A Face at the Window (22 page)

At last, she went to the cellar and unlocked the lockbox where she kept the .22 and the Bisley Through the floorboards held up by massive two-hundred-year-old beams, hand-cut with the ancient bark shreds still hanging from them and the adze marks in them, she heard the hair dryer whirring steadily. In another half hour, she could go on to the next step. Meanwhile, though…

The smell of gun oil drifted sweetly from the opened lockbox as she removed the .22, checked to see that it was loaded and in working order, then zipped it into the pocket of the new, warmer sweater and closed the box again. Putting it away behind the one loose brick remaining in the fireplace foundation—she'd rebuilt the rest—she climbed the old, unpainted wooden stairs again and returned to the parlor.

One-thirty. The gouge in the mantel was a deep one, she saw when she examined it again; worse than she'd believed at first. But the hair dryer had dried the primer completely, the old wood
paling even in its deepest recesses from dark gold to champagne. Behind her the hall clock tick-tocked the desperate moments away as, opening the second tin, stirring and scooping out some of the thick, gray glop inside and pushing it into the gouge's depths, she reminded herself again that even quite serious harm to an old house—and to other things, she told herself very firmly—could be repaired.

That is, if you were willing to do what it took. The epoxy tin's instructions said to pack the stuff in there as if it were putty, so she did. Two o'clock, and at last two-thirty … At a few minutes past three in the morning, Jake tapped the top back onto the tin, washed her hands very thoroughly to get the epoxy stink off them, and left the house.

Her car sat in the driveway; one of the fellows who'd helped get her hauled out of the gravel pit had driven it here. Striding toward it, she gripped her car keys tightly enough to hurt; if this wasn't the dumbest thing she'd ever done in her life, it was close. But she didn't see much choice. If she wanted Lee and Helen back, she would have to go out there to meet with Campbell as he demanded, humor him and at least try to find out what it was he wanted so badly from her.

Around her, Eastport was silent, the moon a small iced disk and the sky around it deep, velvety black, prickling with stars. Crossing the dark driveway she shivered despite the thick clothing she'd pulled on; still August, not even Labor Day yet, but on a clear night like this it was already cold as a twitch's wit, as Sam would've said.

If she went back for a jacket, though, she was so thoroughly nervous about all this that she might not be able to force herself out here again, she realized bleakly. Because for the very first time, though she'd gotten her tools out and applied herself fully
to the task of keeping her hands full, her mind clear, and her nerves at least minimally unjangled…

It hadn't worked. None of it had; she felt absolutely scared witless and as if she might chicken out at the slightest excuse. So she didn't go back, and she'd managed to get herself nearly to the car when a voice came out of the darkness at her.

"Going somewhere?" Not Ozzie Campbell's voice, and not the one that had been on the phone when the screaming happened.
The screaming, dear God, the—

Someone else. "Get in the car. Turn the dome light off and start it." As she did so a man's shape slipped into the backseat and pulled the door shut. "Take it easy."

She glanced over her shoulder, felt relief wash over her. It was Jody Pierce, Helen Nevelson's stepfather; she recognized him at once from the portrait she'd seen in the family's living room.

He slid below window level as she backed angrily out of the driveway. "What are you doing here? I could've shot you if—"

A dry laugh came from the backseat. "Yeah, I worried about that. But Wade says you're pretty decent with a gun, so I figured you probably wouldn't."

The .22 was still zipped into her sweater pocket. "Great. I'm flattered."

The Bisley .45 was a lot more powerful; the difference was between sitting a man down, and leaving him there for good. She'd decided against it only because the bigger gun couldn't be hidden as easily on her person, and carrying a purse would've been flat-out stupid. "You didn't answer my question," he said.

No following car was in the rearview mirror, idling on a side street, or lurking by a curb. She crossed Washington Street, the pavement still gleaming from the earlier rain, passed the Mobil
station and the Baptist church with its vast flat parking lot shimmering wetly under the backlit marquee:
All Welcome!

"I'm going to a meeting," she said tightly. "You could say it's a command performance. But you're not invited." She thought a moment. "How'd you know I'd be going anywhere?"

Because he had known; it was why he'd been out there waiting for her. "Did you know a person can eavesdrop on a cordless phone with only a baby monitor?" he asked, seemingly in reply.

At which she felt like smacking the heel of her hand to her forehead:
Fool.
Get a digital phone, Sam always said, not that old analog cordless; anyone who wants to can hear your business.

But she never had; why bother? After all, this was Eastport, where everyone already knew your business. "So you just—?"

"Easy as pie," he confirmed from the backseat. "I sat," he added confidingly, "in your backyard."

Of course; out there where it was dark. But…"How did you know you wanted to listen to me at all, though?"

She glanced into the rearview again; still no one following. On every telephone pole flapped a white 8½-by-11-inch flyer with two photographs on it.
MISSING,
shouted the top of the flyer.

"I didn't," he said. "But I was scanning cop radio traffic and your name was getting a lot of attention, for somebody who wasn't directly involved. That said that maybe you were."

He paused. "And anyway, by then I didn't know what else to do," he admitted.
Join the club,
she thought as he went on.

"I know all Helen's passwords, for MySpace and Facebook and so on, on her computer. And there's no plot to run away from home and be a movie star, no chat-room boyfriend who's pretending to be a nineteen-year-old and is really a forty-two-year-old ex-con."

He sounded frustrated. She kept driving, letting him talk.
"So after I made sure of all that, I figured I'd have a look at you. A listen, rather," he amended.

Uphill past the recycling center and the dialysis clinic: no one else on the dark road, more flyers everywhere. "Which," he went on, "is what I think this other guy must be doing, too, the one you're worried about."

Past the clinic came the short, flat causeway to Carlow Island, its thick hemlock shapes marching down to the water; they crossed in a few moments.

"You don't have to be nearby," he said before she could voice her next objection: that if Campbell were outside her house with an eavesdropping device, someone would notice.

Pierce himself had been monitoring from the backyard, so Campbell couldn't have been there. "You get something better than a baby monitor, you can target a phone from anywhere," Pierce continued. "Just key in the phone number. Stuff's expensive, and illegal, too, but your pal's not worried about that, probably."

Yeah. Probably not. Or you, either,
she thought at Pierce. "So if you didn't think anyone was watching, why the stealth act just now? Making me turn out the car's dome light and so on?"

"No sense taking unnecessary chances."
Like you're doing,
he didn't add. But she heard it in his voice.

Or maybe it was in her own head. "Yeah, well, if you were listening to me, then you know that I'm supposed to go alone."

"Uh-huh. To the solar house, that big million-dollar baby out on the Jiminy Point road."

So he had heard. For a while, every tradesman in the county had known about the Jiminy Point house; it had been a gold mine for carpenters, plumbers, drywallers, and electricians. But when it was finished, everybody forgot about it, including the owners who now came around only once or twice a summer.

Sitting there empty at the end of a dirt road, as a hideout it was just about perfect. "How come you didn't call the cops?" Pierce asked.

She slowed for the posted thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone through the Passamaquoddy reservation at Pleasant Point. Now was no time to get snared in a speed trap.

"About the call? Why didn't you?" she turned the question around. "Call Bob Arnold, tell him all about—"

(the screaming, please stop the…
.)

Sweat made the steering wheel feel greasy under her hands; she bit her lip and tasted blood. As they crested the next hill, the black-and-white Tribal Police squad car sat motionless under the lights in front of the Pleasant Point municipal building.

"I would've, but if I stick around to explain, Bob Arnold's got to pull me in and book me for assault," Pierce answered. The squad car didn't move as they passed. "He's got no other option, what with that kid still in the hospital."

Pierce laughed humorlessly. "Timmy Barnard. Jeeze, what a complete waste of space on earth. He's lucky traction's all I put him in. Pine box would've been my first choice."

At Route 1 she turned left and crossed the bridge past the Perry Farmer's Union building. "And if I didn't stick around to explain things to Bob," he went on, "you'd just deny it all, say you hadn't had any call from anyone, then go ahead on your own. To meet whoever it is out here."

"You've got that much right." After what she'd been through, it wouldn't be hard convincing Bob that the only place she meant to go anymore tonight was upstairs to bed.

The rank, muddy smell of the river seeped in through the closed car window. A hopeful thought hit her; after all, he'd set up the security camera. "Did you record it? The call?"

"No. Only reason I had the baby monitor was because it was in my truck; I'd fixed it and had it out there already, to bring back to the customer. All the rest of my stuff is in the house, and I didn't want to risk that."

The blacktop curved uphill between thick stands of spruce and hackmatack crowded up close to the edge of the road. "As it was, I nearly got spotted by one of the state boys while I was getting the tape from the camera. Had to hotfoot it."

The scream echoed in her head. "Still, if Campbell wasn't watching the house, how'd he know to call right
after
Bob Arnold and Wade left? How could he, unless he—"

Pierce cut in. "Think about it. Bob uses the radio in his squad car."

He stopped, waiting for her to get it. After a moment she did, unsure at first whether it made her feel better or worse. "Scanner," she said, remembering the one at Hoke Sturdevant's. "Bob's radio calls…and the helicopter, ready to take Wade and the mechanic back out to the ship."

"Uh-huh. I'm just guessing, but by covering your phone and local radio traffic a fellow could pretty much keep current on what everyone's doing. Where they are, when they're leaving…"

He leaned over the seat to look at her, his expression puzzled. "But what I don't get is—I mean you know who this guy is, right? The guy you're going to meet? And you must've told him before that you
wouldn't
meet with him, so that's why he's making you do it, why he's got to make you, by—"

The scream on the phone had risen to a shriek, then trailed off. She shifted uncomfortably behind the wheel. "I know him. But he's never asked for any meeting before. I have no idea what he wants. So I don't understand any more than you do why—"

"Watch it," he cut in. "It's coming up on the left."

The driveway was a pale cut in the dark undergrowth, barely visible until the car's lights hit it. "We're early."

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Drive on, then, why don't you, you can turn around down at Shore Road or on Gin Cove."

The road straightened along a bluff overlooking the bay. In the distance twinkled the Canadian tourist town of St. Andrews; beyond that lay the hazy glow of St. George and the intermittent strobing of the Cherry Island light, slicing through the night.

"Is Jerrilyn okay?" he asked.

Jake slowed for a family of skunks crossing the road single file, hit the brakes once more as a striped straggler hurried to catch up. Then without warning she felt her determination falter.

"Jerrilyn was okay when I saw her," she said. "Or as okay as she could be. But…look, maybe we
should
call Bob Arnold. Or go get him. We could explain the situation to him so he understands, tell him no one can use their phones or radios, either, so—"

Pierce's answering laugh was a short, sharp bark. "That'll work," he replied sarcastically. "How long you think it'll take before one of the good ol’ boys breaks radio silence? Calls his wife to let her know he'll be out a while longer?"

When they reached Shore Road she made a U-turn in the deserted intersection, then stopped to let him get into the front seat. Pierce was correct that the cops couldn't function without phones or radios; except for Bob, they couldn't even be summoned without them. And if they went back to get Bob, they'd miss the agreed-upon appointment time with Campbell—she glanced down at her watch—twenty minutes from now.

Not that Bob would do any of this without more cop backup, anyway, because what if it went wrong? If it did, and Bob hadn't
told anyone, it would be his job on the line. Meanwhile, though, now that she'd begun having second thoughts, she couldn't stop.

"So I guess we're stuck with this, then," she said, keeping her eyes on the road. "Just the two of us."

"Uh-huh." They drove in silence for a few more miles. But a new idea had occurred to her, not a happy one: that if he'd heard the call the way he said, why hadn't he mentioned the screaming?

"Helen doesn't like me much," he said. "Doesn't like all the outdoor stuff I make her do and learn. Survival stuff, first aid and water safety—she thinks I'm too tough on her."

"Are you?"

He stared straight ahead, watching the road. "Maybe I am. But that's all right. She'll learn later on what I've been trying to make happen."

"Which is?"

"Keep her alive, for one thing. You live around here, get back in the woods or on the water with somebody…Did you know that kid Helen was seeing has got a boat?"