Tony chuckled half to himself and got to his feet, dispelling the tension. "You have to admit, though, if she was in a horse race before, Christ only knows what it's turned into now."
He walked to the door, paused, and repeated, "Hell of a speech. See ya, Joe."
Joe sat there for a while, thinking, retracing the conversation. There'd been something in its midst, totally unrelated, that had struck him, as occasional stray thoughts do, out of the blue, encouraged by the merest turn of phrase.
He swiveled in his seat and stared out the window, letting his mind drift. When it finally came to him, he could only admire the simplicity of it.
Shaking his head, he reached for the phone and dialed the crime lab again.
"David?" he said, once the lab director had picked up. "Can you do me another favor?"
With nothing more to go on than pure instinct, he knew he'd found the proverbial smoking gun.
Kathy Bartlett looked up as Gunther knocked on her open door.
"Joe," she said. "What're you doing in town? Have a seat."
"I was in Waterbury, picking up something from David Hawke," he said, sitting opposite her and placing a manila envelope on her desk.
She reached for it but didn't open it immediately. "My God, Gail sure has been making the news."
He smiled ruefully, knowing Kathy's politics were at odds with Gail's on most matters. "Yeah. It's a crapshoot now."
"I give her high marks for guts, though. The woman knows how to fight. If I lived down that way, I might reconsider my vote." She hefted the thin envelope. "What's this?"
"I think it may be what you've been looking for," he told her, happy to move off a subject that had been filling the air ever since Gail's announcement. He and Gail had spoken just once thereafter, mostly for him to wish her luck and for both of them to agree to stay out of each other's way, for everyone's sake. It had been a practical, forlorn conversation. "I was having a chat with Tony Brandt a few days ago, in part about knowing people and things so well and so intimately, that a sudden surprise no longer seems possible. Made me rethink how I'd been looking at the Oberfeldt case."
"Oh?" she prompted, still holding the envelope. Like the prosecutor she was, she knew the value of occasional patience.
"The switchblade at the scene bugged me from the start," he explained. "It wasn't used, although it was open, and the thumbprint on it pointed directly to Pete Shea-which, as it turned out, was the intention."
"The surrogate thief," Kathy said with a smile.
"Right-and eventually the surrogate killer. The gun planted under Shea's mattress was clearly supposed to be the deal closer-no prints, but still covered with Oberfeldt's blood. Of course, Shea found it before we got a lead on him, had his girlfriend hide it, and beat feet, in short order. But the plan worked anyway-we believed Pete was Oberfeldt's killer."
"Okay," Kathy said neutrally.
"If you're going to set someone up like that, you do the deed and then plant the evidence. Makes sense. But as Ralpher or Bander or whatever you want to call him was putting the old man into a coma, Oberfeldt got one good shot at him, maybe with his elbow, and hit him square in the nose-produced a real gusher.
"Following my conversation with Tony, I replayed that scene in my head, based on no more than what I would've done in Bander's place. I visualized tossing aside the gun I'd used to beat Oberfeldt, feeling my nose to assess the damage-and thus covering my hand with my own blood-and then extracting the switchblade to place it by the body."
Kathy's eyes narrowed as she now tore open the envelope. "You're kidding me," she said. "Bander's blood is on the switchblade along with Oberfeldt's?"
Joe smiled. "Exactly. I had the crime lab test the knife from end to end. Before, reasonably enough-especially for back then-they'd taken but one small sample, which turned out to be only the victim's. Pure dumb luck."
Kathy scanned the printed results before her. "There's no such thing, Joe-it's all part of the cosmic plan." She looked up at him. "Especially when it works in your favor."
She rose and shook his hand, a rare gesture for her. "I'll have an arrest warrant for Thomas Bander in a few hours. You want to be the one to serve it?"
Chapter 25
Joe didn't get to serve the arrest warrant on Tom Bander. When he and Lester pulled up to the mansion's familiar broad porch steps, they were met by a woman in a maid's uniform, looking dazed and shivering in the cold without a coat.
Joe swung out of the car and quickly looked around. "Ma'am?" he asked. "You all right?"
"It's Mr. Bander," she said vaguely, pointing inside the house.
On edge, both officers bypassed her and quickly checked the open doorway. There was nothing to see beyond the cavernous hall Gunther remembered from his earlier visit.
With Lester still watchful, Joe pulled the woman in from outside and shut the door quietly.
"What's your name?" he asked her.
"Louise."
"You work here, is that right?"
"Yes, sir. I didn't know what to do."
"You did fine, Louise, and now I want you to stay put. Where's Mr. Bander?"
"In the library. It's down…"
"I know where it is. Is there anyone else in the house?"
"The cook's in the kitchen. There's a man outside covering the plants for winter."
"All right. You stay here."
Gesturing to Lester, Joe led the way down the hall to the towering double doors leading into the library. One of them was slightly ajar.
Gunther pounded on it with his fist, his other hand resting on the butt of his holstered gun. "Thomas Bander? It's the police."
Total silence greeted them.
Joe pushed the door back to reveal the room in whole. At first, distracted by the windows and the light pouring through them, he couldn't see anyone.
Spinney then touched his arm. "Joe. Over there."
He shifted his gaze to a corner of the room, where a metal spiral staircase twisted up to meet the narrow balcony running alongside the rows of untouched books. Next to the stairs, a body was hanging from a rope tied to the railing above. Its feet were dangling almost within reach of the floor.
Joe quickly crossed the room and touched Tom Bander's hand. It was cold and stiff. Rigor mortis had already set in.
"He's dead," he told his partner. "Call for backup, the ME, the state's attorney. Might as well call the crime lab, too, just so they're alerted, but don't tell them to roll yet. Better use your cell phone."
Lester left the room. Joe stood still for a moment, peering at Bander's discolored face, its eyes and mouth half open, looking like a poorly executed wax model.
He shifted his gaze to the railing, the nearby staircase, following in his mind the man's last actions, studying for inconsistencies and finding none.
Finally, he stepped away, watching the floor carefully so as not to disrupt any possible evidence, and approached the enormous desk, where a single sheet of paper seemed to be glowing in the reflected light.
The handwriting was plain, as was the message: "My name is Tom Bander. It used to be Travis Ralpher. I've done some things that will send me to jail and I don't want to go there. I mailed a letter to my lawyer, Mr. Masius, with all the details. Thanks."
Joe sat on the edge of the desk, his legs weak. He could hear his own breathing, feel the beating of his heart. The sunlight gently warmed one side of his face.
Thirty-two years ago, fresh from having buried Klaus Oberfeldt and then Ellen, feeling empty and grieving and instinctively knowing that the case would remain unresolved, Joe had sat at his desk in the detective bureau's bullpen, thinking about Maria Oberfeldt. The phone had rung at that precise moment-a call from the state police-to inform him that Maria had just been found dead by her own hand. A hanging.
It was over. A full and finished circle, completed on a note of thanks.