by Sarah Graves
“Missy,” said Roger Brantwell, “please.”
The social worker had watched grim-faced, taking occasional notes. But now: “Has anyone talked with the child’s father?”
At the question, Missy stiffened. “No. He has nothing to do with—”
The social worker was undeterred. “Perhaps so. But you must understand that we’ll need to speak with him. My department, and the police, as well.”
Straightening, Missy turned, fixing the social worker in a gaze Lizzie felt glad not to have leveled at herself. Girl’s got a spine, she thought with reluctant admiration.
“Lady, get the hell out of my face,” Missy pronounced. “I don’t even know what you’re—”
“Let’s go,” said Lizzie to Dylan. “I’ll find out about it when she finally names him.”
Missy wouldn’t win this battle; if the social worker didn’t win it, then the cops would. But it was obviously going to be a knock-down, drag-out.
“Until then, though, I don’t need to hear any more of the back-and-forth.” Too predictable, too sad …
The courthouse halls were paneled in dark wood wainscoting, with matching ornate wooden trim around the doorways leading into the courtrooms. The banisters, stair trim, and everything else that was not either highly polished linoleum or freshly painted plaster were also heavy, gorgeously carved wood, gleaming richly.
It was a far cry from the old brick and cinder-block public buildings she’d gotten used to back in the city; the place even smelled clean, and the ladies’ room was like a hymn to scouring powder and lemon-scented disinfectant.
Still, she was glad to step outside, through the crush of reporters in the lobby—no network trucks had arrived yet, but they’d be here next, Lizzie supposed tiredly—into the icily fresh night air.
Dylan blew a breath out. “Man,” he said, rubbing his hands together in the chill. “Bad scene. You think she even knows who the dad is?”
“Maybe. Probably,” Lizzie amended, recalling the look of pain in Missy’s eyes at the question. “Yeah, I think she knows. Just doesn’t want him back in her life again, probably.”
Or maybe having people know who it was would humiliate her; the Brantwells, after all, were well respected, according to Cody Chevrier. Lizzie could imagine Roger Brantwell’s reaction if he found out his grandson’s dad was some drugged-out local loser.
In a little park behind the jail entrance to the courthouse stood a hot dog cart, shuttered for the night. She paused by it while Dylan caught up. Under his black topcoat, his shoulders were hunched against the cold, his hands jammed into his pockets.
“You okay?” He looked terrible, his lips tightened to a thin line of misery.
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Damn pain pills screw up my stomach, though.” Neither of them had eaten since lunch, and at this hour even in Houlton everything was closed; she pictured him alone and making do on cheese crackers out of a vending machine.
“If you want to come back with me, I could make eggs again,” she said. “You could crash on the couch,” she added, regretting it as soon as the words were out.
The smashed window at her house was fixed, courtesy of some guys Chevrier had sent over from the department’s maintenance division. But every cell in her body was tired … and it’s a bad idea, anyway, the sensible part of her brain reminded her.
He seemed to think so, too. “No, I’ll go back to the motel,” he began, but then he stopped, his face under the streetlight bone-white and exhausted.
“You know what? Okay.” He gave in abruptly. “I’ll bring my car, though—I’ll need it. You go on, I’ll be along shortly.”
Which made sense. Of course he’d need his car. And despite the long drive back to her place, the idea of leaving his beloved Saab on the street overnight would be unacceptable to him.
But something in his voice set a mental alarm bell ringing. That he would want to linger here by himself first …
For what? As she got into the Blazer a suspicion struck her, but she squelched it at once; if he needed to call someone and he didn’t want her to know about it, then she didn’t want to, either, she told herself. That’s not what they were to each other now.
Then she concentrated on driving; Houlton’s downtown crisscrossing of one-way streets seemed as confusing as Boston’s, for a newcomer. Still, at the corner by the courthouse, she turned left before realizing it was the wrong way; the Route 1 intersection headed back to Bearkill was in the other direction.
“Damn.” From the back seat, Rascal tipped his head at her, his sad hound-dog eyes inquiring.
“Don’t worry, though, fella. We’ll just go around the block and try again.” To get back where she needed to be, it was up one side of the park, then across, and—
Glancing across the tree-lined quadrangle to the red-brick courthouse with the lit-up clock tower and tall, columned cupola perching above it, she noted that it was after midnight. Late, but not terribly; at least 6 a.m. wouldn’t come as a disaster.
But then she saw Dylan still sitting in his car with his phone out, the streetlight’s gleam lighting him from the side. Calling someone, just as she’d thought …
She thumbed the radio as she drove. Dispatch gave her the number she wanted; she punched it into her phone one-handed.
“Hi, can you put me through to Dylan Hudson’s room, please?” she asked the motel clerk where he was staying, and waited.
Hoping she was wrong. Knowing she was a jealous, suspicious person, one who had, moreover, no right whatsoever to be snooping into—
The line was busy. She kept driving, hitting Redial every so often until she was nearly to Bearkill, passing the darkened Tastee-Treet and the high school. Then the phone in Dylan’s motel room rang.
It was answered at once. A woman’s voice. Of course it is. Suspicions confirmed … again.
“Hello?” the woman asked a second time, then hung up.
Lizzie looked down at the phone, considered throwing it out the car window, and then after a moment’s reflection pressed the Off button instead.
Hey. He’s got a right. You don’t own him, you’ve let him know you have no intention of—
Yeah. Sure she had. Probably that was why she drove the rest of the way home with her hands clamped so tightly around the steering wheel, she could see the whites of her knuckles through the skin.
“So, what do you think now of Chevrier’s thing?” Dylan wanted to know when he got to her house twenty minutes later.
He looked like hell, so worn and in pain that she nearly—
What? Took pity on him? He’s lucky I didn’t poison the eggs.
“His ex-cop murder theory? Too many victims,” she replied, shaking her head. “I could see if it was just one or two. But so many?”
She set plates in front of them both. “I like Chevrier, I think he’s good. But so far, I just don’t believe it.”
“Yeah, hard to figure.” Dylan dug tiredly into his eggs. “I mean, if there was a motive, maybe. But I can’t come up with one that covers them all, and neither can he.”
“Or me.” In off moments she’d researched more of the dead ex-cops’ pasts—military service, marriages, debts—and come up yet again with zero in common among them.
“On the other hand”—he broke off a piece of toast, dipped it in fried egg yolk—“the high number does make it—”
“Right. Funny looking. I mean, what are the chances?” She drank some orange juice, wishing intensely that she had never invited him here tonight.
But it was too late now; she decided just to try to get through it as best she could.
“There’s one I haven’t even had time to find out much about yet,” she added. “Guy named Fontine, lived over somewhere on the Canadian border.”
Dylan nodded tiredly. “For a total of five. That’s a lot of dead guys in a year, for sure. I can see why Chevrier’s upset.”
“Right.” Beyond that, though, neither of them could come up with any more useful ideas o
n the subject.
“Good eggs,” said Dylan after they’d eaten in silence for a while; tired as they both were, she doubted he’d take her subdued manner as anything but a need for sleep, and he didn’t.
“Thanks, Lizzie.” He sat back from the table, his eyes dark-ringed.
“You’re welcome. Go on now,” she told him, thinking that she might as well at least be kind.
It was all that was left between them. Expecting anything more had been worse than foolish. She managed a smile.
Fool me twice, shame on me. He’d taken a pain pill before eating, and now his eyelids drooped.
“I’m going to run the dog out once more, but you should get some sleep if you can. Take the bed, okay? I’ll probably be up for a while.”
Besides, that way she could at least get him out of her sight. He nodded exhaustedly. “Yeah, okay. Lizzie knows best.”
Make that just “Lizzie knows,” she thought. But she let him go off to her room with no more than another insincere smile for a goodnight, and if he noticed, he was too tired to say so.
“Come on, Rascal,” she said five minutes later as she finished changing into her sneakers and pulled her jacket back on.
Outside, the night was as still as a held breath on her dark dead-end street. At the corner she paused, looking past the huge looming shape of the potato wholesaler’s barn with its long low porch. When she’d left for work early that morning, day laborers had already been waiting outside, bundled against the cold as they lined up for a shift of potato harvesting.
But now it was deserted, and downtown Bearkill was quiet as well, even the big-eyed, white-faced alien on the Area 51 sign gone dark. Turning her back on it all, she let her feet fall into a slow jogging rhythm on the cold pavement, the dog keeping pace.
Minutes later she was well out of town, the last cross street far behind and the road curving lazily uphill. Her legs fell into the familiar motions, the day’s stresses pounding out of her each time the soles of her shoes met the road.
But it was very dark, with no streetlights to show her and Rascal to passing vehicles, of which to her surprise there were still a few, and the road’s shoulder let off sharply into a loose scrim of sand and pebbles.
Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea … The last straw came when an oncoming car flashed its brights and then left them on, blinding her, and even worse, hit the horn as it went by, so that Rascal jumped and nearly leapt out into its path.
“Okay, that’s it.” Back in the city, a late-night run had been almost as well lit as midday; here, though, she was going to need reflectors, maybe a hat with an LED light, and for the dog a reflective vest and collar.
She reversed course, making her way carefully back along the curving highway into the grid of Bearkill streets. Here were some streetlights, at least, but gloom lay between them, too, and the spruces and pines that had been allowed to remain as ornamentals years ago now loomed in the tiny yards, great dark behemoths.
She stopped suddenly, not quite certain all at once of where she was, exactly. Rascal stopped, too, aiming his big head at something in the darkness, sniffing suspiciously.
“Wuff,” he uttered, backing up to stand beside her, his eyes fixed on whatever was hidden in the darkness among the trees.
Her hand went to her weapon as she backed away slowly. There was a streetlight not too far behind her, flakes of snow swirling down through it, and houses beyond that.
But here it was very dark. Rascal moaned, a sound that was half whine, half growl, and all the way miserable. She took a step backward and then another, but the dog wouldn’t budge and his leash was too short for her to go any farther until he gave in.
“Rascal, come, dammit.” The dog’s eyes widened, his growls now a constant mutter and his hackles stiff.
And then … nothing. Gradually the dog relaxed. At the end of the street, a vehicle started up, pulled out, and came toward them; an older Econoline van, she saw as it passed by.
Nothing to worry about. Just someone headed for a late shift somewhere, probably. She wasn’t even sure the guy in it saw her and Rascal standing there in the dark.
She let a breath out and after a moment broke back into a jog. And this time the release she’d hoped for from the exercise and the cold, fresh air actually came; by the time she got back to the house where Dylan slept, she felt weightless, the events of the day sliding off her tired shoulders, at least temporarily.
Inside, she showered, put on clean sweats with the Boston PD logo on them, then fell onto the sofa bed and slept, deeply and dreamlessly, until the phone jangled her awake at 3 a.m.
He should stay home, stay inside. He knew that. But—I stole a kid!—the unholy agitation that seized Spud that night was like a lit match sizzling in his brain.
A hit of weed didn’t help, nor a second one. By just after ten, with the rest of the house already asleep, he’d been jumping out of his skin.
Ohmygodohmy—He knew what would fix it, though. He knew it from experience. The thought had been building in him and now …
Abruptly he slapped his laptop shut and jumped up from his bed, peering between the slats of the venetian blind at his bedroom window to where thickening snow filtered through the yard light onto the front lawn.
Nobody around, no cops waiting to pounce; none that he could see, anyway. Best of all, there was no van sitting at the end of the driveway … or waiting for me to deliver a year-old boy …
His bike stood right outside, though of course he wouldn’t have to ride it the whole way to Bangor. Even this late at night, there would be some trucker or lonely traveler who would stop for him if he stuck his thumb out.
He knew that from experience, too. Swiftly he dressed for the trip, covering his tattoos with a long-sleeved sweatshirt and a scarf around his neck and popping his nose stud and lip ring out, dropping them into his jacket pocket to put back in later.
Finally he unbraided his hair, brushing it flat and covering it with his watch cap again, then slipped outside for his bike and pedaled through the night toward Route 1, where in the thickly falling snow he shoved the bike off the pavement into some trees, then stepped back up to the road’s edge and waited.
As he’d expected, he didn’t have to wait long. It was a good ride, too: The car that slowed for him belonged to a housekeeping worker on his way to the night shift at the hospital in Houlton; with a bottle of Allen’s Coffee Flavored Brandy in his hand and a loose, half-in-the-bag grin on his face, the guy wouldn’t remember he’d picked anyone up, much less be able to describe his passenger.
After the janitor let him out, Spud trudged up the on-ramp of I-95 headed toward Bangor, and had just reached the merge with the travel lanes when his next stroke of good fortune hit:
This driver turned out to be a college kid on his way back to school, his eyes caffeine-bright and his iPod blaring out headbanger stuff, metal music that filled the little junker the kid drove with a defiant roar.
With no jewelry or tattoos showing and his hat snugged down, Spud doubted he could be described accurately by this kid, either, and the joint he’d brought to share during the ride plus the beers the kid had with him made it even less likely.
He got the kid to let him out in downtown Bangor, where the snow had stopped and at nearly midnight the streets were as dark and ominously empty as the opening scene of a zombie movie. He walked past the tattoo shop where he’d gotten most of his ink and piercings, the comic book store, and the video games arcade.
In daylight he might’ve lingered at one or more of these. Now, though, he was on a mission and soon he reached Blackie’s, which from the outside looked like any other hole-in-the-wall bar: dim neon sign in the hazy window, a sand-filled bucket for butts by the front door.
Inside, however, despite the lateness of the hour, the joint was jumping. “Gimme a Bud,” he told the bartender.
No one checked ID in here, one reason he liked the place. Another was the number of single girls it attracted. He didn’t kno
w why; the music was awful, just a garage band playing Nirvana covers, and the decor was worse, cheap tables and metal chairs.
Still, somehow the place was catnip for chicks; a dead man could probably hook up in Blackie’s, Spud thought as he drank some of his beer and surveyed the action, patiently waiting.
Soon his patience was rewarded. “Hi!” said the girl with the little mole on her cheek, smiling brightly. “You wanna dance?”
Spud put down his beer, smiling back. She was just his type: young, female, and already pretty drunk.
“Well, I don’t know.” He glanced around. Most of the tables were empty, the dance floor packed with bouncing bodies. Flaring strobe lights keeping time to the music’s thudding beat turned faces into unrecognizable masks, and the noise was stunning.
He leaned down, noting her glassy eyes and her loose-limbed state of inebriation. Lipstick stained her plastic beer cup.
“You with somebody? I don’t want to get in trouble with your boyfriend. Or even your girlfriends.”
She let her head loll back, giggling. “Naw, no one’s with me. I’m a big girl, I’m allowed out by myself.”
Myshelf, slurring the word. “I’m Alison,” she added.
Alishon. Spud chugged his beer, glanced around once more. But of course no one was watching; you could fire off a cannon in here and nobody would notice.
Alison took his arm, her smile slackly dreamy. “C’mon, big guy,” she said, putting her face up for a kiss.
He bent to comply and saw that she’d bitten her lip sometime during the evening.
She tasted of blood and Juicy Fruit.
The cop cars’ flaring cherry beacons stained the falling snow blood-red in the predawn darkness by the side of Route 1 just outside Bearkill, where the wrecked car’s glowing taillights peeked up over the edge of the embankment.
It was snowing hard; the two long tire tracks at the side of the road were already filling up again. The guys with the gurney huffed and puffed, straining to haul the victim strapped to it back up the steep slope.
When they got near, Lizzie smelled beer even out here in the open air. “Empties on the floor, lots of them,” one of the EMTs reported.