No shit, Louise wanted to say but didn’t. Instead, she stared straight ahead at the blank beige wall. For a long time, the only sounds were the steady clicking on his IV feed and the soft, hissing sound coming from his oxygen tube.
“So who did you kill?” she asked, finally working up the nerve to speak.
“Tony Gillette. You know Tony?”
“Only by reputation.”
“He was a small time punk-ass dealer from Darmiscotta who deserved it, s’far as I can see.”
“You said two guys. Who else?”
Tom winced like he’d bitten the inside of his cheek. His face went a shade or two paler.
“Yeah, here’s where it gets kinda fucked up … Gillette was with a DEA guy … guy named Jerry Lincoln. I went to meet them … I’ve been working on setting up this sting operation, and it went to shit.”
“Jesus Christ, Tom,” Louise said as the full impact of what he was telling her hit home. This wasn’t a joke, and no matter how she looked at it, she knew Tom was in a world of trouble.
Tom winced and let out a small yelp of pain when he straightened up and leaned forward. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. His cheeks were lined with broken blood vessels.
“This is why you gotta help me, Lou,” he said, his voice a desperate whisper.
Louise sat motionless, her hands cold, her gaze fixed on the floor. Then she started shaking her head from side to side, already denying what she knew he was about to say.
“There’s some —”
He leaned forward and reached out with his left hand, trying to touch her, but Louise — braced for a slap — flinched and then quickly shifted out of reach.
“It’s not like that,” Tom said with a little boy pleading in his voice. “Not any more. I … I realized how shitty I’ve been treating you, but that’s all gonna change from now on. I promise.”
Louise looked at him, unable to keep her upper lip from curling into a sneer.
“I know I haven’t treated you good. But I’m gonna change. I promise. I already have changed. And I … I’m gonna need you … your help because of all the shit that’s gonna come down on me because of what happened.”
Louise didn’t say a word.
“I’m gonna be in a world of legal trouble, and it’s gonna be expensive.”
“I can’t help you there,” she said, but thinking about the money she had found in his bureau made her smile inwardly.
“Yes, you can.” Tom tried again to reach out and touch her, but Louise was keeping her distance. She knew what he might do. She could see the monster, still lurking behind this thin mask of reconciliation and pretended love.
“In the bedroom … in my bureau.” He looked around the room as though expecting to see someone lurking nearby, listening. “Taped to the back of the second drawer … There’s a manila envelope.”
“A manila envelope?”
Louise bit down on her lower lip to keep from smiling as she thought about what she had already done with that envelope. Earlier that evening, when she was at her father’s house, she had fretted about what to do with the cash she had found. Any place she thought of to hide it was too obvious. When the cops came snooping around — which was inevitable — they’d be certain to find it if she stashed it anywhere in the house. The problem was, she didn’t dare hide it anywhere outside the house, either. She was sure the police had equipment that would find it no matter where she hid it … or maybe they had money-sniffing dogs … or the house was already under surveillance.
So what to do? … What to do?
And then it had hit her.
She wasn’t sure if it was something she had seen on a cop show when she was a kid or if it was simply a stroke of genius on her part.
She had folded the envelope over into as small a package as she could make and then wrapped it in several layers of Saran Wrap. Then she had gotten the jar of mayonnaise from the refrigerator. It was one of those huge family-sized jars her father was always buying at Sam’s Club to save money, even though he seldom if ever made himself a sandwich. She scooped out enough of the contents to make a cavity large enough to hold the envelope, and then she refilled the mayonnaise jar and smoothed it over. After making sure the edges of the envelope weren’t visible, she washed the excess mayonnaise down the sink and washed her hands, making sure to clean under her fingernails.
She had put the jar back into the refrigerator, making sure it was way back on the bottom shelf where no one would notice it. She felt secure that it would be safe there for a while, at least until this shitstorm with Tom blew over.
“I’ve been — umm, saving up some money for us. You know — for a rainy day. And … well, this sure as shit constitutes a rainy fucking day.”
“And you want me to do — what?” Louise prayed that what she was thinking didn’t show on her face.
“You gotta get that money and hide it somewheres,” Tom said, lowering his voice. “I’m gonna have legal bills up the ass if I’m gonna stay out of jail.”
Louise was silent for a long moment. What galled her most was thinking how stump-stupid Tom must think she was.
After all the terrible things he had said and done to her, did he really think she’d come running to help him?
She wished to God she dared to tell him as much, but for now, she had to act the devoted, if not loving, wife.
She twisted her hands in her lap, her mind churning fast as she tried to think this through without giving herself away. Then a brilliant idea, as good as the mayonnaise jar, came to her.
“The cops already showed up at the house this morning.”
“What?” Tom jerked forward and then winced with pain.
“Yeah. They were at the house this morning with a search warrant.”
“You have got to be shitting me!”
Tom stared at her for a moment, and then his expression collapsed. Moaning, he sagged back on the bed. He looked like an inflatable toy that had a slow leak. His eyes went glassy; his face was sheet-white.
“I’m fucked,” he said, sounding totally defeated.
Louise nodded and said, “Uh-huh. They came by the house. I didn’t know what to do, like, if I should call a lawyer or whatever, but I let them in and then went back to my father’s house. I… I had no idea what they were doing there.”
“Whoa, wait … wait … wait.” Tom’s frown deepened as he raised his un-bandaged hand and shook his forefinger at her. “You were at the house? Our house?”
Louise realized she was on thin ice.
“Yeah, I — umm, I went over to … to get my jewelry,” she said. “I knew you were out, and I thought it’d be safe.”
Tom’s face turned crimson with anger.
Louise said nothing, but she shied away from him, prepared for him to lunge out of the bed and throttle her right there and then. Even the cops outside the door wouldn’t be able to help. She could yell for help all she wanted, but he’d get a few good licks in, first.
But then, like a cloud passing from in front of the sun, Tom visibly relaxed. He smiled and shook his head and then sniffed with suppressed laughter.
“Yeah … Sure. That’s okay,” he said. “Like I said — I knew I was an idiot for treating you the way I did. I was gonna ask … beg you to come back to me.”
Louise didn’t miss the note of insincerity in his voice. But she kept her expression neutral, her gaze fixed on her husband’s face.
She had to play this all the way through. If she got lucky, this would be the last time in her life she would ever see Tom Marshall before he went to jail.
“I …” Louise began, but then she faked a wild shudder and put a hand over her mouth as though she was concerned beyond belief for his welfare. “There … there’s no way of knowing what they found … if anything … I mean … how’ll we know if the money’s still there.”
“It’s gotta still be there! At least it was as of yesterday.”
It pleased her no end to see how much Tom was panicking and
trying so hard not to let it show. He started gnawing his lower lip, his eyes darting nervously from side to side.
“How will we even know if they found it?” she asked, struggling to keep the correct note of worry in her voice. “They might — Do you think they’d keep it and not even report it? And then use it for evidence against you?”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Tom whispered. He was staring straight ahead at the wall behind her. It was obvious he knew he’d run out of options … and luck. She was practically bursting with demon glee.
Who was it who said: Revenge is a dish best served cold?
Man, did they ever get that wrong.
Revenge is a dish best served piping hot from the gates of Hell.
“You gotta go back there and get it,” Tom said.
“I’m not sure I can even get back into the house,” she said after a moment’s thought. She stood up and started pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed. “You don’t think the cops already have the house sealed up? They’ll be watching me and the house, for sure.”
Tom’s face looked like it was etched in ivory.
“I suppose I can try … unless you don’t want me to.”
Tom’s expression softened, but a worried tightness still pinched the skin around his eyes. She could all but smell his meanness lurking below the surface.
“It’ll be wicked dangerous.
“I know,” he said. “But I promise. You help me get out of this, and I’ll be the husband you want me to be.”
At that, Louise had had enough.
“You know what?” she said, snapping her fingers as she started backing slowly toward the door. She glanced over her shoulder and was prepared to call for help the instant he left the bed.
“What’s that, hon?”
Tom looked at her expectantly. He obviously was assuming she was going to say she’d find a way to get into the house and check if the money was still there. She could read the hope in his eyes that she was going to say that she still loved him and wanted to try to make it work between them.
“I think you’re on your own here,” Lou said. She was surprised by the calm, steady strength in her voice.
Tom stared at her, his mouth gaping in surprise as if he didn’t believe he’d heard her correctly. He looked like she had slapped him across the face, and he visibly shriveled right there in front of her eyes. He looked like a heat-blasted plant, withering in the sun without water.
“You’re not gonna fool me with your bullshit,” she said in a low, controlled voice. “Never again. As soon as you get out of here, you’re going straight to jail and then —” She clasped her hands in front of her chest and shook them. “And then — Oh, I pray to God that then you get convicted and sent to Warren for the rest of your miserable life. As far as I’m concerned, you can rot there.”
Her stomach was knotted with tension when she turned her back on him. She expected him to pick up something close to hand and hurl it at her as she walked toward the door, but she made it to the door without incident.
As she flung the door open, she looked back at him one last time and almost laughed out loud when she saw him lying there in the hospital bed and staring at her in stunned silence. His eyes bugged from his head, and his mouth was hanging open. He was making a low sputtering sound like cold water hitting a hot stove. She thought he looked like a codfish that had been hooked and dragged up onto the deck, but he sure as shit wasn’t a “keep-ah.”
“Thank you,” she said, nodding to the cop who was standing outside the door in the hallway. “I’m all done.”
Chapter Eighteen
Letting Go
The money … to hell with the money … but the IDs … that stuff is gonna be a royal pain in the ass to replace.
Ben was surprised how, with his life still very much in the balance, he could dwell on such mundane things like losing his wallet, which had sunk to the bottom of the ocean when he peeled off his pants.
He would die of exposure long before another fishing boat or the Coast Guard saw the wreck in the morning. He wasn’t sure what time it was. It had to be well past midnight. No matter. It was going to be a hell of a long time before the first rays of light streaked the Eastern horizon.
Forget about the IDs and money … His father’s new boat — the Abby-Rose — was “a goner.” It would eventually fill with seawater and sink, and — as far as he knew — his brother had already drowned. Treading water, Ben stared at the overturned hull some distance away. Either he had been thrown far on impact or else he had drifted while trying to find the surface. He thought he detected a current, pulling him away from the wreck. It took his stunned brain a long time to figure out that his best chance of survival was to stay with the boat. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to tread water until someone showed up.
Moving stiffly, the cold penetrating his bones like nails, he started swimming toward the wreck. After a few seconds, filled with a surge to survive, he started taking strong, powerful strokes and kicking evenly. The current sweeping him away from the boat was also moving the boat toward him, so he closed the distance faster than he thought he would. Still, his muscles were burning with exhaustion by the time he got to the boat and, reaching up, slapped his hands against the stern and clung to it.
Okay … Now what? he asked himself as he looked around at the debris floating around him.
Somewhere in the wreckage, there had to be a box of distress flares, but finding them or a life jacket would be next to impossible. Then he remembered that his father kept the flares in a closed cabinet in the wheelhouse — at least he had on all his other boats — but Ben decided that he wasn’t about to dive under the boat and come up inside the overturned hull. It’d be pitch black in there, and he’d probably bang his head on something and go under again for the last time.
So what do I do now? he wondered. Hang on … and pray someone finds me … before I drown or die of hypothermia?
There didn’t appear to be any other options. Even if he had a cell phone, if he hadn’t already thrown it away, it would have sunk to the ocean floor with his pants. He hadn’t been thinking. But he doubted he’d be able to pick up a signal this far out to sea, anyway, and the boat’s radio was useless now.
A sudden loud thump from inside the boat made him jump. His first thought was that some piece of wreckage had come loose and banged against the inside of the hull. When the sound came again, though, a faint spark of hope stirred in his chest.
“Pete?” he called out, his voice a ragged croak.
Trembling and shivering deep inside from the cold, he made a fist and deliberately pounded on the hull three times. Then he paused and listened, hoping to hear his signal repeated above the steady slapping sounds of waves breaking against the boat.
His heart skipped a beat when, from underneath the boat, came three identical thumps that resonated in the night like a kettledrum.
“Pete!” he yelled, and he hit the bottom of the hull three more times.
He paused, waiting …
Then two times.
Again, the pattern repeated.
Three thumps and then two.
His brother was alive. He was in the air pocket beneath the overturned boat.
“Jesus Christ, Pete!” Ben shouted, bringing his face close to the hull and hoping his voice would transmit through the fiberglass.
In reply, his brother said something, but his voice was so muffled Ben couldn’t make out the words. It sounded like he was yelling from the bottom of a canyon. Warm tears of joy streamed down Ben’s face. Without hesitation, he pushed away from the boat, tread water for a second or two until he got oriented, and then did a smooth surface dive and went under.
Darkness swallowed him immediately, but he felt and fumbled around until he found the gunwales and then pulled himself down and under and then inside the boat. He clunked his head hard on something when he broke the surface and took a breath of the air inside. The waves still slapped against the boat outside, but th
e sound was thin and distant.
“Mother fucker, Pete” he said, sputtering and panting, his arms flailing to keep him up. His voice echoed oddly in the dark, enclosed space. “Sure as shit, I thought you drowned.”
“You’re not that lucky,” Pete replied.
Under the circumstances, Ben didn’t stop to think what a strange comment that was.
“Are you stuck on something?”
Ben reached out, groping around in the darkness until his hand brushed against his brother’s shoulder.
“Hell, no. I’m trying to find the goddamned flares, but damned if I can see for shit down here. My lighter don’t work, ’n I figure the air won’t last long, ’specially now that you’re down here sucking it up.”
“Get bent,” Ben said. “I thought I was saving you.”
Pete didn’t say a word, so Ben was silent for a while until finally he made a decision.
“Forget about the flares,” he said. “We gotta get our asses out of here. Someone’ll see us if we can hang on ’till morning. You got any idea what time it is?”
Pete raised his arm and pressed a button on his watch. The dial glowed a faint phosphorescent blue that illuminated his features for a moment, and then the light winked out.
“A little past one,” he said flatly.
“What d’yah say we get the fuck out of here?”
Pete didn’t reply to that, either, but then Ben heard a loud splash as his brother dove under. A second later, Ben did the same. Swimming down perhaps deeper than was necessary so he wouldn’t bump his head again, he swam until his breath burned in his lungs, and then rose to break the surface. A few feet to his left, his brother — little more than a black silhouette cut out from the night sky — was clinging to the boat as it rocked in the waves.
“Damn, that hurts!” Pete yelled.
“What?”
“I cut my hand on something.” He held up his hand, but in the darkness, Ben couldn’t see if there was any blood. “Salt water stings like a bastid.”
“Probably good for it, though,” Ben said. “It’ll clean out the cut.”
“Fuck you!”
The Cove Page 35
