Damaged Goods: A Jack McMorrow Mystery Page 20

  “Daddy,” Sophie said.

  “What, honey?” I said.

  “We went swimming in a big, big pool.”

  “Really. Was it deep?”

  “Yes. Deep like the ocean.”

  “Were there fish?”

  She paused, thinking. “Yes, but you couldn’t see them ’cause they were at the bottom. With the octopuses.”

  “Wow.”

  “And Daddy.”

  “What?”

  “Then we went to this place and had a dinner and it was fancy.”

  “Oooh,” I said. “Did you get dressed up?”

  “I wore my yellow dress. And my sandals.”

  “You must have looked beautiful.”

  “Yes. And I had macaroni. And there were lots of forks.”

  “Very nice,” I said.

  “And two spoons for the ice cream.”

  “What kind?”

  “Chocolate with cookies in it.”

  “Yum.”

  “Yes. And now we’re going to watch TV right in our bed. There’s two beds, but I’m going to sleep with mommy.”

  “I wish I could be there to watch TV with you.”

  “Maybe you could come,” Sophie said.

  “I’d love to but I can’t tonight,” I said. “But you have fun with your mom.”

  “You want to talk to her?”

  The phone clattered, Sophie saying, “Daddy wants to talk to you.” Then there was a smooching sound as she kissed the phone goodbye. Then Roxanne.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “I’ve been trying to call you,” I said.

  “I know. Just got your message. Cell doesn’t work in the room.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Using the room phone.”

  “Sophie sounds happy.”

  “For now,” Roxanne said. “Until the excitement wears off. How are things there all by yourself? Quiet?”

  “Well—”

  “What, Jack?”

  “Sophie right there?”

  “She’s playing with the mini-bar.”

  “And you call yourself a good mother,” I said.

  “What is it?” Roxanne said.

  “Don’t worry, because everything is okay.”

  “Tell me,” she said.

  I did. The chicken. The doll. The knife. The phone calls.

  “Portland?” she said.

  “They have no idea. Just that he’s driving south. Could be headed for Key West for all they know.”

  There was no reply and I could picture Roxanne closing her eyes, trying not to show Sophie anything.

  I told Roxanne about Trooper Ricci, how when she saw the doll she seemed to get fired up for the first time. And after a deep breath, I told her about going to the Wiltons’ house.

  “Oh, Jack.”

  “At that point, Ricci hadn’t even called back. I had to do something.”

  “But Jack, what if—”

  “Clair was there. And anyway, now we know who the second guy is, the guy with the Jeep in the woods. They’ll pick them up soon, I’m sure.”

  “But if he’d been there—”

  “And he’d pointed a gun at me? I would have killed him.”

  I heard her swallow.

  “I can’t just sit here and let him come after you and Sophie. I can’t.”

  “I know, but it puts me in such a difficult place.”

  “This is a difficult place, honey,” I said. “No matter how you look at it.”

  “So we shouldn’t come back?”

  “Let’s talk tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ve got to call the office. God, this is insane. And it’s so hard with her right with me.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “So nothing else I need to know?” she said.

  “Just Mandi, she called and—”

  I heard water running and Roxanne called, “I’ll do that, honey.” To me she said, “I’ve got to go. I’m going to give her a bath, get her in bed. I don’t want her all turned around, up all night.”

  “Okay.”

  “Was there something else? Mandi, you said?”

  “It can wait,” I said. “You take care of yourself.”

  “You, too. And remember I love you.”

  “I love you, too. You know what they say. This, too—”

  “—shall pass,” Roxanne said. “But how, Jack? And when? I don’t like not knowing, Jack. I don’t like it at all.”

  Ten o’clock. Full dark, inside the house and out. I sat in the big chair with a cup of tea and the loaded rifle. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness so instead of blackness, I saw shadows. The house, the yard, the woods.

  The shadows were alive with sounds: crickets, night birds, rustling at the edge of the trees as voles dug in the moldering leaves.

  I got up and went to the screen door and listened, heard a faint thud, then scratching. A flying squirrel had landed on a birch by the bird feeders. The squirrel launched again, a pale flicker like a bird flashing through headlights. I heard it hit the feeder, the seeds showering down. I eased the screen door open, moved slowly out onto the deck.

  When my shoe touched the wood, the squirrel leapt, climbed the birch trunk, and was gone.

  I waited. Listened. Cataloged the sounds, filing them under categories of things you should hear in the woods at night. And then there was the sound of a step, the faint scritch of a shoe on gravel. The driveway.

  I eased down the steps, moved across the grass to the trees at the rear of the yard. I flicked the safety off, moved to my right, then toward the driveway, staying at the edge of the woods. Peering into the shadows, I took two steps. Waited. Another two steps. Waited again.

  Another sound, something hitting the hard-packed gravel in front of the garage. A kicked stone?

  I let my breath move in and out slowly, calming myself. Put my feet down carefully, feeling for branches or twigs. Beside the garage, I paused. Listened. Heard a barred owl in the woods.

  Then a soft rustle. Fabric rubbing. Behind me.

  “It’s me,” Clair said.

  I exhaled slowly. He stepped up beside me, a different shotgun cradled in his arms, this one all flat black, from barrel to butt. He was wearing a dark camouflage sweatshirt, black fatigue pants.

  “Was that you out front?”

  “Just checking.”

  “Good thing I didn’t shoot you,” I said.

  “You learned to shoot?” Clair said.

  “Sometimes you get lucky.”

  “Speaking of which, you see the flying squirrel?”

  “Yeah. Raiding the birdfeeder.”

  “Always figure seeing something like that is a gift,” he said.

  “See anything else?”

  “Fox in the ditch out front. Other than that it’s clear,” Clair said.

  “Phone trace shows them nearly out of the state, anyway,” I said.

  “No. The phone trace shows the phone nearly out of state. Doesn’t tell you who’s holding it.”

  “True,” I said. “Guess we’ll know when they get picked up, some Georgia highway patrolman.”

  “Or he’s out in your woods with night-vision goggles right now.”

  “This isn’t gonna help me sleep,” I said. “Been a long day.”

  “Take a couple of hours,” Clair said. “I’ll stand watch.”

  “They’ve got that armload of guns. I could stay with you.”

  “Rather know that anything I hear out here isn’t you,” Clair said.

  “You think they’ll play night sniper?” I said.

  Clair thought for a couple of moments, then shook his head. “I picture more like a gallon of gas, pour it on the house, use a cigarette for a fuse.”

  “I’ll sleep well,” I said.

  “Like a baby,” Clair said.

  I turned, walked to the house, eased the screen door open, and squeezed back in. I sat back down in the big chair, leaned the rifle against the arm. Watched the darkness for a minute,
two.

  Sleep? In a while.

  I went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. When the water boiled, I made tea and a peanut butter sandwich. I sat at the kitchen table and reached for my notebooks.

  My hurried scribbling from the first conversation with Mandi, sitting on the bench. Seemed like a lifetime ago, but it had only been a week. A beating ago. A bunch of threats. A guy waving a pistol. Another guy saying he had to have her.

  I flipped through the pages. A quick story. “Ha,” I said, and then I came to the page with the VIN from Mandi’s car.

  I considered it, got up, and went to the counter for my wallet. I took out a credit card, came back and sat back down. Reached for my laptop and powered it up. Waited for the browser, then found the CarFax page.

  I signed up for 30 days for 35 bucks. I carefully typed the number into the search box. I waited while the wheel went around. Looked out at the woods, a black shadowed wall. Looked back as a list appeared.

  The car had been last registered in Maine seven months ago, back in January. Sybill Lasell, 14 Ellsworth St., Portland. Eleven months before that, February, Sybill Lasell, this time living at 138 Beach St., Old Orchard Beach, south of Portland. A year prior to Old Orchard, a Sybill LaSalle had registered the car in Seabrook, New Hampshire: 544 Beach Road, No. 2, a cheap off-season rental? Two months before New Hampshire, the car had been registered to Jane Aire, 879 Ocean Rd., #4A, Revere, Massachusetts. The list ran out in Worcester, Massachusetts: Marie Delgado, 1123 Boston Highway.

  Jane Aire? A memento of high school English? Even if she wasn’t Jane, and that was a previous owner, Mandi was working her way up the coast.

  I printed the page. Stared at it some more in the blue glow of the computer. It told me what I already knew: that she was a transient. Told me what I suspected: that her name was Sybill but it wasn’t necessarily Lasell or LaSalle. A plan formed: call the city tax offices, get the names of the owners of those properties. Call and inquire about Sybill: “I’m a landlord in Portland, Maine. Sybill Lasell gave me your name as a reference. . .”

  A half-hour of my Clair patrol time had passed. I shut the computer down and looked out at the darkness. Shapes formed, nothing moving. I felt drowsy, and, as Sybill circled, I reached for the gun leaning against the chair. I made sure the safety was on and then leaned back, closed my eyes, and slept.

  A police radio. A woman’s voice calling numbers. Three-twelve to three-twenty-three. A man answering, more numbers. Then, “Augusta, I’ll be off.” It played, background music to my dream, and then I needed to answer them but I had no radio. I was running from room to room looking for—

  I sat up. It was light. The radio noise was still there. A motor idling. It came to me in a rush: there was a cop out front. I bolted from the chair, thinking of Roxanne and Sophie, that something had happened. I ran to the side door, unlocked it, and yanked it open.

  Just as Raven lifted his hand to knock.

  “Morning, Mr. McMorrow,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  “It’s no bother,” I said.

  “The A.D.A. wants to see you.”

  I looked at my watch. It was 7:10, sunny but still cool. Raven wore a blue cotton jacket over his blue polo shirt. A blue unmarked cruiser waited behind him like a faithful horse.

  “Your prosecutor works early,” I said.

  “She,” Raven said. “Ms. Tibbetts. And yes, she does. Young and ambitious.”

  “Good thing for a prosecutor.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You could have just called.”

  “That’s okay. Pretty morning for a ride in the country. Nice little hideaway you got here.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You want to come in? I can make coffee.”

  “Rain check on that one, Mr. McMorrow. Ms. Tibbetts, she has court at nine and she wants to talk to you before that.”

  “You gonna drive me in?” I said.

  “Sure,” Raven said. “We can talk.”

  “You’ll have to drive me back.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, smiling. “We can talk some more.”

  He waited outside as I brushed my teeth, put on a clean T-shirt, a denim shirt over it. I grabbed a notebook and pen from the desk, my phone from the counter. As I turned away, I saw a note stuck to the outside of the sliding glass door to the deck. I opened it, pulled the note off.

  0420 hours. Sun coming up. Gone home. Quiet night.

  Clair.

  Outside, Raven was standing by the cruiser, looking up at the trees.

  “Know what just flew over?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “My namesake. I always consider that a good omen.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  He gave the sky a last glance.

  “Maybe they’ll pick up those two numbskulls,” he said, opening the driver’s door, climbing in. I got in on the passenger side, Raven grabbing a notebook out from under me.

  “You heard about them?”

  “Talk around P.D. this morning. Anything with kids, you know? And this one, the state worker, too, the wife assaulted. I heard there was a knife stuck in a doll.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  Raven backed out and pulled away fast. “People are twisted,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, and after a moment or two I asked, “What do you think of the way the state police are handling it?”

  “By the book,” Raven said, one hand on the steering wheel, the other rubbing his jaw. “The way they teach ’em now, at the academy.” We took the left onto the Dump Road and Raven hit the gas, accelerating. The radio squawked, the roadside trees were a blur. “Of course, doing things by the book—that’s not always a good thing.”

  “No,” I said.

  “’Cause people don’t really fit into a textbook.”

  I didn’t answer. We swung onto the paved road and turned east. There was a car up ahead, a Chevy chugging along, an old country couple sagging into the seat. Raven hit the lights and the car pulled off so we could pass.

  “Like this guy, Roger,” he said, half to himself.

  “He’s obsessed with her,” I said. “My expert assessment.”

  “And Miss Lasell. Beats the guy’s head in, but he did come to her apartment with a gun. Did it to save you, but then, if she hadn’t gotten this guy into such a lather, none of it would have happened.”

  I shrugged.

  “Real femme fatale,” Raven said.

  “You know who really scares her?” I said. “Marty, the ex-cop.”

  Raven touched the brakes, a curve ahead.

  “Where was he a cop?” I said.

  “You could ask him,” Raven said.

  “I don’t think he likes me.”

  “See? Love triangle number two. Kinda like geometry. Miss Lasell is the common point in two intersecting triangles.”

  “I’m not her lover, more her babysitter.”

  “Some people combine the two,” Raven said.

  “Not me.”

  “If you say so,” he said.

  “I know so,” I said. “And I think Marty’s crooked as hell. Retire or get drummed out?”

  We were climbing a hill, passing a tractor-trailer filled with wood chips. They flew out of the back of the truck like confetti. A parade of one.

  “You know we caught a guy, he had a compartment built in a trailer like that, under the chips,” Raven said, one hand on the wheel, arm flung over the seat back. “Hauling a hundred and fifty pounds of pot in from New Brunswick every week.”

  “Retire or drummed out?” I said again.

  “Guy was making five grand a week just for bringing the stuff across. Only got caught ’cause the truck breaks down, trooper stops to help, happens to have a drug dog in the car. Dog goes flippin’ crazy. Murphy’s Law.”

  I waited.

  “Retire or—”

  “Martin B. Callahan,” Raven said. “Mass. cor
rections.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “Google’s a wonderful thing,” Raven said.

  Chapter 30

  The assistant district attorney had an office in the courthouse, the same place where Cheree Wilton had shown up for her hearing, her husband waiting in the truck outside. We stood for a few minutes in a hallway with a water cooler but no cups, and a vending machine that sold bright-orange cheese and crackers. Raven eyed it for a minute, then walked over and dropped in two quarters. The crackers fell down and he picked them out, tore the cellophane open, and offered me one.

  I declined. He ate one in two bites, was halfway through the second when the door opened. A very young woman in a dark blazer, slacks, and pumps stepped out and said, “Come in,” and turned away. We followed.

  By the time we got inside, she was standing behind her desk, which took up most of the cramped office. She had dark-rimmed glasses and reddish permed hair that fell in long ringlets. Her hands were on the desk. They were small, like a little kid’s.

  “Sandra Tibbetts,” she said. “I’m assistant district attorney.”

  I glanced at the wall to her left: a framed diploma said University of Maine School of Law. “Jack McMorrow,” I said.

  “The reporter,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Except you don’t write for any papers around here,” she said.

  “Not usually.”

  “They’re crappy papers, anyway,” she said.

  “I’m sure they’re doing the best they can,” I said.

  There were two chairs in front of the desk. Ms. Tibbets remained standing so we did, too. She looked at me like I was a math problem she had to figure out. Nobody smiled.

  “You have a lawyer?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t think witnesses needed one.”

  “Most times not,” Tibbets said. “We can get you one if you want.”

  I shook my head again.

  “Okay, then let’s get right to it. I’ve got to be in court.”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I did, the abridged version. She listened, didn’t blink. Her eyes were green. She had more mascara on the left than the right. Maybe she hadn’t been wearing makeup that long.

  Raven looked at me, then at her, then back at me, enjoying the show. Then it was her turn. “When you walked in, what did you think Mr. Wilde was going to do?”