“Physical strength?”
“Could be.”
“A schizoaffective person on steroids,” I said.
“Yes,” Bainer said. “Speaking in the vernacular, not the medical. Meth isn’t a steroid.”
“So if somebody like Teak is kicking around the streets, ends up with a bunch of tweakers, that could be a dangerous thing.”
“You think?” she said.
I drove up the hill away from the river and the hospital, took a right on Main Street, passed the Irish pubs, Indian restaurants, a German beer house. The sleet had turned to fine snow and the mostly empty sidewalk was sugared white.
I drove south, saw the police station on my left, Tingley and Bates in there somewhere, maybe working the phones on the Barrett Hines case. Who wanted him dead?
On the right was the park. I slowed and parked by the monument to war dead, figured they’d need another monument soon—to people killed in the Queen City. I shut off the motor and sat. The truck smelled like cigarettes and motor oil, definitely not a do-gooder’s vehicle. More like a battering ram, knocking down doors, exposing the naked underbelly of Riverport. Bar Harbor. Sanctuary.
Somebody had to do it.
I sat and the snow dropped onto the warm windshield, melted and slid down. I hit the wipers, looked out. Saw two familiar figures crossing the park’s diagonal sidewalk, carrying what looked like grocery bags, headed for the neighborhood behind the shelter. Arthur and Dolph.
Maybe they’d like an update on their good friend Teak.
I got out, walked to the corner, and turned up the street. I could see them through the trees, sauntering in what seemed the only speed they had. I turned down the path, met them head-on.
They looked up, then down onto the path. See no evil.
“Hey, boys,” I called.
They saw me and stopped. I kept coming. They would have turned and gone the other way if there had been time, but there wasn’t.
“Arthur, Dolph,” I said. “How’s it going?”
They looked at me, then at each other, waiting for a spokesman to step up. It was Dolph this time. He said, “Okay.”
“Glad to hear it. Listen, I just saw Teak at the jail.”
Holding their shopping bags, they looked at me warily, like this was veering too close to trouble.
“He’s doing all right. Still talking about his comic-book stuff. I don’t think they know what to make of him in there.”
I waited for a response. Waited some more.
“Yeah,” Dolph said.
“Listen, I have a question for you. It’s important.”
They listened, clutched their bags of stuff. There was snow in their hair but they didn’t brush it away.
“Teak says Lindy Hines, the lady at Home Department, she’d been invaded by Perkele, who is like the devil. He can take over people’s bodies.”
Arthur nodded.
“Did he ever tell you that? That he knew a woman around here who’d been taken over by this alien thing? Or anyone else, for that matter? I’m just wondering how long he’d been thinking like this.”
“Teak, he can be way out there,” Dolph said.
“Crazy dude,” Arthur said.
“Yeah, I know. Seriously nuts, thinking all this stuff is real.”
“Yeah, that lady, she was real nice,” Dolph said. “She weren’t no alien, you ask me.”
I smiled at him.
“You knew her?”
“Brought her the boxes,” Dolph said.
“You brought her what boxes?”
“Miss H.’s boxes,” he said. “So’s she could help us out.”
“Oh, the records and stuff.”
“Yup. She was real nice,” Dolph said. “Gave us sandwiches and these wicked good homemade cookies.”
Arthur nodded in agreement. “Still warm.”
They both smiled. Lindy Hines had known the way to their hearts.
“You delivered the cartons and had lunch? Who was driving?”
“Cowgirl—her other name is Sadie. She used to come to the shelter. Now she’s got her own place, but she helps out when Miss H. is right out straight.”
I remembered her. The diapers.
“Cranked the tunes,” Dolph said.
“Country,” Arthur said.
I grinned. “With that hat, Sadie must be a country fan.”
“She’s from Alabama,” Dolph said. “Or Kentucky. Someplace like that.”
“Good times,” I said.
“Miss H. was some ugly when we got back,” Dolph said.
“Why’s that?”
“We didn’t tell her before we went. We just grabbed the stuff and left. Sadie looked up the lady’s address. Thought we was helping out.”
“I’m sure you were,” I said.
“She was some pissed,” Dolph said. “Told Arthur to get his head out of his ass.”
Arthur nodded.
“Well,” I said, “everybody has a bad day.”
They suddenly stopped talking, looked back into the park. A cluster of people had come off the sidewalk. Two uniformed cops were walking up to them. They must have asked for ID, because the people started fishing in their pockets.
“We gotta go,” Dolph said.
“Yeah,” Arthur said.
“One more question,” I said, and moved closer.
“Did Teak do drugs? I mean, meth or coke or whatever?”
They looked at each other, then at me. Shook their heads in unison like twins.
“Teak, he don’t do that shit,” Dolph said.
“He’s whacked enough,” Arthur said.
“Any tweakers in the basement that day? Mutt?”
They shook their heads again.
“The woman with the hoodie?”
That got a shrug, which was as good as a yes.
“Teak know her? What’s her name?” I said.
They looked at each other. This time Dolph shook his head first. Arthur followed his cue. When they turned to me, their mouths were clamped shut. They turned and hurried away, across the street into a parking lot, winding their way between the cars.
I turned and left the park the way I had come, made my way back to the truck. Climbed up and in, started the motor, slid back out and scraped the snow from the windshield. Got back in and waited for the heater to kick in.
And thought, There were tweakers at the shelter, and I doubted the woman in the hoodie was the only one.
And the divine Miss H. had a temper.
35
k
I headed south, out of the city and along the river, the black current flowing along beside me. And then I swung west, up into the hills where the two-lane road was slick with sleet and snow. I slowed and put the truck into four-wheel drive, heard a thunk up front, hit the gas. The motor roared and I sped up hills that for a hundred years had kept people in their settlements for the entire winter.
Hitch up the wagon, go three miles down the road. Get back to feed the horse and milk the cows.
The mayhem of modern times. Money launderers and drug dealers and crazy guys with hatchets. Somebody with a knife—probably not crazy at all.
It was the one that made the situation inexplicable. Teak? It all made sense. Marta? A different kind of sense, but all about money, clear as the water around Virgin Gorda. Barrett? That’s where it all went off the rails.
I mulled it over as I drove. There were crimes of passion, crimes of greed, crimes of psychosis. But which one was Barrett’s murder? Mother and son. What did they have in common, other than a box of receipts in the back of a car. And what of Rod? He didn’t kill his ex, much as it made a problem go away. Could Rod have known Teak? How could the up-and-coming contractor be part of Teak’s world? Rod was on the fast track up. Teak had botto
med out. He was gum on the bottom of Rod’s boot.
The miles ticked past, the hills shrouded in the midday dusk that fell in December. No view from the ridgetop in Dixmont. The woods closing in on the road in Troy. I hit the brakes as I came into Unity, watching for Amish buggies as I turned off and headed southeast toward home.
Farmhouses like lighthouses on hilltops, shorn cornfields showing like tidal flats. Everything gray-white and dead and still, and then I was coming off Knox Ridge, headed down into the valley. I turned off on the Dump Road, black woods on both sides, thinking I’d be settled when Roxanne and Sophie got home. A fire going, all of us sitting in the warm kitchen, them talking about their days.
Talk to Clair, figure out who had the next shift.
I was getting out of the truck in the dooryard when I sensed him and turned. He’d approached my blind side, as always, was standing there like he’d known I was coming.
“How was the day?” I said.
“Quiet. Nobody showing, woods or the road.
He held a short-barreled shotgun, pointed at the ground by his right leg.
“Gotta go,” Clair said. “Mary has an eye appointment, for four. The dilation thing; I’m driving. Then we’re going out to dinner, Darby’s in Belfast. You see if you can keep out of trouble.”
“Try,” I said. “New gun?”
“Mossberg five-ninety. Nice tactical shotgun. Louis borrowed the Benelli.”
“Talk to him?”
“Yeah. Still says it isn’t her; she’ll have changed cars and clothes, and she’ll be back.”
I thought of Lindy, the pool of blood under her head. Barrett, his own pool in the hallway. In that string of events, Marta’s clothes on the ground, the car burnt black—it all carried the odor of death.
“Awful lot of dying,” I said. “You think it’s over?”
Clair took two shells from his pocket, fed them into the chamber.
“No,” he said. “Bet you two million dollars.”
And he turned and walked away.
I leaned back into the cab for my notebooks and gun. Walked to the side door, unlocked it, and let myself in.
I’d beaten them home. One mission accomplished.
I went to the kitchen, took out a Ballantine. Thought of Marta and put the beer back. I put the kettle on. Dug out a Barry’s tea bag from the cupboard and put it in a mug. I waited for the water to boil, looked at my watch; 2:45. I had time.
The tea poured and steeped, I added some milk and sipped. Thought of Teak locked in a cell, his mind soaring through the galaxy. Harriet coming to comfort him, a man who had split an innocent woman’s skull, slicing Lindy Hines’s head like a hard-boiled egg.
And Marta, her underwear scattered on the snow like strewn hothouse flowers. If she was dead, assaulted in some heinous way in her last moments, I owed her a serious apology.
Listen to you, McMorrow.
Taking the tea to the mudroom, I put my jacket and gun back on, the Glock reassuring on my chest. I took a last swallow and went outside. It was dark, clouds sneaking in from the east. I surveyed the yard, walked to the road, and looked up and down.
Nothing and nobody showing. I walked back to the house, followed the path past the shed and into the backyard. The path merged with the trail to Clair’s barn, and I walked between the scrubby cherry trees, the field pines elbowing in. The snow was hard and weathered, the tracks indistinct. I thought I could see the shape of Sophie’s small boot. A frozen deer print. A couple of big paw prints. Fresher.
Louis’s dog.
I looked ahead and then down at the ground, kept it up until the barn was in sight. The tracks were occasional and blurred, until the dog had come upon a rabbit trail and ranged off the path. Then the tracks were plain. Louis hadn’t left a trace.
The tracks showed the dog had come out of the woods just short of the barn, then continued on the trodden path, where the tracks faded out. I kept walking, past the dooryard side of the barn, over to the door.
I tried the door and it opened. I was about to step in when a voice behind me said, “Jack.”
36
k
It was Louis. He was standing at the corner of the barn, like he’d come around and stopped. He was alone, and then the dog bounded from behind the barn and circled me, sniffed my boots.
“Smells something,” Louis said.
“Jail,” I said.
He came a couple of steps closer.
“Went down to the house to find you but you weren’t there.”
“Just got back. Went to see Teak.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Fine, for an ax murderer.”
“Probably helps that he’s crazy,” Louis said.
“Both a boon and a bane,” I said.
Louis nodded, barely, looked away. Friend continued to sniff my boots, the scent of fresh dirtbags.
“What did you want?” I said.
“Wanted to explain,” he said. “Still do.”
“Explain what?”
“Explain Marta.”
“What about her?” I said.
“Why I’m acting the way I’m acting.”
I waited. Even the dog, flopped on the snow, crooked his head and seemed to be listening.
“I’m in love with her,” Louis said. “Always have been.”
I felt like I’d been hit with a shovel.
I said, “Huh. I thought you bailed, joined the Marines and left her high and dry.”
“No,” Louis said. “We were eighteen. I proposed. Had a ring and everything. Had a big ruby in it. Belonged to my grandmother.”
“She said no?”
“Said we were too young.”
“So you ran off to the war?”
“Didn’t have a plan B,” Louis said. “Had to find one quick.”
“Iraq, Afghanistan.”
“Sure took my mind off her.”
“But not really?” I said.
“No,” Louis said.
“All this time I thought you were just moody.”
He smiled.
“Is she here?” I said.
He shook his head.
“Was she?”
He shrugged.
“Did you come looking for Marta or the money?” I said.
“Same thing,” Louis said. “Follow the money, that’s where she’ll show up.”
“Unless,” I said.
He shook his head.
“Pretty woman, they think she’s helpless, she turns the tables. Marta’s very good at pivoting.”
“Pivoting?”
“Turning an obstacle into an opportunity—it’s the way Marta works,” Louis said. “It’s instinct.”
“Why?” I said. “You’ve known her since she was a kid. What’s her deal?”
Louis looked away. He had me talking like she was alive.
“Always had to fend for herself,” Louis said.
“After the car accident.”
Louis smiled.
“It was no accident,” he said. “Father was ex-military turned mobster. Sold off Soviet military hardware in the nineties. Had a falling out with the group, so the gang ran them off the road, left them to die.”
“But she lit the field on fire,” I said.
He was startled, but only for a moment.
“You looked it up.”
“Basic research,” I said.
“See what I mean?” Louis said. “She’s resourceful. Tough. Smart.”
I thought about it.
“Yeah, and the apple doesn’t fall very far,” I said. “She ends up with some shady money launderer?”
“She didn’t love him,” Louis said. “It’s all about survival.”
“Until it isn’t,” I said.
&n
bsp; We stood. The dog got up and gave me another sniff.
“Why would she cover her tracks if she’s innocent?” I said.
“They’re gonna try to pin the Virgin Gorda murder on her. Can’t touch the Russian mob, bought off everybody in London, so they need somebody to take the fall.”
“Had her boyfriend tied up and tortured until he gave up the money?”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Louis said.
I hesitated, said, “Maybe she would, Louis. If she thought he was going to dump her. If she thought she was going to end up with no money, maybe she’d do that in a second.”
The dog perked up. Lifted his head, then put it back down. Louis shook his head.
“Love is blind, Louis,” I said. “You’re a good man, but this is where we part. She comes back, I call the cops. Fair warning.”
Louis looked at me and there was a coldness in his eyes, like I was no longer Jack his friend but an adversary in the lethal game he played very well. It was the look I imagined he had in combat before he pulled the trigger.
He turned and walked across the dooryard to his Jeep, held the back door open for the dog. The dog leapt up and in, and Louis got in, too, started the truck, and pulled out. He backed a full half-circle so the driver’s door was facing me. Buzzed the window down.
“That would be a big mistake, Jack,” he said, and put the Jeep in gear and pulled away. The dog watched me intently from the backseat, the way he did when someone or something was a potential enemy, target, prey.
I stared right back.
After the Jeep had gone down the road, I gave an audible ten-count and, with a last glance at the house, stepped into the barn workshop, closed the door behind me.
The room was quiet and shadowed, the light coming in from the west where the stalls were, with a few small windows. I walked the perimeter of the shop, leaned down to look under benches, behind motor stands. There were cabinets for tools and I opened those, saw wrenches and screwdrivers and nothing else. I leaned close to the wall to look behind the cabinets, saw nothing but rough-hewn boards covered in decades of dust and dirt.
That led me to the doorway and I went left, started down the long corridor, stalls on the left. Pokey stirred at my footsteps and poked his head through the slats of the gate. There were apples in a burlap bag hanging on a nail and I fished one out, held it up. Pokey took a bite, bared his teeth as he reached for more. Three bites and the apple was gone, and he chewed and chewed, looking to me to see if there was more.
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