Billy opened the lockbox in the bed of the truck and removed a plastic bag of groceries, a case of Silver Bullets, and a bottle of Johnny Drum Black. He put the bourbon in the pocket of his overcoat to save himself another trip, and headed for the building. As he stomped to the back door, a drape twitched in one of the windows on the second floor.
Each of the units contained its own kitchen, but Billy had taken the precaution of having the gas cut off until the maintenance work could be completed. The power was still on, though, so his guest could cook with the microwave, and watch DVDs on a crappy TV. None of this lessened the bitching, as though everything that had occurred was Billy’s fault – which it wasn’t, but Billy was in the shit now, right up to his chin, with no choice but to keep paddling. He couldn’t see how the whole business might possibly end well. He just hoped that when the end came, it happened far from Auburn, and far from him.
Billy took the stairs carefully, sticking to the side closest to the wall, and avoiding the fourth and fifth steps entirely. He’d already put his left foot through the lower one on a previous visit, resulting in a mildly sprained ankle and a jagged hole in the wood like a toothed mouth, and only a warning crack from the fifth step had saved him from further injury. This time he reached the second floor without harm, and kicked the door in place of knocking, his hands being otherwise occupied. Eventually, after a certain amount of shuffling and swearing, the door opened to reveal the form of the most wanted man in the state of Maine.
‘Well,’ said Heb Caldicott, ‘you took your fucking time.’
Parker headed home to shower after he was done with Moxie Castin, but didn’t bother making dinner. He knew that Louis was on his way back to Portland, and they’d arranged to meet for a late burger at Nosh on Congress. In the meantime, Parker spoke with Kes Carroll, who confirmed that the Silver Alert had generated a few calls, but none of the sightings appeared to be of Lombardi. Parker didn’t know if Moxie had yet managed to tell Solange Corriveau of the Karis lead, or of the events in Indiana, but he saw no reason why he shouldn’t share what he knew with Carroll. The information didn’t make Carroll any happier, but it did help focus her mind. It also increased the likelihood of Lombardi’s disappearance being taken off Carroll’s hands and absorbed into the Jane Doe investigation – or the Karis investigation, as Parker had now begun to think of it – assuming Corriveau accepted the possibility of a connection.
Parker then tried Leila Patton again. This time the call didn’t go immediately to voice mail, but the number rang and rang until eventually it was ended automatically. Patton, it seemed, had turned off her messaging service. With nothing better to do, Parker put the phone on speaker and kept hitting redial while he boiled some water for instant coffee and ate a couple of Fig Newtons to stave off the hunger pangs.
Finally, on the fourth attempt, the phone was answered by a female voice.
‘Hello?’
‘Leila?’
‘Yes.’
‘My name is Charlie Parker. I’m—’
‘I don’t want to talk to you. I have nothing to say. Just leave me alone.’
Clearly Patton had reconsidered her decision to cooperate. Parker knew he only had seconds.
‘Errol Dobey,’ he said. ‘Esther Bachmeier.’
He could hear the sound of Patton’s breathing. At least she hadn’t hung up. ‘Don’t you care about what might have happened to them?’
Still no reply.
‘Leila?’
She began to cry, and the call was terminated. When Parker tried the number again, he received only a message asking him to try later. He took his coffee to his office, turned on his computer, and booked a round-trip ticket to Cincinnati.
Heb Caldicott wasn’t looking well, which was hardly surprising under the circumstances. He’d taken one stab wound to his left side, another to his left arm, and his chest bore a slash mark that was about a foot long and a quarter of an inch deep, all thanks to Dale Putnam, who’d shown a certain amount of spirit in his final moments on this earth.
Caldicott had decided to kill Putnam and Gary Newhouse as soon as they admitted shooting the state trooper. He wished he’d disposed of them before agreeing to give them shelter under his roof, and maybe he shouldn’t have suggested that his bitch girlfriend might like to fuck one or both of them in order to give him some time to think, but it was easy to be wise after the fact.
Still, he’d quickly settled on a plan to get rid of them. He picked a van from the lot, concealed Putnam and Newhouse in the back under blankets and junk, handed them a bottle of Old Grand-Dad to help keep out the chill and ensure they stayed nice and relaxed, and drove south, keeping off the highway and below the speed limit. The van still bore the name and contact details of a decorating company that had closed down a year earlier, which made it less interesting to cops than an unmarked vehicle. As it happened, he wasn’t stopped once along the way, although he passed a couple of police cruisers with lights blazing, and he reached his destination without incident.
That destination was Pintail Pond, although it was many years since a pintail or any other bird had troubled its surface, Pintail Pond being as toxic a body of water as existed in the state of Maine, thanks in no small part to Heb Caldicott’s habit of dumping various forms of automotive filth, fluids, and containers in its depths, including carcinogenic used motor oil, empty bottles of engine coolant and refrigerant, and redundant batteries. His intention was to add the bodies of Putnam and Newhouse to this mix, and let nature take its course.
Beside the pond was a hut that had long fallen into disrepair, but still possessed four walls and most of a roof. It was to this structure that Caldicott directed a reluctant Putnam and Newhouse, who were a little drunk, if not as drunk as Caldicott might have wished. Again in retrospect, Caldicott regretted not killing Putnam first, but Newhouse had been closest to Caldicott as the two men entered the hut ahead of him, so it seemed natural to put a bullet through the back of Newhouse’s skull before moving on to Putnam.
Unfortunately, it quickly emerged that Putnam had a suspicious side. Caldicott had earlier managed to relieve him of his gun on the perfectly reasonable grounds that it was unwise to carry a weapon recently used to shoot a state trooper, and Newhouse had never been much for carrying a firearm. But Putnam had retained a knife, an implement of which Caldicott was unaware until Putnam decided to use it on him while Newhouse’s body was still twitching on the floor. Putnam managed to inflict a lot of damage on Caldicott before Caldicott got two shots into him, it being a lot harder to hit a moving target at close range than people liked to think, especially a moving target intent on gutting someone with a blade.