Damaged Goods: A Jack McMorrow Mystery Read online

  “Interesting way to put it.”

  “You know what the ad should say?”

  “No, what?” I said.

  “It should say, ‘I’ll pretend to like you.’”

  “People would respond to that?”

  “No, but it’s true. It’s what most guys want. Some women, too. Everybody just wants somebody to care about them, not to have sex with them, necessarily. But somebody to find them interesting.”

  “And do you?”

  “What? Find them interesting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sometimes. For an hour or two. Or a day. A couple of weeks ago a guy took me to Fun Town. It’s this amusement park down past Portland. You been there?”

  I shook my head.

  “We had a date. We went on rides and ate popcorn and pizza. He had a great time, ate this gross sausage sandwich. Guys like the most disgusting food, I’ve noticed. Anyway, the end of the day, he kissed me goodbye on the cheek, asked if he could call me again.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Mandi said. “Cost him three-hundred bucks. Plus the rides and popcorn.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said no,” Mandi said.

  “Why? You didn’t like him?”

  “He was fine. Kind of boring, but nice enough.”

  “But what?”

  “It’s still business, Jack.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is it business? Because they pay me money, I provide a service.”

  “Why is it a business? This may be too personal, but why aren’t you going to places with guys you really care about. Or do you?”

  Mandi stood up, pulled her sleeves down, and crossed her arms.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s personal.”

  She crossed to the boardwalk, started back toward the restaurant. I walked beside her as gulls swooped over us, hoping for chips. At the end of the walkway, she stopped, leaned over the railing, and looked out at the boats. I leaned next to her and we stood for a while and didn’t talk. Gulls circled. Boats chugged into the harbor and out. Two people pushed off from one of the biggest sailboats, two masts, dark green hull and matching green-and-white canvas over the stern, and motored over in an inflatable dinghy. We looked down as they eased up to the dock. The guy held the boat still while the woman stepped up onto the dock.

  She was tanned and lithe. He was handsome as a catalog model.

  “Money,” Mandi said.

  “Serious money,” I said.

  “You ever wonder,” she said, “what it would be like to have everything go your way?”

  “Don’t think they don’t have problems.”

  “I know,” she said. “I have a client like that. Rich as hell. Never even had a job. But he knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “What it’s like. To be really down and out. His family’s all screwed up. Parents never wanted him around, shipped him off to some fancy school when he was eight. His father’s been married, like, five times. Mother’s a cokehead, tried to commit suicide.”

  “Is that what you have in common?” I said.

  She smiled. “Screwed up families?”

  “Yeah.”

  No reply. I waited. She looked out on the harbor, lost in thought.

  “Did I offend you?” I said.

  She laughed. “Offend me? Hard to do.”

  “If I did, I apologize. I didn’t mean to.”

  “No prob, Jack.” She turned and looked at me and I felt her eyes, her smile drawing me in.

  “I don’t even know you, Jack,” Mandi said. “When did we meet, twenty minutes ago? But you’re like me. Easy to talk to. ”

  “Goes with the territory, I guess,” I said, more business-like, stepping back. “Let me ask you a couple more questions, before my time runs out.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four, give or take a year.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “No, I have a cat.”

  “What’s the cat’s name?”

  “If I tell you, how will you know it’s true?” She grinned.

  “Trust,” I said.

  “She’s black and long-haired. You can brush her like a doll.”

  “Indoor cat?”

  “Oh, yeah. She wouldn’t know what to do on the outside.”

  I wrote that down. “Where’d you grow up?”

  “A bunch of places, none of them worth ever going back to.”

  I scribbled more.

  “Have you had other jobs?”

  “Sure. Worked full-time and I was on food stamps.”

  “Go to college?”

  “No.”

  “Finish high school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  She suddenly looked weary, discouraged, like some sort of medication was wearing off. And then her mind was someplace else, not on Galway, Maine, or Jack McMorrow or the gulls trailing the lobster boats into the harbor. She twisted her hands like she was cold.

  And I saw them.

  Both wrists. Scars that made pale pink hash marks, like she had been keeping score in some sad and horrible game.

  “I should go,” Mandi said, turning away, starting up the walk.

  “I didn’t get my full hour.”

  “Call me again.”

  “I will. Because I have more questions.”

  “So do I,” she said. “Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kids?”

  “One. She’s almost four.”

  “You love her?”

  “More than life itself.”

  “How ’bout your wife?”

  “Her, too.”

  She smiled, wistfully, I thought.

  “That’s sweet,” Mandi said. She quickened her pace and I did the same. Side by side, we walked past the lobster restaurant, back up the street.

  “Where are you parked?” I said.

  “Around the corner. Up a ways. But I gotta go to the store, as long as I’m in town.”

  “Okay.”

  We were halfway up the block. There was a hardware store ahead on the right, rubber rain boots and flowerpots set out on the sidewalk.

  Mandi stopped at the door. Held out her hand. I clasped it, gave it a shake. It was soft, but her grip was firm. She looked me in the eye, then turned away, walked past the flower pots and into the store. I hesitated, then continued up the block. Crossing at the corner, I walked out of sight, then stopped and walked back.

  Leaning against the brick wall of an old hotel, I watched and waited. After a couple of minutes, Mandi came out of the store, empty-handed. She looked both ways, then crossed the street. Halfway down the block, back toward the water, she stepped into a doorway and out of sight.

  I waited another minute, then walked down the brick sidewalk. The doorway was next to a pottery shop. The door was painted pale green, a lace curtain covering the window from the inside. I turned the ornate iron knob.

  The door was locked. I pressed my face to the glass and peered in.

  Stairs.

  I stepped out onto the sidewalk to the curb. Glanced up.

  There were three windows on the second floor with the same lace curtains. I walked down the block, crossed again, then went to the adjacent corner, next to the pizza shop. I went in and the same kid gave me a look. I took a bottle of water from a rack, flipped a couple of dollars onto the counter. And then I went to one of the window booths and sat.

  And watched.

  After five minutes, one of the curtains moved. Ten minutes later, a black cat jumped up and sat on the sill. Five minutes after that, the curtain brushed aside. Arms encircled the cat and picked it up. A face flashed in the window, just for a moment.

  Mandi was home.

  Chapter 4

  They weren’t devil worshippers, Roxanne said. She’d been on the phone to the deputy. The depu
ty said the couple were into some religion that had them worshipping Satan, except he wasn’t the devil. Christianity invented the devil we knew, the one with the pitchfork and horns.

  “Then what is he?” I said.

  I was holding a can of Ballantine Ale. I opened it. Sophie looked up from the floor of the porch, then reached for another crayon.

  “He’s something that came before Judaism and Islam and Christianity,” Roxanne said.

  “Ra, the Sun God?”

  “No, he’s Satan, except it was these other religions that turned him into something evil and crowded him out.”

  I took a swallow of ale. Roxanne was drinking iced tea. We were sitting in Adirondack chairs overlooking the lawn, the apple trees. A blue bird flew to the roof of one of the bird boxes at the far edge of the lawn, flipped down, and stuffed its babies with bugs.

  “And that’s why they didn’t feed their kids?” I said.

  “They don’t believe in buying food that will make a profit for Jewish and Christian companies. That’s what the dad told the deputies. He said they raise their own pure food.”

  “Harder than it looks.”

  “Deer ate the lettuce. Woodchucks got most of their broccoli. Potatoes weren’t ready ’cause they planted too late. Kids were living on green tomatoes and wormy spinach.”

  “Can’t Satan just whip up some barbecue?” I said. “Must make a mean hot sauce.”

  We both sipped. Sophie was stretched out on her belly, coloring something brown.

  “What is it, Soph?” I said.

  “It’s deers,” she said. “It was bears but I changed it. I gave them horns.”

  “Very nice, honey,” Roxanne said.

  “You’re a good artist,” I said.

  “I need to show Brownie,” Sophie said, and she got up, took off on sandaled feet, paper flapping in her hand.

  Brownie was a toy stuffed bear, all the fur loved off it. A gift from Clair and Mary.

  “Where are they now?” I said, asking the question that had been hovering.

  “Parents went home,” Roxanne said. “Kids have been placed, but they’ll be moved after they’re assessed. Hearing is Monday.”

  “Did they calm down? The parents, I mean?”

  “The deputy said the mom’s okay, the dad’s on another planet. Went into a rant about how they don’t recognize the authority of our Christian government. He won’t even begin talking about a safety plan. Won’t listen to anything we try to say. He said he’ll ‘await spiritual guidance.’”

  “From Lucifer?”

  “I guess,” Roxanne said.

  “They know your name?” I said.

  “Yes. It’s on all the documents. I’ll have to testify at the hearing next week.”

  “Will they show up?”

  Roxanne shrugged.

  If they don’t, I thought, where will they be?

  I took a swallow of ale. Thought of my conversation with Clair. I wondered if I should load the rifle before I turned in.

  Sophie went up at 7:30 for books and then bed. She propped Brownie on one side of her and a big blonde doll named Twinnie—so called because she was the size of a two-year-old and Sophie had decided then that they were twins—on the other. I read them a story about mice that lived in a treehouse. A weasel tried to get into the house and the mouse manned (moused?) the barricades. . . .

  We had at least one weasel, maybe more.

  Sophie asked me to read the story again because Brownie hadn’t been paying attention. Halfway through the encore she was asleep. I took Twinnie down and propped her up in the corner by the bookshelf. Brownie stayed put. I kissed Sophie’s silken cheek, stared at her for a minute, and then I walked downstairs, silently in bare feet. Roxanne had gotten a blanket and a glass of wine and had gone back out to the porch. She was sitting with her feet tucked underneath her.

  I kissed her cheek, too.

  “So tell me,” she said.

  “The girl?”

  “Yes. Start at the beginning.”

  I did, from the pizza shop, to the talk on the water, and back to the pizza shop, watching the apartment.

  “That’s so sad,” Roxanne said.

  “It is. You wonder what brought her to this place. She seemed smart. Quite nice. Very likeable. I mean, if you didn’t know her, what she did, maybe you’d like her, too.”

  “Most women in any sort of sex trade were sexually abused when they were young. They go on to repeat it. Maybe out of some sort of self-abasement. Maybe because they think that’s all they’re good for.”

  “Or they’re drug addicts.”

  “Or both.”

  “The scars tell you something was seriously wrong with her at some point,” I said.

  “Yes,” Roxanne said. “Very.”

  “It’s a good story though.”

  “I guess, but why are your stories never simple?”

  “Life isn’t simple,” I said.

  Roxanne sipped her wine, looked out on the lawn, the apple trees, the woods beyond. From the edge of the woods, a red-eyed vireo sang, the last bird to call it quits.

  “We’re okay, you know,” I said.

  “I know. But it’s a big mess. Everything, except for us.”

  “There’s Clair and Mary.”

  “I know. But sometimes I feel like we’re the only thing staying in place, our little part of the world. Everything else is just swirling around, all this chaos. I just want to stop the merry-go-round and get off.”

  “Can I help you?” I said.

  Roxanne turned to me, smiled. Stretched her legs in front of her. Her lips opened. Her eyes softened. “Yes.”

  “Right now?”

  “I think I need you. I need to be that close to you.”

  “We’re pretty close anyway,” I said, and we stood and kissed, then walked upstairs, my arm around her waist. We looked in on Sophie, sleeping on her back with Brownie beside her. We closed her door and went to bed. Dusk deepened as we made love, and when it grew dark, Roxanne got up and lit a candle. For a moment, she stood in its light, and I smiled as she came back to bed and melted into my arms.

  Ten o’clock. Roxanne was asleep, her back to me, her bare shoulders showing above the sheet. I eased off of the bed, found my boxers on the floor, and put them on. I blew out the candle and went downstairs. I walked to the kitchen, turned on a light, and opened the closet door. My deer rifle, a Remington .30-06, was leaning in the back.

  I took it out, went to the counter, and, standing on a chair, reached a box of shells from the top shelf of the cupboard. From a jar on the shelf above the slate sink I took out a key, unlocked the trigger lock.

  I loaded the gun, five rounds clicking into the magazine, the metallic clack loud in the silent house. I put the lock back on, kept the key out. Walking to the study, I looked out the window at the darkness. I could hear the rustle of the night woods, the distant yelp of a fox.

  I walked to the dining room, looked out the front window to the road. It was empty and all was still.

  The rifle cradled in my arms, I walked up the stairs, opened Sophie’s door and listened to her breathing—soft and regular as a clock tick. I left the door open and went to our room. Roxanne was still asleep and I opened the closet door, leaned the rifle against the wall inside. I closed the door and hooked it shut at the top.

  I went to the side of the bed, put the key on the top of the earthenware base of the lamp on the bedside table.

  Making a mental note to show Roxanne the key in the morning, I lay back on the pillows. Eyes wide open in the darkness, I stared. Listened. Heard a car approaching, coming down the road from the east. Loud exhaust. Probably a pickup. American.

  It slowed slightly as it passed the house, but continued on until the night was quiet again.

  I listened, waiting.

  And then the truck returned, slowed, continued on.

  Chapter 5

  The hearing was Monday morning at eleven in Galway District Court. Roxanne left ear
ly for a prepping meeting at her office in Rockland, kissing me on the fly as she went out the door.

  “You can do this,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking back. “For everything.”

  I made oatmeal and Sophie and I chatted as we ate. She said she wanted to go back into the deep woods to see if we could find more arrows, maybe even some Indian kids. I said I had to do some work and asked if she would like to visit Clair and Mary.

  She was out of the chair and on her way to the door when I reminded her she was still in her pajamas. She changed direction, little feet sliding on the pine floor, and ran for her room.

  I went to the phone and called. Mary answered and I asked if I could leave Sophie with her for three hours or so.

  “You could leave her for three weeks,” Mary said.

  She was at the kitchen door when we arrived, Sophie carrying Brownie, me handing off her backpack filled with toys and books and crayons. Mary said she was making cookies and needed a helper. Sophie ran in, saw her “cooking chair” pulled up at the counter, and started to climb up.

  “Is Clair here today?” I said.

  Mary, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back, her face tanned from the garden, gave me one of her gentle and reassuring smiles.

  “He’s here. He told me what was going on. She’ll be fine, Jack. Hard part for you will be getting her back.”

  “Between one and two,” I said.

  “Take your time. Do what you have to do.”

  I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  It was a little after 10:30 when I drove down the hill into Galway. I drove down Main Street toward the salt-smelling bay, looked up and down the sidewalks for Mandi, but didn’t see her. When I passed her building, I slowed and looked up. The black cat was in the window.

  I circled back, took a left at the light, and drove a block, parked the truck on a side street diagonally across from the courthouse. There were cars parked up and down the block in front of the building, and three women smoking on the sidewalk out front. I settled into my seat and watched.

  The women—middle-aged, young, and younger—resembled each other. Three generations, I decided. The family that goes to court together . . . After a couple of minutes, they flicked their cigarette butts into the gutter and walked into the courthouse. A jail van pulled away from the back of the building and turned the corner. Orange-suited inmates looked out of the windows sullenly, their field trip soon coming to an end.