“Sounds like it.”
Amelia leaned back and gathered her hair into a knot at the back of her head. “It took years to realize Dobbs was in on it, how’re we going to come up with the third person?”
“That’s why DeLonge needs this.” Nick waved the tape in front of my face. “He has the resources, we don’t. And we can ask him to use his discretion.”
I shook my head. “No way.” I plucked the cassette from his fingers and wrapped it in my palm. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
“You’re already on a leave of absence. Withholding evidence could mean you get disbarred,” Nick said. “Are you willing to risk that?”
I thought of Hilary waving the shovel above her head, a nine-year-old girl taking on a sixteen-year-old boy. She hadn’t even hesitated. “Definitely.”
Nick’s eyes were on mine, his lips drawn in a fine line across his face. As serious as his expression was, I could tell he agreed.
* * *
Amelia opted for the guest room instead of going home and I followed her in and sat on the blue silk comforter.
“It’s hard to believe we know who it is. I mean, we knew ever since the night at Gritty’s, but hearing all that on the tape makes it more real somehow.”
I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. “Do you think if we told Hilary that it was Dobbs who raped her, it would give her some peace?”
“Not once she knows the circumstances,” Amelia said. “It’d make her crazy depressed. In this case, truth is the greater evil.”
I turned to go to bed, but Amelia grabbed my wrist. “Hey,” she said. “Get the board.”
“No way.” I walked toward the door.
“Maybe it’ll tell us who the third person is.”
I stopped. She was right. As much as I was afraid of the Ouija, I knew it had what I needed and if I asked, it would give it to me.
“Stay here,” I said.
Nick was in bed with the light on, case files strewn over the comforter.
“Anything?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I’m getting a blanket for Amelia,” I said, raising the lid of the trunk and wrapping the board in a crocheted quilt. “Be right back.”
I slipped into Amelia’s room and set the board on the floor beside the bed. We sat cross-legged on either side of it. I took a deep breath and we both reached our fingertips toward the planchette.
A thousand bees stung my arms and I fought to hold my hands steady on the wooden disc. “Who is the third person?” I asked.
The planchette twisted and turned, moving from one side of the board to the other and then came back, resting at the center.
Amelia looked at me. “That was weird.”
I started to nod my agreement, but stopped when pain seared through my head, bringing with it a close-up of Duane’s gaping neck and Hilary beside him, her chest blown wide open. I looked down at my hands; blood streamed from my fingers to the edges of the board. I screamed and drew back from the disc. The instant I did both the images and the blood disappeared.
“What happened?” Amelia sat staring at me. “Why’d you scream?”
I was shaking all over and leaned back against the bed to get my breath.
The door swung open and Nick filled the doorway. “What the hell’s going on in here?”
“We’re just playing a game,” I said.
He looked at the board and then at me. “That thing’s never been just a game to you.”
He knew the board meant something, he’d known it since the day he picked me up in the rain. Our eyes held tight for a moment and then he stepped from the room and closed the door.
I looked at Amelia. “I saw Duane.”
“You what?”
She was looking at me like I was crazy and that’s exactly how I felt. “An image of Duane,” I said. Given the look on her face, I decided not to tell her what else I’d seen. “It freaked me out, that’s all.” I tried to smile. “No big deal, but that’s enough for now.” I left the room and closed the door behind me, glad to be alone. Before going to my bedroom I sat on the couch in the dark and stroked Stitch’s back, feeling sick over my vision of Hilary and what it almost certainly meant. Stitch shoved the top of his head against my chin and then hopped down and ran to the door.
“Ready to peruse the neighborhood?”
He meowed and rubbed his back along the doorframe.
“Stay out of trouble,” I said and watched him bounce down the stairway. Even with the locked entryway he always managed to slip in and out as neighbors came and went. In the morning he’d be waiting outside the apartment door. I got into bed and pressed tightly against Nick’s back still feeling anxious about the images.
“Your heart’s pounding,” he said. “You okay?”
“It shows me things,” I said and felt his body stiffen. “I see images, things that have happened or things that are coming. I know it sounds crazy. My grandmother had what they called the gift, my mother thinks I have it too.”
He rolled toward me. “Is that why she said it was your fault when Hilary was raped?”
I nodded. “But it wasn’t. I didn’t see it coming.”
“But you blame yourself?”
I shrugged. “I think Hilary does. That’s why I started using it again. To see if it would show me anything that could help her.”
“And?”
“It’s shown me a lot more than I wish it had.”
Nick pulled me close against him. “It’s just a game,” he whispered and kissed the top of my head.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Let’s just say that most of the things you’ve done I find a little unbelievable, but I’m going to reserve judgment and stick around for a while to see how it all plays out.”
“Then what?”
“I’m gonna stick around a little longer.”
“How about a lot longer?”
“I can do that too.”
I snuggled closer and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t erase the image of Hilary from my head—her eyes blank, lifeless. I don’t know what time it was when I finally gave in to sleep. But it seemed only minutes had passed until the apartment door slammed and the sound of feet retreating down the stairway had me sitting bolt upright in an empty bed.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“What’s all the noise?” I asked coming into the living room.
The apartment door was wide open. I stepped into the hallway and as I did Nick came up the stairway with Stitch in his arms. I knew the moment I looked at him that he was dead.
“What happened?” I ran to him and reached for Stitch, tears already streaming down my cheeks. I took Stitch into my arms and pressed my face into his orange fur.
“I’m so sorry,” Nick said guiding me back into the apartment.
Amelia was standing in the living room. “Oh my God,” she said. “What happened?”
“Where was he? How did you...?” I stopped when I saw the look on Nick’s face.
He shook his head. “I came out to make coffee and heard something scraping at the door. When I opened it, Stitch was hanging from the doorknob.”
For the first time I noticed a thin cord buried in the orange fur. “He was hanging... Someone hung him from the door?”
Nick nodded.
I collapsed onto the couch, hugged Stitch against my chest and rocked him. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, baby.”
“That’s not all,” Nick said sitting down beside me. “This was attached to the cord.”
He held a piece of white paper in front of my face. It was nothing more than a blur. “I can’t see it,” I said, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my bathrobe.
Nick took a breath and then read,
“Stay out of it or you’ll have more than a dead cat to deal with.”
“That son of a bitch,” I said. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“Cecily, it’s time for DeLonge to get involved,” Nick said.
Amelia set a cup of tea on the table, sat down and put her arm around my shoulders. “You can’t wait any longer. Give him everything we have and it’ll be over. You’ll be off the hook.”
I shook her off, stood up and went to the bedroom. From inside the trunk at the foot of my bed I took a blue and gray blanket and wrapped Stitch in its warmth, then I got dressed and carried him back to the living room. “I have to take care of him.”
Nick stood. “Let me do it for you.”
Hesitantly, I placed Stitch in Nick’s arms then kissed his orange head for the last time.
“You stay here until I get back.”
I sank onto the couch beside Amelia and she put her arm around my shoulders.
“Nick’s right about getting DeLonge involved,” she said.
“Delonge is involved, believe me. I see his little Smurfs out of the corner of my eye all the time keeping tabs on me.” I took a sip of tea and closed my eyes trying to hold onto the feeling of Stitch curled in my lap and the warmth of him snuggled against my neck at night.
“Have they set a trial date?” Amelia asked.
“Three weeks,” I said through a fresh deluge of tears.
She hugged me close. “We’ll get him and when we do he’s gonna pay for everything, one way or another.”
I nodded. “That’s the plan.”
* * *
An hour later Nick was back and Amelia left for work. We sat on the couch sipping coffee, trying to negotiate a compromise. We weren’t getting very far.
“All right, look,” Nick said. He stood up and walked over to his jacket hanging on the back of a chair. “I knew you wouldn’t take my advice and I don’t know what Dobbs is planning so the least I can do is make sure you can protect yourself.” He took a small silver handgun from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“What the hell?” I said. “I don’t want that.”
“I don’t care what you want. If you’re dead set on doing this yourself, then don’t be stupid. I’m going to show you how to handle this and you better be prepared to use it if you need to.” He sat down beside me and laid the gun across his palm. “It’s small and lightweight, just a 4.5-inch barrel, but it’s a 9 millimeter and it’ll do the job. Just point it and pull the trigger. It’s accurate.”
I looked at him. “I don’t want it.”
“Put it in your bag and forget about it, but it’ll be there if you need it. Do it for me.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Who said anything about fair?”
“What if I get caught with it?”
“If you have to, you can ditch it. It can’t be traced. Although I’d prefer you didn’t.”
“Aren’t there serial numbers on it?”
He shook his head. “Not on that one.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I used to be a cop, remember? I have contacts in high places.”
“Like prison?”
“Exactly. Now get a jacket. I’m going to show you how to use it.”
We drove to the Southern Maine Rod and Gun Club just outside of Portland. The long strip of land that runs from Gray Road to the Maine Turnpike was once a military training ground. A couple of cops nodded to Nick as we passed, but most of them ignored us.
“No friends on the force?” I asked.
“Most cops don’t think too highly of a guy who gives up his career for his wife.”
“Why did you?”
“It didn’t seem worth the risk after Sam was born. I wanted to make sure I was around for the milestones.” He handed me a set of earplugs. “Put these in.”
“If you left the force, why did your marriage end?”
“The force never left me. I missed all the fun.”
“The fun?”
“Yeah.” He aimed his Glock at the silhouette image of a man hanging in front of him and put a bullet through its forehead.
Chapter Thirty-Five
It was a rare ninety-degree day in late September and the parking lot at Maine Medical Center offered no relief. I sat in my car and watched vapors rise like summer ghosts from the hot top, distorting the shapes of radials and retreads. Drops of sweat slipped from my hairline, to my neck, to between my breasts and formed a horizontal smear across my salmon-colored tee. I wondered how things had deteriorated this far and this fast. No Ben, no Stitch and Duane Wainwright was dead. I seemed to be losing people and pets at a pretty fast pace. Not that I was ever close to Duane Wainwright, but he turned out to be an important part of my life, indirectly. Crossing the parking lot toward the hospital, I told myself it had to be this way. The end was coming and it was right that I would face it with Amelia and Hilary.
I pushed the up button for the elevator and waited, relishing the air conditioning. Hilary was standing in the hallway when the doors parted.
“Hey.” She smiled, adding a measure of happiness to the healthy face in front of me.
“You look great,” I said.
“I should. I’ve dried out, seen the light and am now a chem-free zone.”
“Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?”
She shrugged. “It’s all good, at least until next time.”
“Can’t you just say there won’t be a next time?”
She nodded back toward the door to the rehab unit. “Believe me, I have, over and over again. Why do you think they’re letting me out?”
“You’re out?”
“Just for a walk right now, baby steps, ya know? But I’ll be discharged in a few days.”
“Even after your slip?”
“My father died. Worse, he was murdered. They didn’t excuse it, but said it was understandable and the fact that I got myself right back in here said a lot. So instead of starting all over, I’m still on track as long as I follow up with my new shrink.”
Hilary swung the door wide and I followed her onto the ward. When we signed in at the desk the morning paper caught my eye. Wainwright’s picture was on the lower half of the front page. A step in the right direction from a few days ago when it was front and center and the bold print above the picture had read Local Lawyer Charged with Millers Falls Murder. I flipped the paper over, but not before she noticed.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m okay. What’s happening with that Dobbs guy? Do you know for sure that he’s involved?”
I followed her down the hallway and into the Day Room. “Yeah, he’s involved, but I have to find a way to prove it.”
“Can’t the police help?”
“The cops think they have their killer.”
She smiled. “You do fit the profile.” She fell onto the couch, picked up the remote and pointing it at the television, started to surf.
“You watch too much TV.”
“What else have I got to do?”
I checked her hands out of the corner of my eye. No shakes. She looked wonderful, yet I cringed remembering her words in the hallway, until the next time. Over the years I’d come to understand that attitude as self-preservation. If she treated falling off the wagon as an expectation it hurt less when she hit the ground.
“Ben and I split up,” I said.
“I heard. Amelia told me. I wanted to ask you about it at the funeral, but my head wasn’t working real well. What happened?”
“Lots of irreconcilable differences, which you already know, but mostly because of the whole Dobbs thing. Basically he told me to choose between him and my work.” That was about as specific as I could get with her for now.
“He should know you better than t
hat.”
“That’s just it. He should have, but he doesn’t. Better to realize that now than ten years from now.”
“You think you would have lasted that long?”
I thought about Nick and how much better it was to be with someone who knew you and hung around anyway. “It might have, but only because I didn’t know any better.”
“And now you do?”
I nodded and smiled.
“Marquette?”
“He knows me.”
“And he likes what he sees.”
“Seems to, crazy as it sounds.”
“It doesn’t sound crazy at all,” she said. Settling on a rerun of The Office, she dropped the remote onto the couch.
“I gotta go,” I said. “I just wanted to see how you were doing and get a dose of balls before going after Dobbs.”
She laughed. “You got your own, you just don’t know it.”
Riding down in the elevator I leaned my head against the metal wall and closed my eyes. There was way too much going on. I forced my thoughts back to Hilary. Knowing the whole story about Dobbs would either enable her to finally leave the past or be the catalyst for another bender. She’d always been so hard to read. One minute she was bringing a shovel down on Jarod’s head, the next she was pouring booze and pills down her throat to make it through the day. And here I was again needing her “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. Whether it was real or not didn’t matter, it’s what drove me. It’s one of the reasons I can’t let go of her. She saved me when I was a scared, little kid. Now she fed herself a diet of vodka and pills while I tried to save her. Sometimes I think it would take years to unravel all the knots that hold us together. Most of the time I don’t want to try.
Chapter Thirty-Six
At nine o’clock the next morning I called Nick to check in and got voicemail. He was in New Hampshire for a couple of days finishing up another case, and while he was gone the plan was for me to start working on Dobbs’s history in Millers Falls. Chances were the third person was an acquaintance of his, since Wainwright didn’t have any friends that we knew of.
In the Shadow of Revenge Page 19
