The Last Place

“He wouldn’t kill himself,” Carl said. Tess wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t want the state police to see them as less than a united front, so she put a cautionary hand on the side of Carl’s leg, beneath the table where it couldn’t be seen. He let it rest there for a moment, then shook it off.

“No,” the major agreed. “Not if you’re right about his pattern. But it’s hard to deduce a pattern from just two. Sam here has been down to Quantico and trained as a profiler.” He nodded toward the lieutenant. “These things are not as cut-and-dried as you might think.”

Again, Tess tried not to make a face. She had a friend in Baltimore City homicide who had gone to Quantico on a consultation once, for two seemingly random homicides that had happened in two of the city’s posher neighborhoods. It was a red ball squared, to use cop parlance, but the trip to Quantico had been more public relations than police work. The profiler had looked at the files and said, “Both these crimes occurred at night. So now we know your killer is nocturnal.” That turned out to be the only useful information derived from the session. The homicides were unrelated, after all, and the two independent perps who were ultimately arrested proved capable of committing crimes at any time of the day or night.

“What about closed cases?” She tried to sound deferential, non-combative. There was a bad feel to the room, the sense of some unresolved grudge between Carl and Sergeant Craig.

“Closed cases?” Lieutenant Green looked baffled. “Closed cases are closed.”

“But what if the person who committed these crimes is in prison for another crime?”

“Well, of course. We’re always open to that possibility.”

“Or what if one of your resolved cases was resolved incorrectly? What if the wrong man was convicted for a crime, allowing this killer to continue?”

“That’s”-the major searched for a word-“an interesting notion. We’ll consider that too. We do appreciate your help, your cooperation. This case may turn out to be quite important.”

The troopers were giving them the bum’s rush, just as Carl had feared. Tess could sense his anger building, but she knew they needed to be tactful, almost servile, to get what they wanted. Like beta dogs, they had to roll on their backs and offer up their stomachs to the alpha dogs. This was a hard lesson for men, but it came naturally to most women.

“We called the state police because we want to help. We’d like to work with you.”

Major Shields smiled at her. “The state police doesn’t work with civilians.”

“Of course.” She paused for a beat, and the troopers smiled, full of the warm feeling that comes from getting one’s way effortlessly. “Only this extremely sensitive information grew out of our investigation. I’m still under contract. My work hasn’t ended. You could even say I own this information. Me and my clients.”

The troopers were no longer smiling.

“You are free to continue whatever it is you do,” the major said, “where it does not overlap or interfere with official police work.”

It was a bluff. Tess shook her head, calling him on it.

“My clients are well-co

“Cover-up?”

“My clients will press any advantage they have to get more funding for domestic violence prevention. They could make a lot of hay over the Fancher case, how you let the boyfriend slip away. Especially if it turns out he killed again.”

“Alan Palmer would have fooled anyone,” Sergeant Craig sputtered. “He was an upstanding citizen. Everyone who knew Lucy Fancher approved of him. He’s in a hospital, for Christ’s sake.”

“Someone named Alan Palmer is in a hospital,” Tess said. “But he was there before the Alan Palmer you knew left North East.”

“Well, the guy we knew had a pretty good alibi. As far as I’m concerned, he still has an alibi. Just because-”

The major silenced him with a look, then said, with impressive menace, “Don’t threaten us, Miss Monaghan.”

“These aren’t threats, just facts. My clients feel a certain proprietary interest in what I’ve uncovered. The best way to assure them they’re not being cut out is to let me-and Carl-work with you.”

“You are not a public safety officer and Carl is no longer one. What could you possibly do?”

“Small tasks, even scut work. Field interviews you don’t have time for. We can answer phones, take tips, pass out leaflets with Alan Palmer’s driver’s license photo. By the way, does it match Eric Shivers’s?”

The troopers’ quick glances among themselves told Tess they had not yet checked. She saw Lieutenant Green make a quick note on his pad.

“Carl and I could even look into the two men’s lives, try to see if they overlap in any way.”

“They don’t-” Sergeant Craig began, only to get another cautionary look from the major, the kind that can make words shrivel on the tongue. Either Major Shields was thinking about her request, or he didn’t want the young trooper to reveal anything the state police had learned.

“If we allow you to work with us, even in the most tangential way,” the major said, “it must be understood that everything we do is confidential. No leaks to the press. If this man has remained in Maryland, he believes he has escaped detection. His sense of security is one of the few advantages we have.”

“Also, it would appear he has long dormancy periods,” put in the lieutenant.

Duh, Tess yearned to say, but Shields and Craig beamed at him for this insight. Perhaps she should let the profiler strut his stuff.

“Tell us what else you’ve been able to figure out by looking at the case files.”

“This killer seems particularly methodical.”

Double duh.

“Assuming it is one killer. That’s by no means certain.”

“What is certain?” Tess asked, as if she had not assembled half the facts of the case to date. “Have you put together a timeline for the case?”

“Tiffani Gunts was killed in April six years ago. About two months before she died, ”Alan Palmer‘ renewed his license at the DMV in Mondawmin, in Baltimore City.“

“Renewed?”

The lieutenant shrugged. “Maryland licenses come up for renewal every five years. The real Alan Palmer had a motorcycle accident when he was twenty-six, about eighteen months before the license was renewed. But being comatose doesn’t invalidate your driver’s license. It remains in the system.”

“Even if you don’t keep up your insurance?”

“Loss of insurance flags the registration, not the license. As far as the DMV computers were concerned, Alan Palmer was entitled to drive, brain dead or no, even if he hadn’t renewed his license when it expired. He was still in the twelve-month grace period. Whoever took over his identity must have known this somehow and arranged to get other documents that allowed him to renew the license-a Social Security card, a certified birth certificate.”

“What address was on Alan Palmer’s driver’s license? The most recent one, I mean.” Tess cupped her chin in her hand and leaned forward as if mesmerized.

“We did check that.” Lieutenant Green granted her a smile. He was warming to her. Men usually warmed to women who listened to them in this fashion. “It looked like a real street address, but it turned out to be a box in one of those Mail Boxes chains in Baltimore. He used the street address and made the box number look like an apartment number. A month before he came in for the renewal, he filed a change of address, so the paperwork went to that box.”

“Still, they have a photo of the real Alan Palmer in front of him. And he wouldn’t match.”

The lieutenant rubbed his chin. “Yeah, but he’s a young guy, and young people can change a lot over a six-year period. Plus he was a lot ski