The Bright Silver Star (32 page)

And now Mitch flicked on his headlights.

And there stood Dodge Crockett intently spray-painting 9/11 WTC on the side of the minimart in two-foot-high red letters.

“Hold it
right
there, Mr. Crockett!” Des bellowed at him angrily.

First, Dodge froze. Then he hurled the aerosol paint can at her. Then he tried to run, which was futile—Des was faster than he was. He scarcely got twenty feet before she overtook him and threw him roughly to the pavement, jamming her knee into the small of his back. She slapped a handcuff on him and dragged him over to the rear service door, which had a heavy steel handle on it, and cuffed him to that. Then she called for a cruiser on her cell phone. She also got the Acars’ home number and put in a call to them.

Mitch climbed out of the truck and walked slowly over toward Dodge, his eyes hungrily searching Dodge’s face in the headlights for some insight into what was going on in this man’s mind—this man who he had looked up to and confided in and thought of as a friend.

Dodge did not hang his head in shame or defeat. He remained unbowed and unapologetic, the same way he had when Mitch and Will had walked in on he and Becca.

“A cruiser will be here in five,” Des announced, pocketing her phone.

“How about the Acars?” Mitch asked.

“No answer. I left a message on their machine.”

Mitch frowned. It was after midnight—kind of late for them to be out. Then again, maybe they didn’t pick up after they went to bed. A lot of people didn’t.

“This finally makes some sense,” Des said, staring coldly at Dodge “I get it now.”

“You get what?” wondered Mitch.

Dodge wasn’t saying a word.

“Why Miss Barker got weird on me,” she explained. “The old girl clammed right up when I asked her if she’d seen anybody drive by her house after that rock got thrown. Same with Mr. Acar, who was way too anxious to button it all up. Because it wasn’t any stupid kids who were messing with him. It was
you,
Mr. Crockett, and you’re someone who still matters in this town. Miss Barker knew it was you—she recognized your car. And Mr. Acar knew because you’d warned him, hadn’t you? You’d told him what might happen if he didn’t back off.”

Mitch turned to Dodge and said, “Why have you done this? What did the Acars ever do to you?”

“They’ve cut our morning take-out trade in half, that’s what,” Dodge spoke up, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. “They’re absolutely killing us with those Turkish pastries of hers. The locals haven’t come anywhere near The Works since she started selling them. I begged Nuri to give us a break. I said to him, look, you’ve got a thriving gasoline business. Kindly leave the food trade to us. He refused. I even offered to buy the damned pastries from him myself and sell them at The Works. Again he refused. He just wouldn’t listen to reason. Those Acars are unbelievably stubborn people.”

“So, what, you’re trying to scare them into leaving town?” Mitch asked.

“I’m
trying
to protect my investment. This is business I’m talking about, Mitch. People play for keeps. Believe me, some fellow who was truly ruthless would have burned this damned place to the ground a month ago and never lost a night’s sleep over it. We will have to shut down half of our bakery operation if they don’t back off. As far as the banks are concerned that’s a red flag. I won’t be able to raise any more capital. I won’t be able to meet my overhead. The Works will go into receivership, and I’ll be cleaned out. I’ll lose everything.”

“In other words, the Acars are smart businesspeople and you’re not.”

“Don’t judge what you don’t understand,” he shot back gruffly.

“Actually, I understand you perfectly, Dodge,” Mitch said.
“You’re the single most arrogant egomaniac I’ve ever met. You think the rules that apply to other people don’t apply to you. That you can do whatever you want to whomever you want, up to and including your own daughter. Well, you’re wrong, and it’s amazing to me that you’ve lasted all of these years without finding that out. I guess you’re just a sheltered small-town boy. But let me just ask you this—why did you have to push Tito off of that cliff? And how did Donna qualify as competition? It seems to me she was one of your biggest assets.”

“Now, you wait one minute.” Dodge’s eyes widened. For the first time he seemed genuinely rattled. “I’ve stepped over the line a tad, I’ll grant you that.”

“You’re granting us jack,” Des snapped. “We caught you in the act.”

“I threw a rock through a window,” Dodge acknowledged readily. “I sprayed some graffiti on a wall. But that’s all. You can’t pin those murders on me. I had nothing to do with them. I am not a killer, I swear.”

“All I know,” Mitch said, “is that Donna told me not to look too closely at her business or her marriage. And now she’s dead and you’re out here trying to put a hardworking immigrant couple out of business.”

“Where were you last night, Mr. Crockett?” Des asked him.

“I was home all evening.”

“Alone?”

“Very alone. I don’t seem to be too popular these days.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she said, raising her chin at him. “Were you romantically involved with Donna?”

“Of course not,” Dodge replied. “Donna Durslag didn’t sleep around. She wasn’t the type. Believe me, I know about these things.”

Mitch started to say something back but before he could get the words out something went
ker-chunk
inside his head and he just stood there with his mouth open, dumbstruck. Because it hit him now—the thing that had been staring right at him all along. The thing he’d completely ignored.

And now Mitch stood there in the Citgo parking lot with his head spinning. It was spinning when the cruiser that Des had summoned pulled up and an immense young trooper climbed out. It was spinning as Des went over the charges with the trooper. It was spinning as she uncuffed Dodge from the door handle and put him in the backseat. It was still spinning when he and Des stood there watching the cruiser take Dodge away to the Troop F barracks in Westbrook.

“Are you okay, boyfriend?” Des asked, examining him with concern. “You look a little blown away.”

“Des, I’ve figured it out. . . .”

“Figured what out?”

“Who killed Tito and Donna.”

“Well, are you going to tell me about it?”

“Of course, only there’s absolutely no way to prove it. No conventional way, that is. Des, I’m afraid that this is going to call for some more, well, visionary thinking.”

She stood there with her hands on her hips, scowling at him. “Mitch, you
have got
to be kidding me.”

“What do you mean by that?” he protested innocently.

“I
mean,
I know that look on your face. You look just like a fat little boy who is about to stick his fat little hand in the cookie jar.”

“Okay, first of all I resent the repeated use of the F-word—”

“You want to set some kind of a trap. And you want
me
to watch your back, don’t you? Tell me I’m wrong. Go ahead, tell me.”

“Well, it worked once before, didn’t it?”

“You ended up in the
hospital
before.”

“I didn’t mind. The wound healed fast, and I got all of the ice cream I could eat. Not to mention tapioca.”

“Mitch, it cost me my damned job on Major Crimes.”

“And look how much happier you are. Look at how much fun we have together, day in and day out.” He strode resolutely back to his truck now and got in, waiting for her join him.

Des followed him reluctantly and climbed in, her eyes shining at him. “Mitch, I’m being serious now, okay? Please, please don’t do this—whatever
this
is.”

“I have to,” he insisted, pulling out onto Old Shore Road and heading for home.

“Why, damn it?”

“Because somebody has been killing people who I care about. You guys can’t put a stop to it. I can. And there’s absolutely no need for you to worry about me. I can handle myself. I’m perfectly capable of . . .” Mitch frowned, glancing over at her. “What was that noise you just made? I distinctly heard a sound come out of you.”

“That was sheer human anguish!” she cried out. “I am involved with a crazy person. You are insane!”

“Am not. I’m just a concerned Dorseteer who’s had enough.”

“Kindly tell me this, Mr. Had Enough—what am I supposed to do about Rico and Yolie? What do I tell them?”

“Not a thing. If they have so much as a hint of prior knowledge then it’s entrapment. That’s one of the truly valuable things I’ve learned from hanging with you, Des.”

“Mitch, it’s entrapment if
I’m
involved!”

“But you’re not. You’re simply backing my play in case it all turns sour. They can’t fault you for being in the right place at the right time. Perfectly legitimate.”

She glowered out the windshield in seething silence. “You’re going to do this no matter what I say, aren’t you?”

“If you don’t want in, just say so. I promise I won’t hold it against you.”

“You know what I should do? I should cuff you to that steering wheel right now.”

“But you won’t,” he said, grinning at her.

“Why the hell not?”

“Two reasons. One, because I’m your sweet baboo—”

“You
were
my sweet baboo. Our love is like
so
hanging in the balance right now.”

“Two, because deep down inside, where your scrupulously high moral standards live, you know I’m right.”

She said nothing in response to that. Just rode along next to him, smoldering, as he steered his truck back to Big Sister.

“I can’t do it,” she finally said, her voice low and pained. “Not again. I won’t be there to help you this time. You’re on your own. I’m out.”

“That’s fine. I understand.”

“I mean
it!”

“So do I.”

“Mitch, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I am hating you right now.”

“I’m awfully fond of you, too, Master Sergeant.”

The road up to the Devil’s Hopyard was narrow and twisting, and the low, dense fog ahead of him in the headlights made the shoulders seem to crowd right in around his truck.

Mitch drove slowly, alone in the cab except for his microcassette recorder and the pint bottle of peppermint schnapps on the seat next to him. His mouth was dry, his palms moist, even though he kept wiping them on his shorts.

When he arrived at the end of the road he pulled onto the shoulder by the gate, just as Tito had when he’d phoned him to say goodbye. The yellow crime scene tape had been removed, but two overflowing barrels of evidence still remained—the trash that the press corps and celebrity gawkers had left behind. Their empty film canisters, food wrappers, coffee cups and soda cans were spilled out all over the pavement.

Stinking garbage. This was Tito Molina’s final tribute from his public.

Mitch shut off his engine, grabbed his things and got out, hearing the roar of the falls, feeling the fear surge through his body. He started down the rocky footpath in the fog, making his way by flashlight past the picnic tables toward a wooden guardrail that smelled of creosote. Here he spotted the warning sign that all of the newspaper accounts had referred to, the one that read:
Let the Water Do the Falling. Stay Behind This Point.

He climbed over it and started his way carefully out onto the slick, gleaming shelf of ledge, the roar growing louder as the water cascaded
right by him, crashing onto the rocks down below. It was cooler up here over the falls. But he was still perspiring, his heart pounding as he inched his way slowly out onto the promontory.

Mitch sat now, hugging his knees with his arms, and flicked off his light, alone there in the wet, roaring darkness. And terrified. He would be feeling way more sure of himself if Des were backstop-ping him, no question. Not that he blamed her for saying no. She had to think of her future. He knew this. But he also knew that she was his safety net. Walking this particular tightrope without her made the trip a whole lot more daunting. He took a sip of the peppermint schnapps, realizing at long last that what it tasted exactly like was Nyquil—although he doubted that a slug of peppermint schnapps would put him to sleep in ten to twelve minutes with drool dribbling down his chin.

In fact, he doubted he’d be asleep for a long, long while.

The waterfall masked all distant noise. Mitch didn’t hear the other car arrive. Didn’t hear its door slam shut. Didn’t hear the footsteps approaching in the darkness—not until they were right there beside him, sure and quick on the slippery granite ledge.

And Mitch heard a raised voice say: “You came alone?”

Mitch reached down and flicked on the microcassette recorder at his feet. It was a powerful little unit. When he’d tested it in his bathroom with the shower and faucet running full blast it could pick up his voice quite clearly from four feet away. “Of course I did,” he responded, hearing the quaver of fear in his own raised voice. “I said I’d be alone, didn’t I?”

“You said it was urgent, and that I should meet you up here. Why here?”

“Because this is your special place. You feel safe up here. I think I can see why. It’s comforting being surrounded by so much darkness and water. You’re totally free to be yourself—the self that you hide so well from everyone in the daylight.” He took a gulp from the bottle. “Want some peppermint schnapps?”

“I’ve never liked the stuff. Since when do you?”

“Oh, I don’t.”

“Then why’d you bring it?”

“As a tribute.”

“Does anyone else know we’re here, Mitch?”

“Not a soul.”

“Why are we?”

“Because we’re friends. I want to help you.”

“You said on the phone that you know.
What
do you know?”

Mitch reached for his flashlight and flicked it on, its beam illuminating the lean, taut face of Will Durslag. “I know that you loved Tito and you killed him. I know you loved Donna and killed her. But I don’t know why, Will. I need to know why.”

Will’s eyes turned to narrow, frightened slits. He looked like a wild, desperate animal crouched there in the torchlight.

Mitch flicked it off, plunging them back into the darkness. They’d been doing better there. “We talk about lots of things when we walk on the beach together. Can’t we talk about this?”