Darkness First (21 page)

12:40
A.M.
, Monday, August 24, 2009

Pleasant Point, Maine

S
taying away from the roads, traveling cross-country, avoiding contact with the cops or, for that matter, anyone else, Harlan spent most of the day and much of the night getting as far as the Passamaquoddy tribal lands at Pleasant Point. The most dangerous part of the trip lay just ahead. If the troopers were already out in force, as he suspected they were, passing over the narrow causeway on to Moose Island and then into Eastport was where he'd most likely be spotted. Cops didn't take kindly to anyone taking down one of their own. At least he hadn't killed the sonofabitch. Though he'd been sorely tempted.

It hadn't been a conscious decision to head for Eastport to find Tabitha. Harlan's legs just seemed to know where they were supposed to go. He supposed it was destined to come to this. Right from the beginning he'd told Tiff it was a dumb idea to steal the drugs, an even dumber idea to ask an eleven-year-old kid to hide them for her. But Tiff, being Tiff, insisted she knew best. Anyway, he was in the middle of it now. He knew what he had to do.

Harlan's plan was simple in concept, trickier in the details. First find Tabitha Stoddard. Somehow convince her to give him the Oxycontin. Once he had the pills and Tabitha was safe, he'd use them as bait to lure Riordan into the open. Get the fucker to show his face. Then kill him. As slowly and painfully as he had killed Tiff. He owed Tiff that much. Owed himself that much as well.

When Riordan was dead and the drugs destroyed, Harlan didn't much care what happened next. If it turned out to be violent death at the hands of a state police SWAT team, so be it. If he had to turn his own gun on himself, that was okay too. The only thing he wouldn't let them do is lock him up. Not now. Not ever.

As he walked, his mind flashed back to the night that began the final act of his affair with Tiff. He remembered the dancing and the loving and the song that was destined to become the soundtrack for what he guessed would be the last days of his life.
I will follow you into the dark
.

I
t had been a warm, wet Tuesday near the end of June. Tiff was working the bar at the Moose and Harlan came in late like he usually did. The place was empty except for a couple of regulars shooting pool in the side room. He slid on to the last stool and Tiff came over. They started shooting the shit about nothing in particular. He bought her a drink and she put on some music she liked. A Ray LaMontagne song. Since there was nothing else to do, she told him she felt like dancing. He wasn't much of a dancer but she came out from behind the bar, took his hands and pulled him on to the floor. He put his arms around her and they started slow dancing, though he supposed some people wouldn't have called it dancing at all.

Mostly it was the two of them standing there, holding on to each other and swaying to the soft, sexy sound of LaMontagne's ‘All the Wild Horses', which, for some reason, Tiff had set to play over and over. ‘All the Wild Horses'. He guessed it was just Tiff's kind of song.

Tommy kicked them out at one in the morning. Told Tiff to take Harlan home if that's what she was planning to do. Told her not to worry about the cleanup. He'd take care of it himself. Wasn't much to do anyway.

They drove in convoy through a summer rain back to her place. Then ran up the wooden stairs on the side of the building, Tiff just ahead of him, his hands on her ass, pushing her up to her place on the second floor. They stopped on the deck and kissed for a while before she had a chance to find the key.

Once inside, there was a hurried tearing at clothes until they both fell naked on to the bed in Tiff's room. Not really a bed. Just a king-sized mattress on the floor. The first time they made love that night it was eager and urgent and they both came quickly.

After they finished, and Harlan was lying there still breathing hard, Tiff got up and put on some more music. Not LaMontagne's ‘Wild Horses' this time but Death Cab for Cutie's ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark'.

With the music on, Tiff came back to bed and they made love again. Not fast and hungry like the first time but slowly, sweetly and full of promises he knew, even then, they'd never get to keep. When they finished, the two of them lay side by side, a warm breeze from the window playing over their naked bodies, the prophetic lyrics playing in the background.
I will follow you into the dark
.

That night, for the first time since they'd started seeing each other, he told her he loved her. She laughed a wicked laugh and told him to be careful using words like love because one of these days she might make him prove that he meant what he said.

He told her he was ready to prove it any time she wanted.

She tucked her body in close to his, her head resting on his chest, one leg draped over the two of his.

‘If I asked you,' she whispered, ‘would you go away with me? Just pick up and get away from this place as far as we can go? Never let anybody know where we are and never come back?'

He asked her what she was getting at. What this was all about.

‘Just answer the question,' she said. ‘Would you do it? Go away with me? Follow me into the dark?' she said, mimicking the song.

He laughed and said he would.

‘Even if it was dangerous? Even if somebody might try to kill us if we left?'

He thought at first she was kidding. But there was something in the way she said it that told him she wasn't. So he told her yes, he was ready to risk dying if it was for something as good as her. He meant it, too.

That's when she first told him about Conor Riordan and the drugs. About arranging the boat for him. About Riordan's run to Canada and back. How she was in it up to her ears and, even though she wanted out, she knew he'd kill her if she tried walking away. She said there was only one way anybody ever left a job with Conor Riordan and that was dead.

‘Conor Riordan? That his real name?'

‘I don't know. I think it's just a name he uses. Nobody knows his real name.'

‘But you know he's killed people?'

‘I can't prove it but I know it. He likes hurting people. He likes hurting me. It turns him on.'

He didn't ask her what Riordan did to hurt her because he didn't want to know.

She told him about her plan to steal some of Riordan's drugs. ‘He goes away sometimes,' she said. ‘Two or three days at a time. Sometimes more. I don't know where he goes but it doesn't really matter. What's important is I found out where he keeps the stash,' she said. ‘The drugs and the money.'

‘He doesn't take the stuff with him?'

‘No. Too easy to get caught with it.'

‘How'd you find out?'

She smiled a wicked smile and told him she knew how to find out things.

‘No, really.'

‘It's better you don't know too much. But the next time he leaves, I'm going to take what I figure he owes me. Y'know? For services rendered? No more. No less. He's got so damned much I'm not sure he'll even notice what's missing. We can use what I take for seed money to start a new life together as far away from this fucking town and this fucking county and this fucking state as we can possibly get.'

Harlan lay there thinking about what she said and the more he thought about it the surer he was it wouldn't work.

‘Tiff, listen to me. Forget the drugs. Forget the money. Wherever we go we can make out on our own. We can work. We can get jobs.'

‘The money's mine, Harlan. I earned it. I want it.'

He shook his head. ‘If you take the drugs, what do you think this guy Riordan's going to do? Just shrug his shoulders and say, “Oh well, I guess I owed Tiff that much”? Baby, he won't. We'll be looking over our shoulders the rest of our lives. Every time somebody looks at us a little funny we'll be thinking the next sound we hear is gonna be the bullet that blows our brains out. Only we won't hear it, 'cause by the time the sound gets to us, we'll already be dead.'

‘Not if you kill him first,' she said.

‘I'm not killing anyone,' he said. ‘At least not so I can start selling drugs to a bunch of fucking addicts. I don't want you selling them either.'

She got pissed when he said that. Jumped out of bed and started pacing around the floor. Insisted she wasn't going to go away poor. With him or anyone else. Wasn't going to go without her share of Riordan's nearly five million dollars. She'd worked too hard for it, taken too many risks. She'd earned her share and she wanted it.

‘Harlan, I know you killed people in the war and maybe you've had enough of killing. But you say you love me and I'm telling you I've had enough of living poor. Last thing I want is to end up living like my parents. I'd kill myself first. Or take the chance that Riordan'd do it for me. If you won't help me, I'll handle it myself.'

Harlan didn't agree to it. But he didn't tell her no right away either. That didn't come till later. When he finally knew he wanted no part of it. And he never agreed with her idea of hiding the drugs with Tabitha. Which he always thought was nuts.

That night after Tiff calmed down and came back to bed, they lay together for a while listening to the sound flowing from the expensive speakers she'd bought with money earned from selling drugs. Then they made love for a third time listening to the words.
I'll follow you into the dark
.

A
fter crossing over on to Moose Island, Harlan found himself a hidey-hole. A shallow depression in the earth surrounded by thick vegetation where he couldn't be seen by anybody unless they practically tripped over him. Since he figured he couldn't go knocking on Pike Stoddard's door till morning, he might as well get a few hours' sleep. He spread his ground cloth on the cool earth and lay down. But sleep wouldn't come. His mind kept going back to the cop who'd wanted to kill him. Detective Emmett Ganzer. He was sure Ganzer had intended to shoot him. What he couldn't figure out was why.

Last night at the Moose, Maggie told him, because he and Tiff were lovers, he'd automatically be considered a suspect. Okay, fair enough. But there had to be more than a little wiggle room between being a suspect and getting yourself shot for no good reason at all.

Unless, of course, the cop, Ganzer, had something to gain from shooting him.

Harlan could only think of two possibilities.

One ugly. The other uglier.

Ugly was Ganzer killing him, then planting evidence ‘proving' that Harlan had killed Tiff. Ganzer gets credit for clearing the case. Gets a raise or a promotion or whatever the hell they give you in the state police for being a good cop.

Uglier was Harlan's growing suspicion that maybe Ganzer
was
Conor Riordan. He'd never considered the possibility that Riordan might be a cop. But why not? Wouldn't be the first cop in history who turned bad. And with what Tiff'd told him was a nearly five million dollar payoff Ganzer/Riordan had a whole lot more to gain from killing Harlan than just a promotion or a pat on the back.

The more Harlan thought about this scenario the more likely it seemed.

Which is when a definite ‘oh shit' thought struck him for the first time. What if Ganzer/Riordan knew Tabitha had the drugs? What if he'd tortured the information out of Tiff before he'd killed her? Harlan got to his feet and got his shit together. He had to get to Stoddard's house long before morning. If he wasn't already too late.

Eastport, Maine

A
t a little after two
A.M.
on a Monday morning, even in the tourist month of August, the city of Eastport was asleep. Its streets lay deserted. Few lights shone from either stores or houses. Even the small police department on Water Street appeared locked up for the night. The only movement Conor Riordan could see as he cruised the streets was a feral cat darting into an alleyway. Another solitary hunter in pursuit of what it no doubt hoped would be easy prey.

He doused his lights before pulling up in front of the house on Perry Street. He sat for a while in the darkness, watching for visible signs of life from within. There were none.

He studied the place. The peeling paint. The rotting clapboards. The
For Sale by Owner
sign. The flags hanging limply atop the aluminum pole. He supposed lowering the flag on this summer night hadn't been a high priority for the homeowners. Understandable, just hours after learning their second daughter had been murdered. Just minutes before they would decide their own lives were no longer worth living.

Riordan replayed the last words on the last voicemail on Tiff Stoddard's cell phone: ‘The one thing I'm wondering about, though, is what the heck you want me to do with the package you gave me.' He remembered the girl peering through the upstairs window that freezing night back in December. Tabitha.
What the heck do you want me to do with the package you gave me?
Once he had the package he'd have to kill her. He'd never killed a child before. He wasn't sure if it would bother him or not. Didn't see why it should. Children die every day. Why not this one?

He slipped the car into gear. Drove far enough down the road that no one passing an unattended parked car would connect it with the house or what was about to happen there. He slipped on a pair of surgical gloves. Unzipped a small canvas gym bag and made sure that everything he needed was there. Paper booties and cap. A pair of needle nose pliers and a screwdriver. A single sheet of plain white paper, a note written on one side in clumsy block letters. A penlight. A canvas wallet containing a set of lock picks. And, finally, the Pneu-Dart breech-loading CO2 powered pistol acquired just for this purpose and a 3 cc tranquilizer dart. The vet he'd consulted in Bangor had recommended (and supplied for an exorbitant fee) a drug called Etorphine. Brand name M99. To knock out an eighty-pound Rottweiler the vet warned him to use a minute amount of the stuff. It was 10,000 times more potent than morphine and the 3 cc the dart was capable of delivering was more than enough to take down an elephant. It would take only one one-hundredth of that to knock out the dog in just seconds. It sounded perfect.

Riordan walked back to the house and cut across the yard to the back. His first stop was the gray box on the rear corner where the phone company connected its line.

T
he sound that woke Tabitha Stoddard was neither particularly loud nor particularly menacing. Just the snap of a twig on the grass below. Yet she sat up with a start. Peered out her window, a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Tabbie thought she saw something move in the darkness below but couldn't tell what it was. Maybe nothing more ominous than a raccoon checking the garbage bins. But she didn't think so. She looked and listened hard. Neither saw nor heard anything more. Yet somehow she sensed an alien presence. In her heart she was sure the December Man was back.

T
he man moved silently to the back door, climbed the three steps to the landing. Knelt on one knee and checked the lock with the penlight. A cheap Kwikset pin and tumbler deadbolt. Easily breached. He removed the lock-pick set from his bag and selected a slender tension wrench and the thinnest of three stainless steel picks.

T
abitha climbed out of bed. Not seeing anything more from the window, she stared at the bedroom door. Had the December Man brought the long knife she remembered from her dream? If she opened the door and ran to her mother's room would he catch her by the wrist, turn her around as he had in the dream and
cut her open like a hog in a slaughterhouse
? A tiny whimper escaped Tabbie's lips. She wished Tiff was here. Oh please God, she prayed, why can't you let Tiff come back? But she knew even Tiff couldn't save her now. Not from the darkness. Not from the December Man. Tiff hadn't even been able to save herself.

T
he man probed the lock with the slender pick. One by one he found each of the pins and eased them up on to the narrow ledge of the cylinder. When all five were clear, he gently turned the wrench. The lock slid open. He turned the knob with a gloved hand and pushed the door open. Just enough to poke the muzzle of the dart gun through to the inside.

Electra lifted her head at the scent of a stranger. Rose from the pile of old blankets that served as her bed. Curled her upper lip, baring her fangs. A low rumbling rose from the depths of her broad chest. Her nails clicked on the linoleum floor as she trotted back to investigate the invader she could smell just on the other side of the kitchen door.

T
abitha pulled the blanket off her bed, grabbed Harold from his shelf, took her iPhone and the lady cop's card from her drawer and scrambled inside her closet. She closed the door, lowered herself to the floor, pulled the blanket over her head. Tried to arrange a pile of dirty laundry over the blanket so anyone looking in the closet might mistake her for nothing more than that. A pile of dirty laundry. Inside this makeshift hideout she wrapped her arms tightly around Harold and bit down hard on his ear to keep the sound of her crying too soft for anyone to hear. Even if Mrs St Pierre was right about heaven being a better place and Tiff and Terri being safe in the hands of Jesus, Tabitha knew now she really, really didn't want to go there. She wanted to stay right here. Even if Eastport was, as Tiff so often said, a real shithole.

T
he snarling Rottweiler flung herself at the narrow opening in the door. When she was a few inches away, the man fired. The dart struck home, burying itself in the middle of her muscular chest. Electra barked once, then looked down, puzzled by the alien thing sticking out of her. She wanted to pull it out, but couldn't reach it with either her mouth or paws. She staggered once and then again, trying to maintain her balance, and then toppled over on to her side. Her legs jerked spasmodically. She lay still.

D
onelda Stoddard had always been a light sleeper. But tonight her sleep was especially troubled, both by the death of her second daughter and the terrible nightmares of her third. Startled into alertness by Electra's single bark, Donelda looked across to the other side of the bed. No sign of Pike. No doubt the so-called man of the house was still downstairs, still dead to the world, the gun he kept by his side as useless as his alcohol-soaked brain. She picked up the phone to call 911. The phone was dead. She closed her eyes. Had Tiff's killer come to kill the rest of them? She wished they'd gotten themselves a cell phone but it was yet another expense they couldn't afford.

T
he man pulled the spent dart from the Rottweiler's chest. He kicked the dog once to make sure it was really out. He kicked it a second time, harder, just for the hell of it.

U
pstairs, Tabitha squeezed herself further into the corner of her small closet.

D
ressed only in a long cotton sleepshirt, Donelda opened the bedroom door and went out into the hall. She stood and listened again. She heard nothing but her husband snoring. Perhaps Electra's bark, the dog's appearance at the door, had frightened the intruder away. Please God, she prayed, let it be so. She went to the hall window and looked down into the yard. She saw nothing. No cars. No movement. No one running from the house. She hoped against hope that, for the moment at least, what was left of her little family was safe. But then she heard it. An almost imperceptible sound between Pike's snores. The whisper of a foot moving gently on the floor below. And then another. Whoever this enemy was, whatever he wanted, he was in the house. And she was on her own.

T
he man listened to the wet snores coming from the silhouetted figure in the wheelchair. He flicked on the penlight and saw Pike Stoddard sitting slumped on the other end of the room, his legs covered by a lightweight summer blanket. An empty whiskey bottle lay on the floor next to him. Another, half empty, was on his lap. The man started forward, then stopped and listened when he heard a floorboard creak overhead.

F
rom inside her cocoon of blanket and laundry, Tabitha pressed a button on her iPhone, creating enough light for her to read the number the lady cop had written on the card. She pressed the numbers on her keypad.

D
own in Machias the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony sounded in a darkened bedroom. Once. Twice. And then a third time. Maggie Savage, still half asleep, reached an arm across, patted the bedside table with her hand until she found her phone.

F
rom inside her closet, Tabitha heard her bedroom door open, then softly close again. She poked her head outside the blanket. Saw no band of light at the bottom of the door. Whoever was in her room wasn't turning on the lights. She pursed her lips tight. Retreated back into her cocoon. Tried not to breathe, knowing she couldn't make a sound.

Through the phone she heard the lady cop say, ‘Hello.'

Tabbie dared not answer. If she spoke, the December Man would hear where she was. The December Man would kill her.

‘Hello?' Tabitha heard the lady cop's voice again from the phone. ‘Is anyone there?'

Tabitha heard footsteps walking to her bed. Terrified the December Man would hear the lady cop's voice, Tabbie broke the connection. She turned off the phone and bit down hard again on Harold's ear. Her body shivered uncontrollably. Warm pee streamed out from between her legs.

H
earing no more steps overhead, the man walked to the wheelchair. He shone the penlight on Pike's face. His head lolled to one side. His mouth hung open. A string of spittle hung suspended from his lower lip in seeming defiance of the laws of gravity. A raspy snore punctuated the rise and fall of his chest.

The man pressed Pike's thumb and fingers against a white sheet of paper and then slipped it between two bottles on the shelf where Pike kept his booze. That done, he went behind Pike's wheelchair. Tiff told him her old man always kept a loaded pistol tucked in the chair where he could reach it fast. He slid one hand under Pike's blanket on the right. No gun there. He did the same on the left and felt a small-caliber automatic. Pike was a lefty. Good to know. The man checked the load. Chambered a round. Working carefully, he wrapped Pike's left hand around the grip, placing each of the fingers in the correct position, easing the index finger inside the trigger guard. He painstakingly bent Pike's left arm up to what seemed a natural position, the barrel of the automatic less than an inch away and pointing directly at Pike's temple.

Pike snored on. It looked like the poor sonofabitch was going to sleep through his own suicide.

M
aggie Savage turned on the light: 2:35. Who the hell was calling at 2:35? Whoever it was had hung up. Maggie rubbed the sleep from her eyes and returned the last call received. The phone rang once and went immediately to message. A child's voice. ‘Hello,' the child said, ‘you have reached Tabitha Stoddard's iPhone. If you'd like me to call you back, please leave your number and I will do so as soon as I can.' Maggie hung up without leaving a message. It would take her the better part of an hour to get from Machias to Eastport, but Frank Boucher was right there. She punched in his home number.

T
abitha heard footsteps approach the closet. On the other side of the door the intruder paused. Tabbie closed her eyes tighter. Bit down on Harold even harder. She felt the blanket rustle in a sudden stirring of air. The door swung open. Tabitha supressed a violent urge to scream.

‘Tabitha?' a familiar voice whispered.

Tabbie dropped the blanket and peered up at her mother.

‘Sssshhh. Be quiet,' Donelda whispered. ‘Get dressed. Quickly.'

‘H
ello,' Boucher's voice at the other end of the phone.

‘Chief, this is Margaret Savage. Get some people over to Pike Stoddard's place right away.'

She must have woken Boucher from a deep sleep, because he sounded barely compos mentis.

‘Huh? What? Why? What's going on?'

‘I don't know. But something's seriously wrong there. Get whatever assets you have to Stoddard's now.'

D
onelda helped her youngest daughter strip off her pajamas. Handed her some underwear. Then jeans and a sweatshirt. While Tabitha dressed, Donelda pulled the two sheets off the bed and tied them tightly together. Using one end to form a makeshift sling, she slipped it under her daughter's arms. This is how they always did it in the movies. She hoped to hell it worked in real life. She pulled the screen from the window. Laid it on the floor.

‘Get over here,' Donelda ordered in a loud whisper.

Tabitha didn't move.

She tried to pull the frightened child toward the window.

‘Wait,' Tabitha said. She ran back to the closet. Emerged with her iPhone and Harold.

They both froze at the sound of the shot from downstairs.

Her mother pulled her toward the open window. Tabitha threw Harold out and climbed up on to the sill.

‘I'll lower you down. When you get to the ground, pull the sheet off and run.'

‘Where?'

‘Just run. And don't come back!'

Tabbie hesitated. Tears poured from her eyes. Donelda lifted her youngest child, hugged her tightly, kissed her hard.

‘Just remember,' she whispered, her words barely audible. ‘I love you. More than anyone or anything in the world. And I always will. No matter what.'