His hand hadn’t shifted from the butt of his gun. He didn’t seem nervous, but you never could tell with small-town cops.
I handed over the documents. He glanced at them, but didn’t call them in.
‘What’s your business here, Mr. Parker?’
‘I’m a private investigator,’ I said.
I caught the flash of recognition in his eyes. Maine is a big state geographically but a small one socially, and I’d made enough noise to be on the radar of most of the law enforcement community, even peripherally.
‘Who’s your client?’
‘I’m working on behalf of a lawyer, Aimee Price. Any questions will have to be directed to her.’
‘How long have you been in town?’
‘A few hours.’
‘You should have reported in to us.’
‘I didn’t realize I had that obligation.’
‘You might have considered it a courtesy call under the circumstances. You know where the police department is?’
‘Yeah, it’s where everything else is. Left at sanitation, right at the clerk’s office, then straight on till morning.’
‘It’s right at sanitation, but close enough. I want you to haul on back there and wait for me.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘You can ask, but the only answer you’ll get is that I’m telling you to go. The next step is for me to put you in the back of my vehicle and drive you there myself.’
‘I’ll bet your cuffs bite.’
‘Rusty too. Could take a while to get them off.’
‘In that case, I’ll be heading back to town in my car.’
‘I’ll be right behind you.’
‘That’s very reassuring.’
He waited for me to make a turnaround, and it was only when I was safely back on the bridge that he got into the Explorer. He stayed close behind me all the way, although he was kind enough to kill his lights. The kid with the tattoos was standing at the door of the coffee shop when I pulled into the municipal lot. I gave him a wave and he shrugged. No hard feelings, I thought. You did the right thing.
The chief pulled in beside me. I got out and waited for him to join me. He indicated that I should head inside. There was a sprightly looking woman in her early sixties behind a desk just inside the door, surrounded by neatly piled files, a pair of computers, and a dispatcher’s radio. She smiled politely as I entered, and offered me a cookie from a plate on the desk. It seemed rude to refuse, so I took one.
‘You carrying?’ asked Allan.
‘Left-hand side,’ I said.
‘Take it off, and leave it with Mrs. Shaye.’
I kept the cookie between my teeth, removed my jacket, and handed over the shoulder rig.
‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Shaye. She wrapped the straps around the holster and placed it in a cardboard box, to which she appended a playing card: the nine of clubs. She handed another nine of clubs to me.
‘Don’t lose it, now,’ she said.
‘Likewise,’ I said.
‘Take another cookie,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’
‘In case of what?’ I said, but she didn’t get a chance to answer. Instead, Allan pointed to the left, although his office was to the right. He walked me to one of the town meeting rooms, one so small that I made it look crowded all by myself.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Mrs. Shaye to bring you coffee.’
He closed the door behind him, then locked it as well. I took a seat, finished my first cookie, and put the other one on the table. There was a window that faced onto the rear lot, and I watched a man in overalls working on a second police-department vehicle, a Crown Vic that had clearly been purchased used from another department, with marks on its door where the decal had been removed. Hard times in the city, hard times by the sea.
Mrs. Shaye arrived with coffee and sugar and another cookie, even though I had yet to eat the second one. A long hour went by.
And the sun set on Pastor’s Bay.
Randall Haight sat at his kitchen table, his hands palm down on the cheap wood, staring at his reflection in the window. He did not know the man before him. He did not know Randall Haight, for there was nothing about him to be known. He did not know William Lagenheimer, for William had been erased from existence. The face in the glass represented an Other, a pale thing marooned in darkness, and an Otherness, a realm of existence occupied by unbound souls. The setting sun burned fires in the sky around his visage. His diary lay before him, the pages filled with tiny, almost indecipherable handwriting. He had begun writing down his thoughts shortly after his release. He had found that it was the only way to keep himself sane, to hold his selves separate. He kept the diary hidden in a panel at the base of his bedroom closet. He had learned in prison the importance of hiding places.
There were locks on the windows and locks on the doors. He would usually have started cooking his evening meal by now, but he had no appetite. All of his pleasures had dissipated since the images started to arrive, and the latest batch had turned his stomach. What kind of person would do that to a child? He was grateful to the detective for taking them away with him. He did not want them in his house. The girl might get the wrong idea about him, and he did not want that to happen. The balance between them was precarious enough as things stood.
Randall now understood why the detective had reacted so strongly to him back at the lawyer’s office. Randall hadn’t liked the sense of revulsion that came off the detective at that first meeting, the way he didn’t seem particularly sympathetic to the threat that the messages posed to Randall’s peace of mind, to his life in Pastor’s Bay. It had led him to search for more information about the detective, and what was revealed was both interesting and, Randall supposed, moving. The detective had lost a child to a killer, but here he was working on behalf of another man who had killed a child. Randall struggled to put himself in the detective’s position. Why would he take on such a task? Duty? But he had no duty to Randall, not even to the lawyer. Curiosity? A desire to right wrongs? Justice?
It came to Randall: Anna Kore.
A chicken breast sat defrosting on a plate by the sink. Regardless of his absence of appetite, he had to eat. He would get weak and sick otherwise, and he needed his strength. More than that, he had to be able to keep a clear head. His very existence was under threat. His secrets were at risk of being discovered.
All of his secrets.
The TV was playing in the living room behind him. Cartoons, always cartoons. They were the only programs that seemed to keep her calm. He heard a sound behind him, but he did not turn.
‘Go away,’ he said. ‘Go back to your shows.’
And the girl did as she was told.