“It does make you mad, doesn’t it? Being treated like some little nothing? You want to do something about it, show them how wrong they are? Isn’t that why I’m here?”
“You’re good at this.”
“I’ve had to be.” A twitch of something like sorrow flickered across his face; then he focused on her again. “How many on the force here?”
She hesitated. “A few. All right,” she sighed, “don’t give me that look. I’m it, just about, except for the chief. He’s sixty-three with a heart condition. And one part-timer. He’ll go to full-time in the summer. Probably. Maybe.”
“Except you don’t think so.”
She picked up her cup. “The town owes me six weeks back pay as it is.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “So you won’t be going to anybody else about this in a hurry.”
“Don’t be so…”
“The stateys haven’t got a clue. You know that.”
“I…”
“You know that or you wouldn’t be talking to me. You’re hungry—I knew that the first time I saw you. How long you been in this job?”
“Just over a year. I take it you’re feeling a bit better. Are you going to tell me what happened to you tonight?”
“Where you from?”
“Here. At least I mostly grew up here. We moved to New Hampshire in my teens. Then I went to law school.” She held up a hand to forestall his next question. “Being a lawyer just wasn’t it for me. Then I tried like crazy to find myself, even ran with an EM service for a while. What?”
“Nothing. I…like I said, you remind me of somebody.”
“I wound up at the police academy in Boston.”
“So? You want to talk about it?”
“I couldn’t take it, okay? No big deal. I burned out. Had a breakdown. Is that what you want to hear?” She crossed her arms defensively. “Why am I telling you this?”
“Maybe because you trust me.”
“Then I should have my head examined.” She gulped a mouthful of tepid tea. “Again.”
The cat moved in front of the sofa, and he dropped his hand. Quick as a cobra, the animal sank its fangs into the base of his thumb before darting away. “Jesus.” He brought his hand to his lips.
“You all right?”
He took his thumb out of his mouth. “It’s not rabid, is it?”
From beneath the sideboard came a low snarl.
“I don’t think so.”
“Let me know if it develops symptoms.”
“For heaven sakes, it’s just a little bite. Here, there’s some peroxide left.”
“You have any other cute pets around the place? Snakes? Scorpions?”
“Don’t be such a wuss. Gimme.”
Sucking on his thumb again, he mumbled something.
“What?”
“Divorced?”
“I said you were good.”
“Just assuming. You know—cops.”
“Anyway, not exactly. We lived together for three years.”
“Another cop?”
“Graduate student. Philosophy. He ended up cutting his throat with a razor blade.” She drew her hand across her windpipe. “Or, no, like this actually. He was a southpaw.” She switched hands and made the gesture again. “Punishing me, I guess.”
“Tough.”
“That card you gave me—I haven’t been able to track it down. There’s no such company, is there?”
“How did you end up back here?”
“You just don’t stop, do you? All right. My family had some connections here still. When one of the old-timers quit to do security work in A.C., they found out about the job.” She sighed. “When I…when I got out of the hospital, you know, after the breakdown, I needed the work, and my parents still owned a house. At first, I thought I’d live there, but then I saw the condition of the place. They hadn’t even been able to rent it in years.” She gestured about vaguely. “A lot of the furniture was salvageable though. Too much of it probably. Are you through with this?” Abruptly, she gathered up the mugs and spoons and marched into the kitchen. When she returned a moment later, his position hadn’t changed. “All right—that’s not the reason I came back. I thought maybe a small town like this, maybe I could do something real, maybe the ugliness wouldn’t overwhelm me. Are we finished with this topic now?”
“And you found the town dying?”
“I never was much of a beach person anyway. Burn too easy. It’s a redhead thing.” Shrugging, she paced into the kitchen again and began to rinse out cups. Behind her, a floorboard creaked. “Should you be up? Watch out for the barbells on the floor.”
“Damn!”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Broke my foot is all. You work out with these?”
“You’re going to say it looks like a guy lives here, right?” Nervously, she stacked the mugs on a small drain board, then grabbed a can of cat food and began rooting through a drawer. “Where’s that can opener?”
“How do you have room to move?” A spasm of dizziness took him, and he pulled up a wooden chair.
“I’d get you some more aspirin, but you should probably put something solid in your stomach first. Do you think you could eat?” Her voice trailed off. The cat leapt, clicking softly across the countertop to the food. “Get down from there.” She set the food on the floor, then glanced up. He had slumped forward. His hair gleamed a thick, dull gold under the kitchen light, and she reached out to stroke it.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She flinched. “Sorry.”
“I mean…”
“No, it’s all right.” She leaned against the sink. “It’s just you’ve got to be about the best-looking man I’ve ever seen.” She smiled at the confusion on his face. “A lot of women must see that as a challenge.”
Unsteadily, he got to his feet. “Not much of one.” He stared: the open button on her blouse exposed a pale cloud of freckles. “Have you thought about what I said…about not telling the state police because…?” He stepped closer. “You’re so skinny.”
“Watch that, you.”
“You run, don’t you?” Suddenly, he slid his hand along the curve of her hip.
“Now I know you’re feeling better.”
He ran his hand along the fabric of her blouse, smoothing it absently, as though he wasn’t aware of doing it. “You should throw me out of here.” He grunted softly. “I mean it. Don’t let me do this to you.” The veins in his forehead swelled. “You don’t know what I’m like.”
Gently, she pushed against him. His breath grew heavy and uneven, and she felt its heat on her cheek. His beard stubble scratched her.
A sigh rose from him, husky with weariness, and he clutched her tightly, too tightly, as if trying to break through a barrier of flesh. His hands spread on her hips, slid down the back of her legs. Groaning, he pulled her up against him.
She caught sight of his face, blinked. “Oh. Look, we don’t have to do this, you know.” She tried to back away. “If you’re not feeling up to…”
He made her stop talking. Her mouth was wet, soft. He felt the little teeth behind her lips.
She pulled her face away. “What?”
“You remind me…”
“You keep saying that.” She attempted a smile, played her fingers along his chest. “I take it you work out.”
“Not in years.”
“So? We did mine. What about your stats? Divorced?”
Something clouded his eyes.
“What? She died?” Again, she tried to pull away. “I remind you of her?”
“No. Somebody else.”
“What happened with that one?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Another man? She must be nuts.”
“Worse.” He shook his head. “A cause.”
“Oh.” She stopped stroking him. “And you still love her, right?”
He barely nodded.
“I suppose I knew that.” Another thought hit her. “She’s mixed up in this somehow?”
He considered it a long time. “You could say that. You could say that’s why I’m here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s the only way for us. Right now.” He tried to pay attention to what her hands were doing, but a bloody fog seemed to fill his head. “Only way I can be of use.” His voice snagged on the final word, tearing like cloth on a nail. “My head. Don’t feel too well. Don’t think I can…”
“Shut up. There’s no obligation, you know.”
“Sorry…”
“Shut up, I said.” Moving away from him, she twitched aside the kitchen curtains and peered out at the night. Frost cobwebbed the glass. “So what do you live on?”
“What?”
“While you’re chasing a killer? That’s what you do, isn’t it? It sounds pretty nuts. You’re not independently wealthy or something, are you? Is she?”
“There’s someone who takes care of…hard to explain. Other people are interested.” His gaze sought hers, soft, insistent. “My needs are met.”
A tiny crumb of paper clung to the sleeve of her sweater, and she stiffened as he picked it off. “You mean, you’ve got some sort of patron or something?”
“I told you there were things I couldn’t talk about.”
She turned back to the window. “Right.”
“Quite a view.”
“Used to be the marina,” she muttered distantly.
“Could I…?”
“What?”
“See your notes?”
“They’re on the desk. In the other room. The rolltop in the corner.” Not moving from the window, she stared down at the empty dock. She heard his footsteps, then the sliding rattle of the desk. The cat finished eating and jumped to the windowsill and settled. Without thinking, she reached to stroke it, and instantly, the cat flipped onto its back, wrapping both front paws around her hand. “Oww! Oww! Stop that!” The claws just lanced her flesh without really digging in, holding her so she couldn’t pull away. The tongue startled her—it felt like hot, wet sandpaper. “All right, fine, I like you too, now let go of me, all right? Oww!” The cat flipped back around with a snakelike movement and huddled against the pane.
“It’s no good.”
She followed his voice into the living room.
“No good,” he repeated, perched uncomfortably at her cluttered desk. “You haven’t done much actual investigative work, have you? Check out the dates. Your man escaped from this halfway house or whatever late in September. The first corpse turned up in a pond almost a week before that. In pieces. Never even identified. All we know for sure is her first name was Stella.”
“How do you know that? That’s not in there, is it?”
“I forget. Maybe a tattoo?”
“Don’t be creepy.”
“It’s right here in your notes. See the date?”
“And don’t patronize me.” She snatched the notebook. “I checked with the hospital administrator, the new one. Patients in that part of the facility are monitored, not—how did he put it?—‘unduly restricted.’ Look. Clay Mills is approximately an hour’s drive from that pond. Just suppose he got hold of a car and…”
“How far is that pond from Edgeharbor?”
She started to answer, caught herself. “You know how far it is.”
“About twenty minutes. Straight inland. If you’re on foot, takes about…” Suddenly, he pushed the rest of the file away. “My head. Damn. You’re close, but that’s not it.”
“What are you talking about?”
He tapped the papers. “This Chandler, the father, what does he have to say about his son’s disappearance?”
“I haven’t been able to contact him.”
He turned completely around in the chair to face her.
“There’s been no answer at his office or his home,” she explained, straightening the papers. “I’m not sure what I’d say anyhow. Why do you look so interested all of a sudden?”
“There must be court records about the killing of his wife.”
She nodded.
“Could you get them?”
“I don’t think I could remove them from…”
“Could you take me to them, let me read them?”
“They’re in the old courthouse.”
“But you could get in?”
“I…no, I’m not taking you there.” She held his gaze. “There are limits.”
After a moment, his shoulders sagged. “Could you maybe look the file over, and tell me what’s in it?”
“I could do that, yes.”
“Could you do it now?”
XIII
Fog pressed up the dark beach, damply flattening the saw grass. On a bluff, the abandoned summer cottages clustered, facing the sea, one a little apart from the others. Mist enveloped it. Moisture slicked the green and white trim, and the front window shimmered faintly. Drapes hung closed at the side windows, but light pooled thinly in the small yard.
The back door wasn’t closed all the way. “It’s got to stop.” Crouched on the kitchen floor, Perry whimpered. “It’s got to.” He waited for the trembling in his shoulders to abate. Clutching a scrub brush, he wiped the back of a wet rubber glove across his nose, then plunged the brush back into a bucket. Reddish water turned the gloves orange. “Got to stop.” The boy slopped more water over the caking filth on the linoleum and scrubbed at it, making a brown swirl in which tiny bubbles hissed. Wet, it smelled like blood again. “Not my fault.”
A dull ache circled up his knees with each sob, and his shoulders began to stiffen, but he scrubbed on, pushing the pail ahead of him, while the cold pierced through the open crack of the door, and a trace of fog ghosted into the kitchen.
The mist spun halos around her headlights, and her grip slid damply on the steering wheel. Heading down Decatur Road, she glimpsed movement at the end of the block. Must be high tide. Water glittered in sharp, vanishing segments. Then she turned onto Chandler Street.
Another halo hovered above the street lamp, a jagged nimbus that glistened and changed shape in the floating vapor. A freezing glow shivered across the front of the courthouse, bleaching the granite steps, and shadows wavered like gargoyle wings.
She parked the jeep across the street from the courthouse but didn’t move. Branches clicked against the lamppost, and icons of civilization—phone booth, mailbox, hydrant—clustered in the desolate funnel of brightness. Well, I do seem to be here. Getting out of the jeep as quietly as she could, she marched straight through the light. I probably should have gone around back. Across the park, darkness buried the houses. Anyone might see.
She headed up the stairs. He’s got me feeling like a crook now. The cold of the doorknob stung through her gloves. But I suppose I should have thought of that before I swiped these keys from the chief’s desk. Metal ticked against metal as the key scraped the lock.
A slap of wind pushed the door, but she grabbed it before it could bang open. She looked back once. Mist winked across the street lamp. Then she eased her way in. With an icy crack of hinges, the door sucked shut behind her, snuffing the light. Nothing to be nervous about, right? Her fingers searched along the wall. I’ve been here hundreds of times. She located the switch but didn’t turn the lights on.
Just never at night.
The hesitant click of her footsteps resonated down the hall, fading reverberations fusing into a dissonant hum. The lump of keys in her hand rattled, and she stumbled as though drowsy. A damp smell hung in the air. Can’t see a thing. When she judged she’d gone far enough from the draped front windows, she switched on the flashlight, swinging the beam past a glass case commemorating the town’s war dead. One side of the building housed an auditorium, long unused, and she played the light across office doors on the other side of the corridor: county clerk, registry.
A door stood open. The beam rippled across letters reversed on frosted glass, then planed over surfaces within. Above a row of file cabinets, window shades blocked the night. I suppose I can ch
ance a bit more light now. Stepping into the office, she closed the door quietly behind her. I am the law after all. Instead of flicking on the overheads, she groped her way to a desk and switched on a gooseneck lamp, twisting it to face the wall.
The cabinets loomed like gray sentinels. She tugged the first drawer—it made a low grinding, suggestive of metal teeth, but didn’t budge. However, a desk drawer slid open smoothly, revealing pens, index cards, and a tray full of keys marked with letters on bits of tape. A moment later, she clanked open the A-G drawer.
Inside lay a mass of crushed papers, and she pawed hastily through them. Only the Chandler file sported a typed tab, and she hefted it to the desk, swiveling the lamp so that light pooled on the blotter.
She paged through arrest records, but the snapshots shocked her so that she had to lean against the desk until the trembling stopped. The woman had been slashed apart. Pudding seemed to seep from the tatters of her dress. She turned the photos facedown and flipped open a small notebook. As the pen scratched loudly, the shadow of her own hand flowed massively across the page.
Finally, she returned to the photographs.
Raising her head, she confronted the dark.
After a moment, she moved to the next desk and switched on that lamp as well, and a second bright puddle gave shape to the shadows.
He answered on the first ring. Her voice sounded faint, far away.
“No, I’m all right,” she told him. “Just a little rattled. I’ve been looking at Polaroids of the crime scene. Yes. About what you’d expect. Not much here we didn’t already know. The initial report is sealed.”
He perched on the bed. She had dropped him at his hotel before going on to the courthouse. “Sealed?”
“By court order.”
“Can’t you open it, Kit?”
At first there was silence on the other end of the line. “You don’t understand. It’s probably in a safe somewhere. There’s just a card here referencing it.”
“Why would it be sealed?”
“Courtesy probably. I told you. Influential local family. All I’ve got here is some incidental information filed by the officers who went to the house. Doesn’t tell us much. She was a teacher apparently. There’s something weird though.”
The Shore Page 12