Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,52

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 substantial: 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