Up ahead, he could see the theater marquee. Apparently the Empire made a habit of showing a new movie - or as new as they got this far into nowhere - and a classic as well, on different screens. The new film was not something that interested him, but the other was Key Largo with Humphrey Bogart. Buckton might be about as far removed from Boston as America had to offer, but there was something to be said for quaint.
"What's going on there?" Molly asked.
Jack slowed the Jeep and turned to see Molly pointing at a small congregation of people on the sidewalk. A police car was parked in front of the Paperback Diner, and he saw Deputy Vance on the sidewalk talking to a waitress.
"Good question," he said softly.
They parked the Jeep up the block, stashed the guns they had been carrying in the glove compartment, and walked back toward the diner. People were milling about, including a few whose faces he thought he recognized from around town. Quietly, without drawing attention to themselves, Jack and Molly merged with the crowd, and Jack tried to peer in through the glass door. Inside, he could see the sheriff and a number of people who looked like they worked there. The place was a mess, plates and books strewn all over.
A great many books. It suddenly occurred to Jack why they had called it the Paperback Diner.
There was a lot of whispered talk amongst the spectators. The waitress Deputy Vance was speaking to seemed very upset, and Jack wondered if maybe she was the owner.
A jostling in the crowd jarred him, and Jack turned to see that people had made way for a fiftyish man in dark pants and a button-down shirt with no tie. He was a kind-looking man with a ruddy complexion and an expression of concern on his face. When Deputy Vance saw him approaching, the lawman stood up a little straighter.
"What's all the ruckus, Alan?" the man asked.
"Morning, Mr. Lemoine," the deputy replied. He glanced back into the diner, and shook his head in confusion. "Just vandals, looks like. Probably kids. It's a crazy thing. Seems like sometime after midnight, somebody broke in and just tore the place apart. Ripped all the books down off the shelves but didn't steal anything, as far as we've been able to tell so far."
"Lemoine?" Jack whispered to Molly, frowning. "Why is that name familiar?"
Molly smiled. "Tina at the hotel? He must be her father."
Jack sensed a looming presence behind him and turned slightly to see a big, barrel-chested man leaning toward him.
"You got it in one, kids," the man said. "Are you nosy, or just observant?"
Though he smiled, a kind of dark energy seemed to flow off the man. He made Jack very nervous. But when he thrust out a meaty hand to be shaken, Jack took it quick enough.
"Bernard Mackeson," the man said. "I own the department store just down the street."
Jack and Molly introduced themselves. Mackeson eyed them both closely, even suspiciously, and Jack had to wonder if it was just the way Buckton residents treated anyone who wasn't a local, or if there was more to it than that.
Mackeson smiled, then moved on as though the encounter had never happened. He stood at the inner edge of the circle of spectators, eavesdropping - as they all were - on the conversation between Deputy Vance and Mr. Lemoine. Jack understood now why Vance treated the man with such respect. The deputy was in love with the guy's daughter; he had to be on his best behavior.
Lemoine scratched the back of his head and sighed. "A shame, isn't it? All that nastiness we see on television has finally started to make Buckton just as sick as the rest of the world. I never thought I'd see the day, Alan. Never thought I'd see the day."
Alan muttered something to the man, gave him a pat on the back, and then Lemoine strolled off down the sidewalk in the general direction of Mackeson's store.
For his part, the burly Mackeson remained in the crowd, paying no more attention to the man who had departed.
Someone in the crowd echoed what the deputy had been saying, repeating it for another who had just arrived. "Teenagers or something," the bystander said.
"Though why they'd want to break in and throw all those books around and not even rob the place . . . I suppose it's probably drugs, isn't it?"
Jack blinked.
Books.
Suddenly he felt rather stupid. With a glance to make sure no one was paying particular attention to them, he leaned in toward Molly.
"I'm thinking this wasn't vandals," he whispered. "This whole thing is supposed to be about a missing book, right? I mean, that's why these three people were killed."
Molly nodded. "So this mess probably means someone thinks it's been hidden. And where else would you hide a book than with a bunch of other books?"
The crowd of spectators had thinned somewhat as people began to realize that no one had been killed or injured and nothing was stolen. They drifted back to their homes and jobs. As Molly spoke to him, Jack glanced up at Deputy Vance just as the deputy noticed the two of them.
Vance frowned.
After a moment he strode over to them. "Morning, you two. Tina tells me you were out hiking most of yesterday. Did you conquer the mountain or did it conquer you?"
Jack chuckled politely. "The battle still rages," he replied.
"What a mess in there, huh?" Molly said, referring to the diner.
Vance glanced over his shoulder, then back at them. He hesitated as if taking the time to talk to outsiders was not high on his list of priorities at the moment.
Then he sighed.
"It's very sad. They were arranged just so and it's going to take a while to put all the books back in order. I told Trish, the woman who owns the place, that Tina and I would come over later and help out."
Molly warmed to him then. She patted his arm lightly. "That's sweet of you. We are pretty wiped out from yesterday and this morning, but if you think she could use some extra hands . . ."
Alan seemed surprised. His gaze went from Molly to Jack, and back to Molly again. "It's kind of you to offer. I'll mention it to Trish, see what she says." He paused, took a deep breath, and then gestured toward the store. "Nice talking to you, but I guess I'd better check in with the sheriff again. The way things have been going lately, people want to see us doing our jobs."
"It's got to be pretty unsettling, having all this stuff happen at once," Jack reasoned.
"No kidding," Molly agreed. "I can't imagine living here, having no crime, practically ever, and then having three murders in a month and now this break-in, too.
They must be freaking out."
Vance was retreating toward the diner, but he stopped and looked at Molly oddly. "Two murders. Don't make it any worse than it is," he told her.
Jack stiffened. They don't know about the third murder yet. He studied the deputy's face, but Vance seemed content to believe Molly had just misspoken.
"Sorry," Molly replied quickly. "I know it's a big deal here, of course, but in the city, two, three . . . that's sort of every night."
Vance rolled his eyes heavenward. "Thank God I never have to live in the city." Then he went into the diner.
On the way back to the Jeep, Jack glanced at Molly. "That was not good."
"It'll be all right," she consoled him. "I just got the number wrong. What, are they going to think we did it?"
When Alan walked back into the Paperback Diner, Sheriff Tackett was staring at him with a hard expression that unnerved the deputy. Tackett was a gruff, unforgiving man, but usually he was not openly hostile.
"Who were those kids?" the sheriff demanded, a cell phone clutched in his hand.
Alan blinked, confused. He cocked a thumb and gestured over his shoulder. "Those two? Just a couple of hikers from Boston. They're staying over at the inn. I talked to them when they checked in, and they were wondering what all this fuss was about."
"Hunh," the sheriff grunted.
Tackett stared out the window at Jack and Molly as they walked up the street. Alan knew that people in Buckton did not, as a general rule, like tourists very much. But the sheriff was usually more o
pen-minded than that.
"People oughta mind their own business," Tackett muttered.
With a scowl, he turned to go. "This one's yours, Alan. I dusted for prints around some of the shelves and on the front door handle, but I'm sure we're going to get a bunch of nothing from that. Ask around, see if anyone noticed kids around last night or early this morning. You know the drill."
Alan stared at him.
"Are you having some kind of problem hearing me?" Sheriff Tackett asked, frowning angrily.
"Not at all. Just surprised you're leaving. Everything all right?"
Tackett paused, then strode over to stand only inches away from Alan. When he spoke, his voice was an angry whisper, but Alan did not think the anger was aimed at him.
"I'm pretty damn far from all right. The people of this town expect me to uphold the law. To keep them from getting murdered, for Christ's sake. I can't even keep some kids from trashing a diner, why should they trust me to find a killer?"
Alan shuffled uncomfortably. He did not have an answer.
Then Tackett leaned in even closer. "I'm going up to see Aaron Travis. Seems Kenny Oberst didn't show up at the drugstore today, so Aaron went to check on him.
"Kenny's dead. Aaron says it's the worst thing he's ever seen."
"My God," Alan gasped, eyes wide.
Sheriff Tackett started to walk away. Alan's mind reeled from the news of Ken Oberst's murder. Another one, he thought. When is it going to stop?
Another voice was in his head, though. A girl's voice. Alan frowned and called out to Tackett. The sheriff paused and walked back to him.
"The girl," Alan said. "The one you were just watching, with that other fellow? The hikers? We were talking about what's been happening and she mentioned three murders. Not two, three. It . . . it could have just been a slip of the tongue. That's what it seemed like - But ..."
The deputy let his words trail off, uncomfortable as he was under the dark, suspicious glare of the sheriff 's eyes.
"Could have been," Tackett agreed. "And it could be they know something we don't. People come from outside, they always seem to bring their own trouble with them. I still can't believe human beings can do this to other human beings, but you never know. We'll keep a close eye on these strangers, Alan. I get a very bad vibe off them.
"They just smell wrong."
CHAPTER 8
The lobby of the Buckton Inn was deserted when Jack and Molly hurried through the door, the air all around them was heavy with the possible implications of what they had learned. It was still early in the day, barely past noon, and Jack was troubled by how quickly things seemed to be moving.
Nobody was behind the check-in counter. As they strode to the stairs, however, the sweet sound of someone strumming an acoustic guitar drifted through the lobby to them. Molly turned to Jack, a curious frown creasing her forehead. Jack glanced into the small bar, where he had seen a piano before.
At a small circular table suited only for a couple of drinks, Tina Lemoine sat with a fat-bellied acoustic six-string and hummed amiably along with her own strumming and picking. Her fingers danced lightly across the guitar's neck as she searched for just the right chord. On the table were a tall glass of lemonade and a book, open and facedown, cracking the spine. Behind her, three tall windows let in the sun and the breeze that only swirled the heat around rather than lessening it in any way.
When Tina glanced at them, it was slow and deliberate. She did not interrupt her playing at all, as if she had known they were standing there all along.
"Help you guys with anything?" she asked, and her question had enough of a rhythm to it that the words were in time with the music.
Molly waved an apologetic hand. "No. We just . . . didn't know where the music was coming from. Sorry to interrupt."
"Just killing time," Tina revealed. "Someone's got to be around, but I get so bored sitting behind the desk."
"I can imagine," Jack said, mainly to have something to say as he drifted closer. "Hey, Tina, do you know if the Empire shows films in the afternoon, or just at night?" The book on the table in front of her, he could see now, was The Turn of the Screw.
The guitar thrummed beneath the motion of her hands as the song picked up speed. When she spoke now, it was between beats. Jack marveled at her skill.
"You're in luck," Tina replied. "There are afternoon shows Saturday and Sunday. What happened, did you overdo it up on the mountain?"
"You could say that." Jack waved to her as they went back into the lobby. "Thanks."
Upstairs, once they were in their room with the door closed behind them, he let out a short sigh of relief and shook his head, still a bit taken aback by the developments of the day. Though nervous about carrying them around, they had brought their guns in from the glove compartment. Molly handed hers to Jack and he put them both in a drawer beneath his clothes.
"All right, so what do we have here?" he asked.
Molly studied Jack carefully, then raised one finger to her lips, though he thought it was a gesture of contemplation, rather than an attempt to hush him.
"Let me get this straight," she said. "You want to go to the movies this afternoon?"
Just the tone of her voice made Jack smile and chuckle. Molly, however, did not seem to appreciate his amusement. His grin disappeared and he scratched his head idly.
"Let's come back to the movies in a minute, okay?" he suggested. "This other stuff is more important."
Molly nodded once, emphatically. "My point." Then she shook her head slowly, a self-effacing smile surfacing. "Sorry. I'm just . . . I feel like we should have been able to stop this last one, you know what I mean? We come up here, poking around, like there's something we can do, but we couldn't save this Mr.
Oberst."
The pain and confusion in her voice stopped Jack cold.
"This isn't our town, Mol. No matter what happens, we can barely scratch the surface around here," he told her. "But that doesn't mean we can't help. If somebody here knows what's really going on, they're not gonna tell us. We could just pack up and go home. And that's what I'll do if you want me to."
"Oh, no," Molly said quickly, shaking her wild red hair back over her shoulders. "We're not going anywhere."
Jack nodded, paused a moment in his pacing. "All right, then. Good. So, what do we know?"
Lips pressed together in a tight line, Molly let herself flop back on the bed and she stared at the ceiling. After a moment she cleared her throat.
"The spot on the map where there was a cluster of victims, and supposedly some sort of ruins, seems like the best place to start looking for the lair," she replied. "From there we can check the other murder sites we haven't visited yet. The vandalism at the diner probably means the ghosts were right about this book that was supposedly stolen from the Prowlers. The vandals didn't take anything else, so it stands to reason that they made that mess because they had to be looking for the book."
"My guess is they didn't find it or they wouldn't have had to trash the whole place," Jack added. "Also, if they killed Oberst and trashed the diner all in one night, they're either not afraid of getting caught . . . or there are more of them than we thought."
Molly wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. "I don't like either option." Her gaze locked on Jack's. "So, what next?" she asked at length.
"Next, we call Bill, get him and Courtney caught up. Then we have lunch, and then head over to the surveyor's office and look into those ruins. Tomorrow we hit the mountains again, try to have a look at them and at other locations we think might be their lair."
"Courtney won't like us getting that close without Bill," Molly reminded him.
"Who says we're going to get close? We might not even find the right place. But if it makes you feel better, I'll lay the whole thing out for them and get their feedback."
Molly nodded slowly, considering. "All right. So what do we do tonight?"
"You wanted to go to the movies, get our minds off of all of th
is."
Molly rolled onto her side on the bed and stared at him. He could see that she was spooked, that the speed with which things had begun to happen around them had also unsettled her. And he did not blame her.
"I'm not sure anything would get my mind off this. Not until we're on the way home."
"Hey, it's Humphrey Bogart," Jack reasoned, his tone light.
"Oh, well, that makes all the difference," Molly teased.
"It does!"
Silence descended upon the room. They stared at each other for several long moments before Jack went over to the phone between their beds. Jack dialed the number at Bridget's Irisk Rose Pub. Bill was more likely to be down at the bar already than to be up in the apartment. On the third ring, a female voice answered. It took Jack a second to place it as belonging to Kiera Dunphy.
"Kiera, it's Jack," he began, then forged on before she could ask him if he was enjoying his trip. "Can I talk to Bill?"
Molly stood up from the bed with a creak of springs and he could feel her eyes on him as she went to the bureau to click on the television. The volume was low, but he could hear the pop-pop-pop of her changing channels.
"Jack?" Bill said as he came on the line. "What's happening up there?"
There was something odd in Bill's voice, a tension Jack hadn't heard before. Certainly, Bill was worried about them - that had been evident all along - but this was something different.
"What's going on down there?" he countered.
The bartender paused for a second or two before responding. "Nothing. Business as usual. Did you find what you're looking for?"
"Yeah," he replied, still concerned by Bill's tone. "Yeah, they're here. In force, I think. There's been another killing."
He explained how they had gone about creating their map, and that they were going to be out searching for the lair the following day. Jack was fairly certain Bill was going to insist that they wait for him, and at this point, he was certainly not going to protest. But when he finished, there was only silence on the other end of the line.
"Bill?"
The bartender cleared his throat and it sounded almost like a growl. "I don't want you to do anything until I get there, but I can't come right now, Jack."
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