‘I’m reaching for my gun,’ he said. ‘Don’t let anyone shoot me.’
He handed her the weapon, and added his phone. He knew the procedure, knew it as he stepped from the car and headed back to the MSP building, a phalanx of uniforms as an escort. If he wasn’t yet under arrest, he soon might be.
What he didn’t know was why.
Bob Johnston had to peel away only an inch of the spine’s lining before his suspicions were confirmed. He continued working at the material with a thread nipper and a micro spatula, his pace never varying, his concentration never faltering, as he delicately separated the cloth from the boards, slowly exposing a single folded sheet of vellum.
108
Parker sat in an interrogation room, stewing quietly. He had been given water, but told nothing other than that they were awaiting the arrival of detectives from Auburn who were investigating a possible homicide. He asked to be allowed to call a lawyer, but was informed – by Corriveau herself, no less, although her manner toward him had now cooled considerably – that he had not yet been charged with a crime, and so a lawyer was hardly necessary. Parker told Corriveau to save that routine for the rubes, and give him his call. He was brought to a phone, from which he contacted Moxie Castin.
‘You almost here?’ said Moxie.
‘The state police are holding me, or as good as. They’re waiting for Auburn C.I.D. to arrive.’
‘What are you supposed to have done?’
‘Someone got killed in Auburn. Ask around. Find out what’s happening.’
‘Okay, but I’ve got a woman and a kid here who are starting to get shaky. Her father was supposed to have joined her by now, but she can’t get hold of him on the phone.’
Parker thought for a moment.
‘Move her and the boy. Have Louis take them to a hotel. Tell her it’s for their own safety. It’s not a lie, and it’ll make her less likely to cut and run.’
‘I’ll do that. In the meantime, I’ll call Phil Kane and have him head over to you.’ Unlike a lot of the bigger law firms in the state, Moxie didn’t operate offices outside Portland, but instead maintained informal arrangements with a handful of trusted independent attorneys. Philip Kane was a former Kennebec County prosecutor who had jumped ship to criminal defense back in 2006, and made his name defending drug traffickers. Behind his back, he was known as Co-Kane. He was good at what he did, although hiring him was generally regarded as an instant admission of guilt.
Parker thanked Moxie, and was escorted back to the interrogation room. Fifteen minutes went by before Kane arrived and immediately asked for time alone with his client. Once the door was closed, he sat close to Parker and began whispering so softly that Parker had trouble hearing him. Kane, Parker thought, had trust issues when it came to the police.
‘Billy Ocean’s body turned up in an empty apartment building in Auburn,’ said Kane. ‘He was probably killed late last night or early this morning. Single gunshot to the head. Moxie filled me in on this business with his vehicle, and your car. Do you have an alibi for last night?’
‘I was at home.’
‘Alone?’
‘No, I was with the guy who blew up Billy Ocean’s truck.’
‘Be serious.’
‘I am being serious.’
‘Then that,’ said Kane, ‘may not be the best of alibis.’
Bob Johnston placed a clean piece of cotton on the surface of his workbench, and opened upon it the fragment of vellum retrieved from the spine of the book. He was surprised at how easily it unfolded. Manuscripts benefit from moderate handling; without it they grow less supple, but this one remained flexible and in a state of near-perfect preservation. It looked so fresh that Johnston wondered if it was actually of the same age, or even the same vellum. As an experiment, he used a blade to remove from the bottom edge a fragment of about an inch in length, but still barely a sliver in width. He placed the piece in a metal bowl, took it to the sink, and applied a flame. The material began to shrivel and burn, the heat eventually reducing it to a black worm at the bottom of the bowl, but failing to destroy it entirely.
So it burned like vellum. That, at least, was something.
Johnston was about to throw away the column of dark ash when a thin rim of white appeared at one end. He stared at it for a time, not entirely sure of what he was witnessing. A minute went by, then two. Johnston took the bowl back to his desk, sat in his chair, and waited.
It took exactly one hour. He timed it.
One hour for the fragment of burned vellum to reconstitute itself.
The door to the interrogation room opened. Gordon Walsh appeared, Sharon Macy behind him. Both gave Parker the hard eye.
‘You,’ said Walsh, ‘are a lucky son of a bitch.’
According to the dispatcher, the original tip-off had come from a woman. The anonymous caller claimed to have heard what she believed to be a gunshot from the vicinity of a property in Auburn the previous night, and to have seen a vehicle driving away at speed shortly after. She said she hadn’t called the police at the time because she didn’t want to cause a fuss over what could have been a car backfiring. On reflection, she decided it was better to be safe than sorry. She declined to give her name, and used a pay phone to make the call. She had noted the license plate number of the car, she added, and thought it might have been a man behind the wheel. When the plate was checked, it was found to be one of three vehicles registered to Charlie Parker, a licensed private investigator living in Scarborough, Maine.
The Auburn PD sent out a patrol car to investigate, and the officer responding glimpsed, through the filthy glass at the rear of the property, a body lying in the hallway. He called for backup before entering, and confirmed that the victim was deceased. A driver’s license identified him as William Stonehurst. Only when backup arrived did the officers commence a full search of the building, although one of them almost ended up in the basement when a stair gave way under his weight. They found evidence of recent habitation in the top-floor apartment, including prescription and nonprescription medication, food, and used bandages, but all the units appeared to be empty.
While the investigators were flooding the rooms, a noise was detected from one of the bedroom closets. It sounded like weeping. The closet was opened, and a crawl space was discovered behind the boards. In it lay Heb Caldicott, almost delirious with pain from the suppurating wound to his side.
‘She killed Billy,’ said Caldicott. ‘The bitch killed Billy.’
Parker wasn’t in the mood to play nice with Walsh, Macy, Corriveau, or anyone else representing the forces of law and order in the state of Maine. He’d traveled to Assbend, Indiana, returning with detailed descriptions of two individuals who qualified as chief suspects in five killings in Maine, and potentially two more in Indiana, and as a reward he’d been kept in an overheated, under-furnished room on suspicion of killing an unarmed man. Under other circumstances, Parker would have damned to hell anyone with a badge, but Corriveau in particular wanted to make amends, and he decided he might be glad of some favors to call in further down the line.
And so, with Philip Kane departed to seek out clients who might actually be guilty of something, Parker briefly consented to batting around ideas on who might be glad to see his existence made uncomfortable for an undefined period. Walsh made a crack about digging out the last census, but no one laughed, and Parker was mildly gratified to see Walsh look embarrassed.
‘Odds on it was the Englishman’s partner who made the call,’ said Parker.
‘Because you’re looking for Karis Lamb’s child?’ said Corriveau.
‘Yes.’
‘Which means they must think you’re close.’
‘Yes again.’
‘And are you close?’ Macy asked.
‘I’ll tell you once I get back to Portland.’