Gray Ghost

by William G. Tapply

  The sheriff nodded.

  “You got a lot of suspects,” said the judge. “Start with everyone whose daughter or girlfriend he ever molested.”

  “I was only aware of that one case.”

  “There was only the one case. You aren’t so naive as to think that was his one and only offense, are you?”

  “I guess not,” said the sheriff. “It’s just the only one we know about.”

  Roper nodded. “Well, me, too. I’m just suggesting.”

  “Right. Who’d know about other instances?”

  “The victims and their families, whoever they are. Watson himself.”

  “Not sure how I can use that, Judge.”

  He shrugged. “Me, neither. You’re the sheriff. Far as that particular case was concerned, you understand that I can’t talk about it beyond what’s in the record. It was a pretty run-of-the-mill case, as child molestation cases go.” The judge shrugged.

  “I understand the victim’s father was pretty passionate.”

  “I had to warn him,” said the judge. “It was moving as hell, but way out of line. That’s all in the record. You’re looking for an obvious murderer, you couldn’t go wrong with him.”

  “The father,” said the sheriff.

  Judge Roper nodded.

  The sheriff looked at Calhoun. “You think of anything, Stoney?”

  “What about that prosecutor?” said Calhoun.

  “I don’t think he did it,” said the judge, “inasmuch as he’s been dead for a few years now.”

  “I understand that. I only meant, the job he did. Any suggestions that he was bagging the case?”

  “Don’t know why you’d think that,” said Roper, “but I sure as hell can’t comment on it. Read the record and figure it out for yourself. Acworth was a tough prosecutor, I can tell you that. Some people don’t think that Jet Ski accident was any accident. He pissed a lot of people off.” The judge picked up his rods and set them into the racks under the gunwales. “I did what I could. I found the man guilty and put him in prison. Made sure that when he got out, he’d have a target painted on him.”

  “The sex offender registry, you mean,” said the sheriff.

  “Yep. It makes anybody with a computer a suspect, wouldn’t you say?” He looked at his watch. “Okay, your time’s up, Sheriff. Was there something else?”

  “Guess not. If anything occurs to you …”

  “Sure. I’ll call you. Now get your ass off my boat so I can go fishing. I been waiting a long time to be retired, and I don’t want to waste it rehashing old cases or dwelling on the murders of men who deserve to be murdered.”

  The sheriff shook hands with Judge Roper and stepped onto the dock.

  The judge looked at Calhoun and touched his forefinger to his eyebrow. “Deputy,” he said.

  “Good to meet you, Judge,” said Calhoun, and he and Ralph turned to follow the sheriff back to his truck.

  A battered brown Volkswagen Rabbit that hadn’t been there on Saturday now sat in front of the green ranch house where Mattie Perkins lived. Calhoun pulled his truck in behind the Rabbit.

  They got out and went to the front door. The sheriff rang the bell, and a minute later the inside door opened and a woman looked out at them through the screen door. She was holding a cigarette down alongside her leg, as if she were trying to hide it. The smoke twirled out through the screen.

  “Mrs. Perkins?” said the sheriff.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m Allison Perkins. And judging by your uniform, you’re the sheriff. And you,” she added, jabbing her cigarette at Calhoun, “must be the deputy. You boys’ve already interrogated my daughter. I got to say, this is a lot of fuss over a dog that tips over trash cans and howls at night.”

  “Can we talk with you, ma’am?” said the sheriff.

  “Sure.” She pushed open the screen door and stepped outside. She was wearing shorts and sandals and a sleeveless jersey. She had muscular legs and arms. Calhoun thought she had intelligent eyes, and he liked her cynical smile. “I’d invite you in,” she said, “but it’s a mess. I clean rooms at the Ramada, and I can’t keep my own place picked up. As if cleaning rooms was my career. You want to talk about Errol Watson, right?”

  The sheriff nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Not about his dog, huh?”

  The sheriff shrugged.

  “I’m biased,” said Allison Perkins. “I happen to know what Errol Watson is, and I’ve got a teenage daughter, and I’m not at all happy to have that man living in my neighborhood.”

  “How did you find out about Watson?” said the sheriff.

  “One of the neighbors told me, and I looked him up on that website. It’s hard to know how to tell your daughter that the man across the street is a convicted sex offender.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  She shrugged. “I just told her to steer clear of him. I didn’t tell her why. Maybe I should have, I don’t know. They don’t tell you how to handle something like this in the child-rearing manuals. So I just let Mattie think I’m being overly protective, which I have always been anyway, and she knows it. She can be mad at me, I don’t care, as long as she does what I tell her.”

  “Did you ever speak to Mr. Watson?”

  “About Mattie, you mean?” She dropped her cigarette on the dirt and ground it out under her sandal. “Not me. Mattie disobeyed me once. I found out she was over there. She swore she was just watching the man work on his motorcycle. I gave her hell, but I was so scared that I got Mattie’s father to come and, um, explain our position to Errol Watson. That is one thing that Lawrence Perkins is very good at. Explaining his position. He doesn’t always find just the right words for it, but he makes his meaning clear so that you have no doubt what he wants out of you and what will happen if you don’t do it. Or, in this case, refrain from doing it.”

  The sheriff smiled. “You mean he yells.”

  Allison Perkins nodded. “Yells and swears and threatens to knock the shit out of you, which, among other things, accounts for the fact that he and I are divorced. Lawrence Perkins always manages to get his message across loud and clear. Especially loud.”

  “Did he threaten Errol Watson?”

  “Sure he did. You can ask anybody in the neighborhood, because he wasn’t exactly soft-spoken about it. He told him if he touched our daughter, if he said hello to her, if he even looked at her, he, Lawrence Perkins, would personally be back for him, and when he was done with him, he wouldn’t ever think about little girls again.”

  “What’d he mean by that?” said the sheriff.

  She shrugged. “You’d have to ask him. Near as I could tell, Watson took him seriously. Mattie says she hasn’t even seen him since then. We figured he was hiding inside his house, afraid to show his face.”

  “When did this, um, conversation between Mr. Perkins and Mr. Watson take place, do you remember?”

  “Sometime in July? A few weeks after we moved down here, which was right after school got out.” She looked at the sheriff, then at Calhoun. “We were living in Madrid and I lost my job. I was the elementary school reading specialist, and they were having budget problems, so they eliminated my job. If you have tenure, they can’t fire you without cause, but they can eliminate your job, and then it’s just tough shit. I can tell you, there isn’t a lot of work for a reading specialist up in that neck of the Maine woods, so I brought Mattie down here to the city, such as it is, hoping I could find something.” She laughed quickly. “So here I am, cleaning rooms at the Ramada, circulating my resume, hoping to get some interviews. I’ve got a master’s degree and eleven years’ experience and good references, and I’m changing sheets and scrubbing toilets for a living.”

  Calhoun noticed that Allison Perkins pronounced “Madrid” the same way Mattie had, with the emphasis on the first syllable.

  “Errol Watson,” said the sheriff. “He hasn’t been a problem, then?”

  “His dog has been,” she said. “I called about him tipping
over our trash cans, howling all night long.” She smiled. “Next thing I know there’s a sheriff and a deputy at my door.”

  “Just his dog, then?”

  “Except for that one time with Mattie, and truthfully, that was her fault.” Allison Perkins fished a cardboard pack of cigarettes from the hip pocket of her shorts. She flipped it open with her thumb, plucked out a cigarette with her lips, lit it with a plastic lighter, and turned her head so she wouldn’t exhale in the direction of the sheriff. “Near as I can tell,” she said, “Watson didn’t do anything wrong. Mattie said he wouldn’t even talk to her. Still, it scared me, knowing what kind of man he is.”

  “When did you see him last, do you remember?” said the sheriff.

  She took a puff on her cigarette and looked up at the sky for a moment. Then she shrugged. “I don’t remember. It’s been a while. A few weeks, anyway. Like I said, after my ex confronted him that time, he laid pretty low. I can tell you that his dog was pestering us for quite some time. I had to make four or five phone calls before the animal people finally showed up. Why? Has something happened to Errol Watson ? Where is he ?”

  “What about your neighbors?” said the sheriff. “Any of them have any, um, confrontations with Mr. Watson?”

  Allison Perkins shrugged. “Not that I know of. I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me, but I can’t say. I don’t see much of my neighbors. I’m off working a lot of the time. I take all the hours they’ll give me.”

  “And Mattie?” said the sheriff. “She’s staying away from him?”

  “Mattie is a good kid,” she said. “Now and then I ask her. I’ll say, ‘You been over to Mr. Watson’s house?’ or, ‘You talk to Errol Watson lately?’ And Mattie says, ‘No, not since you told me not to.’ And I can see in her eyes that she’s not lying to me, because I can always tell when she does lie to me. She knows she can’t lie to me, and she doesn’t bother trying anymore. I say, ‘Matilda Louise’—she hates it when I call her by her whole name like that’I ask her, ‘Have you been smoking?’ And she just goes, ‘How did you know?’ And I give her a little punishment, but I tell her it would be a lot worse if she tried to lie about it.” She smiled. “Anyway, I do believe Mattie has stayed away from him, and him from her, too, ever since that one time. Which still doesn’t make me happy that he’s living across the street.”

  “What about visitors?” said the sheriff. “Does he have friends, people who drop in on him or who come home with him?”

  “Not that I ever noticed,” said Allison Perkins. “I don’t recall ever seeing a strange car parked over there, or anybody going in and out. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Just that I never saw it.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to be at the Ramada at three, and before that I’ve got to have some lunch and take a shower and put on my uniform and make some dinner for Mattie, so …”

  “Mattie’s at school?” said Calhoun.

  She turned and smiled at him. “I didn’t know you could talk, Mr. Deputy.”

  “I prefer not to,” he said. “The sheriff’s better at it than me.”

  “Mattie’s at school, yes. Eighth grade. A terrible grade to teach, by the way. She’s on the field hockey team, so she doesn’t get home till suppertime. I don’t like it, but we’re making it work for now. I’d rather have a job in a school, I can tell you that.”

  “Can you tell us how to find your husband?” Calhoun said.

  “My ex-husband,” she said. “He works on marine engines at Antrim’s boatyard down in Kittery.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Calhoun dropped the sheriff off at the shop where he’d left his vehicle, and then he and Ralph headed down to Kittery. It took about an hour on the turnpike, and then another ten or fifteen minutes to find the Antrim Boatyard, which was located on the banks of the Pis-cataqua River across from Portsmouth.

  A ten-foot chain-link fence topped by barbed wire surrounded the boatyard, which appeared to cover several acres. The entire enclosed area was crowded with boats of all descriptions in dry dock—motorboats and speedboats, tugboats and launches, sailboats and yachts, fishing boats and lobster boats. There were several large hangar-like buildings with metal roofs, and here and there the neck of a crane poked high into the sky. Along the river side of the yard Calhoun could see some docks where more boats were moored.

  He found the entry gates open, and inside the entrance he spotted a white tin-roofed building, a miniature of the big boat hangars, with a sign that said OFFICE on the wall beside the door. He parked in front and went in.

  The inner walls were dark fake-wood paneling. They were covered with photographs of boats. A thirtyish woman wearing a pink T-shirt sat behind an L-shaped steel desk talking on the telephone. She was poking at her reddish hair with the eraser end of a pencil. Her desk was piled with papers and catalogs and manila folders. A computer sat on the short leg of the L. A big floor fan was blowing the warm air around.

  The woman arched her eyebrows at Calhoun, gave him a quick smile and lifted a finger at him, then shifted her eyes back to the ceiling and continued her conversation. As near as he could tell, she was talking to a teenager about getting his homework done before he went out with his friends.

  Calhoun turned his back on her and looked at some of the boat photos. In one of them he recognized the first President Bush grinning from the stern of a long skinny speedboat. He was holding a spinning rod in one hand and a big bluefish in the other.

  “Can I help you, sir?” said the woman.

  Calhoun turned. “You got a man named Lawrence Perkins working here?”

  She frowned. “Who wants to know?”

  He fished the leather case that held his deputy badge from his pants pocket and flipped it open. “Sheriff’s business,” he said. “I’m Calhoun.”

  “I hope Perk ain’t in trouble?” said the woman, making it a question.

  “I just need to talk to him,” said Calhoun.

  She cocked her head and looked at him for a moment, as if she could read something in his face. Then she said, “I’ll get him for you.” She picked up the phone, poked a couple of buttons, then said, “Man here needs to talk to Perkins … I don’t know, Harry, but… yeah, right now. Good. Thanks.” She hung up. “He’s on his way. Do your business outside, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Calhoun. “Thanks.”

  He went outside and leaned against his truck, and a few minutes later a big man came lumbering up from the direction of the water. He was wearing a gray T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and baggy blue jeans and a backward baseball cap. He had a thick blond beard, and stringy sun-bleached hair curled out from under his cap.

  As he got closer, Calhoun saw that his arms were enormous and that each biceps was plastered with an elaborate tattoo—an angel with its wings spread on the right one with the word HEAVEN under it, and a red Satan rising from a blaze of fire on the left, which, of course, was labeled HELL.

  The man frowned at Calhoun. He was wiping his hands on a greasy-looking rag. A V of sweat stained the front of his T-shirt. “You lookin’ for me?”

  “Mr. Perkins?”

  He nodded. “Who are you?”

  “Name’s Calhoun.” He showed Perkins his badge.

  Perkins glanced at it and shrugged, as if he’d seen plenty of badges in his life. “So what’d I do now?”

  “Nothing, far as I know,” said Calhoun. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Allie sent you, didn’t she?” he said. “She said if I was late again, she’d report me. I told her I’m tryin’ to do my best. I know my responsibility.”

  Calhoun shook his head. “It’s nothing like that, Mr. Perkins. I just want to ask you about Errol Watson.”

  Perkins frowned. “Who?”

  “Errol Watson,” said Calhoun. “Lives across the street from your wife and daughter?”

  “Oh, him,” said Perkins. “Allie’s not my wife. We’re divorced. It was her idea, getting divorced, but I’m still s—pose to give her child support eve
ry month.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” said Calhoun. “Tell me about Watson.”

  “What do you want me to say? God damn convicted sex pervert living practically next door to my baby daughter, never mind my ex-wife? That ain’t right. People like that, they should keep ‘em locked up.”

  “You had words with him, I understand,” said Calhoun.

  “Words?” Perkins laughed. “I told him if I heard he went anywheres near Mattie—or Allie, for that matter’if he spoke to them or even looked at them, he’d be sorry.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Perkins. “It’s just what I said. I guess I’d kill him. Wouldn’t you?”

  Calhoun smiled. “When was the last time you saw Errol Wat-sonr

  “First time, last time, only time,” said Perkins. “Allie calls me, this is a couple months ago, right after she and Mattie moved down to Portland, she’s crying and swearing and sputtering, I never heard her so mad, I can barely make sense out of what she’s saying, she’s telling me this freak’s tryin’ to, I don’t know, seduce my little girl. So I piled into my truck and I went up there and I did what Allie wanted me to do.”

  “She wanted you to … what? Threaten him?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Allie’s this sweet little schoolteacher, right? You know her ?”

  “I met her,” said Calhoun.

  “She’s a ball buster,” said Perkins. “I mean, believe me, she could’ve done a better job than me, scaring the shit out of that Watson. She can be pretty scary, believe me. I think she was disappointed I only yelled at the guy.”

  “What did she expect?”

  He shrugged. “You never know with her. All I know is, no matter what I do, it ain’t right, or it ain’t enough.”

  “Are you saying that the only reason you confronted Watson was because your ex-wife asked you to?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t’ve even known about him if she didn’t call me.”

  “But you were just doing it for her?”

  “For her?” Perkins laughed. “Not hardly. Doin’ it for me, too, man. I don’t mind telling you, I was pretty pissed. The idea of a person like that living in a … a neighborhood. I had to control myself not to hammer the sonofabitch.”