RandomActNEWpub

by Random Act (retail) (epub)

  “Anybody been in here, buddy?” I said. “Pretty woman, dark hair?”

  He gave my hand a last nuzzle and snort and turned away.

  I walked down the passageway, eyeing the empty box stalls. Nothing inside but old hay, leather straps hanging from the wooden walls. And then I was at the staircase. I went up.

  The loft was mostly full, bales stacked up to the rafters. It smelled like hay and the air was dusty. I got out my phone, turned on the light, walked slowly along the front of the bales. There was a third-floor loft reached by a ladder, and I climbed it, stood on the catwalk. The walls were bare, light showing through the cracks between the gable end doors.

  A second ladder led to the cupola and I climbed that, too, found a swallow’s nest, a few initials carved into the boards. None were “MK.”

  I climbed back down to the main loft, made my way slowly to the rear of the space, facing the field and woods. There was lumber stacked, a horse weather vane acquired but never installed. Some furniture piled along the wall, evicted from the house but not dispatched to the kindling pile. I shone the light into the tangle of chairs and tables, saw nothing. I swiped my finger along the chair arms and seats and came away with a gray smudge of dust.

  Nothing had been recently moved.

  I headed for the stairs, figuring I’d go to the open-ended cellar. There were old horse-drawn mowers and harrows, rusting away in place. It was dark, and there might be a place where a bag could be stuffed up over the stone foundation, dark enough that Clair hadn’t noticed. This was where Pokey’s stall was swept down through a trapdoor, the manure and straw shoveled out with the loader on the front of Clair’s small John Deere. Hay and grain in; manure and straw out.

  The grain was stored in a big wooden bin and funneled down to the boxes through a wooden chute. Grain was dumped into the bin out of burlap bags, Clair running them up through the loft door with the conveyor. Pokey ate a lot of grain in a winter, and the bin was almost full in early December.

  I stopped and leaned over the rim. Put a hand down and ran it through the grain, cool and smooth as coarse sand.

  I put the light on it. There was a rise at one side, whereas usually the grain rose to a sort of peak in the center, like sand piled from an hourglass. I moved around the bin, leaned over, and swept at the grain. It fell back into the indentation and I swept it aside again.

  Dug deeper.

  Felt nothing but the cool kernels.

  Another sweep.

  Felt something hard.

  I climbed up on the side of the bin and peered in. There was a dark streak six inches beneath the surface of the grain. I climbed over and in and scooped the grain away with two hands, like I was digging for buried treasure.

  Which I was.

  It was a gray canvas duffel. I yanked it out by the straps on top and wrestled it to the surface. It said patagonia in big letters on the side. The zipper was on top and I brushed it off, pulled it open.

  I knew what was in it, but still I had to lift the flap.

  And there they were.

  The stacks of $100 bills. I felt an urge to look behind me, like if the money was there, Marta would be, too.

  And maybe this was why Louis had been at the barn. Searching? Checking to make sure the stash was safe? That things were going according to plan?

  I zipped the bag closed, slid it back down into the hole in the grain. It didn’t go as deep as it had been, and I pulled the bag back out, dug the hole wider, scraped the bottom. I lifted the bag and dropped it straight down in and it fit better. Sweeping the grain back into the hole, I covered the bag, then kept shoveling with my hands until the hole was a faint mound. I climbed out of the bin and leaned back inside and tried to give it the same contour I’d found. And then I walked to the stairs and started down. Every two steps I stopped and listened.

  Pokey clumping in his stall. Crows calling. The rattle of a loose windowpane.

  I walked quickly and quietly past the stalls and into the workshop, went to the door. Looked out the window and it was darker, the gray dusk falling fast.

  Nobody showing.

  I opened the door and stepped out. Closed it behind me. Looked around again and then walked across the dooryard to the entrance to the path, kept walking.

  It was darker in the woods, the brambles and branches trembling in the wind. I looked left and right, peering into the shadows, seeing only more shadows behind them. Ahead I could see a trail, a snaking opening, paler shade of gray. I thought I saw someone, but it was a bent tree trunk, part of a dying apple from the days when this was all farm.

  I kept walking, a steady pace, then stopped suddenly. Looked left and right and back. Listened. Started walking again, telling myself Marta might not be back for months. She might not be back ever, cremated not once, but twice.

  I stopped again.

  And then I picked up the pace, and the house was in sight. There were lights on in the kitchen, Roxanne and Sophie home from school. Alone.

  I crossed the yard, circled the garage, went in the shed door. Let myself into the mudroom, then the kitchen. Roxanne was putting Sophie’s lunch containers into the dishwasher. She looked up at me and said, “Jack, are you okay?”

  I moved closer, whispered, “The money. I found it.”

  Sophie came running into the kitchen, said, “Daddy. You’re all covered with dirt.”

  37

  k

  Dinner. Tub. Bedtime. Books. Anticipation.

  We went to the study, sat on the couch. I started at the beginning, which seemed long ago. Teak at the jail, Harriet there, too. Dr. Bainer. Louis and his new gun.

  Louis at the barn, looking to explain himself. I walked her through it, told her about the love part.

  “Now it makes sense,” Roxanne said.

  “It does?”

  “He isn’t thinking straight. He’s smitten, seeing only what he wants to see.”

  “Or she’s someone who killed somebody, burned them to cinders,” I said. “It’s like it doesn’t matter. He’s still on her side. He pretty much warned me to leave her alone.”

  We mulled that over for a moment—Louis as adversary; Louis picking sides.

  “The money,” Roxanne said.

  I told her. The bin. The grain. The bag.

  “Maybe Louis left it there, for Marta to pick up.”

  “Or the other way around,” I said.

  “Either way, safer than keeping it at his house, with all the cops around.”

  We sat again, staring straight ahead, our minds whirring. And then it was Roxanne who said, “We should leave it right where it is. If it’s there, she’ll take it and leave. She comes back and it’s gone, she’s going to come looking, or someone else will, who’s been told where it is.”

  That scenario wasn’t a pleasant one.

  We were quiet.

  “You protect your own,” Roxanne said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  There was a thump from upstairs and then Sophie’s footsteps. She called down the stairs, “Can somebody get me a drink?”

  “I’ll do it,” Roxanne said.

  “I have to tell Clair,” I said.

  “Don’t be gone long. Or far,” she said. “We’ll go to school in the morning, but I want you here tonight.”

  It was a dark night, low clouds and no moon. I stood and listened to the crackle of the woods, peered into the darkness. There was no one in sight on the road, east or west. The spruces across the way were a wall of black.

  I heard a boot step, turned.

  “Thought I was gonna have to smack you upside the head, get your attention,” Clair said.

  “I heard you,” I said. “Was playing possum.”

  He smiled, said, “What do you got?”

  “Two million in cash,” I said. “Give or take.”
/>   “Where?”

  “Buried in the grain bin in the barn,” I said. “A waterproof duffel.”

  “Stashed it and ran.”

  “If she does come back, it’s trouble. If someone else comes, it’s even more trouble.”

  We stood. A coyote yipped from deep in the woods, then another, even deeper.

  “Louis said her dad was some sort of criminal in Ukraine, selling weapons after the Soviet Union collapsed. Both parents got killed by mobsters.”

  “Not entirely surprised,” Clair said. “She’s got this sort of amorality to her. Almost feral. In a very attractive way.”

  I nodded. The night was quiet around us.

  “I saw Louis here. He said he’s in love with her.”

  “I figured that. Head over heels.”

  “Not necessarily on our side,” I said.

  “No,” Clair said. “Not this time.”

  When I went back into the house, Roxanne was going up to bed. I heard the bedsprings squeak, a sound that on another night might have meant something very different. Then the bedroom TV came on, cable news. I went to the kitchen and made a pot of tea, poured it into an insulated mug. Then I turned the lights out on the first floor, put on my parka, and went to the sliding door to the deck. I opened it and stepped out, circled the house on the cleared path. Each step was like walking on broken glass, the crunching sounds crackling into the woods.

  It would be a night to sit and listen.

  I walked around to the big black Ford, unlocked the door, and reached the Glock out from under the seat. I slipped it out of its holster, slid the gun and an extra magazine into the right-side pocket of my parka.

  The metal was cold to the touch. I warmed it with my hand, thought of John Lennon, his song about happiness. Then I walked around the house again, and climbed the steps. I opened the slider and went inside and took a kitchen chair from the dining room and set it on the deck.

  Sat. Sipped my tea. The woods rattled like the trees were on the march. I watched. Listened. Ran through the day in my head, kept sticking at the same places. Was Harriet romantically involved with Teak? What triggered his explosion? Did Barrett really have something incriminating on Rod? How would we feel if the body in the car did turn out to be Marta.

  Manning the barricades, afraid of a dead person.

  Barred owls again, their calls echoing through the frozen woods. A branch snapped. I stood and made my way down the steps. Froze in the shadow of the house and listened.

  Another crack.

  Gun out, I waited and listened, straining to hear a footstep, a cough or a sniffle.

  Nothing.

  Fifteen minutes went by and still nothing. My feet were cold, my gun hand, too. I circled the house slowly, froze in the driveway as a truck approached from the east. I eased behind Roxanne’s car as the truck slowed, the headlights slashing the darkness.

  I heard music. Country-western blaring behind closed windows

  The truck passed, an old Chevy pickup, two people showing. It sped up as it passed Clair’s house, continued on down the road. And then it was quiet again. Dark again. Silent for a moment, and then the woods noise.

  Snap. Crackle.

  I walked the rest of the way around the house, stopped at the deck. Listened again. Heard only the whisper of the woods. Walked up the steps, grabbed my mug, and slipped back inside.

  From the base of the stairs, I saw that Roxanne had turned off the TV and the light. Moving to the living room, I stood in the front window, looked out at the road and the driveway and the hard-crusted snow. I looked at my phone. It was almost ten. I checked my email, flipped through the queue.

  One email stopped me, from the day before.

  From: Jane.Brockway@NYT.com

  Subject: Nigel Dean

  Hey Jack. Janie here. We met, but you probably don’t remember it. I was an intern. You were the hard-ass metro reporter in a beat-up leather jacket. I had a crush on you. Now I said it. True confession.

  K. D. Carlisle says you want to know about Nigel Dean. Very tough guy. Guess the people who killed him were tougher.

  Word on the street only: Dean was a money launderer. He’d “invest” in companies, when in reality the dirty money was flowing the other way. He buys and sells, makes paper profits, the dirty money gets reinvested and comes out clean. Then it goes back where it came from, minus his cut. I’m thinking he got greedy. Russian mob, they don’t fool around. They’re also very connected here. If it had been a home invasion by some locals, they’d be sitting in a Caribbean jail by now.

  After 2 here. Gotta work tomorrow.

  Cheers.

  PS: What are you working on? Owe me one now, McMorrow. Nigel Dean have ties to Maine?

  I wrote back.

  Thanks. Be in touch.

  And a white lie.

  I remember you as an intern. I knew you’d make good.

  Nigel Dean was very dirty. Marta was with him for years and would have sniffed it out in minutes. Maybe it was luck that she got away with $2 million. I didn’t think so.

  She had a plan. Launder herself. Disappear Marta Kovac, resurrect herself as someone else—with money to live on until she set up the next guy. What went wrong? Her old boyfriend’s buddies weren’t the Maine rubes she’d expected? One of them asked a lot of questions?

  And this place in Maine, it wasn’t as close to the ends of the earth as she thought. Marshals tracked her down. And if they could do it . . .

  I closed the laptop and the room went dark. Then I went back outside, sat in my chair, the Glock on my lap. Listened. Watched. Walked around the house. Listened and watched some more.

  At midnight I came inside, locked the slider behind me. Sat on the couch and watched the yard through the glass. Made a circuit around the house, stopping at windows that provided vantage points in each direction. Told myself I should sleep, and sat on the couch again.

  It could be days. Weeks. Life had to go on, even with the boatload of money in the barn. But still, I tried to get into Marta’s head. Watch the house, wait until everybody’s gone. Move in fast, grab the bag, and go. A last hurdle before the new life begins.

  I’m Marta Kovac and I’m missing, presumed dead. If I tell you otherwise, I’ll have to kill you.

  At two a.m. I was still on the couch, thinking, listening. Three. Four. And then I woke up and Roxanne was shaking me, saying, “Jack. It’s quarter to seven. We’re getting ready to go.”

  It was snowing, fat white flakes that floated down like autumn leaves. I scanned the yard, the road, the woods on both sides. No tracks.

  There was an inch of snow on the car and I cleaned Roxanne’s windows, then took a swipe at mine. Got in the truck, put the gun on the seat. Roxanne pulled out first and Sophie waved from the backseat. I followed, saw them into the school, and backtracked home.

  I circled the yard, saw only the remnants of my own trail circling the house. Then I went inside, put the kettle on, and made another cup of tea. Then I sat and looked through my notes: My first visit to the shelter with Harriet and Dolph and Arthur. Mutt and the boys in the basement. Teak’s dad, still proud of his son—or at least, the son he once knew. His brother, who had no comment.

  I flipped through the pages, underlining key points, scrawling stars next to the best quotes. Barrett: “Rod is an egotistical, narcissistic philanderer. I blame him for my mother’s death.”

  A complicated story, but weren’t they all. I visualized a headline in the Times: murders of maine mother and son: one random, one unsolved.

  And then another: fleeing caribbean murder and russian mob, woman suffers violent death in rural maine.

  That story I couldn’t write. Yet.

  I went back to Teak. Something not quite right about that headline. Yes, two murders. But was Lindy’s killing totally random? Not quite. I tried another sub
head: “Volunteer killed by a client of the agency she wanted to serve.”

  Leaned back in the chair and stared at the screen. It was true. Teak had killed Lindy. She had volunteered at Loaves & Fishes. Barrett was her son, but he had no connection to the shelter.

  But yes, he did. The papers in the apartment. The cartons in the car. The boxes delivered. Harriet angry and upset. What had they said? “Miss H. was some ugly.”

  I got up from the chair and went to the window to think.

  Yeah, Barrett hated his stepfather. Yeah, he had information that could ruin Rod, maybe get him in trouble with the IRS. And Lindy had that, too. She was an accomplice to whatever minor tax fraud they’d committed. Fudging the books. Trimming the profits.

  But that hadn’t gotten Lindy killed. Teak had killed Lindy, but he was sitting in the earthlings’ jail when Barrett had been stabbed. Did he have someone else he’d recruited to the cause? One of the guys from the basement crew?

  “No,” I said aloud. “They all knew Teak was nuts.”

  There was a knock at the door from the shed. I took the Glock off the desk and went through the kitchen to the window. No vehicle in the driveway. Tracks leading not from the road, but from the side of the garage. From the direction of the barn.

  Marta.

  I racked a cartridge into the chamber.

  Four knocks, louder than the first. Clair?

  I was walking back into the kitchen when it struck me. The boxes. Lindy had the cartons of shelter stuff when she was killed. Barrett had the same records, sitting in Lindy’s car. Where were they now?

  More knocks. Marta not going away?

  I put a hand on the latch. Lifted.

  Pulled the door back.

  Harriet. Red knit hat, puffy dark green parka, L.L.Bean insignia.

  “Hi, Mr. McMorrow,” Harriet said. “Hey. Sorry to bother you. I actually went to your neighbor’s house first. I thought the lady at the store said it was the white house with the big barn, right? So I went there, but nobody was home, and then I said, ‘Harriet, maybe she said the house before the barn.’ ”