Ms. Jacobsen watched her daughter walk out, and then turned to me. “Sit down, Matt. Well, what have you been up to in the woods? What is that, some kind of uniform?”
I shook my head. “Just hiking gear,” I said, lamely. “I…got lost and couldn’t get my bearings for a couple of days.”
“You were safe enough, though.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your gun,” she said, frowning. “You English boys always go walking with Glocks in your belts?”
“Em…”
“Never mind.” She got up and came over to me. “I don’t want to know the details. You listen to me, Matt—if that’s your real name. My Mary’s had a troubled life. She’s too trusting. This isn’t the first time she’s got involved with a man most parents would have shot before he got inside.”
“But I’m not your daughter’s—”
She raised a hand. “Hear me out. I’m not overpossessive, but I have to look after Mary every time a worthless piece of shit turns her head and then dumps her. Men are assholes. I reckon that applies where you come from as much as here.” She looked into my eyes. “So don’t expect me to welcome you with open arms. If Mary’s happy for now, that’s okay. But remember this. The last guy who messed with her is still in hospital.” She laughed emptily. “Unfortunate hunting accident. You make sure you treat her right.”
I watched nervously as she went back to her armchair. Never mind the camp and its armed guards. I had the feeling I’d walked into an even more dangerous creature’s lair.
With the food served, the atmosphere warmed up a little in the kitchen. Ms. Jacobsen’s pot roast was superb and I made a pig of myself—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a good meal. Mary was cheerful and her mother managed to converse without savaging me. I learned that the old woman had been a legal secretary in Portland and had moved up here when she retired recently. There was a map of Maine on the kitchen wall and I was finally able to orient myself. Unfortunately, the northern part of the state seemed to be mainly trackless forest and, despite the bearings I’d taken with the compass, I didn’t have much idea where the camp might have been.
After coffee and a very good homemade blueberry cheesecake, Ms. Jacobsen said she was going to bed. Mary and I cleared up the dinner things and went back into the sitting room.
“You really haven’t told me much about yourself, Matt,” she said, her eyes on me.
“Well, I—”
“It doesn’t matter. I can see you need some time to get perspective.”
“No, it’s okay. You’ve taken a big chance for me.” I told her I’d been chased through the forest by the people whose uniform jacket I’d given her. I didn’t say why—not that I was too clear on that myself. I said that I’d taken the uniform after I’d come round and found myself naked. I didn’t feel up to telling any more lies and my memory was steadfastly refusing to provide any more information.
“So,” Mary said, “what’s our plan?”
Her mother’s warning was still ringing in my ears. “We haven’t got a plan,” I said, keeping my eyes off her. “You stay here with your mother.”
“Matt!” she said irately. “The troopers are looking for me, too, remember?”
“Like I said, go back and say I threatened you. You’re a schoolteacher. Why should they think you’re lying.”
“No chance! I’m helping you and that’s final.”
I thought about it. I could certainly do with help, especially with the FBI doing their best to frame me. Besides, my journey though the forest had made me keen to avoid being alone again. But why was Mary so desperate? A few seconds later I got the answer—suddenly her lips were on mine, her body crushing against me. I had a flash of the woman with blond hair, and a feeling of guilt; I was sure the woman meant a lot to me, and tried to detach myself. But Mary was like a force of nature and pinned me against the couch.
“Stop,” I gasped, managing to twist my mouth away. “You don’t even know me.” I could have added that I didn’t know myself.
“I know this is right,” she said, getting her lips back on mine.
I was going to have to distract her. “We’ve got to get out of here,” I said, after I’d slipped aside again. “I don’t want to involve your mother in this.”
“Don’t worry,” Mary said, smiling. “They won’t link her to us. No one in Sparta knows where she lives—she doesn’t go into town.”
“But they’ll find her soon enough. The FBI is after me, not just the local idiots.”
“Mom can look after herself,” Mary said.
I had a feeling she was right on that count. “Can I borrow her pickup? You can say I made you give me the keys.”
“Forget it, Matt. If you want the pickup, I’m coming too.” She nudged me in the ribs. “You’ll need me—I know the back roads.”
Shit. I didn’t really have any option but to take her. She would be a big help and there was no time to argue.
“All right, Mary. But we have to go now.”
She kissed me hard on the lips. “I take it Washington, D.C., is the final destination? You need to find out who thinks you’re a murderer.”
I nodded. “I don’t suppose there are any old clothes I could borrow?”
Mary laughed. “That’s how an Englishman asks politely, is it? Yeah, one of my old boyfriends was about your size. He left a suitcase behind.”
I wondered if Ms. Jacobsen had made him an offer he’d decided to accept, her shotgun pointed at his groin. She went out of the room and returned with a pair of jeans, a checked shirt and a padded jacket.
“Here you are. I told Mom we’re leaving.”
“What about your work?”
“I’ll call in sick.” She didn’t bother looking away while I undressed. “Won’t be the first time. Hey, you could do with a shower, English.”
She was right. I followed her to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. The hot water felt great and when I’d finished, I almost felt human again. Then I remembered how many people were on my tail.
To my surprise, instead of feeling helpless, I found that I was ready to take anyone on. I didn’t know why I was being targeted, but I was going to find out. It occurred to me that it might be the last thing I did. Too bad. I would go down fighting.
Mary was waiting for me in the hall, a cooler bag beside her. “I took the rest of the pot roast,” she said, her eyes glinting, “since you seemed to like it so much—and various other things. Where we’re going, there aren’t too many malls.”
We went out to the pickup. I transferred the rifle and other weapons from her car, stowing them under the seat.
“I’ll drive,” I said.
She pushed me out of the way. “Me first. You can look at the scenery.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“So it is.” She laughed. “You can tell me all about London, then.”
“Right.” I wondered how much I would be able to remember.
A few minutes later, we were heading up a narrow road, back into the Maine woods that I loved so much.
Twenty-Two
Abraham Singer pushed his glasses above his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He had been examining the medieval text since seven in the morning. Getting up from his office desk, he went over to the window. The lights of Georgetown spread out beneath him, those of central Washington visible in the distance.
The university had put him on the top floor of the building. At first he’d considered complaining, as there was no elevator and his knees weren’t as good as they had been, but he’d quickly realized the benefits. He got the daily exercise that Naomi had been nagging him about since the bypass operation, plus—even more important—there was very little noise up here. Not that it mattered. He’d be retiring from the department in under a year.
The elderly scholar ran his fingers through his beard and looked at his watch. He should have gone home hours ago, but the text promised some new insights into the kabbalah, and he c
ouldn’t resist working on it to the exclusion of every other consideration. Naomi would be annoyed, but she’d have gone to bed already. He’d get an earful at breakfast.
Abraham looked at one of the photographs on his desk—him and Naomi on their wedding day all those years ago in Jerusalem. He had been doing his military service and hardly recognized his young self, his face fleshless and his body rake-thin. Naomi’s cheeks dimpled and her dark hair glowing in the sunlight, even in black and white. There weren’t many people at the celebration as both their families had been ravaged by the Holocaust. The Singers had lived in Nuremberg and had been sent to the camps early in the war. Abraham’s parents survived, but both had been taken by cancer soon after they’d arrived in the home country. Naomi’s mother had also returned from Auschwitz, but she never spoke of it. She had still managed to be the most cheerful person Abraham ever met.
He took in the shots of their children—David, a lecturer in film at Berkeley, and Judith, a journalist in Miami. They had given him great joy, as did the five grandchildren, but, if he was truthful, he would have to admit that his work had always taken priority.
Abraham Singer was that rare bird, a scholar of Jewish religion with serious misgivings about the ancient faith. The easy answer would have been that the fact of the Nazi horrors had created an entirely justifiable skepticism. He knew that wasn’t the whole story. He needed to believe, he needed to maintain a link with the past that was creative and fertile, but he found much of the ritual primitive and obscurantist. That was why he had established lines of academic debate with Christian and Muslim scholars who harbored similar attitudes about their own faiths. But it wasn’t enough. He was still haunted by the suspicion that somewhere in the mass of manuscripts and texts was hidden the key to an intellectually rigorous traditional belief. He knew that feeling was as deeply rooted in Jewish tradition as the orthodoxy he distrusted, but it was irresistible.
And so he had turned to the kabbalah. The problem was that the ancient and medieval texts contained as much contradictory information as the most dedicated controversialist could desire. Although he was a rationalist, he couldn’t resist delving into the mystic wisdom that tried to link God and the universe with the individual mind and body. To his surprise, he even found the occult text of Cornelius Agrippa fascinating in its identification of kabbalah with magic and the mystic meanings of numbers.
Abraham Singer walked across to the mirror above the disused fireplace. The building had once been a town house and he supposed that this would have been a servant’s room. The floorboards creaked and the windows, still in their original frames, were hell to open. He glanced at himself and shook his head. Sixty-five, but he looked much older. Perhaps that was the price you paid for ignoring ordinary life and burying yourself in books.
There was a soft knocking at the door. The professor was surprised. Normally he heard people coming up the stairs. Besides, who would be in the building after ten at night? It must be the cleaner.
Abraham went over to the locked door—he had taken the university’s security instructions seriously ever since one of his colleagues had been robbed at knifepoint a few months earlier.
“Yo, Professor, I gotta take your garbage,” came an accented voice.
Singer didn’t recognize it. Then again, the cleaners changed all the time. He turned the key, expecting a young Latino. Instead, what he saw made him step backward in horror, his hands raised. He was pushed hard in the chest and fell to the floor.
Then the light was taken from his eyes.
Peter Sebastian climbed out of the helicopter onto a football field on the outskirts of Sparta, Maine. The nearest field office was Boston, so he was on his own up here. He had left Dana Maltravers behind to keep an eye on the Washington end.
At least the state troopers were making an effort. The area commander had driven up when he was advised Sebastian was on the way and they had coordinated checkpoints on the main roads in all directions. Although the wanted man had been seen leaving the town heading south, he could have changed direction on the back roads. Unfortunately there weren’t enough officers to cover all the possibilities, but if Matt Wells was planning on crossing into Canada, he’d probably have to do so on foot.
“This woman who’s helping him, who is she?” Sebastian asked after they’d got into the unmarked car.
“Name of Mary Upson,” Major Arthur Stevens replied. “Grade-school teacher. Trooper Condon can tell you more.”
“He can also tell me how he managed to lose the wanted man,” Sebastian said sharply. “My understanding is that your guy had him at his mercy.”
The major kept his eyes on the road. “Seems the suspect knows how to handle himself.”
They arrived at the state troopers’ station. The three men in uniform straightened their backs when they saw their superior officer.
Peter Sebastian swept up the steps. “I want to see Trooper Condon.” He stopped inside the door and eyed the young man who had followed him. “Take me somewhere private. You don’t want your bosses to hear this.” He looked beyond him. “I’ll handle it from here, Major,” he called.
Stu Condon opened the office door and took him inside. “He pulled a gun on me,” he said, before the FBI man could speak. “I couldn’t—”
“What kind of gun?”
“A Glock,” the trooper replied, his face pale. “Seventeen shot, I reckon.” He paused. “He…he took mine, too.”
“Another seventeen?”
Condon nodded, his eyes to the floor. “And…and he had a combat knife in his belt. On his back.”
“Is that the full total of his arsenal?” Sebastian asked, acidly.
The trooper shook his head. “I saw a rifle on his shoulder before he got into the car.”
The Bureau man’s eyes widened. “A rifle?”
“Yes, sir. I think it was an M16.”
“Jesus Christ! Where did he get that?”
“Couldn’t say, sir.”
Sebastian glared at him. “What can you say about the woman, then?”
“Mary Upson? Schoolteacher, sir. Been here a year.”
“I’m looking for local knowledge here, Trooper. She married? Have a boyfriend? What kind is she—lively, reliable, depressive, what?”
Condon looked at him awkwardly. “Well, sir, I don’t really know. She isn’t married. I don’t think she has a boyfriend. Don’t know if she has any friends, actually. She goes to the bar at weekends. Sometimes leaves with guys.” He looked away.
Sebastian laughed. “How about you, Trooper? I see you’re wearing a ring. You try your chances?”
Trooper Condon shrugged. “Nothing happened.”
“All right, I’m not interested in your private life. This Mary sounds like a bit of a live wire.”
“Yeah, I guess she can be. Sometimes she gets raging drunk. Then she won’t let anybody near her.”
“What about at school? Is she popular?”
Stu Condon chewed his lip. “My…my wife is a teacher, too. She doesn’t like Mary. Says she’s a troublemaker, always trying to change procedures. The kids seem to appreciate her, though.”
“She got any family here?”
“No, sir. I heard she was from Portland.”
Sebastian called in the major.
“Have your people in Portland been notified about Mary Upson? Apparently she’s from there.”
Stevens nodded. “They’re checking on her now. Shouldn’t take long.”
The FBI man glanced at Trooper Condon. “I take it your men know about the weapons Wells is carrying?”
“They do. Anything more you can tell us about this guy?”
“Yeah,” Sebastian said. “He’s a judo and karate black belt, he knows boxing and he’s trained in rifle and pistol use. Oh, and he’s killed at least one person before.”
Major Stevens and Trooper Condon exchanged glances.
“Um, there’s been a development,” the major said.
“Spit it out,” Seb
astian said, instantly alert. “Has he been sighted?”
“No. But local troopers have found two men tied up behind a house not far from here.”
“Who are they?”
“We’re not sure. There’s no ID on them. They’d been knocked unconscious and only recently attracted attention—one of the locals heard shouting and called it in.”
“Wells,” Sebastian hissed.
“But why would he have been involved with them?” Stu Condon asked. He ran his hand over his short hair. “There was something strange about Mary Upson. She was wearing a kind of uniform jacket, gray like the pants Wells had. And her jeans were trashed.”
Peter Sebastian eyed him dubiously. “Anything else you haven’t told us?”
The trooper pursed his lips. “No. But why did they come into the station house, if he’s on the run like you say?”
The Bureau man gave him a tight smile. “Let us do the thinking, Stu. This uniform, what was it? Military?”
“I don’t know.” Condon glanced at the major. “I never saw it before. There were some letters on the shoulder, but I can’t remember them.”
Sebastian’s cell phone rang. He answered it and then groaned. “Another one? Jesus, Dana, what’s going on?” He held the phone tightly to his ear. “Yes, I realize that means Wells couldn’t have done it. But he could still have killed the first two victims and got up here on the early shuttle. He’s involved some—what’s that?” He rolled his eyes. “Yes, obviously using a false ID. Have you checked the airport CCTV? Well, get on with it. Anyway, he could still have a confederate who did the latest one.” He listened again. “Okay, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Bad news?” the major asked.
“Yes,” Sebastian said, “very bad news indeed.”
He stepped past them, his expression thunderous.
Nora Jacobsen drove her daughter’s Toyota out of the shed and down the driveway. It was a chilly night and the ground wasn’t quite soft enough to register tracks. When she got back, she would rake the gravel. The place she was heading was a couple of miles up the road. The local farmer dumped his old machines in a clearing he’d made in the woods. She’d leave Mary’s car there. Old Snodgrass wouldn’t even notice. Better still, the law wouldn’t, either.
Maps of Hell Page 14
