"The Killing Kind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Connolly John)

4

I SLEPT LATE THE NEXT MORNING but didn't feel refreshed when I woke. The memory of my dream was still vivid, and despite the cool of the night, I had sweated under the sheets.

I decided to grab breakfast in Portland before paying a visit to the Fellowship's offices, but it wasn't until I was in my car that I noticed that the red marker on the mailbox had been raised. It was a little early for a delivery, but I didn't think anything more of it. I walked down the drive and was about to reach for the mailbox when something lithe and dark scurried across the tin. It was a small brown spider, with an odd violin-shaped mark on its body. It took me a moment or two to recognize it for what it was: a fiddleback, one of the recluses. I drew my hand away quickly. I knew that they could bite, although I'd never seen one this far north before. I used a stick to knock it away, but as I did so another set of thin legs pushed at the crack of the mailbox flap, and a second fiddleback squeezed its way out, then a third. I moved around the mailbox carefully and saw more spiders, some creeping along its base, others already rappelling slowly to the ground on lengths of silken thread. I took a deep breath and flipped the mailbox catch open with the stick.

Hundreds of tiny spiders tumbled out, some falling instantly to the grass below, others crawling and fighting their way across the inside of the flap, clinging to the bodies of those below them. The interior was alive with them. In the center of the box itself stood a small cardboard packing crate with airholes in its side, spiders spilling from the holes as the sunlight hit them. I could see dead spiders lying curled in the crate or littered around the corners of the mailbox, their legs curled into their abdomens as their peers fed on them. I backed away in disgust, trying not to think of what would have happened had I thrust my hand unthinkingly into the semidarkness.

I went to my car and took the spare gas can from the trunk, then retrieved a Zippo from the glove compartment. I sprinkled the gas both inside and outside the mailbox, and on the dry earth surrounding it, before lighting a roll of newspaper and tossing it in. The mailbox went up instantly, tiny arachnids falling aflame from the inferno. I stepped back as the grass began to burn and moved to the garden hose. I attached it to the outside faucet and wet the grass to contain the fire, then stood for a time and watched the mailbox burn. When I was content that nothing had survived, I doused it in water, the tin hissing at the contact and steam rising into the air. After it had cooled, I put on a pair of calfskin gloves and emptied the remains of the spiders into a black bag, which I threw in the garbage can outside my back door. Then I stood for a long time at the edge of my property, scanning the trees and striking at the invisible spiders I felt crawling across my skin.

I ate breakfast in Bintliff's on Portland Street and plotted my plan of action for the day. I sat in one of the big red booths upstairs, the ceiling fan gently turning as blues played softly in the background. Bintliff's has a menu so calorific that Weight Watchers should place a permanent picket on the door; gingerbread pancakes with lemon sauce, orange graham French toast, and lobster Benedict are not the kind of breakfast items that contribute to a slim waistline, although they're guaranteed to raise the eyebrows of even the most jaded dietician. I settled for fresh fruit, wheat toast, and coffee, which made me feel very virtuous but also kind of sad. The sight of the spiders had taken away most of my appetite anyhow. It could have been kids playing a joke, I supposed, but if so, then it was a vicious, deeply unpleasant one.

Waterville, the site of the Fellowship's office, was midway between Portland and Bangor. After Bangor I could head east to Ellsworth and the area of U.S. 1 where Grace Peltier's body had been discovered. From Ellsworth, Bar Harbor, home of Grace's good friend but funeral absentee Marcy Becker, was only a short drive to the coast. I finished off my coffee, took a last lingering look at a plate of apple, cinnamon, and raisin French toast that was heading toward a table by the window, then stepped outside and walked to my car.

Across the street, a man sat at the base of the steps leading up to the main post office. He wore a brown suit with a yellow shirt and a brown-and-red tie beneath a long, dark brown overcoat. Short, spiky red hair, tinged slightly with gray, stood up straight on his head as if he were permanently plugged into an electrical outlet. He was eating an ice cream cone. His mouth worked at the ice cream in a relentless methodical motion, never stopping once to savor the taste. There was something unpleasant, almost insectlike, about the way his mouth moved, and I felt his eyes upon me as I opened the car door and sat inside. When I pulled away from the curb, those eyes followed me. In the rearview, I could see his head turn to watch my progress, the mouth still working like the jaws of a mantid.

The Fellowship had its registered office at 109A Main Street, in the middle of Waterville's central business district. Parts of Waterville are pretty but downtown is a mess, largely because it looks like the ugly Ames shopping mall was dropped randomly from the sky and allowed to remain where it landed, reducing a huge tract of the town center to a glorified parking lot. Still, enough brownstone blocks remained to support a sign welcoming visitors to the joys of downtown Waterville, among them the modest offices of the Fellowship. They occupied the top two floors over an otherwise vacant storefront down from Joe's Smoke Shop, nestled between the Head Quarters hairdressing salon and Jorgensen's Café. I parked in the Ames lot and crossed at Joe's. There was a buzzer beside the locked glass door of 109A, with a small fish-eye lens beneath it. A metal plate on the door frame was engraved with the words: THE FELLOWSHIP-LET THE LORD GUIDE YOU. A small shelf to one side held a sheaf of pamphlets. I took one and slipped it into my pocket, then rang the buzzer and heard a voice crackle in response. It sounded suspiciously like that of Ms. Torrance.

“Can I help you?” it said.

“I'm here to see Carter Paragon,” I replied.

“I'm afraid Mr. Paragon is busy.” The day had hardly begun and already I was experiencing déjà vu.

“But I let the Lord guide me here,” I protested. “You wouldn't want to let Him down, would you?”

The only sound that came from the speaker was that of the connection between us being closed. I rang again.

“Yes?” The irritation in her voice was obvious.

“Maybe I could wait for Mr. Paragon?”

“That won't be possible. This is not a public office. Any contact with Mr. Paragon should be made in writing in the first instance. Have a good day.”

I had a feeling that a good day for Ms. Torrance would probably be a pretty bad day for me. It also struck me that in the course of our entire conversation, Ms. Torrance had not asked me my name or my business. It might simply have been my suspicious nature, but I guessed that Ms. Torrance already knew who I was. More to the point, she knew what I looked like.

I walked around the block to Temple Street and the rear of the Fellowship's offices. There was a small parking lot, its concrete cracked and overgrown with weeds, dominated by a dead tree beneath which stood two tanks of propane. The back door of the building was white and the windows were screened, while the black iron fire escape looked so decrepit that any occupants might have been better advised to take their chances with the flames. It didn't look like the back door to 109A had been opened in some time, which meant that the occupants of the building entered and left through the door on Main Street. There was one car in the lot, a red 4 x 4 Explorer. When I peered in the window I saw a box on the floor containing what looked like more religious pamphlets bound with rubber bands. Using my elementary deduction skills, I guessed that I'd found the Fellowship's wheels.

I went back onto Main Street, bought a couple of newspapers and the latest issue of Rolling Stone, then headed into Jorgensen's and took a seat at the raised table by the window. From there I had a perfect view of the doorway to 109A. I ordered coffee and a muffin, then sat back to read and wait.

The newspapers were full of the discovery at St. Froid, although they couldn't add much to the news reports I'd seen on television. Still, somebody had dredged up an old photograph of Faulkner and the original four families that had journeyed north with him. He was a tall man, plainly dressed, with long dark hair, very straight black eyebrows, and sunken cheeks. Even in the photograph, there was an undeniable charisma to him. He was probably in his late thirties, his wife slightly older. Their children, a boy and a girl aged about seventeen and sixteen respectively, stood in front of him. He must have been comparatively young when they were born.

Despite the fact that I knew the photograph had been taken in the sixties, it seemed that these people could have been frozen in their poses at any time over the previous hundred years. There was something timeless about them and their belief in the possibility of escape, twenty people in simple clothes dreaming of a utopia dedicated to the greater glory of the Lord. According to a small caption, the land for the community had been granted to them by the owner, himself a religious man, for the sum of $1 per acre per annum, paid in advance for the term of the lease. By moving so far north the congregation's privacy was virtually guaranteed. The nearest town was Eagle Lake to the north, but it was then already in decline, the mills closing and the population depleted. Tourism would eventually rescue the area but, in 1963, Faulkner and his followers would have been left largely to their own devices.

I turned my attention to the Fellowship's pamphlet. It was basically one long sales pitch designed to elicit the appropriate response from any readers: namely, to hand over all of the loose change they might have on their person at the time, plus any spare cash that might be making their bank statements look untidy. There was an interesting medieval illustration on the front, depicting what looked like the Last Judgment: horned demons tore at the naked bodies of the damned while God looked on from above, surrounded by a handful of presumably very relieved good folk. I noticed that the damned outnumbered the saved by about five to one. All things considered, those didn't look like very good odds on salvation for most of the people I knew.

Beneath the illustration was a quotation: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works (Revelation 20:12).”

I laid aside the pamphlet, kind of relieved that I'd bought Rolling Stone. I spent the next hour deciding who among the good and not-so-good of modern music was unlikely to be taking up salvation space in the next world. I had made a pretty comprehensive list when, shortly after one-thirty, a woman and a man came out of the Fellowship's offices. The man was Carter Paragon: I recognized the slicked-back dark hair, the shiny gray suit, and the unctuous manner.

The woman with him was tall and probably about the same age as Paragon; early forties, I guessed. She had straight dark brown hair that hung to her shoulders, and her body was hidden beneath a dark blue wool overcoat. Her face was hardly conventionally pretty; the jaw was too square, the nose too long, and the muscles at her jaws looked overdeveloped, as if her teeth were permanently gritted. She wore white pancake makeup and bright red lipstick like a graduate of clown school, although if she was, nobody was laughing. Her shoes were flat, but she was still at least five-ten or five-eleven and towered over Paragon by about four inches. The look that passed between them as they made their way toward Temple Street was strange. It seemed that Paragon deferred to her and I noticed that he stepped back quickly when she turned away from the door after checking the lock, as if afraid to get in her way.

I left $5 on the table, then walked out onto Main and strolled over to the Mustang. I had been tempted to tackle them on the street but I was curious to see where they were going. The red Explorer emerged onto Temple, then drove past me through the lot, heading south. I followed it at a distance until it came to Kennedy Memorial Drive, where it turned right onto West River Road. We passed Waterville Junior High and the Pine Ridge Golf Course before the Explorer took another right onto Webb Road. I stayed a couple of cars behind as far as Webb, but the Explorer was the only car to make the right. I hung back as much as I could and thought that I'd lost them when an empty stretch of road was revealed after I passed the airfield. I made a U-turn and headed back the way I had come, just in time to see the Explorer's brake lights glow about two hundred yards on my right. It had turned up Eight Rod Road and was now entering the driveway of a private house. I arrived in time to see the black steel gates close and the red body of the 4 x 4 disappearing around the side of a modest two-story white home with black shutters on the windows and black trim on the gable.

I parked in front of the gates, waited for about five minutes, and then tried the intercom on the gatepost. I noticed that there was another fish-eye lens built in so I covered it with my hand.

“Yes?” came Ms. Torrance's voice.

“UPS delivery,” I said.

There was silence for a few moments as Ms. Torrance tried to figure out what had gone wrong with her gate camera, before her voice told me that she'd be right out. I was kind of hoping that she might have let me in, but I settled for keeping my hand on the camera and my body out of sight. It was only when Ms. Torrance was almost at the gate that I stepped into view. She didn't look too pleased to see me, but then I couldn't imagine her looking too pleased to see anyone. Even Jesus would have received a frosty reception from Ms. Torrance.

“My name is Charlie Parker. I'm a private detective. I'd like to see Carter Paragon, please.” Those words were assuming the status of a mantra, with none of the associated calm.

Ms. Torrance's face was so hard it could have mined diamonds. “I've told you before, Mr. Paragon isn't available,” she said.

“Mr. Paragon certainly is elusive,” I replied. “Do you deflate him and put him in a box when he's not needed?”

“I'm afraid I have nothing more to say to you, Mr. Parker. Please go away, or I'll call the police. You are harassing Mr. Paragon.”

“No,” I corrected. “I would be harassing Mr. Paragon, if I could find him. Instead, I'm stuck with harassing you, Ms. Torrance. It is Ms. Torrance, isn't it? Are you unhappy, Ms. Torrance? You sure look unhappy. In fact, you look so unhappy that you're starting to make me unhappy.”

Ms. Torrance gave me the evil eye. “Go fuck yourself, Mr. Parker,” she said softly.

I leaned forward confidentially. “You know, God can hear you talk that way.”

Ms. Torrance turned on her heel and walked away. She looked a whole lot better from the back than she did from the front, which wasn't saying much.

I stood there for a time, peering through the bars like an unwanted party guest. Apart from the Explorer there was only one other vehicle in the driveway of the Paragon house, a beat-up blue Honda Civic. It didn't look like the kind of car a man of Carter Paragon's stature would drive, so maybe it was what Ms. Torrance used to get around when she wasn't chauffeuring her charge. I went back to my car, listened to a classical music slot on NPR, and continued reading Rolling Stone. I had just begun to wonder if I was optimistic enough to buy one hundred rubbers for $29.99 when a white Acura pulled up behind me. A big man dressed in a black jacket and blue jeans, with a black silk-knit tie knotted over his white shirt, strode up to my window and knocked on the glass. I rolled down the window, looked at his shield and the name beside his photo, and smiled. The name was familiar from the police report on Grace Peltier. This was Detective John Lutz, the investigating officer on the case, except Lutz was attached to CID III and operated out of Machias, while Waterville was technically in the territory of CID II.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice liked to say.

“Help you, Detective Lutz?” I asked.

“Can you step out of the car, please, sir?” he said, standing back as I opened the door. The thumb of his right hand hung on his belt, while the rest of his fingers pushed his jacket aside, revealing the butt of his.45 caliber H amp;K as he did so. He was six feet tall and in good condition, his stomach flat beneath his shirt. His eyes were brown and his skin was slightly tanned, his brown hair and brown mustache neatly trimmed. His eyes said he was about mid-forties, maybe older.

“Turn around, put your hands against the car, and spread your legs,” he told me.

I was about to protest when he gave me a sharp push, spinning me around and propelling me against the side of the car. His speed and his strength took me by surprise.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I still owe payments on the car.”

He patted me down, but he didn't find anything of note. I wasn't armed, which I think kind of disappointed him. All he got was my wallet.

“You can turn around now, Mr. Parker,” he said when he had finished. I found him looking at my license, then back at me a couple of times, as if trying to sow enough doubt about its validity to justify hauling me in.

“Why are you loitering outside Mr. Paragon's home, Mr. Parker?” he said. “Why are you harassing his staff?”

He didn't smile. His voice was low and smooth. He sounded a little like Carter Paragon himself, I thought.

“I was trying to make an appointment,” I said.

“Why?”

“I'm a lost soul, looking for guidance.”

“If you're trying to find yourself, maybe you should go look someplace else.”

“Wherever I go, there I am.”

“That's unfortunate.”

“I've learned to live with it.”

“Doesn't seem to me like you have much choice, but Mr. Paragon does. If he doesn't want to see you, then you should accept that and be on your way.”

“Do you know anything about Grace Peltier, Detective Lutz?”

“What's it to you?”

“I've been hired to look into the circumstances of her death. Someone told me that you might know something about it.” I let the double meaning hang in the air for a time, its ambiguity like a little time bomb ticking between us. Lutz's fingers tapped briefly on his belt, but it was the only indication he gave that his calm might be under threat.

“We think Ms. Peltier took her own life,” he said. “We're not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.”

“Did you interview Carter Paragon?”

“I spoke to Mr. Paragon. He never met Grace Peltier.”

Lutz moved a little to his left. The sun was behind him and he stood so that it shone over his shoulder and directly into my eyes. I raised a hand to shade myself and his hand nudged for his gun again.

“Ah-ah,” he said.

“A little jumpy, aren't you, Detective?” I lowered my hand carefully.

“Mr. Paragon sometimes attracts a dangerous element,” he replied. “Good men often find themselves under threat for their beliefs. It's our duty to protect him.”

“Shouldn't that be the job of the police here in Waterville?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Mr. Paragon's secretary preferred to contact me. Waterville police have better things to be doing with their time.”

“And you don't?”

He smiled for the first time. “It's my day off, but I can spare a few minutes for Mr. Paragon.”

“The law never rests.”

“That's right, and I sleep with my eyes open.” He handed my wallet back to me. “You be on your way, now, and don't let me see you around here again. You want to make an appointment with Mr. Paragon, then you contact him during business hours, Monday to Friday. I'm sure his secretary will be happy to help you.”

“Your faith in her is admirable, Detective.”

“Faith is always admirable,” he replied, then started to walk back to his car.

I had pretty much decided that I didn't like Detective Lutz. I wondered what would happen if he was goaded. I decided to find out.

“Amen,” I said. “But if it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to stay here and read my magazine.”

Lutz stopped, then walked quickly back to me. I saw the punch coming, but I was against the car and all I could do was curl to one side to take the blow to my ribs instead of my stomach. He hit me so hard I thought I heard a rib crack, the pain lancing through my lower body and sending shock waves right to the tips of my toes. I slid down the side of the Mustang and sat on the road, a dull ache spreading across my stomach and into my groin. I felt like I was going to vomit. Then Lutz reached down and applied pressure from his thumbs and forefingers just below my ears. He was using pain compliance techniques and I yelped in agony as he forced me to rise.

“Don't mock me, Mr. Parker,” he said. “And don't mock my faith. Now get in your car and drive away.”

The pressure eased. Lutz walked over to his car and sat on the hood, waiting for me to leave. I looked over at the Paragon house and saw a woman standing at an upstairs window, watching me. Before I got back into the car, I could have sworn that I saw Ms. Torrance smile.

Lutz's white Acura stayed behind me until I left Waterville and headed north on I-95, but the pain and humiliation I felt meant that the memory of him was with me all the way to Ellsworth. The Hancock County Field Office, home of Troop J of the state police, had dealt with the discovery of Grace Peltier's body. It was a small building on U.S. 1, with a pair of blue state trooper cars parked outside. A sergeant named Fortin told me that her body had been found by Trooper Voisine on a site named Acadia Acres, which was scheduled to be developed for new housing. Voisine was out on patrol but Fortin told me that he'd contact him and ask him to meet me at the site. I thanked him, then followed his directions north until I came to Acadia Acres.

A company called Estate Management was advertising it as the future setting for “roads and views,” although currently there were only rutted tracks and the main view was of dead or fallen trees. There was still some tape blowing in the wind where Grace's car had been found, but that apart, there was nothing to indicate that a young woman's life had come to an end in this place. Still, when I looked around, something bothered me: I couldn't see the road from where I was standing. I went back to the Mustang and drove it up the track until it was in more or less the same position as Grace's car must have occupied. I turned on the lights, then walked down to the road and looked back.

The car still wasn't visible, and I couldn't see its lights through the trees.

As I stood by the roadside, a blue cruiser pulled up beside me and the trooper inside stepped out.

“Mr. Parker?” he asked.

“Trooper Voisine?” I extended a hand and he took it.

He was about my height and age, with receding hair, an “aw shucks” smile, and a small triangular scar on his forehead. He caught me looking at it and reached up to rub it with his right hand.

“Lady hit me on the head with a high-heeled shoe after I pulled her over for speeding,” he explained. “I asked her to step from the car, she stumbled, and when I reached over to help her I caught her heel in my forehead. Sometimes it just don't pay to be polite.”

“Like they say,” I said, “shoot the women first.”

His smile faltered a little, then regained some of its brightness.

“You from away?” he asked.

“From away.” I hadn't heard that phrase in quite some time. Around these parts, “from away” meant any place more than a half-hour's drive from wherever you happened to be standing at the time. It also meant anyone who couldn't trace a local family connection back at least a hundred years. There were people whose grandparents were buried in the nearest cemetery who were still regarded as “from away,” although that wasn't quite as bad as being branded a “rusticator,” the locals' favorite term of abuse for city folks who came Down East in order to get in touch with country living.

“Portland,” I answered.

“Huh.” Voisine sounded unimpressed. He leaned against his car, removed a Quality Light from a pack in his shirt pocket, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head and watched as he lit up. Quality Lights: he'd have been better off throwing the cigarettes away and trying to smoke the packaging.

“You know,” I said, “if we were in a movie, smoking a cigarette would automatically brand you as a bad guy.”

“Is that so?” he replied. “I'll have to remember that.”

“Take it as a crime stopper's tip.”

Somehow, largely through my own efforts, the conversation appeared to have taken a slightly antagonistic turn. I watched while Voisine appraised me through a cloud of cigarette smoke, as if the mutual dislike we instinctively felt had become visible between us.

“Sergeant says you want to talk to me about the Peltier woman,” said Voisine at last.

“That's right. I hear you were the first on the scene.”

He nodded. “There was a lot of blood, but I saw the gun in her hand and thought: suicide. First thing I thought, and it turns out I was right.”

“From what I hear, the verdict may still be open.”

He stared at me, then shrugged. “Did you know her?” he asked.

“A little,” I replied. “From way back.”

“I'm sorry.” He didn't even try to put any emotion into the words.

“What did you do after you found her?”

“Called it in, then waited.”

“Who arrived after you?”

“Another patrol, ambulance. Doc pronounced her dead at the scene.”

“Detectives?”

He flicked his head back like a man who suddenly realizes he has left out something important. It was a curiously theatrical gesture.

“Sure. CID.”

“You remember his name?”

“Lutz. John Lutz.”

“He get here before, or after, the second patrol?”

Voisine paused. “Before,” he said at last.

“Must have got here pretty fast,” I said, keeping my tone as neutral as possible.

Voisine shrugged again. “Guess he was in the area.”

“Guess so,” I said. “Was there anything in the car?”

“I don't understand, sir.”

“Purse, suitcase, that kind of thing?”

“There was a bag with a change of clothes and a small purse with make-up, a wallet, keys.”

“Nothing else?”

Something clicked in Voisine's throat before he spoke.

“No.”

I thanked him and he finished off his cigarette, then tossed the butt on the ground, stamping it out beneath his heel. Just as he was about to get back into his car I called to him.

“Just one more thing, Trooper,” I said.

I walked down to join him. He paused, half in and half out of the car, and stared at me.

“How did you find her?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how did you see the car from the road? I can't see my car from here and it's parked in pretty much the same spot. I'm just wondering how you came to find her, seeing as how she was hidden by the trees.”

He said nothing for a time. The smile was gone now, and I wasn't sure what had replaced it. Trooper Voisine was a difficult man to read.

“We get a lot of speeding on this road,” he said at last. “I sometimes pull in here to wait. That's how I found her.”

“Ah,” I said. “That explains it. Thanks for your time.”

“Sure,” he replied. He closed the door and started the engine, then turned onto the road and headed north. I followed him out and made sure that I stayed in his mirror until he was gone from my sight.

There was little traffic on the road from Ellsworth to Bar Harbor as I drove through the gathering dusk of the early evening. The season had not yet begun, which meant that the locals still had the place pretty much to themselves. The streets were quiet, most of the restaurants were closed, and there was digging equipment on the site of the town's park, piles of earth now standing where there used to be green grass. Sherman's bookstore was still open on Main Street, and it was the first time that I had ever seen Ben amp; Bill's Chocolate Emporium empty. Ben amp; Bill's was even offering 50 percent off all candies. If they tried that after Memorial Day, people would be killed in the stampede.

The Acadia Pines Motel was situated by the junction of Main and Park. It was a pretty standard tourist place, probably operating at the lower end of the market. It consisted of a single two-story, L-shaped block painted yellow and white, numbering about forty rooms in total. When I pulled into the lot there were only two other cars parked and there seemed to be a kind of desperation about the ferocity with which the VACANCIES sign glowed and hummed. I stepped from the car and noticed that the pain in my side had faded to a dull ache, although when I examined my body in the dashboard light I could still see the imprint of Lutz's knuckles on my skin.

Inside the motel office, a woman in a pale blue dress sat behind the desk, the television tuned to a news show and a copy of TV Guide lying open beside her. She sipped from a Grateful Dead mug decorated with lines of dancing teddy bears, chipped red nail polish showing on her fingers. Her hair was dyed a kind of purple black and shined like a new bruise. Her face was wrinkled and her hands looked old, but she was probably no more than fifty-five, if that. She tried to smile as I entered, but it made her look as if someone had inserted a pair of fishhooks into the corners of her mouth and pulled gently.

“Hi,” she said. “Are you looking for a room?”

“No, thank you,” I replied. “I'm looking for Marcy Becker.”

There was a pause that spoke volumes. The office stayed silent but I could still hear her screaming in her head. I watched her as she ran through the various lying options open to her. You have the wrong place. I don't know any Marcy Becker. She's not here and I don't know where she is. In the end, she settled for a variation on the third choice.

“Marcy isn't here. She doesn't live here anymore.”

“I see,” I said. “Are you Mrs. Becker?”

That pause came again, then she nodded.

I reached into my pocket and showed her my ID. “My name is Charlie Parker, Mrs. Becker. I'm a private investigator. I've been hired to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a woman named Grace Peltier. I believe Marcy was a friend of Grace's, is that correct?”

Pause. Nod.

“Mrs. Becker, when was the last time you saw Grace?”

“I don't recall,” she said. Her voice was dry and cracked, so she coughed and repeated her answer with only marginally more assurance. “I don't recall.” She took a sip of coffee from her mug.

“Was it when she came to collect Marcy, Mrs. Becker? That would have been a couple of weeks ago.”

“She never came to collect Marcy,” said Mrs. Becker quickly. “Marcy hasn't seen her in… I don't know how long.”

“Your daughter didn't attend Grace's funeral. Don't you think that's strange?”

“I don't know,” she said. I watched her fingers slide beneath the counter and saw her arm tense as she pressed the panic button.

“Are you worried about Marcy, Mrs. Becker?”

This time, the pause went on for what seemed like a very long time. When she spoke, her mouth answered no but her eyes whispered yes.

Behind me, I heard the door of the office open. When I turned, a short, bald man in a golf sweater and blue polyester pants stood before me. He had a golf club in his hand.

“Did I interrupt your round?” I asked.

He shifted the club in his hand. It looked like a nine iron. “Can I help you, mister?”

“I hope so, or maybe I can help you,” I said.

“He was asking about Marcy, Hal,” said Mrs. Becker.

“I can handle this, Francine,” her husband assured her, although even he didn't look convinced.

“I don't think so, Mr. Becker, not if all you've got is a cheap golf club.”

A rivulet of panic sweat trickled down from his brow and into his eyes. He blinked it away, then raised the club to shoulder height in a two-armed grip. “Get out,” he said.

My ID was still open in my right hand. With my left, I took one of my business cards from my pocket and laid it on the counter. “Okay, Mr. Becker, have it your way. But before I go, let me tell you something. I think someone may have killed Grace Peltier. Maybe you're telling me the truth, but if you're not, then I think your daughter has some idea who that person might be. If I could figure that out, then so can whoever killed her friend. And if that person comes asking questions, then he probably won't be as nice about it as I am. You bear that in mind after I'm gone.”

The club moved forward an inch or two. “I'm telling you for the last time,” he said, “get out of this office.”

I flipped my wallet closed, slipped it into my jacket pocket, then walked to the door, Hal Becker circling me with his golf club to keep some swinging distance between us. “I have a feeling you'll be calling me,” I said as I opened the door and stepped into the lot.

“Don't you bet on it,” replied Becker. As I started my car and drove away, he remained standing at the door, the golf club still raised, like a frustrated amateur with a huge handicap stuck in the biggest, deepest bunker in the world.

On the drive back to Scarborough I ran through what I had learned, which wasn't much. I knew that Carter Paragon was being kept under wraps by Ms. Torrance and that Lutz seemed to have more than a professional interest in keeping him that way. I knew that something about Voisine's discovery of Grace's body made me uneasy, and Lutz's involvement in that discovery made me uneasier still. And I knew that Hal and Francine Becker were scared. There were a lot of reasons why people might not want a private detective questioning their child. Maybe Marcy Becker was a porn star, or sold drugs to high school kids. Or maybe their daughter had told them to keep quiet about her whereabouts until whatever she was worried about had blown over. I still had Ali Wynn, Grace's Boston friend, to talk to, but already Marcy Becker was looking like a woman worth pursuing.

It seemed that Curtis Peltier and Jack Mercier were right to suspect the official version of Grace's death, but I also felt that everybody I had met over the past couple of days was either lying to me or holding something back. It was time to rectify that situation, and I had an idea where I wanted to start. Despite my tiredness, I took the Congress Street exit, then headed onto Danforth and pulled up in front of Curtis Peltier's house.

The old man answered the door wearing a nightgown and bedroom slippers. Inside, I could hear the sound of the television in the kitchen, so I knew I hadn't woken him.

“You find out something?” he asked as he motioned me into the hallway and closed the door behind me.

“No,” I replied, “but I hope to pretty soon.”

I followed him into the kitchen and took the same seat I had occupied the day before, while Peltier hit the mute button on the remote. He was watching Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum oozing evil as the psychotic preacher with the tattooed knuckles.

“Mr. Peltier,” I began, “why did you and Jack Mercier cease to be business partners?”

He didn't look away, but his eyes blinked closed for slightly longer than usual. When they opened again, he seemed tired. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, was it for business or personal reasons?”

“When you're in partnership with your friend, then all business is personal,” he replied. This time, he did look away when he said it.

“That's not answering the question.”

I waited for a further reply. The silence of the kitchen was broken-only by the sound of his breathing. On the screen to my left, two children drifted down the river on a small boat, lost in darkness.

“Have you ever been betrayed by a friend, Mr. Parker?” he asked at last.

Now it was my turn to flinch. “Once or twice,” I answered quietly.

“Which was it-once, or twice?”

“Twice.”

“What happened to them?”

“The first one died.”

“And the second?”

I heard my heart beating in the few seconds it took me to reply. It sounded impossibly loud.

“I killed him.”

“Either he betrayed you badly, or you're a harsh judge of men.”

“I was pretty tense, once upon a time.”

“And now?”

“I take deep breaths and count to ten.”

He smiled. “Does it work?”

“I don't know. I've never made it as far as ten.”

“I guess it don't, then.”

“I guess not. Do you want to tell me what happened between you and Jack Mercier?”

He shook his head. “No, I don't want to tell you, but I get the feeling you have your own ideas about what might have happened.”

I did, but I was as reluctant to say them out loud as Peltier was to tell me. Even thinking them in the company of this man who had lost his only child so recently seemed like an unforgivable discourtesy.

“It was personal, wasn't it?” I asked him softly.

“Yes, it was very personal.”

I watched him carefully in the lamplight, took in his eyes, the shape of his face, his hair, even his ears and his Grecian nose. There was nothing of him in Grace, nothing that I could recall. But there was something of Jack Mercier in her. I was almost certain of it. It had struck me most forcefully after I stood in his library and looked at the photographs on the wall, the images of the young Jack triumphant. Yes, I could see Grace in him, and I could recall Jack in her. Yet I wasn't certain, and even if it was true, to say it aloud would hurt the old man. He seemed to sense what I was thinking, and my response to it, because what he said next answered everything.

“She was my daughter, Mr. Parker,” he said, and his eyes were two deep wells of hurt and pride and remembered betrayal. “My daughter in every way that mattered. I raised her, bathed her, held her when she cried, collected her from school, watched her grow, supported her in all that she did, and kissed her good night every time she stayed with me. He had almost nothing to do with her, not in life. But now, I need him to do something for her and for me, maybe even for himself.”

“Did she know?”

“You mean, did I tell her? No, I didn't. But you suspected, and so did she.”

“Did she have contact with Jack Mercier?”

“He paid for her graduate research because I couldn't afford to. It was done through an educational trust he established, but I think it confirmed what Grace had always believed. Since the funding began, Grace had met him on a few occasions, usually at events organized by the trust. He also let her look at some books he had out at the house, something to do with her thesis. But the issue of her parentage was never discussed. We'd agreed on that: Jack, my late wife, and I.”

“You stayed together?”

“I loved her,” he said simply. “Even after what she'd done, I still loved her. Things were never the same because of it, but yes, we stayed together and I wept for her when she died.”

“Was Mercier married at the time of…” I allowed the sentence to peter out.

“The time of the affair?” he finished. “No, he met his wife a few years later, and they were married a year or so after that again.”

“Do you think she knew about Grace?”

He sighed. “I don't know, but I guess he must have told her. He's that kind of man. Hell, it was him who confessed to me, not my wife. Jack just had to relieve himself of the burden. He has all the weaknesses that come with a conscience, but none of the strengths.” It was the first hint of bitterness he had revealed.

“I have another question, Mr. Peltier. Why did Grace choose to research the Aroostook Baptists?”

“Because she was related to two of them,” he replied. He said it matter-of-factly, as if it had never occurred to him that it might be relevant.

“You didn't mention it before,” I said, keeping my voice even.

“I guess it didn't seem important.” His voice faltered and he sighed. “Or maybe I thought that if I told you that, I'd have to tell you about Jack Mercier and…” He waved a hand dispiritedly. “The Aroostook Baptists were what brought Jack Mercier and me together,” he began. “We weren't friends then. We met at a lecture on the history of Eagle Lake, first and last we ever attended. We went out of curiosity more than concern. My cousin was a woman called Elizabeth Jessop. Jack Mercier's second cousin was Lyall Kellog. Do any of those names mean anything to you, Mr. Parker?”

I thought back to the newspaper report the previous day and the picture of the assembled families taken before they departed for northern Aroostook.

“Elizabeth Jessop and Lyall Kellog were members of the Aroostook Baptists,” I replied.

“That's right. In a way, Grace had links with both of them through Jack and me. That's why she was so interested in their disappearance.” He shook his head. “I'm sorry. I should have been open with you from the start.”

I rose and put my hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.

“No,” I replied. “I'm sorry that I had to ask.”

I released my hold on him and moved toward the door, but his hand reached out to stop me.

“You think that her death has something to do with the bodies in the north?” Seated before me, he seemed very small and frail. I felt a strange kind of empathy with him; we were two men who had been cursed to outlive our daughters.

“I don't know, Mr. Peltier.”

“But you'll keep looking? You'll keep looking for the truth?”

“I'll keep looking,” I assured him.

I could hear again the soft rattle of his breathing as I opened the door and stepped out into the night. When I looked back he was still seated, his head down, his shoulders shaking gently with the force of his tears.