by Dick Cluster
“That’s farfetched. But it makes more sense out of what happened than anything else.”
“And so you’ve been camping out here, trying to find anything that would show why or how or whether Scat Johnston would have been involved in doing something like that…”
Alex stopped and looked back at the photograph, which he’d been trying to avoid. It made him uneasy. He realized he’d been separating the deaths even while he looked for a connection. The separation had gone “bad boy, good girl.” But here were bad boy and good girl in bed together.
Scat looked like Alex had thought he might. Not like his father. He was skinny, his ribs showed, his grin was toothy, his head was square, with a hard jaw. But Caroline, Alex had expected, would look kind of subdued. Maybe because her grandmother knew so little about her, maybe because of the seriousness with which she’d grappled with the morality of prostitution. Alex had been seeing her as pretty but introverted, maybe even shy. Here she was smiling, a bright smile in a round face fringed by short, curly blond hair. She looked healthy and comfortable, freckled, unembarrassed. That her breasts were bare did not seem to matter. She neither slumped her shoulders nor arched her back. She was not being shy, or coy, or seductive. Yet she was posing, the two of them were, they obviously knew the camera was there. Alex wondered whether there was somebody behind it, or whether one of them had set the timer and jumped back into bed. Before he asked any more questions, he thought it was only decent to share the fact that there was some evidence to back up what Dennis MacDonald had decided on his own to believe.
“Apparently Scat told somebody that’s what happened, before he died,” Alex said. “Apparently he was thinking of turning himself in.”
Dennis’s eyes opened wide. In his wide sockets, under his broad forehead, they looked like frozen-over ponds between pink ridges at dawn. This had all been theory, Alex realized. The big man had been theorizing about a kind of malevolence that was foreign to him. Now he was squeezing and crushing the empty beer can in his hand. Alex looked back down at the photo, turned it over in search of a date, found none.
“You lived with her,” he said finally. “Was she, like, a physically modest person, would you say?” That district attorney edge had crept into his voice again. But it seemed he’d done the right thing, maybe by instinct, because he drew a deep laugh out of Dennis MacDonald.
“You mean because of her tits hanging out in the picture like that? No, if you want to put it that way, she was probably the most physically immodest girl I ever met. She’d walk around how she felt like, and she’d walk in a room without knocking too. If it was the wrong time, she’d just say, ‘Oh, sorry,’ and walk back out.”
“Oh,” Alex said, interested. “Well, would you say she was asexual, or that her ideas about privacy were just different?”
“A-sexual?” Dennis drew out the word. He didn’t seem sure what Alex meant.
“Not interested? So what turned other people on just might not seem that way to her?”
“No, I think it was what you said about the privacy. Uh, about the other, being interested, she said she was… healing, that’s the word she used. She said she was getting over something, somebody, and maybe she’d be interested again when that healing was really over and done.”
“Did she tell you this because you told her you were interested in her?”
Dennis smiled. “Well, I was healing too. The thought did cross my mind that we might heal each other.” His smile faded as he looked at the crushed can in his fist and flexed his fingers around it. “I could do this to the guy who drove over her. I can understand why somebody else wanted to cut him up like hamburger.” He gave Alex a long, steady look. “I hear that’s what somebody did.”
“Uh-huh. But, like you said, if she was really killed and it was made to look like an accident, there had to be two people involved. It may have been the second person who killed Scat, to keep him quiet.”
“Right. It might’ve. Probably was. That’s who I’ve been waiting for. Coming back to look for what might tie him in.”
“This picture,” Alex said again. “You’ve had lots of time to think about it. Pretend I don’t know anything. Tell me who you are, why it surprised you, what you think.”
“Who I am? I work construction, I do maintenance, I like to ski, climb, canoe. I been here five years, that makes me a newcomer in the valley, in the towns, but it makes me an old-timer in the ski operation, in the Woods. I knew Scat, sure. He wasn’t what you’d call deep. But he had a lot of parties, and there was always something to get off on there. The thing is, I didn’t know Caroline knew him. She wasn’t shy, but she wasn’t all that much of a party person, any more than me. Remember, she only got here this past fall.”
“Maybe she had friends that knew him.”
“She had a few girls she hung out with, outdoor fiends, hikers, climbers, cross-country skiers. Shit, I don’t know… I guess she ran into Scat somewhere, or came here with somebody to one of those parties maybe. Maybe she got it on with him the way it looks. Or maybe this was some kind of party game getting played.” He waited, then said what else he had decided to believe. “I don’t think they were really involved, though. If it was more than a one-night stand, then I think I would’ve known.”
Alex waited. In the time Big Mac had been brooding over the picture, he would have developed more ideas than this.
“One thing I thought of, though. Maybe whatever she was doing at his place, she saw something she shouldn’t’ve seen.”
“Like what?”
Dennis shrugged that good-shock-absorbers shrug again.
“You implied Scat was a dealer.”
“Yeah, sure, and everybody knew it. But his name was enough to keep him from harm over that. And he didn’t sell to kids, local kids anyway. The cops are locals, from the real towns and the real woods. So that was the rules on the dope trade. Keep to the outsiders, the Pepperell Woods folk, everything’ll be okay. Let the locals go down to Manchester or Concord if they’re determined to buy.”
“Was there serious money in this, for Scat?”
“Lotta money in the state these days. Down south, cities and suburbs, up here the resorts. I read in the paper that more dough was spent in New Hampshire on cocaine than whiskey last year. And a lot gets spent on whiskey, cold and long as the winter gets. Anyway, Scat kind of had the franchise around here. That’s why he had to agree to a test— it wouldn’t be cool for people to think he’d been protected from something like that, driving under the influence, running somebody down. ’Cause enough people already knew he was being protected about his business.”
“So, if Caroline saw something she got killed over, it wasn’t a drug transaction, that’s what you’re saying. What was it?”
“That’s the trouble. Damn if I know.”
“Who comes here on the weekends? Families mostly? Families and college kids?”
“Yeah, and friends, you know, a bunch of friends’ll get together, rent a place like this, fill it up.”
“Couples mostly?”
“I don’t know. Some. Or it could be a group of girls, group of guys.” He narrowed his brows. “We’re still talking about sex, is that it?”
Alex nodded. Dennis thought a minute, then asked, “You ski?”
“Yeah.” Alex nodded again, knowing what he meant. Downhill skiing was an exciting sport, but also a social one. It was a show-off sport. You skied in flashy outfits if you could afford them, and you showed off your flashy technique if you had any. You performed in front of a lot of strangers, and they performed in front of you. Between runs, you bunched up in lift lines where there wasn’t much to do but look at each other and chat. Flirtation was almost an official part of the sport, certainly a big part of the winding down.
“But what I mean is, people— older men— that come alone, or college guys maybe, that don’t want to take the trouble to pick a woman up? Men that might be in the market for buying sex? And if there’s a market, is there a sup
ply?”
“Economics one-oh-one,” Dennis MacDonald winked. “If there’s a demand, I thought there was always supposed to be a supply. Yeah, I’ve heard about that. Again, now I think about it, the cops make the same kind of rules. No local girls, no houses. Girls imported from the city, that come to your condo, your hotel room. Yeah I’ve heard about that kinda thing.”
“But you don’t know anybody yourself, in that line of work?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Caroline’s grandmother said Caroline did. She knew one or more prostitutes who worked the Woods.”
Dennis shook his head, the long red hair floating out, incongruous. Alex thought suddenly of Meredith, hoped she was thinking about him. “Well,” Alex asked, “how would I do that— get a call girl to come to my room?”
“You? Oh, speaking hypothetical, you mean. Talk to the bartender at Larabee’s, that’s what I’ve been told.”
“Larabee’s?”
“That’s the drinking lounge in the conference center, the place with all the function rooms. Mostly it’s not really conferences, not in the winter. It’s ski weekends. Book whole groups into places to stay, bring ’em up in buses or maybe they drive. Feed ’em in batches, like a banquet. More like pigs in a feedlot, quality of the food.”
Groups, Alex thought. Bernie’s law firm had an annual ski weekend, for lawyers and nonprofessional staff. The student activities board, or whatever it was called, offered one at UMass. A blowout weekend. Lots of singles, or attached men spending the weekend on the loose. You wouldn’t want to stand out as the guy who didn’t score. The bartender would learn to spot you too: “Hey, friend, you look a little down. How would you like me to find you a nice girl?”
“Dennis,” he said. “My girlfriend is coming up tomorrow, I hope, but tonight I’m a single man. Can you take me to Larabee’s and point out the right bartender for me to see?”
18. PARKER HOUSE
Dennis MacDonald had been able to give Alex the names of a few of Caroline’s friends. He knew where her best friend, Pamela Parker, could be found right now. Pam served out soup and hot drinks from ten to four, at the Parker House lunch cabin, located six kilometers out on the network of cross-country trails. She’d worked there since it was put up two years ago, Dennis said. Somebody had thought it was funny to name it after her.
Alex drove to the ski touring center to rent a pair of skis through Sunday. The man behind the counter offered him new ones, state-of-the-art, crafted of foam and fiberglass, with a computer-designed bottom that would grip all types of snow without wax. Alex asked for the old-fashioned wooden waxable ones, but was told the center did not stock these anymore. Alex liked the waxable skis not just because they were old-fashioned, but because they went with his tinkerer’s nature. If the ride wasn’t smooth enough, steady enough, he wanted there to be something he could adjust. The color-coded sequence of waxes allowed for this tinkering. You could replace hard waxes with softer ones as the snow warmed up or got worn down. Still, today he took what he could get. He looked forward to an hour’s workout, alone, that would get him to Ms. Parker’s domain.
Enjoyment came easily. Grooming crews had been out, so Alex found himself gliding quickly along newly set tracks in the fresh, powdery snow. The trail led across an open field, probably a golf course in summer, and then began to wind upward, following a brook through a forest of birch and fir. Alex didn’t hurry. He concentrated on technique, sinking into a crouch for better purchase on the snow. It was like tai chi, all breath and rhythm and shifting of weight from foot to foot, from heel to toe. And it made the winter an ally. There was no bracing against icy surfaces, nor steeling the skin and muscles against insidious cold. As long as you kept moving, footing was sure and the body generated more than enough heat.
The trail crossed over the brook on a wooden bridge, slabbed the side of a hill, and dropped steeply into another finger of the valley on the other side. Alex crouched even lower, tucked his poles, and let gravity and the tracks and the banked turn take him swiftly down and around. Then he stretched out again, working harder, up the gentle grade through a patch of woods that seemed to be all birch now, or birches interspersed with some darker but also leafless trees.
The ridged plastic ski bottoms, Alex had to admit, bit nicely and glided well. The birches, silvery off-white, slid by like bright moments, uncountable ones. Alex was disturbed only by the thought that this same sensation may have been the last one that Caroline Davis had ever felt. But that notion assumed she’d been peacefully skiing when she was felled by a knockout dart fired at her neck from behind a tree. Hardly likely. If the accident had been staged, her death or immobilization would most likely have happened somewhere else, even indoors. Especially if there was any truth in what Suzanne’s assailant “Callahan” had said. Alex concentrated on his motions again, and was sorry to be interrupted by voices ahead. Soon he could see a small thicket of skis planted tips-up and tails-down in the snow, with the cabin behind.
The cabin, built of greenish, rough-sawn boards, still looked raw and new. Smoke rose from a stovepipe that angled out beneath the high end of the prefabricated corrugated plastic roof. Beside the cabin was a map engraved and painted on a large signboard mounted on two poles. Alex studied the map while catching his breath and waiting till he felt ready to go inside.
The map indicated White Mountain National Forest boundaries with grooves painted yellow, trails maintained by Pepperell Woods with grooves painted red, other trails with grooves painted black. Alex saw that he was well into the National Forest already, that the resort corporation must pay some kind of use fee to the feds just as lumber companies would, or cattle and sheep ranchers out West. North of the cabin began the wilderness trails, labeled FOR EXPERIENCED SKIERS IN GOOD PHYSICAL CONDITION. Wilderness was an exaggeration, Alex thought. It just meant the paths were not tracked or patrolled. The Forest Service would furnish a few signs and bridges and occasionally clear out fallen trees. In the other direction, south, the maintained trails circled back into the main valley. One red groove, Alex saw, ran for quite a while parallel to a secondary road. That would be the one from which Caroline’s alleged tracks diverged. He pushed open the door of the Parker House, built to succor novice skiers in indifferent physical shape.
Inside the cabin, three picnic tables had been set around a plywood counter that surrounded a wood-burning stove. The place was stuffy and smelled of sap and coffee and something less pleasant, maybe mold. The sudden heat reminded Alex of climbing into Scat’s loft, but perhaps this was also because the woman in charge seemed like Dennis MacDonald’s female counterpart. Pam Parker was nearly Alex’s height, broad-shouldered, broad-hipped, and broad-bosomed. Her blond hair, dry like straw, was plaited into a long braid that hung far down her back. She looked like an ad for vacationing on an authentic Swedish farm, except she was wearing old jeans and a sweatshirt and her expression was surly rather than welcoming. Alex watched her wipe the counter with a cloth and then accept a dollar from a skier who looked like a midget beside her. She served the skier coffee in an enameled aluminum cup and did not give her any change. The skier sat down at the only occupied table, where she rejoined her two companions, college boys by the look of them.
“Excuse me,” Alex said quietly when the customer sat down. “Are you Pam? Dennis MacDonald said I could find you here.”
“Pamela,” she said, not looking up. “You trekked out here to find me?”
“From Boston, actually.” He passed Rosemarie’s letter across the counter. It was becoming a kind of visa that allowed entrance to otherwise hostile enclaves in Pepperell Woods. “Except for Dennis, none of Caroline’s friends came to the service her grandmother held.”
“No,” Pamela said, still wiping. “A funeral out West. A memorial in Cambridge. It was like people picking over the pieces after the meal is done. Anyway, I don’t believe much in relatives.” She reached below the counter, got rid of the cloth, and pulled out a sign hand-lettered in Magic Marke
r. GONE TO OUTHOUSE OR SOMEWHERE, it said. SELF SERVICE, PLEASE PAY. BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES OR SO. She lifted a hinged section of counter and walked to the picnic table farthest from the one where the three college students were. She sat with her back to the counter, leaving it behind.
“I know what Dennis thinks,” she said. “I think it’s wishful. If I were going to wish…” She formed one hand into a fist, as Dennis had, but didn’t crush anything inside. She surrounded the fist with her other hand, twisting and rubbing like a ball-and-socket joint. She switched hands, making the left one the ball and the right one the socket. “I’d wish for her to still be alive.” She was clearly upset, but her face showed only a flat Nordic reserve. “I mean, whatever you find out about how she died isn’t going to bring her back.”
“No. Maybe it’s just that her grandmother wants to understand her better. Was Caroline a very secretive person, would you say?”
“Uh-huh. She was.” Pamela sat up straight and folded her arms across her chest. Alex decided that Pamela was hurt, even rocked by Caroline’s death, yet there was a distinct childish quality to her response. You can’t make me, she was saying. But make her do what? As if to confirm Alex’s thoughts, she added, “And so am I.”
“Did you know Scat Johnston?” Alex asked. If she had disliked Scat, he might find more give there. And there was a theory— the crudest but therefore simplest theory— he wanted to check out.
“No.”
“I thought everybody knew him. The thing is, I think somebody knew too much. Apparently somebody was blackmailing his father to keep some of his secrets from being revealed. Is it possible that could have been Caroline?”
Pamela uncrossed her arms, went back into the ball-and-socket routine. “Doesn’t sound like her,” she said grudgingly. “Caroline was idealistic. Not about changing the world. About honesty. That’s one reason she was hard to know. It’s hard to be honest and also talk much about yourself.”
