"That's true," Joe admitted mournfully. "It's always what you don't do that bites you in the ass later. Damn."
Wilkinson was looking sorry for him. "I wish I had some good news to balance the books, but we've got nothing so far. No clue on who killed him-or why, for that matter."
Joe rubbed his face vigorously with both hands and took a deep breath. "Okay, maybe there's some other angle. What was behind the parking ticket thing?"
Wilkinson made a dismissive gesture. "Like I said, he hit the bottle, hard and regular, along with a few hundred other people in this town. He had a car stolen a while back and claims he didn't know it was missing. It was being ticketed all over town; notices were being sent to Chesbro's address, but he never got them. That part, I half believe. He never collected his mail, including the final letter that told him to show up in court or else. I was the 'or else.' He was pretty surprised to see me. I'll give him that."
"Maybe more than surprised?" Gunther asked. "Did he act nervous you might find out he was flying under different colors?"
"I didn't notice it if he was," Wilkinson answered. "And we never did tumble to that. He had a license, a social security number. We were happy. It's still pretty easy to get a new identity in this country, especially if you're living low-profile."
"He have a job?"
"At a fish-packing plant. Don't ask; don't tell. We talked to them. Barely knew who he was. Just another face."
"Are you the investigator?" Joe asked.
"One of them. We have a team approach on these-one each from our department, the state police, and the DA's office. For all practical purposes, the state police take the lead."
Joe nodded thoughtfully. "I don't suppose there'd be any way I could look at where he was living? Check out his personal belongings?"
Wilkinson stood, taking his keys off the desk and pocketing them. "I don't see why not, assuming you fill me in on why you're here and what Chesbro meant to you. Could be we're after the same thing somehow."
Driving anywhere in Gloucester doesn't take long. It's more the traffic than any distance that usually gets in the way, and in this instance, neither was a factor. The place Pete Shea had been calling home as Norman Chesbro was a rooming house above a bar located only a couple of blocks down from the police department, on the "wrong" side of Main Street, assuming you preferred boutiques to dead fish. Joe barely had time to explain his interest in Shea before Wilkinson pulled his car over hard by the harbor and killed the engine.
"Home, sweet home." He gestured across the street at a largely windowless, stucco-clad blockhouse of a building, capped by two floors of a completely different type of construction. It looked as if a motel had been airlifted onto a warehouse, except that the warehouse in this case had a Budweiser sign decorating the door.
"He lived up there?" Joe asked.
Wilkinson hefted himself out. "Yup. The anonymous Dew Drop Inn. People live there from half an hour to ten years, and nobody knows nuthin'. It's a cold fact that half the people upstairs and down are wanted for something somewhere, but anytime I step inside, they all pretend they're in a library." He pointed to a collection of moored fishing boats of various sizes and shapes. "That's where he was found this morning by a local fisherman about to head out."
"Any guesses on how he was killed?" Joe asked. "You said he had a hole in the chest."
"The autopsy's being done in Boston, as usual, but I'm guessing a knife-a big one. Looks like the killer caught him under the ribs and aimed straight up into the major vessels." Wilkinson squinted at him in the bright sunlight. "Anybody you know who might've wanted to get that up close and personal?"
Joe thought back to the morning's Brattleboro Reformer, which had run an article on the old Oberfeldt killing on the heels of the radio reports the day before. But all he could give Wilkinson was a hapless look. "It's all such ancient history."
The other cop nodded thoughtfully. "So, it's probably just a drunk getting knifed. Most of the people we find in that shape have a bad history-doesn't mean any of it played a part in making them dead."
He glanced across the street at the bar and waved to a man who'd just stepped out onto the sidewalk and was putting on dark glasses against the sudden light. Even at that distance, Joe pegged him as cop, from the shoes to the haircut.
"Hey, Rick," Wilkinson shouted.
The man waved back and trotted over to them between cars.
"Rick Edelstein, from the state police. Joe Gunther from Vermont. Joe has an arrest warrant for the late Mr. Chesbro, known to him as Peter Shea."
Edelstein shook hands and arched his eyebrows, "Really? What for?"
"A thirty-two-year-old homicide," Joe admitted.
Edelstein's expression didn't change. "Moved right on that, didn't ya?"
Gunther hoped he was plugging into the man's sense of humor when he answered, "Well, you know how things pile up."
Edelstein laughed. "Shit. And I thought my desk was bad. Welcome to Gloucester. You have anything to add to this mess?"
Wilkinson answered for him. "Not a thing. He'd like to see the room, though."
"Sure," Edelstein said. "Right this way."
He led the way back to the bar, saying over his shoulder, "The place is barely full, it being so early in the morning."
He was only half joking. Gunther was surprised by the six or so people who were in fact sitting at the bar, grimly facing their first beer and shots. It was a dark, cavernous, ill-smelling place, its walls covered with a predictable chaos of photographs, mounted fish, maritime paraphernalia, and irreverent to crude signs. The lighting was poor and mostly supplied by battered brass fixtures along the walls, aided by a single wagon-wheel chandelier and a smattering of neon beer ads. The TV and the empty pool table stood ignored. The place was as quiet as a church on Monday morning.
"Stairs are over here," Edelstein said, still leading.
They climbed a narrow wooden staircase next to the bathroom and reached a dingy hallway running the length of the building.
"This is it," he announced, and knocked on a bruised hollow-core door. It was opened from within by a uniformed police officer, his face dulled with boredom.
"Welcome to chez Chesbro-or whatever. Crime scene people have come and gone, so feel free."
It wasn't much, and Joe couldn't help noting that its one window didn't even overlook the utilitarian harbor. The room was in the back, and the view was of the Dumpsters in the alleyway.
He glanced about. No surprises concerning cleanliness. The bed was a mess; clothes were strewn about in a dropped-as-you-stand fashion; the decor was minimal. The forensics team had been unusually delicate, leaving the place largely as he imagined they'd found it.
"No bathroom?" he asked, noticing that the only door led to a half-empty closet.
"Down the hall. Nothing of his there that we could determine."
Joe squatted down where he stood, not wanting to further disturb the spirit of the man who'd once lived here. The three other cops, instinctively understanding, stayed quiet and still.
Joe began absorbing the room, following Pete's habits by the clues he'd left behind: the single pillow, the way the night table's light was tilted over one side of the bed, indicating solitude. There were a few postcards taped to the wall, not of exotic places or naked women, but of Gloucester Harbor and the statue dedicated to those lost at sea.
Joe stood and crossed over to the small pictures. "You mind?" he asked the others, indicating his interest.
Edelstein said, "Go ahead."
Joe peeled a postcard from its mooring and looked at the back.
"'Dear Katie,'" he read aloud. "'It's beautiful here. Wish you could see it. I got a nest all ready and waiting for you to move in.'"