"That sounded pretty good," Spinney said later in the car, clearly sounding out his silent boss.
"Yeah."
Spinney hesitated, pretending to watch the multihued panorama of trees painted across the string of low mountains of the valley they were traveling.
"You want us to do a full-court press on Shriver, then? Nail that down so Kathy can use it to squeeze Greenberg?"
"Yup."
Lester nodded to himself. "Right. Like she said, better that than digging around ancient history."
Gunther remained silent.
"Or maybe not?" his partner suggested.
Joe blinked a couple of times, as if trying to pay attention. "No, that's right. That's what you should do."
Spinney smiled. "While you dig into ancient history."
Joe cast Lester a rueful look. "Yeah."
The younger man smiled. "I thought so. Could I ask you a personal question?"
"Sure. You can ask."
"This is like a private thing, right? The whole who-killed-Oberfeldt deal."
Gunther didn't answer at first, and Lester thought for a moment that he wouldn't, that it ran too deep.
He was wrong.
"You know my wife died while I was chasing that case?"
"I'd heard that," Spinney said cautiously. In fact, he'd heard Willy ranting that Joe had become a "fuckin' Ahab" on the matter.
"That was a bad time," Joe continued. "I was earning my spurs as an investigator, coping with my wife's cancer, struggling to do my best as a cop and a husband, and feeling like I was failing at both." He paused, as if witnessing it all over again. "And I did fail. Maria Oberfeldt told me so."
Lester opened his mouth to ask the obvious question. He wasn't up to speed on the Oberfeldt case.
"The wife," Joe explained, cutting him off. "She rode us like a tyrant while her own husband was dying down the hall from where Ellen was doing the same thing. She'd call, drop by the PD, even bushwhack me in the hospital corridor."
"Jesus," Spinney muttered. "That's pretty tasteless. Didn't she know what you were going through?"
Joe nodded, but only with sympathy. "Sure she did. All the better, as far as she was concerned. I more than anyone should have shared her pain."
"I don't see that."
"I did," Gunther told him. "I did then and I do now. We were both on a death watch, but where cancer was killing my spouse, she didn't know who'd killed hers. It wasn't fair, and it was up to me to level the playing field."
Spinney's response was gently put. "Isn't that being a little unrealistic? On both your parts?"
Gunther thought about that for a moment before admitting, "That was our reality. I doubt either one of us was ever able to let go of it."
A mile fled under the car's wheels before Lester suggested, "So, you'll be trying to connect Bander to Oberfeldt while the rest of us go after Greenberg."
"Yeah."
Chapter 21
Kathy Bartlett had asked Joe if he had anything against Tom Bander-born T. J. Ralpher-beyond his past history as a bad boy and the fact that his rags-to-riches story had been born following Klaus Oberfeldt's death. Instinctively, he thought he did, and that it also connected the past with the present. But his hoped-for evidence, unlike Poe's in "The Purloined Letter," wasn't hidden in plain sight. If he was correct, it was the only thing actually missing from plain sight.
Upon returning to the VBI office that afternoon, he called the one contact he had in an arcane and much misunderstood profession.
"Court Reporters Associates," the woman answered on the other end.
"Hi. This is Joe Gunther, of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Is Penny Johnson there?"
Court Reporters Associates was a well-known Burlington-based firm with employees who worked all over the state. Joe's knowledge of them had been peripheral at best until he'd met the current owner, Penny Johnson, at a party thrown by the Windham County state's attorney several years back. For some reason, they'd both ended up in the same corner of the room and had passed the time trading resumes. It was a habit he'd practiced for as long as he could recall, and one he was blessing right now.
"Joe, how are you?" Penny's voice eventually said on the phone. "It's been quite a while."
"We haven't been wallflowers together in quite a while. Guess we both need to get out more."
She laughed. "After my average workday, the closest thing I want to see to a human being is on TV. What can I do for you?"
"I have some questions about your profession, actually. During a search recently, we came across some old… I don't know what you call them… the things that come out the end of your steno machines."
"Paper tapes," she said. "Is it indiscreet to ask who typed them?"
"Someone named Hannah Shriver."
"Oh." A shocked silence followed her reaction.
"Did you know her?" Joe asked, hardly believing his luck.
"No," was the slightly stammered reply. "But I read the papers, Joe. She was the poor woman killed at the fair, wasn't she?"
"Yes," he said, disappointed.
"And she was a court reporter?"
"Used to be, over thirty years ago. That's how far back these tapes go."
"Oh," Penny repeated, but this time he could hear the relief in her voice, as if by placing Hannah in a time long past, he'd also put her at a safe distance.
"I wanted to ask you how those tapes are produced," Gunther continued. "They're completely verbatim, right? Word for word?"
"That's correct."
"Just like the typed transcription that follows? Every 'ah' and 'um' included?"
"Every one, yes, painful as it is to read sometimes."
"So," he surmised, "if the typist chose to leave something out of the tape, then there's no one who would know it had ever been said, unless they were asked to recall the conversation from memory."
"No," she said.
Joe was taken aback. "No, what?"
"No, she wouldn't leave anything out. It doesn't work that way, Joe. It's not like taking minutes at a meeting, where you select the relevant parts. We're on autopilot, sometimes typing two hundred and sixty words a minute. Our fingers bypass our brains, in a way, and connect only to our ears. It's so much that way that sometimes I can actually daydream while I'm typing. It would be a real feat to interrupt that flow and start picking and choosing what to write down. In fact, I'm not sure it's even possible. I certainly couldn't do it."
Joe furrowed his brow, thinking of alternatives. "The same typist writes the transcription?"
"Yes, especially back then. Now, with computers, it's a little different, but if you weren't exaggerating about the time frame, then the whole process was very personalized, especially in how the tape reads. Each reporter had her own way of doing things."
"I thought it was basically shorthand," he said. "Once you know how to decipher it, it's like reading a regular language."
She sounded embarrassed. "Well, yes and no. We all come up with our own shortcuts, and they sometimes get pretty hard for other people to figure out."
"Meaning you might not be able to translate what's on a tape?" He couldn't keep the disappointment from his voice.
"It could be difficult," she admitted apologetically. "Although certainly feasible. It would just take a long time. Where was she trained?"
"Hang on," Joe said, and pawed through the files on his desk. "Champlain College," he finally announced, holding a sheet of paper before him.
"Oh, that's great," Penny said, relieved. "My old school. We probably know the same tricks. That'll help a lot. I'm assuming you want me to try to read her tape?"
"Would you mind?"
"Not at all. It will take a while, though, like I said. It's not the same as in the movies. It's more like solving a jigsaw puzzle without the box top."
"I have the transcription," he said hopefully.