Back in the hallway, June was waiting for me. Harmon hovered nearby, seemingly anxious to be rid of us all. Todd was on the phone in the hall. I heard him thank someone before he hung up. He clearly wanted to tell Harmon something, but wasn’t sure if he should wait until we were gone. I decided to nudge him.
“Anything wrong?”
He glanced at Harmon for permission to speak in the company of others.
“Well?” said his boss. “What did they say?”
“I called the Falmouth P.D.,” said Todd, directing the explanation to me as well as his employer.
“Just seemed like it was worth checking to see if they’d spotted anything out of the ordinary. They usually keep a close eye on the houses along here.” By that, I presumed that he meant they kept a close eye on Joel Harmon’s house. He could have bought and sold most of his neighbors ten times over. “Someone reported a car cruising the area, maybe even parked for a while over by the eastern wall of the property, and got suspicious. By the time the cops came, the car was gone, but could be that it was connected to what Maria saw.”
“They get a make, a number?” I asked him.
Todd shook his head. “Just a medium-sized red car,” he said.
Harmon must have seen something in my face.
“Does that ring a bell with you?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “Frank Merrick, the man who was bothering Rebecca Clay, drives a red car. If I found the connection between you and Clay, then so could he.”
“Friendship,” Harmon corrected me, “not connection. Daniel Clay was my friend. And if this man Merrick wants to talk to me about him, then I’ll tell him just what I told you.”
I walked to the door and looked out at the pebbled driveway, illuminated by the lights of the house and the lamps that stood along the verge. It was Merrick, it had to be. But Merrick’s description did not match that given by Maria of the man whom she had glimpsed in the garden. Merrick had come here, but he had not been alone.
Hollow.
“I’d be careful for the next few days, Mr. Harmon,” I said. “If you go out, keep Todd with you. I’d have your security system checked too.”
“All because of this one man?” asked Harmon. He sounded slightly incredulous.
“He’s dangerous, and he may not be just one man. As you said yourself, better to be safe.”
With that, June and I left. I drove, the electronic gates opening silently before us as we left the Harmon house behind.
“My,” said June, “you do lead an interesting life.”
I looked at her. “You think that was my doing?”
“You told Joel that the man in the car might have made the same connection that you did—or, rather, that I made for you—but there is another possibility.”
There was only the slightest hint of a rebuke in her voice. I didn’t need her to tell me why. I had figured it out for myself, even though I was reluctant to say it aloud in front of Harmon and had instead forced it back like bile in my throat. Just as I had tracked Merrick, so, too, perhaps Merrick was tracking me, and I had led him straight to Joel Harmon. But I was also troubled by the appearance of the man in Harmon’s garden. It appeared that Merrick’s inquiries about Daniel Clay had drawn something else, a man—no, men, I corrected myself, remembering a feeling like foul breezes separating before me, and letters scrawled in dust by a childlike hand—shadowing his movements. Was he aware of them, or was their presence something to do with Eldritch’s client? Yet it was hard to see half-glimpsed men climbing the rickety stairs to an ancient lawyer’s office, or dealing with the harridan who guarded the gateway to the upper levels of Eldritch’s business. What had seemed at first like a simple case of stalking had become infinitely stranger and more complex, and I was glad that Angel and Louis would soon be with me. Merrick’s deadline was about to expire and, while I had set in motion a plan for dealing with him, I was aware that he was, in a sense, the least of my worries. Merrick I could deal with. He was dangerous, but he was a known quantity. The Hollow Men were not.