Nick ripped the hood off the kid’s head and he took in the sight of us, his surroundings. His face was wet with tears and sweat. I watched a hundred emotions flicker over his face. We’d bagged him too fast for him to know who we were, and now that he knew, he was confused. We weren’t a rival drug crew who would kill him and leave him somewhere with his genitals in his mouth for Cline to find. We weren’t FBI agents who would extract whatever they wanted from him and then dump him in a jail cell for the rest of his life. There was relief, but there was also terror. He knew we were Marni’s people.
“Oh, fuck.” Squid dissolved into sobs again.
“Yeah, fuck.” Nick kicked Squid’s chair, jolting the boy.
“Please.” Squid looked at me, figuring for some reason that I was the friendliest of his three captors. “Please, man! You can’t do this. You can’t. This is kidnapping, man. This is serious shit. Let me go, okay? Please! Let me go. I won’t say nothing.”
“Squid.” I held up the boy’s phone. “Don’t try to give me a lecture on serious shit. I’ve got your message here to Marni inviting her to the party two nights ago. Cline asked you to invite her because she knew you from school and trusted you. She’s dead, and there are a bunch of photos from the party that put the two of you together.”
“You can’t prove nothing.” Squid sniffed.
“Yeah, famous last words,” I said.
“We just went to a party, that’s all.”
“That’s all, huh?” I said. Effie took the backpack we’d taken off Squid’s shoulders and dumped its contents at his feet. Baggies of colored pills spilled out onto the bare boards. There was also, as the boy had promised us, another huge gun. The boy refused to look at the items.
“Did you know that when you die, your stomach becomes a kind of time capsule?” I folded my arms, sat on the edge of an old table a few feet away from Squid. “It immediately stops digesting whatever’s in there. Addison Gilbert Hospital pulled a couple of pills identical to these out of an OD victim last week. I wonder if they’ll find any in Marni’s stomach.”
“That’s bullshit, man,” Squid snapped.
“You better hope so.” Nick was circling Squid like a wolf, every muscle in his body taut and ticking with desire for violence. “Because if it’s not, we’ve got you, a drug fatality, and the lethal drugs that were supplied all together and wrapped up with a nice little bow.”
Squid hung his head and sobbed soundlessly, shuddering with fear. He gave himself a minute and then let the rage take over, kicking in the chair, spitting as he exploded at me.
“You stupid-ass bitch! What did you expect Cline to do? The guy’s a fucking psycho! He killed Newgate just for bringing his kid to a meeting!”
Effie and I looked at each other.
“He killed Mary Ann Druly too, didn’t he?” I asked. “That bitch made a fool of him in public.” Squid wiped a tear on his shoulder. “You don’t get away with that.”
“We need to get Clay down here,” I told Nick. “The kid’s a murder witness.”
“Dude, you dumb or what?” Squid sneered at me. “Listen to what I’m telling you. Cline is gonna come and get you. He got Marni. That chick was dead the moment the fat cop brought her to the house in the squad car. Cline’s gonna get me next, because he’ll know you took me. Doesn’t matter if he thinks I snitched on him or not. People are just things to him.” The boy laughed suddenly, spittle hanging from his lip. “You think you’re gonna put me on a stand? You hand me in and I won’t make it to the jailhouse!”
In my hand, Squid’s phone rang. The caller was identified only with the letter C. I walked to the door of the abandoned house and stood looking out at the pines as I pressed the answer button.
I kept quiet. Cline seemed to expect that.
“Robinson,” he said. “I know it’s you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“I’M SUPPOSED TO get a call from Squid telling me when the drop is made,” Cline said, his voice languid, almost bored. “He doesn’t call. Then Tricks, the bartender, finds his bike crashed by the side of the road. I put two and two together. I could probably be sheriff around here. I have instincts for this sort of stuff.”
“Do you know anything,” I managed, my teeth almost locked together, “about the person whose life you took at that party? Marni was a beautiful, intelligent—”
“Oh, I bet she was.” Cline sighed. “People are always beautiful and intelligent and kind and generous when they die the way she died. Young, tragically, wastefully. I bet she lit up a room, didn’t she? They always say that. ‘She loved making people smile and she lit up every room she walked into.’”
“I suppose you’d know what they say,” I said. “You’ve destroyed so many innocent lives.”
“That sounds very grand, but I wouldn’t call myself a destroyer of lives,” Cline said. “These people do that themselves. You know what I am? I’m the master of pain. I have a monopoly on it. People like Marni come to me because they’re hurting, and I take the hurt away. I decide who feels it and who doesn’t.”
“You seem pretty happy to deal it out. Squid is terrified of you.”
“He should be,” Cline said, “with the stuff he’s seen. But you won’t be able to use him for anything meaningful. He knows what happens when one of my soldiers allows himself to get caught. And that’ll be your fault, Robinson. You’ve sealed his fate.”
“You’ve got a real swollen head, you know that?” I said. “You talk about killing people like it’s inevitable, like it’s your right. You’re not a god walking the earth, Cline. You’re just a piece-of-shit drug dealer from a long line of lowlife assholes.”
“Listen to you, motherfucker,” Cline barked. “You think you can talk about my family like that? You don’t know shit about my family, you punk-ass bitch!”
He’d lost it momentarily. I’d touched a nerve. I smiled as he dropped his sophisticated act and reverted to the trash talk he’d probably promised himself he would abandon the last time he left prison. There was a pause while he regained his composure.
“We don’t have to do this,” Cline said. “There’s a way out for you. Give me the kid back, and I’ll leave you and your people alone. It’s what’s best for everyone, man. You’re a smart guy. You know it.”
“Listen to you,” I said. “You’ve got your speech prepared. When threatening me doesn’t work, you switch to flattery. You’re like a used-car salesman. ‘You better get this deal now or you’ll miss out. You’ll hate yourself. You’re a smart guy—let me sweeten the deal for you.’”
“There’s no money in used cars,” Cline sniffed. “And you don’t know me, boy. But I know about you, Robinson. I know what happened in Boston.”
Prickles, tingles, spread out from my chest and over my scalp; raw adrenaline unleashed. I should have seen this coming. People like Cline had cops, judges, and politicians in their pockets. He had drugs, and that brought him money, and money brought him influence, connections, friends in high places. I gripped the phone tight. “Yeah? What about it?”
“I’ve got contacts. I can make that shit go away,” Cline said. “You can’t tell me you were happy to give up the beat to clean toilets in a shitbox guesthouse full of losers.”
“I’m guilty of the Boston thing,” I said. “I got what I deserve.”
“What about your roadkill wife?”
It took everything I had not to shatter the phone on the concrete steps to the house. I heard him shifting pieces of paper, probably Siobhan’s accident report. More evidence that Cline had the local cops on his payroll. I closed my eyes and breathed while he continued.
“You’re smart enough to figure, like I did, that the story the driver gave didn’t add up,” Cline said. “I can give you the people who were in that car. I can give you the real driver.”
“Let me give you something,” I said, my voice colder than I’d ever heard it. “Twelve hours. You have that long to turn yourself in to the police and not a second more.”
/>
Cline was laughing as I hung up the phone. I walked back into the abandoned house, and Effie jutted her chin at me, made an okay shape with her fingers.
You okay?
I didn’t answer. Squid squealed with terror as I kicked his chair over and then stood above him, grabbed a handful of his shirt, and twisted it in my fist.
“Cline said we can’t use you, but I think he’s wrong.” I yanked the kid forward so his face was inches from mine. “You’re going to help me hit the master of pain where it hurts.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
SUSAN WAS STANDING on the porch when we arrived home. She watched Nick turn the car around after he had dropped off me and Effie, her eyes impossible to read. Effie went around the side of the house and I stood with Susan, surveying the holes in the siding. Though she kept her expression neutral, I could see her temple ticking with her pulse.
“There was a kidnapped kid in that car just now, wasn’t there,” she said finally.
“He’s a contact of ours. Nick’s driving him north to Augusta,” I said. “He’s got a cousin there. Cline’s more likely to look for him at his mother’s house in Boston.”
“You’ve gone rogue.” Susan shook her head.
“I haven’t gone rogue,” I said. “I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t need to play by anyone’s rules.”
“Just because you’re not a cop doesn’t mean you get to snatch kids off the street!” She threw her hands up.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t treat me like an idiot, Bill. Cline put a missing-persons report in with Clay, and he mentioned it to me. I heard about the crashed bike. You endangered that kid’s life by making him flip on Cline.”
“Oh, believe me, he was already in danger,” I said. “It’s a matter of time with these people. When the heat’s on, they clean house. I’ve seen it over and over. Cline wants Squid brought in so he can kill him or locked up so he can get one of his prison contacts to do it. The kid will be safe with his cousin.” I watched her shake her head again. “I needed information. This guy killed Marni, Susan. He had someone lure her there and he killed her. If his men had been better shots, he might have killed someone here at the house.”
“I’m worried you’re going to get in over your head on this,” she said.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m not your problem.”
I turned to go but she took my hand. I couldn’t look at her. From the moment Cline had offered to tell me exactly what had happened to Siobhan, to lay out for me the awful truth I’d been denying all this time, my nerves had been frayed. I didn’t want to think about Siobhan. I didn’t want to think about Marni. I didn’t want to acknowledge the heavy desire now in my chest to hold Susan in my arms, to feel her hands on my neck, her lips on mine. Fighting back against it all seemed the only safe course of action. But then, without realizing it, I let her put her hand on my cheek. She was so close I could smell her sweet breath.
“Bill,” she pleaded, “just don’t—”
“I can’t do this,” I said. I pulled away and went inside.
Angelica was on the couch in the living room under the windows, one arm in a sling and the other lying across her forehead like she’d fainted; her left index finger was splinted. I went into the kitchen and stood at the window, felt Susan’s presence without turning to look at her.
“What are you going to do?” she asked. I gripped the edge of the sink.
“I have a plan,” I said. “But a part of me wants to throw it in. I keep thinking about just driving to Cline’s house, dragging him down the stairs by his shirt, and kicking the shit out of him on his own lawn.”
She was silent. The malice in my voice was frightening, even to me. Another being was speaking from a dark place in my mind. It was loss that did this to me, forced me down into my own deepest, most evil recesses.
“You’re not that dumb.”
“Oh, I can be pretty dumb,” I smirked. I heard a thunk from upstairs, which I ignored. I turned to her. I wanted to tell Susan that I’d done this before. That I’d let the badness take me, stupid and filled with rage, and I both did and didn’t regret what I had done. But the phone rang in my pocket, drawing us both out of ourselves. I answered without looking at the caller ID.
“Bill,” someone said. A voice I hadn’t heard in over two years. “It’s Malone.”
I barely managed to respond. “What do you … this is not a good time.”
“Maybe it isn’t,” he said. “But I don’t think we have a choice. I’m a hundred yards from your house, and a black woman on the second floor has got me pinned with a big fuck-off rifle. She just blew a hole the size of a dinner plate in the tree right next to me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
EFFIE WAS SITTING on a wooden stool at the window, her eye on the scope and her finger on the trigger of a rifle even bigger than the one I’d pulled off Nick the other night. The silencer on it was as thick as my arm, which accounted for the thunk I’d heard when she’d fired a warning shot at my former partner. Effie turned and looked at me as I entered the bare room, then made a couple of signs I recognized from raid training I’d done as a young patrolman.
One target. Hundred yards.
“Does everybody in this goddamn house have an enormous rifle under the bed except me?” I asked. Effie looked like she was mentally reviewing the number of guests with large guns under their beds. I moved toward her, stopped when I noticed a tiny brown lump on the bedspread. The rat was sleeping, curled up in a ball like a cat, its pink tail tucked around its body. I knelt beside Effie and looked through the scope. Jerry Malone was indeed standing frozen in the forest, his hands out from his sides like he was prepared to either raise them or jump for cover if another shot came. He’d dropped the phone, probably not wanting to push his luck any further. There was a hole in the tree right next to him large enough for a man to put his head through. The scope of the rifle was so big I could see the individual splinters of wood from the shot that had fallen on his shoulder.
“He’s an old buddy,” I told Effie.
She rolled her eyes and threw her hands up. Now you tell me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
THE MALONE I approached in the forest in front of my house was much thinner and paler than the one I’d seen outside the commissioner’s office in Boston. He’d grown a beard, but the dark hair only accentuated the rings under his eyes. I stopped ten feet away, saving us both the awkward silent negotiation about whether to shake hands.
“Great place.” Malone nodded at the house. “Security system is a bit extreme, maybe.”
“I’m having some troubles with the locals,” I said. “Someone decided to use the house for target practice a couple of days ago. I’m expecting a slide in short-term rentals.”
I wasn’t showing any warmth, not in my body language or the tone of my voice, but I recognized that I wanted to. Despite what happened in Boston, what prevailed were the good memories of me and Malone catching babies falling off balconies and running through back alleys chasing thieves, sitting on the dock after the shift and watching the boats come in, talking about our wives and our houses, how lucky we were. He brushed the wood splinters off his shoulder and looked me in the eye for the first time since I’d approached.
“I know it was the anniversary of Siobhan the other day,” he said. “It got me thinking … ” He couldn’t find the words, shrugged. I understood. I crossed the no-man’s-land between us and hugged him, slapped his bony back. The walls crumbled like chalk. What we’d done seemed so long ago now, so unimportant. I felt him half laughing, half sobbing with relief.
“Come inside.” I led him toward the house, my arm around his shoulders.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
IT WAS SUPPOSED to be a quick trip into town, but Effie knew that nothing was quick when Angelica was involved. The two had jumped in the car after Bill’s friend Malone arrived to go get some supplies for a barb
ecue, but Angelica was treating the trip as an opportunity for some kind of philosophical lecture about writing. From the bright lights of the Stop and Shop, down the hill past the whale-watching and tourism stretch, and into the café on the edge of Harbor Cove, Angelica had droned on. Effie window-shopped, took in the sea air, and generally ignored her partner. Gloucester was settling down for the evening, pink light falling softly on the storm-blue sea. Angelica ordered coffees for the two of them, hardly pausing in her oration to address the waitress. A group of men came in and took the booth directly behind Angelica, big men who settled themselves loudly in the leather seats.
“I don’t know about you, but I can’t understand how the archetype of the muse has survived unaltered for as long as it has,” Angelica said. She didn’t wait for any gesture of an answer from Effie. “It diminishes the author’s accountability for the successes and failures of the written work, and besides that, it banishes the creative act to the realm of the spiritual conduit, and—oh my God!”
Effie had been staring out at the harbor light but she snapped back toward Angelica, who was sitting bolt upright in her chair like she had been zapped. Effie put her palms up—What?—but Angelica flapped her hands at her.
“Shh, shh!” Angelica said. “Be quiet.”
Effie sighed.
“These guys,” Angelica whispered, leaning forward and adjusting her sling, “in the booth behind me. They just mentioned Mitchell Cline.”
Effie discreetly leaned out of her seat, but all she could see were broad shoulders barely contained in expensive fabric. She pointed at her ear, the guys in the booth.
You heard them?
“I was eavesdropping,” Angelica whispered. “I’m terrible, I know. I listen to everyone. It’s in the writer’s tool kit. C. S. Lewis compared eavesdropping to spying on people by magic. See? More elitist mysticism.”
The Inn Page 12
