“It wasn’t in the car,” I said. “Not last night.”
“Seems like two million, even burnt up, would leave something. A pile of money-shaped ashes,” Clair said.
“Then if it’s here, she’ll be back,” Louis said.
He bent over the cooking rabbit and sliced the breast open. The knife, his Marine-issue KA-BAR, was like a razor. I thought of Barrett.
“You boys want a taste?” Louis said.
We shook our heads. He tossed a piece to the dog, who caught it in midair, swallowed.
“Police want to talk to you,” Clair said.
“I’ll call them,” Louis said. “After I eat.”
We stood and he still crouched. He sliced off a piece of meat and popped it into his mouth. Chewed slowly.
So he really didn’t believe she was dead, and maybe he was right.
I paused. A thin column of smoke rose from the fire, sifted into the treetops, and slipped away. Just like Marta.
“So let’s say you’re right,” I said. “She left there of her own accord. So who’s with her? And where is she now? Canada? Laying low until the marshals move on and she can come collect her money? And what are we? A smokescreen? If she didn’t have the money with her, will they come to collect it? And what happens if she won’t talk. Will they come looking to squeeze it out of you? Out of us?”
I paused, added, “She’s trouble, Louis. She brought this mess with her.”
Louis stood, tossed the hare carcass to the dog, who took it and walked ten feet and dropped it and started licking. Louis wiped his knife on his jeans and slipped it back into its sheath. Turned to me.
“My problem, Jack,” he said.
“All of our problem now,” I said. “You, Clair, me. Mary and Roxanne and Sophie. She dragged us into it.”
I turned and started back, following our tracks. I walked quickly, striding across the high ground, jumping from hummock to hummock in the bog. These woods seemed deeper and darker now, something dangerous I needed to escape. For whatever reason—lust, love, loyalty—Louis had sold his soul.
I emerged from the woods, glanced back and didn’t see Clair. Sitting in the silent truck cab, I stared at nothing, ran through it. The money. The gun. Marta’s warning. Had someone else gotten in her way?
I started the motor, looked to the woods. There was a ripple of motion behind the trees and then I could see Clair coming out and toward me. He got into the truck and shut the door.
And headlights flickered from the trees.
Coming fast down the driveway, sliding into the clearing, boxing the truck in.
An SUV. A Malibu. Ruiz slung herself out of the SUV, started over. The door of the Impala opened and a guy got out, another cop. The hair. The stance. The walk.
Scalabrini from CID. Jack McMorrow, this is your life.
I buzzed the passenger window down as Scalabrini walked up. He looked at me and smiled. “Jack McMorrow. Long time no see.”
“I’d like to say it’s good to see you, but it isn’t,” I said.
“What’s it been? Two years? And now another fire.”
“Right.”
“So how’s our friend Louis?” he said.
“Been better,” I said.
“Ruiz filled me in,” Scalabrini said. “Thought he was smarter than this.”
“Yeah, well, love is blind sometimes,” I said.
Clair opened his window and Ruiz leaned in and said, “Where is he?”
“In the woods,” Clair said. “Just cooked a rabbit.”
“Is he armed?” Ruiz said.
“Usually,” Clair said.
“Now?”
“Didn’t see anything, but if I had to guess . . .”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“McMorrow?”
I nodded.
“Mind leaving the firearms in the truck?” Scalabrini said.
We hesitated, slipped the guns from under our jackets, placed them on the truck floor.
Scalabrini said. “Think he’s gonna run?”
We both shook our heads.
“Nothing to run from,” Clair said.
“Will he resist?” Ruiz said.
“No,” we said in unison.
“Will he want to talk?” Scalabrini said.
“As much as he ever does,” Clair said.
He led the way down what was now a path. We walked single file, Ruiz and Scalabrini behind me, the cops shining their lights ahead of our group. The light was blue on the snow and our boots crunched in unison, like soldiers on a march. After a while, we saw the fire through the trees, flames now, Louis tossing on wood.
As we approached, Ruiz said, “Call out to him. So he knows it’s you.”
“He’ll know,” Clair said.
“How?” Ruiz said.
“The sound,” he said.
“What about us?”
“He knows you’re coming,” I said.
As we entered the clearing, Louis got up from his crouch by the fire. He turned to us, wiped his hands on a camo rag. The dog stood beside him and faced the police. A united front.
“Louis,” Scalabrini said. “How ya been?”
Louis gave him a long look and said, “Busy.”
Scalabrini glanced at the dog, whose eyes were locked on him. Louis said, “It’s okay,” and Friend moved a few feet away and crouched.
Louis and Scalabrini shook hands. Ruiz stood back, like one of us might bolt. Louis looked at her.
“Ruiz. Marshals service.”
“Who you hunting?” Louis said.
“Marta Kovac,” Ruiz said.
He gave her a cold look, said, “Is that right?”
Scalabrini nodded to Ruiz and she looked to me and Clair, said, “Come with me, gentlemen.”
She moved to the far side of the clearing, maybe fifty feet, out of earshot. We followed her, stood in the snow. Ruiz stayed between us and the woods, out of habit. Scalabrini punched at his phone, started recording. Then they started talking, he and Louis huddled shoulder to shoulder.
I caught a few words here and there.
“And that was what time? . . . Didn’t argue? . . . Tell me again where you were at . . .”
And then there was quieter talk, Scalabrini doing most of it.
Finally we heard his voice raised, angry now, “Who would want to hurt her, then? Somebody did it. Or did she rip her clothes off and torch her own vehicle?”
The dog edged closer. Louis and Scalabrini were turned toward us, the dog pivoting with them.
“I don’t know,” Louis said.
“You must have some idea, Louis,” Scalabrini said. “Did she tell you who she was running from? Where’d this fucking money come from?”
“She said it was hers,” Louis said.
“Where is it now?”
Louis shrugged.
“If I didn’t know you, I’d think maybe you killed her and took it,” Scalabrini said.
“I don’t need her money,” Louis said.
“No? Well, you don’t seem too surprised by any of this.”
Louis stared, didn’t reply.
“Stay in town,” Scalabrini said.
“Mostly do,” Louis said. “If I have a choice.”
Scalabrini walked over to us, looked at Ruiz, and said, “Let’s go.”
She looked at us with a sort of regret, like she’d wanted the chance to release us into the woods and then run us down. Another time.
They left, followed their own tracks out. We walked over to the fire and Louis and the dog, now crunching the rabbit bones.
“What about the Russians?” Clair said. “Didn’t she tell you where she was going?”
Louis stared at the smoldering fire.
“You do
n’t want them looking for her,” I said. “You want the trail to end right there in that pit.”
He crouched and stirred the fire with a stick.
“Did the two of you set this up?” I said. “If they think she’s dead, they stop looking?”
He turned and reached for a dead limb, snapped it under his boot, and threw both pieces onto the fire. The coals sparked.
“A lot of bad people out there, Jack,” Louis said. “Very bad people.”
And then he dropped to a crouch, his back to us. I could see the shape of the gun butt at his waistband.
We turned and walked out of the clearing and down the path. When we reached the yard, the house was dark. The cops were gone. We climbed in the truck, picked the guns up from the floor. We looked around at the trees, the deepening shadows.
“Think she’s dead?” I said.
“Fifty-fifty,” Clair said.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about her.”
“Barely scratched the surface,” he said.
31
k
We were back in Prosperity in forty minutes, a quiet ride. Roxanne’s car wasn’t in the driveway. The lights were on, all of them. I texted Roxanne and she replied.
—2 minutes
“I’ll take watch until the morning,” Clair said.
“I’ll see the girls off at the school.”
He looked away, peering into the skeletons of lilacs by the driveway. Then he looked back at me.
“I mean what I said. About being wrong,” Clair said.
“Happens,” I said.
“Shouldn’t,” he said, and he turned and walked off into the darkness.
I turned and went into the house, hung up my jacket and my gun. Then I put a log in the woodstove, heard Roxanne’s car pull in. I went to the window and Sophie saw me and waved as she ran up the walk. She met me at the door and I hugged her even longer and harder than usual.
Roxanne followed Sophie in. She was carrying a grocery bag and she unloaded it on the counter. Fresh salmon. White wine on the counter, but it was for cooking. I opened the refrigerator and closed it, leaving the Ballantine on the shelf.
“Sophie, honey,” Roxanne said. “Go get the story you did at school. Show Daddy.”
Sophie tore down the hallway and scrambled up the stairs.
“It’s on the news,” Roxanne said. “You think someone kidnapped her?”
“Looks like it. But Louis doesn’t think so.”
We could hear Sophie’s footsteps crossing the hallway upstairs, then starting down the stairs.
“Either way, somebody’s loose out there,” Roxanne said.
“But only one knows where we live,” I said.
“God, Jack,” she said. “I thought we were done with all of this.”
“We didn’t ask for any of it this time. It came to us.”
We were quiet after Sophie went to bed, Roxanne watching political shows on television in the living room, me sitting for ten minutes, then making a loop around the house. The study was dark. The second-floor bathroom, too. The front-side vantage point was our bedroom. I came down after loop number three and Roxanne said, “She wouldn’t come here. Not now. What would it get her?”
“The money,” I said.
“You think she left it behind?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t want to lose it all if the cops picked her up. Even if they hauled her back to the islands for questioning, the money would be waiting. All these abandoned houses and fallen-in barns around here . . . but she’d leave tracks in the snow.”
“She needed to put it in a place where tracks wouldn’t attract attention,” Roxanne said.
“Under our noses,” I said.
I got a flashlight and the Glock and went out to the shed. Peered behind the woodpile, opened the chest freezer. I pulled sleds and snowshoes aside and flicked the light up into the rafters. Then I went to the staircase and walked slowly and silently upward. I emerged in the loft, flashed the light around. Nothing had changed. Everything was in its place.
Marta hadn’t been there.
I came back down, went outside. It was a dark night, full clouds, and I circled the house, crunching over the crust. I left shallow tracks. The only ones around the house were my own.
I was standing in the dooryard when I heard someone exhale behind me.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, yourself,” Clair said.
He stepped out of the shadows and stood beside me. He was dressed in black, from his boots to his gun.
“I was checking to see if she might have stashed the money here somewhere.”
“I checked, too,” Clair said.
“And?”
He shook his head.
“Same,” I said.
We stood. I heard a barred owl in the distance, thought of Clair pretending that he never heard Marta leave.
“Heard her going down the stairs,” he said. “In her socks.”
“Hear her going around the yard?”
“No.”
“Was she alone here?” I said.
“Sitting on the step when we got back from getting groceries,” Clair said.
“The barn.”
“I looked.”
“I’d look again.”
We stood, bearing the weight of our collective guilt.
“You could have turned her in,” I said. “I could have chatted with the dog lady.”
“Think we’re slipping?” Clair said.
“Don’t know. But I figured if we did, Louis would take up the slack.”
“Boy’s head isn’t screwed on straight these days. Like he was on a very delicate balance, and when she got here, it threw him right off.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re on our own.”
“Like old times,” Clair said.
We were quiet and I heard the owl again. Who cooks for you?
“What’s your real guess?” I said. “If you had to make one.”
“I think she’s coming back,” Clair said.
“Be good if it’s her alone.”
“Maybe,” Clair said.
When I got back to the house, Roxanne was standing in the doorway. I brushed the snow off my boots and stepped inside.
“All quiet. Clair’s out and about.”
I took off my jacket and hung it on the hook, put the flashlight and gun on the counter.
“I was worried,” Roxanne said.
“She’s probably long gone,” I said. “Or dead.”
“If she’s not and we see her, we’ll know she’s alive. She won’t be able to disappear as easily then. She can’t let that happen.”
“Odds are slim.”
“But not none,” she said.
I made another cup of tea, poured the cold one into the sink. Then I went to the table and bobbed the new tea bag up and down in the water, watched the tea leaves darken the water like blood.
Roxanne pulled out a chair but didn’t sit.
“You know how you go online and it seems like everything’s just gone crazy?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Insane awful murders and leaders with not even a pretense of morals and good people getting swept away by the worst storms ever and crushed by earthquakes and burned up in forest fires and everything turned upside down.”
I waited.
“I feel like we’ve turned into that,” Roxanne said. “Like we can’t get away from it. An ax murderer in Home Department, and Lindy and her son killed, and Ukraine and Russians and Marta and some friggin’ island and millions of dollars.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “It used to be somewhere else, far away. But now it’s right here.”
“The walls have been breached,” I said.
&n
bsp; “What kind of world is this?”
“One where you don’t really know anyone, and nothing is what it seems.”
“I know you,” Roxanne said.
“And I know you.”
“And Clair and Mary.”
“Yes.”
I tried to think of something else reassuring to say. Nothing came to mind.
32
k
We went to bed early, lay there in the quiet. Listening.
And then, after a long time, I heard Roxanne’s breathing settle into a gentle rhythm and I looked over and she was asleep, as beautiful as ever. It seemed an eternity since we’d made love with abandon, like Teak and Marta had somehow stolen that innocence away. I watched her for a minute, then got up and went downstairs, gun in my waistband.
In the study, I stood in the dark and looked out at the backyard and the edge of the woods. The moon had risen and the snow was bathed in a pale blue light. Clair had good visibility.
I drew the curtains and went to the desk, tapped at the keyboard. Kovac and car accident and death and Ukraine.
Stories popped up, but they were in Russian and Ukrainian, except for one on the English-language site of Interfax, the Ukrainian news agency. It was from the archives, dated August 6, 2004: Jaromir and Dasha Kovac had died when their car was sideswiped on a mountain road. They were on their way home from a holiday in a place called Bukovel. Their daughter Marta was injured and trapped in the wrecked car for three days before it was spotted by passersby. Marta survived on a bottle of juice and a packet of almonds. Finally, fearful of dying of thirst, she resorted to dropping lighted matches out of the broken car window and lighting the meadow grass on fire.
A hiker saw the smoke and alerted authorities. “The wind was favorable and blew the fire away from the vehicle,” said a spokesman for the National Police. “She is very fortunate.”
Had Marta’s luck finally run out in Jackson, Maine? Or had she been “very fortunate” once again?
I still came down on the side of my gut. She’d be back.
It was after eleven when I switched gears, filled out an email request to see Teak in the jail. The website said regular visitation was Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoons, limited to one session per day. Professional visits (“Attorneys, clergy, etc.”) were anytime between eight a.m. and nine p.m.
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