Without Warning (12 page)

“I’m sure we all have enemies. But he was on the business side of the paper, and we’re a small operation. So there’s no one I can imagine or am aware of, but there were obviously some things that Roger didn’t share with me.”

“Do you know what he was doing in the days before he left the paper?” I said “left the paper” as a substitute for “when he was wrongly arrested for killing my wife,” since it didn’t have the same ring to it.

“Yes, because I took over his responsibilities. He was putting our HR files in order, employee backgrounds, health insurance, those kinds of things. We had been pretty lax about it in the past.”

The conversation then flipped to Katie assuming the role of interrogator, pumping me for information that she could use in a story. I wished I had some to give her; I wished I had some at all.

We dropped it, with neither of us particularly satisfied. Once we got to King Eider’s and sat down, things changed. It was like the restaurant was a stress-free zone, and we could put all the baggage aside and actually enjoy each other’s company.

Nothing of consequence was discussed, which was how both of us liked it. We talked about high school, classes we were in together. It was almost as if we hadn’t seen each other for years and were catching up.

“You always sat behind me in class,” she said. “Why was that?”

“Your neck.”

“My neck?”

“Yes. Right behind your ear … both ears actually … your neck has this little indentation. I used to like staring at it.”

She instinctively put her hand behind her ear to check on what I was talking about. “You mean this old thing?”

I leaned over and looked. “Yup. There’s one on the other side, too. But I never really had a favorite between the two.”

She touched it again. “I think everyone has this.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “But yours was the one in front of me.”

She laughed at that. We laughed a lot through that meal, mostly at my continuing inability to crack open lobster shells. It’s a deficiency quite rare among Mainers. She touched my arm as she talked, seven times to be exact. I was counting.

We were there for three hours, and if I had had a more enjoyable meal in years, I couldn’t remember it. The ride home got more serious, as we talked about life and romance since the loss of our respective spouses.

“I’ve dated some; not a lot,” I said, in answer to her direct question. “No one serious. You?”

“Not too much. I wouldn’t let it get important to me; it always seemed like a mountain I didn’t want to climb.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, because I did.

When we got to her house, she didn’t invite me in. She didn’t have to; I followed her, as she knew I would. I’m not even sure she had closed the front door behind us before we were kissing and groping each other, just like the high school days we had just talked about.

But in bed, it was nothing like high school. Back then we wanted, now we needed.

It turns out there’s a big difference.

I left Katie’s house at one
AM
. She seemed to think it was important to discuss what had just happened between us. Those kinds of talks are not my style, but I respected her feelings, and it turned into a positive.

“I think we’re in rather uncharted waters here, Jake.”

I suppose sleeping with a woman whose husband was convicted of murdering my wife could be considered “uncharted,” so I agreed, but didn’t say so. “It felt pretty normal to me,” I said.

“Me, too.” She laughed. “But in this case feeling normal probably isn’t normal.”

“Katie, I’d like to continue seeing you. Maybe we should keep it a bit under the radar because of the case, but I think we’re pretty good together. More than pretty good. It feels comfortable, and it feels right.”

She nodded, it seemed almost a bit reluctantly. “Me, too. And I’m sort of stunned by it, in a wonderful way. But I agree that under the radar is probably a good idea.”

We left it at that, but didn’t make any plans to see each other again. I was sure that we would, but figured we’d just let it happen naturally. Happening naturally had worked pretty well so far.

I went home, and had a strange reaction when I walked in the door. My home was my sanctuary; I always felt a sensation of relief when I returned there. This time it felt a little lonely, empty, and I didn’t know why. Since introspection was not my specialty, it would probably be a while before I found out.

But I was pretty sure it had something to do with Katie.

Emptiness and loneliness has never interfered with my sleep; actually, they haven’t invented anything that can interfere with my sleep. So I was out cold within ten minutes of getting home. I wanted to be up at six; ever since the capsule was dug up I’d been getting to the office even earlier than usual. But I didn’t set an alarm; I’ve always had a sort of clock in my head that gets me up.

So I was up and out of the shower at six thirty when the phone rang. Caller ID showed it to be from area code 204, which somehow my mind knew was Charlotte, North Carolina. I wasn’t aware of anyone I knew who lived there.

I answered it, and the voice on the other end said, “Jakie?”

The use of “Jakie” instantly told me that I was talking to someone from my military days. The guys I served with were the only ones who called me that. We all called each other by nicknames, some creative and some not so much. “Jakie” was in the latter category. But hearing the names let us know we were talking to a Marine buddy; it was the verbal version of a secret handshake.

“That’s me,” I said.

“Jakie, it’s Costanza.”

I was talking to George Starks. Because his name was George, and because he was losing his hair at the time, we named him “Costanza” after the
Seinfeld
character. As I mentioned, some of it wasn’t very creative.

“Hey, man, good to hear your voice. What’s going on?”

“I got bad news, Jakie. Billy Boy’s not with us anymore.”

I knew he was talking about Bill Norris, one of our buddies in Afghanistan. It was a shock. I had felt closer to Bill than most of the other guys, even though we hadn’t been in touch in years.

We were in the same unit, and we fought side by side, and that made us family. But Bill and I shared another common experience; we had gotten into a bar fight with each other. I forget what the argument was about, probably sports. But we had a bunch of beers and all of a sudden we were throwing punches and wrestling on the floor.

I wound up with a cut lip, and I think he had a broken nose, but by the next day we had completely gotten over it. Something about fighting someone seems to result in a bond between the combatants. It’s probably some kind of human nature, or maybe inhuman nature, thing.

“What happened?”

“Somebody killed him, Jakie. Set an IED in his front yard. You believe that? They’re turning New Hampshire into goddamn Afghanistan.”

“Who’s they?”

“Terrorists … jihadists … who the hell knows? Maybe they’re targeting all of us that were over there. Watch your ass, Jakie.”

“But they haven’t arrested anybody?”

“Not that I heard. His wife called Janice, and she’s heading up there to be with her. Maybe I’ll do that Google thing and see what I can find out.”

I didn’t know where it was in New Hampshire, but I could also “do that Google” thing and find out. I also knew a number of officers in the New Hampshire State Police, so I’d be able to learn more about it.

“What was Bill doing?”

“Last few years he was selling houses … real estate. Doing pretty well from what I heard.”

Costanza talked some more, but I didn’t focus on what he was saying. I was too stunned by what I had just remembered. It was one of the predictions in the capsule. “Williams collected his last six percent.”

Maybe the killer left out an apostrophe. Maybe he meant to write, “William’s collected his last six percent.”

“What did the name ‘Bill’ stand for?” I asked.

“What did it stand for?”

“Yeah, what was his real first name?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” Costanza said. “I guess it was William.”

I Googled Bill Norris, and quickly found out his real name was indeed William. Most of the entries referred to his real estate career; he was president of the local association of Realtors. He seemed to have had a reasonably successful, if relatively unexciting, career.

There was also an article on him that appeared in his local paper about seven years ago. I was mentioned in the article, with the obligatory reference to me as a “war hero” and Navy Cross winner. Bill had related the story, with apparent and characteristic good nature, about our fight. He made it seem like he was the obvious loser, emphasizing the broken nose, but I remembered it as being much more even. Bill was a tough guy, and even though I don’t think I have ever lost a fight, if we were both sober there’s no way of predicting how it would have come out. But in the interview, he probably was just being self-effacing.

It seemed hard to believe that Bill’s death could have been connected to a capsule buried five years before and almost three hundred miles away. But if it wasn’t, then we were looking at a serious coincidence.

I went into the office and told Hank what had happened. “You think our boy did it?” Hank asked.

“If not, it’s the biggest coincidence going,” I said.

“So you think it’s about you?”

I knew what he was referring to. The other deaths had been local; I had connections to the victims, but so did most other people in the small town we lived in. But this was different. If Bill was the William that the capsule killer was referring to, then Hank was right.

It had to be about me, since I was the only one who had any relationship to him at all. Jenny, George Myerson, Charlie Price, and Bill Norris were all people I knew very well. The only victim I didn’t know was Rachel Castro, but that didn’t alter the theory, since the intended target was Matt Higgins. I certainly knew Matt.

“I’m going down there,” I said.

“Okay. You want me to mention this in our meeting this morning?”

I nodded. “Yes. Everybody should know as many pieces as possible. And make a list of people that I arrested that went to prison, and that have since gotten out. We need to check them out one at a time; don’t take anything or anyone for granted.”

It was about a four-hour drive down to North Conway, where Bill had lived. I had called ahead and spoken to Gale, his wife. We had met briefly, years before, but she certainly knew who I was. She sounded like she was barely holding it together, but she agreed to see me if I drove down there.

When I arrived, the house was pretty much filled with people who had apparently come over to console her. The front yard was roped off as a crime scene, and I could see the damage that had been done to the front of the house by the IED.

Gale herself came to the door, accepted my condolences, and asked if I wanted something to eat or drink. In the living room I could see at least fifteen people, so I asked her if we could talk privately. “I won’t take much of your time,” I said.

“That’s okay. Bill talked about you all the time. You were one of his favorite people.”

“I felt the same way about him.”

She brought me into a small den, and I said, “Are you all right here? I mean with the damage to the house.”

She nodded. “Yes, my brother is a contractor. He’s going to repair it, but I’m going to live here while he does. It’s our house; they can’t chase me away.”

“Do you have any idea who ‘they’ are?”

“No. I’ve wracked my brain about it, but everybody loved Bill.”

“How did it happen?”

“He went out to get the paper.”

“Did he bring the paper in every day?”

“Yes,” she said. “They must have known that.”

We talked about Bill for a while. She seemed to know some of the old military stories by heart; Bill must have recounted them a lot. It seemed to make her feel better to talk, so I let her. But in terms of finding out who might have done it, I had gained nothing.

I stopped off at the police station on my way out of town and talked to the chief, whom I had never met before. He gave me the courtesy of describing where he was on the case, which was absolutely nowhere. I knew the feeling.

I was experiencing another feeling as well, ever since I started talking to Gale. She and I were now members of the same club, the kind you don’t want to belong to. Both of our spouses had been murdered, suddenly and without warning. You think you will spend the rest of your life with someone, and then in an instant you discover that you only spent the rest of their life with them.

It’s a strange, disorienting sensation, and it had initially left me with a loneliness that felt beyond intense. I could see the same thing in Gale’s eyes as it was dawning on her. The people that had been in the other room would soon be leaving, but the emptiness inside her was going to be there for a very long time.

I had the advantage of knowing who killed Jenny, or at least thinking that I did. Not knowing would create a different kind of pain, and I suppose a need for what they call closure. Achieving closure would be a neat trick under any circumstances, but not knowing who committed the murder would, I assume, make it impossible.

I was learning that for myself, as Roger Hagel no longer was filling the bad guy role. I had long ago learned to deal with the loss of Jenny; I put the feelings away in a compartment and rarely let them out. But seeing Gale was causing another feeling to recur; the loneliness was coming back.

This time I knew instinctively that I had a new way to deal with it.

Katie.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her, ever since I had left her house. I wasn’t sure if my feelings were real, or if I was just thrusting her into the role of “loneliness-reducer,” but they sure felt real. And on some level it didn’t matter.

I called her on her private line, but she didn’t answer. I was going to leave a voice-mail message telling her that I needed to see her, that I wanted to see her that night, but I figured it was possible that her assistant picked up her messages. So I just asked her to call me.