“I know,” I said.
“We haven’t cleared the case,” Zackis said. “But we haven’t closed it either. Every once in a while, when it’s a slow day, one of us revisits it, and comes up as empty as the rest of us.”
I nodded.
“Ever hear of a guy named Perry Alderson?” I said.
“Perry Alderson,” Zackis said. “I’ve heard that name some where. Perry Alderson.”
He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully for a moment. Then he stood up.
“Lemme check something,” he said.
Zackis went out of the squad room. The dick that was cleaning his fi ngernails looked at me.
“You private?” he said.
“Yep.”
“How’s that pay?”
“Not so good in this life,” I said. “But in Paradise you get all the virgins you want.”
He looked at me for a moment and then said, “I guess maybe I’ll stay here, wait out my pension.”
Zackis came back into the squad room with a piece of paper.
“I knew I’d seen the name,” Zackis said.
He handed it to me. It was a Missing Persons circular on Perry Alderson with a picture, probably from a driver’s license. I’d never seen him before.
“Erie police put it out,” Zackis said. “Missing Person on a guy named Perry Alderson. Same year that the Turners went south.”
“In Erie?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Nice memory,” I said.
Zackis grinned.
“Made me think of Perry Mason,” Zackis said. “I know a guy up there, want me to call him?”
“More than you know,” I said.
56.
The cop in erie was named Tommy Remick.
“Alderson had a charter boat,” he told me after Zackis handed me the phone. “Fishing. Sightseeing. That kind of thing. One morning it shows up empty, half aground near the marina where he kept it. No sign of him or anyone else. No evidence of foul play.”
“When was this?”
“September thirteenth, 1994,” Remick said.
“Alderson got any next of kin?”
“Ex-wife. Remarried. Lives in Stockton, California. Moved there around 1990 after she left Alderson. She hasn’t seen him since.”
“Nobody else?” I said.
“Nope. No kids. Parents dead. No siblings we can fi nd.”
“How old would he be,” I said.
“Born January 1957.”
“So,” I said. “He’d be forty-eight now.”
“You say so,” Remick answered. “I don’t do math.”
“If he’s alive,” I said.
“He isn’t,” Remick said. “Offi cially. It’s been ten years.”
“Twelve,” I said.
“I told you about my math,” Remick said.
“How big a boat?” I said.
“Another thing I don’t know nothing about,” Remick said.
“Alderson lived on it. Was all he had. I think it slept four.”
“So it was pretty big.”
“You’re thinking it might have been too big for whoever ditched it on the shore?” Remick said.
“Something like that,” I said.
“If anyone ditched it,” Remick said. “Boat could have just been abandoned and drifted in there.”
“Prevailing currents?”
“Wouldn’t prevent it from drifting in there.”
“When’s the last time anyone saw Alderson?”
“On the tenth,” Remick said. “He was mopping the deck on his boat. Told the marina manager he had a charter that afternoon.”
“Anyone see the charterees?” I said.
“The people who hired him? No. Nobody saw him leave,”
Remick said. “When the boat showed up empty we did a bigsearch-and-rescue thing. Boats. Planes. Coast guard went all over the lake. We never found anything.”
“How far from shore was it aground?” I said.
“Not far. Maybe twenty feet,” Remick said. “Anyone wanted to ditch it would have had no problem swimming to shore.”
“Motor off?”
“Yep,” Remick said. “Plenty of fuel left. Only thing odd was, there was no anchor.”
“Did he normally carry one?”
“They all do,” Remick said. “He was a charter guy. People would sometimes want to anchor and fish, or picnic, or look at sunsets. He should have had an anchor.”
“Any theories on that?” I said.
“If it’ll hold a boat,” Remick said, “it’ll hold a body.”
“Maybe two,” I said.
57.
The trip home from Cleveland on Route 90 took me north along the lake, through Euclid and Ashtabula, Ohio, and right past Erie, Pennsylvania. I thought about stopping in and looking at the lake where, I suspected, Bradley Turner had undergone a lake change and become Perry Alderson. But I missed Susan too much. And Pearl. I was beginning to miss Hawk. And I needed to get home before I started to miss Vinnie.
Cleveland to Buffalo was about three hours. Buffalo to Boston was longer than a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. It gave me plenty of time to catch up on my coffee, and think. The coffee was easier.
Certainly Alderson had once been Bradley Turner. Married to Anne Marie. Living in Laurel Heights. Taking some classes at Coyle State. Fooling around with a lot of the coeds, which was probably why he took the classes. No one had found any sign of paid employment, so he probably depended on his wife’s money, which seemed substantiaclass="underline" nice house, nice suburb. For whatever reason, maybe because she caught him fooling around, one day he had taken the missus on a cruise out of Erie and while out there had killed the wife and the boat guy, and, maybe, tied the bodies to the anchor and dumped them in the middle of the lake. It was a big lake. Then he had taken the boat back to shore and, either to avoid observation or because he didn’t know how to dock it, he had run it aground, swum to shore, gone back to his car, and driven off into the sunrise. Probably with Perry Alderson’s ID in his pocket. I stopped at a travel plaza near Batavia. Got gas, used the restroom, bought coffee and a nourishing cinnamon bun in the crowded food court, and went back to the thruway. The leisurely days when Howard Johnson’s was your host of the highways were but a quaint memory. So he gets back in his car, in his wet clothes, and drives on back home, like nothing happened. He takes all the money out of the bank. He’s smart. He doesn’t get greedy, try to sell the house, or the car. He drives the car up to Toledo, parks it in a mall, takes the bus back to Cleveland. He takes nothing from the house that might connect him to Bradley Turner. Then as Perry Alderson he goes to Cleveland, probably, gets a place to 251 live, and starts creating a new persona for himself. By 1996 he’s counseling people in shelters, and ten years later he’s a professor at Concord College, and a lecturer on matters of individual freedom. Is it a great country or what? That’s why he lied about his age, I thought. It wasn’t just vanity. Alderson was younger. Maybe he’d actually done, as Turner, the things he claimed to have done as Alderson. Or maybe his father had done them. Or maybe he’d made them up. Maybe he’d made the father up. He had, after all, made himself up.
I stopped near Syracuse for more gas and coffee. The travel plaza was packed. It was a Thursday in early December. Where the hell was everyone going? More existentially, where the hell was I going. I took my coffee to the car and continued east. I was going home.
58.
The homecoming festivities were intense and extended, and Pearl was visibly annoyed at being shut out of Susan’s bedroom for so long. It was three o’clock in the morning when she was able to join us. Susan had a bottle of LaurentPerrier pink champagne, and we drank some of it, sitting up in bed, with Pearl sprawled between us.
“Whew!” Susan said.
“Whaddya think?” I said. “Love or lust.”
“For us,” Susan said, “it’s a meaningless distinction.”
“For everybody?”
“If they’re lucky,” Susan said.