Parker. It had to be. He had the contacts, and the will.
Pryor closed the door behind him, placing the groceries on the kitchen table before moving into the dining room. It was still early afternoon. He would call his lawyers and ask for a meeting to be arranged, that evening if possible, with a representative of Grainger & Mellon, who acted for the Backers in all legal matters. He would present his suspicions to them. He didn’t even have to establish a pattern. The pattern was that there was no pattern.
He stopped. A peculiar smell came to him: perfume, and whatever the perfume was imperfectly disguising. He turned as a shadow moved against the wall to his left, and a pain entered his neck and spread quickly through the rest of his body. Within seconds he was on the floor, and oblivion followed.
77
In the nineteenth century, a seam of a fine-grained schist – a layered metamorphic rock that can easily be split into plates – was discovered in the vicinity of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. A schistose structure is generally unsuited to construction materials, but in the case of the Cape Elizabeth schist the rock broke readily into jointed blocks ideal for building. This led to its use in structures around Portland, although the Cape Elizabeth stone later became identifiable through severe staining caused by the oxidation of the pyrite in the blocks.
Two quarries were opened in Cape Elizabeth to access the schist, one larger than the other. The smaller and shallower of the two – known as the Grundy Quarry after its former owner, the Grundy Granite Company – was now the access point for a nature trail popular with residents and tourists during the summer months, but relatively unused in the off-season. With the change in weather, and the return of migrant birds, birders and hikers would soon be tramping its pathways once again, and local volunteers were already preparing to cut back some of the vegetation and pick up the trash.
But for now the Grundy Quarry was still a useful spot for teenage drinking, pot-smoking, and necking (if teenagers still necked, which they probably didn’t, ‘necking’ being a too-quaint term for the kind of activities that would have caused Austin Grundy, a staunch Baptist, to spin in his grave had he known of the uses to which the environs of his quarry were being put by the youth of today).
Four male representatives of that same demographic were currently availing of the Grundy Quarry in order to drink and smoke, if not to neck, each of the quartet being resolutely heterosexual, even if two of them had not yet managed to explore this inclination to any practical effect. Although it was raining, three wooden shelters stood around the quarry’s circumference, each with a bench table, making them perfectly suited to the illicit consumption of beer, while the damp weather meant that the chances of being disturbed by adults, particularly cops, were slim to none.
The water at the base of the quarry was relatively shallow but very murky. Nobody in recent memory had tried to swim in it, and during the summer its surface bore a permanent haze of insects. But a combination of rain and snowmelt had served to raise the water level, and it was into this pool that Josh Lindley – at seventeen the youngest, brightest, and shyest of the group – was now gazing from above.
Josh was feeling philosophical, although that might just have been an effect of the alcohol. He had a High Life – the Champagne of Beers – in hand, although Josh figured that if champagne tasted like High Life, he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. On the other hand, High Life tasted better than some of the stuff they’d been forced by necessity to imbibe at their little gatherings. He still recalled the two-day hangover he’d endured after Troy Egan secured for them six forty-ounce bottles of Olde English 800, N.W.A playing through the speaker of Troy’s phone as they toasted the late Eazy-E, who had favored OE800 back in the day. Only later, when he was once again able to hold down solid food, did Josh discover that OE800 was regarded by some experts as possibly the worst beer in the world, although it hadn’t tasted so bad to him at the time. It was beer, and how bad could beer be?
Pretty bad, as it turned out.
The sound of a huge splash broke his contemplation: Troy Egan and his cousin, Devin, hoisting another gray block over the quarry edge. Someone had dumped a bunch of them behind one of the shelters. Assholes sometimes did that because the area around the quarry was so easy to access from the road. Folk could drive up to it and toss their old recliners, refrigerators, or ovens into the water, although most just left their crap on the grass for the town to haul away.
‘Thar she blows!’ Troy shouted, and Devin laughed, even though Josh was sure that Devin Egan had no idea what the phrase meant, and was only laughing because Troy was laughing. Over at a shelter, the fourth member of their little band, Scott Vetesse, was trying to find the right dance playlist on Spotify.
‘Come on, guys,’ said Scott. ‘Enough.’
‘One more,’ said Troy. ‘This one will be like a depth charge exploding. It’s a monster.’
And it was. No way were Troy and Devin going to be able to lift that block between them.
‘Josh,’ Troy called. ‘Get over here. You too, Betty.’
Josh wandered over to join them, as did Scott, even though he was pissed at being called Betty, rhymes with Vetty. Josh had to admit that the block was likely to make a hell of an impact. He drained the last of his beer and put the bottle on the ground. Although he could not have known it, this was the final High Life he would ever consume. From that day forth, even looking at the label would bring back unpleasant memories.
Together the four boys managed to man?uver the block to the rim of the quarry, where it teetered, waiting for the final push.
‘Bombs away!’ said Troy, and Devin laughed again, and down the block went, striking the rock face as it went, dislodging a chunk of stone before bouncing out to strike where the quarry was deepest. An enormous eruption of water followed, just like a torpedo, as Troy had promised. Devin whooped, and the others joined in, but their cries faded away until only Devin’s voice could still be heard, before he, too, grew quiet.
The rear of a car had emerged from the water, forced up from the uneven quarry bed by the impact of the block on the hood. The trunk popped open, revealing the body of a woman tied up inside.
Josh Lindley didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t puke. He didn’t even want to keep staring, but he did because he couldn’t look away, no matter how hard he tried. And then he realized that he had turned away, but he was still seeing the body in the trunk, and he knew that he would keep seeing it no matter what, and this was one of the burdens he would bear into adulthood, into old age, into the grave.
He took out his cell phone and dialed 911.
Over by the shelter, Troy Egan was already disposing of the beer.
78
Garrison Pryor opened his eyes. He was lying naked in his bathtub, his hands restrained behind his back, his legs and mouth bound with tape. A woman was sitting on the toilet seat next to him. Pale skin, gray eyes, near-white hair beneath a light-blue plastic skullcap: less a living being than a washed-out image of one, like a picture fading from the world.