The Last Place

“So what do you think, Esskay?”

Tess often consulted her greyhound as if the dog were a Magic 8-Ball of sorts. Esskay raised her head, miffed at being disturbed, snorted, and dropped her head with a heavy thunk that give the impression that it might be hollow. Tess interpreted this look as “Outlook unclear.”

“What about you, Miata?” The other dog in her life, as accidental an acquisition as the first, was a terrifyingly well-behaved Doberman. Left alone with a roast on the table, Miata would not dream of leaving the blanket that was her bed. Now she cocked her head, ready to do whatever Tess instructed, even if it meant she had to give up licking the stuffed toy lamb, a replica of Shari Lewis’s Lamb Chop, she dragged with her everywhere.

But, as always, the Doberman took no initiative. Miata was a born follower, a beta dog, maybe even an omega dog.

“Road trip,” Tess declared. Being the boss had its privileges, even if her only subordinates were two canines, indifferent to her brilliant decision-making. She would head west, wrap up Frederick and Sharpsburg over two days, spending a night. It wasn’t that far-each was an easy day trip, no more than an hour’s drive-but she saw no reason to travel the same roads twice. Esskay could go, but Miata would have to stay home with Crow. The backseat of the Toyota simply could not accommodate 160 pounds of dog, not when 70 pounds of it-Esskay-insisted on complete horizontal domination.

Frederick is where the soft dark shape of the Appalachians first appears on the horizon, where the road opens up and hints at the vast-ness of the country beyond. Tess had never liked this expansive view. In her mind, Frederick was nothing more than the hometown of Barbara Fritchie, the little old lady who allegedly stood up to Stonewall Jackson, flying the U.S. flag as Confederate troops marched north toward Gettysburg. The highway into town had been lined once with reminders to visit Barbara Fritchie’s candy shop and Barbara Fritchie’s souvenir shop and Barbara Fritchie’s café. The signs were gone now, but John Greenleaf Whittier’s lines were burned into Tess’s memory. She wondered if the poem was still taught.

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,/But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

Had she really said that? Probably not, Tess decided. At any rate, the township that Fritchie had so vigorously preserved for the Union was a sprawling exurb now. People were willing to drive more than an hour to jobs in Baltimore and D.C., in order to have a little more house and a little more land for a little less money. Talk about a deal with the devil.

Tiffani Gunts had lived outside Frederick, in a warren of new town houses not far from the Monocacy River. Tiffani Gunts had died there too. Six years ago, shot by an apparent intruder. Frederick had a decent daily newspaper, so Tess had been able to find out a little more about the young woman, only twenty-two when she died. A student at the local community college, she worked part-time at a convenience store. She was living with her fiancé, Eric Shivers, and her three-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. Shivers had been out of town on a business trip when someone broke into the town house. Tiffani must have surprised the thief, for he shot her to death in the kitchen.

Eric Shivers didn’t turn up in any of the telephone databases that Tess searched, but the Guntses were easy to find. There were only two listed in the Frederick phone book, Tiffani’s parents and an older brother and his wife. The senior Guntses lived in an older part of Frederick. Not the nice-old part, which had dark red-brick houses and broad front porches that dated back to the Barbara Fritchie era. Wallace and Betty Gunts lived in the sad-old part, a neighborhood of tired-looking ranch houses. Forty years ago, this area must have held the promise of better times, but that promise had been broken long ago. Worn down was the phrase that occurred to Tess as she turned down their street-for the neighborhood, for the house, and for the Gunts family too, once she met them. The quartet-Mr. and Mrs. Gunts Sr., Mr. and Mrs. Gunts Jr.-had pale, dull skin and flat eyes. They looked as if they had been rubbed so hard by life they didn’t have any pores left.

The Guntses took her to the family room, an extension built off the back of the house. The beige wall-to-wall carpet crunched beneath Tess’s feet, and there was a curious fist-size hole in the drywall, as if someone had punched it one day, but the room was otherwise neat and clean. Wally Jr. was the apparent spokesman. His father was almost catatonic in his stony silence. The two women kept their eyes fixed on the sliding glass door to the backyard, where three children played in the not-quite-warm April air. One of those must be Tiffani’s child, but Tess wasn’t sure if she lived here or with her aunt and uncle.

“I’m sorry to ask you to dredge up unpleasant memories,” Tess said, “but there is a possibility it could do some good.”

She had seldom made this claim before in her work, at least not honestly.

“We were glad you called,” Wally Jr. said. “We never felt like the sheriff’s office did all they could. They were nice enough, but every time we asked about this thing or that thing, they’d tell us we watched too much television. The investigator did tell us he was going to give the case a special kind of number, see if it matched similar cases in other states.”

“A VICAP number?”

Wally clearly didn’t know, but he wanted to be helpful. “That sounds right.”

“But they didn’t find anything.”

“Not that they ever told us. Fact is, all I know they did for certain was call pawnshops, looking for Tiffani’s engagement ring, or the microwave and the blender. Eric was so organized, he even had the warranties on the electric stuff, so they could have ID’d it if it turned up. But like I kept telling ‘em, the guy’s not going to pawn anything here in Frederick. You’d think they were scared to make a long-distance call.”

Tess decided to play devil’s advocate. “Investigators are usually pretty determined to solve homicides.”

“Yeah, I guess so. But it was kind of like they thought they did solve it, just because they had a theory. They were sure some guys came up I-270 from Washington and decided to break into the town houses because they were new then, and not all were occupied. A brand-new refrigerator and stove had been stolen from one of the empty units two weeks earlier. The lock was jimmied in the same way. But nothing big was stolen from Tiffani’s place. Because Tiffani was-Tiffani was-”

Wally Jr.“s face reddened as he tried to suppress the tears that brimmed in his dull brown eyes. His mother and his wife didn’t bother to fight them, they just sat with tears coursing down their flat, pale faces. Only the father remained impassive. Six years, Tess thought. Does this kind of pain ever end? Would it be different if their daughter’s killer had been caught and convicted?

“I know what happened.” Shot to death in the kitchen, as her child slept upstairs. “Guy used a pry on the lock, and it gave way pretty easy.”

“The bottom lock, yeah. I don’t know why Tiffani didn’t have the dead bolt on, Eric being on the road and all. She wasn’t as timid as she once was, but she still wouldn’t have gone downstairs if she thought a burglar was in the house.”

“What would she have done?”

“She’d have grabbed the portable phone and locked herself in the baby’s room. She was a smart girl. She would have done the smart thing. I’m telling you, it doesn’t make sense.”

“Is there any possibility it wasn’t an intruder? Do you think the investigation should have focused on a different scenario, or someone else in Tiffani’s life, such as her daughter’s father?”

Wally looked puzzled. “No, I think they’re probably right about what happened, but I don’t understand why they can’t find the guy. When they really want to solve a crime, they always do. Ever notice that? If you kill a rich person, they get you. Cops come to your house and take footprints and tire tracks and use that weird stuff that makes even tiny traces of blood shine. I know. I watch the Discovery Cha