Blood Ties (19 page)

Probably every day Hill talked to somebody who thought he had the answer. “Jo Anne Rudd died for the sins of the world.” “Grace Newcomb was killed by Bigfoot.”

Instead of going back to his hotel, Tregear headed into the center of town, where he hoped to find a decent dinner and drink way more beer than was good for him and forget the whole thing.

*   *   *

The next morning Tregear came within a gesture of getting back on the train to DC and spending the rest of his furlough curled up with the first woman who showed any interest. He actually went down to the station and checked the schedule, but it was a Saturday so the trains weren't running. He decided he would go sightseeing instead.

The hotel had thoughtfully provided a magazine that contained a map of Historic Frederick. Tregear, who tended to be obsessive about maps, had torn it out and stuffed it into his wallet.

And, just to add a little something to the whole endeavor, he thought he might try to spot his babysitters.

The etiquette was that you didn't make life any harder than necessary for the watchers. You didn't suddenly duck out of buildings by a side door, or cross and then immediately cross back on a busy street so that they made themselves obvious. The watchers, after all, were Navy, just like you, and rendering their lives miserable demonstrated a lack of team spirit.

However, it was hard to follow a person on foot, wandering more or less randomly through an urban landscape, without giving yourself away.

But these guys were very good. It was two days before Tregear was sure about even one of them, and that was almost by accident.

Tregear found Frederick interesting. From the quantity of building that had gone on in what was now called the downtown, he concluded that the city must have enjoyed considerable prosperity in the three or four decades preceding the Civil War, and it was easy to imagine what the place must have been like when Lee's army came marching through.

One could still see the building where Maryland delegates would have assembled to vote for secession if Lincoln hadn't first had most of them arrested. There was even a Museum of Civil War Medicine on Patrick Street, and its bookstore was where Tregear identified his first babysitter.

The giveaway was his sunglasses.

He was the sort no one noticed. Probably in his early twenties, about five ten and a hundred and fifty pounds, wearing tan shorts and a gray T-shirt, he was indistinguishable from the vast army of college kids with not much to do over their summer. He was standing well away from the front window, holding a book titled
Death is in the Breeze
about eight inches from his face. And he was wearing sunglasses.

They were the wraparound kind and very dark. It was, after all, August and probably a majority of the people one saw on the street were wearing sunglasses. But this pilgrim still had them on in a dimly lit room, and he was pretending to read. It didn't ring true.

Tregear went outside and headed west, away from the center of town. The guy in the sunglasses didn't follow him. In fact, Tregear didn't see him again for another three hours, until he was standing beside the canal on the Carroll Parkway, just where the water went underground for about two blocks. There was a dog park just across the street and Mr. Sunglasses was standing beside the chain link fence, talking to a man with an Irish setter.

Over the next three days, Tregear concluded that they must have been running about a six-man team on him. He identified two more—a tall man with particularly hairy arms, wearing a straw hat, and a Near Eastern type, short with a bad haircut.

He tried to be considerate. He stayed in his hotel room at night and he took enough time with his meals to save everyone's digestion. He tried to go to interesting places, preferably where everyone would have a chance to sit down once in a while.

By the end of the fifth day, a Wednesday, he still hadn't spotted any watchers beyond the first three. They were very good.

And he still hadn't heard anything from Detective Sergeant Hill and had more or less decided he wasn't going to.

Afterward, he often wondered whether, if he hadn't been so intent on his watchers, he might have cast his net a little wider and noticed someone else on his tail.

Because there was, as he found out Thursday night.

He was having dinner in front of Brewer's Alley, a restaurant on North Market Street that, as the name implied, served beer brewed on the premises. It was seven-thirty in the evening and voluptuously hot. People were passing by on the sidewalk. The barbecue chicken salad was delicious and the beer was better. Life was good.

Tregear was sitting alone at his table, and then suddenly he wasn't. A man came into the little trellised patio and sat down in the chair opposite. He was in his late twenties, in such perfect physical condition that he seemed to glow from the inside, and his dark blond hair was cut just long enough to take a part. He might as well have had “Annapolis” stamped on his forehead.

“Seaman Tregear,” he said, as if the name and rank were some sort of secret between them, “there is a car parked up the street. We'll drive you straight back to New London tonight.”

“I'm on leave. Go away.”

The man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a plastic card. He set it on the table, just in front of Tregear's left hand.

Tregear picked it up and looked at it, then set it back down again.

“Go away,
sir
.”

Lieutenant Seward, USN, didn't like that answer. His face visibly hardened.

“The car is waiting, Seaman. You're coming. That's an order.”

“I only follow orders when I'm on duty,” Tregear answered. “I'm not on duty. By the way, would you like a beer?”

“I can arrest you, if that's what you want.” The lieutenant smiled tightly, just to show he wasn't a bad guy. “I can take you back to New London in chains.”

“If you do, I'll probably get so depressed I won't be able to remember my own name, let alone how the Navy's code sequences work. We'll see how the brass likes that,
sir
.”

The lieutenant let out a little gasp, as if exasperated and amused at the same time.

“I'll have that beer now, if you wouldn't mind,” he said.

Tregear flagged down a waiter.

“You sure you wouldn't like a little something with it?” Tregear asked. He had halfway decided to forgive the man. After all, Seward was an officer and a gentleman, which meant he probably couldn't help himself.

The beer came in a glass that was already sweating in the warm August evening.

“They warned me you might be tough to handle,” Lieutenant Seward announced. Then he took a sip and seemed elaborately pleased. “But I have to get you out of here. There isn't a choice. Your watchers have discovered that someone else is watching too.”

“Who?”

The lieutenant shrugged. “We assume the competition.”

“How many?”

“Just one that we know of. But there could be others.”

“Just one? Describe him.”

For a few seconds the lieutenant merely stared into space, giving the impression he couldn't understand why what some nameless thug looked like could make any difference. Then, apparently, he decided to relent.

“Forties, maybe six one, maybe a hundred and seventy pounds, light brown hair, wearing jeans and a work shirt—down here, he probably thinks that looking like a redneck is a great disguise.”

He laughed, until he saw that Tregear wasn't.

“Anything else?”

“Else?” The lieutenant shook his head, then suddenly seemed to remember. “They think he's left-handed, but they're not sure.”

“Anybody get a really close look at him?”

“We've got some long-distance photos—if you insist.”

“Where are they?”

“In the car.” The lieutenant smiled, a warning that he was about to spring his cleverly concealed trap. “Which is where you should be, right now.”

There wasn't any point in arguing. Tregear didn't even want to argue. He was too scared. He paid his tab and they were out of there.

“I need to stop by the hotel to get my stuff.”

“It's being attended to.”

The lieutenant raised his arm and, about thirty feet up the street, the two back doors of a peanut butter–brown station wagon sprang open. The man who got out on the sidewalk side was tall, with very hairy arms. Tonight he had left his straw hat behind.

They put Tregear in the backseat, in the middle, as if afraid that he might try to bolt.

“Show me the pictures.”

The lieutenant, who was in front, on the passenger side, handed back a manila envelope. There were perhaps a dozen photographs, but Tregear only needed one.

“He's not the competition,” he said. “He's much scarier than that.”

*   *   *

Nobody was interested.

Tregear discovered that his mouth had gone completely dry. He didn't begin to relax until they were in New Jersey, when he discovered he was very, very tired. He missed New York altogether and didn't wake up until they reached New Haven.

Around noon of the next day a chambermaid at the Mt City Lodge in Frederick opened the door to Room 256 and almost stumbled over a corpse in civilian clothes but subsequently identified as Petty Officer Third Class Frank Piersal, age twenty-three. He had died of a single knife thrust to the throat, probably from behind, probably by someone who was left-handed.

The listed occupant of the room, a Mr. Stephen Rayne, who was described by the bell clerk as having used his left hand to sign his registration card, had disappeared and was wanted for questioning by the Frederick Police Department.

Back in New London, when Tregear's commanding officer showed him Piersal's photograph, he recognized him as Mr. Sunglasses.

“Of course nobody thinks you did it. We'll have a word with the Frederick police,” Commander Renfield explained. “Piersal was sent to pick up your stuff while you were still having dinner. Whoever killed him was probably waiting for you.”

“He's just as dead, whether I killed him or not.”

And then he tried to explain.

“Piersal was killed by my father. The last I heard his name was Walter Rayne, but he's probably changed it sixteen times since then. He's already killed two women in Frederick, plus God alone knows how many besides. Send one of these photos to the Frederick police and tell them this is their killer. Or I'll go tell them—maybe now they'll believe me.”

“This is really true?” Renfield asked him.

“You bet. If you want corroborating evidence, I've got gobs of it.”

“I'll let Security know. It's their decision.”

But Security did nothing. They didn't want Tregear anywhere near a criminal case, even if they could prove beyond a doubt he was as innocent as a lamb. They didn't want the publicity. They didn't want Tregear's name and/or photo in any reports—let alone the newspapers. They didn't want any part of any of it. Tregear, to the world outside the Navy, wasn't admitted to exist.

The photos, they claimed, were useless for purposes of identification.

“You tried,” Renfield told him.

“Not hard enough.”

*   *   *

“So eventually I put in for separation, and here I am,” Tregear said, and smiled wearily. “But I learned a few valuable lessons out of the experience.”

“Like what?”

Ellen had long since finished her wine and was a little surprised to discover she was still holding the glass. She set it down on the table in front of the sofa.

“What did you learn?” she asked, as if she thought a clarification was in order.

Tregear made a despairing little gesture with his right hand, suggesting that the cost of such knowledge must always be paid in guilt.

“I learned that I couldn't approach the police directly,” he said, “both because they wouldn't believe me and because Walter might be listening at the keyhole. And I've learned that I have to keep my distance. I accomplished nothing in Frederick and Piersal died in my place. If I'd stayed away, he'd still be alive.

“So from time to time I've made the police anonymous presents of information, which have usually been ignored, and I've been waiting for a situation like this, where the police would come to me.”

 

15

As she walked back to where her car was parked, Ellen discovered that she was what her father, the shrink, would have described as “conflicted.” The cop was feeling triumphant. She was on the cutting edge of the sort of homicide investigation they wrote books about, and the adrenaline was pounding through her veins. But Ellen Ridley, the woman who was not always a cop, discovered she was a shade disappointed.

Well, what had she expected? Stephen Tregear had just unburdened himself of the most horrific story she had ever heard.

“I think I have to talk to my partner,” was all she had said.

“That strikes me as a very good idea. Tell him he's welcome any time.”

But was she welcome? Welcome in a way Sam wouldn't have appreciated? That was perhaps a little unclear.

When she was behind the wheel of her car, with the door firmly closed, she phoned Dispatch. She found herself wondering if Tregear had some way of listening in.

“Where is Sam?” she asked.

“Oh hi, Ellie! I love you too,” a woman's voice answered. “He's in the office, breaking in a new chair. You want to talk to him?”

“It can wait.”

Frankly, she wasn't sure what she was going to say to him.

*   *   *

Sam was at his desk, drinking coffee out of a paper cup. He didn't look happy.

“The lieutenant wants us off Tregear by tomorrow,” he said, after he had glanced up at Ellen and then briefly scowled. “If Captain Marvel lodges another complaint, we're going to have a problem.