“I want to tell you something,” she said.
I sat down again.
“Last night,” she said. “It was …” She lowered her eyes, avoiding mine. “It was nice.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I’m trying to fight it,” she said, still looking down at her hands, which were gripping her coffee mug, “but I’m not as … as tough as I thought I was. I’m feeling very alone, very vulnerable, very sad, very angry. Sometimes I manage to put it out of my mind, but then it all comes smashing down on me. This almost unbearable feeling of despair.”
“It’s going to take a while,” I said. “You really should talk to somebody. You shouldn’t fight it. You should confront it.”
“That’s what Officer Benetti said. She gave me some names.”
“You should call one of them.”
“I know.” She looked up at me. “I came into your room last night.”
I nodded.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“I thought all I wanted was a hug,” she said. “But if you’d just looked at me, or—or touched me …”
I shook my head. “That’s the last thing you need, Sharon.”
She reached across the table and put her hand on top of mine. “I know. You’re right, of course.”
“You don’t know how tempting it was,” I said.
She smiled. “That’s sweet. Thank you for saying that.”
“It’s the truth.” I glanced at my watch. “Well …”
“Yes,” she said. “You should go.”
She hugged me at the door.
“Every day will be a little better,” I said.
She shrugged. “That’s what I keep telling myself. You’ll keep in touch with me?”
“Of course.”
“Come for dinner again?”
“Sure.”
The two-day storm had passed during the night. The sun was bright and warm. Clods of wet snow were falling from the trees and shrubs in Sharon’s front yard. They hit the ground with a muffled thump, and the branches that had been bent over were springing back up.
I brushed the snow off my car and managed to ram it through the pile the plow had left at the end of the driveway and drove out into the street.
It was a little after ten on this Saturday morning. I drove over to the camera shop. Sandy Driscoll was behind the counter toward the back of the store talking with a white-haired man. A middle-aged woman stood beside her, talking on the phone.
When Sandy saw me, she frowned. I arched my eyebrows at her, and she shook her head.
I looked at the display of camera bags and tripods, and a few minutes later the white-haired man left the store. Sandy came around the counter and stood beside me. She darted a quick glance at the woman behind the counter, then said, “Can I help you with something, sir?”
“I need—”
“Oh, right,” she said quickly. “You wanted an album. This way, please.”
She led me to the front of the store, pulled a photo album off a shelf, and handed it to me.
I pretended to examine it. “I need to talk to you,” I said quietly.
“Please. Leave me alone.”
“Brian has disappeared again. We’ve got to talk.”
She shook her head. “No way.”
“I’m sorry, Sandy,” I said softly. “But I’m prepared to go to the police, tell them that Brian’s alive and you know where he is. It’s not what I want to do. But you’re not leaving me any alternative. Is that what you want?”
She shook her head.
“Talk to me, then.”
Sandy glanced over her shoulder. The woman behind the counter was still on the phone. She was looking at us.
“I don’t want her to recognize you,” Sandy murmured. “It’s almost time for me to run out for coffee. It’ll be about ten minutes if we don’t get a gang in here. Leave now. I’ll meet you out front.”
“Fine,” I said in a normal voice. “Thanks, anyway.”
I went outside and waited in my car.
About fifteen minutes later, Sandy came out and slid into the passenger seat. “Drive somewhere,” she said.
I pulled out onto the road. “Which way?”
“Left, I guess,” she said. “Head for the college. I’ll get coffee at Drago’s.”
“Do I make you nervous?” I said.
“It’s a small town, Mr. Coyne. You were on television a few nights ago.”
“I was?”
“You killed a man. They showed you coming out of your office.”
“Oh, that.”
“I know about Brian,” she said.
“Where is he?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “You scare him.”
“He’s okay?”
“He’s alive, if that’s what you mean. He’s depressed and frightened.”
“He called you the other day, right?”
She nodded. “I picked him up at Jason’s. He’s pissed at me for telling you where he was. He doesn’t want anybody to know where he is now, and I’m not saying anything else about it.”
“But you know where he is.”
“I told you—”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I blew out a breath. “Sandy, just tell me, what’s going on around here?”
She laughed quietly. “You want me to tell you things that nobody in this town wants to know. When it all comes out, I don’t want anybody connecting it to me.”
“So you will tell me?”
She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about it. Thinking I should tell someone. You’ve got to promise—”
“You can trust me,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you promised you’d leave Brian alone. I trusted you on that.”
“Things changed.”
“That man you killed?”
“Yes. But I’ve kept your secret. Yours and Brian’s. I had dinner with his mother last night. She has a right to know that he’s okay. But I didn’t tell her. That was painful for me.”
She was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “Most of what I know is secondhand. Hints I’ve gotten, things kids’ve said to me. Secrets, Mr. Coyne. I don’t know how it all fits together.”
“Let me ask you something about photography,” I said.
“Photography?”
“I have these photos,” I said. “They’re kind of grainy, and they’re printed on paper that seems thinner than regular photo paper. Not what you’d get if you took a film to your shop to be developed.”
“Maybe someone printed them in a home darkroom,” she said. “Maybe they’re photocopies. Or they could’ve been scanned on a computer or taken with a digital camera and loaded into the hard drive. Then you could print them out on any kind of paper.”
“I don’t know anything about that technology,” I said. “Would that make them grainy and blurry?”
“Depends on the equipment and the quality of the paper,” she said. “Maybe the photos were poorly exposed in the first place.”
I remembered what I’d seen in Ed Sprague’s office. A computer. Digital cameras. Scanners and printers. “I want you to tell me about Chief Sprague,” I said to Sandy.
I heard her let out a long breath. I glanced at her. She was looking out the side window.
“From my personal experience,” she said softly, “he was just a nice man who cared about kids. It’s not like we were friends or anything.” She hesitated. “But that’s because I’m not—not young-looking and attractive and skinny and athletic. Some of the kids … he was, um, closer with.”
“Like Brian Gold?” I said.
“Yes. Like Bri. And Jenny and Mikki. There were a few others. His favorites.”
“What do you mean, he was closer to them?”
“He had them over to his house all the time. He had a swimming pool, they had cookouts, they paddled his canoe around his pond. Their parents thought it was cool. What better place for kids to be than the chief of police’s
house? There’s nowhere in Reddington for kids. We don’t even have a mall. Ed’s house was a place where kids could go, relax, have fun. Nothing organized. Ed let them do anything they wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“He just left them alone,” she said. “Except he didn’t allow drugs or booze. He said he’d arrest anybody who was breaking the law.”
“So what do you want to tell me, Sandy?” I said.
She exhaled deeply. “You remember Mikki?”
“Sure. The girl who was with you that day by the river.”
“She told me that Ed didn’t mind if the kids … used his bedroom.”
“What are you saying?”
“What do you think?”
“You mean he let them have sex in his house?”
She nodded.
“Is that it?”
“Okay,” she said. “Mikki told me they sometimes had group sex. Like orgies, okay? I don’t mean Ed. But sometimes friends of his were there.”
“Adults, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“And the kids didn’t mind that?”
She mumbled something I didn’t hear.
“What did you say?” I said.
She cleared her throat and turned to face me. “Mikki said they got paid.”
“For doing what?”
“For—for performing.”
“You mean Sprague’s friends would watch?”
“Sometimes they just watched. Sometimes they’d …”
“Have sex with the kids?”
“Yes. That’s what Mikki told me.”
“Who paid them? Sprague?”
“His friends, I think. Mr. Coyne, you can’t tell anybody I told you this. Please.”
“You have my word.” I paused. “How long has this been going on?”
“Not long, I don’t think. A couple months? Mikki mentioned something about Christmas vacation.”
“Who else knows about these—these orgies?”
“I don’t know. Mikki told me. We’re best friends. I don’t think anyone else knows. Can you imagine if their parents found out about it? This town would explode.”
Like Jake, I thought. Jake knew. He found those photographs, and he exploded.
“So what do you think happened?” I said.
“To Jenny and Bri, you mean?”
“Yes.”
She was quiet for a moment. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
“Tell me what you know.”
She sighed. “I don’t know anything, really. Brian—that night I picked him up, the night Jenny … when she died … he didn’t say much to me. But the other night, after you—you went there and scared him—he told me he and Jenny had decided to run away.”
“And Sprague went after them, ran them off the road.”
“Yes.”
“Brian told you that?”
She nodded. “They were good kids, Mr. Coyne. They got into something they shouldn’t have, and they wanted to stop, and he wouldn’t let them.”
“He was afraid they were going to tell somebody,” I said.
Sandy shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so.”
“So who killed Sprague?”
“Bri’s father, I thought.”
“No,” I said. “Somebody else. The same person who killed Sprague also killed Jake Gold. That was the man I shot the other day. Somebody hired him. I want to know who.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly.”
I pulled into the parking area at Drago’s. There were only a few cars in the lot on this Saturday morning. I parked off to the side away from them, and we sat there in silence for a few minutes.
“Want some coffee?” said Sandy.
“Thank you. Black.” I took out my wallet and gave her a five-dollar bill.
She was back ten minutes later. We sat there, sipping our coffee.
“You should’ve told me this before,” I said.
“I figured it was all over,” she said. “When Ed died, I mean.”
“It’s not over.” I looked at her. “Sandy, were you ever there?”
“At Ed’s?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “I told you. I was there a few times. Ed didn’t care who was there. But I stopped going when I realized what was going on. And I never …” She looked at me. Her eyes were brimming.
“It’s okay, Sandy,” I said.
“I’m not into sex. Anyway, I’m too fat.”
“You’re not too fat,” I said.
She shrugged. “His friends, they liked the skinny, young-looking kids. Like Brian and Jenny. Jenny hardly had breasts.”
“Did you meet any of Ed’s friends?”
She looked out the side window and said nothing.
“What about that man I shot?” I said. “His picture was in the paper, on TV. Did you recognize him?”
She shook her head.
“Come on, Sandy. People have been murdered. Brian’s in trouble.”
“I didn’t recognize that man.” She turned to look at me. “Please, Mr. Coyne.”
“You did meet some of Sprague’s friends, didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “Sort of.”
“Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Look, I really shouldn’t be talking to you.”
I told you—”
“I know. But I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay?”
“Sure. I’m sorry.”
We drove back to the camera store in silence. When I pulled up in front, Sandy turned to me. “I’ve told you everything.”
I nodded.
“So don’t come around again, okay?”
“Okay.”
“If I think of anything else,” she said, “I’ll call you.”
“The last thing I want to do is make trouble for anybody,” I said.
She peered at me for a moment. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” She laughed quickly, then got out, slammed the car door shut with her hip, and walked directly into the camera store without looking back.
I pulled away and headed back to Boston. I had to do some thinking.
I got home a little after one in the afternoon. I went directly into my bedroom. The red light on my answering machine was blinking steadily. One message.
Evie.
I sat on my bed and pressed the button.
“Hi, Brady.” The soft feminine voice belonged to Sharon, not Evie. “I just wanted to thank you again,” she said. “The flowers, the wine. The … the sympathetic ear. It was all so sweet. I had a lovely evening. I meant it about doing dinner again, you know. I hope you did, too.” She paused, then laughed quietly. “I think I’m feeling a wee bit better today. One day at a time, huh? Anyway, that’s my message for today. I just wanted to thank you for everything. I hope you’ll keep in touch with me.”
The machine rewound itself and beeped.
I sat there and stared at it. I wondered if Sharon would thank me if she knew what I wasn’t telling her.
I went to the kitchen, made some coffee, and took it out onto my iron balcony overlooking the harbor. I leaned my elbows on the railing and savored the summerlike breeze. The snow on the docks below me had nearly disappeared.
Sandy’s story whirled in my head. Evil secrets in a small town. It made me want to puke. It made me want to strangle somebody.
I thought about Evie. Where the hell was she? She had said she’d call me. I needed her.
Maybe I’d misunderstood. Maybe she was waiting for me to call her.
Hell, I wasn’t proud. I had to talk to her.
I dialed her number. When her machine answered, I hung up without leaving a message.
I showered, shaved, and pulled on a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. Then I went into the kitchen and heated up a can of Progresso lentil soup. I ate it at my table and thought about what Sandy had told me.
By the time I finished my soup, I knew
what I had to do.
I waited until five o’clock to leave. I wanted it to be dark when I got to Reddington.
I pulled on a dark blue ski parka, my Herman’s Survivor boots, a black knit watch cap, and thin leather gloves. I checked the batteries in my little cigar-size flashlight, stuck it into my jacket pocket, then took the elevator down to my car and drove over to my office in Copley Square.
When I got there, I went directly to my safe, took out the envelope of photographs, and spread them out on my desk.
They’d been printed on some kind of flimsy photographic paper with a shiny surface. They were as hard to look at this time as they had been before. But I forced myself to study them.
Brian and Jenny were easily identifiable in each of them. The other naked and seminaked bodies appeared to belong to several different people, both male and female. None of them was young. All of the faces except Brian’s and Jenny’s were averted from the camera. No help there. If there were tattoos or birthmarks or distinctive scars on any of those adult bodies, I couldn’t make them out.
The surroundings were blurrier than the faces, but I could see that there was a patchwork quilt under the bodies, a lamp with a square shade on the table beside the bed, the corner of a window with no curtain, half of a picture frame beside the window.
There had to be other photos. Photos that showed faces besides those of the kids. I wanted them.
I slid the prints back into the envelope and returned them to the safe.
My hand hesitated when it brushed against the .38 Smith & Wesson. I took it out, held it for a minute, curled my finger around the trigger, hefted its weight.
I remembered the way Bobby Klemm had slammed backward onto the floor when I shot him, the way the blood had soaked his sweater, the way his eyes had stared up at the ceiling, seeing nothing.
I wondered if I could use my gun again.
Then I thought about those vile photos. I remembered Jake’s dead body, spotted with cigar burns. I remembered Brian, curled fetally on a bed in a darkened room in Boston, telling me to go away. I thought about Sharon, her terrible dreams, her brave smiles, and I thought about Sandy Driscoll, and Mikki, and the other Reddington children, the unspeakable secrets that were haunting them.
Could I use my gun again?
I slipped it into my jacket pocket.
Damn right I could.
Scar Tissue Page 21