by Sarah Graves
The stocking over his face turned his every expression into a fright mask. “A little dab’ll do ya,” he sang quaveringly.
Not that his appearance had been any great shakes without a sock over it … Another hard shiver went through her as she recalled first seeing him only a day ago: smirkingly pleased by his own creepiness.
As he was now. But the knife, at least, was no longer at her throat. “If you want a door to stay shut,” he went on in a whisper, “super-glue it.”
“Great tip,” she managed. His foot was on her throat now. “What the freak do you want, Garner?”
Only she didn’t say “freak.” He grinned but didn’t reply.
With his foot still firmly planted on her, he glanced back at the fire, now about the size of a blaze in a small fireplace. It still wasn’t spreading, because he’d piled the flammables in a metal dishpan Wade used sometimes for soaking wood strips to make them pliable.
But sooner or later it would spread, and then it would get to the shelf where Wade stored wood stains, lacquers, and varnishes for restoring old gun stocks on the antique weapons he repaired.
Above that, their shapes clearly outlined in the orange-and-yellow glow from the fire, were more of the liquids he used in gun work: paint thinner and acetone, mason jars half full of the amber fluids, a whole collection of ruined paintbrushes soaking with their bristles aimed down.
Because as he said, the old natural-bristle brushes were better than anything he could buy new. He just had to recondition them. But now …
A furious sob stuck in Jake’s throat: Wade would likely never see anything in here again. Including me …
Mechanized shrieks from somewhere nearby stabbed her ears; they’d been going on for a long time, she realized distantly, only she hadn’t noticed.
A knife at your throat will do that to you.… It was the smoke alarm, piercingly loud, audible not just here in the shop but out in the street, too.…
And that pulsing white light at the shop window wasn’t the fire. It was the fire alarm’s LED lamp, and something else.
Something outside. Headlights, turning into the driveway …
He saw it, too, and under the stocking his awful grin changed abruptly to something much worse: ugly, deeply malicious, and not the least bit sane.
“Bitch,” he grated at her. His face was distorted with rage. But at the same time he looked confused, and distracted just enough so that she might …
She kicked at him, felt her foot connect. Crumpling with a groan, he hurled the fire extinguisher at her, then staggered and half fell down the stairs, stumbling at the bottom.
On the other side of the door, both dogs went wild; a little longer and Prill might chew right through it. Groaning, he made it to his feet, as pounding began on the door leading outside.
Through the stocking she glimpsed fright on his face as he realized he might be trapped. But then he saw the laundry room door, and through it the window.
“Jake!” It was Bob Arnold outside.
“Bob, he’s—” But her attacker had already hurled himself at the old window glass; it shattered outwards as he went through it. By the time she reached the shop door and flung it open, his footsteps were thudding away on the other side of the house.
“Bob,” she gasped, unable to get her breath suddenly.
He seized her shoulder with one hand, peering anxiously into her face. The alarm still howled rhythmically upstairs.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, already thumbing his radio with his other hand. She shook him off, pointed.
“That way … I think it was—”
The fire upstairs crackled. Her legs suddenly buckled out from under her as he summoned help.
He dragged her out, away from the house. Already in the distance, sirens began howling. “Bob …”
He ran for his car, which he’d left running, and reversed out of the driveway in a spray of gravel.
Garner, she thought. But he was supposed to be …
Clambering up, she staggered inside. The dogs hurled their bodies against the still-closed door leading to the kitchen.
But on this side of the door stood a bucket full of water tinctured generously with lemon juice. Bella kept it there for mops that needed emergency sweetening; she hated a sour mop.
Seizing the bucket, Jake ran upstairs. The fire still burned merrily, happy for the moment with its meal of swept-up sawdust, wood shavings, and the bigger sticks and chunks of old scrap wood now beginning to burn in earnest.
But the smoke had found its way to the open screen window a few feet away. So she could breathe now.…
Resisting the temptation to toss the water onto the blaze, Jake forced herself to approach it calmly. Careful, careful … Tipping the heavy bucket, she let the water stream onto the fire.
Hot sizzles of steam erupted, startling her. Too much water and the sparks would fly. Careful …
She tipped it more, flooding the remaining embers. Now a wet, sodden mess covered the floor under the window.
A hissing stink boiled up. She put the bucket down, scanned around in the harsh glow of the fire alarm’s battery-powered LED.
No flicker of flame showed from anywhere, and no smoke wisps rose. The air was thick with haze, but it was mostly steam from the water on the burning wood scraps. Through the window came the howl of a fire truck’s siren approaching.
Gazing around once more, she cursed loudly and creatively at the smoke-smelling disarray that just minutes ago had been Wade’s workshop. Then she grabbed a crowbar from the hook where he kept it, went back downstairs—cursing some more at the broken window in the laundry room—and applied the crowbar to the glued-shut door to the kitchen.
The dogs leapt gratefully at her as sirens screamed out front, red whirling beacons strobing the night. Hastily she shoved both dogs into the back parlor and shut the door on them.
Then, imagining with dismay the dirty boot marks, smudgy handprints, and the many other grimy evidences that Bella would no doubt find to exclaim over when she got home, she went to let a crew of excited firemen into the house.
HUSTLING AS FAST AS HE COULD THROUGH THE DARK STREETS of Eastport, Steven Garner could barely keep from laughing out loud even through his pain. It had all worked so well.…
He hadn’t known she’d be alone, of course, until nearly the last minute. But when he’d watched her husband leave the house with his duffel over his shoulder, then followed him downtown to the dock and waited while he got onto a tugboat, Steven had realized: he was even more home free than he’d expected.
It just went to show that luck really did favor the prepared mind. He hadn’t known how, exactly, he would terrify her, let her know that he could get at her anytime he wanted.…
But he’d known he would, and now simply by taking advantage of the opportunities that had presented themselves, he’d made her understand that he was in charge.
Congratulating himself, he sidled into the dark, overgrown yard of the abandoned house on Washington Street. Pulling the stocking off his head, he wiped at the cold sweat in his hair, the chill fog cooling him after the heat of his exertions.
Probably at the jail the poor sap he’d paid to say he was Steven Garner—complete with a halfway decent resemblance and all the required ID to make such a claim believable—was having a bad night.
But it was what he’d promised to do in return for the money, so he could hardly complain. Of course, there might be a little more to it than he’d expected.…
Half on agreement, half later … Steven felt a smile curl his lips as he patted the other five hundred still in his pocket. Fat chance the guy would ever collect it; by the time he got free and came looking for it, Steven would be long gone.
He shoved his way past the broken door into the old house. Inside, the air smelled of mice and damp.
He pushed the door shut and leaned against it. The sirens in the distance had stopped, but the quiet out there was deceptive; by now they knew he wasn’t in custo
dy, that he was still at large and pursuing his plans.…
That’s me, he thought, unable to supress a chuckle at the memory of how he’d escaped the plump cop simply by doubling back and waiting until the cop had gone. At large and in charge.
Now that they knew, though, he was going to have to be even more careful. Because first they would search the empty houses again, and all the campgrounds and tenting areas on the island, in case he was in any of them.
They’d be visiting fields, beaches, and wooded areas, too, just in case. Now that he’d invaded her home and put his hands on her, anywhere he might be hiding would get a thorough inspection.
But he had anticipated this stage of the operation long ago when he was planning it, so he was ready.
CHAPTER
10
MORNING DAWNED COOL AND CLEAR, THE FOG DRAWING back like a thick blanket they all crawled out from under, blinking in the sunshine.
“Mom, are you sure you want to do this?” Sam leaned against the front porch rail, coffee cup in hand.
The fireworks had been postponed for twenty-four hours. She thought about what would happen after that: no more festivities, no more crowds of strangers thronging the sidewalks.
Which meant Garner would come after her tonight. Or perhaps sooner.
“Absolutely. I should’ve gotten out in front of this when I first realized who he was.”
She knelt on the porch deck, wiping pools of the overnight’s puddled drizzle with a towel. “Hand me that hair dryer, please.”
She’d plugged it into an extension cord so she could get it all the way out here and down to the bottom step. Sam bent and handed it to her. “Okay, but make sure you—”
“Yes, yes, don’t stand in a wet spot, I know.” Actually, the running of any indoor electrical appliance while outdoors was not exactly a recommended procedure.
But she was too wired up herself to care. Also ticked off, frazzled, bone-tired, and flat-out mad as hell. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to be holding it at all, most of the time.”
The hair dryer was the pistol-grip kind, with a flat base that you could set the handle into so the dryer would stand up by itself. She arranged this, then aimed the nozzle at the largest wet spot—the steps’ surfaces were cupped with age, so water collected in them—and turned it on.
“I don’t see why wiping it’s not enough,” Sam said over its whine. “Seems to me you’re going overboard on the prep work.”
He wasn’t talking about the fire; no one was. They were all so shocked to the bone by it, they didn’t want to.
Or didn’t dare to, as if fright over what Steven Garner might do next was the cat that had got all their tongues.
She began toweling the next step. Gently, though; the fresh primer she’d brushed on the day before was set firmly enough to wipe, but not to scrub at.
“The whole definition of doing enough prep work is going overboard on it,” she added, this being one of the first and the most difficult lessons she’d learned working on the old house.
“Take paint scraping, for instance,” she went on, angling her head sideways at the old dwelling’s white clapboards. “To scrape correctly, first you take off everything that’s loose.”
Knowing where this was going, Sam made as if to back up into the house. “No, no,” she told him, “stay where you are.”
“Mom, I’ve already got a job, you know. At the Boat School.”
She wiped the next step. “Then, after you get all the loose stuff off, you do what’s not loose. Say, maybe ten percent more of the old paint.”
Which was the hard part. Because first of all, as this very porch had demonstrated, even what looked loose really wasn’t. Paint chips that appeared ready to fall off by themselves clung on like barnacles if you waved a paint scraper near them.
“Sam, you could save me a lot of money.”
If she hired him to help scrape the part of the house that she still intended to paint sometime this summer (if I survive tonight, her mind insisted on adding snarkily), she would pay him a fair rate, of course.
But it wouldn’t cost what she’d end up paying professional painters in Eastport in the summer, when demand for them would be so high that they could charge the really premium prices.
And that, as she’d also learned from experience, was another part of fixing up an old house in Maine: buying stuff when no one else wanted it, whenever possible.
“And maybe it would be … Well … Maybe I would enjoy working with you on something,” she added.
Before you finally leave home for good, she didn’t say, in part because she didn’t like thinking about it. But Sam would go off to live on his own sooner or later; his long adolescence was nearly done.
No drugs, no booze, not for a long time now, and he’d put on weight through the chest and shoulders. He still had the long eyelashes, lantern jaw, and fast grin, plus the quick, agile body that made him a natural on boats.
But he was a man, and in a thousand small ways he had begun acting like one. Like now, for instance: “Yeah. Maybe, huh?”
He eyed the hair dryer’s progress, crouched and moved it to the next wet spot. “Okay,” he agreed. “You’re right, that might be fun.”
He straightened. “Let me know when you want to start.”
And just like that, it was decided. Jake stopped wiping at the porch and looked around at the fresh, clear morning, with the sunshine’s warmth drawing gauzy puffs of condensation up off the wet street.
Out on the green lawn, a couple of robins each tugged at the ends of a single earthworm. A black-and-white cat crept toward them, her stealth spoiled at the last minute by having to stop and shake her paw in disgust at the wet grass.
But then: “I wish you wouldn’t do this thing tonight,” Sam said.
From the porch steps, she could see all the way to the bay. Far out on the watery horizon, the fog bank lay diminishing like a thin, dark gray pencil line.
“I’ll be fine.” She picked up the towel again. “You know why the hair dryer’s not too much prep work, right?”
He shot her a look. “Yes, Mom,” he replied patiently. “It’s because if it’s even a little bit wet, the paint won’t stick to it. I’ve worked on enough wet boats to know. And don’t change the subject,” he added.
She shrugged. “I’m not. There’s nothing to discuss. This guy isn’t going to give up, he’ll just keep after us and after us, and I don’t think the cops will find him, either.”
Using teams of local volunteers, they were already combing the parks and beaches, and checking on every visitor in every motel, bed-and-breakfast, and boardinghouse for miles around.
“Or not in time, anyway,” she added.
“You still think he’s killed people?” Sam crouched on his haunches, coffee cup in both hands.
She hesitated. Worrying him hadn’t been part of her plan.
But maybe he should be worried. “They both died, I know that much. The girl who’s supposed to have fallen, down on Sea Street. And the guy with the stab wound …”
“Billy Wadman,” Sam supplied the name; she hadn’t known it before.
“He was kind of a schmuck,” Sam said. “But he wasn’t such a bad kid. He just hung around with the wrong …” Sam looked up, getting it suddenly. “Really? You think that your guy was the one who—”
“Killed him, yes. Bob Arnold said there was some kind of a scuffle among the boys just before it all happened. No one says they saw Steven Garner there. But …”
Suddenly the sheer fright of the night before hit her again. She turned away so Sam wouldn’t see it in her eyes, the horror of being surprised in her own home. And then the fire …
She hadn’t faced it yet, but soon she meant to go back into Wade’s workshop and clean it all up. It would be good to have a job to do when she went up there again.
It was good having one now. “But last night, Garner had a stocking pulled over his face,” she finished.
Sam didn’t reply, j
ust crouched there listening with both hands wrapped around his cup. She took a breath and went on.
“For a disguise, I mean.” Though it hadn’t been very much of one. Partly she imagined it was so that, worst case, she wouldn’t be able to testify with true certainty that it had been him.
But mostly, she knew, it had been for the shock value. To up the whole fear-factor portion of his program.
And it had worked. “So I’m thinking, if he used a disguise once, then maybe …”
“Yeah. Why not, huh? Maybe he was disguised when he stabbed Billy Wadman, too, and that’s why nobody remembers seeing him.”
Sam stood up. “Makes me like your plan even less, though. I don’t see why you have to be the one who …”
Lures him. Stands out there like a goat tethered to a post, waiting for the predator.
“Because I’m the one he wants.” She laid the towel aside. Now just a few hours of dry morning air and the porch would be ready for the first coat of paint.
“You are, huh?” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back jeans pocket, opened it.
It was the photograph of him, with the target on it. “How’d you find …?”
She’d stuck it under the phone books, to hide it from him.
“I was trying to look up the phone number of the Motel East, so I could find that girl I met and break our date for tonight.”
A smile of complicity made him look for an instant just like his father at that age. “Plans with my mom,” he explained.
She faced him. “I don’t get it. I thought you’d be spending all day trying to talk me out of it.”
Sam laughed, shaking his curly head. “I am,” he admitted ruefully. “But I know better than to think it’ll do any good.”
Then his face changed. “And listen, there’s one other thing I wanted to say. Two, actually.”
His hands moved awkwardly on the cup. “I’m, uh, really glad the guy didn’t hurt you.”
She felt ridiculously touched. “Thanks, Sam.”
Tears brimmed her eyes, but if she let them spill over, he might never say such a thing again, so she didn’t.