Boar Island (39 page)

No one else stood out from the thinning crowd. No beady-eyed perverts slinking around in their pj’s. Had the cybercreep seen Heath or Anna and disappeared back into whatever hole he lived in? Was he standing them up to throw them off guard the next time he called for E to meet with him, or the time after that, so he could strike when they were no longer alert?

The crowd on the green had thinned to twenty or so stragglers. Stores were still doing a desultory business. The man in sandals went into the ice cream shop. Paunchy ceased to parallel E’s path and veered onto an intersecting course. The woman in the curler cap stumped stolidly down the sidewalk, evidently bent on getting a Frappuccino to wash down the candy.

Elizabeth reached the coffee shop. She slid into a chair at one of the abandoned tables, took out her cell phone, and began fiddling with it.

The man with the paunch stopped fifteen feet shy of Cecelia’s. Standing on the curb before the narrow street, he squinted as he stared across the road to where E was sitting. Artie moved his laptop so he could watch him without seeming to take his eyes off the screen.

Paunchy shoved both hands into the pockets of his windbreaker, his protruding brow shadowing his face.

Anna’s brain, still tainted with the Rohypnol, reeled: the doughy hands, the oversized bag clutched to the woman’s breast. This was important, this was trying to take her mind from its set track.

The man on the curb pulled a black rod from his pocket. Anna couldn’t make out what it was, but it wasn’t flat; it wasn’t a cell phone. Pink Curler Cap was almost to Heath, her small sneakered feet marching determinedly along the dull gray concrete of the sidewalk.

Anna’s brain locked between the dumpy little woman in the old housecoat and the man with the black rod. Walter bolted through the fog swaddling her mind to smash into the man on the curb. The boy didn’t hit him with a football tackle or a fist; he plowed into him like a ship at ramming speed, the entirety of his strong young body smashing into the smaller man, knocking him ten feet onto the green.

“Get off me! Get off me!” the man screamed as Walter followed him down and pinned him to the turf with his weight. “Help! Help!” the man cried. No one moved to help. Anna had worked in tourist destinations most of her life. Tourists had no connection to other tourists, no knowledge of who was who, no faith in their instincts. They seldom sprang into action. There were too many unknowns in an alien environment.

The rod had flown from the downed man’s hand. Rolling across the asphalt of the road, it flashed a bluish beam of light. A flashlight; the man had taken a flashlight from his pocket to fight the gloom.

Artie was on his feet and running toward where Walter held the shrieking little man down.

Doughy hands. White. Plump. Dimples for knuckles.

Anna had seen her before, at the first coffee shop meeting. She’d had curly red hair then, but the same hands, the same bag. Whirling, she saw the woman in the pink curler cap drawing on a welding glove, the glove she’d seen peeking from the bag the last time.

One hand gloved, the other dipped into the capacious bag and came out with a can, the flat, squareish, metal kind that holds lighter fluid. She was passing Heath, whose attention was fixed on the tangle of men yelling and wrestling on the green.

“Run, E!” Anna shouted. “Run!” Galvanized by decision, Anna shot across the lawn, legs pumping, lungs filling to bellow again: “Run!”

Heath’s head jerked in her direction. “The woman!” Anna screamed.

Ten yards separated her from her goddaughter.

The woman with the lighter fluid dropped her bag. Pinching the can in both hands, she aimed a stream of fluid at Elizabeth’s face.

FORTY-FOUR

From out of a swirling mist of blind panic, Elizabeth emerged into focus. Heath felt her blood pressure drop twenty points. Without a glance at her mother, E slid into a chair at a table near Artie. She took her cell phone from her pocket and laid it on the small round tabletop. Heath’s fingers closed around her own phone in the pocket of her brightly embroidered tunic. It took all of her self-control not to snatch it out and text E just to feel some small line of connection.

Tearing her eyes from her daughter, Heath forced herself to continue her search of the people straggling from shops or toward the cinema. Anna’s WM3 was stopped at the curb. This man had pervert written all over him, from his baggy-butt pajama bottoms to his beetling brow.

Seemingly from nowhere a dark shape, like that of a black bird of prey stooping on an unwary rabbit, crashed into the man so hard his feet left the ground and he flew sideways several yards. Elizabeth squeaked. Heath might have squeaked herself. It was Walter. God bless him, Heath thought. God bless the boy.

Abandoning his laptop, Artie leapt from his table and went to help E’s boyfriend. Elizabeth, per Anna’s orders, was remaining seated until the all-clear was sounded, but her eyes were as round as a startled child’s as she watched her tormentor exposed and laid out by two men.

Heath hadn’t recognized the man. He didn’t even look familiar. Such was the virulence of the attacks he’d mounted, so imbued with specific hatred, she’d expected Elizabeth’s stalker to have a personal agenda. How could a total stranger develop such an oozing rotten loathing of a lovely young woman he’d never even met?

Then again, they might have met. Perhaps a fleeting exchange in a Best Buy or at a Walgreens. Twisting it in his mind, the man had imagined a relationship. Elizabeth failed to play her part, so he imagined betrayal. Then he plotted revenge.

Relief washed through Heath, weakening her, floating her physical fatigue to the surface. Fortunately, they would soon know why and who. Knowing would lay a lot of ghosts to rest. Knowing would keep Heath, and more importantly E, from wondering if black slime underlay the warm smiles and kind words of friends and acquaintances. Heath doubted knowing would promote understanding. Perverts had a perverted way of looking at the world. In their heart of hearts, they believed everyone would behave as badly as they did if they got the chance. Virtue was only a mask. Reality, the pervert believed, was what he lived.

Before Heath could finish drawing in her sigh of relief, she heard a scream.

“Run!”

Anna was pelting across the green, sprinting toward the coffee shop.

Elizabeth looked up from her cell phone.

“Run!” Anna screamed a second time.

Elizabeth half stood, then sat down again, evidently remembering her orders to stay put.

A short woman in a pink curler cap passed Heath, blocking her view of the men struggling on the lawn.

“The woman!” Anna cried.

Confused, Heath turned toward Elizabeth. The stumpy little figure was stopped at Elizabeth’s table, standing so close, E couldn’t get up without overturning her chair. A large, shiny, purple tote bag slid from the woman’s arm, exposing an enormous paw.

It was a hand in a welding glove. In that hand was a can of what looked like lighter fluid.

Heath was easily ten feet from her daughter. Without thought, she dropped her canes and lunged. The legs Leah had crafted from electronics and metal responded to the sudden weight of her upper body moving forward. Dem Bones propelled her at nearly a run. Torso foremost, metal and hinges activated to their utmost, Heath was hurtling toward Elizabeth’s attacker, utterly out of control.

The woman raised the can, pointed the nozzle at Elizabeth, and started to squeeze. E shoved her chair back and tried to rise. Heath slammed past the frumpy woman and careened into Elizabeth. Both of them went down in a tangle of arms, legs, and chairs.

“Whore, Jezebel!” a woman’s voice drilled into Heath’s back. Sizzling and popping like a firecracker booth going up in flames seared the air. The small of Heath’s back began to burn.

A loud thud and the crashing of more chairs cut off the shrieked epithets. “Stay down!” she heard Anna yell. “Stay down, God damn you.”

“It’s on me!” A high-pitched scream. “It’s on me.”

“Artie!” Anna again. And, “Keep her down.”

A gasp came from nearby, and then Heath heard a small voice in her ear. “Mom, you’re squishing me.”

All of her weight and all of her electronics were pinning Elizabeth to the pavement. Heath tried to lever her upper body off, but her arms were shaking, muscles as weak as overcooked pasta. “I can’t move,” Heath panted. “Push me.”

Small strong hands shoved against her shoulders. Heath was raised far enough that she could see her daughter’s face. So beautiful. “Are you all right, E?” Heath’s voice quavered with tears. Some good she was in a crisis. Dead wailing weight.

“I think so,” Elizabeth said uncertainly.

“Help me! It’s on my face!” the obscene woman screamed.

Elizabeth pushed Heath until she could roll off. There she lay on her back, helpless as a stranded beetle, the electronic legs still twisted.

Anna moved into the airspace above. “You okay?” she demanded.

“Yes,” Heath managed.

“You?”

Heath heard Elizabeth repeat, “I think so.”

“What’s that smell? What’s making that noise?” Anna asked. Elizabeth was sitting up now; Heath could see her if she craned her neck sideways.

“I don’t know,” E said.

Heath drew in a breath, tasting the air: singed fabric, burning plastic, a biting acridity. She listened to the sizzling crackling noise coming from beneath her. The small of her back burned like fire. Though there was no flame and no smoke, the woman must have managed to ignite the lighter fluid before Anna tackled her. Some of it must have struck Dem Bones’ power pack, where it sat across Heath’s hips.

Heath sighed. “I think the smell is me on fire. I’m afraid the racket is the sound of a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of electronics being destroyed.”

Anna had her rolled over and her shirt ripped up the back before Heath could say anything else.

“Artie, call an ambulance,” Anna said.

“What’s burning? Where is it burning?” Elizabeth was asking.

“No fire,” Anna said. “Acid. Battery acid is my guess. E, go into the coffee shop and bring as much clean water as you can and scissors or a sharp knife. Do it now, and do it quickly.” Heath felt her hips being jerked sideways and heard what sounded like fabric ripping. Facedown, a view of nothing but table legs and an overturned chair, Heath felt helpless.

Nothing made her angrier than feeling helpless.

“Talk to me!” she said through clenched teeth.

Instead of a reply she felt a cold wet cloth drop onto the small of her back. “Dab gently. As much water as you can without dripping. We don’t want to spread the stuff,” Anna said.

“Got it,” E said.

“Artie, see if you can get Cybercreep to shut the hell up and get some water on her face to dilute the acid,” Anna said.

“Talk to me or I’m going to bite you!” Heath said.

“Sorry, Mom.” E’s voice was shaking as bad as Heath’s. “The can had battery acid in it. A little got on your skin above Dem Bones. Anna has cut away the shirt and the straps so we can get anything that has acid on it away from your skin. It ate right through your skirt. It’s like horror movie special effects. Dem Bones is practically melting. Most of it got on the power pack.”

Heath groaned. “There goes your college education.”

A wet sobbing litany of “My face, my face, oh no, my face, she wouldn’t be pretty without her face, little baby-faced whore, he wouldn’t look at her with no face, not my face, no, no…” burbled in a monologue from the other side of the table.

“Are the cuffs on?” Anna asked.

“In front, so she can wash her face,” Artie said.

“Help me sit up,” Heath told Elizabeth. Before E could start to argue, Heath said, “Please,” in a tone that was so pathetic she was almost embarrassed to use it to manipulate her only child.

As they’d done a thousand times before, Elizabeth braced her knees to either side of Heath’s and, locking wrists, pulled her to a seated position. Once Heath was stable, E moved behind her and knelt, making herself into a living backrest.

Not more than a couple of yards away the woman in the pink curler cap was sitting on the ground, dribbling words and snot as she dabbed at her face with fat little white hands forced closed with silver handcuffs. Acid had splashed onto one of her cheeks and the side of her mouth. The flesh was red and beginning to blister.

This mewling miserable creature was the person who had filled E’s life with threat and filth, then tried to burn her face off with battery acid.

“Who in the hell is this?” Heath asked.

Anna, who was standing slightly behind the woman talking on her cell phone, reached down without interrupting her conversation and pulled off the curler cap and, with it, a red curly wig.

Blond hair tumbled out. Blue-framed glasses fell from her nose. Heath didn’t recognize her, although, through the snot, the blistering, and the smeared, mud-colored lipstick, she did seem familiar.

“Mrs. Edleson?” Elizabeth gasped.

FORTY-FIVE

The adrenaline dumped into Anna’s system during the excitement of capturing Elizabeth’s cybercreep had drained away. Despite the fact that she had slept a good portion of the day, Anna was so tired she could scarcely breathe. Drugged sleep did not refresh the way natural sleep did. Rather than resting, she felt as if she’d spent those hours in a morass of thick oily dreams and mind-numbing traps from which she could not escape into consciousness.

Hunched over the steering wheel of the patrol car used by erstwhile ranger Denise Castle, Anna was aware of her vision tunneling until all she could see was the red taillights in the lane ahead as she followed the second of two ambulances to Mount Desert Hospital.

In the first, with two female officers from the Bar Harbor Police Department, was Mrs. Sam Edleson, the flesh of half her jaw and lower lip eaten away by the acid she’d intended to use to disfigure Elizabeth. Often the why of a crime remained unknown long after the who, what, when, where, and how had been solved. Not so this time. Regardless of the pain talking must have caused with her ruined lip, Terry Edleson wouldn’t shut up about why.