RandomActNEWpub

by Random Act (retail) (epub)

  I tracked the Penobscot to Bucksport, a scrappy little town that had once boasted a paper mill. The mill was closed now and the town was struggling. The word made me think of Barrett—whether he went down right away or grappled. The position of the body would suggest that he’d fallen right over after he got stuck. Were his eyes open, staring at the person who bent down and jabbed his neck? Were his last breaths spent trying to make sense of it all? Or did it make perfect sense to him, just as his mother’s murder had not?

  I crossed the Verona Bridge, and then I was on the west bank, a long straight stretch of two-lane road. It was 2:15, and I was still forty-five minutes from home, wanted to be there when Roxanne and Sophie got back.

  I hit the gas on a long upgrade where the road slashed through stone on the west side, the river glimmering far below on the right. It was widening into the head of Penobscot Bay when my phone buzzed. I picked it up off the seat.

  “McMorrow,” I said.

  “Hey,” Clair said.

  He’d send smoke signals before he’d call.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Route One, almost to Stockton Springs. Headed home.”

  “Get to Belfast, head north up to Jackson.”

  “Why?”

  “Marta,” Clair said.

  “What about her?”

  “They found her car,” Clair said.

  “Yeah?”

  “In a gravel pit. Burned.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “How’d you find out?”

  “Ruiz, the US marshal. She called.”

  “Why you?” I said.

  “They were looking for Louis but he wasn’t around.”

  I swallowed.

  “Looking for Louis to do what?” I said.

  “To try to make an ID.”

  “Of what? A body?”

  “They wanted me to look at a boot,” Clair said. “There were woman’s clothes outside the car.”

  I had an hour to think about it, all dark thoughts. Through Searsport, skirting Belfast, north to the tiny crossroad town of Waldo, the bigger crossroad town of Brooks. And then I was into Jackson, where a few roads twisted their way through the woods, skirting steep wooded ridges where trailers were tucked back into the trees.

  Clair had said the car was found in an abandoned gravel pit off the Bog Road, which ran all the way to Monroe. I asked where on the Bog Road this was, and he said he didn’t know, but figured he’d just follow the cops.

  He did, from the west, and I did, coming from the south. My cop was a Waldo County sheriff’s deputy in a marked pickup. I stayed back a hundred yards, tracked the truck up Route 7, the Moosehead Trail. There were woods on both sides, dark and dense, an occasional trailer, a rotting farmhouse surrounded by rusting vehicles, everything succumbing to the irresistible forces of decay.

  This was rough country—made Louis’s Sanctuary look like the Hamptons. I wondered what Marta had made of it, if she’d been alive this far and not stuffed in the back of the Audi like a road-killed deer. But she must have been alive, if they’d taken her clothes off, I thought. Or maybe not. It was a sick world.

  The pickup slowed and I spotted another truck, civilian with a flashing red light on the dash, marking the road in. I sped up, got close to the deputy’s truck, and swung in behind it when it turned. I waved to the local and he waved back. I was on official business. I’d seen Marta’s sweater and vest, her L.L.Bean boots.

  It was a logging road, unplowed and streaked with tire tracks. I put the Ford in four-wheel and followed the deputy into a clearing, with mounds of snow-covered slash that looked like beaver lodges in a frozen bog. And then we were across the clearing and into another road that swung to the left and up a rise, then straightened out and down. Fifty yards in there was another pickup, local fire department, the guy standing in front of it. He waved the deputy on and I followed like I belonged there, and we went deeper into the cut-over forest, the trees stripped away on both sides, everything but occasional clumps of birch and poplar.

  There were lights up ahead, red and blue, and then a fire truck, a bunch of guys standing around it. They were looking at a pile of twisted and blackened metal, roped off by crime tape like it was an art exhibit: Do not touch.

  Beyond the fire truck there were unmarked SUVs, State Police, marked SUVs, Waldo County Sheriff’s Office. And a crime-lab van. And people in evidence tech suits peering at the blackened mound. And a couple of K-9 tracking teams, one woman officer and her dog headed toward the woods.

  And Clair’s big Ford.

  I pulled in and parked and got out of the truck. I saw a couple of guys with US marshal jackets standing by a black Ford Explorer. I walked up to them, recognized them from Clair’s kitchen. I said, “Hey. Jack McMorrow. Where’s Officer Ruiz?”

  They gave me a long stare, then one of them pointed to the burnt car. Ruiz came around from the other side, saw me, and started over. Clair was behind her. He was looking at the wreckage and then he shook his head and looked up. Saw me and joined us.

  We stood in a circle and looked at what was left of the Audi. It was a gray-black hulk squatting on wheels with the tires burned off. The snow was melted away for forty feet around. The acrid smell of burnt rubber and foam hung over the clearing.

  “You want to take a look at the clothes?” Ruiz said. “Mr. Varney already has, but two opinions are better than one.”

  I nodded and she turned and led the way around the car and away from the tote road. The crime tape encircled more of the clearing, and there were clothes on the ground in the enclosure. We walked to the tape and peered in.

  Jeans. The green vest. The cream-colored sweater. The L.L.Bean boots. Underpants and bra, black with tiny pink flowers. The clothes were strewn like they’d been tossed. The ground was trampled, and there was an outline of scuffed snow in the vague imprint of a human body. And a small spatter of blood.

  “Christ,” I said.

  “They look familiar?” Ruiz said.

  “What she was wearing when she and Louis came over to my place,” I said. “I don’t know about the underwear.”

  Clair nodded.

  “You’re sure,” Ruiz said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I looked toward the remains of the SUV, the blue tarp.

  “I guess you caught your fugitive,” I said.

  “It would appear so,” she said.

  “Looks like somebody else caught her first,” Clair said.

  The vision of what had likely happened swirled through our minds. Abduct the pretty woman from out of state, drive the Audi back into the woods. Assault her in some horrific way. Torch the car.

  But where was Marta? Abducted? Dumped in the woods?

  “Somebody called it in,” Ruiz said. “Locals figured it was somebody burning brush and didn’t exactly hustle to get out here. By the time they did arrive, the vehicle was pretty much what you see.”

  “Nobody inside?”

  She shook her head.

  “And no sign of her,” Clair said.

  “Tracks to the edge of the woods. Another set of tire tracks going out.”

  “Cold to be without clothes,” I said.

  Chickadees flew over the hulk and chattered their way into the woods. I could hear nuthatches and titmice, too. Then the whistle of a brown creeper.

  Life goes on.

  Ruiz lifted the tape and led us away.

  “Thanks,” she said by the trucks. “We’ll be talking.”

  We nodded and she walked back toward the huddle of cops. The State Police evidence techs were taking photos. The woman and the dog were coming back. She looked at Ruiz and shook her head.

  The dog looked disappointed.

  “Dead end,” I said.

  “Looks like it,” Clair said.

 
We stood amid the flashing lights, the huddled cops, the burned wreck.

  “Louis,” I said. “You reach him?”

  “Not yet,” Clair said.

  “We should go there,” I said.

  “Police are looking for him, too.”

  “Probably not thinking this was some random act.”

  “Never their first guess,” Clair said. “Boyfriend, husband—always the first suspect.”

  “We always hurt the ones we love,” I said. “We’ll probably find him first.”

  “If he wants to be found,” Clair said.

  Multiple texts on the way south. To Louis, saying we needed to talk. From Vanessa at the Times, just checking in. To Roxanne, saying I’d be later than 3:30. From Roxanne:

  —is clair around?

  he’s with me.

  —what’s going on?

  I tapped the phone.

  they found marta’s car. burned in a gravel pit.

  —where is she?

  they don’t know.

  —ok.

  —i’ll take Sophie for a ride and a hot chocolate. come home when you’re here.

  Probably not necessary.

  I paused.

  but can’t hurt.

  And then we were driving, as far as the Prosperity General Store, where Clair parked the Ford and plow and climbed in with me. We zigzagged our way toward Sanctuary, there being no direct route. The woods and fields rolled past, the occasional house, the remnant of a settlement, Budweiser signs glowing in the store windows like flares warning of an accident.

  I was silent, my jaw clamped. Clair was the same, more his natural state. We were on Route 131 outside of Searsmont, fifteen miles from Prosperity, when he finally spoke.

  “I screwed up,” he said. “I should have turned her in.”

  I could have said, “Yeah. You screwed up, and now she’s probably dead.” Instead I said, “Maybe she changed her clothes and torched the car. Covering her tracks.”

  “Who was in the other vehicle?”

  “Accomplices.”

  He looked skeptical.

  “That looked like a violent crime scene to me,” he said. “If I’d told them what I knew this morning, marshals might have grabbed her. She’d be in jail. Somebody figuring out how to get her down to those islands,” Clair said.

  And not abducted or killed in a lonely gravel pit in Jackson, Maine—the last place Marta Kovac would choose to die.

  I drove, downshifting, upshifting, the truck slinging its way over the rises.

  “A hitchhiker?” I said. “Somebody jumps her when she’s pumping gas? She was armed, smart, knew how to protect herself. Some local lowlife did what Russian mobsters couldn’t?”

  “Or they found her first. If the marshals tracked her this far, the bad guys could have, too.”

  “And they somehow get in her car, force her to drive into that pit, assault her, then burn it? Why take her with them?”

  “Get more information out of her,” Clair said.

  I was tracking the curves, banging over the unavoidable potholes.

  “She told me she was a survivor,” I said. “Warned me not to get in her way.”

  “Road’s probably littered with people who wrote that girl off.”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking Marta’s nine lives had most probably run out.

  We passed the turnoff to North Appleton, continued toward Appleton proper. The sun dropped behind the ridge to the west and a cold dusk began to settle. Soon it was dark, like Clair’s mood, a heavy shadow settling over him and the stone-walled pastures. We’d driven this route a hundred times, looked at the map to see Stover’s Corner and Pitman’s Corner, Gushee’s Corner and Sherman’s Mill.

  I’d make some comment about who Gushee was and Clair would say, the guy who lived at the corner.

  Not today.

  We rode in silence all the way to Sanctuary, skirted the village and continued on to the Ridge Road, which led to the Pond Road. I slowed for Louis’s driveway, turned in, and saw that the cable was up, a piece of red surveyor’s tape hanging from the center. The truck’s headlights showed tire tracks where vehicles had pulled up to the gate, stopped, and backed out. I stopped the truck and we got out, leaving the lights on and motor running. We saw footprints in the half-frozen puddle, circling the cable. Fresher footprints in the snow, coming back out.

  “Guess they went in to try to find him,” Clair said.

  “Good luck with that,” I said, “if Louis doesn’t want to be found.”

  Clair took his keys out of his jacket, walked to the padlocked cable. I got back in the truck while he unlocked the cable and dragged it aside. He climbed in and we drove down the driveway, the cops’ tracks leading the way.

  The Jeep was parked in the yard, a dusting of snow on the roof and hood, no tire tracks going to or from. The cops’ tracks stopped at the front door, then reversed. Made a loop around the Jeep and then went back up the drive.

  We went up the steps and onto the porch and Clair knocked hard and loud, and we waited, and then Clair said, “I know where he is.”

  I followed him around the house and past the woodshed and into the woods. There was a path cut into the brush but no footprints in the snow. I was about to point this out when Clair said, “He likes to come in from different directions.” I nodded and followed.

  We walked for twenty minutes, traversing some of Louis’s three hundred acres. At one point we crossed a marsh, stepping from hummock to hummock, walking gingerly on the ice, crunching through dead cattails. And then we were on dryer, higher ground, with big hemlocks blocking the light. The path disappeared, but Clair knew the way, and he walked in his steady, unstoppable way, through the big woods, and into a bramble of birches and spruce.

  And then I smelled smoke as we slipped down an embankment, then up the other side of the trough, where exposed roots made for steps. Ahead of us there was a boulder the size of a garage, and Clair went to the right of it, came around the other side, and called, “Hey, Marine.”

  There was a camo tent pitched tight to the rock, gray and green and white like dappled snow on trees. A campfire was burning in a ring of stones, and there was something cooking on a spit over a bed of glowing coals.

  Rabbit.

  We walked closer.

  “Hey, Marine,” Clair called again.

  We stood and waited and there was a soft brushing sound behind us. We turned and the dog was there, woofing softly and coming in to sniff us out. Then Louis came out of the spruces, the branches whipping backwards as he passed. He was carrying another snowshoe hare by the back legs. The hare was white with blotches of brown. Louis was dressed in the same camo as the tent.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “Just in time for lunch.”

  He walked over and laid the hare down on the snow near the fire. The dog watched in case it was faking and might make a run for it.

  “Didn’t hear a shot,” I said.

  “Snare,” Louis said. “No need to wake up the whole neighborhood.”

  He almost smiled, calm and relaxed in his hideaway. I was thinking it was too bad to spoil his mood when Clair said, “Louis. It’s Marta.”

  Louis straightened, didn’t look at Clair or at me.

  “What?” he said.

  “Found her car in a pit in Jackson. Her clothes strewn around, the whole thing burned.”

  Clair paused to let that sink in, but only for a few seconds.

  “Police couldn’t find you so they called me. To ID the clothes.”

  “The vest?” Louis said.

  “Yup. The boots and the sweater.”

  “L.L.Bean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Underwear?”

  “Black with pink flowers,” Clair said.

  Louis was still turned away from us. The r
abbit was on the ground, staring up like it was listening.

  “I thought you said everything was burnt,” Louis said.

  “Clothes were a little distance away,” Clair said.

  Another long pause. A woodpecker tapping in the distance. A deep drumming. A pileated.

  “The Sig?” Louis said.

  “They didn’t mention a gun.”

  “How many bad guys?”

  Clair shrugged. “Hard to say. Scene was pretty messed up. Dog found one track leading out, but it ended at the woods. Another vehicle came and went.”

  Louis bent down and slipped his knife from his belt. He gutted the rabbit, then skinned it. Three practiced cuts. Then he stepped close to the fire and picked up the spit that lay on the ground beside it. Skewered the rabbit and put it over the flames.

  We all watched. Eventually grease dripped and there was a hissing flare in the coals. The dog moved close.

  Louis turned to us. Shook his head.

  “She’s not dead,” Louis said. “I never met anybody like her, always a step ahead. It’s like this sixth sense.”

  I thought of her car rolling by, 4:08 a.m.

  “She did tell me she’s first and foremost a survivor,” I said.

  “She knows what’s coming, and she has plan B, C, D ready in case she’s wrong,” Louis said. “Even in the Marine Corps, all the battle planning, I never saw anything quite like her. She was like that when we were kids. Had to be, because nobody else was planning for her.”

  “Marshals were hot on her trail,” I said.

  “Dodged them by an hour,” Clair said.

  “If they were tracking her, maybe the bad guys from that island were, too,” I said.

  “Run her off the road, drive the car into that pit,” Clair said.

  “She’d find a way out of it,” Louis said.

  “Maybe not this time,” Clair said, a little more gently.

  “Did she walk out of there naked?”

  “Maybe had clothes with her,” Louis said. “Burned the car, changed her clothes, and left.”

  “There was blood,” I said. “Not a lot.”

  He turned and crouched by the spit. He turned the rabbit and more grease dripped. The dog had scooched forward, his eyes locked on the cooking meat. Still looking away, Louis said, “What about the money?”