Tag Man (10 page)

“Huh,” Ron said. “Might be what they call a clue.”

“Better,” Willy suggested, straightening. “We have a gunman with no gun and specialized ammo, an extra barrel and no ID, and the name of an unusually named restaurant every local’s heard about but any outsider would have to write down to remember. If this dude’s not an out-of-town hit man, our next lunch together is on me.”

Ron nodded in agreement, reflecting that in all the years they’d known each other, they’d never once shared a meal.

*   *   *

Several locks were noisily thrown back before the front door eased open two inches to reveal a slackened chain and the somber face of a clearly suspicious woman.

“Badges can be bought in a catalog. I’ve heard about it,” she said.

Joe was still holding his credentials out, as he had been moments earlier before the door’s peephole.

“I understand, Mrs. Hodgkins, and I don’t argue with your being cautious. You’ve been through a lot lately.”

“What’s that mean?”

He tilted his head back to take in the front of her enormous home. “You were broken into by the Tag Man. He left his calling card. That had to have been frightening.”

“Frightening?”
she exclaimed, yanking the door wider and hitting the chain’s limit with a jar. The door bounced free of her hand and almost shut again.

“Stupid thing,” she growled, working the chain free and finally opening the door fully.

“Are you sure?” Joe asked. “I’m happy to wait if you want to call my office and have somebody describe me or something.”

She rubbed her forehead in frustration, trying to smile and failing. “No. I mean, I know you’re all right—look at you, after all.”

Joe smiled faintly.

“I’m sorry,” she then said, flushing. “That didn’t come out right.”

“Sounded right to me.”

“Shit.” She finally gave up, stepping back to let him in. “Let’s move on, okay? Forget I said anything. What is it you want?”

The question was faintly old-fashioned, as was the woman, Joe thought, although in an appreciative way. Merry Hodgkins, he’d learned from his research, was long divorced, a successful businesswoman, and by her own admission pretty paranoid even before the Tag Man had made her a target. The Brattleboro detective he’d consulted who’d followed up on that break-in had described Hodgkins as remarkably straightforward with both her strengths and weaknesses.

Joe stepped inside. She glanced around him as if to check that he hadn’t brought along a SWAT team or more thieves, then closed and rebolted the door.

She smiled apologetically at that point. “Sorry,” she said. “I was crazy enough before that happened, but he really did it to me. Did you catch him? Is that why you’re here?”

“I wish I could say that,” he told her. “But we’re still looking.”

She frowned. “Then what? I don’t have anything new to tell you. I changed all the locks, upgraded the alarm, I even switched to another security firm, just to rule out that it had been an inside job.”

Joe was nodding. “I know. I do apologize. I’ve just come onto the case, to help out with a new set of eyes, if you know what I mean. I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions.”

That caught her interest. “Okay,” she said slowly. She gestured through a nearby doorway, offering, “Would you like to sit down? Maybe have a refreshment of some sort?”

He passed into a large living room, answering, “I’ll pass, thanks, but feel free if you want something yourself.”

They were located off Western Avenue, also called Route 9, the main road connecting Brattleboro to points west. Merry’s was one of several old mansions that used to house some of the industrial magnates ruling the town a hundred years earlier. It was brick with a slate roof, meticulously tended, and seemed a ridiculous home for a woman alone.

Joe perched on the edge of one of the sofas facing an antique coffee table, and waited for Merry to settle across from him.

“What would you like to know?” she asked.

“What I understand,” Joe began, “is that nothing was actually stolen. Is that right?”

“He ate some food I had.”

Joe checked his notes from a pad he’d extracted from his pocket. “Pâté? And a jar of caviar?”

“And crackers.” She smiled ruefully. “He went for the good stuff—I’ll give him that much.”

“And he left the remains out, so you’d see what he’d done?”

“Yes.” She knitted her eyebrows. “Your people took photographs of all that.”

“I know. I saw them,” he told her. “What I’m after is more what made him tick.”

To her credit, she thought about that carefully before answering, “You want to know why the caviar, instead of attacking me or stealing my TV.”

“Exactly. And I’m asking not because I think you knew him, although that’s possible, but because I gather you traced his movements after you discovered he’d been in the house.”

She studied him for a moment before responding like the executive she’d once been. “And since I’m a recognized security nut and a neat freak to boot, I might have noticed things other people wouldn’t?”

Joe didn’t argue with her self-assessment. “Call it wishful thinking,” he conceded. “I’m looking for a psychological portrait based on his actions. If it’s any comfort, you’re not the only one I’ve approached. I’m trying to visit everybody he hit.”

She sat back and crossed her legs. “It’s not a comfort, but I do understand. What have the others said?”

“If it’s okay, I’d like not to say up front.”

Onboard with that, she nodded before staring at the carpet in concentration for a moment.

“He didn’t violate my private things,” she said. “And he didn’t touch me that I know of, or do anything unseemly.”

“Okay,” Joe encouraged her.

“He did go through my papers, in my office,” she continued. “I thought that was odd, and pretty alarming. In my business life, it wasn’t belongings you worried about so much as confidential information. So that had me going. I alerted my business manager to be extra watchful, and I changed all my accounts. It was a real pain, actually, and cost me a bundle. Passwords, account numbers, all forms of identity. I had everything checked or altered.”

“And had he done any damage?” Joe asked.

She shook her head. “No. That was the funny part. Not a dime was stolen, not a figure changed or altered.”

She suddenly stared at him with a smile of admiration. “I’ll be darned.”

“What?”

“I hadn’t thought of it until now. Never crossed my mind. Someone breaks into your house, you think of your personal safety, maybe your jewels, secrets, like I said … not that the guy might be after just old-fashioned data.”

“He stole data?”

She shook her head. “I never would have … Do you know what I did? When I was in business?”

“A stockbroker?” Joe answered hesitantly.

“An investment analyst,” she answered. “Close enough. It’s all a little voodoo, to be honest. But you’re right. I played the market, both with my money and other people’s.” She waved her hand around to indicate their surroundings. “And I did well. I had a knack for it. Between you and me, I made more money than I know what to do with. But it became like a game, and after I officially retired, I stayed at it with just my own funds, for fun. That’s what he accessed.”

Joe scowled. “What?”

“I could tell from the time stamps on my computer,” she explained. “Up to now, I thought I’d done something I couldn’t remember doing. Which isn’t like me at all. Now, I’m all but positive that your Tag Man got into my personal investments portfolio and basically stole my hottest prospects. He looked over my shoulder, like someone cheating in school. And if he followed it up by buying according to my strategy, then he made some decent money, depending on how much he invested, because most of those prospects panned out handsomely.”

Joe stared at her. “Is there any way we could follow up on that? Find out who he is by tracking his purchases?”

By now, she was actually laughing. “No. That’s the beauty of it. It’s not like it’s insider trading. He copied off the smartest kid in class—assuming he bought anything afterward. But why wouldn’t he? What would be the point of breaking in otherwise? But no, to answer your question. He could have bought any number of stocks through any number of brokers and gone totally unnoticed. I mean, a thousand years ago, the Hunt brothers from Texas tried to corner the silver market by buying everything in sight, and they got caught because they were stupid and obvious. But if we’re talking about somebody so desperate and broke that he has to do this, then he’s not a millionaire—he’s an incredibly smart, lazy guy trying to make a buck.”

She leaned forward, her pleasure at this discovery written across her face. “There’s your portrait. This is a smart man you’re after, but an unconventional one, and a risk taker. He doesn’t opt to do the homework before investing, like the rest of us. He watches for the people who consistently come out on top, and then he picks their brains without asking permission. I’m no shrink, but that’s got to narrow your field of suspects considerably.”

Joe couldn’t argue the point. Unfortunately, he had no list of suspects to consult. This kind of crime was a first for him.

He rose, closed his notepad, and slipped it back into his pocket. “Thank you, Mrs. Hodgkins. This has been a huge help. Exactly what I was hoping for.”

She escorted him back to the front door, saying, “Please, call me Merry, and the appreciation is all mine. You’ve helped me put a face on this man, or at least some sort of personality. He’s less anonymous to me now. More familiar. I can’t say that I know him—it’s not that—but I recognize the type.”

She opened the door and shook his hand. “So I thank you. I hate the idea that someone came in here while I was asleep, and I’m still going a little crazy over the whole security thing, but maybe this’ll help with the nightmares. I really appreciate your coming by.”

Joe said his final farewells and took his leave, walking across the lawn to his car. He was happy that she’d seen this as an opportunity to feel better, but his life experiences had taught him to view things less optimistically.

He got into the car and put the key into the ignition. But he didn’t start up the engine quite yet, choosing to gaze thoughtfully at the large house for a moment longer.

His mind returned to what Ron Klesczewski had told him about the break-in at the Jordans’, with its hints of possible mob involvement and of Lloyd Jordan’s being a whole lot cagier than the woman Joe had just left.

He seriously doubted that the Tag Man had restrained himself to merely peaking at Jordan’s investment portfolio. But, if not just that, what else?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dan sat very still in the womb of his secret room, as cut off from the rest of the world as possible, staring at the .45 pistol that lay menacingly in the center of his tidy desk. Thoughts of the snake in Eden crossed his mind.

Two things might have attracted the owner of this gun: Dan had removed some of Lloyd Jordan’s confidential papers, and at Gloria Wrinn’s he had uncovered the gruesome trove of a man whose activities had been giving him nightmares ever since.

The papers he understood, at least as far as he’d bothered to pursue the matter. The love letter spoke for itself and hadn’t been all that revealing; the financial records, of which he’d grabbed but a sampling, had clearly shown transactions going to and fro, but had also been coded, to preserve the names or entities involved. They possibly reflected something illegal, being kept either for blackmail or life insurance, but since he’d left the bulk of them in place, and had stolen what he had as an irritant only, it seemed unlikely that his life would be a reasonable price to pay for their removal. Also, the man with the gun hadn’t mentioned them.

He had said that the conversation desired by his clients involved Sally.

Which brought Dan to thinking about Paul Hauser.

He hadn’t looked at all of Hauser’s albums. Just most of one and single pages of two others. Enough to reveal that they involved the homicidal deaths of women either Sally’s age or not much older.

There had been unsolved deaths in upper New England over the years. Now and then, a woman might be found dead in her home, or buried in the woods, or dumped in an urban alleyway, with her killer never caught.

But they were rare, and none that Dan could recall had been as overtly violent as what he’d witnessed in those photographs. Not that he would have known, necessarily. He was not a tabloid fancier, and the local media tended not to go in for gory details. Generally, there was a propriety to rural newspapers and TV news shows that he’d come to appreciate. Politicians cheating on spouses were usually left alone, civic leaders caught in embarrassing legal situations got by with a police-blotter reference. The double-spread coverage of killings so common to big cities was treated up here with a virtual primness, with photographs of the house involved, perhaps, or a high school graduation snap of the victim.

There had been the infamous Connecticut Valley Killer, of years ago. Dan had heard the police theorize that in fact, those murders—six in all—had possibly been the work of two unrelated perpetrators, both of them probably long dead or on death row elsewhere for different crimes. That string of deaths had gripped the area and caused widespread alarm, but they had also stopped in the late 1980s, had presumably not been resumed, and had involved women of a broader age range than what Dan had seen in those pictures.

He kept staring at the gun, as if it might suddenly make a move.

Of course, a killer could change his approach, learn to be more circumspect and not attract so much attention. People across the country simply wandered away nowadays, by the dozens every week, escaping the tentacles of an unhappy life. A few of them—carefully selected—could be culled from the herd and killed, with no one the wiser.

Was that what was going on with Hauser? Had he developed a sense of caution? And had any of this even taken place in New England?

Dan tapped his chin doubtfully. He didn’t know, and—most surprising—his memory of what he’d seen in Hauser’s apartment had been blurred by his horror.