Gray Ghost

by William G. Tapply

  “It just wouldn’t feel right,” she said. “Like you taking that deputy’s badge. Some things, it really doesn’t help to analyze them. You’ve got to consult your heart.”

  Calhoun cleared his throat. “You don’t have to explain, honey. It’s okay.”

  She turned her face and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then she pushed herself up off his lap. She stood there in his baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants looking down at him. Her face was wet. “I’m gonna leave now, Stoney, before I lose all my courage.”

  He looked up at her and nodded.

  She turned, went halfway down the steps, then stopped and looked up at him. “Is that all you’ve got to say?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “About what I just said,” she said. “Do you have an opinion?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “You could—you could tell me I’m wrong. You could argue. You could have some emotion. You could … fight for what you want.” She was still crying. Or maybe she’d stopped and had started all over again. “You think I’m doing the right thing?”

  “I’m pretty sure you’ve given it a lot of thought, honey. Nobody knows what the right thing is. Like you said, you consult your heart and make your best guess.”

  “Don’t you care?”

  Calhoun shook his head. “That ain’t really a question, is it?”

  Kate smiled at him through her tears. “There’s nobody like you, Stoney Calhoun,” she said. Then she turned and continued down the steps.

  Calhoun started to follow her.

  At the bottom of the steps she turned and looked up at him. “Don’t come down, Stoney. Please. Just stay right there and wave to me when I go.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Okay.”

  She swiped her wrist across her eyes. “I’ll see you at the shop tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “We’re still partners, don’t forget,” she said.

  He nodded. “Partners. You bet.”

  She got into her truck, backed around, and started up the driveway.

  Calhoun lifted his hand, and Kate flicked her headlights.

  He stood there on his deck until the sound of the Toyota’s engine faded away in the distance. Then he collected the knives and forks and plates and glasses from the table and took them into the kitchen.

  Calhoun was back out on the deck sipping coffee and looking at the stars and listening to some blues from the radio in the house. It was about an hour since Kate had left, and already he was feeling lonely and bereft. He wondered how he was going to work beside her, knowing she didn’t want them to be anything more than business partners.

  Ralph, who had a good sense for Calhoun’s moods, had curled up right under his feet, trying to give him comfort.

  When he heard the car engine out on the road half a mile away downshifting and turning into his driveway, he hoped it was Kate, coming back to say she’d changed her mind, or that it was the sheriff, saying he’d been wrong to be upset and wanted to be friends again.

  But Calhoun’s ears told him the engine wasn’t Kate’s truck or the sheriff’s Explorer. It was that damn Audi sedan, which meant the Man in the Suit had come back.

  Calhoun went inside, took his Remington twelve-gauge autoloader off the pegs, made sure it was loaded with Number 8 bird-shot, and went back out onto the deck.

  The Audi pulled into the place next to Calhoun’s boat where Kate had parked earlier. Its headlights went off, the driver’s door opened, and the Man in the Suit stepped out. He looked up at the deck, shielded his eyes against the glare of the floodlights, and said, “You can put that damn shotgun down, Stoney. I’m not here to rob you.”

  “Shoot all trespassers,” Calhoun said. “You’re the one who gave me that advice.”

  “And damn good advice it is,” said the Man in the Suit. “Except I’m not a trespasser. I’m your friend.”

  “Friend,” said Calhoun. “Not hardly. Well, come on up. It ain’t even midnight yet. Good time for a visit.”

  The Man in the Suit was wearing a gray suit with a pale blue shirt and a dark blue necktie and shiny black shoes. He always wore a suit, and it was generally gray, just like the rest of him. Gray, indistinct, utterly forgettable. He’d never mentioned his name to Calhoun, and Calhoun didn’t want to suggest he had any interest whatsoever in the man by asking. He just thought of him as the Man in the Suit. He’d been dropping in at odd, unexpected times ever since Calhoun moved to the woods in Maine. His mission was always the same: to try to determine what Calhoun remembered about the time in his life before he’d been zapped by lightning.

  Calhoun understood that he’d known things—secrets, he guessed, information that was important and valuable—and whoever the Man in the Suit worked for didn’t want him to remember them.

  Calhoun understood that remembering would be dangerous.

  The fact was, he remembered nothing, but the Man in the Suit had made it clear that even if something from before did pop into Calhoun’s head, it would be in his best interest to deny it.

  So each time the Audi pulled into Calhoun’s dooryard, they danced their little dance, the Man in the Suit asking Calhoun what he remembered, and Calhoun saying he remembered nothing, and the Man in the Suit never knowing whether he was lying or telling the truth. As far as Calhoun could tell, the Man in the Suit always assumed that he was lying, but he never pushed it.

  When the Man in the Suit first started coming to visit, Calhoun threatened to shoot him, and he was at least half serious. The whole idea of the Man in the Suit scared him and made him mad. Pretty soon the Remington twelve-gauge became a kind of joke between them.

  Not that Calhoun trusted him, or especially liked him. The Man in the Suit worked for the government. He knew everything about Calhoun’s forgotten life. He used what he knew to bribe and bully Calhoun, who protected himself by pretending it was all irrelevant to him.

  The Man in the Suit came up the steps and sat in the same Adirondack chair that Kate had been sitting in barely an hour earlier. “Who’s that?” he said.

  “Who’s who?”

  “The music. On the piano.”

  “That’s Oscar Peterson. Everybody knows Oscar Peterson.”

  The Man in the Suit shrugged. “It’s nice.” He jerked his chin at Calhoun’s coffee mug, sitting on the table. “What’re you drinking?”

  “Coffee. Want some?”

  “No. Got a Coke?”

  Calhoun went inside and returned the shotgun to its pegs on the wall. Then he snagged a can of Coke from the refrigerator, took it back out, and put it on the table in front of the Man in the Suit.

  “Thanks, Stoney.” He cracked it open, took a swig, put it down, and peered at Calhoun. “So—”

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  The Man in the Suit nodded. “Okay.”

  “So you can leave now. I’m going to bed.”

  “Anything you’d like to know?” said the Man in the Suit. “From before, I mean?”

  Calhoun shook his head. “Nope. I’m all set.”

  The Man in the Suit smiled. “I understand you’ve had some, um, stress recently.”

  How the hell did he find out about Kate so quick? Calhoun thought. The son of a bitch had a way of worming into Calhoun’s life, of knowing things that were none of his damn business. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

  “Sheriff Dickman. He needs you, he asked for your help, and you turned him down. Why’d you do that, Stoney?”

  “That ain’t your affair.”

  “Sure. You’re absolutely right about that. Still, I don’t understand. There’s that murdered body, throat cut, burned and mutilated, which is pretty damned interesting, and you got a chance to help out, help a friend, help your society, and you refused. That’s not being a good citizen.”

  “I’m not interested in some murdered body,” Calhoun said, “whether it’s burned and mutilated or not. And I don’t care about being a
good citizen. And I don’t care whether you understand or not. And it pisses me off that you’re so damn nosy.”

  The Man in the Suit shook his head. “Sometimes you disappoint me, Stoney.”

  “Disappointing you don’t bother me one bit.” Calhoun gazed up at the stars for a minute, then looked at the Man in the Suit. “You saying I should agree to be the sheriff’s deputy? That why you’re here ? To tell me that ?”

  “I was a little surprised, that’s all. I don’t like to be surprised. I kinda thought you’d jump at the chance, and you didn’t. It makes me think I don’t understand you.”

  Calhoun shrugged. “That burned-up body ain’t my problem, just because I happened to find it.”

  “No man is an island, Stoney.”

  “Oh, Christ. You gonna burst into song?”

  The Man in the Suit smiled. “The sheriff could use you. It’d be good for you. You’ve got talents, you know. You shouldn’t let them go to waste.”

  “I got talents, all right,” said Calhoun. “I can steer a boat in the fog. I can smell bluefish from a mile away. I can cast a whole fly line with just one backcast. And if you don’t get the hell out of here, you’ll see how accurate I can be with that twelve-gauge of mine.”

  The Man in the Suit held up both hands. “You’ll do what you want. I know that. I’m just saying, as a friend, you ought to reconsider working with the sheriff. Just give it some thought.”

  “If I say okay, will you go?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. I’ll give it some thought.”

  The Man in the Suit drained his Coke, then stood up. He held out his hand. “Shake on it, then.”

  Calhoun shook his hand.

  “That’s smart, Stoney.”

  “I only said I’d think about it. I didn’t say I’d do it.”

  “But,” said the Man in the Suit, “you will think about it, because whatever else you are, you’re a man of your word.”

  “I don’t expect to change my mind.”

  “Oh, I expect you will.” The Man in the Suit bent down, patted Ralph, who was snoozing on the deck, then straightened up and went down the steps to his car.

  Calhoun didn’t bother waving as he turned and drove out the driveway.

  Calhoun opened the shop at eight thirty the next morning. He’d left Ralph home to bark at the chipmunks and sleep under the deck. Ralph got restless if he had to spend the whole day cooped up in the shop. Kate was off on a guide trip, so except for a few customers, Calhoun had a quiet day for listening to the radio, tying flies, and thinking about things.

  A little after three in the afternoon Kate pulled her truck with her boat trailered behind it into the side lot.

  Calhoun went out to help her unload the boat and get the trailer off her truck.

  He asked her how it went.

  She said good. They caught some fish. The clients seemed to enjoy it. Anything happen in the shop?

  Calhoun said nothing special.

  Then some customers showed up, and he went back inside to wait on them.

  Kate hosed out her boat, then came into the shop. She went to her office and turned on her computer.

  At five, Calhoun went back to say he was leaving.

  She looked up, smiled, and said have a nice evening.

  You, too, he said.

  Business partners. It was going to take some getting used to, he could see that.

  Something was wrong. He sensed it just about the time he turned into his driveway. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t know where that spooky feeling of unease came from. He’d felt it before, though, and he knew enough to trust it.

  So instead of continuing to drive his truck down the rutted driveway to his house, he pulled off the side into the bushes. He got out, pulled his .30-30 Winchester Model 94 lever-action deer rifle out from the floor behind the seat, jacked a cartridge into the chamber, and walked. He went slowly, holding the rifle at port arms, careful not to snap a twig or rustle a branch, and when he knew his house was just around the next bend, he slipped off the roadway into the woods.

  He took a curving route that brought him to the rear of his house. He paused there behind the bushes that bordered the yard. He saw no movement except the rustle of leaves in the breeze. He heard nothing except the caw of a distant crow. He smelled nothing except pine needles.

  He slipped around through the woods to the front of the cabin, and that’s when he saw the strange vehicle parked in the turnaround next to his boat.

  It was a small green SUV, a Subaru Forester. Calhoun went to the place in his brain that remembered all the vehicles he’d noticed in the past six years, scanned down through the images, and identified this one. He’d seen it just a few days earlier, in the parking area at the landing in Portland. The area had been dimly lit, and Calhoun hadn’t paid any conscious attention to the vehicle, but there it was, vivid and specific in his memory.

  This vehicle belonged to Paul Vecchio, the history professor from Penobscot College, the man Calhoun had taken fishing, the man who’d discovered that burned-up body on Quarantine Island.

  He held the short-barreled deer rifle like a pistol, the barrel resting on his shoulder, stepped out of the woods into his yard, and called, “Hey. Mr. Vecchio.”

  Two bad things happened.

  First, Mr. Vecchio did not answer.

  Second, Ralph did not come scampering down off the deck or in from the woods to greet him, which he normally did without being called when Calhoun came home.

  Again Calhoun called. “Mr. Vecchio. Paul. You here?”

  Then: “Ralph, where the hell are you?”

  No response from either of them.

  He crept up the stairs to his deck, moving silently on the balls of his feet, holding his rifle with both hands, ready to shoot.

  When he saw Paul Vecchio, he lowered the weapon.

  Vecchio was sitting in the same Adirondack chair where Kate, and then the Man in the Suit, had sat the previous evening.

  Except Mr. Vecchio’s eyes were half-lidded, and he had a shiny red blotch on his chest, and it was pretty obvious that he was dead.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Calhoun laid the .30-30 on the table and went over to look at Paul Vecchio. The blood that smeared the front of his pale blue shirt was dark and sticky-looking. There appeared to be three wounds, two high on the right side of his chest, the other lower, in the middle of his belly. The ones in his chest had done most of the bleeding. Calhoun couldn’t tell how big the bullet holes were under Vecchio’s shirt.

  He squatted down on the deck so that he was eye-level with Paul Vecchio. Even in death, the professor looked mild-mannered and friendly. He seemed to be looking at Calhoun out of the sides of his half-closed eyes, and one corner of his mouth was crinkled into half a grin, as if he were sharing some joke, waiting for Calhoun to laugh.

  He remembered how Vecchio had whooped and hollered and shouted how much fun he was having when they’d found the blitzing stripers and blues. He was the kind of man who hugged life against his chest, who jumped in up to his ears.

  Now he slouched there in Calhoun’s Adirondack chair, still as a stone. Those twinkling eyes were cloudy. His grin was frozen on his face.

  Son of a bitch.

  Calhoun blew out a breath and pushed himself to his feet. If he couldn’t save Paul Vecchio’s life, maybe he could avenge it.

  And if something had happened to his dog …

  He went to the deck railing and yelled for Ralph.

  He waited. Yelled again.

  Where was that dog?

  Without thinking about what he was doing, Calhoun surveyed the crime scene. He looked around the deck for spent cartridge casings or anything else that might be evidence. All he found that hadn’t been there when he’d left in the morning was a purple plastic sunscreen bottle lying beside the chair Vecchio was sitting in. It looked like it might have fallen out of his hand when he was shot. Calhoun remembered that Mr. Vecchio was pretty sold on the im
portance of sunscreen.

  He knew better than to touch anything, even a fallen bottle of sunscreen. He continued looking around the deck for spent cartridges and found nothing, which meant that either the shooter had picked up his empties or he’d been using a revolver.

  He climbed down off the deck and looked under it in case one of the cartridge cases had fallen through the cracks between the floorboards. None had. Then he scanned the parking area. He didn’t have much hope of finding tire tracks or footprints. There hadn’t been any rain for a week, and the ground was hard and dry, and anyway, there had been quite a bit of traffic at Calhoun’s house lately. The sheriff, Kate, the Man in the Suit, Calhoun himself with his truck and trailered boat, and now Mr. Vecchio.

  Still, Calhoun looked carefully, mentally dividing the area into quadrants and studying each one systematically.

  He noticed nothing.

  Next he climbed back onto the deck and went into the house. He looked around, touching nothing, comparing what he saw with the memory images of how each room had looked when he’d left that morning.

  He was convinced that nobody had been inside.

  He thought about looking into Vecchio’s Subaru for clues, but decided against it. He figured he’d better leave that to the police.

  Judging by the length of the shadows and the color of the sky, he judged it was about ten minutes before seven in the evening. The sheriff was probably home by now, but since he’d refused to become a deputy and help him with his investigation, Calhoun felt funny about calling him at home. You could call a friend at home for any reason, even business. When you were no longer friends, you didn’t do that.

  So he picked up the portable phone in the kitchen and called the sheriff’s office and, as expected, got the answering service. He gave the woman his name and number and assured her that it was an emergency.

  She said the sheriff would call him right away.

  He took the phone out onto the deck and put it on the table. He went to the railing and yelled for Ralph again. The fact that he had to call him at all was seriously worrisome. Ralph never needed to be called. Whenever Calhoun came home from the shop or after a day of guiding, no matter what time it was, Ralph was always there, trotting out of the woods or down from the deck, wagging his stub tail, wanting a scratch behind the ears and a rub on the belly. Ralph would come to investigate any vehicle that he heard pulling into their yard, and he always came when he was called.