All the Blue-Eyed Angels (18 page)

“Hey, Chris.Fancy meeting you here.”

“Just stopped in town for a little lunch,” the man said, smiling. Playing along. He leaned down to peer into the car and tipped his hat at me. “You don’t remember me, I guess—Chris Finnegan. I was a couple years ahead of you in school.”

He was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered, with glasses and a casual way about him that I imagined was supposed to set people at ease. It wasn’t working.

“I heard somebody had a couple pizzas delivered here,” Diggs said. “Hey, here’s an idea just off the top of my head.”

I glared at him, but he ignored me.

“Why don’t you join us, Don? The more the merrier.”

Indeed.

◊◊◊◊◊

“You don’t have to file a report, of course,” Sheriff Finnegan informed me. We were packed in Diggs’ office, Einstein finally liberated from the car and now poised to attack the first stray piece of pepperoni or hamburg that fell to the floor. The evil trolls drumming inside my head had gotten louder and more unruly, and my mood was not improving.

“I don’t need to file a report, thanks. I told you—I ran into a door.”

Finnegan smiled. He had a slice of Wallace’s loaded, extra cheese pizza in one hand, a can of Coke in the other. He took no notes.

“A door that tagged you in the noggin twice and, based on the way you’re holding yourself, probably got in a couple of serious body blows to boot.” He finished chewing and looked at me thoughtfully. “You don’t mind me saying, that’s one mean son of a bitch of a door.”

I attempted a smile. I felt bad for lying, and worse because Finnegan was obviously just trying to do Diggs a favor. He looked at Diggs, who looked at me.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

I closed my eyes, my head throbbing to some primal rhythm that was fast making my stomach roll to the beat.

“Maybe later.”

He stood, nodding toward the doorway. “Just for a minute.”

As soon as we were out the door and down the hall, he turned on me.

“What the hell are you doing? You’re acting like some fucking battered wife—you got hit by a door? What
is
that?”

I could feel the blood in my cheeks as a week’s worth of impotent rage reached its boiling point. I advanced on him so fast that he took a step back.

“It’s my story, Diggs—
Mine.
It’s my book, it’s my family, it’s my fucking body. Back off. If I file a report, cops will be swarming the island. Whatever is going on, whoever it is will get spooked—”

“Or
caught—
”

I glared at him. “I mean it, Diggs. I’m not filing a report. I’m not making a statement. And if you don’t back the fuck off, I’ll find someplace else to hang my hat until I’m done here.”

Diggs shook his head. I’d never seen him angrier.

“Fine. Screw it—you want to kill yourself, go ahead. But if you go out there alone again—”

“I’m not going to.”

He caught the front of my shirt in his hand and pulled me closer. My heart was beating too fast. Diggs chest rose and fell and his breath came hard. Five seconds came and went while he tried to get himself back under control.

“I’m serious, Solomon,” he said, quieter now. “You see this face? This is the face of a terrified man. And doubly so because you aren’t taking this shit seriously.”

The rage left as quickly as it had come, leaving exhaustion in its place. I leaned into him, resting the top of my head against his chest—a move that was half embrace, half defense tackle.

“I’m taking it seriously,” I mumbled.

He smoothed back my hair. “If you go out to the island again, you’ll take me or Juarez? I don’t know how much help I’d be, but Juarez has a gun and James Bond hair, so I’m pretty sure he could do some damage. And when push comes to shove, I can scream like a banshee.”

“I won’t go out to the island alone again.”

He wrapped his arms around me and held me close. “You’re really okay?”

My eyes stung. If I could have stayed that way—Diggs’ voice in my ear, my body enveloped in his—for another five years, I would have been seriously tempted to do so.

“I’m fine, Diggs.”

He laughed. Shook his head. “Liar,” he whispered.

Once Sheriff Finnegan realized I wouldn’t be making any revelations about the attack, he excused himself to hit the mean streets of midcoast Maine once more. I bowed out shortly thereafter, intent on only one thing: Bed.

I drove past the town landing on my way back to Diggs’ place and noted that Hammond’s boat wasn’t at its mooring. I tried his cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail. The bastard was ignoring me—probably out solving the case, for all I knew. I was so tired I honestly couldn’t work up the energy to care. It was only four in the afternoon, but I’d been running on fumes for so long I was about twenty-four hours past empty.

Back at Diggs’ place, Einstein settled on the bathmat while I soaked in the tub with half a dozen scented candles and a bottle of wine at my fingertips. I’d closed the curtains, popped two pain pills Edie Woolrich had given me, and was just beginning to feel the tension start to ease.

The conversations I’d had over the past week replayed in my head. I did a cast call of the major players in my unfolding drama: Joe Ashmont, Matt Perkins, Noel Hammond. My mother and father. Rebecca Ashmont. Reverend Diggins. Isaac Payson.

Christ. Had the whole town been involved in this?

I now knew that Matt, Joe, and Rebecca grew up together. Rebecca married Joe, then apparently had an affair with Reverend Diggins when she was still part of his congregation, if the stories were to be believed. Joe moved her out to his island, where she had a son.

Somewhere during those years alone on the island with her boy, Isaac Payson made contact with her. I went over what I knew about the founder of the Payson Church and realized it was precious little, gleaned mostly from articles I’d read by others even less informed than myself. Raised in Maine by a good, God-fearing family before he slipped the draft by disappearing to parts unknown during Vietnam; started a church in Mexico sometime in the early-‘70s; returned to Maine in 1976 with a small troupe of followers who settled with him on Payson Isle. As far as I could tell, he’d never been in trouble with the law, and the work he did out on the island and up and down the Midcoast kept him in good standing with the community.

I could remember other women from abusive situations taking refuge with the Paysons; it would hardly have been unprecedented for Isaac to help Rebecca and Zion escape Ashmont’s iron rule.

That brought me to the summer of 1990, and whatever events might have led to the fire.

My father got a phone call early that morning. He in turn called Reverend Diggins for some ungodly reason, and told him he was on his way to the church. He left me at the hotel… But for some reason, he never followed through on that meeting with the Reverend.

Then there was my mother, and the story Hammond had given me about her: stacking all the bodies, destroying the evidence, seducing Hammond to ensure his silence. All of this done with the knowledge of Joe Ashmont and Matt Perkins.

I got out of the tub and toweled myself off. The drizzle outside hadn’t gotten any worse, but it hadn’t gotten any better, either. The sky was boiled gray outside my bedroom window, heavy clouds hanging low overhead. It felt much later than early evening.

The Reverend’s words were bothering me:
If I didn’t know better, I would say you didn’t actually want to learn the truth at all.

I could concede that that may have been true at one time. Hell, most of my teen years I’d been terrified of what my father might have been doing while he wasn’t with me the morning of the fire. Even then, I’d known that whether or not my father actually started the fire, he clearly knew more than he was saying. The question was, how much more? Maybe I hadn’t wanted the truth then, but I didn’t want to live this way anymore—plagued by guilt over what my father may or may not have done, the lies that he told and the lives that were lost. I wanted the truth.

“So, why haven’t I called my mother?” I asked Einstein.

I sat at the edge of the bed, Einstein at my feet. He perked up when he realized I was talking to him. What had the Reverend said? The people best equipped to answer my questions were my own parents.

He hadn’t said the
person
best equipped, I realized.

The people.My parents. Plural.

I still hadn’t been to the cabin where my father lived out his final days. There was no good reason for that—I just didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to see what his life had been, how the man I’d worshipped had unraveled over the years. After his death, my mother had asked if I wanted any keepsakes to remember him by. I’d said no. As far as I knew, she hadn’t gone through his belongings. And if she hadn’t, chances were good that no one had.

After all these years, did my father still have the answers I needed?

I put on jeans and a sweatshirt and powered through the heady combo of muscle relaxants, wine, and fatigue. I grabbed my cell phone and hit speed dial.

“I thought you were napping,” Diggs said.

“I got my second wind. You’re probably not free tonight, are you?”

“Seriously, woman? Don’t you ever rest?”

“I did rest,” I said. “I thought of something I want to check out. So... Do you have plans?”

He hesitated—wrestling, I knew, with deadlines he couldn’t miss.

“Don’t worry about it,” I interrupted before he tied himself in a knot. “What about your Cuban comrade in arms. Is he around?”

“Yeah,” Diggs said. “He just swung by, actually. I think he’s headed your way. You’re going out to the island?”

“I just want to check something out,” I said before he could lecture me on all the sleep I wasn’t getting and the ways it was bound to kill me. “I’ll make sure he brings his gun and his Bond ‘do, don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

“So I’m guessing our late dinner at the Shanty is out, then.”

“Shit. I forgot.” My ill-advised lip lock with Diggs seemed like a lifetime ago, the big talk we’d had planned downright silly compared with everything else going on. “I’m sorry. Raincheck?”

“Yeah, of course. Don’t worry about it. Give Juarez my regards—and, Solomon?”

“I know, Diggs—be careful.”

“Very careful.Careful to the power of ten. Squared.”

Though the math was a little beyond me, I made the promise all the same. After I hung up, I tried Hammond’s cell phone again. It went straight to voicemail. Again. He wasn’t picking up at home, either—avoiding me, or was he still out on his boat?

I took Einstein out for a quick pee and left him to keep the home fires burning at Diggs’ place. Juarez was just driving in when I intercepted him.

“Do you have any plans for the afternoon?”

“As far as I know, all my plans involve tailing you, unless I want Diggs to castrate me by nightfall.” He tried for a smile, but he didn’t look that amused. I knew the feeling.

“You don’t need to tail me—I think I popped one pain pill too many. You mind driving?”

“Where to?”

“Noel Hammond’s place first. Then, how about a nice evening jaunt across the bay?”

I braced myself for a lecture that, refreshingly enough, didn’t come.

“You’re the boss. I’m just here to make sure you get home in one piece.”

He opened his passenger’s side door for me. I hip-checked him as I climbed in, giving him what I hoped was a sexy grin—though given the painkillers, bruises, and swelling, I may have come up short. “And to look pretty—don’t forget that, Jack. You make great arm candy.”

He laughed and shook his head, but I could tell that he was pleased. Men. A little flattery really will get you anything.

Hammond’s truck wasn’t in his driveway when we got there. I pounded on his front door anyway, but predictably got no answer. The way I figured it, he was still at least one step ahead of me, maybe more. With that in mind, there was really only one logical place he could have gone. Payson Isle.

“Son of a bitch,” I said as soon as the realization struck.

Juarez was waiting in the car. I glanced his way, then tried the front door. It was locked. I went around to the side and peered in the kitchen window.

A car door slammed. A moment later, Juarez joined me.

“You think you could jimmy the lock on the front door?” I asked.

“Not unless I have a damned good reason to, no.”

I trailed behind as he walked around to the back. A low deck with a barbecue grill and two lawn chairs, a glass-topped table with an ashtray half-filled with cigarette butts… And a sliding glass door that led into the kitchen. Juarez opened it easily and stood aside.

“No breaking, just entering,” he said.

“A man after my own heart. I just want to leave a note, let him know I was here.”

“Sure you do.”

Juarez stayed on the deck while I went in.

“Noel?” I called. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted him to answer or not.

The house remained quiet. The black and white cat materialized, threading his way between my legs. Juarez finally gave in and followed me inside.

“I’m just looking for some paper—to leave that note,” I said.

He found a notepad and pen by the phone and tried to push them into my hand, but I ignored him. Istead, I went into the room where I’d seen Hammond get his files earlier that day, and found a cramped study with shelves of books lining the walls. Many of the titles were familiar—books on Jim Jones and David Karesh, Heaven’s Gate, Amityville, and two thin volumes on the Paysons that I’d practically memorized.

Two oversized scrapbooks were lying on Hammond’s desk. I opened the first and several yellowed newspaper clippings fell to the floor.

“Erin,” Juarez said, standing at the threshold to the room, “you should put those back.”

“I will—just give me a second.”

I knelt in the dim, crowded room, scanning articles Hammond had been hanging onto for years now. Most were from the days following the fire—some from the
Trib
, some from larger newspapers around the state, and one lengthy article I knew well from the
Boston Globe.
There was a profile piece I’d read before on my father, done by the
Portland Press Herald
on the tenth anniversary of the fire—not long before Dad’s death. I studied the picture.