Cutter's Run

by William G. Tapply

  “Yes, the Charlotte thing, and the Susannah and Noah thing. Visiting Arnold Hood and driving to Portland. Those kinds of things. Tomorrow you’re going back to Boston, and…” She sat down at the table and hugged herself.

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  “You’re not?”

  “No. You think I’d let you stay here alone with somebody leaving you threats on the telephone?”

  “I can take care of myself, Brady. I took care of myself just fine before I met you.”

  “I know. I’m staying anyway. I’m going to stay until this is settled.”

  She looked up at me and shook her head. “The big deputy.” She laughed quickly. “Jesus.”

  “Look,” I said. “As soon as we get this business straightened out, let’s just take off for a weekend. We can drive up to Acadia. It’s great this time of year, after the tourists are gone. We can climb around the rocks at the top of Mount Desert, find us a funky lobster shack, eat a bushel of steamers and a couple of boiled lobsters with big gobs of potato salad and several ears of corn on the cob and a few bottles of cold beer, then crash in a bed-and-breakfast, and sleep till noon. We can leave our watches and compasses home, just follow our noses, do whatever we feel like doing whenever we feel like it, no schedule, no goals, and…”

  I let my voice trail away. Alex had pulled her hand away from mine, folded her arms on the table, and lowered her head to them.

  “Bad idea, I guess,” I said.

  “No,” she mumbled into the tabletop. “It’s a lovely idea. Except I have to work every day.”

  “You don’t have to. You’re the boss. Give yourself a day off. You’ve earned it.”

  She lifted her head. Her eyes glistened. “You don’t understand, Brady. I’m a very cruel boss. I give absolutely no benefits to my employees. If they ever figured out what they make per hour, they’d quit. I hound them unmercifully. No praise. No rewards for a job well done. Just criticism. I’m always on the verge of firing them. I’m a master at making them feel guilty if they even think about goofing off. The only way they can keep me off their backs is by working hard every single goddam day. Anything else and I make their lives miserable. They know it’s not worth it. That’s why my employees are so damned compulsive and stressed-out.” She sighed heavily. “That’s why this book is actually gonna get done. Because I beat the shit out of myself every day. That’s why.”

  “Is this by way of explaining why you didn’t buy yourself a new dress today?” I said.

  She shrugged. “I guess so. I’m wandering around Portland while you’re off sleuthing, and all the time I’m thinking, Where the hell is Brady? Why isn’t he here with me? And I’m also thinking that if I were more responsible, I’d be back at my computer writing my goddam book. Shopping for a stupid dress seemed so—so frivolous. So, yes. It’s by way of explaining a lot of things, I guess. Why I’m such a bitch, mainly.” She held her hand across the table to me, and when I took it, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that sometimes—”

  At that moment the phone began to ring.

  We looked at each other. Alex arched her eyebrows.

  “Let the machine get it,” I said.

  She shrugged, pushed back her chair, reached to the counter behind her, and picked up the kitchen extension. She said, “Hello,” then paused, frowned for a minute, and handed it to me.

  I mouthed the word “who.”

  She shrugged, then stood up and walked out of the room.

  I put the phone to my ear and said, “This is Brady Coyne.”

  “It’s Ellen Sanderson.”

  “Thanks for calling. Do you—?”

  “Like I told you,” she said quickly, “Charlotte is my friend. I want to help.”

  “Well, good.”

  “Can you meet me?”

  “Of course. When?”

  “Tomorrow. After work. Say around six?”

  “Okay. Name the place.”

  “There’s a clam shack on the Scarborough River, right near where it empties into me bay. There’s a parking lot and a boat launch there. You take Route 1 south from Portland and follow the signs to Pine Point.”

  “I’ll find it,” I said.

  “Look,” she said. “I’ve gotta go.”

  The phone clicked in my ear.

  I hung up, then found a scrap of paper and scribbled “Pine Point” and “Scarborough River” and “Route 1” and “Tuesday, 6:00” on it before I forgot.

  CHAPTER 16

  I FOUND ALEX IN her office peering at her computer through her big round glasses. I leaned over the top of the bookcase partition and said, “How about those burgers?”

  “Let me know when they’re ready,” she said. She hit a couple of keys, then leaned forward as words scrolled down the screen.

  I was dismissed.

  I went back to the kitchen, rummaged among the herbs and spices, and selected, more or less randomly, dried sage and basil. I sprinkled some of each onto the meat, added some salt and fresh-ground pepper, men picked up the one-pound glob of chopped sirloin and kneaded it in my fingers. I divided it in half, shaped each half into a ball, then pressed and patted each ball into a thick patty, which I put on a platter. Then I cut two thick slices of extra-sharp cheddar and four slices from a loaf of Italian bread. I slathered one side of the bread slices with butter, sprinkled garlic salt and paprika on them, and piled the bread on the platter, too.

  The charcoal was glowing red in the grill on the deck. I laid the two patties on it, then sat in one of the rockers. The sun had set in the west, where it always does, and the pink was fading from the low cloudbank off toward New Hampshire. I lit a cigarette. A friendly bat swooped and fluttered overhead. Every mosquito he nailed was one that wouldn’t ram its proboscis into the back of my neck.

  Alex was inside. Sulking, I figured. Angry with me, angry with herself. When she was angry, she retreated to her book.

  She didn’t think it was working.

  Maybe she was right. It had been so long since I’d been in a relationship that worked that I’d lost my perspective. How much conflict and discontent could there be in a relationship that still qualified as Good? How good did it have to be before you could confidently and unequivocally call it Good?

  Damned if I knew. To me, it was working. But maybe, after years of having no relationship whatsoever, I had no standards.

  I snapped my cigarette butt into the yard, got up, and flipped over the burgers. I laid the cheese slices on top of the patties, then put the four slices of bread around the edges of the grill. I kept turning the bread over and moving it around the grill while the burgers cooked and the cheese melted. After years of trial and error, I knew that when the toast was golden brown, the burgers would be pink—but not red—on the inside.

  My culinary repertoire is pretty much limited to bachelor necessity. I can heat up a can of baked beans or Dinty Moore beef stew with the best of them, and I’m pretty good with eggs. Grilled burgers with melted cheddar cheese on toasted garlic bread is my specialty.

  By the time I slid it all onto the platter, darkness had seeped into the backyard and a whole flock of bats were darting around overhead.

  I went inside. “Food,” I called to Alex.

  “Coming,” she answered.

  “Beer?”

  “Please.”

  I snagged two bottles from the refrigerator, found a couple of frosted mugs in the freezer, and managed a perfect head when I poured them. Beer from a bottle. Another specialty of mine.

  Alex came in and sat at the table. “Yum,” she said.

  I kissed her cheek, then sat across from her. She spread catsup on her burger and took a big bite. “Delish,” she mumbled.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Alex said, “Something’s been bothering me, Brady.”

  “I know,” I said. “We can work it out.”

  She shook her head. “No. Not that. Charlotte Gillespie. She told you she knew me, remember?”

  I nodded.r />
  “But I don’t know her. Never laid eyes on her, I’m certain of it. From your description, I wouldn’t have forgotten her. An African-American woman in Garrison?” She shook her head. “But something niggled at me. And I finally figured it out. That’s what I was doing just now.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Figuring it out.”

  “I thought you were sulking,” I said.

  “Not this time.” She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “I just went through some old files in my computer. I found what I was looking for, and I was right. I’ve never seen her. But I did talk with her on the phone. It was the name Charlotte that niggled at me. She never said her last name. She called me about my series in the Globe. Said it was the first thing she’d ever read on the subject of abuse that rang true to her. I got the distinct impression that she knew a great deal about the subject, but when I told her I was doing a book on it and was interested in interviewing victims, she backed off.”

  “You sure this is me same Charlotte?” I said.

  She shrugged. “I remember her voice had a Smoky Mountains twang to it. But the reason I’m sure it was her is that she told me she lived in Maine, and I remember thinking it seemed odd for someone with her accent. I inferred that whatever her situation had been, she’d escaped it, gone to Maine, and started a new life for herself.” Alex peered up at me. “Now here’s the really strange thing. This whole conversation happened over a year ago, when I was still living on Marlborough Street.”

  “Before you moved up here.”

  “Yes. Before I even started looking for places.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “When I realized that she was reluctant to talk about her situation,” said Alex, “I changed the subject. You know. To relax her. I mentioned that I was planning to move to a quiet country place to work on the book. When I told her I was thinking about New Hampshire, that I wanted someplace within a couple hours of Boston, she mentioned southwestern Maine. Said she knew an area that was prettier and quieter and cheaper than New Hampshire.”

  “Garrison?” I said.

  “Yes,” said Alex. “She specifically mentioned Garrison. And so when I began looking for places, I checked out this area, and…”

  “Voila,” I said. “You’re here because of Charlotte.”

  She nodded. “Thing of it is, we know she wasn’t living here then. She was living in Falmouth and working in Portland.”

  “But this is where she came when she got fired.”

  “Yes. Garrison is a perfect place to hide out, she said. Those were almost her exact words. A perfect place to hide out. Anyway, the point of it all is, I’m sure from what she said that she’d been abused. That she fled that situation and went to Portland and made a new life for herself.”

  “Then she fled to Garrison,” I said, “and now she’s missing. And you think her abusive husband—”

  “—or boyfriend or whatever—”

  “—tracked her down and…”

  She nodded. “The legacy of abuse. It’s got to be the same Charlotte, don’t you think?”

  “Unquestionably,” I said. I took a bite of my burger, then a sip of beer. “That was excellent detecting, lady. I will suggest to Sheriff Dickman that he should deputize you.”

  Alex smiled.

  “All the time, I thought you were in there being mad at me.”

  “Oh, I was,” she said. “But mainly I was detecting. Computers are excellent for detecting. It’s a good thing I’m compulsive about entering all my notes. I typed the word ‘Charlotte’ and sent my machine on a find mission, and there it was.”

  I told Alex about my conversation with Ellen Sanderson and my plan to meet her at six the next evening.

  “Sounds deliciously clandestine.” She smiled. “It’s too bad you don’t have the same enthusiasm for your law practice that you do for—”

  I slapped the side of my head with my palm. “Oh, shit,” I said. “Julie. I was supposed to call Julie. She’ll kill me.”

  “If there was something urgent, she knows this number.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the point.”

  “The point being,” said Alex, “Julie thinks you’re irresponsible as it is, and this just confirms it. And despite the fact that you are, in fact, irresponsible, you don’t like it when your behavior confirms it”

  “Yeah,” I grumbled. “Something like that.”

  After we finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen, I took a deep breath and called Julie at home. When I explained that I’d been out all day on important business, that I was sorry I hadn’t been able to call, that it had weighed heavily on my mind the whole time, and that this was the absolute first chance I’d had, she replied with silence.

  “Okay,” I said. “So I forgot. But then I remembered.”

  “Well,” she said, “nothing happened except that Mr. Jackson and Dr. Adams called, and they both want to go fishing.”

  “What’d J. W. say? Have the blues started blitzing on the Vineyard?”

  “Something to that effect,” said Julie.

  “What about Doc? What’d he have to say?”

  “Oh, he mentioned trout. Sounded wistful. Hardly flirted with me at all.”

  “That’s not like Doc,” I said. “I’ll call both of ’em when I get back. Which, by the way, won’t be at least till next week. See, I’ve got something—”

  “What?”

  “I said—”

  “I heard what you said, Brady.” She let out a long dramatic sigh. “I give up. Cancel the rest of the week, right?”

  “Reschedule. You know the drill.”

  She laughed. “Rescheduling clients? That is a drill I know very well.”

  I found myself smiling. “I expected you to be really upset.”

  “I saw this coming,” she said.

  “You did? I didn’t.”

  “I know you better than you do,” she said.

  I found Alex in a rocker on the deck. I plopped down in the chair beside her and reached for her hand. She held on and we rocked there in silence, watching the bats play on the edges of the floodlit yard.

  After a while, I said, “Well, I talked with Julie. We’re all set.”

  “Bet she gave you some shit, huh?”

  “Hardly at all, actually. Julie knows me. Said she expected it.”

  “I’m glad someone knows you,” she mumbled.

  “We’ll take that weekend,” I said.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” I said. And as I said it, I remembered a lifetime of broken promises and unfulfilled commitments. This seemed like a promise that I’d better keep.

  We rocked and held hands and stared off into the darkness, and after a few minutes, Alex said, “You’d better not let me down.”

  It was spooky how Alex, just like Julie—and, come to think of it, like Gloria, my ex-wife, and like Sylvie Szabo and Terri Fiori and, for that matter, like just about every woman I’d been involved with—how they all seemed to know exactly what I was thinking.

  “I know you better than you do,” Julie had said. If women understood me so well, how come I never seemed to have the foggiest idea of what was going on in their minds?

  CHAPTER 17

  I’D JUST STARTED ON my second mug of coffee the next morning when Sheriff Dickman called. “I’ll pick you up around noon,” he said.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “I’ll fill you in when I get there. Good-bye.” And he hung up. A busy man.

  I had the morning to kill, so I decided to go back to Charlotte’s cabin, look around again. Maybe she’d even be there. I doubted it, but it was worth trying. While I was up there, I’d take a look at Cutter’s Run, the stream that divided Arnold Hood’s property from Noah Hollingsworth’s.

  I never visit water without a fly rod. Maybe some wild brook trout had taken up residence in the pond the beavers had built. So I tossed an old fiberglass stick and my fishing vest into the back of the Wrangle
r and drove the back roads to Charlotte Gillespie’s cabin. I turned in at the No Trespassing sign with the swastika, switched into four-wheel drive, and crept the Wrangler along the ruts to the place where the boulders in the dry streambed blocked the roadway. I parked there and carried my rod and vest the rest of the way up the hill. I walked all around the cabin and checked the outhouse. Everything looked exactly as it had the last time I’d been there.

  I went to the front door of the cabin and pushed it open. “Charlotte?” I called. “Are you home?”

  There was no answer. I went inside and looked around.

  Nothing had changed except that the place seemed even emptier than it had before.

  So I carried my rod down the sloping meadow through thigh-high grass and goldenrod and clumps of juniper to the flooded alders and poplars in the crease between the hills.

  The beaver pond was shallow and brushy around the edges, and it smelled of mud and decay. Gnawed-off stumps poked up through the water here and there, but I could see where it deepened toward the middle. The stream’s channel looked as if it might hold a pretty native brook trout or two.

  The deepest part would be down at the foot of the pond. I could kneel on the beaver dam and cast into the good-looking water and, if I was lucky, catch a trout and still keep my feet dry. So I began to circle downstream along the edge of the pond.

  I noticed that no lily pads grew in the water, a sign that the pond had been created fairly recently. New beaver ponds usually make better trout water than old ones, because after a few years they begin to fill with silt. They grow shallow and warm and acidic and weedy, and then they no longer provide good habitat for brook trout.

  A new beaver pond, on the other hand, is cold and clear and clean, a trout fisherman’s treasure. And this appeared to be a fairly new one.

  It took me ten or fifteen minutes to weave my way through the briars and alders and fallen tree trunks and mud and mosquitoes to the dam. It was about thirty feet across and nearly five feet high, an amazing piece of engineering, as are all beaver dams. The sticks, branches, and twigs from hundreds of poplars and alders were woven together so tightly and intricately that they held back the unrelenting force of moving water to create a pond deep enough for beavers to build their lodges and raise their young in safety.