“Did you pay for gas with a credit card?” I said. “That’s the easiest trace.”
“Prepaid Visa cards,” she said. “Buy them at Walmart for cash.”
We looked at her and she caught herself.
“Nigel,” Marta said. “He liked to stay under the radar.”
There was an awkward moment, Roxanne shooting me a look. And then a slam, the door to the mudroom. Sophie came in with her boots and jacket on, leading Friend by his thick, leather collar. The dog padded along patiently.
“We’re ready,” she said.
“Oh, fun,” Marta said. “I wish I was back on Instagram. My boyfriend and his sled dog in the deep north woods.”
We trooped outside and around to the backyard, where trails led through woods and eventually to Clair’s barn. I grabbed Sophie’s toboggan on the way out, tied a rope to the loop on the front. Louis tied the end of the rope to Friend’s collar and led him away to take out the slack. Sophie climbed onto the toboggan, arranged her feet, and grabbed the line tightly.
“Go, Friendy, go,” she said, and Louis gave Friend a whistle and started to trot away. The dog followed, pulling the toboggan easily. Sophie whooped and Marta clapped and the team started down the wide part of the trail to Clair’s barn, disappeared beyond the first bend. Marta started walking slowly and we walked with her, one on each side. She was quiet, eyes on the trail in front of her.
“Are you okay?” Roxanne said.
“Yes,” Marta said. “It’s funny, but I sort of am. It’s like I escaped from this glittering sort of prison and I’m free now, with you guys and Louis and all this nature.”
Trees, trees, and more trees. Maybe Maine was growing on her.
“It was bad for a long time?” Roxanne said.
“Oh, God. A good six months, but there were signs. And then for years I was berated and belittled.”
“Was it physical?” I said.
“He never struck me. But he squeezed so hard it left bruises, purple spots, one for each fingertip.”
“I’m so sorry,” Roxanne said.
“And when he wasn’t hurting you, you were supposed to adore him because he bought you all of this. And you had to have sex when he wanted because that’s what you bring to the party, you know? And he was so angry if he didn’t get it.”
“It’s all about power,” Roxanne said. “And control.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” I said.
“Always the first question,” Marta said. “Because after a while I believed him. I’m nothing. He’s everything. I should be grateful for everything he gives me. Without the great Nigel Dean, I’m nothing and nobody.”
We walked, boots crunching in the snow. Suddenly Marta said, “Can I tell you something? I’ve only told Louis this. When they came in the house—the Russians, I mean—part of me was ready to run. But the other part wanted to stay and see him lose. See him beaten. See him put down. And when I did run, partly it was because I was afraid. But another part was because I wanted to escape.”
“From them or him?” Roxanne said.
“Both,” Marta said. “It’s messed up, I know, but in this very weird way it was like I’d been rescued.”
We introduced Marta to Pokey, who came to the door of his stall and took a carrot from Sophie. Marta fed him an apple, after Louis sliced it into pieces with the five-inch knife on his belt. The dog sniffed the barn and eyed the pony face-to-face, and then we hitched Friend back up and he pulled Sophie home.
Everyone came inside and Roxanne made cocoa. Marta and Louis each had a cup, Marta sitting next to Sophie at the table and talking horses. Marta’s pony when she was a little girl in Ukraine was named Snowflake and she was white. They kept her at their country house. Sophie said it was too bad Snowflake and Pokey couldn’t be friends, because Pokey’s only friends were Mary’s chickens.
Louis stepped outside through the shed and I followed. We watched a gaggle of blue jays land in the line of spruce trees beside the house. They squawked and squabbled and three crows flew in, and then a great-horned owl launched out of a tree on wide stiff wings, jays and crows in pursuit.
“You okay?”
“Actually, yeah,” Louis said. “I’m good. It’s kind of like being deployed again.”
I glanced at him. He was staring out at the trees. I figured the bulge under his sweater at the hip was his Kimber .45—if Marta still had the Sig.
“You picturing it as permanent?” I said.
Louis shrugged.
“Who knows? I’ve seen her three days in eleven years.”
“But you had a good thing at one time.”
“We were kids,” Louis said. “But yeah. It was special. Still is. She is.”
We stood for a moment and listened to the sound of the distant birds.
“You worried about somebody coming looking for her?” I said.
“Wouldn’t say worried. More like aware.”
I knew what that meant for Louis. Walking the perimeter around the cabin. The guns locked and loaded. When he did that, the dog went on high alert.
“Can she shoot?”
“Okay with a handgun,” Louis said. “But the best weapon for her is the Benelli. We spent some time with it.”
I pictured their last couple of days at the cabin. Hop out of bed and grab the tactical shotgun. Not your typical love nest.
We could hear the crows still mobbing the owl in the distance. I was feeling guilty about thinking that Marta had way more downside than upside, that without her we never had to worry about Russian gangsters at all. And then she was behind us, said, “Hey, Lou. We gotta run. Let this beautiful little family get back to their day.”
They started for their car, Marta taking Louis’s hand in hers. Sophie and I waved and walked back to the house, in the shed door and through to the kitchen. Roxanne was at the sink, rinsing the carafe from the coffeemaker.
“You have to get ready,” she said to Sophie, and Sophie bounded out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Roxanne cranked the faucet tighter and turned back to me.
“You okay?” she said.
I took a breath, closed my eyes. Opened them.
“It was really horrible.”
She took my hand.
“I’m sorry.”
“I mean, an ax. It’s . . . it’s not anything you want to see.”
“I know, Jack. Maybe you shouldn’t write anything.”
“It’s a story,” I said.
Roxanne squeezed my hand, touched my shoulder.
“Having just talked to her. That makes it even more awful. It’s just surreal. And now this Marta here, and Louis with her. It’s just a lot.”
“I know,” she said. “But Marta seems okay. A little lost, like she’s trying to re-create herself.”
“Who knows what she really is?”
“You don’t believe her?” Roxanne said.
“I don’t know. Why should I?”
“Because Louis does,” Roxanne said. “And we know Louis.”
“Do we? Sometimes I think we just know what he wants us to know.”
“That seems harsh. Because if you think that about him, then Marta—”
“—is a complete unknown,” I said. “We don’t know jack.”
10
k
Gymnastics was Sunday mornings at the community center in Belfast, twelve miles to the east. Sophie would fling herself around on the mats with her buddies and Roxanne would make a quick stop at the co-op. I waved good-bye and stood until the Subaru was out of sight.
They were on their own.
I walked into the house, filled the electric kettle, and stood as it hissed and rumbled. It steamed and I made a fresh cup of tea and took it into the study, flipped open my notebook.
The digest story was done and gone:
> Riverport, Maine—In a bizarre daytime attack, a woman in a crowded big-box store was killed by an ax-wielding man who was then subdued by store workers.
Lindy Hines, who had recently moved to the city from nearby Mount Desert Island, was attacked by T. K. “Teak” Barney, 27, while she was shopping for Christmas decorations at the Home Department store in Riverport, police said. Ms. Hines suffered a single blow to the head. She was transported to Eastern Maine Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.
Her alleged assailant was taken into custody at the scene. He remained in the Penobscot County jail late Saturday. Bail had not been set.
Mr. Barney is known in the community as a street person who frequents a local homeless shelter. According to one close acquaintance, he has suffered from a mental illness for several years and was being treated with medication. Police said they did not know what triggered the attack.
Hines had just started volunteering with the administrative office of the same shelter where Barney was a client and pitched in as a handyman, said Harriet Strand, manager of Loaves & Fishes.
She said Hines, who was trained as an accountant, had volunteered to organize the shelter’s finances, but had yet to visit the actual facility. “She never had the chance,” Ms. Strand said.
The bigger story awaited.
I opened the laptop and started to type out an outline. Sheila at Home Department, Detective Tingley, the neighbors at the condo, Harriet at the shelter. Arthur and Dolph.
Then I sat back and paused. Leaned in and opened the browser and googled BVI news. The website had a stream of stories: an American tourist kicked out for bad behavior; the under-fourteen football squad headed for a tournament in Puerto Rico; a local guy jailed after stealing a scooter and leading police on a chase around Tortola.
Small stuff, unless you lived on an island.
I searched for Nigel Dean. The stories, all by staff writer R. L. Bunbury, emerged from the archives: the initial report of a suspicious death. Police ruling that it was a homicide. Investigation moving off the island and no continuing danger to the public. In other words, Nigel wasn’t killed by a local serial killer. Everybody go back to sleep.
There was a phone number at the newspaper’s offices on Tortola. I opened the desk drawer, took out a flip phone, one of two I’d picked up at a Walmart in Augusta. I flipped it open, then pulled up the Miami Herald on my laptop and clicked through to crime news. Crime reporter Alan Charles had a story about a heist of $1 million in electronics, the security guard tased and tied up. I dialed.
A man with a British Caribbean accent answered. I asked for Bunbury. The phone clicked and the call rang through.
“Bunbury,” a woman said.
“Ms. Bunbury, this is Alan Charles,” I said. “Miami Herald.”
“Miss, and proud of it,” Bunbury said. “Miami Herald. You’re not calling about the scooter thief, I take it.”
“No, actually it’s about the Nigel Dean case,” I said.
“What about him?”
She didn’t sound surprised.
“I’m just wondering if there have been developments, stories I’ve missed. The one I read was two days after he was killed.”
She didn’t reply.
“Just curious. Any arrests?”
Bunbury paused. I waited again.
“Not that I know of,” she said.
“And you would know, I’m assuming.”
“Not necessarily. It’s a very wide-ranging investigation.”
“Like Miami? Any connection here? Your story said the investigation had moved out of BVI.”
“Sorry, no Miami,” she said. “What did you say your name is?”
I repeated it. I could hear Bunbury typing.
“Huh,” she said. “You’re in there, but how do I know you’re this fellow? If I call this number back, will it ring in at the Miami Herald?”
“No,” I said. “It’ll ring my cell in my condo in Coral Way. I’m at home. They let us telecommute a couple of days a week. Helps with traffic congestion.”
She didn’t answer. I said, “Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“The Dean home invasion. Not local, then?”
“We don’t believe these were ours.”
“And not South Florida?”
I waited. Finally she said, “Maybe Russia, maybe London.”
“Long way to go for a home invasion. So this wasn’t some low-level thugs.”
“Police would tell you they were very professional, the way they got into the villa, disabled the alarm system. And they were, how should I say, heartless in the way they conducted themselves.”
“Torturing the guy, you mean.”
She didn’t reply. I counted to ten.
Finally, I said, “You still there, Miss Bunbury?”
“Yeah. Where did you hear Dean was tortured?”
“I thought I read that someplace.”
“Not in my stories. Police say he was stabbed to death.”
“Huh. We were talking about it here. Maybe somebody jumped to a conclusion. Taped to a chair and stabbed. Sounds pretty torturous.”
“I said, ‘tied,’ not taped,” Bunbury said.
“Which was it?” I said.
Another skip in the rhythm of the conversation.
“Investigators are withholding some details,” she said.
“Are you?”
“We try to cooperate when we can. A life was taken, after all.”
“I understand,” I said. “Dean’s girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“She’s lucky she wasn’t killed.”
“Yes. Very.”
Something in the two words.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that,” Bunbury said.
“She hid, right? In the wine cellar?”
“That’s where I’m told they found her. The police, I mean.”
“And she cooperated, right? I mean, she’s not a person of interest, as they say.”
I waited.
“What exactly is your interest, Mr. Charles?”
“I don’t know. Sounded intriguing. World-class criminals target rich Englishman in his island villa. Kill him after extracting millions, or whatever it was. I thought I might grab a photographer and head over. We’re gearing up on crime features. In print, there’s a standing slot. Page one, below the fold. They’re our top stories in terms of both click-throughs and time on the page. You know how metrics drive the content these days.”
Again, no reply. I heard more typing. Probably trying to locate my phone number, at least the area code.
“I’m told Ms. Kovac spoke with police here,” Bunbury said. “She was understandably distraught.”
“Where is she now? Would I be able to speak with her, do you think?”
“They said she could leave the island, apparently. Word I got is that she went off the island to be with family. Flew out on a private charter. I tried to call her through the Dean family lawyer in London. I just got voice mail.”
“Memorial service for Dean?”
“In England. The ancestral manse.”
“Was she there?”
“You seem very interested in this woman.”
“She’s got the harrowing story to tell,” I said. “Hiding in the cellar while the bad guys kill her boyfriend. Waiting for hours.”
“That you’ll have to get from the police,” she said. “If you come to the island.”
Emphasis on the if.
“If you’re a reporter at all.”
“Oh, I can assure you I am,” I said, and I hung up. Powered the phone off and tossed it in the trash.
I sat in the study chair and ran through it. Marta had details that hadn’t been released, which stood to
reason. She was in the house. She was talking to the cops on the scene. Bunbury wasn’t all that sympathetic to Marta—but why? No respect for the trophy girlfriend? Didn’t know she’d been trapped there? Had Marta not seemed sufficiently distraught? If not, where did Bunbury get that from? The BVI cops, who she seemed cozy with?
And if Marta wasn’t the grieving widow, what was she? The abuse victim released from her torment? The insider? Tipped off the bad guys to the money for a cut? If she’d done that, why was she here? Unless it was for a place to hide.
From whom? Maybe Marta Kovac, the ultimate survivor, had taken a cut that wasn’t hers.
I took a deep breath. “There you go again,” I said.
And my phone, my actual phone, buzzed.
I picked it up off the desk. Saw a Maine number I didn’t recognize.
“McMorrow,” I said.
“I saw your story. The New York Times. How dare you write about my mother without speaking to me,” a man said.
11
k
Orrington is just south of Riverport on the other side of the Penobscot River. Barrett Hines lived in a house that overlooked the river from the end of a looping sort of cul-de-sac. It was hard to find, even with GPS, and took me an hour and a quarter to get there. When I arrived, I saw Lindy Hines’s SUV in the driveway. Barrett was standing inside the front door, the same dog bouncing up and down at his feet.
He held the door open for me and we shook hands. When we made eye contact I was looking up. The dog yipped at me and backed away, lunged in to nip at my boot.
“Harry,” Barrett said. “Zip it.”
The dog quieted, sniffing my boots instead of biting them. Barrett led the way to a big open room with a wall of windows that looked out on the river, which was frozen except for a dark snaking stream at the center. There was a gravel pit on the far shore, with yellow loaders and backhoes parked near brown scars on a backdrop of white. Toto, this wasn’t Tortola.
“Much boat traffic in the summer?” I said.
“Some,” he said. “Have a seat.”
He gestured toward an easy chair. There were two of them facing the windows, matching overstuffed, in dark brown leather. I imagined one was for his husband. I sat, took out my notebook and a pen. He turned his chair and faced me.
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