He led me through a pantry and out the back door. Mel held out his arm, and we stopped on the small wooden porch. A narrow dirt path led straight back to the big old barn. Another path angled off to the side where it met the driveway.
The back lawn needed mowing, and milkweed and goldenrod and brambles grew waist-high against the side of the barn. The rusty skeletons of harrows and reapers and plows, plus an ancient refrigerator and some old lawn furniture, were piled up against the barn, half-hidden in the weeds.
Mel put his hand on my arm. “I’m gonna look, make sure the coast is clear, okay? You stay here. When I give you the signal, you run into the barn. Go into the third stall on your left. You’ll find a door. Go in there and take them steps down into the cellar.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll see,” he said.
I shrugged. “Okay.”
He moved to the driveway and peeked around the corner of the house to the front. Then he looked back at me, waved his hand, and pointed at the barn.
I took a deep breath, then sprinted down the path and through the big opening into the barn. I stood there in the middle of the wood-plank floor and looked around. It was dim and dank inside the barn, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust.
A tractor and a flatbed truck were parked in the back. Along the entire length of the wall on the right was a workbench piled with power tools and hand tools and engine parts. Several bare, unlit lightbulbs hung down over the bench, dangling from long electrical cords attached to the beam overhead. An open stairway at the end of the bench near the front of the barn led up to the hayloft.
Horse stalls lined the entire wall on the left. I went into the third stall and looked for the door Mel had mentioned. In the dim light, it took me a minute to locate it. It looked like it had been cut out of the original wall. Its vertical sides matched up with the edges of the weathered wallboards. Only the thin horizontal saw-cut, about head-high, gave it away.
A hole the size of a quarter had been drilled into the door. A short length of thin rope hung out of the hole.
I pulled on the rope and felt a latch lift on the other side of the door. It swung open silently. I stepped through the doorway and found myself on a small landing at the top of a narrow, steep flight of wooden steps that descended into the darkness.
I pulled the rope back through the hole, and the door shut behind me. The latch snapped into place, and everything went completely black.
I stood there, hoping my eyes would make one more adjustment. But there was no light whatsoever in there. I felt around on the walls for a light switch but found none. Instead, my ears began to pick up faint sounds—the creak of old wooden beams and rafters, the chirp of crickets, the coo of pigeons, the scurry of mice in dry hay. After a minute, I thought I detected a faint, mechanical, clicking sound. I listened harder, and then I couldn’t hear it anymore.
Standing there in the absolute darkness, I was more aware of the odors, too. Decomposed manure, axle grease, old leather … and something sweeter and fresher and cleaner that I couldn’t identify.
I wished Mel had thought to give me a flashlight.
Take the steps down into the cellar, he had said.
He had not said what I’d find down there.
Was this stupid? Did I have any reason to trust Mel and Mary Scott? Mel had tried to kill me the last time I was here. I had no idea what Mary’s agenda was.
For all I knew, both of them thought I’d killed Larry.
The rough walls were so close beside me that I could touch them by sticking out my elbows. There was no railing to hold on to. I put my hands out to guide myself and began slowly to descend the steps. I took them one at a time, pressing my hands against the walls for balance and feeling for the next step with my foot before shifting my weight onto it.
I counted fourteen steps, and then my forward foot felt a dirt floor. I stepped down onto it, reached out my hand, and touched a rough wooden wall in front of me.
I groped on the wall until my hand brushed against a latch. I lifted it with the crook of my forefinger, pushed the door open, and stepped through the doorway.
I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the sudden glare of light. Before I could open them, something hard jabbed into my ribs.
“Put your hands behind your neck and take two steps forward,” growled a voice from behind me. “Try something stupid and I’ll blow a hole in you.”
I did as I was told, then slowly turned my head.
Evie stood there, holding a double-barreled shotgun at her hip. She was wearing shorts and a man-sized T-shirt. She’d ditched the felt hat. Her auburn hair hung in a long braid down the middle of her back.
“Well, here we are again,” she said.
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “So this is where you’ve been holing up.”
She lowered the barrel of the shotgun so that it was pointing at the plywood floor. “Be it ever so humble.”
I looked around. A couple of fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling filled the room with harsh white light. A door laid across a pair of file cabinets made a worktable. On the table were a computer with an external modem and a printer and a scanner, along with a telephone, a fax machine, a twelve-inch television set, a portable CD player, and an electric fan.
On one wall was a small dirty window with no curtains. A door beside it stood ajar. It opened to the outdoors, where the dark woods loomed close. This room, I realized, was at ground level on the rear wall of the barn.
A narrow cot with an unrolled sleeping bag on it sat along one wall. Shelves hanging on another held paperback books and stacks of magazines and newspapers and reams of paper.
Evie propped the shotgun in the corner, sat on the cot, and looked at me without smiling. “I understand you were in Larry’s room this morning,” she said.
I nodded. She was thinking of the photo display.
She shrugged. “What can I say?”
“You don’t have to say anything, honey,” I said. “You didn’t even know me then.” I waved my hand around the room. “What is this place?”
“Larry’s hideaway,” she said. “He practically lived here. Him and his beloved computer.”
“And this is where you came, after …”
She nodded. “After we got back from the Cape.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“I know you tried to call Charlotte Matley,” I said. “How come?”
“After finding Larry, and then those policemen, accusing me …” She took a deep breath and blew it out quickly. “I needed advice. Advice from someone … objective. Someone I could trust.”
I started to speak, to tell her she could’ve trusted me, but she held up her hand. “Charlotte wasn’t there,” she said, “and I guess I panicked. I just had to get the hell away from there. So I grabbed my backpack and came here. I knew Mary would take care of me.”
I went over, sat beside her on the cot, and put my arm around her shoulders. “So now what are you doing, honey?”
She leaned against me. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t live forever in this—this hole.”
“I sneak out,” she said. “Mary and Mel are watching out for me. Anyway, it’s not forever. Just until they catch whoever’s killing people.”
“As near as I can tell,” I said, “their only suspects are you and me. I think the only reason they haven’t arrested me is because they think I’ll lead them to you.”
She was quiet for a minute. Then she pressed her cheek against my shoulder and said, “I do love you, you know.”
I turned and kissed her neck. “I wasn’t sure,” I said. “I love you, too.”
“There’s a ‘but’ coming at you,” she said.
I smiled. “Isn’t there always?”
“Here’s the ‘but,’” she said. “But—I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”
“Meeting like this?” I said. “Sneaking into motel rooms? Clandest
ine rendezvous in hidden rooms under barns? It’s actually kind of romantic, if you ask me.”
“I’m not kidding,” she said.
“No, I didn’t think you were. Things’ll be different after this is over with.”
“They’ll be different, all right,” she said. “They’ll never be the same.”
“If it’s those photos—”
“I told you I wanted you to go home, stay away from me.”
I shrugged.
She nodded. “I mean it. I wish you hadn’t come to this town.”
“You think I’m bad for you,” I said.
“No,” she said, “I think I’m bad for you.”
“Well, you’re stuck with me.”
She looked at me for a minute, then rolled her eyes and stood up. “Well, I want to show you something.”
She went over to the table with the computer on it. “I’ve been sleeping down here for a week,” she said. “This morning I started poking around Larry’s stuff. I found this.” She picked up a piece of paper.
I went over and she handed it to me. It was a page that had been torn from the “Living” section of the Boston Globe dated June 12, about two months earlier. The headline read, “End of an Era in Cortland.” The subhead read, “Illness Forces Small-Town Children’s Doctor to Announce Retirement.” It took me a moment to recognize Dr. Winston St. Croix’s photo. It had obviously been taken before he became ill. He had a rugged face, a head of thick, silvery hair, a dark, neatly trimmed mustache, twinkling, humorous eyes. He wore a white jacket over a light-colored shirt with a polka-dotted bowtie. In the photo he was holding a tongue depressor in the mouth of a boy who looked about eight years old. They were looking at each other with wide eyes and arched eyebrows. The doctor’s mouth was open, too, and you could almost hear both of them saying “Ahh” at the same time.
I looked at Evie. “What’s the significance of this?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I found it stashed under some old maps.” She pointed her thumb at the bookshelves. “I assume Larry tore it out of the paper.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Well, of course, I used to go out with Winston St. Croix. This”—she tapped the newspaper photograph—“is how he looked before he got sick.”
“A good-looking man. Probably too old for you.”
She smiled. “Point is, Larry was jealous of him. Always called him ‘your saint.’”
“I remember that.” I skimmed through the article. The first several paragraphs described St. Croix’s old-fashioned way of practicing pediatric medicine—answering his own phone, making house calls, advising parents on child-rearing issues, donating his services to local schools. He received hundreds of Christmas cards every year from former patients who’d grown into adults. There were quotes from Cortland folks telling stories about Dr. St. Croix braving blizzards to tend to babies with fevers and ear infections, Dr. St. Croix diagnosing rare illnesses, Dr. St. Croix holding office hours on Sunday afternoons, Dr. St. Croix sponsoring Little League teams.
He was a veritable candidate for sainthood.
According to the article, there weren’t any left like him. He was the last of the old-time caregivers. In these days of managed health care and malpractice insurance and assembly-line medicine, the retirement of Dr. Winston St. Croix was, indeed, the end of an era.
I noticed that a few lines about two-thirds of the way through the article had been underlined in pencil. They read: “Dr. St. Croix opened his first office in the little town of Gorham, Minnesota, in 1968. He moved his practice to Cortland in 1980.”
I looked up at Evie and pointed to those lines. “Is this significant?”
“Larry apparently thought so. He underlined them.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.” She shuffled among some papers on the desk, then handed one to me. “Here. I found this, too.”
It had been printed off the Internet from the archives of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The date was November 13, 1987. The headline read, “Carlisle Teen Suicide Baffles School, Church Leaders.”
I looked up at her. “Carlisle, Pennsylvania,” I said. “That’s where Owen Ransom was from.”
“Who’s Owen Ransom?”
“When the police came knocking on my door this morning? When you scooted into the bathroom?”
She nodded.
“That was Owen Ransom. They found him in the parking lot out back of our motel. His throat had been cut.” I filled her in on my encounters with the man who had called himself Dr. Paul Romano, his murder, the fact that he was an impostor, and my conversation with Kate Burrows, the editor of the Carlisle newspaper.
“You’ve been busy,” said Evie.
“It hasn’t produced much.”
She tapped the printout I was holding. “Owen Ransom would’ve been a teenager in 1987.”
“Well, Owen Ransom didn’t commit suicide in 1987,” I said. “I talked with him yesterday.”
I skimmed the article. A high-school freshman, a boy, had hanged himself in the basement of his home on a Saturday night. His parents found him when they got up on Sunday morning. He had left no note.
He had been a popular kid, a member of the basketball team, an honor-roll student. Teachers and friends were shocked. He’d seemed to be a happy, well-adjusted boy.
The article quoted some statistics on teen suicide. The rate had been rising alarmingly in that part of Pennsylvania. Oftentimes the victims were, like this one in Carlisle, apparently happy and well-adjusted youngsters.
The Carlisle school board was directing the administration of the school to develop a plan to identify depressed and potentially suicidal students. Local churches were expanding their counseling and outreach programs for troubled teens.
The article discreetly neglected to mention the name of the suicide victim.
I looked at Evie and shrugged. “I don’t get it.”
She shook her head. “Me neither. But it must’ve meant something to Larry. Here. Read this.” She handed another piece of paper to me. “This was the other thing I found.”
This one, too, had been printed out from the archives of the Inquirer. It was dated August 7, 1990. “Carlisle Couple Dead in Boating Accident,” was the headline.
I skimmed the article. The victims were a married couple named Margaret and Robert Ransom. They’d taken a canoe onto a local lake one summer evening. Their bodies and the capsized canoe were found by fishermen the next day. There had been no storm or wind that night. The couple were survived by a teenage son, unnamed in the article.
“Owen Ransom’s parents,” I said.
Evie nodded. “What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it all revolves around your doctor friend. Your saint. Something about his retirement. Ransom showing up and getting murdered. That canoe accident. The suicide. They’re connected. Or at least Larry Scott thought they were.” I hesitated. “And, of course, the fact that Larry was gathering this material, and that Larry himself got killed. That’s another connection. Did you find anything else?”
“No, but—”
At that moment the telephone rang.
Evie looked at it, then she arched her eyebrows at me.
I shrugged.
It rang again. Evie picked it up, put it to her ear, but said nothing. Her eyes shifted from the ceiling to me. Then she said, “Yes, okay,” and hung up.
“That was Mary,” she said. “You’ve got to get back up into the barn right away.”
“Why?”
“Just go,” she said. “She said make it quick.”
Evie grabbed my arm, opened the door I had come in through, and pushed me to it.
She gave me a quick hug, then I started up the stairs. She left the door open so I could see where I was going.
When I reached the top, she closed the door. In the sudden darkness, I found the latch and pushed the door that opened into the horse stall on the main
floor of the barn. I made sure the latch rope was not hanging on the outside of the door. Then I stepped into the stall and pushed the door shut.
I walked out of the stall. The inside of the barn was now brightly lit by the bulbs over the workbench. Mel Scott was sitting there with his back to me, working on a small engine.
He turned, beckoned me over, and pointed at the stool beside him.
I crossed the barn floor and sat on the stool. “What’s going on?” I said.
“Just watch what I’m doing,” he said. “This here is the motor from a snowmobile. I’m showing you how to replace the fuel pump, okay? You’re interested in this stuff, right?”
I shrugged. “Sure.” I leaned on my elbows to watch him.
Less than a minute later, two silhouettes appeared in the entrance to the barn. They stood there for a minute. Then one of them said, “Hello, Mr. Coyne.”
It was Detective Neil Vanderweigh.
I waved to him. “Hello.”
The two of them came over, and in the light from the bulbs over Mel’s workbench, I saw that the other one was Sergeant Dwyer, the Cortland cop.
Dwyer nodded to me and said, “How you doin’?” to Mel.
“Workin’ on it,” said Mel.
Vanderweigh jerked his head at Dwyer, who started wandering around the barn.
“What brings you here?” I said to Vanderweigh.
“I’m the cop,” he said. “I get to ask the questions. That was my question.”
“Mrs. Scott invited me over,” I said. “I accepted. There’s not a helluva lot to do in this town. Watching a mechanical genius repair a snowmobile engine is pretty entertaining stuff. I’m learning a lot. That’s the fuel pump he’s working on.”
From the corner of my eye, I watched Dwyer. He was poking around the tractor and the flatbed truck that were parked in the back of the barn.
Vanderweigh pulled a stool up beside me and hitched himself onto it. “I wondered what you’d do if you found yourself without an escort.”
“So you tracked me down. I’m flattered.”
“Oh, we care deeply,” he said.
Dwyer returned from the rear of the barn and was looking up the stairs that led to the hayloft.
Past Tense Page 17