A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  That if she hadn't seen their faces, then they wouldn't have to do what he was hinting about doing. And driver-guy, his gaze chilly and unblinking like that of a snake identifying its prey-

  She didn't know yet what passenger-guy thought about killing her, she realized as she fought back panic. But the driver guy-

  Slyly he eyed her, his tongue flickering out over his thin lips in anticipation.

  Driver-guy wanted to.

  Idon't understand," said Jerrilyn Pierce, gazing around at the assembled Washington County Sheriff's Department officers and Maine State Police investigators.

  It had taken only about an hour to gather them here. Her own house had been designated a crime scene, so they'd taken Helen's mother to a room at the Motel East where they'd set up a sort of preliminary command center.

  The room had a coffee maker, a small refrigerator, a sizable bathroom, and a table with chairs pulled up to it. The draperies and big sliding glass windows were open, letting in a spectacular view of the bay and Campobello Island beyond.

  Nobody was looking at it. "Somebody… took Helen and Lee?" Jerrilyn seemed unable to comprehend this. "And her car? But why?"

  "I don't know," said Jacobia, seated across from the woman with the wad of unused tissues in her hand. Tears might come later, but for now Helen Nevelson's mother was simply in shock.

  Me, too, thought Jake. "Just answer their questions," she went on. "Anything you can think of that might help."

  Jerrilyn nodded shakily. She was a tall, ruddy-faced woman with thick, wavy salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a rubber-band-wrapped braid, wearing a man's plaid shirt, faded jeans, and tan steel-toed boots. Fit and muscular-looking, it turned out she worked on a landscaping crew over on the mainland clearing brush for new house lots going in on the north end of Boyden Lake. After Jake's call, Bob Arnold had driven to the site to get Jerrilyn, to break the news and bring her here. Next, he'd begun calling in help and organizing search teams.

  "They'll go from one end of the island to the other," he told the girl's mother. "Every house, every shed, they'll cover every inch," he assured her.

  Which at first sounded as if it might be fairly easy to do; Jerrilyn nodded, attempting a grateful smile through lips pressed together in the beginnings of panic. The whole island, after all, was only two miles wide and seven miles long.

  But that added up to fourteen square miles, some of it in streets and sidewalks but a good deal more in fields, forested areas, and stony beaches that lay straight down a hundred or more feet below the cave-riddled and precipitous granite cliffs.

  Not to mention the whole of Shackford Head State Park, a big wooded peninsula near the airfield, whose many off-trail portions could take days to investigate thoroughly.

  "Mrs. Nevelson," said one of the State Police officers. "If you could perhaps just try answering a few questions for me."

  "Pierce," Jerrilyn corrected him. "Nevelson is Helen's last name. I've remarried."

  It was just past one in the afternoon and by now every cop in Maine had fresh descriptions of the two missing persons, plus recent photographs. The one of Helen Nevelson showed a tall, broad-shouldered girl with fair hair piled up in a braid atop her head. Round-cheeked and smiling, like most Maine girls outside of the cities she didn't appear to put much stock in the current fad for emaciation.

  Or stylish clothes; jeans and a sweatshirt were her usual garb, and the snapshot of her was no exception. Handing over one of Lee—pale Dutch-boy bob, baby-toothed grin, blue eyes-Jake had thought for an awful moment that she might vomit.

  Now she walked out onto the motel room's small deck for some air, then turned back as Jerrilyn got up, too, pressing her hands together. "Maybe it's a mistake," Jerrilyn began, "maybe Helen just decided to take Leonora somewhere. For an outing, or…"

  But her voice trailed off as she remembered the chaos in the screened porch. "The little bastard," she snapped suddenly.

  "Who?" Jake asked, puzzled. There was no way Jerrilyn could have known about Ozzie Campbell.

  "Tim Barnard," Jerrilyn said, accepting a glass of water from one of the officers. Her voice strengthened slightly after a swallow of it.

  "That little pissant from Topsfield that Helen was going out with for a while," she said. "He thought he could push her around and he got ugly when she let him know he couldn't."

  She looked at Jacobia, the only other woman in the room. "He hit Helen. Can you imagine?" Even in her distress, she seemed to find this idea amusing, her lips twisting in a near-smile.

  "Not really," Jake agreed, peering again at the snapshot of Helen. Big-boned, with a fresh pink complexion, generous figure, and yellow hair, she resembled a Nordic goddess. And Tim Barnard, if Jake recalled him correctly, was indeed a little pissant.

  "She fixed him, though," Jerrilyn said grimly. "He thought she was flirting with someone—they were at the Crab with some other young people?"

  The Happy Crab was a downtown Eastport sports bar, a popular hangout for local twenty-somethings, with a large-screen TV, pool table, and finger foods, hot wings and onion blossoms and so on, plus lunch and dinner for all ages.

  "Helen turned around and slapped the taste right out of that boy's mouth," Jerrilyn went on. "Right there with all his buddies watching it. And then she put the five in the corner pocket, just like nothin’ ever happened."

  For a moment Jerrilyn looked happy. But then: " ‘Course, that wasn't how he felt about it. He starts yellin’ at her, how she can't do that to him, he's going to fix her. And when her stepdad heard the story—"

  The cops’ ears, already alerted at the mention of a violent boyfriend, pricked further.

  "Stepdad's Jody Pierce," Bob Arnold put in quickly. "Some of you might know him, registered Maine Guide, runs a hunting and fishing service a little ways up-country, out of Grand Lake."

  Bob looked around at the group. "Rest of the time he fixes all kinds of electronic equipment, in that shop of his out at his house."

  A couple of the cops nodded and glanced at each other, the tone of Bob's remarks having put them on notice that going after Jody for any of this would be barking up the wrong tree, in Bob's opinion.

  "Jody found the Barnard kid, the night after the events Mrs. Pierce, here, just described to you. Found him in that bar out on Route 214, there, in Meddybemps, ‘bout eleven o'clock."

  Some of the officers looked impatient, as if wondering what this part of Bob's narrative had to do with missing persons. Jake wondered, too, and she didn't like the way this was going anyway.

  Ozzie Campbell had called her, once before the kidnapping and again afterward, as if to make sure she understood he was behind this, nobody else. Taunting her, daring her to do anything about it. But when she'd told that to the officers all they wanted to know was had she seen anyone, and when she made it clear that she hadn't, they'd pretty much dismissed her story.

  "What about the parents?" asked one of the county deputies. "Where are they?"

  "Europe," Bob replied. "Italy. I already called the airline; they got off the plane early this morning just like they planned, right around the time we were all finishing up our breakfasts."

  "Look," Jake began impatiently again, "you don't understand. I know who did this, and—"

  "Anyway, Jody Pierce seized Tim Barnard by the collar," Bob went on, ignoring her, "hauled him out of there, put a beating on him like you wouldn't believe."

  The cops were all listening to him. "So where's Tim Barnard now?" asked the county sheriff's deputy.

  "In traction," spat Jerrilyn. "Too bad Jody didn't put him in a coma." Or worse, her tone clearly expressed.

  "And now poor Jody's got a warrant out on him for assault," she went on aggrievedly, "all because he stood up like a man and took care of his family. Which you guys didn't. None of you did."

  She fixed Bob in an accusing gaze. "I called, you know. She called, too. Helen did," she added to the men standing around in the motel room. "Called Bob, here, to say she was a-scared o
f Tim. It wasn't even the first time he'd decided to knock a girl around. Nobody ever stopped him, till Helen."

  "Now, Jerri, you know we did all we—" Bob began.

  "Sure. All you could do. Which was nothing" she accused him bitterly. "And now look. He's got some rotten friends of his, put them up to it from his hospital bed to take it out on poor Helen, when you couldn't even be bothered to…you couldn't even…"

  She bit her lip to try stopping the flood of tears that was finally coming. Jake got up and put her hand gently on Jerrilyn's heaving shoulder.

  "So this boyfriend, this Barnard guy, he's in the hospital. We're sure?" said one of the state guys. "He's still there? And the stepdad, where's he at?"

  "His name" Jerrilyn managed angrily through the tissues she clutched to her face, "is Jody. Not ‘the stepdad.’ "

  "Fine. That's fine, Mrs. Nevelson. We're just trying to—"

  "Pierce. And you're not trying!" she shouted, looking around wildly at the men. "You're just standing around with your thumbs up your butts. Why aren't you out finding the little bastards who took Helen?"

  "And Lee," Jake said quietly. Jerrilyn stopped shouting.

  "Yes," she whispered, glancing over apologetically. "Her, too."

  "All right, then," Bob Arnold said, taking charge by his voice and his body language once more. The other men, all with more authority than he had, let him do it, too, because around here the guy who knew the territory got to plot the course, and never mind how it got written up in the reports later.

  "Let's get going on what we do know," he said. "The missing car, the girls’ descriptions, the boyfriend and his friends…"

  Not mentioning Jody Pierce. But it was clear that in the others’ minds he was still on the agenda, if only long enough to get him definitively off it. Once upon a time, stepfathers had come in two flavors, heroes and villains, and it was obvious from the start which kind a particular one was.

  Nowadays, though, anything might go on behind closed doors. And a guy with a warrant automatically came under suspicion.

  Bob looked around. "Anyone mind if I go up to the hospital, talk with Tim?" he asked mildly. "He knows me," Bob explained, "so I might be able to get more out of him faster than if…"

  Nods from the other men. "And Jerri," Bob went on, "I think these guys'll be done with your house pretty soon, so you can go back there for the rest of the questions if you—"

  "Wait," said Jake. No one was talking about Ozzie Campbell. Or Lee. They seemed to assume this was just about Helen. But in that case, why take Lee? "What about the phone calls I got?"

  She searched for something else, something to convince them that they shouldn't jump to conclusions. "And what about the guys who were asking about me?" she added. "Who had a picture of me?"

  This better be good, their faces said as they all turned to her. Suddenly she was even more aware of how weak it all sounded. "In the hardware store earlier. Tom Godley said two guys were in there with a photograph of me, asking questions about me."

  Her face burned under their skeptical looks. "Strangers," she added. "And then the calls. Two strange phone calls, and I'm sure I know who—"

  "Why don't I handle that, too?" Bob cut in smoothly as the rest moved toward the door, no longer listening.

  Bob was getting her off the hook, Jake realized, saving her from looking any more foolish than she already did. Jerrilyn was frowning oddly at her, as well.

  As if, Jake thought, the thin-sounding story about strangers and phone calls was an attempt to grab the spotlight, somehow. But clearly to the others Helen's violent boyfriend was the whole focus of the investigation, now; him and his friends.

  And maybe Helen's stepfather, Jody Pierce. "Jake," Bob said when the rest had gone outside, "I know you're upset. I am, too. But we're going to get Lee back. And Helen," he added hastily at Jerrilyn's sharp look.

  Last chance, Jake thought. "Bob, he called me. Campbell… I can't prove it, but I know his voice."

  "Yeah," Bob said. "I heard you. Thing is, how you feel about it doesn't guarantee it means anything, does it? And we don't know where this Campbell guy's gotten to but what we do know is, he's not from around here."

  She took his point; she'd thought it herself, earlier. How would Campbell have even known about Lee, much less found her at Helen's secluded home? The street Helen lived on didn't even have a name, much less a sign.

  And Campbell was a big strapping guy with thinning blond hair, bushy eyebrows, and a face like a rotten orange, all swollen nose and blown red capillaries. She'd seen a brief New York news clip of him that Sandy O’Neill had e-mailed to her, just after the indictment was handed down.

  No way did he resemble either of the two guys Tom Godley had seen. "You'll talk to Tom, though? At Wadsworth's, about the—?"

  "I will. I'm not ignoring you, Jake. But what I want from you now is phone numbers where you think we can maybe get hold of Ellie and George, in case the airline doesn't manage to."

  "Oh," Jerrilyn breathed sorrowfully, looking up from the table where she'd been cradling her face in her hands. "Oh, that poor little baby's mother and dad, they're going to be so—"

  Fresh misery swamped Jake. "Do we have to call them right away? Maybe it is just a mean trick, Tim Barnard getting back at Helen, and in a couple of hours they'll be—"

  Her voice trailed off. Ellie and George, away on the very first trip they'd taken alone together since Lee was born—

  To Italy, no less, George acting unimpressed but as excited as Ellie, really. Rome and a rented villa on the Riviera…jet- setting, Ellie had called it while she'd packed a pretty sundress and new swimsuit, more daringly cut than any she would wear here.

  Worrying all the while about leaving Lee. I swear, Jacobia had told her friend earnestly while they pored over pictures of the exotic destination. Nothing bad will happen.

  And now…Jake tried to think what she would say to Ellie, how she could possibly break the news to her that her child had been taken.

  Bob shook his head. "We have to get them back here; they'll both have to be questioned," he said. "It could be someone with a grudge against George, or mad at Ellie—"

  Neither of which things Jake could imagine. "Get the numbers and call me and give ‘em to me. And that's all I want you to do," Bob finished firmly. "I've got squads of guys out there—"

  Jerrilyn frowned again. "—and girls, too," Bob said. "Women. And I don't want things going on that I don't know about, next thing you know I've got to spend a whole lot of time and energy, rescuing a rescuer. You catching my drift, here?" he added. "Stay home, sit tight, and call me if anyone calls you."

  Sit down. Shut up. Stay out of it. "Yes. Yes, I understand," she answered obediently, keeping her voice low. Because feeling the way she did, suddenly—scared, angry, and frustrated in the extreme—if she raised it even a little bit she might scream the whole place down.

  "I'll get the numbers for you," she said.

  Back in the bad old days, Jake Tiptree had been a hotshot Manhattan money-manager with a brain-surgeon husband, a son just entering puberty, and an Upper East Side penthouse looking out over Central Park in a building so exclusive that you practically needed an FBI background check just to deliver pizza there.

  Unfortunately her husband had turned out to be even better at adultery than at surgery, which was how she reached the point one day of standing alone in her fancy kitchen with a broken wineglass in her right hand, frowning thoughtfully at the skin of her left wrist. But then the phone rang and it was a client needing to be talked off a financial ledge, and by the time she got done handling him she'd also crept back down off her own.

  Months later, though, driving home alone from New Brunswick, Canada, after a stockholders’ meeting, she'd stopped overnight in Eastport, Maine. And although until then she'd had no interest in old houses, home repair, or (God forbid) power tools, she'd fallen in love.

  With the house: enormous, antique, and to her unskilled eye charmingly dilapidated.
With the town, salt-scoured and severely lovely, set by the water's edge at the end of a curving causeway so low that she could almost reach out through the car window to dabble her hand in the ice-cold waves.

  And with the idea of a life that did not include a husband whose brain was habitually occupied so far south of his cranium, it was a wonder he remembered how to operate on anyone else's.

  Also, in Eastport Sam might just possibly not grow up to be a monster. No guarantees, but for one thing the apparent absence of exotic, lab-quality pharmaceuticals seemed like a good omen; even then, he'd had a worrisome taste for illegal substances.

  So she'd moved from Times Square to fresh air in one dumb jump, as her by-then-ex-husband criticized the decision. But it had, as Sam told her much later when he'd been clean, sober, and halfway rational for seven whole weeks, made all the difference.

  Since then she'd worked on the old house through moments of extreme happiness as well as through turmoil and disruption: her marriage to Wade, Sam's relapses and recoveries, her father's return to her life after so long, her ex-husband's death. Even the news that Ozzie Campbell was finally to be tried for her mother's murder went down easier with a paintbrush in her hand, and the breaks she took from working on her victim's impact statement had been oddly soothed by the creak of a prybar or slam of a hammer.

  Thus, by two-thirty in the afternoon on the day Lee White-Valentine and her baby-sitter Helen Nevelson were taken, Jake was back at the sidewalk hole in front of her old house. Bob Arnold had called twice; once to get the number of the villa where Ellie White and George Valentine were to be staying, and again to ask if she wanted him to get hold of Wade, and ask him to come home.

  "Don't bother him. He'll call when he can," she'd replied, thinking that if their situations were reversed, Bob would not be asking if Wade wanted his spouse summoned in off the disabled freighter currently stalled in the Bay of Fundy, where despite the bright day a line of thunderstorms was forecast for tonight.

  Bob meant well, though, she reminded herself as she frowned at the bag of concrete mix. By his renewed invitation, too, to stay the night with him and Clarissa and the kids. He just didn't realize that now, even the touch of the warm late summer air on her skin made her want to howl.