29.

Parker drove to Green Heron Bay, walked to his bedroom, and reached behind the big closet that faced his bed. His fingers found the b.u.t.t of the gun taped to the wood, and wrenched it free. The weapon was already loaded, although without a bullet in the chamber. He had hidden the gun away when he first arrived at the house, although he could not say why. It was a licensed firearm, and he had more cause than most to feel that a gun might be necessary for his protection. Those who had shot him were themselves dead, as were the ones who had sent them to dispatch him, but such acts of vengeance left trailing tendrils, and their stings could hold their potency for lifetimes, generations.

Yet still he had not wanted to look upon the gun, and had rarely touched it since coming to Boreas. Now he held it in his right hand, and the grip and weight were instantly familiar. He went back downstairs, unearthed the cleaning kit from the storage area beneath the stairs, disa.s.sembled the weapon, cleaned and oiled its component parts, then ressembled it. And in putting it together again, it felt to him that he was also piecing back something deep inside himself, an element of his being that had been mislaid, but not lost. When he was finished, he tucked the gun into the waistband of his trousers. They fitted him more loosely than before, and he had gone down two notches on his belt. Two was comfortable, if slightly less snug than he might have wished, while three was too tight. With the gun in place, his trousers now sat perfectly. He wondered if he should take it as a sign.

He changed into a clean shirt. Like his trousers, his shirts didn't fit as well, but in this case the looseness served to hide the gun. He walked outside, closed the front door behind him, and looked upon the waves. The tide was coming in again, and while the sky remained clear, the sea appeared to have taken on a darker tone. He had always loved the sea, had loved it ever since his first memory of his mother and father taking him north to Scarborough to meet his grandfather. He recalled walking on Ferry Beach with the old man for his grandfather had always appeared old to him but not, strangely, as old as his wife, a strange, near-silent woman who simmered with disappointment and regret. Parker had never spoken his feelings about her aloud, but he remembered being secretly, shamefully glad when she died and, as he grew older, he believed that his grandfather, although bereaved, might have felt her pa.s.sing as a kind of blessing, an easing of the burden on both of them.

Parker felt the sand beneath his feet, and for a moment he was a boy again, his grandfather beside him. And so convinced was he of the old man's presence that he closed his eyes, and his right hand reached out and tested the air, and he experienced a twinge of disappointment when it made no contact with his shade. Yet still he walked with him in his memory, and heard his grandfather's voice telling tales of Scarborough, and of the violence of its origins. Parker had been fascinated as a boy by tales of cowboys and the Old West, and it delighted him that he could walk in places where natives and settlers had fought and died, their blood leaching into the ground so that the memory of it was retained in the very atoms of the earth. Scarborough even boasted a Ma.s.sacre Pond, where Richard Hunnewell and eighteen other men were slaughtered in 1703, and a Garrison Lane, after the fortress built at Prout's Neck at the start of the eighteenth century. Curiously, these seemed more real to Parker than Old Fort Western in Augusta, the oldest surviving wooden fort in New England. Oh, he had been entranced by it, and had loved to visit the fort was a compulsory stop during their family vacations in Maine yet the images he had recreated in his head of the Scarborough settlements were more visceral, more immediate. Old Fort Western had to be shared with others, but the shadow-Scarborough was his alone. It lived in him and he, when he walked through the physicality of its present incarnation, lived in it.

He opened his eyes again. To his left was the Winter house. Lights burned in its downstairs windows. He began walking toward it. Already he had ceased to notice the gun at his back.

30.

The two detectives from the Major Crimes Unit of the Maine State Police arrived in Boreas shortly after Charlie Parker left Cory Bloom's office. The detectives were named Tyler and Welbecke, and were based out of Belfast. Both were female, and only slightly younger than Bloom herself. Tyler was the chattier of the two, Welbecke the more reserved, but Bloom didn't pick up bad vibes from either of them. As was now obligatory whenever two or more cops were gathered together, talk turned to Oran Wilde. Tyler and Welbecke were about the only detectives in the MCU who hadn't been dragged into the investigation and search. Initially, said Tyler, they'd been kind of p.i.s.sed at being out on the periphery, but now the media was starting to ask how one teenager suspected of five killings could continue to evade the combined might of Maine's finest, and consequently Tyler and Welbecke were among the few currently out of range of that particular s.h.i.tstorm.

Together the three women went over the paperwork acc.u.mulated so far, which wasn't a whole lot, and then Cory Bloom accompanied them as they looked at the parking lot where Bruno Perlman's vehicle had been found, and the beach at Mason Point. By now the light was fading. The sea was dark, darker than Cory Bloom could remember seeing it in many months, so that it seemed slowly to be contaminating the sky. Beside her, Tyler shivered.

'Grim place to wash up,' she said.

Bloom took in the strand, trying to look at it through fresh eyes. She supposed that Mason Point wasn't the prettiest stretch of beach in Maine, but in summer it was okay. It was just one of those places that needed people to bring it alive living people, that is. A corpse was never going to do much for it.

'It's not so bad,' she said. 'Anyway, I don't think it mattered to Bruno Perlman.'

'No, I suppose not.'

Welbecke spoke up. She had said very little since arriving in Boreas, preferring to let Tyler do most of the talking, and interjecting only to clarify points. She was more attractive than Tyler, but in a hard way, and she exuded negativity. Bloom guessed that she probably didn't have many friends. She was equally threatening to both s.e.xes.

'When did Charlie Parker get involved in all this?' she asked.

Bloom tried to detect the nuance behind the question. Dislike? No, that wasn't exactly it. There was a tone, though.

'A day or two after the body was found.'

'What did he say?'

'He just raised some questions, that's all.'

'Such as?'

Welbecke was persistent, Bloom would give her that. Bloom had nothing to hide, so she went through her dealings with Parker as thoroughly as she could.

'You let him examine the vehicle?' said Welbecke, and this time Bloom really didn't like her tone. 'You let him potentially contaminate a crime scene?'

'If I hadn't,' said Bloom, 'then Perlman's body would still be in the undertakers' refrigerator. n.o.body from MCU was in a hurry to come calling until Parker took an interest.'

'You need a private investigator to tell you how to do your job?' said Welbecke.

'No, but you clearly do.'

Welbecke made a movement with her neck, loosening it up in preparation for a fight. Bloom had only ever seen men do that before, and then largely the kind of oversized a.s.sholes who were looking for trouble, but were too dumb to understand that telegraphing the fact gave their opponents time to react and take them out. It made Bloom respect Welbecke less, which gave her no pleasure. She didn't like seeing women behave as badly as men, and especially not cops. Law enforcement remained a profoundly s.e.xist environment, and women would always be held to a higher standard than men under all circ.u.mstances, while simultaneously being expected to fail to reach it. She was just glad that her predecessor was no longer around to witness this p.i.s.sing match. It would simply have confirmed all that Erik Lange and his cronies believed about women.

Tyler, who had been looking on in something like amus.e.m.e.nt, chose that moment to act as peacemaker.

'Whoa, whoa!' she said. 'n.o.body's pointing fingers here, okay?' She addressed herself to Bloom. 'You'll just appreciate that there are certain ways of doing things, and this is all maybe a little unorthodox, you know? But I don't think any harm has been done, right, Stacey?'

Welbecke gave the impression that she thought harm might have been done in spades, but contented herself with looking away and offering a 'Like I could give a s.h.i.t' shrug to the world in general. Meow, thought Bloom: saucer of f.u.c.king milk for Detective Welbecke, please.

Tyler turned her back on her partner and walked toward the outcrop of land that gave Mason Point its name. Bloom followed, not caring to remain alone in Welbecke's company for longer than necessary. Tyler was watching the movement of the incoming tide. Even from where she stood, it was possible to detect the vicious crosscurrents.

'Do people swim here?' she asked.

'There are signs in the parking lot warning about the tides,' said Bloom. 'We usually have a couple on the sand too, but they're being repainted at the moment, before the season kicks in.'

Tyler took a deep breath of sea air.

'How long have you and Welbecke been partners?' asked Bloom.

'Couple of months. My turn: did you tell Parker about the marks on Perlman's skull?'

Bloom felt her face redden. She still didn't believe that she'd done anything wrong by keeping him informed, but strictly speaking she shouldn't have shared any of it with him. That was true of all that had occurred, which brought them right back to square one: a body frozen in a locker while the best part of thirty detectives in Maine, and more cops in adjacent states, chased a teenage ghost.

'Yes,' she said. 'I did.'

'Welbecke is a by-the-numbers kind of person, you understand? And, technically, all that she said was right. Do you know Gordon Walsh over at MCU?'

'No.'

'I guess you'd call him my mentor. He's good police. He's also the one Parker spoke to about Perlman. If Welbecke has a problem with anything that's occurred here, she'll have to bring it to Walsh, and he has a lot of respect for Parker. But she won't complain. She's just blowing off steam. Like I told you, she's by-the-numbers, but that's not always a bad thing, especially now that we may be opening a murder book on this.'

'I understand.'

And she did. Tyler was letting Bloom know that she'd take care of Welbecke, and in return Bloom needed to close down the channel of communication between Parker and herself.

'Does he live far from here?' asked Tyler.

'Just a couple of miles away, on the other side of town. He has one of two houses on Green Heron Bay.'

'Who has the other?'

'A woman named Ruth Winter and her daughter.'

'Local?'

'Almost: she's from Pirna. She moved here not long ago. Why do you ask?'

'Just curious.'

'If you want to go out and talk to Parker, I can give you directions. It's easy to miss the turn for the bay, especially when it's getting dark.'

'Tomorrow will be fine,' said Tyler. 'Right now, I'd like copies of all your paperwork, and then I'm going to check into my motel, take a shower, and go get dinner somewhere. Any suggestions would be welcome.'

Bloom recommended a couple of places as they marched over to where Welbecke stood, then together the three women headed to their respective vehicles. Bloom led the way back to her office. She had made the required copies before the detectives arrived, in antic.i.p.ation of the request, and all other relevant information was already in the system, so the handover didn't take long. Welbecke thanked Bloom as she left, and seemed to mean it. Bloom watched them drive away through the slats in her blinds. Preston joined her.

'How were they?' she asked.

'They were okay.'

'Both of them?' said Preston. 'The tall one looked like a bit of a b.i.t.c.h.'

'No, she was okay too.'

'Huh,' said Preston, in a way that suggested the ways of the world never failed to surprise her.

'By the way,' said Bloom, 'if Mr Parker calls again, either by phone or in person, you take a message, but you tell him I'm not available.'

'Understood. Is he in some kind of trouble?'

Bloom saw her own reflection in the window, and caught herself smiling.

'Mary, I think with him, trouble's a perpetual state of being.'

31.

Ruth Winter looked surprised and fl.u.s.tered to see Parker at her door. She was wearing an ap.r.o.n, and had flour on her hands.

'Sorry, I'm running a little late,' she said. 'The girls are watching TV, and I've just started making the pasta. You're welcome to come in, but dinner will be a while ...'

She managed a smile, but it was clear that she didn't particularly relish the prospect of having to entertain him and prepare dinner at the same time. He didn't smile back.

'Can I talk to you for a moment?' he said. 'In private.'

He could hear the sound of the TV coming from the living room. A woman's voice was singing, but he couldn't identify the song. It sounded saccharine, and he thought it might be from a later Disney movie, one of those that had largely pa.s.sed him by.

Winter nodded and stepped outside, closing the door behind her. She was wearing a sweater and jeans beneath her ap.r.o.n, but she shivered as the wind from the sea struck her.

'Is something wrong?' she asked.

His eyes went to the little hole on the doorframe.

'Why did you take down your mezuzah?' he said.

'What?'

'Your mezuzah. It was on the doorframe when I first met you, and then it was gone. I was wondering where it went?'

He saw her bristle, but she tried to retain her composure.

'There was a crack in the case, and I was worried about water getting in.'

It was a different explanation from the last, a new lie, and he was a man who had been lied to so often that he could almost ascribe to untruths a color and a shape, the way certain synesthesic musicians gave form and hue to notes.

'Did you know Bruno Perlman?'

'Who?'

'Bruno. Perlman.' He repeated the name slowly and distinctly. 'The man whose body washed up at Mason Point.'

'Why would I know him?'

The wrong answer, he thought, or the answer to a different question, but not the one that had actually been asked.

'Do you know who I am Ms Winter? Do you know what I did for a living?'

'Look, I'm sorry, but I don't have time for this.'

She made a move for the door, but he blocked her way with his arm.

'What do you think you're doing?' she said.

'Helping you, if you'll let me.'

'I don't need your help. I don't even know why you think that I might.'

'I've been a private investigator for more than a decade,' he said. 'Before that, I was a police officer, and a detective.'

'And?'

She wouldn't meet his eyes. She looked through the gla.s.s of the door to her kitchen. She just wanted to get back inside, and away from this man.

'I can tell when people are in trouble, when they're frightened, when they're hiding something. And when they're lying.'

'Get your hand down,' she said. Her voice trembled slightly. 'You're scaring me. I want you to leave now. If you need to take your daughter with you, then I understand, but I want you to go.'

She reached under his arm to take the handle of the door. He didn't try to stop her.