out what records she had access to.”
“Same problem we have with the shrink. Why would anyone talk to us?”
Tess rummaged through her desk, finding letterheads from an insurance company, one that happened to exist only in her imagination: S amp;K Fire and Life, named for the greyhound. She loaded a sheet in the printer and began typing.
“To Whom It May Concern-”
“What are you doing?” Carl demanded.
“Lying.”
“I don’t think I can be a party to-”
“Carl, you’re not a cop anymore, remember? You’re never going to be a cop again. But you could be a private investigator, if you wanted to, or a security consultant. So step back and watch how it’s done.”
He walked over to her desk, looking over her shoulder at the template on her screen. “This works?”
“Fake letterhead is amazing. The thing that really sells it, however, is the motto.”
“Motto?”
She opened the printer tray and pointed. “There, under the name: Serving Baltimore families since 1938. For some reason, that clinches it. It’s the little extras that make a lie work, the superfluous details.”
“Did you always think like a criminal, or did you learn on the job?”
Tess stopped to think about this, fingers hovering above the keyboard. “I believe there was always a criminal in me, waiting to find a noncriminal way to express itself. So far, this arrangement is working out nicely.”
The letter, backed up by Tess’s real business card and license, worked its usual magic. Hazel Ligetti’s supervisor in Hagerstown had only to hear the words “possible Medicaid fraud” to pull the files requested by the two earnest investigators from the insurance company. After all, Tess had the men’s names, DOBs, Social Security numbers, even the Soundex numbers from their Maryland driver’s licenses. She knew the hospitals where they were now being treated.
She also knew it didn’t hurt that the person suspected of wrongdoing was dead. The department might have closed ranks around a living employee. But if giving up a dead one could make trouble go away, why not bend a few rules?
“Did Hazel have ready access to these files?”
The supervisor, Alice Crane, was a pale thin woman with frizzy bangs that belied the effort that had gone into straightening the rest of her highlighted hair. Or perhaps her hair was naturally straight and she tortured her bangs into those crimped waves. Tess found the things women did in the pursuit of beauty oddly endearing.
“Hazel had access to all the files. She entered the dates of each hearing, as the case moved from the state to the federal rolls. Once someone got SSI, the case was closed, but we kept the files. Part of Hazel’s job was transferring the paper files to computer.”
So Hazel sat there, her fingers moving over the keys as she recorded the particulars of hundreds of lives that had been interrupted or derailed. The medical files wouldn’t tell her everything she needed to know to find the right identities for her friend, but quick calls to the Motor Vehicle Administration and Vital Records would have filled in the gaps.
“What was Hazel like?”
“Oh, she was a good worker. Quiet. Put in long hours. Whenever I had jobs that meant overtime, I always gave Hazel first crack. After all-” The supervisor blushed.
“What, Mrs. Crane? What were you going to say?”
“Hazel didn’t usually have plans in the evenings. You could kind of count on that. She… kept to herself.”
But Tess had known that. Hazel’s landlord had told her the same thing, with bland cruelness. At least Hazel had a nice boss.
“Didn’t she have any friends here in the office? Or photographs on her desk? Did anyone ever visit her here?”
Mrs. Crane shook her head. “I boxed up her desk myself after the fire. There were just a few things. She had a vase of silk flowers. And a paperweight, I think. She didn’t leave a will and, boy, was that a mess. Set me straight about what you have to do, even if you’re a single woman. Would you believe we had to put her personal effects in storage, wait to see if anyone came forward to make a claim? In a way, it was almost a godsend the house burned to the ground-” She caught herself, put her hands to her mouth in horror. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“I know,” Tess assured her. “What happened to Hazel’s things?”
“We were allowed to get rid of them after a year went by, so we did.
Except for some silk flowers-I have those on my desk. But if no one came forward for the money, I can’t see how anyone would want some flowers.“
“Money? I thought it took all Hazel’s life insurance just to bury her.”
“Her life insurance? Oh, yes, the little state policy we all have. That’s about all it would cover, for sure. But we have a good 401(k) plan through the state, and Hazel was a saver. Someone must have told her the value of compound interest because she started putting those dollars away early. There was over a hundred thousand dollars in her account when she died, and it’s still drawing interest. They advertise every year, but the beneficiary never comes forward.”
“Beneficiary?”
Carl straightened up, like a hound dog catching a scent, while Tess found herself reaching for the edge of the table, to still a suddenly shaking hand.
“Well, she wrote down someone’s name on the form, but there’s no address and she didn’t put down his Social Security number. Sometimes, I wonder if she just picked the name out of the phone book. Hazel told me one time the only time she felt lonely was filling out forms. She had no kin, but she didn’t think of herself as solitary unless she had to fill out a form.”
“But there was a name-”
“Oh, yes. Not that it did any good. As I said, they put it in the legal notices in Hagerstown and Baltimore and even DC. But that money just sits and sits. I guess the state will get it, which seems a shame to me. It’s not as if the state needs Hazel’s money-”
“The name, Mrs. Crane. Do you remember it?”
“I wrote it down someplace, in case he ever calls or comes to look for her.” She flipped lazily through the Rolodex on her desk and then through the pages of a date book. It was all Tess could do not to grab her hand and make it go faster. Carl caught her eye and mouthed “Eric Shivers.” She nodded, worried about the same thing. If the killer had come to Hazel already disguised, they wouldn’t know anything more than they did now.
“Here it is-William Windsor. I’d love to know what he was to Hazel. Imagine, leaving over a hundred thousand dollars to a stranger. He must have done something really nice for her.”
Tess managed a mouth-only smile. “Something memorable, at least.”
She had Carl call the name in to Dorie Starnes as they drove back to the city. Even from the driver’s seat, Tess could hear her mercenary friend’s voice booming over the cell phone’s unsteady line.