"The Killing Kind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Connolly John)2THE NEXT MORNING I sat in my kitchen shortly after sunrise, a pot of coffee and the remains of some dry toast lying beside my PowerBook on the table. I had a report to make to a client that day, so I put Jack Mercier to the back of my mind. Outside, rainwater dripped from the beech tree that grew by my kitchen window, beating an irregular cadence on the damp earth below. There were still one or two dry, brown leaves clinging to the branches of the beech but they were now surrounded by green buds, old life preparing to make way for the new. A nuthatch puffed out its red breast and sang from its nest of twigs. I couldn't see its mate, but I guessed that it was close. There would be eggs laid in the nest before the end of May and soon a whole family would be waking me in the mornings. By the time the main news commenced on WPXT, the local Fox affiliate, I had finished a pretty satisfactory draft and ejected the disk so that I could print from my desktop. The news led with the latest report on the remains unearthed at St. Froid Lake the day before. Dr. Claire Gray, the state's newly appointed ME, was shown arriving at the scene, wearing fireman's boots and a set of overalls. Her dark hair was long and curly, and her face betrayed no emotion as she walked down to the lakeshore. Sandbag levees had already been built to hold back the waters, and the bones now rested in a layer of thick mud and rotting vegetation, over which a tarpaulin had been stretched to protect them from the elements. A preliminary examination had been conducted by one of the state's two hundred part-time MEs, who confirmed that the remains were human, and the state police had then E-mailed digital images of the scene to the ME's office in Augusta so that she and her staff would be familiar with the terrain and the task they faced. They had already alerted the forensic anthropologist based at the University of Maine at Orono: she was due to travel up to Eagle Lake later that day. According to the reporter, the danger of further weakening the bank and the possibility of damaging the remains had ruled out the use of a backhoe to uncover the bodies and it was now likely that the task would have to be completed entirely by hand, using shovels and then small trowels in a painstaking, inch-by-inch dig. As the reporter spoke, the howling of the wolf hybrids was clearly audible from the slopes above her. Maybe it had to do with the sound from the live broadcast, but the howls seemed to have a terrible, keening tone to them, as if the animals somehow understood what had been found on their territory. The howling increased in intensity as a car pulled up at the edge of the secured area and the deputy chief ME, known to one and all as Dr. Bill, climbed out to talk to the trooper. In the back of his car sat his two cadaver dogs: it was their presence that had set off the hybrids. A mobile crime scene unit from the state police barracks at Houlton stood behind the reporter, and members of CID III, the Criminal Investigation Division of the state police with responsibility for Aroostook, mingled with state troopers and sheriff's deputies in the background. The reporter had obviously been talking to the right people. She was able to confirm that the bodies had been underground for some time, that there were children's bones among them, and there was damage to some of the visible skulls consistent with the kind of low-velocity impact caused by a blunt instrument. The transportation of the first of the bodies to the morgue in Augusta would probably not begin for another day or two; there they would be cleaned with scalpels and a mix of heated water and detergents before they were laid out on metal trays beneath a fume hood to dry them for analysis. It would then be up to the forensic anthropologist to rearticulate the bodies as best she could in the ME's office. But it was the reporter's concluding comment that was particularly interesting. She said that detectives believed they had made a preliminary identification of at least three of the bodies, although they declined to give any further details. That meant they had found something at the scene, something they had chosen to keep to themselves. The discovery aroused my curiosity-mine and a million other people's-but no more than that. I did not envy the investigators who would have to wade through the mud of St. Froid in order to remove those bones with their gloved hands, fighting off the early blackflies and trying to blank out the howls of the hybrids. When the report ended, I printed off my own work and then drove to the offices of PanTech Systems to deliver my findings. PanTech operated out of a three-story smoked-glass office in Westbrook and specialized in making security systems for the networks of financial institutions. Their latest innovation involved some kind of complex algorithm that made the eyes of anyone with an IQ of less than 200 glaze over with incomprehension but was reckoned by the company to be a pretty surefire thing. Unfortunately, Errol Hoyt, the mathematician who understood the algorithm best and who had been involved in its development from the start, had decided that PanTech didn't value him enough and was now trying to sell his services, and the algorithm, to a rival company from behind the backs of his current employers. The fact that he was also screwing his contact at the rival firm-a woman named Stacey Kean, who had the kind of body that caused highway pileups after Sunday services-made the whole business slightly more complicated. I had monitored Hoyt's cell phone transmissions using a Cellmate cellular radio monitoring system, aided by a cellular gain antenna. The Cellmate came in a neat brushed-aluminum case containing a modified Panasonic phone, a DTMF decoder, and a Marantz recorder. I simply had to enter the number of Hoyt's cellular and the Cellmate did the rest. By monitoring his calls, I had traced Hoyt and Kean to a rendezvous at the Days Inn out on Maine Mall Road. I waited in the parking lot, got photos of both of them entering the same room, then checked into the room on their right and removed the Penetrator II surveillance unit from my leather bag. The Penetrator II sounded like some kind of sexual aid but was simply a specially designed transducer that attached to the wall and picked up vibrations, converting them into electrical impulses that were then amplified and became recognizable audio. Most of the audio was recognizable only as grunts and groans, but when they'd finished the pleasure part they got down to business, and Hoyt provided enough incriminating detail of what he was offering, and the how and when of its transfer, to enable PanTech to secure his research and then fire him without incurring a major damages suit for unlawful dismissal. Admittedly, it was a kind of sordid way to earn a few bucks, but it had been painless and relatively easy. Now it was simply a matter of presenting the evidence to PanTech and collecting my check. I sat in a conference room on one side of an oval glass table while the three men across from me examined the photographs, then listened to Hoyt's telephone conversations and the recording of his romantic interlude with the lovely Stacey. One of the men was Roger Axton, PanTech's vice president. The second was Philip Voight, head of corporate security. The third man had introduced himself as Marvin Gross, the personnel director. He was short and reedily built, with a small belly that protruded over the belt of his pants and made him look like he was suffering from malnutrition. It was Gross, I noticed, who held the checkbook. Eventually, Axton reached across with a plump finger and killed the tape. He exchanged a look with Voight, then stood. “That all seems to be in order, Mr. Parker. Thank you for your time and efforts. Mr. Gross will deal with the matter of payment.” I noticed that he didn't shake my hand but simply departed from the room with a swish of silk like a wealthy dowager. I guessed that if I'd just listened to the sounds of two strangers having sex, I wouldn't want to shake hands with the guy who'd made the tape either. Instead, I sat in silence while Gross's pen made a scratching noise on the checkbook. When he had finished, he blew softly on the ink and carefully tore away the check. He didn't hand it over immediately but looked at it for a time before peering out from under his brow and asking: “Do you like your work, Mr. Parker?” “Sometimes,” I replied. “It seems to me,” Gross continued languidly, “that it's somewhat… “Sometimes,” I repeated, neutrally. “But usually that's not the nature of the work, but the nature of some of the people involved.” “You're referring to Mr. Hoyt?” “Mr. Hoyt had sex in the afternoon with a woman. Neither of them is married. What they did wasn't sleazy, or at least it was no sleazier than a hundred other things most people do every day. Your company paid me to listen in on them, and that's where the sleaze part came in.” Gross's smile didn't waver. He held the check up between his fingers as if he was expecting me to beg for it. Beside him, I saw Voight look down at his feet in embarrassment. “I'm not sure that we are entirely to blame for the manner in which you conducted your task, Mr. Parker,” said Gross. “That was your own choice.” I felt my fist tighten, partly out of my rising anger at Gross but also because I knew that he had a point. Sitting in that room, watching those three well-dressed men listening to the sounds of a couple's lovemaking, I had felt ashamed at them, and at myself. Gross was right: this was dirty work, marginally better than repos, and the money didn't make up for the filthy sheen it left on the clothes, on the skin, and on the soul. I sat in silence, my eyes on him until he stood and gathered up the material relating to Hoyt, returning it to the black plastic folder in which I had brought it. Voight stood too, but I remained seated. Gross took one more look at the check, then dropped it on the table in front of me before leaving the room. “Enjoy your money, Mr. Parker,” he concluded. “I believe you've earned it.” Voight gave me a pained look, then shrugged and followed Gross. “I'll wait for you outside,” he said. I nodded and began replacing my own notes in my bag. When I was done, I picked up the check, examined the amount, then folded it and put it in the small zipped compartment at the back of my wallet. PanTech had paid me a bonus of 20 percent. For some reason, it made me feel even dirtier than before. Voight walked me to the lobby, then made a point of shaking my hand and thanking me before I left the building. I walked through the parking lot, past the lines of reserved spaces with the names of their owners marked on small tin plates nailed to the parking lot's surrounding wall. Marvin Gross's car, a red Impala, occupied space number 15. I removed my keys from my pocket and flicked open the little knife I kept on the key chain. I knelt down beside his left rear tire and placed the tip of the blade against it, ready to slash the rubber. I stayed like that for maybe thirty seconds, then stood and closed the knife, leaving the tire undamaged. There was a tiny indentation where the blade had touched it, but nothing more. As Gross had intimated, following couples to motel rooms was the poor cousin of divorce work, but it paid the bills and the risks were minimal. In the past I had taken on jobs out of a sense of charity but I quickly realized that if I kept doing things for charity, then pretty soon charities would be doing things for me. Now Jack Mercier was offering me good money to look into Grace Peltier's death, but something told me that the money would be hard earned. I had seen it in Mercier's eyes. I drove into the center of Portland and parked in the garage at Cumberland and Preble, then headed into the Portland Public Market. The Port City Jazz Band was playing in one corner and the smells of baking and spices mingled in the air. I bought some skim milk from Smiling Hill Farm and venison from Bayley Hill, then added fresh vegetables and a loaf of bread from the Big Sky Bread Company. I sat for a time by the fireplace, watching the people go by and listening to the music. Rachel and I would come here next weekend, I thought, browsing among the stalls, holding hands, and the scent of her would linger on my fingers and palms for the rest of the day. With the arrival of the lunchtime crowds I headed back toward Congress, then cut down Exchange Street toward Java Joe's in the Old Port. As I reached the junction of Exchange and Middle, I saw a small boy seated on the ground at Tommy's Park on the opposite side of the street. He was wearing only a check shirt and short pants, despite the fact that it was a cool day. A woman leaned over him, obviously talking to him, and he stared up at her intently. Like the boy, the woman was dressed for very different weather. She wore a pale summer dress decorated with small pink flowers, the sunlight shining through the material to reveal the shape of her legs, and her blond hair was tied back with an aquamarine bow. I couldn't see her face, but something tightened in my stomach as I drew nearer. Susan had worn just such a dress and had tied her blond hair back with an aquamarine bow. The memory made me stop short as the woman straightened and began to walk away from the boy in the direction of Spring Street. As she walked, the boy looked up at me and I saw that he was wearing old black-rimmed eyeglasses, one lens of which was obscured by black masking tape. Through the clear lens his single visible eye stared unblinkingly at me. Around his neck hung a wooden board of some sort, held in place by a length of thick rope. There was something carved into the wood, but it was too faint to see from where I stood. I smiled at him and he smiled back as I stepped from the sidewalk and straight into the path of a delivery truck. The driver slammed on the brakes and blew his horn, and I was forced to jump back quickly as the truck shot past. By the time the driver had finished giving me the finger and proceeded on his way, both the woman and the boy were gone. I could find no trace of them on Spring Street, or Middle, or Exchange. Despite that, I could not shake off the sense that they were near, and were watching. It was almost four o'clock when I returned to the Scarborough house, after depositing my check at the bank and completing various errands. I padded around in my bare feet as some Jim White played on my stereo. It was “Still Waters” and Jim was singing about how there were projects for the dead and projects for the living, but sometimes he got confused by that distinction. On the kitchen table lay Jack Mercier's check, and once again that unease returned. There was something about the way he looked at me when he offered me the money in return for talking to Curtis Peltier. The more I thought about it, the more I believed that Mercier was paying for my services out of guilt. I wondered too what Curtis Peltier might have on Mercier that would cause him to hire an investigator to look into the death of a girl he barely knew. There were a lot of people who said that the collapse of their business partnership had been an acrimonious one, bringing to an end not only a long-established professional association but also more than a decade of friendship. If Peltier was looking for help, Jack Mercier seemed to me to be a curious choice. But I couldn't refuse the job either, I thought, because I, too, felt a nagging sense of guilt over Grace Peltier, as if I somehow owed her at least the time it would take to talk to her father. Maybe it was the remains of what I had felt for her years before and the way I had reacted when she believed herself to be in trouble. True, I was young then, but she was younger still. I recalled her short dark hair, her questioning blue eyes, and even now, the smell of her, like freshly cut flowers. Sometimes, life is lived in retrospect. I sat at the kitchen table and looked at Jack Mercier's check for a long time. Finally, still undecided, I folded it and placed it on the table beneath a vase of lilies I had bought on impulse as I was leaving the market. I cooked myself a dinner of chicken with chilis and ginger and watched TV while I ate, but I barely took in a fraction of what I was seeing. When I had finished, and the dishes were washed and dried, I called the number Jack Mercier had given to me the day before. A maid answered on the third ring, and Mercier was on the line seconds later. “It's Charlie Parker, Mr. Mercier. I've decided. I'll look into that matter.” I heard a sigh on the other end of the phone. It might have been relief. It might also have been resignation. “Thank you, Mr. Parker,” was all he said. Maybe Marvin Gross had done me a favor by calling me a sleazebag, I thought. Maybe. That night, as I lay in bed thinking of the small boy with the darkened lens and the blond-haired woman who had stood over him, the scent of the flowers in the kitchen seemed to fill the house, becoming almost oppressive. I smelled them on my pillow and on the sheets. When I rubbed my fingers together, I seemed to feel grains of pollen like salt on my skin. Yet when I awoke the next morning the flowers were already dead. The day of my first meeting with Curtis Peltier dawned clear and bright. I heard cars moving by my house on Spring Street, cutting from Oak Hill to Maine Mall Road, a brief oasis of calm between U.S. 1 and I-95. The nuthatch was back and the breeze created waves in the fir trees at the edge of my property, testing the resilience of the newly extended needles. My grandfather had refused to sell any of his land when the developers came to Scarborough looking for sites for new homes in the late seventies and early eighties, which meant that the house was still surrounded by forest until the trees ended at the interstate. Unfortunately, what remained of my semirural idyll was about to come to an end: the U.S. Postal Service was planning to build a huge mail processing center off nearby Mussey Road, on land including the Grondin Quarry and the Neilson Farm parcels. It would be nine acres in size, and over a hundred trucks a day would eventually be entering and leaving the site; in addition there would be air traffic from a proposed air freight facility. It was good for the town but bad for me. For the first time, I had begun to consider selling my grandfather's house. I sat on my porch, sipping coffee and watching lapwings flit, and thought of the old man. He had been dead for almost six years now, and I missed his calm, his love of people, and his quiet concern for the vulnerable and the underprivileged. It had brought him into the law enforcement community and had just as surely forced him out of it again, when his empathy for the victims became too much for him to bear. A second check for $10,000 had been delivered to my house during the night, but despite my promise to Mercier I was still uneasy. I felt for Curtis Peltier, I truly did, but what he wanted I didn't think I could give him; he wanted his daughter back, the way she used to be, so that he could hold her to him forever. His memory of her had been tainted by the manner of her death, and he wanted that stain removed. I thought too of the woman on Exchange. Who wears a summer dress on a cold day? When the answer came to me, I pushed it away as a thing unwanted. Who wears a summer dress on a cold day? Someone who doesn't feel the cold. Someone who I finished my coffee and caught up on some paperwork at my desk, but Curtis Peltier and his dead daughter kept intruding on my thoughts, along with the small boy and the blond woman. In the end, it all came to weights on a scale: my own inconvenience measured against Curtis Peltier's pain. I picked up my car keys and drove into Portland. Peltier lived in a big brownstone on Danforth Street, close by the beautiful Italianate Victoria Mansion, which his home resembled in miniature. I guessed that he had bought it when times were good, and now it was probably all that he had left. This area of Portland, encompassing parts of Danforth, Pine, Congress, and Spring Streets, was where prosperous citizens made their homes in the nineteenth century. It was natural, I supposed, that Peltier should have gravitated toward it when he became a wealthy man. The house looked impressive from the outside, but the gardens were overgrown and the paint was peeling from the door and window frames. I had never been inside the house with Grace. From what I understood, her relationship with her father floundered during her teens and she kept her home life separate from all other aspects of her existence. Her father doted on her but she appeared reluctant to reciprocate, as if she found his affection for her almost suffocating. Grace was always extraordinarily strong willed, with a determination and inner strength that sometimes led her to behave in ways that were hurtful to those around her, even if she had not intended to cause them pain. When she decided to ostracize her father, then ostracized he became. Later I learned from mutual friends that Grace had gradually overcome her resentment and that the two had become much closer in the years before her death, but the reason for the earlier distance between them remained unclear. I rang the bell and heard it echo through the big house. A shape appeared at the frosted glass and an old man opened the door, his shoulders too small for his big red shirt and a pair of black suspenders holding his tan trousers up over his thin hips. There was a gap between his trousers and his waist. It made him look like a small, sad clown. “Mr. Peltier?” I asked. He nodded in reply. I showed him my ID. “My name is Charlie Parker. Jack Mercier said you might be expecting me.” Curtis Peltier's face brightened a little and he stood aside to let me in, while tidying his hair and straightening his shirt collar with his free hand. The house smelled musty. There was a thin layer of dust over some of the furniture in the hall and in the dining room to the left. The furnishings looked good but not that good, as if the best items had already been sold and what remained was used only to fill up what would otherwise have been vacant space. I followed him into a small, bright kitchen, with old magazines scattered on the chairs, three watercolor landscapes on the walls, and a pot of coffee filling the air with the scent of French vanilla. The landscape in the paintings looked vaguely familiar; they seemed to consist of views of the same area, painted from three different angles in subdued hues of brown and red. Skeletal trees converged on an expanse of dark water, hills fading into the distance beneath cloudy skies. In the corner of each painting were the initials GP. I never knew that Grace had painted. There were paperbacks yellowing on the windowsill and an easy chair sat beside an open cast-iron fireplace packed with logs and paper so that it wouldn't brood emptily when not in use. The old man filled two cups with coffee and produced a plate of cookies from a cupboard, then raised his hands from his sides and smiled apologetically. “You'll have to forgive me, Mr. Parker,” he said, indicating his shirt and his faded pants, and the sandals on his stockinged feet. “I wasn't expecting company so early in the day.” “Don't worry about it,” I replied. “The cable guy once found me trying to kill a roach while wearing nothing but sneakers.” He smiled gratefully and sat. “Jack Mercier tell you about my little girl?” he asked, cutting straight to the chase. I watched his face while he said Mercier's name and saw something flicker, like a candle flame suddenly exposed to a draft. I nodded. “I'm sorry.” “She didn't kill herself, Mr. Parker. I don't care what anybody says. She was with me the weekend before she died, and I have never seen her happier. She didn't do drugs. She didn't smoke. Hell, she didn't even drink, at least nothing stronger than a Bud Light.” He sipped at his coffee, the thumb of his left hand worrying his forefinger in a constant, rhythmic movement. There was a white callus on his skin from the repeated contact. I took out my notebook and my pen and wrote while Peltier spoke. Grace's mother had died when she was thirteen. After a succession of dead-end jobs, Grace had returned to college and had been preparing her postgraduate thesis on the history of certain religious movements in the state. She had recently returned to live with her father, traveling down to Boston to use library facilities when necessary. “You know who she might have been talking to?” I asked. “She took her notes with her, so I couldn't say,” said Peltier. “She had an appointment in Waterville, though, a day or two before…” He trailed off. “With whom?” I prompted him gently. “Carter Paragon,” he replied. “That fella who runs the Fellowship.” The Fellowship was a pretty low-end operation, hosting shows on late-night cable and paying little old ladies a nickel a shot to stuff Bible pamphlets into envelopes. Paragon's pitch involved claiming to cure minor ailments by asking viewers to touch the TV screen with their hands, or one hand at least, the other hand being occupied ringing the Fellowship's toll-free number and pledging whatever they could afford for the greater glory of the Lord. The only thing Carter Paragon ever cured was an excess of cash in a bank balance. Unsurprisingly, Carter Paragon wasn't his real name. He had been born Chester Quincy Deedes: that was the name on his birth certificate and his criminal record, a record that consisted mainly of minor credit card and insurance fraud, peripheral involvement in a pension scam, and a couple of DUIs. When hostile journalists brought this up, the newly monikered Carter Paragon admitted that he had been a sinner, that he hadn't even been searching for God but God had found him anyway. It still wasn't entirely clear why God had been looking for Chester Deedes in the first place, unless Chester had somehow managed to steal God's wallet. Mostly the Fellowship was kind of a joke, but I'd heard rumors-unsubstantiated, mostly-that the Fellowship supported extremist religious and right-wing groups financially. Organizations believed to have received funding from the Fellowship had been linked to pickets and attacks on abortion clinics, AIDS help lines, family planning institutes, even synagogues. Very little had ever been proved: checks from the Fellowship had been deposited in the accounts of the American Coalition of Life Activists, an umbrella organization for some of the more extreme antiabortion groups, and Defenders of the Defenders of Life, a support group for convicted clinic bombers and their families. Phone records seized in the aftermath of various incidents of violence also revealed that assorted fascists, rednecks, and cracker militants had contacted the Fellowship on a regular basis. The Fellowship usually issued swift condemnations of any illegal-actions by groups alleged to have received funding from it, but Paragon had still felt compelled to turn up on respectable news magazine programs on a couple of occasions uttering denials like St. Peter on a Thursday night, dressed in a suit that shimmered oilily, a small gold cross pinned discreetly to his lapel as he attempted to be charming, apologetic, and manipulative all at the same time. Trying to pin down Carter Paragon was like trying to nail smoke. Now it seemed that Grace Peltier had been due to meet with Paragon shortly before she died. I wondered if she had made the meeting. If so, Paragon might be worth talking to. “Do you have any notes she might have made for her thesis, any computer disks?” I continued. He shook his head. “Like I said, she took everything with her. She was planning to stay with a friend after she'd met with Paragon and do some work on her thesis there.” “You know who the friend was?” “Marcy Becker,” he said immediately. “She's a history grad, friend of Grace's from way back. Her family lives up in Bar Harbor. They run a motel there. Marcy's been living with them for the last couple of years, helping them to run the place.” “Was she a good friend?” “Pretty good. Or I used to think she was.” “What do you mean?” “I mean that she never made it to the funeral.” I felt that little lance of guilt again. “That's kinda strange, don't you think?” “I guess it is,” I said. “Did she have any other close friends who didn't show for the service?” He thought for a moment. “There's a girl called Ali Wynn, younger than Grace. She came up here a couple of times and they seemed to get on well together. Grace shared an apartment with her when she was in Boston, and she used to stay with her when she traveled down to study. She's a student at Northeastern too, but works part-time in a fancy restaurant in Harvard, the ‘Hammer’ something.” “The Blue Hammer?” He nodded. “That's the one.” It was on Holyoke Street, close by Harvard Square. I added the name to my notebook. “Did Grace own a gun?” I asked. “No.” “Are you sure?” “Positive. She hated guns.” “Was she seeing anybody?” “Not that I know of.” He sipped his coffee and I found him watching me closely over the rim of the cup, as if my last question had caused a shift in his perception of me. “I recall you, you know,” he said softly. I felt myself flush red, and instantly I was more than a decade and a half younger, dropping Grace Peltier off outside this same house and then driving away, grateful that I would never have to look at her or hold her again. I wondered what Peltier knew about my time with his daughter and was surprised and embarrassed at my concern. “I told Jack Mercier to ask for you,” he continued. “You knew Grace. I thought maybe you might help us because of that.” “That was a long time ago,” I answered gently. “Maybe,” he said, “but it seems like only yesterday to me that she was born. Her doctor was the worst doctor in the world. He couldn't deliver milk, but somehow, despite him, she managed to come wailing into the world. Everything since then, all of the little incidents that made up her life, seem to have occurred in the blink of an eye. You look at it like that and it wasn't so long ago, Mr. Parker. For me, in one way, she was barely here at all. Will you look into this? Will you try to find out the truth of what happened to my daughter?” I sighed. I felt as if I was heading into deep waters just as I had begun to like the feel of the ground beneath my feet. “I'll look into it,” I said at last. “I can't promise anything, but I'll do some work on it.” We spoke a little more of Grace and of her friends, and Peltier gave me copies of the phone records for the last couple of months, as well as Grace's most recent bank and credit card statements, before he showed me to her bedroom. He left me alone in there. It was probably too soon for him to spend time in a room that still smelled of her, that still contained traces of her existence. I went through the drawers and closets, feeling awkward as my fingers lifted and then replaced items of clothing, the hangers in the closets chiming sadly as I patted down the jackets and coats they held. I found nothing except a shoe box containing the mementos of her romantic life: cards and letters from long-departed lovers, and ticket stubs from dates that had obviously meant something to her. There was nothing recent, and nothing of mine among them. I hadn't expected that there would be. I checked through the books on the shelves and the medicines in the cabinet above the small sink in the corner of the room. There were no contraceptives that might have indicated a regular boyfriend and no prescription drugs that might have suggested she was suffering from depression or anxiety. When I returned to the kitchen there was a manila file of papers lying in front of Peltier on the table. He passed it across to me. When I opened it, the file contained all of the state police reports on the death of Grace Peltier, along with a copy of the death certificate and the ME's report. There were also photographs of Grace's body in the car, printed off a computer. The quality wasn't so good, but it didn't have to be. The wound on Grace's head was clearly visible, and the blood on the window behind her was like the birth of a red star. “Where did you get these, Mr. Peltier?” I asked, but I knew the answer almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Jack Mercier always got what he wanted. “I think you know,” he replied. He wrote his telephone number on a small pad and tore the page out. “You can usually get me here, day or night. I don't sleep much these days.” I thanked him, then he shook my hand and walked me to the door. He was still watching me as I climbed into the Mustang and drove away. I parked on Congress and took the reports into Kinko's to photocopy them, a precaution that I had recently started to take with everything from tax letters to investigation notes, with the originals retained at the house and the copies put into storage in case the originals were lost or damaged. Copying was a small amount of trouble and expense to go to for the reassurance that it offered. When I had finished, I went to Coffee by Design and started to read the reports in detail. As I did, I found myself growing more and more unhappy with what they contained. The police report listed the contents of the car, including a small quantity of cocaine found in the glove compartment and a pack of cigarettes that was lying on the dashboard. Fingerprint analysis revealed three sets of prints on the pack, only one of them belonging to Grace. The only prints on the bag of coke were Grace's. For someone who didn't smoke or take drugs, Grace Peltier seemed to be carrying a lot of narcotics in her car. The certificate of death didn't add much else to what I already knew, although one section did interest me. Section 42 of the state of Maine certificate of death requires the ME to ascribe the manner of death to one of six causes. In order, these are: “natural,” “accident,” “suicide,” “homicide,” “pending investigation,” and “could not be determined.” The ME had not ticked “suicide” as the manner of Grace Peltier's death. She had, instead, opted for “pending investigation.” In other words, she had enough doubts about the circumstances to require the state police to continue their inquiries into the death. I moved on to the ME's own report. The report noted Grace's body measurements, her clothing, her physique and state of nutrition at the time of death, and her personal cleanliness. There were no signs of self-neglect indicative of mental disorder or drug dependency of any kind. The analysis of her ocular fluid found no traces of drugs or alcohol taken in the hours before her death, and urine and bile analysis also came up negative, indicating that she had not ingested drugs in the three days preceding her death either. Blood taken from a peripheral vein beneath her armpit had been combined in a tube with sodium fluoride, which reduces the microbiologic action that may increase or decrease any alcohol content in the blood after collection. Once again, it came up negative. Grace hadn't been drinking before she died. It's a difficult thing to do, taking one's own life. Most people require a little Dutch courage to help them on their way, but Grace Peltier had been clean. Despite the fact that her father said she was happy, that she had no alcohol or drugs in her system when she died, and that the autopsy revealed none of the telltale signs of a disturbed, distracted personality of the type likely to attempt suicide, Grace Peltier had still apparently put a gun close to her head and shot herself. Grace's fatal injury had been caused by a.40 caliber bullet fired from a Smith amp; Wesson at a range of not more than two inches. The bullet had entered through the left temple, burning and splitting the skin and singeing Grace's hair above the wound, and shattering the sphenoid bone. The bullet hole was slightly smaller than the diameter of the bullet, since the elastic epidermis had stretched to allow its passage and then contracted afterward. There was an abrasion collar around the hole, caused by the friction, heating, and dirt effect of the bullet, as well as surrounding bruising. The bullet had exited above and slightly behind the right temple, fracturing the orbital roof and causing bruising around the right eye. The wound was large and everted, with an irregular stellate appearance. Its irregularity was due to the damage caused to the bullet by contact with the skull, which had distorted the bullet's shape. The only blood in the car had come from Grace, and the bloodstain pattern analysis was consistent with the injury received. A ballistics examination of the recovered bullet also matched up. Chemical and scanning electron microscope analysis of skin swabs taken from Grace's left hand revealed propellant residues, indicating that the gun had been fired by Grace. The gun was found hanging from Grace's left hand. On the seat, beside her right hand, was a Bible. It is an established fact that women rarely commit suicide with guns. Although there are exceptions, women don't seem to have the same fascination with firearms as men and tend to pick less obviously violent ways to end their lives. There is a useful rule in police work: a shot woman is a murdered woman unless proved otherwise. Suicides also shoot themselves in certain sites of election: the mouth, the front of the neck, the forehead, the temple, or the chest. Discharges into the temple usually occur on the side of the dominant hand, although that is not an absolute. Grace Peltier, I knew, was right handed, yet she had elected to shoot herself in the left temple, using her left hand and holding what I assumed to be an unfamiliar weapon. According to Curtis, she didn't even own a gun, although it was possible that she had decided to acquire one for reasons of her own. There were three additional elements in the reports that struck me as odd. The first was that Grace Peltier's clothes had been soaked with water when her body was found. Upon examination, the water was found to be salt water, although its precise source had yet to be determined. For some reason, Grace Peltier had taken a dip in the sea fully clothed before shooting herself. The second element was that the ends of Grace's hair had been cut shortly before her death, using not a scissors but a blade. Part of her ponytail had been severed, leaving some loose hairs trapped between her shirt and her skin. The third was not an inclusion but an omission. Curtis Peltier had told me that Grace had brought all of her thesis notes with her, but there were no notes found in the car. The Bible was a nice touch, I thought. I was walking back to my car when the cell phone rang. “Hi, it's me,” said Rachel's voice. “Hi, you.” Rachel Wolfe was a criminal psychologist who had once specialized in profiling. She had joined me in Louisiana as the hunt for the Traveling Man came to its end, and we had become lovers. It had not been an easy relationship: Rachel had been hurt badly both physically and emotionally in Louisiana, and I had spent a long time coming to terms with the guilt my feelings for her had provoked. We were now slowly establishing ourselves together, although she continued to live in Boston, where she was doing research and tutorial work at Harvard. The subject of her moving up to Maine had been glanced upon once or twice, but never pursued. “I've got bad news. I can't come up on the weekend. The faculty has called an emergency meeting for Friday afternoon over funding cuts, and it's likely to pick up again on Saturday morning. I won't be free until Saturday afternoon at the earliest. I'm really sorry.” I found myself smiling as she spoke. Lately, talking to Rachel always made me smile. “Actually, that might work out okay. Louis has been talking about heading up to Boston for a weekend. If he can convince Angel to come along I can link up with them while you're tied up in meetings, then we can spend the rest of the time together.” Angel and Louis were, in no particular order, gay, semiretired criminals; silent partners in a number of restaurants and auto shops; a threat to decent people everywhere and possibly to the fabric of society itself; and polar opposites in just about every imaginable way, with the exception of a shared delight in mayhem and occasional homicide. They were also, not entirely coincidentally, my friends. “ Rachel was a huge fan of the Boston Ballet and was trying to convert me to its joys. She was kind of succeeding, although it had led Angel to speculate unkindly on my sexuality. “Sure, but you owe me a couple of Pirates games when the hockey season starts.” “Agreed. Call me back and let me know what their plans are. I can book a table for dinner and join the three of you after my meeting. And I'll look into those tickets. Anything else?” “How about lots of rampant, noisy sex?” “The neighbors will complain.” “Are they good looking?” “Very.” “Well, if they get jealous I'll see what I can do for them.” “Why don't you see what you can do for “Okay, but when I wear you out I may have to go elsewhere for my own pleasure.” I couldn't be sure, but I thought her laughter had a distinctly mocking tone as she hung up. When I got back to the house, I called a number on Manhattan's Upper West Side using the land line. Angel and Louis didn't like being called on a cell phone, because-as the unfortunate Hoyt was about to learn to his cost-cell-phone conversations could be monitored or traced, and Angel and Louis were the kind of individuals who sometimes dealt in delicate matters upon which the law might not smile too gently. Angel was a burglar, and a very good one, although he was now officially “resting” on the joint income he had acquired with Louis. Louis's current career position was murkier: Louis killed people for money, or he used to. Now he sometimes killed people, but money was less of a concern for him than the moral imperative for their deaths. Bad people died at Louis's hands, and maybe the world was a better place without them. Concepts like morality and justice got a little complicated where Louis was concerned. The phone rang three times and then a voice with all the charm of a snake hissing at a mongoose said, “Yeah?” The voice also sounded a little breathless. “It's me. I see you still haven't got to the chapter on phone etiquette in that Miss Manners book I gave you.” “I put that piece of shit in the trash,” said Angel. “Guy who laces his shoes with string is probably still trying to sell it on Seventh Avenue.” “Your breathing sounds labored. Do I even want to know what I interrupted?” “Elevator's busted. I heard the phone on the stairs. I was at an organ recital.” “What were you doing, passing around the tin cup?” “Funny.” I don't think he meant it. Louis was obviously still engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to expand Angel's cultural horizons. You had to admire his perseverance, and his optimism. “How was it?” “Like being trapped with the phantom of the opera for two hours. My head hurts.” “You up for a trip to Boston?” “Louis is. He thinks it's got class. Me, I like the order of New York. Boston is like the whole of Manhattan below Fourteenth Street, you know, with all them little streets that cross back over one another. It's like the Twilight Zone down in the Village. I didn't even like visiting when you lived there.” “You finished?” I interrupted. “Well, I guess I am now, Mr. Fucking Impatient.” “I'm heading down next weekend, maybe meet Rachel for dinner-late on Friday. You want to join us?” “Hold on.” I heard a muffled conversation, and then a deep male voice came on the line. “You comin' on to my boy?” asked Louis. “Lord no,” I replied. “I like to be the pretty one in my relationships, but that's taking it a little too far.” “We'll be at the Copley Plaza. You give us a call when you got a restaurant booked.” “Sure thing, boss. Anything else?” “We let you know,” he said, then the line went dead. It was a shame about the Miss Manners book, really. Grace Peltier's credit card statement revealed nothing out of the ordinary, while the telephone records indicated calls to Marcy Becker at her parents' motel, a private number in Boston which was now disconnected but which I assumed to be Ali Wynn's, and repeated calls to the Fellowship's office in Waterville. Late that afternoon I called the Fellowship at that same number and got a recorded message asking me to choose “Can I help you?” it said, in the tone that a certain type of secretary reserves for those whom she has no intention of helping at all. “I'd like to speak to Mr. Paragon, please. My name is Charlie Parker. I'm a private investigator.” “What is it in connection with, Mr. Parker?” “A young woman named Grace Peltier. I believe Mr. Paragon had a meeting with her about two weeks ago.” “I'm sorry, the name isn't familiar to me. No such meeting took place.” If spiders apologized to flies before eating them, they could have managed more sincerity than this woman. “Would you mind checking?” “As I've told you, Mr. Parker, that meeting never took place.” “No, There was a pause on the end of the line, and I thought the receiver began to grow distinctly chilly in my hand. After a time, Ms. Torrance spoke again. “I see from Mr. Paragon's diary that a meeting was due to be held with a Grace Peltier, but she never arrived.” “Did she cancel the appointment?” “No, she simply didn't turn up.” “Can I speak to Mr. Paragon, Ms. Torrance?” “No, Mr. Parker, you cannot.” “Can I make an appointment to speak to Mr. Paragon?” “I'm sorry. Mr. Paragon is a very busy man, but I'll tell him you called.” She hung up before I could give her a number, so I figured that I probably wasn't going to be hearing from Carter Paragon in the near future, or even the distant future. It seemed that I might have to pay a personal call on the Fellowship, although I guessed from Ms. Torrance's tone that a visit from me would be about as welcome as a whorehouse in Disneyland. Something had been nagging at me since reading the police report on the contents of the car, so I picked up the phone and called Curtis Peltier. “Mr. Peltier,” I asked, “do you recall if either Marcy Becker or Ali Wynn smoked.” He paused before answering. “Y'know, I think they both did at that, but there's something else you should know. Grace's thesis wasn't just a general one: she had a specific interest in one religious group. They were called the Aroostook Baptists. You ever hear of them?” “I don't think so.” “The community disappeared in nineteen sixty-four. A lot of folks just assumed they'd given up and gone somewhere else, somewhere warmer and more hospitable.” “I'm sorry, Mr. Peltier, I don't see the point.” “These people, they were also known as the Eagle Lake Baptists.” I recalled the news reports from the north of the state, the photographs in the newspapers of figures moving behind crime scene tape, the howling of the animals. “The bodies found in the north,” I said quietly. “I'd have told you when you were here, but I only just saw the TV reports,” he said. “I think it's them. I think they've found the Aroostook Baptists.” |
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