24
I SLEPT A STRANGE, disturbed sleep in her arms that night, twisting and clawing at unseen things. Angel and Louis were in the spare room and all of the doors were locked and bolted, so we were safe for a time, but she had no peace beside me. I dreamed I was sinking into dark waters where Jack Mercier waited for me, his skin burning beneath the waves, Curtis Peltier beside him, his arms bleeding black blood into the depths. When I tried to rise they held me back, their dead hands digging into my legs. My head throbbed and my lungs ached, the pressure increasing upon me until at last I was forced to open my mouth and the salt water flooded my nose and mouth.
Then I would wake, over and over, to find her close beside me, whispering softly, her hands moving in a slow rhythm across my brow and through my hair. And so the night passed.
The next morning we ate a hurried breakfast, then prepared to separate. Louis, Rachel, and I would head for Bar Harbor and a final confrontation with the Beckers. Angel had repaired the phone at the house and would stay there so we would have room for maneuvering if needed. When I checked my cell-phone messages on the way to the car, there was only one: it came from Ali Wynn, asking me to call her.
“You told me to contact you if somebody started asking about Grace,” she said, when I reached her. “Somebody did.”
“Who was it?”
“A policeman. He came to the restaurant yesterday. He was a detective. I saw his shield.”
“You get his name?”
“Lutz. He said he was investigating Grace's death. He wanted to know when I saw her last.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Just what I told you, and nothing else.”
“What did you think of him?”
She considered the question. “He frightened me. I didn't go home last night. I stayed with a friend.”
“Have you seen him since yesterday?”
“No, I think he believed me.”
“Did he tell you how he got your name?”
“Grace's tutor. I talked to her last night. She said she gave him the names of two of Grace's friends: me, and Marcy Becker.”
It was just after 9 A.M., and we were almost at Augusta, when the cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the number.
“Mr. Parker?” said a female voice. “It's Helen Becker, Marcy's mother.”
I mouthed the words “Mrs. Becker” to Rachel.
“We were just on our way to see you, Mrs. Becker.”
“You're still looking for Marcy, aren't you?” There was resignation in her voice, and fear.
“The people who killed Grace Peltier are closing in on her, Mrs. Becker,” I said. “They killed Grace's father, they killed a man named Jack Mercier, along with his wife and friends, and they're going to kill Marcy when they find her.”
At the other end of the line I could hear her start to cry.
“I'm sorry for what happened the last time you came to see us. We were scared; scared for Marcy and scared for ourselves. She's our only daughter, Mr. Parker. We can't let anything happen to her.”
“Where is she, Mrs. Becker?”
But she was going to tell me in her own time, and her own way. “A policeman came, just this morning. He was a detective. He said that she was in a lot of danger, and he wanted to take her to safety.” She paused. “My husband told him where she was. We're law-abiding people, Mr. Parker. Marcy had warned us to say nothing to the police, but he was so kind and so concerned for her. We had no reason not to trust him and we have no way of contacting Marcy. There's no phone at the house.”
“What house?”
“We have a house in Boothbay Harbor. It's just a lodge, really. We used to rent it out during the summer, but we've let it get rundown these last few years.”
“Tell me exactly where it is.”
Rachel handed me a pen and a Post-it note and I wrote down her directions, then read them back to her.
“Please, Mr. Parker, don't let anything happen to her.”
I tried to sound reassuring. “I won't, Mrs. Becker. One more thing: what was the name of the detective who talked to you about Marcy?”
“It was Lutz,” she said. “Detective John Lutz.”
I signaled right and pulled into the hard shoulder. Louis's Lexus appeared in the rearview seconds later. I got out of the car and ran back to him.
“Change of plan,” I said.
“So where we going?” he asked.
“To get Marcy Becker. We know where she is.”
He must have seen something in my face.
“And let me guess?” he said. “Someone else knows where she's at too.”
“That's right.”
“Ain't that always the way?”
Boothbay Harbor used to be a pretty nice place thirty years ago, when it was little more than a fishing village. Thirty years before that the whole town probably smelled of manure, since Boothbay was then the commercial and shipping center for the fertilizer trade. If you went back far enough, it was pretty enough to provide a site for the first permanent settlement on the coast of Maine, back in 1622. Admittedly, that settlement was also one of the most wretched on the eastern seaboard, but everybody has to start somewhere.
Now, during the season, Boothbay Harbor filled up with tourists and recreational sailors, crowding a harbor front that had been brutalized by uncontrolled commercial development. It had come a long way from its wretched origins, or if you were one of the naysayers, it had come a long way to become wretched all over again.
We took 27 southeast from Augusta and made Boothbay in just over an hour, following Middle Street out until it became Barters Island Road. I had almost been tempted to ask Rachel to wait for us in Boothbay, but apart from not wanting to risk a sock to the jaw, I knew that she would provide reassurance for Marcy Becker.
At last we came to a small private road that curved up a rough, tree-lined drive to a timber house on a small hill, with a ramshackle porch and boards built into the slope to act as steps. I guessed that it couldn't contain more than two or three rooms. Trees surrounded it to the west and south, leaving a clear view of most of the road up to the house. There was no car visible at the front of the drive, but a mountain bike stood below the window to the left of the front door.
“You want to leave the cars here?” asked Louis, as we paused beside each other at the foot of the road. If we drove any farther, we would be immediately visible to anyone in the house.
“Uh-uh,” I replied. “I want to be there and gone before Lutz arrives.”
“Assuming he ain't there already.”
“You think he rode up on his mountain bike?”
Louis shrugged. “Either way, we best not arrive with our hands hangin' by our sides.” He popped the trunk and got out of the car. I took another look at the house, then glanced at Rachel and shrugged. There didn't seem to be any activity, so I gave up looking and joined Louis. Rachel followed.
Louis had pushed back the matting in the trunk, exposing the spare tire. He twisted the bolt holding it in place, then lifted the tire and handed it to me, leaving the trunk empty. It was only when he slipped a pair of concealed clasps that it struck me how shallow the trunk was. The reason became apparent a couple of seconds later when the whole floor raised up on a hinge at the rear, exposing a small arsenal of weapons fitted into specially designed compartments.
“I just know you've got permits for all these,” I said.
“Home, there's shit here they ain't even got permits for.”
I saw one of the Calico minisubs for which Louis had a particular-fondness, two fifty-round magazines on either side of it. There was a spare Glock 9-millimeter and a Mauser SP66 sniper's rifle, along with a South African–made BXP submachine gun fitted with a suppressor and a grenade launcher, which seemed to me like a contradiction in terms.
“You know, you hit a bump in the road and you'll have a crater named after you,” I said. “You ever worry about DWBs?”