What good’s a print going to do?” Willy Kunkle asked Joe. “We already have his prints on file.”
Joe was back in Brattleboro, staring at the shot glass nestled amid a small, ignored stack of pink call-back notes in the middle of his desk. It was his sole trophy so far in what was starting to look like a repeat exercise in futility.
“And didn’t you say she’d moved since he split? That means she must’ve packed all that crap, touching each and every item. The print’s probably hers.”
Gunther shrugged. “It was something she said. She was impressed we never caught him, even though he was wandering all over New England. Made me think that if we’d missed something as obvious as his living with his old girlfriend, maybe we were missing something just as obvious now.” He stood up, preparing to follow Willy out the door. “I’m going to run Shea’s old prints through AFIS. We never did anything like that when we were looking for him, you know? Never sent them to the FBI, never circulated them anywhere. We just kept them here, relying on a physical description for the all-points.” He scratched his head. “It was so long ago. It never crossed my mind he could’ve been busted somewhere else and his prints entered into the system. That would’ve waved a red flag right off the bat.”
Willy looked at him. “Jesus, you’re cracking up, you know that? Who says the guy’s even alive, much less that he was printed someplace else? You’re dreaming.”
Joe walked out into the hallway with him, still distracted. “Maybe, but I never even thought of it. That’s what’s getting me. From the start, my head wasn’t in this case.”
Willy made for the staircase at the end of the hall, his meager counseling abilities exhausted. “You win some, you lose some. Shit happens. Get some sleep.”
With a rattle of shoe heels on stair treads, he was gone.
Joe smiled and murmured, “In a while.”
“You get what you were after?” the AFIS operator asked him an hour later.
Joe stared at the printout in his hands, incredulous. “You could say that.”
The cell phone in his pocket chirped. He thanked the technician and moved out into the deserted hallway, only half visible in the after-hours lighting.
“Hello?”
“Joe. It’s me.”
He smiled at the sound of her voice. “Gail. Where are you?”
“I’m driving into town. I have to go from one something to something else, but I was hoping I could see you for a couple of minutes. Are you nearby?”
“The Municipal Building. Is everything all right?”
“I’m eating too much and I‘ve lost track of who I’m meeting when or why sometimes, but I’m fine. It’s something else. Can you stay put for five minutes? I’m almost there.”
“Sure. I’ll be in the parking lot.”
She was faster than she’d thought, and drove up only ninety seconds after he’d stepped outside. He leaned on her door as she rolled down the window to kiss him.
“Come around,” she urged him. “It’s cold out.”
He circled the car and waited while she cleared her passenger seat so he could slide in beside her.
“What’s going on?” he asked after closing the door.
She reached for his hand, her face glowing from the dashboard lighting. “I have an apology to make.”
He waited, confused.
Her words almost tumbled over one another. “I heard about the case you’re working on—the one you had when Ellen died. I’m so sorry I didn’t ask what you were doing. I’ve been so tunnel-visioned with this stupid campaign. It must be so hard for you, reliving all that.”
He squeezed her hand. “Slow down. It’s okay. How’d you find out, anyhow? Nothing’s been in the paper.”
But she maintained her manic pace. “In this town? You’re kidding, right? ‘Confidential’ isn’t even in the lexicon around here. Someone leaked it to Ted McDonald, so WBRT’s been running it all afternoon, meaning the Reformer will have it tomorrow. I just couldn’t believe it when I heard. You came by the house that night, probably to tell me, and I barely said hi. That was it, wasn’t it? Why you came by?”
Joe was embarrassed, not to mention stunned by her revelation about the news getting out. He now had a pretty good idea what most of those unread call-back slips were about on his desk. “Oh, well, not really. Maybe a small reason. I just wanted to see you.”
“And share a little of what was going on in your life,” she finished. “Hardly a huge request, but too big for me.” She leaned over suddenly and kissed him. “This thing has turned me into a total jerk.”
He pulled back to see her better. “You’re making too much of it. I would’ve mentioned it, sure, but I saw you were busy. And it’s not like we haven’t seen each other since. This thing’s not as bad as it sounds. A lot of time has gone by. In some ways, it’s like working any other case. It’s just got some weird echoes attached to it.”
That wasn’t quite true, but he was touched by her concern, and didn’t want her feeling any worse.
“What’s McDonald been saying, by the way?” he asked.
“Just that the police have reopened an old murder case dating back thirty-plus years, based on some new evidence they won’t discuss, and then a recap about Oberfeldt. How’s it coming, anyhow?”
“Up to five minutes ago, not too well, but I just got some fingerprints out of AFIS that look pretty promising. How ’bout you? The primary’s getting close. You feeling good about it?”
Gail made a face. “Not too good about some of the company I have to keep.” She checked her watch. “I have to meet with Rene Charbonneau in ten minutes. Guy makes my skin crawl.”
Joe looked at her in surprise. Rene Charbonneau was a county bigwig—a self-made man who ran a soft drink and beer distributorship and a small string of convenience stores and owned God knows how much commercial real estate.
“Charbonneau?” he asked. “What’s that about?”
“Money. What else? He’s the top Democrat in that category—a miniature version of Ed Parker’s Tom Bander. Sooner or later, everybody stands on his rug on their way to Montpelier, at least if they’re coming from Windham County.”
Joe was impressed by how little he knew of this world. “I’ve never even met the guy. No surprise there, I guess. I thought you were going after the tens and twenties of the unwashed masses.”
She looked a little shamefaced. “I know I said that, but assuming I win the primary, I have to start planning for the next stage. Different game, with King Kong as an opponent. I play the same role—maybe a little more centrist—but I have to make sure the major movers are taken care of. I’m not after Charbonneau’s money so much—more the support it represents. Parker’s going to be really hard to beat.” She paused to sigh wearily. “Christ, I can’t believe what I’m saying. I sound exactly like all the politicians I used to hate.”
He tried steering her away from such thoughts. “Is Charbonneau really bad news?”
“Oh, no. He’s pretty progressive for a hard-core capitalist. He just sees himself as a ladies’ man, and he gives me the creeps. Takes my elbow, pats my shoulder, guides me around by the small of the back. I wish he’d just grab my ass and get it over with.”
Joe laughed. “That would be the end of somebody’s career, sure as hell.”
There was a momentary stillness, which she followed in a more muted voice. “That brings up something else, Joe.”
“What?”
“It’s the real reason for the apology. I did something I’m even more embarrassed about than having ignored you the night you came over. Have you started calling your law enforcement contacts yet, telling them about me?”
Joe felt his face get warm in the darkness of the car’s interior. “No. I’m sorry. I talked to Lester about it, and he said—”
She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t do it.”
“Don’t call?”
She looked out the windshield, avoiding eye contact. “I’ve been aiming at this campaign for a long time—a lot longer than I’ll admit. I don’t know if it’s ambition or a need to be admired, or maybe, God forbid, because I actually believe in what I keep preaching about.”
“Gail,” he cautioned.
“No,” she said with a quick smile. “It’s okay. I spend so much time telling people what they want to hear, it’s nice to just be honest with someone. Especially you.” She took a breath. “Anyway, the point is that getting here has taken a lot of time and effort, and the actual campaign has rubbed my face in things I never dreamed of—like the allegations that I’m milking the rape for sympathy, or using my gender to advantage, or soaking my flatlander parents for money. It’s all made me a little crazy, and turned winning the election into a kind of Holy Grail, especially against a guy who’s starting to look damn near unbeatable. It’s like a vendetta. I don’t listen so much to all my friends and supporters anymore. I listen instead to the bastards who don’t even know me and treat me like shit, and I want to win so I can shove it up their noses.”
Joe didn’t respond to any of this, recognizing not only its cathartic benefit but also that it probably reflected a much broader truth. He suspected that most politicians, if only in the secret recesses of their hearts, shared many of the same sentiments.
”Bottom line is,” she continued, “that I sometimes lose sight of who I am and of what really counts in my life.” She looked at him and took hold of his hand again. “In a more clear-sighted moment, it never would have crossed my mind to ask you to make those calls, Joe, especially while we were lying naked in bed.”
She held up her hand to quiet the response she saw forming on his lips. “You would argue the point because you’re a nice person, but I see what I did as emotional blackmail, and I don’t want you to cater to it. So, promise me you won’t make those calls, okay?”
He fought the instinct she’d already quelled twice, to downplay her words and make light of the perceived injury. Because in fact, she was right, and he was grateful for her perception and honesty. But despite his desire to, he still couldn’t match her eloquence.
“Okay,” he said simply. “Thanks. And don’t worry. No matter how you’re feeling now, you are the good guys. Don’t forget that.”
She leaned over and kissed him once more. “That’s me—Wonder Woman. Oy.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Would you be up for a late-night visitor in a few hours?”
“Absolutely,” he said instantly, but just as immediately felt a renewed unspoken frustration. As he left her car and waved good-bye, he swore under his breath at his own weakness. Just as Gail had run roughshod over him because of her own ambitions, he’d just now shot himself in the foot so as not to hurt her feelings.
In fact, he didn’t want company tonight. He wanted to be on the road. The AFIS printout in his pocket told him that Peter Shea’s fingerprints currently belonged to a man named Norman Chesbro, and that Chesbro had been arrested for a chronic failure to pay parking tickets just two months ago in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Once again, Joe found himself caught in tendrils of his own making.
He let out a puff of air in resignation and headed toward his car. What the hell. A few hours now wouldn’t make that much difference.