Bad Men (2003) (49 page)

“He’s down there,” said Macy. “There’s nowhere he can go.”

But Marianne was pulling her back.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “There’s something else down there too.”

Macy looked at her. She remembered the tower, and the floating child, and the look on Scarfe’s face as he stared out into the forest and saw what was pursuing him.

Macy began to run. A rumbling sound came from the ground below her, and she felt the earth begin to give way beneath her. She increased her speed, Marianne beside her, the two women racing as the ground around the Site collapsed, taking the stones and the cross and the remnants of the settlement with it, smothering Moloch’s final cries in the thunder of its destruction.

Barron sat in the SUV over by the Portland Marine Company, an empty coffee container from the 7-Eleven on Congress in the cup holder by his right hand, the radio playing some Cheap Trick for the night owls. Once or twice prowl cars had passed his way, but he’d hunched down low in his seat and the cops hadn’t even slowed, the SUV just another vehicle parked in the lot. The snow was still falling, although the wind had died down some. The SUV was warm, the heat on full blast, but he had kept his gloves and coat on just the same.

Barron had spent most of his evening trying to reach a decision about Parker, the private detective who was nosing around. People listened when Parker spoke, and it was only a matter of time before somebody with real authority started paying attention to his noises about a sexual predator at work in the area, possibly a predator in a uniform.

The men in Boston were his only option. He was their tame cop, in so deep with them now that he could never escape. If they heard he was under threat, then they might be prepared to deal with his problem for him. The Russians didn’t give a rat’s ass about reputation, or influence. They were in it for the money, and anything that threatened their sources of income, or their carefully cultivated contacts, would be annihilated without a moment’s thought. He had once hoped that they might let him go, but it had been a faint hope. If that was the case, he might just have to resign himself to the fact and take advantage of the situation.

He glanced again at the dashboard clock: almost midnight. All was quiet. If Scarfe’s buddies did come back to the port, it looked like they would be able to do so without interference. Barron had even spotted one or two ships, dense with lights, braving the bay as the snow began to ease and the wind faded from a howl to a whisper. The streets were deserted and Scarfe’s battered Grand Am was parked not ten feet from where he sat, along with two vans. They had wheels. They were free and clear once they got back to Portland. Barron had done all that he could be expected to do. He had waited, he had kept an ear to traffic on the two police bands. He had his cell phone ready, the number he had been given by the men in Boston written on a napkin and not stored in the phone’s memory just in case any of this came back to bite him on the ass.

Then his scanner burst into life, and next thing Barron knew there was a chopper being readied for a run to Dutch, the Coast Guard was moving in, and there were enough armed police heading for the water to mount an invasion. Barron started his engine and drove.

It had all turned to shit, just as he had expected.

Barron ditched the SUV at Hoyt’s Pond, then retrieved his own car and headed home. He spent the next two hours pacing his apartment floor, wondering if he should run, fearing that his colleagues were already coming for him, sold out by Scarfe to save himself. After a while, he just had to know. He returned to Commercial and contrived to bump into one of the detectives from headquarters, who gave him the lowdown on the situation. Dupree was dead, killed by persons yet to be identified. Some, maybe all, of those responsible were also dead, but they were still searching the island. Macy had blooded herself: Terry Scarfe, who appeared to be tied in with those involved, had died at her hands. Barron was particularly happy to receive this last piece of information. If he had survived, Scarfe would have fed him to the department like fish bait.

Barron returned to his apartment relieved and began to feel the old urge gnawing at him, brought on in part by his relief at what he had learned about the events on Dutch. His appetites had forced him to risk his job and jail time for men he didn’t know, yet he was still unable to control his urges. Lipska, the little Polack who acted as Boston’s representative in Maine, had promised him some payback if he did as he was told, even as he was blackmailing him in another’s name. Barron felt saliva flooding his mouth and the welcome ache building at his groin. He made the call.

“Yeah, it’s me. Something went wrong, and the cops moved on the island.”

He gave Lipska a summary of what little he knew. “Now I want what’s coming to me.”

He sighed when he heard the other man’s reply.

“Yeah, I know I still got to pay, but you promised me something fresh, with a little off the top for my time.”

Barron grinned.

“Man, you crack me up, you really do. I’ll be waiting.”

Barron’s apartment lay off Forest, close to the university. It took up the entire top floor of the building, the rooms below rented out to students, and nurses from Maine Medical. They paid their rent to Barron although they didn’t know it. He used an agency. To them, he was just another tenant. Barron didn’t want them bothering him with their shit.

He took a beer from the fridge, walked to the bathroom, and lit some candles, then ran a bath, testing the water with his fingers to make sure the temperature was okay. He wanted it just a little too hot, so that it would have cooled down just enough by the time the package arrived. He stripped, put on a robe, then turned some music on low. He was just heading back to the kitchen for another beer when there was a knock at his door. There had been no buzzer, no voice over his intercom. He went to his bedside table and took out his gun, keeping it to his side and slightly behind his back as he approached the door. He looked out of the peephole, then relaxed and opened the door.

There was a boy standing before him, fifteen or sixteen at most, just the age Barron liked. He had dark hair and pale skin, with reddish-purple smudges beneath his eyes. Truth be told, Barron thought he looked kind of ill, and for a moment he was worried that maybe the kid had the virus, but Lipska had assured him that he was clean, and that was one thing about Lipska: he didn’t lie about shit like that.

“How’d you get up? I leave the door open? I must have left the door open.” Barron heard himself babbling, but hell, the kid had something. He was almost otherworldly. Barron felt certain that tonight was going to be special. He stepped aside to let the kid enter, noticing his faded, crude trousers, his rough cotton shirt, his bare feet. Bare feet? The hell was Lipska thinking, on a night like this?

“You leave your shoes at the front door?” Barron asked.

The boy nodded. He smelled clean, like the sea.

“Yeah, bet they got real wet. Maybe tomorrow we’ll head out, buy you some sneakers.”

The boy didn’t reply. Instead, he looked toward the bathroom. Steam was rising from the tub.

“You like the water?”

The boy spoke for the first time.

“Yes,” he said.

He followed the older man into the bathroom, his thumbs rubbing against his fingers, tracing the grooves that the waves had worn into his skin like an old song waiting for the touch of the Victrola needle to bring it alive.

“I like the water very much.”

Lipska arrived forty minutes later and tried the buzzer. There was no reply. He tried twice more, then tested the door with his hand. It opened at his touch. He gestured to the boy waiting in the car, and the young man stepped out. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. He was shivering as he followed Lipska into the house.

The door to Barron’s apartment was open when they reached it. Lipska knocked once, then again, harder this time. The door unlatched beneath the pressure of his hand. Inside there was water on the floor; just a little, as if someone had left the shower or the bath without properly drying off first. To Lipska’s left, the bathroom door stood half open and he heard the sound of the tap dripping. The only light came from there.

“Barron?” he called. “Barron, man, you in there? It’s Lipska.”

He walked to the bathroom door and pushed it open. He took in the naked man, his knees above the surface of the water, his head below it, eyes and mouth open, one arm dangling over the edge of the tub; registered too the faint tang of saltwater that hung in the air.

He turned to the boy, who had remained standing at the door.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Don’t I get my money?” said the boy.

“I’ll give you your money,” said Lipska. “Forget you were ever here. Just forget you were ever here…”

Lipska led the boy down the stairs and out into the street, then stopped as two uniformed policemen advanced toward him, a plainclothes detective walking close beside them. Behind the cops, he saw the private detective named Charlie Parker leaning against a Mustang. Parker’s face was expressionless as the uniforms separated Lipska from the boy. Only when Lipska was cuffed did Parker step away from the car and join the cops.

“What’s this about?” said Lipska.

“I think you know what this is about,” said Parker.

“No,” said Lipska. “I don’t.”

Parker leaned in close to Lipska’s face.

“It’s about Barron,” he said. “It’s about children.”

The best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past.
—George Halifax (1633–1695)

Marianne looked out of the window to where the boy sat on the small wooden bench at the end of the garden. From that seat, it was possible to peer through the branches of the evergreens and catch glimpses of the sea beyond. She stood at the sink, her hands immersed in soapy water, and waited for him to move, but he did not.

He has not cried, she thought. He has not wept since the night Joe Dupree died. He has not asked that we leave this place, and for the present we cannot. They are still trying to work out what happened here. Men are dead, and the reporters have washed over the island like a flood, questioning anyone who will stand still long enough to talk to them. Two weeks have gone by, and still they ask questions.

So many had died because of her: Bonnie Claeson was dead, and Richie too. His body had been washed ashore the night after the blizzard, the body of another man joined with it, both impaled upon a single arrow. Joe Dupree, the man who had shared her bed, had been laid to rest the week before. She had wept by his grave, haunted by the thought that he had died believing that he had been used and that she had felt nothing at all for him. The police were unwilling to let her leave the state until they had finished their investigation, and so the bodies of Patricia and Bill remained on ice in a morgue until she could officially identify them. She had read of the discovery of Karen Meyer’s body in the newspapers. Marianne had brought death upon them all, and for that she could never forgive herself.

They had found her husband’s body two days before, buried in the remains of a network of tunnels beneath the site. It appeared that he had died in the collapse. The searchers discovered dirt in his mouth—dirt and human remains. There were finger bones lodged in his throat.

Throughout the days that followed, Sharon Macy had been her ally, her protector, the two women united by their experiences. The investigators had taken away the money, but she had been told quietly that no charges would be filed against her. The states of Maine and Virginia proved remarkably sympathetic to her plight, perhaps recognizing that a battered wife, fleeing her husband to save herself and her child, would sway even the most hardhearted of jurors.

But Danny concerned her most of all. He had suffered through a terrible ordeal, and had seen men die in front of him. She felt that she needed to get him away from the island and the memories it held for him in the hope that time and distance might fade them. They were seated at the breakfast table, and he was merely toying with his Cheerios when she’d brought the subject up for the first time.

“I don’t want to leave,” Danny replied. “I want to stay here.”

“But after all that has happened—”

“It doesn’t matter. The bad men are dead.”

“We may have to leave. People here may not want us to stay after what happened.”

“They won’t make us leave,” he said.

And now it was she who seemed to be the younger one, the child, and he the older one, the one offering reassurance.

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

“Who told you?”

“Joe. He told me it would be okay.”

She let it rest then, not wishing to return either of them to the vision of the dying policeman on the floor, the ragged wound in his throat and his blood spilling across the tiles. It came to her at night, unbidden, just as she supposed that it came to Danny too. She would not allow it to torment her son’s waking moments as well.

But then Larry Amerling came to her, and he and Jack sat with her in her living room. Amerling told her that nobody on the island blamed her for what had happened, at least nobody who mattered, and that she couldn’t be held responsible for the actions of her husband. The deaths of Bonnie and Richie and Joe would remain with them always, and nobody who knew them would ever forget them, but they would not be brought back by forcing Marianne and Danny to leave.

“Joe cared for you, and I know Bonnie and Richie did too,” said Amerling. “Of all people, they would want you to stay.”

She cried and told them that she would think about it, but Jack, his right arm still in a sling, took her hand, and hushed her and told her that there was nothing to think about. Then Larry Amerling said something very strange.

“Maybe I’m just getting fatalistic in my old age, but I think that what happened was meant to happen,” he said. “Strange as it sounds, you and Danny were brought here for a reason, your husband too. There are things about that night that I don’t understand, and that I don’t want to understand. I’ve spoken to Officer Macy, to Linda Tooker and her sister, to old Doug Newton, and others too. A lot of people on this island have tales to tell about what they saw that night. You didn’t cause any of that. It was here, waiting. My guess is that it had been waiting for a long time for the chance to emerge. The island feels different now because of it. It’s been purged of something that’s troubled it, and it’s at peace. You should stay. You’re part of us. Sometimes I think you were always part of us.”