“She’s dead,” she said.
“We don’t know that,” Rath said.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Tammy said.
“I don’t know if you heard. A girl’s body was found in the woods.”
“I heard a brief thing. On my way in, it’s a terrib—”
Rath didn’t have to tell her. She knew. Yet he told her anyway. “We think . . . I think, it’s related to a man named Ned Preacher. I can’t prove it. Yet.”
“Preacher? But he’s in prison. For your sister. He’s the one who—”
“He’s out. On parole.”
“How can he be out?”
“I’m the wrong person to ask. We suspected him of attacking your mom back then, the first time. But we couldn’t prove it. Had no evidence.”
Tammy Clark finished her water and rolled the empty plastic bottle between her palms, her anger clear.
“And you believe the dead girl and my mom—”
“I suspect it.”
“Suspect. Tell me straight. Have that respect at least. If you only knew half her struggles, even when she believed her attacker was dead. She’s never felt safe. Never. She never goes a day without thinking of her attack, and thinking of me having to see her like that. Every time she gets in front of a mirror, which she avoids like the plague, she sees her own scarred body. He cut her up. She loved the sun, the beach, the water, but has never enjoyed a sunny day since. She’s a ruin of scars. She has to keep covered. Not out of shame. But the sun, the heat, it hurt her scars, physically causes her pain. A lot of pain. Tell me what you suspect. I can handle it.”
“I think the person who hanged that girl in the woods is Ned Preacher. And I think he’s hurt your mom.”
45
Rath set off across the hospital lot in the fog.
At the Scout he fished his keys out of his coat pocket.
“Frank?” a voice said behind him.
Rath spun. Fog swirled.
For a moment he wasn’t sure it was her. She’d cut her hair, or perhaps tucked it under the crocheted hat askew on her head.
“Hey,” Madeline said and fidgeted with her hat.
“You left the Dress Shoppe,” Rath said stupidly.
“It lost its charm after that girl you asked me about, the girl I helped in the store, was found dead in the trunk of a car. How’d you know I left?”
“I stopped in for more clothes.”
“For Rachel?”
Rath was surprised she remembered Rachel’s name. Though it had only been a few weeks since he’d seen Madeline, it felt like months. She’d left a couple messages on his voice mail shortly after the date. He’d never returned the calls.
Madeline wiped rainwater from her eyes, glanced at the hospital as an ambulance siren yelped behind Rath. “What brings you here? I hope nothing—”
“I had to meet someone. Work.”
“A case.”
Rath nodded.
“It must be hard, working with missing and dead people and violence all the time.”
“I hadn’t done it for years until the girl who was in your shop went missing. That was extenuating circumstances.”
“Extenuating circumstances for this one, too?”
“So it seems.”
“I hope it works out better this time.”
Rath wanted to say he had listened to her voice-mail messages, in fact saved them, and was sorry he’d not gotten back to her, time had gotten away and other matters had taken priority. He wanted to say he had been sorry not to see her in the shop. Instead, he twirled his key ring around his finger, the keys jangling. As if this were a cue, Madeline said, “I hope Rachel likes her clothes. It was good to see you. Quite a coincidence.”
Before Rath could say anything, Madeline had turned and disappeared into the fog.
Yes, Rath thought, quite the coincidence.
46
Rath was texting Rachel to tell her the day was getting away from him, he’d have to visit tomorrow, when the door to the Wilderness Restaurant flew open.
He looked up from his booth situated beneath a mounted moose head to see Test hurled into the restaurant on a gust of wind from the squall outside.
Her wet hair hung in her eyes as she raked her fingers through it, peeled a rubber band off a wrist, and cinched it around a soaked ponytail. She scanned the Wilderness, her chin up as if she needed to look over a crowd of people. She didn’t. The Wilderness was as desolate as a beach in January. It was normally packed, but this weather . . . this fog. Its persistence was damnable. And the rain. It had doubled down, a brutal cascade, expelled from a sky so black, the midday hour was a marrow-sucking, unending gloom. Even the jukebox in the back stood quiet, and the few old-timers who normally orbited around the pool table as reliably as the earth around the sun were AWOL, the billiard balls racked on the felt, waiting to be cracked.
There were only Rath and his Barn Burger Special.
Test sat opposite Rath. She snatched a napkin from the dispenser and blotted her wet cheeks, her face greasy and without makeup, revealing freckles on her nose and cheeks.
Rath bit into his burger; Michigan sauce squeezed out onto his fingers and plate.
Test retrieved a folder from her pack. Rivulets of rainwater ran from her police windbreaker onto the table. Rath had been here a half hour and was still soaked and chilled. He wished he’d ordered soup.
The waitress shuffled over, coughed into her elbow. “Our burgers aren’t so good that you gotta put your life at risk with that mess outside,” she said to Test. Apparently, since the same waitress had not warned Rath, it was OK for him to put his life at risk.
“It’s not the food, it’s the atmosphere,” Rath said.
The waitress looked at Test.
“Just hot tea for me,” Test said.
She spread the contents of the folder out on the table. “Larkin pulled three possibles for fellow convicts released within six months of Preacher.”
“First,” Rath said, “anything with our fireman?”
“There’s something there. I can’t grasp it. Yet. But then I think of this Preacher angle. Preacher knowing Jamie was hanged. Knowing the time. He’s involved.”
“No doubt there.”
“Larkin’s still working him. You? Anything with Abby Land?”
“Someone’s fed her a line about her getting out early, at eighteen, because she’s a minor.”
“She needs to fire her public defender for filling her head with fantasies.”
“It wasn’t her attorney. Something’s not right there. But then there’s Preacher. He’s our hot ticket. He excludes our fireman. What do you have on his prison buddies?”
Test tapped a finger on a mug shot of a black male, bald with muttonchops, a gold hoop ring in his left earlobe. “Xanders Geoffries. Thirty-eight. Five ten. Second-degree murder, sexual assault. Served twelve years. He was in the same cell block as Preacher, as were the other two cons I have a line on. I don’t think he’s our guy. He’s housed in Providence, Rhode Island. I checked with his P.O. Geoffries is employed already, a Shell service station and convenience store. I called his employer and his manager. He was on the shift at the time of both Dana Clark’s disappearance and Jamie Drake’s murder.”
“Do background checks on the manager and owner,” Rath said. “We don’t know these people to trust them out of hand. A lot of times parolees get work with their old ties who cover for them, and they fall right back into it. I want to make sure the owner and manager are clean and straight. If not, we pay a visit to a Shell station in RI.”
The waitress brought Test’s tea and set it down, asked if there were anything else. Test shook her head, and the waitress strode toward the back, fishing a pack of cigarettes from her apron pocket.
“Number two.” Test jabbed a finger at a second mug shot. A Caucasian male, red hair cut short and neat. Chubby face of a guy who looked like he enjoyed his beer a bit too much and a bit too often, though he probably hadn’t seen t
oo much beer inside. He sported a crisp line of beard where his jawline used to be before he encased it in fat. He looked like a man you’d see working the floor of a Home Depot or the lot at the local Chevy dealership.
“Timothy Glade. Forty. Five foot six. Served eleven years of a ten-to-fifteen for three counts of sexual assault of a minor, and one of attempted murder. A serial predator. Vicious. Nasty. The things he’s done. Unforgivable. These people make me want to pack up my kids and move to a deserted island.” Test pushed her mug away, tea lapping over the edge.
“He could be our guy,” she continued. “One of his assaults, he had a ‘buddy’ join him. They took turns, captured the hijinks on video. He was released thirty days ago. Lives a hundred miles from here. Outside Concord, New Hampshire.”
“A good poke but in striking distance.”
“He’s not on parole. Served his time. He’s out clean, free as a bird, no obligation to report to anyone, to get a job. Not accountable to anyone but himself.”
“Let’s interview him. Soon. A weekday night. Catch him out of sorts.”
Test nodded and stabbed a finger on the third mug shot. Rath stared at the face.
“Clay Sheldon,” Test said. “Fifty-one. Brown and brown. Six feet one. Powerful build.”
“Fits the CRVK.”
“He’s got my attention, believe me. Except he was in prison for murder during the commission of an armed robbery. No predatory history. No sexual assault. No priors. Clean as a NASA space lab until then. He was living in Maine, and his motive for the robbery was purely financial from the court transcript. He pleaded guilty, but not in an attempt at a plea bargain, though his lawyer sought and got that for him. He was distraught by his killing, sobbed in court, and did the opposite of what the Preachers of the world do: he asked the judge to go hard on him, to punish him. Just put him away for as long as possible and get it over with. He was put on suicide watch.”
“Not exactly a match made in heaven for Preacher.”
“But get this. He lives in Colebrook.”
“Just across the river. Twenty minutes away.”
Rath could see that Test wanted to go drop in on Sheldon now. But he didn’t want her going alone. “Larkin still keeping Preacher busy?”
“You bet. I told him to try to instigate Preacher into assaulting him, so we can put the cuffs on the bastard. That goes against Larkin’s nature too much, though.”
“Let’s talk to Sheldon. For all we know, his gushing to the judge could have been a ploy.”
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” Test said.
“We’ll see about that.”
47
Clay Sheldon answered the door to his efficiency at the North Star Motor Court bare chested, his muscular physique on display, as well as the graffiti of tattoos across his chest. Rath expected a muscular voice to accompany the man’s brawny build. It did not. The man’s soft-spoken manner was so discordant with his physicality it was as if Sheldon were trying to pull a trick on them.
Rath and Test offered their IDs. Sheldon barely glanced at them. He could smell a cop from down the block and across the street.
“Let me get a shirt.” He stepped back into the unit. The place was a throwback to the heyday of mom-and-pop motels and had apparently not seen an update in decor or a new coat of its original, sky-blue paint since cars had fins and fuel economy was an alien term.
The nightly rate on the sign out front, which boasted color tv, reflected the establishment’s desire to remain locked in the past: $29. $199 weekly.
Rath and Test entered the unit. Sheldon shut the door behind them.
The room was as squalid as expected, damp with a sour pong to the air. The furniture had a dark faux wood veneer, chipped to reveal particle board beneath. The frameless double bed’s mattress sagged in the center as if a body had lain in it unmoving for years.
“It’s temporary digs,” Sheldon said. He turned to grab a wife-beater shirt off the floor. His back was a mural of tattoos, most in old-school greens and blues, symbols that looked Celtic. A few words were scribed in his flesh at the base of his neck below a fold of the only fat on the man’s body. He put on the shirt and jabbed an elbow at two chairs at a table in the kitchenette of turquoise appliances. “Grab a seat.”
“We’re fine,” Test said.
Sheldon remained standing, pushed his hands in the pockets of his gray sweatpants.
“Take your hands out of your pockets, Mr. Sheldon,” Rath said.
Sheldon pulled the insides of his pockets out to reveal nothing but lint.
“You did time with Ned Preacher,” Test said.
“Preacher? I wouldn’t say I did time with him. I didn’t do time with anyone. We were in gen pop, crossed paths. I kept to myself. Much as you can. Ain’t exactly easy, to mind your own business inside. It’s seen as . . . impolite.” He laughed. “No one trusts a loner.”
“You always been a loner?” Test said.
“I had a family.”
“You crossed paths with Preacher?” Rath said. “How?”
“Weight room. Library. Rec room for movies.”
If Rath didn’t know better, he’d have thought Sheldon were describing a stay at a Marriott.
“Sounds like you crossed paths a lot,” Test said.
“No more than with anyone else. We all do pretty much the same routine. In shifts. We had the same shifts a lot.”
“You talked to him then?” Rath said.
“Like I said, I’m a loner. Just trying to keep cool, get my anger in check.”
“Anger at who? The law?” Rath said.
“Anger at me. I wanted to kill myself. Every day I battle the part of me that wants to kill me, that wants this nightmare over. I’d kill myself today if I could manage to do one meaningful thing before I did it. Go out knowing I’d helped someone, done something worth a damn.”
“What nightmare?” Test said.
“My life. What I did.”
“It’s been almost two decades,” Test said.
“You think time makes it better? Time makes it worse. The longer I breathe, the longer I know that boy hasn’t breathed, because of me. You’ve never killed a boy, I take it,” Sheldon said. “Never shot a kid just working his after-school job as a cashier to make a few bucks for the movies and gas money. You’d have to be a sociopath to get over that. Or want to. I’m no sociopath. Sometimes, I wish I was.”
Out on the walkway, a shadow passed by the curtained window. Sheldon’s eyes caught the movement.
The scuff and crunch of a plastic scoop digging in the ice machine was followed by the slap of the ice machine’s lid. The shadow passed by the window again, Sheldon’s eyes watching, alert, body tense as the shadow seemed to linger for a second, then was gone.
“You talked to him, though, Preacher?” Test said. “Over so many years, you must have got a sense of him.”
“What is this? What’s he done now?” Sheldon asked. “I heard he made parole. Who knows how that happens. He right back at it? The sociopath.”
“Back at what?” Rath said.
“What? What he’s always done when free.”
“What makes you think he’d be back at it?” Test said.
“I called him the Great Pretender. Not to his face. I don’t need to mix it up. I hit the weight room to occupy my mind and to kill the boredom. Not to get ripped so I could pummel other cons. But, it didn’t hurt to pack muscle. You can imagine. Now I’m out, I could give a shit about pumping iron.”
“The Great Pretender?” Rath said.
“Holier than thou. The Jesus racket. I bought it from some guys. Some guys were the real deal. They struggled. I mean guys who still seemed regretful, ashamed, who realized what they did mattered. And what they do, what we all do, matters. You can do good or you can do bad. Those guys, you know, they were working at being better. Even if they took a step backward. Guys who had to fight against everything they knew how to be in the world in order to even sniff being good. Man, t
hey suffered to be good. I sure the fuck did. There’s a lot of mutants behind bars, but one thing that surprised me was at night, the crying. Man, the crying. Sounded like a goddamned nursery. Men crying like abandoned babies. Men who’d done terrible things. Things no god would forgive. I guess I shouldn’t a been surprised with the crying. I was a crier. But I tried to be quiet about it. Have some dignity.”
Sheldon was traveling down his own lonely road in his mind. Rath and Test kept quiet to see where the road led.
“Preacher didn’t cry,” he said. “He didn’t regret. Not that many of the guys regretted much. Don’t get me wrong. They were too busy blaming everyone else for why they were inside. But Preacher. He seemed to throw a switch when he stumbled upon the ‘good book.’ A magic wand. ‘I’m forgiven.’ Presto. ‘I’m good now. What I did is in the past. Anyone still dragged down by it, best get over it. Cuz I’m forgiven. I am free of the weight of what I done.’”
“Sounds like you knew him well for crossing paths.”
“You cross paths a good shitload in fifteen years. You hear guys. Rumors. See things. You watch them.”
“But you weren’t close?” Test said.
“What I did. Shooting that kid while robbing that store.” He shook his head. “I was desperate. I didn’t do it outta meanness, or outta some sickness to hurt others. After the gun went off in the struggle. And I saw him there. On the floor. He was my daughter’s age. I just sat down and waited for the cops. I tried to shoot myself. They got that on video. I put the gun barrel in my mouth, shoved it in there, and pulled the trigger. And nothing happened. I almost died of a heart attack when I pulled the trigger. My heart almost exploded. But the gun didn’t go off. It was old, rusty, and when it went off the first time and killed the kid, its cylinder, it seized or something. Stuck. It wouldn’t rotate again to bring in a new, live round. All I wanted in that moment was to die, just to die. And I was being denied it by some cruel twist. I thought, ‘This is my punishment, to live. To have to live with myself. To have to see the faces of this kid’s parents in hell. A hell I put them into.’ But I wasn’t Preacher’s type. A predator. Who takes joy in pain. Sexual perversion. Violent perversions. Do you know how much it damages people? Violence like Preacher’s done?”
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