Damaged Goods: A Jack McMorrow Mystery Page 19

“How long ago?”

  Clair looked at the flowers, the broken stalks of wild asters. “This morning,” he said. “Some stuff is dying.”

  “Waited until we left?” I said.

  “Maybe watching the back of the house from the woods. Hears your truck pull out, thinks you’ve left the girls, gone to work.”

  “Goes in the house. We’re gone.”

  “If he’d been smart,” Clair said, “he wouldn’t have left a trace. Wait for you to come back.”

  “He’s just following orders,” I said, turning back to the truck. “Sometimes Satan works in mysterious ways.”

  It was almost four o’clock and the house was standing, looked just as I’d left it. I eased the side door open. Listened. Clair and I stepped in. I was carrying the rifle, barrel pointed down but the safety off. Clair had his shotgun and he went through the kitchen, looked out the back. I started upstairs and he followed.

  I checked our room. All was well. When I turned back, Clair had stepped into Sophie’s room, where Twinnie remained impaled. I came in and stood beside him.

  “One sick bastard,” Clair said.

  “At least one,” I said.

  “I’d bag the whole thing up. DNA, prints on the knife. Who knows what they’ll find.”

  I left the room, gun still slung under one arm, and went downstairs to the kitchen. From under the sink, I took out a box of black plastic trash bags, yanked one bag from the roll. I was leaning down to put the others back when the phone rang.

  Roxanne, I thought. Her first chance to call. Worn out by the swim, Sophie was taking a nap.

  I grabbed the phone on the counter. “Hello.”

  No reply. “Hello,” I said again.

  “McMorrow,” a man said.

  I looked at the box. Same phone number, but not Wilton.

  “You check on your girls lately?” he said.

  “No, I haven’t, Carlton,” I said.

  He didn’t answer. There was a muffled hum, like he’d put his hand over the phone.

  “We know where they are,” he said.

  “Is that right?” I said.

  “You can run, McMorrow,” he said. “But you can’t hide.”

  “I’m not hiding,” I said. “I’m right here. You’re the coward hiding behind the phone.”

  “Kidnappers,” he said. “Baby snatchers. Well, you’ll see how it feels when your little girl, she’s—”

  “You’re dead,” I said. “Just so you know. Better start running now, Carlton. Give yourself half a chance.”

  “Do you know what Satan will—”

  “Your buddy there, he’s gonna owe you one, Carlton. No cops. No discussion. Not gonna listen to you whine and cry. Just a bullet in your head, bury you in a bog someplace.”

  “Who you think—”

  “Open season just got underway on you, my friend. I’m gonna hunt you down.”

  He cleared his throat. I could hear whispering in the background, Wilton saying, “What’s the matter?”

  “Yeah, well,” Carlton stammered. “Satan, he’s gonna—”

  “Two strikes, Carlton,” I said. “That’s all you get.”

  The phone went dead. I turned, the plastic bag still in my hand.

  “Scare him?” Clair said, standing behind me, all the way down from upstairs and I hadn’t heard him.

  “Yeah.”

  “You were starting to scare me. But I think the other one might call your bluff.”

  “No bluff,” I said.

  “Figure of speech,” Clair said.

  I called Roxanne, left a message on her phone. Then I called the state police again, said I needed to talk to Trooper Ricci, and this time it was urgent.

  “Is there something I can help you with, sir?” the dispatcher said.

  “Maybe,” I said. I explained about the threatening calls, my wife’s job, that I had the number on my Caller-ID. I said I’d put the doll in a bag.

  “What doll, sir?” he said.

  “The one they stabbed with the hunting knife,” I said.

  “I’ll see if I can get Trooper Ricci on the phone,” he said.

  Clair went home, said to call him if I needed him, if I heard anything outside. After he left, I walked around one more time, glancing at the phone, which didn’t ring. Then I went to the refrigerator, took out a can of Ballantine Ale. I made a sandwich—Swiss cheese on pumpernickel—and I poured the beer in a glass. Leaving the kitchen light on, I moved to the study and dragged my chair around so it faced the kitchen and the sliding doors to the deck.

  Then I went back to the kitchen, got the rifle, and sat in the chair and waited. The birds called; a phoebe over and over, a cardinal whooping from the top of a tree, a hermit thrush deep in the woods. There was a thump on the deck and I snapped the gun up—a stray cat crossed my sights.

  I put the gun down. Took a bite of the sandwich, a sip of beer. Remembered the box of Mandi’s papers, and picked up the rifle and walked out to the truck. I took the box out, closed the truck door. Walking down the driveway, I looked down the road, where the sun was dropping behind the trees and the woods were filling with shadows. I looked up the road toward Clair’s, heard the cruiser coming before I saw it.

  It came over the crest, slowed, signaled, and turned in. Ricci was at the wheel. She got out, reached back into the car for her hat. Putting it on, she came around the car, stuck her thumbs in her belt.

  “Your day off,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem, Mr. McMorrow,” she said.

  “Even put on your uniform,” I said.

  “Regulations,” she said. “We’re not supposed to go on police business out of uniform, unless it’s authorized.”

  “Still, I appreciate it.”

  “I understand you had visitors,” Ricci said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry I missed them.”

  She looked at the rifle. “I can see that,” she said. “Do some hunting?”

  “Deer,” I said.

  “Season’s four months off.”

  “Key to a successful hunt is preparation,” I said.

  She gave me a long look and I led the way inside.

  I showed Ricci the bag. The chicken. The doll. The knife through its chest. It was the doll that did it.

  Her expression darkened, anger almost coming through. She swallowed it down but then she’d look at the doll again, laid out on the kitchen table like it was ready for an autopsy, and her outrage would bubble back up.

  “And your daughter, she’s with Mrs. McMorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He called all night. Roxanne couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “And we have his number?”

  I handed it to her, written on a page from a reporter’s notebook. The number and times he’d called.

  She walked to the phone, called in to what I figured was the Augusta dispatcher. She said she needed a cell phone trace, said it was important. Read the stuff off the paper and said, “I’ll call back,” she said, and she hung up.

  “Where were you?” Ricci said.

  “When?”

  “When they were here, and your wife and daughter had left.”

  “I followed them to where they were going. Me and Clair, we did a staggered sort of tail, make sure nobody followed them.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “A safe place,” I said.

  She gave me the look again. I wondered how she got so tough so young.

  “So where were you?” Ricci asked again.

  “Left them, came back.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Got back around four-thirty.”

  “Where’d they go? Boston?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So you just came right back,” Ricci said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “You’re such a lousy liar you’re not even gonna try?”

  “We went to the Wiltons’ compound, the place in the woods,” I said.

  A pause as
that sunk in.

  “What’d you find?”

  “Cheree Wilson all by herself, two black eyes and bruises everyplace that showed.”

  “Who? Him?”

  I nodded.

  “But he wasn’t there?”

  “Left late last night.”

  “And now he’s—“

  “Out there somewhere,” I said.

  “What were you going to do if you’d found him?”

  “Talk to him,” I said.

  “Were you armed?”

  I nodded. “Dangerous out there,” I said. “Gotta protect yourself.”

  “You shoot him, you go to jail,” Ricci said. “You kill him, you go for a long time. You’d miss your little girl’s entire life.”

  “I’ll miss her if something happens to her.”

  “Well,” Ricci said, “we’re not gonna let that happen.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “We’re not.”

  She glanced at me, walked to the phone, and punched in a number. Waited. “Ricci,” she said. “Watcha got?”

  She listened, wrote something on the same piece of paper. She thanked whoever it was and hung up. “They do triangulation,” she said. “Call made from between three towers, you can time the signal, tell where the phone was in relation to them.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Here,” she said. “Or close by.”

  “Parked in the woods,” I said.

  “Except the last two. He was south of here, once south of Rockland, the second time near Brunswick.”

  “Headed for—”

  “Portland?” Ricci said. “Who knows.”

  Ricci took the bag with Twinnie in it. Said the knife was bound to show something, maybe Twinnie would, too. Standing in the driveway, she said she’d prefer that I not have a loaded rifle on the premises. I said I’d prefer not to have to have a loaded rifle on the premises. She said if I thought they were around, I should lock the doors and call the police and sit tight.

  “And then I’ll call Clair,” I said.

  “What’s your friend going to do?” Ricci said.

  “Outflank them,” I said.

  She gave me the look. She said she was doing the best she could, that she’d talk to her patrol supervisor, put out a call for Wilton and this Carleton Sirois. Then she asked me for directions to the Wiltons’ house, said she wanted to check in with Cheree Wilton.

  “Be careful,” I said. “She’s got a shotgun and, last time I saw her, two rounds of buckshot.”

  “I’ll call first,” Ricci said. She drove off, cell phone at her ear. I went back inside, called Roxanne, and left another message, this one more to the point. Call me right away. It was 7:45. Where could they be?

  I went to the chair. Looked down and saw the box on the floor. I opened it, took out a sheaf of papers. Flipped through, past the poems I’d read, the drawings I’d seen.

  I came to a thin bundle of papers, held together by a paper clip. I unclipped them, flipped one open. It was a letter, written in a girl’s showy hand, the paper faded and stained.

  Syb- Yo, girl. Wassup? Can’t believe your gone, all grown up and your own apartment, nobody telling you what to do 24-7. Babe I’m gonna come visit. Will watch TV, eat chips and get fat. I’m gonna be a fat pregnant lady someday. Lizard Lips says hi. She of the forked tongue. She is so forked up. Ha-ha. Yesterday after lunch she got on my case, said she was gonna right me up. I was gonna tell her to @#$#%*&* off but then I remembered I want to come see you so I gotta behave myself. Hey, did I tell you I’m taking anger management? And doesn’t it piss me off! Ha-ha.

  You take care, girl. Hugs!

  Amanda

  There were five letters from Amanda. The first four were small talk. She had decided to drop printing and switch to floral arranging. Some sort of vocational school? The last one was a terse note, the words slashed onto the paper:

  I guess you don’t care enough about me to write me back. Either that or your dead and can’t. If your dead, sorry. If your not, I hope your happy, blowing me off, hanging out with your new friends. Me, I got the same old same old. It sux to be me.

  Your former friend.

  Amanda

  Why would Sybill be dead? Where was Amanda? A boarding school? Reform school? Who was Lizard Lips and why would she be—

  The phone rang and I jumped out of the chair to answer it.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice bright for Sophie.

  “Jack?” was the reply.

  “Mandi,” I said. “You okay?” Looking over at the papers, I felt like I’d been caught rummaging in her underwear drawer.

  “I’m okay, Jack,” she said. “But I—”

  She paused. “I was hoping maybe I could see you.”

  “When?” I said.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m waiting for a call. I really can’t leave tonight. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “What’s the matter? Other than the obvious?”

  She hesitated. I heard the cat crying in the background and Mandi said, away from the phone, “Will you shut up?”

  I waited.

  “Sorry,” Mandi said.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I just . . . I know you called. Before.”

  “Just checking.”

  “Thanks. I just had to kind of sort things out, you know? Everything’s been so crazy, so way out of control. Roger, he was so upset.”

  “Maybe he’ll get some help now,” I said.

  “But you know he’s gonna tell on me, Jack. He’s got to. That cop, that detective, he’s gonna say, ‘How do you know her?’ and Roger’s gonna have to tell him.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “So then I gotta move again and, I don’t know, I kinda like it here. It’s, like, the nicest place I’ve ever lived. And you and Roxanne and Clair—”

  Silence, but for the cat. “It’s not just that,” she said. “It’s—”

  “It’s what, Mandi?”

  Or Sybill, I thought. Syb. Yo, girl, wassup? Why’d you leave your friends behind?

  “There’s another problem,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You remember Marty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. He’s kinda, I don’t know how to say this, kinda like obsessed with me.”

  “Seems to be going around,” I said.

  “Yeah, well—”

  “I thought you were afraid of him?”

  “I am. ’Cause he’s kinda nuts. But he’s saying I should come live with him, stop working, he’ll set me up good.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I said no.”

  “And he said?”

  “Kinda like Roger. Says he can’t live without me. Says he’s in love with me. Says he’ll take me to Puerta Vallarta for two weeks. He has a time share.”

  “So he’s not threatening you?”

  A pause. “Not really. More like trying to guilt me.”

  “If you don’t move in with him he’ll—”

  “Life won’t be worth living.”

  “He didn’t seem like that when I talked to him,” I said. “Seemed more arrogant and nasty. A bully.”

  “Maybe that was for your benefit. He was following you. I think he was jealous.”

  “It’s a control thing,” I said.

  “Now he’s saying I’m all he has. His ex-wife is really on his case, I guess, over money. Wants half of everything. Has this lawyer out of Boston, threatening to turn him in to the IRS. He said he’d give her the money, if he could have me, he wouldn’t need anything else.”

  I pictured the black Tahoe, the gold chains. My guess was that you’d have to pry the bling off his cold, dead neck. “What do you think of him?” I said.

  “I think he’s totally creepy.”

  “So tell him that. Tell him to get lost. Tell him to leave you alone.”

  A long pause this time. The cat cryi
ng.

  “Or else what, Jack?” Mandi said.

  Sure, it was tough for her to call the cops. But what was it Marty had said? A tiger by the tail. And not just in the sack. Seemed like a tiger would scratch his eyes out. A woman who would beat somebody with a crutch, stick a guy with a knife—why was she letting this guy push her around?

  “Maybe you could talk to him again,” Mandi said. “He listened to you.”

  I sighed, silently. “I don’t know, Mandi. I have my own stuff going on.”

  “Is that guy still bothering Roxanne?”

  “Yes,” I said. “More than ever.”

  “The police still aren’t doing anything about it?”

  “They want to now, but they can’t find him.”

  “Jeez.”

  “Yeah. He beat up his wife, killed his own dogs. He’s really lost it.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack. If I could help you and Roxanne in any way. I mean, maybe if you needed somebody to watch Sophie for a little while. You could bring her over here.”

  I hesitated and she caught it.

  “Maybe that’s not a good idea, me being who I am.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just that, well, I don’t think Roxanne wants to be away from Sophie right now. Not for a minute.”

  “I understand,” Mandi said, but her tone was chastened.

  “It’s not that,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “Well, take care, Jack,” Mandi said.

  “Listen,” I said. “So Marty isn’t threatening you?”

  “No, he’s more threatening himself. But then he says he can’t stand to see me with anyone else.”

  “If he can’t have you, nobody can?”

  “He doesn’t say that but—”

  “Where’s he staying?” I said.

  “Little place called Bayside,” Mandi said. “He took me there once to see his house. It’s this cottage, looks out on the ocean from across the road. This name is on the sign by the driveway, says Smith. He’s renting.”

  Bayside was an enclave just south of Galway. I remembered cottages and a little yacht club.

  “If I’m out that way, maybe,” I said.

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  “So just don’t answer the phone.”

  “Okay.”

  “How you getting around?”

  “A little better,” she said, her voice oddly brighter. “One step at a time.”

  Chapter 29

  Roxanne called at quarter to nine. She said she was fine—a relative term—and that Sophie wanted to talk to me. There was a clatter and Sophie came on.