Katz nodded, leaned forward, and pushed the intercom button on his phone. "Get a reporter in here," he ordered. "Preferably Alice, if she's around."
He sat back and gave Joe an appraising look. "You got yourself a deal."
Chapter 18
The next few days were filled with forging through a thickening blizzard of information. Between the search for photographs from the fair, responses to Hannah's picture in the paper, and collecting and collating reams of witness interviews concerning both Hannah's death and Pete Shea's, Joe had all he could do to find a few hours' sleep. Now it was he and not Gail who had a hard time returning phone calls or e-mails. In truth, her entire campaign all but slipped from his mind as he spent most of his time in the Municipal Building's basement room, like a commander under attack, hoping for a break not just in the relatively new Shriver case but also in the one that had become as intimate as a lifelong ailment.
And that wasn't all. Reliving Ellen's death, hearing his mother's take on why he'd remained single and childless, and comparing it to Gail's current disappearance into her campaign had made him ponder his past-even amid the present chaos-and consider what might be waiting in the near future.
If Stanley Katz was right about Gail, and she did pull that rabbit out of the hat, then Joe would soon be involved with a high-profile politician. Not because being a state senator amounted to that much-Vermont had a citizen legislature that worked for only a few months of every year-but because Gail would treat her new post as the proverbial bully pulpit. Becoming a senator would mark only the beginning of her ambitions. She wouldn't be lost to him forever, as Ellen had been, but he sensed that they might undergo a permanent change.
For that alone, he saw his present workload as a blessed distraction.
The biggest logjam was the photographs of the Tunbridge Fair. Considering both the popularity of the event and the egregious nature of the crime, the publicity surrounding Hannah's death had become statewide and constant, creating yet another pull on Joe's time in terms of daily press conferences and endless phone calls in which nothing new was ever revealed.
Pictures came in by mail, were dropped off in person, or arrived via e-mail, and covered the gamut from professional near masterpieces to barely discernible snapshots. Sizes varied, too. The standard four-by-fives and five-by-sevens made up the majority, but added to them in surprising numbers were tiny thumbnail shots in the form of miniature stickers, produced, Joe was told by a savvy Lester Spinney, by the latest teenage rage of point-and-shoot camera. But however they came, and in whatever format, there were thousands of them, each one demanding the utmost scrutiny.
The response to Hannah's picture in the Reformer was an entirely different matter. Joe had made sure that the photograph was roughly contemporary to the era in question, but perhaps as a result, both the command center and the Reformer's letters-to-the-editor column were quickly filled with any number of reactions-as much to her as to other young women who might have simply resembled her. To a startlingly large number of people-despite her name being printed right under the photograph-the smiling girl in the quaint hairdo served as a substitute for loved ones now long gone.
It wasn't all for naught, however. As the days slipped by, Joe began to construct a mental home movie of Hannah Shriver as she practiced her newly learned profession, found an apartment on Main Street, and began integrating herself into the community after her two years of schooling in Burlington.
Lawyers, friends, a landlord, a bartender, an old lover-all began adding their own brushstrokes to the portrait begun during Joe's conversation with Natalie Shriver. What emerged was a more detailed version of the elderly woman's recollection, given more immediacy by many of the portrayers' having been of Hannah's age.
Lou Boxer was one of them. A quiet, serious, bespectacled man given to extensive pauses between sentences, he came by Joe's office one afternoon and confessed in a muted monotone that he and Hannah had once been lovers.
"Was this when she was working as a court reporter?" Gunther asked after offering him a seat and a cup of coffee.
Boxer turned down the coffee as he settled into a chair. "Yes. Not that she did that full-time."
"Oh?" Joe asked.
"She was a freelancer. Little tough to find jobs right out of the starting gate."
"That's reasonable," Joe conceded. "Did things improve over time?"
"A little. Never to the point where she made a living."
"How did she pay the rent, then?"
Boxer smiled wistfully. "She got people to help her out. Like me. Hannah could be persuasive."
Gunther raised his eyebrows. "Interesting comment. Tough relationship?"
The other man considered that before asking, "Aren't those two words synonymous?" He fell silent for a moment and studied the ceiling in contemplation. Joe let him think.
"Those were different times," he finally said. "We worked harder at being cool and detached, trying not to be possessive."
"She had other lovers."
Boxer nodded silently.
"You know who any of them were?"
"Oh, sure. That was part of it, wearing those kinds of things on your sleeve. Very countercultural."
"Sounds like you've gotten a little cynical over time."
Boxer sighed. "I shop at the Co-op, protest against the government, and always vote pro-union. Let's just say I've either gotten wiser or too tired to cover much beyond the basics. Right now all the posturing we indulged in sounds as self-focused as anything the movie stars do in the tabloids."
Gunther moved on. "How soon after Hannah hit town did you two hook up?" He pulled a calendar from a file of the right year. "Maybe this'll help nail down the date, more or less. Anytime around then?" He flipped to the month Oberfeldt was attacked.
Lou Boxer glanced at the calendar. "About two weeks earlier."
"Pretty good memory."
Boxer reacted to Joe's doubtful tone. "Not really. I celebrated my birthday with her shortly after we met." He reached out and tapped a date with his finger. "Then."
One day after the attack. "You recall how she was that day, since it's clear in your mind?"
Boxer looked at him quizzically. "How she was? Meaning what?"
"Was she nervous, distracted, in any way unlike herself?"
Again the nostalgic smile. "No. What little I do remember is pretty pleasant."
Joe changed his approach. "Do you remember reading about an assault on a storekeeper around that time?"
"Yeah, vaguely. That may be because it's been in the news, though. You guys are supposed to be looking into it again. Is that connected to Hannah?"
Gunther answered him truthfully. "We don't know, but we're looking at everything right now. Did you and she ever talk about that case?"
Boxer shrugged. "God, I don't know. Some things I remember better than others-chitchat isn't one of them."
Which at least meant it hadn't been a major topic of conversation. "All right," Joe continued. "Let's step back a little, then. How long were you two an item?"
"About half a year, give or take."
"Okay. So you met, you hit it off, had some good times, did all the right cool things. Then what? A falling-out? What changed?"
"She did," Boxer answered, without hesitation for once.
"Could you elaborate?"
The other man removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'd fallen in love with her. I knew it was a bad idea. Hannah was a free spirit-there's a phrase from the old days. Groovy. Now I guess I'd call her flighty and selfish and maybe a little cruel. It was pretty much her way or the highway. At the time, I saw it as feminism and free expression and all that other crap, but it was what it was. In hindsight, or maybe just because I am more cynical now, I don't think she ever gave a damn about the feminist cause, or any other cause, for that matter-just herself."