A Face at the Window (13 page)

Hoke wrinkled his nose; even outdoors the mixture reeked of epoxy fumes, a sharp chemical stink.

"Just stuff it in there," he said as she began spreading the goo. "No need to be too delicate about it. Don't need pretty for this job, just watertight."

Years of use in the rocky cove had turned the boat's bow into a bumpy, mushy-looking mess. He'd cut away the worst of it, or had someone do it for him, so that now a long, narrow opening gaped like a dark mouth.

She used the wooden spatula to pack the deeper recesses with gunk, layered more on top and smoothed it as best she could; by tomorrow it would harden. Getting it down the stairs to the short wooden pier where the dory floated would be another matter.

But she wouldn't be here for that. Hoke watched, his wrinkly face impassive, as she finished smoothing the epoxy in.

"Thanks," he said. "That looks like a mighty fine job. I get that vessel back down in the water, she'll leak nary a drop."

They walked back toward the house. "Care for a soft drink? Or mebbe that beer, now? Reward for your hard work?"

She offered him a smile instead. "Thanks. But I've got to go. I've got to…"

What? Fright ambushed her again at the realization that she didn't know, her gaze falling once more on the deteriorating deck. The damaged step was rotted nearly through; sooner or later he would forget and put his weight on it.

The resulting fall wouldn't be at all like her dad's, though that had been bad enough. Hoke was a lot older, and would likely fracture his hip, and that would be the end of whatever peace he had out here, his long quiet afternoon at the close of day.

Next would come hospitals, painful convalescence, a nursing home. Probably they wouldn't serve fried sausages, there.

Or beer. And the nails and three-quarter-inch plank lay on the deck as if waiting for her.

She picked up the hammer.

Two hours later,
Jake drove back out the Harris Point road toward home. The riser holding up Hoke Sturdevant's punky deck step had turned out to be rotted; she'd ended up cutting a whole new one out of an old length of pressure-treated lumber she found stuck away at the back of his garage.

What he didn't have was a power saw, or not one that worked. So the cutting had taken a while, pressure-treated
lumber being about as amenable to hand-sawing as stainless steel was. Her arm ached, her hand felt permanently cramped, and there was a fresh blister swelling painfully on her thumb, which for good measure she'd also managed to hit with the hammer.

But she'd done her good deed, and Bob Arnold had kept his promise to keep in close touch, calling twice just while she was out at Hoke's. So even though there'd still been no progress in the search for Helen Nevelson and Lee, at least Jake didn't feel left out of the loop.

Truth was, she had the sense Bob was checking
on
her as much as he was checking
in
with her, but that was okay, too. Feeling that somebody right here on the island now cared about how she was doing wasn't much; it didn't get Lee back, or Helen, either.

But it was something. It helped. Meanwhile, though, the sidewalk-repair chore waiting for her at home was unavoidably on hold, and her hands had a not-quite-trembly feeling lurking in them. She thought that if she didn't do something useful and preoccupying with them again soon, they might begin shaking.

Her phone chirped again as she waited for an RV headed for the campgrounds to pass; she grabbed it as she turned from the Harris Point road onto Route 190. Maybe this time, Bob would have something good to report…"Hello, Jacobia."

"Who is this?" But she knew; the new blister throbbed as her hand tightened on the wheel.

"Don't talk. Listen." Campbell's raspy voice. "Now that you know who's really in control here, I think we should meet. Soon."

She fought to control her own voice. "What have you done with Lee? The little girl?"

"Nothing. I'm not in the habit of harming kids. Don't annoy me, though, or I might change that."

With an effort she bit back a retort. "What do you want?"

"Not so fast. You need to understand me, first. Get a real sense of our…special relationship."

I understand you, you murdering son of a bitch.
She passed the old power plant, painted army green, at the rear of a field full of yellow goldenrod off Route 190.

"It's a stony road you're traveling, Jacobia," he said. "I think you should stay on it a while. See what you might find. And not to alarm you, but…you'd better hurry."

The connection went dead. She cursed at the phone, pulled to the side of the road, and punched in Sandy O’Neill's number again, got his voice mail yet again—what the
hell
was he doing?— and left an urgent message asking him to call her back. Then she keyed in Bob Arnold's number, paused, and canceled it before throwing the phone down and pulling back out onto the pavement.

If she called Bob now and this was just another taunt from Campbell, a false alarm, then her credibility with Bob would be even more damaged than it already was. Having the phone meant she could still summon help in an instant, though, if she needed it. So…

Wait. Don't do anything until you know something.
And then she saw it, opposite the airport driveway on her left: a street sign. Stony Road ran uphill past a wire-fenced pony paddock. Two brown-and-white Shetlands frisked in the neatly kept enclosure while a girl in boots forked out fresh hay.

Jake took the turn. The road climbed steadily around a field of sunflowers. At the end of it stood a ranch-style house with another horse fenced in behind it, this one a roan mare. A German
shepherd dog got up alertly from his spot in front of the garage as she went by.

Past the house a sandy cut ran through raspberry cane and burdock. She slowed again, feeling the car's tires digging in as around the next curve the road opened into a gravel pit, behind it a wooded area with trails; she'd often brought the dogs for long walks here. She stopped when the track ended at a mountain of sand, the car door's slam loud as a rifle shot. A crow flapped overhead, cawing as it vanished into the trees.

"Hello?" Kids came here to ride ATVs and scramble around in the sand, though it was forbidden as unsafe, and it was an-other isolated place on the island where the older ones gathered to drink beer and hang out, as a litter of cans and other detritus showed.

But now it was deserted except for a yellow backhoe parked a few yards from a mountain of gravel near what looked like a brush heap. A loose rock clattered down the gravel pile; startled, she whirled, then felt foolish. Unless—

Better hurry…
Around her, shadows lengthened; at nearly five o'clock the sky was still light overhead but to the east it was deepening fast, a few early stars coming out in it. The brush heap was larger than she'd thought, filling and towering up from an excavated depression at the pit's far end.

She approached it. Campbell had been hinting at something with his remark about the stony road; it couldn't possibly be a coincidence. But when she peered in, slash-cut brush was all that she could see in the pit.

She opened the phone, punched in all but the last digit of Bob Arnold's number, then crept to the edge of the brush heap. It smelled faintly of gasoline.

Puzzled, she peered through the branches, took a few steps back and approached the heap of cut greenery and tree limbs
from the other side. A car lay half on its side, backed at an angle into the depression behind the brush heap.

Above and behind it loomed the huge pile of stones with the backhoe standing silent beside it, so that between the brush and the stone heap the car was hidden unless you looked just so. It was a black Ford sedan with a pink plastic barrette clipped to the right front sun visor.

Helen's car. The driver's side door was exposed, facing up. The windshield was intact, as were the other windows Jake could see, on the passenger side. Leaning against the car, she peered in. The keys hung in the ignition on Helen's beaded key fob. And something was in the backseat.

Not Lee. Don't let it be…

Stuffing the phone in her pocket to grasp the door handle with both hands, she pulled, braced her feet apart, and pulled harder. Opening the latch was easy but the car rested on a sharp slant so lifting the door up against gravity was a struggle. When the opening was as wide as her body, she slipped in and pushed up from behind it, until the door opened the rest of the way.

"Lee?" Heart thudding, she crawled in, releasing the door very carefully. It stayed open, and it would only take a moment to be sure about the thing on the seat.
Please not…

Dark. Her weight made the car settle, branches scraping all around and beneath it. "Baby, are you … ?"

She knelt on the front seat, leaned over, and put her hands out, feeling around. On the backseat lay a lump of blankets. A sob caught in her throat as she shoved her hand beneath.

Nothing. She closed her eyes briefly.
Thank you…

Behind her the car door fell shut with a thud. She jumped, bumping her head as the car settled a fraction more, seemed to hesitate, then sank abruptly another foot on the driver's side.

Very
dark. But never fear, the door would open again and if
worse came to worst, she still had the phone.…And the car was resting on piled brush, wasn't it? So it couldn't sink too far.

She felt for the door handle with one hand and gripped the phone with the other.
Don't lose it.…
But then a new sound made her pause, a loud, rumbling noise, like a dump truck or—

A backhoe. It was the backhoe's engine, starting.

S
o you're sure you did like I told you?" Marky de
manded yet again. "You wiped off everything in that freakin’ car? You didn't miss nothing?"

Bouncing along on the dirt road, Anthony kept the map open on his knees. It was a different map from the one he'd used while getting them here from New Jersey, showing more detail.

Anthony thought about the job of making the map, finding
the camping areas, boat ramps, and rest stops, and drawing the tiny picnic tables and tents representing these places. The road they were on now was a dotted line snaking around Money Lake, Havey's Pond, Fickett Lake, and Little Cranberry Swamp.

There were no tent or picnic table icons on this part of the map. " ‘Cause we still got somethin’ to do out here and I ain't gonna till I know you freakin’ stuck to the instructions," Marky continued.

He turned. "Hey. You listenin’ to me?"

"I stuck to them." Anthony wished the map showed a rocket ship icon that he could get into and blast off to another planet. Something about the way he'd begun talking made Anthony nervous, as if maybe Marky's plan from here on out wouldn't be so good.

Or that it wouldn't be good for Anthony. Recalling how Marky had flung the kid's doll out the car window as they crossed the causeway, the surging water seizing the toy and hurrying it away toward the ocean, made Anthony feel bad.

Marky grinning as he did it, like a mean kid torturing some poor dumb creature that couldn't fight back. Like he enjoyed it.

Marky patted the gun in his inside jacket pocket again, not seeming to realize he was doing it. "You got your prints on file, y'know. Freakin’ juvenile delinquent, they still go in the database. You screw up, anyone gets your prints off the car, you're the one—"

"Yeah," Anthony said flatly "I know."

Marky glanced sharply at him. "Yeah, I know," he repeated in a sarcastic singsong. "You know, huh? What d'you think you know? You don't know nothing, you punk."

He swerved around a rock in the awful road, and then through a rut; the old Monte swayed mushily on its big, soft suspension before leveling out. "Freakin’ punk."

The girl in the backseat wept steadily, her strangled sobs through the rag in her mouth making a steady counterpoint to the thuds and bangs of stones hitting the car's underside. Beside her the little kid still slept like the dead.

"Shut up, will you?" Marky snapped suddenly at her, glaring into the rearview. "Jeeze, we should've given her the freakin’ dope juice instead of the kid."

"Yeah, maybe," Anthony replied. They'd already had to retie her wrists; somehow when they weren't watching her, she'd nearly gotten the ropes off, and Marky had blown his top over it.

At Anthony, of course. "Look at the map, there. Keep your mind on the job, will you, please? Are we there yet or what?"

When Marky talked this much it meant he was getting nervous, too, and Anthony knew why. He'd figured it out a while ago, when they turned onto this road and just kept going, into a wilderness that only got more desolate the farther in they got.

They weren't just going to dump the girl. They couldn't; she had seen their faces. They could've worn masks when they grabbed her but Marky had vetoed it.

So they were going to kill her. Marky wanted to; had wanted to all along, Anthony realized. The not-covering-up-their-faces thing was just his excuse.

And the girl knew it, too. Anthony could tell by her eyes, the one time he'd accidentally looked into them while he tied her up again, tighter this time, the way Marky had ordered.