by Matt Hilton
A portly woman was seated behind reception. She had rosy cheeks that contrasted with her white hair. Over trousers and a pullover sweater she wore a tabard, the name of the private institute embroidered above her left breast. She also wore a name badge: Marjorie. Sampson didn’t need to read it to greet her; he was obviously a regular visitor.
‘Hi, Arlen,’ Marjorie responded to his personable hello. She gave Tess a cursory smile too, then raised her eyebrows in question.
‘This is Tess,’ Sampson said. ‘She’s a friend. It’s OK if she visits Caroline with me.’
Sampson posed his words, not as a request but a given fact. Marjorie didn’t react other than to smile again, and offer Tess a clipboard with a list of visitor signatures on it. ‘I’ll need you to sign in,’ she said, then after a mock grimace, ‘rules are rules, right?’
Tess used the attached pen to scrawl her name and approximate time of arrival on the log sheet. Marjorie again offered a smile as she accepted the clipboard back. Immediately she settled down to whatever paperwork she’d been working on before their arrival. It was obvious to Tess that Sampson’s was a very familiar face, and that he was intimately familiar with his environs. He said, ‘Thanks for everything, Marge,’ and then walked away before the receptionist reacted to the finality of his words.
Tess followed him down a corridor. They passed rooms in which resided patients requiring different levels of care, but all of them acutely. Some reminded Tess of chain hotel rooms, others hospital suites, and again of the room in which her dad died. She shivered inside and out.
‘Caroline requires round the clock care,’ he elected without a prompt. He wasn’t seeking pity, but perhaps some understanding of his recent actions. ‘If I was able I’d have her at home with me … but, well, that wasn’t possible while the Ambroses had me on a leash. I couldn’t spend the time I wanted with her, because of them. It was different when Caroline’s sister was here. She helped me with Caroline, but’ – he cleared his throat – ‘something bad happened to her. It shames me as a man, and as a husband, that I’m not here for her all the time.’ He stopped, faced Tess, and she could see genuine regret in his posture. ‘I won’t be ever again.’
Again there was no subtext to his words; simply he was stating how he foresaw his future. For a moment Tess forgot he’d done despicable things and pitied him as much as she did the wife he was going to be forced to abandon. She didn’t respond, mostly due to the catch in her throat. They walked on.
He said, ‘Caroline fell from her horse. We actually wed right here, with a minister conducting the ceremony, and her sister Mary and a nurse as witnesses. It might shock you when you first see her. But be under no illusion, she’s fully aware, and in full control of her senses. All I ask is that, for her sake, you let me tell her what I’ve done my own way.’
‘I’m only here to ensure you fulfill our bargain,’ Tess reassured him.
‘She’ll hear soon enough about my arrest, but we don’t need to do it in front of her do we?’
They were approaching the final room at the end of the hall. Unlike the others they’d passed this one’s door was different. It had a viewing window. Tess said, ‘I don’t need to be in the room with you as you say goodbye. If anyone arrives, I’ll do what I can to stall them until you’re done.’
Again he halted, and his features flushed pink as he regarded her. ‘I’ve done some bad things I shouldn’t have, but believe that I’m ashamed of them more than anyone. I’m sorry for what happened with the Toners, and especially that poor kid Jacob, and I’m sorry your man was hurt. I don’t expect your forgiveness, so won’t ask for it, and you probably aren’t seeking gratitude, but I want to thank you, Tess. It takes a special kind of person to do what you’ve done for me.’
‘Like you said earlier, I owed you one.’ After a pause, Tess reached and gripped his forearm, giving it a supportive squeeze before he entered Caroline’s room.
‘Your debt’s repaid, and I’ll pay mine,’ he promised.
He went inside.
Before the door swung shut she briefly saw Caroline open her eyes and smile in delight as Sampson entered. Feeling slightly voyeuristic, Tess adjusted her position so she could watch through the door’s viewing window. The woman lay on a hospital-style bed, her upper torso strapped to and slightly raised on a plastic backboard that molded to her contours. All kinds of medical contraptions surrounded her, and she was hooked up to most of them by wires and tubes. There were feeding tubes in her nostrils, an oxygen mask fitted loosely over her mouth, and a catheter in her throat. On a hinged arm alongside her left cheek there was some kind of control pad from which protruded a joystick and a thin sip and blow tube. Next to the bed stood a sling by which she could be lifted and turned by her carers. She was no expert, but Tess knew that Caroline Sampson had suffered a terrible trauma that had paralyzed her from the neck down.
Sampson sat on a chair next to the bed, bending at the waist to lay a hand gently on Caroline’s forehead. The woman had limited movement to turn to him. Tess watched her press her cheek to his palm; there was such affection between them in that simple gesture that tears pricked Tess’s eyes. He was not going to press a pillow over her face, nor hang himself with one of the trailing wires: his love for Caroline was too strong. Whatever the Ambroses had forced Sampson into doing she couldn’t hold it against him when he felt he must obey them to protect her. She turned away from the window, allowing them a few minutes privacy, knowing that Sampson was correct. It’d be a long time, if ever, before he would be able to touch and speak in person with Caroline again.
FORTY-THREE
The burial of Jacob Doyle was held under pale blue skies, with breath misting from the mouths of mourners as they paid their last respects. The recent storms had passed, replaced by the chill of an early winter. Standing around the grave, the attendees shivered despite their heavy coats, scarves and gloves. The sudden drop in temperature plucked those leaves spared by the storms from the surrounding trees, and they drifted lazily to the ground, a shimmering backdrop of reds and yellows and all colors in between. Some leaves fell on Jacob’s coffin as it was lowered into the earth, to join a wreath placed upon it by his siblings.
Tess couldn’t equate the two broken figures with the angry guys she and Po had scuffled with only a couple of weeks before. It was obvious that the tough love they showed their youngest sibling was love all the same; the price of losing him was grief. Jacob’s death had diminished them somehow; they looked as brittle as the falling leaves. At one point she’d feared that the brothers might react to the news of Jacob’s death by blaming Hayley Cameron, but as far as she could tell there’d been no obvious rancor from them. Hayley attended the funeral, supported by her dad Jeffrey Lorton and adoptive mom Jessie Cameron, but stayed back a respectful distance from the frontline mourners. Recognizing the sacrifices that Mike Toner had made for his daughter, Hayley had come to value the idea of embracing her own father who might just one day fight for her too.
Neither Madison nor Mike Toner were present. Currently they were both remanded on pre-trial detention, whereas their co-defendant Hayley had been granted bail, her bond paid for by Jeff Lorton. Of the three, Mike Toner faced considerable time in prison, having taken the lion’s share of blame when it came to organizing and running the insurance scam, claiming Maddie and Hayley were manipulated by him into helping him get rich quick. Also, and no less surprisingly he’d taken the heat for some of the events that subsequently occurred at the abandoned restaurant in Rockland. To spare Pinky involvement, he’d sworn that he was the man to drive his pickup into the building, and also to have chased Dom to his accidental death when the thug tried to jump to freedom through a window he broke. On what to charge Toner with on these matters, the prosecuting attorney was still trying to make up his mind, because they occurred during Toner’s brave attempt at saving the life of Nicolas Villere, who at the time was being brutally tortured by Dom and Temperance Jolie. Remarkably Temperance hadn’t attempte
d to contradict his story, because when it came to it, she genuinely couldn’t recall who had done what to who after her arm was snapped in the free-for-all. Tess suspected that these latter crimes would be waived in favor of throwing the book at both Toners for their fraudulent activities instead, but still regretted she couldn’t do more to have them released on bail. Emma Clancy was also hoping to influence her contemporaries in Bangor, with a view to having the Toners’ detention reviewed by the right of habeas corpus: they were unlikely to commit a further serious crime, interfere with the investigation or attempt to flee justice so they should fit the bail criteria.
After he’d finished in Caroline’s room, Arlen Sampson surrendered to Tess, who handed him over to the detectives Po summoned to the care home. Sampson made a full and frank admission to his part in kidnapping Po and to the murders of Blake and Kelly Ambrose, and lastly to the second kidnapping of Pinky that’d allowed him to make it to his wife’s side. There would be further crimes he’d confess to in the coming months, those involving blackmail and assault, but nobody – including Tess and her comrades – would ever learn of his infidelity with and subsequent accidental killing of his sister-in-law Mary Rhodes. Though he’d said his goodbyes to Caroline, he’d spared her any more torment than she was already in by keeping his awful secret – anyone else that ever knew was dead.
Capital punishment was abolished in Maine almost one hundred and fifty years ago, so he wasn’t facing a death penalty, but multiple life sentences were in his future; the fact he made a deal to stand state’s evidence in the investigation into the criminal activities of BK-Rose Holdings LLC might chop a few years off his sentence, but more importantly to him, he’d requested compassionate visiting rights to Caroline’s bedside: Tess sure hoped that his demands would be met.
Tess, Po and Pinky escaped punishment. Though there was suspicion that their parts in Dom Burgess’s death, the reckless destruction of property and later allowing Sampson to escape immediate justice at Bath, wasn’t all it seemed, it was not in the public’s interest to either investigate or charge them. Instead Po and Pinky were recognized as victims and Tess as both their rescuers, and the arrestee of a double murderer. They were fortunate not to have joined Arlen Sampson at Maine State Prison but Tess hadn’t gotten off scot-free. Emma Clancy had metaphorically torn a few strips of hide from her during a telling off about trust and lawful process, but all delivered after a knowing wink and nudge had passed between them.
As the ceremony ended at graveside, Tess linked her elbow with Po’s. A fortnight after having his knee smashed by Dom he was on the mend, but it still ached having stood on it in the cold for too long. He limped as they walked slowly from the grave, surrounded by similarly slow-moving attendees. Pinky, a looming figure in a voluminous black overcoat and wearing sunglasses, looked like a bouncer on the door of the roughest nightclub in town. He had kept a respectful distance behind the family and friends group nearest the grave, but now moved to meet them. He’d driven them first to the chapel in Standish and then on to the graveyard as they followed the hearse to Jacob’s final resting place, and had waited to take them home. They murmured greetings, but another person retreating from graveside distracted Tess. She excused herself from Po’s side and walked to intersect Stacey Mitchum’s path.
Stacey and Jacob hadn’t dated long, but Tess was aware that the girl liked him more than he’d reciprocated. She looked devastated, her face pale and eyes wet as she trudged solemnly away. It took Stacey a moment for Tess to register in her vision, and a moment longer to place the face. Tess offered her a sad smile of condolence. Fresh tears spilled from the girl and Tess placed an arm around her and held her while she shook with grief. Though they were relative strangers, Stacey accepted the comforting hug. When she’d gotten hold of her emotions, she dabbed at her face with her sleeve, and said, ‘If Jacob had stayed with me, he’d still be here.’
‘It’s not your fault, Stacey. Don’t blame yourself.’
‘I don’t.’ The girl checked around and her gaze snapped on Hayley, who was now standing at the grave, looking down into its open maw. Stacey’s face lit up a scarlet shade. ‘She’s responsible for Jacob’s death. I ought to go over there and say something …’
‘It won’t help,’ Tess cautioned her. ‘You are hurting, but so is Hayley. I’ve spoken to her a few times since Jacob’s accident and she’s genuinely heartbroken.’
‘She used him. Why does she care?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Tess, thinking with a twinge of melancholy of Caroline Sampson lying paralyzed in her Brunswick assisted living home, ‘you don’t know the true extent of love until it’s no longer there. Hayley has had a short sharp shock, and I think it will impact on her for the rest of her life. I’m betting that from now on she’s a different girl to the one you once knew.’
Stacey considered for a moment, and Tess watched the anger, and some of her grief, wash out of her. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘I’m rarely wrong,’ she said, then allowed a smile to creep in place. Stacey laughed gently, and it made Tess feel better. Stacey’s unhappiness had always felt like a loose end to Tess, since she somehow felt partly responsible for pushing Jacob into breaking up with her and running back to Bangor. Bringing a smile back to the girl’s face was good for her own soul.
Together, they walked away, following Po and Pinky out of the graveyard.