The Charlie Parker Collection 1

by John Connolly

  ‘But then, some people are not affected at all. The venom simply has no effect on them. And that’s what makes this little test so interesting. Unless you tell me what I need to know, I am going to apply the recluse to the skin of your whore. She probably won’t even feel its bite. Then we will wait. The antidote to recluse venom must be administered within half an hour for it to be effective. If you are unhelpful, then I am afraid we will be here for much longer than that. We will start with her arms, then move on to her face and her breasts. If that proves unsuccessful in moving you, we may have to progress to some of my other specimens. I have a black widow in my case, and a sand spider from South Africa of which I am particularly fond. She will be able to taste it in her mouth as she dies.’

  He raised the little jar.

  ‘For the last time, Mr. Parker, who was the second passenger, and where is that person now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I haven’t figured that out yet.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ Slowly, Pudd began to unscrew the top of the jar.

  I twisted in my chair as he held the jar close to Rachel once again. Pudd took the movement as a sign of my discomfort, and his excitement grew. But he was wrong. These were old chairs. They had been in this house for the best part of fifty years. They had been broken, then repaired and broken again. Using the pressure of my shoulders and by twisting my hand, I could feel the spar in the back of my chair loosening. I pushed up with my shoulders and heard a faint crack. The spar rose about a quarter of an inch as the frame of the chair started to come apart.

  ‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’

  I gripped harder with my right hand and felt the spar turn in its hole. It was almost free. Beside me, Miss Torrance’s attention was focused on Rachel and the spider. Pudd flipped off the lid and tipped the jar over, trapping the recluse on the skin of Rachel’s arm. I saw the spider respond as he shifted the jar slightly, provoking it into a bite. Rachel’s eyes grew large and she gave a muffled cry from behind the gag. Beside her, Pudd opened his mouth and emitted a small gasp as the spider bit, then stared at me with absolute, perverse joy.

  ‘Bad news, Mr. Parker!’ he cried, as the spar came free in my hand and I spun my wrist, pushing the spear of wood with all the force I could muster into the left side of the woman. I felt brief resistance before it penetrated the skin between her third and fourth ribs and shot through. She screamed as I rose. My forehead impacted with her face and she lurched back against the sink, her gun falling away. Simultaneously, Rachel shifted her weight in the chair, causing it to topple backward and forcing Pudd away from the table. With the chair still dangling from my left hand, I reached for my gun and fired two shots at Pudd’s body. Splinters flew from the door frame as he dived into the hallway.

  Beside me, the woman pawed at my legs. I kicked out at her and felt my foot connect. The pawing stopped. I shrugged the remains of the chair from my arm and reached the hallway just in time to see the front door slam open and Pudd’s long brown frame disappear to the right. I sprang down the hall, risked a quick glance from the doorway, and pulled my head in quickly as the shots came. He had a second gun. I took a breath, then rolled out onto the porch and started firing, the Smith & Wesson bucking in my right hand. Pudd disappeared into the trees and I followed, increasing my pace as I heard the car start. Seconds later, the Cirrus burst from cover. I kept firing as it shot down the drive and onto Mussey Road, the rear window shattering and one of its back lights exploding as the gun locked empty. I let him go, then ran back to the house and untied Rachel. She immediately retreated into the hall, curling in on herself and rubbing again and again at the spot where the recluse had bitten her.

  The woman was crawling to the back door, the spar still buried in her side and a trail of black blood following her across the floor. Her nose was broken and one eye had been closed by the kick to her head. She looked blearily at me as I leaned over her, her vision and her life already fading.

  ‘Where has he gone?’ I hissed.

  She shook her head and spat blood in my face. I gripped the spar and twisted. Her teeth gritted in agony.

  ‘Where has he gone?’ I repeated. Miss Torrance beat at the ground with one hand. Her mouth opened to its fullest extent as she squirmed and writhed then went into spasm. I released my hold on the spar and stepped back as her eyes rolled back into her head and she died. I patted her down but there was no ID on her body, no indication of where Pudd might be based. I kicked once at her legs in impotent rage, then reloaded my gun with a spare mag before walking Rachel to my car.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I called Angel and Louis from the Maine Medical Center, but there was no reply from their room at the inn. I then placed a call to the Scarborough PD. I told them that a couple had broken into my house, assaulted my girlfriend, and one of them was now lying dead on my kitchen floor. I also gave them a description of the Cirrus Mr. Pudd had driven away from the house, complete with smashed rear windshield and busted back light.

  The Scarborough PD was equipped with QED, or computer-enabled despatch, which meant that the nearest patrol car would be immediately assigned to the house. They would also alert neighboring departments and the state police in an effort to find Pudd before he ditched the car.

  At Maine Medical they dosed Rachel with antivenin after she had replied to a barrage of questions to which I was not privy, then put her on a gurney in a curtained-off section to rest up. By then Angel and Louis had got my message, and Angel was now seated beside her, talking to her gently, while Louis waited outside in the car. There were still people with questions to ask about the events in Dark Hollow the previous winter, and Louis was considerably more conspicuous than Angel.

  Rachel had not spoken during the ride to the hospital. Instead, she had simply held her hand over the area where the spider had bitten her, shaking softly. She had also suffered some cuts and bruises to the head, but there was no concussion and she was going to be okay. I was X-rayed and then given ten stitches to close up the wound in my scalp. It was already midafternoon, and I was still feeling dazed and numb when Ramos, one of the detectives out of Scarborough, arrived, accompanied by the department’s detective, Wallace MacArthur, and a whole cartload of questions. Their first question was: who was the injured woman? More to the point, where was she?

  ‘She was lying there when I left,’ I said.

  ‘Well, she wasn’t lying there when the first patrol got to your place. There was a hell of a lot of blood on your kitchen floor, and more outside in the yard, but there was no dead woman.’

  He was seated across from me in a small private room usually used to comfort relatives of recently deceased patients. ‘You sure she was dead?’ he asked.

  I nodded and sipped at my lukewarm coffee. ‘I stuck a piece of chair halfway into her body, right between numbers three and four, and I pushed up hard. I saw her die. There’s no way she got up and walked away.’

  ‘You think this guy, this Mr. Pudd, came back for her?’ he asked.

  ‘You find a suitcase full of spiders on my kitchen table?’

  MacArthur shook his head.

  ‘Then it was him.’

  It was a huge risk for him to take; he probably had only a few minutes to retrieve her. ‘I think he’s trying to keep the waters as muddy as he can,’ I said. ‘Without the woman, there’s no positive ID, nothing that can link her to him. Or to anyone else,’ I added.

  ‘You know who she is?’

  I nodded. ‘I think her name is Torrance. She was Carter Paragon’s secretary.’

  ‘The late Carter Paragon?’ MacArthur sat back, opened a fresh page in his notebook, and waited for me to begin. From across the hall, I heard Rachel calling for me.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ I told MacArthur. For a second or two he looked like he might be tempted to sit on me and shake me by the throat until I gave up what I knew. Instead, he nodded reluctantly and let me leave.

  Angel stood and discreetly walked to the wi
ndow as I approached her. Rachel was pale, and there was sweat on her brow and upper lip, but she gripped my hand tightly as I sat on the edge of her bed.

  ‘How you doing?’

  ‘I’m tougher than you think, Parker.’

  ‘I know how tough you are.’

  She nodded. ‘I guess you do.’ She looked past me to the room where Ramos and MacArthur waited.

  ‘What are you going to tell them?’

  ‘Everything that I can.’

  ‘But not everything that you know?’

  ‘That would be unwise.’

  ‘You’re still going to see the Beckers, aren’t you?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going with you. Maybe I can succeed in convincing them where you couldn’t. You and Louis go walking in on those people in your current mood and you’re likely to scare them to death. And if we do find Marcy, a friendly face will help.’

  She was right. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Rest up for a while, and then we’ll leave. Nobody’s going anywhere without you.’

  She gave me a satisfied smile and released my hand. Angel resumed his seat beside her bed. His Glock was in an IWB holster at his waist, concealed by his long shirt.

  From the room in which I had left MacArthur and Ramos came the sound of raised voices. I saw Ramos emerge from the room at a sprint. MacArthur was right behind him, but he stopped when he saw me.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  ‘Trawler spotted Jack Mercier’s yacht at low revs a couple of miles out. Tide’s carrying it in to shore.’ MacArthur swallowed. ‘Captain says there’s a body lashed to the mast.’

  The cruiser, named the Revenant, had docked at the Portland marina five days earlier. It was a twenty-five-foot Grady White Sailfish 25, with twin 200-horsepower Suzuki outboards, and its owner paid $175 in advance for one week’s mooring, at the standard rate of $1 per foot per night. The name, address, phone number, and boat registration number he gave to Portland Yacht Services, administrators of the marina, were all false.

  He was a small man, cross-eyed, with a tightly shaven skull. He spent most of his time in or near his boat, sleeping in its single compartment. By day he sat on the deck with a pair of binoculars in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and a book on his lap. He didn’t speak, and rarely left the boat for longer than fifteen minutes. His eyes seemed almost permanently fixed on the waters of Casco Bay.

  Early on the morning of the sixth day, a group of six people – two women, four men – boarded a yacht on the bay. The boat was the Eliza May, a seventy-footer built three years earlier by Hodgdon Yachts in East Boothbay. Its deck was teak, its body epoxy, glass, and mahogany over Alaska cedar. As well as the Doyle sail on its eighty-foot mast, it had a 150-horsepower Perkins diesel engine and could sleep seven people in luxury. It was equipped with a forty-mile radar, GPS, LORAN, and WeatherFax, as well as VHF and single sideband radio and an EPIRB emergency system. It had cost Jack Mercier over $2.5 million and was too big to moor at Scarborough, so it had a permanent berth at Portland.

  The Eliza May left Portland for the last time shortly after 6:00 A.M. There was a northwest wind blowing, superb weather for yachting, and the wind tossed Mercier’s white hair as he steered her into Casco Bay. Deborah Mercier sat apart from her husband, head down. By then, the cross-eyed man had been joined by two other people, a woman in blue and a slim red-haired man dressed in brown, both carrying tuna rods. As the Eliza May headed out into deep waters, the Revenant left the harbor and shadowed it, unseen.

  I caught up with MacArthur at the elevator.

  ‘Mercier’s involved in this,’ I told him. There was no point in keeping Mercier’s role secret any longer.

  ‘The hell . . .?’

  ‘Believe me. I’ve been working for him.’

  I could see him considering his options, so I decided to preempt him. ‘Take me along,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you what I know on the way.’

  He paused and gave me a long, hard look, then nodded and reached out his hand. ‘You can come as far as Pine Point. Hand over the gun, Charlie,’ he said.

  Reluctantly, I gave him the Smith & Wesson. He ejected the magazine and checked the chamber, then handed it back to me. ‘You can leave it with your friend,’ he said.

  I nodded, walked into Rachel’s room, and handed the gun to Angel. As I turned to leave I felt a light tug at my waistband, and the coolness of his Glock sliding against my skin. I took my jacket from the chair, nodded politely to Angel, then followed MacArthur down the hallway.

  Mercier’s last log entry recorded that the Revenant contacted the Eliza May shortly after 9:30 A.M, about fifty miles out from port. The northwest wind might have been ideal for yachting, but it could also carry a cruiser in distress out to sea, and the Revenant was in trouble. The Revenant’s distress call came in on VHF but the Eliza May was the only boat to hear it, despite the fact that there were other boats two and three miles away. The radio had been set to low range, maybe one watt, to prevent anyone else hearing the signal and answering. The Revenant’s batteries were almost dead, and it was drifting. Mercier adjusted his course, and went at speed to his death.

  I told MacArthur almost everything, from my first meeting with Jack Mercier to that morning’s encounter with Mr. Pudd. The omissions were few, but crucial: I left out Marcy Becker, Mickey Shine’s murder, and our unscheduled early viewing of Carter Paragon’s body. I also made no mention of the fact that I suspected that someone in the state police, possibly Lutz, Voisine, or both, was involved in Grace Peltier’s death.

  ‘You think this Pudd killed the Peltiers?’

  ‘Probably. The Fellowship, or at least what the public saw of it, is just a front for someone or something else. Grace Peltier found out what that was, and it was enough to get her killed.’

  ‘And whatever Grace knew, this Pudd thought Curtis Peltier also knew, and now he thinks you might know too?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘But you don’t.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘If Jack Mercier’s dead, there’ll be hell to pay,’ said MacArthur fervently. Beside him, Ramos nodded silently in agreement as MacArthur leaned back to look at me.

  ‘And don’t think you’ll get away without picking up your share of the check,’ he added.

  We drove along U.S. 1 south before turning left onto 9 and heading for the coast, past the redbrick Baptist Church and the white bell tower of St. Jude’s Catholic Church. At the Pine Point Fire Department on King Street, seven or eight cars were parked in the lot and the doors were wide open. A fireman in jeans and a Fire Department T-shirt waved us on toward the Pine Point Fishermen’s Co-op, where Marine 4 was already in the water.

  The Scarborough PD used two boats for marine duty. Marine 1 was a seventy-horsepower inflatable based at Spurwink, to the north of Pine Point, and launched from Ferry Beach. Marine 4 was a twenty-one-foot Boston Whaler powered by a 225-horsepower Johnson, based at the Pine Point Co-op and berthed, when not required, in the Fire Department. It had a crew of five, all of whom were already on board as we pulled up at the gray-and-white co-op building. The harbormaster’s boat was alongside the Whaler, and there were two Scarborough PD officers on board. Both carried 12-gauge Mossberg shotguns, the standard arms kept in Scarborough PD patrol cars. There were two more policemen in the Whaler carrying M-16s. All wore blue windbreakers. From the jetty, curious fishermen looked on.

  Both Ramos and MacArthur shook on their waterproofs as I followed them to the boat. MacArthur was climbing down to the Whaler when he saw me.

  ‘The hell do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Come on, Wallace,’ I pleaded. ‘Don’t do this. I’ll stay out of the way. Mercier was my client. I don’t want to be waiting here like an expectant parent if something has happened to him. You don’t let me go with you, I’ll just have to bribe a fisherman to take me out and then I’ll really be in the way. Worse, I might just disappear and then you’ll have lost a crucial witness. They’ll ha
ve you back directing traffic.’

  MacArthur glanced at the other men on the boat. The captain, Ted Adams, shrugged.

  ‘Get in the damn boat,’ hissed MacArthur. ‘You even stand up to stretch and I’ll feed you to the lobsters.’

  I followed him down, Ramos behind me. There were no more windbreakers so I pulled my jacket tight around me and huddled on the plastic bench, my hands in my pockets and my chin to my chest, as the Whaler pulled away from the dock.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ said MacArthur.

  I extended my right hand and he slapped the cuffs on it, then locked me to the rail of the boat.

  ‘What happens if we sink?’ I asked.

  ‘Then your body won’t drift away.’

  The boat surged through the dark, gray waters of Saco Bay, white foam erupting as it went. MacArthur stood beside the covered cockpit looking back to Scarborough, the horizon bobbing merrily with the movement of the boat on the sea.

  In the wheelhouse, Adams was responding to someone on the radio. ‘Still moving,’ he said to MacArthur. ‘Only two miles out now, heading to shore.’ I looked out past the seated policemen, past the crew at the cockpit, and imagined that I saw, like a tiny rip in the sky, the long, thin mast of the yacht. Something clawed at my insides, the last desperate scratchings of a cat left to drown in a bag. The prow dipped and sent a fine spray lashing over the deck, soaking me. I shivered as gulls glided above the surface of the water, calling noisily over the sound of the engine.

  ‘There she is,’ said Adams. His finger pointed to a small green dot on the radar screen while, simultaneously, the half-seen needle of the mast joined a dark spot on the horizon. Beside me, Ramos checked the safety on his Glock .40.

  Slowly the shape acquired definition: a white seventy-footer with a tall mast, drifting on the waves. A smaller boat, the lobster fisherman out of Portland that had first spotted the yacht, shadowed it from a distance. From the north came the sound of Marine 1 approaching. The two boats always responded to a call together for safety reasons.