The End of the Pier (27 page)

It was odd, though, he never gave as a reason that, after all, his dad was paying for the university. Sometimes she thought it was because he knew it would be taking unfair advantage, and other times she thought it was because they both knew it was not really an issue. If Maud had had all of that money, these arguments would still have gone on. Ned probably thought he had staying power because he had buying power. In a way Maud almost wished it were true; it would make her and Chad's relationship much easier to understand.

•  •  •

She watched several more of the party-goers try to get into their boats, with a lot of whoops and hollers and laughing when one nearly went over the side. But the music went on. They'd probably be up until dawn, especially since this was the last party.

The ice in the bucket had melted except for a few pieces, which she chased through the water and put in her glass. Sam said he'd be back, so he would, even at this hour. It was after two a.m.

It was wonderful: no more had she thought it, she heard the car, the door slamming, and he was coming down the walk. She hoped he wouldn't start some depressing talk about the end of the season.

“Hello, Maud.”

She turned. “Wade Hayden, for the Lord's sake! What are you doing wandering around at this hour? I expect you couldn't sleep,
either.” She did not want to make it appear that she sat down here for any other reason.

“Mind if I set down, Maud?” She nodded. He sat in Sam's chair and put a brown paper bag beside it. He looked at the forgotten can of Coors. “I don't drink as a rule, but I wonder, would you mind. . . ?”

Actually, she would: if the last beer were drunk, it might mean Sam wouldn't come. Oh, for pete's sake. “Go right ahead, Wade.” Then she thought Sam would get a real thrill out of this—Wade Hayden taking the Coors out of the cold water and popping the top.

“Someone having a party over there, Maud?” His smile was just a twitching up of the lip. “And never invited us?”

There was something slightly chilling about the way he coupled them. “Us.” She drank the weak martini.

“Something I got here to show you.” He reached into the brown paper bag and brought out the blue dress. “Pretty, ain't it?”

Maud sat dead still. She felt very fragile; were she to move, she might splinter apart. She was cold with fear. The dress was Dr. Hooper's. Maud always looked carefully at her clothes, wishing she herself could wear such simple things and look as good as Dr. Hooper. She had to respond. Her mouth was dry, but she said, “Wade, that is
very
pretty. Is it a present for someone, maybe?” She didn't know how she got her mouth to move; it felt that tight.

Wade Hayden smiled that unfelt smile again. “It sure is. It's for you.”

She had never seen Wade Hayden anywhere but in the post office or the Rainbow, and he never said anything except hello and goodbye. Something was horribly wrong; she had to be careful of what she said . . . but not so careful he would hear the fear in it. “Well, that
is
a nice dress, Wade. But why should you be giving me a present? It's not my birthday.” She managed to bring to her frozen mouth a little smile.

“Oh, you'd never guess what it's for. I know your boy's left for
school, and I know you miss him. This is just a little something I brought you for being a good mother. There's not a better mother for miles around; there's not even one
as
good. You could say that being postmaster, you know an awful lot about people. Can't help but.” His look at her was oddly kind. “You want to try it on to see if it fits?”

Without looking at him, she took the dress and held it on her lap. And without speaking to him, she looked up and over the water and saw that it was quiet, all quiet, no one except for a man—she could make out the glimmer of his white jacket—standing on the dock over there, smoking a cigarette. The tip made a tiny glow, a pinpoint of light winking on, then off. But he was too far to call to, might as well have been in a plane up there in the black night whose winking red light meant people were going somewhere, places she couldn't follow—back to school, to the city, to that room whose balcony hung over the sea.

Maud smoothed and smoothed the dress. Two tears made their way down her face, fell on the dress. Dr. Hooper.

“No, Wade. I don't think I can try on your dress, thank you all the same.”

Elizabeth Hooper would never come through La Porte again, never sit at the counter eating pie again, never see her son again.

S
am hadn't moved the car, hadn't done anything. Stupid to get on the bad side of Sedgewick. But everybody has their limits, he thought, and he was sick of kowtowing to blind bastards like the sheriff.

He switched on the engine as if he knew where to go and let it idle.

If it had been his kid . . . He thought of Wade. Stony, silent except to try and go over the murder of his own daughter again and again. No wonder. What else would go through a man's mind after something like that happened?

Sam suddenly thought of Rosie. He thought of Rosie strolling down Fifth on her lunch hour, looking in shop windows, eyeing a Spanish shawl, brilliant splashes of reds and orange for her red-gold hair, something to toss over her shoulder in a grand gesture, go sweeping down Fifth Avenue in the soft air of one of those perfect spring days to which even New York City gets treated—

A spasm caught at his hand and he dropped the cigarette when he realized he'd been thinking of an imaginary girl. Watching her, following that bright Spanish shawl worn by a girl who didn't even exist until he'd said her name to Maud. There had never been a Rosie.

Grinding out the cigarette with his heel, Sam wondered, was he going Maud-mad? Maud-Mediterranea-mad? He smiled. The thought and the smile revived him a little, enough to go back over the whole damned business.

He leaned his head against the head rest, closed his eyes, and
thought about the women. To him, they were different. Tony Perry might have been an out-and-out whore (though he loathed the word), a woman with children she didn't pay much or any attention to. Loreen Butts, according to the mother, was shy and quiet; according to the husband, could be hard to handle; according to Boy Chalmers, ditto. Carl Butts was away most of the time, leaving her the care of the son.
Not that the son ever got much care
 . . . Sam frowned. But how could Elizabeth Hooper even be compared? Or Nancy Alonzo? Nancy had been a local, yes; but that was about all she had in common with Perry and Butts. He lit a cigarette; his frown deepened. But wait a minute. Yes—yes, she could, if she'd walked out on her son and husband. Eunice Hayden. Eunice hadn't been raped, no . . . Still, he
knew
all of these killings had been done by the same man; knew it as well as he knew that his headlights were running twin paths of smoky light through the woods, sectioning off trees, undergrowth, rocks. What else did the victims have in common except they all had kids? Not Eunice, though.

They all had kids. They all had kids who a lot of people saw as neglected at best and abused at worst.

The thought simply stuck. Well, it was ridiculous. Most women did; and there was Eunice—she didn't fit. As much as he tried to rid himself of the answer, it still came rushing toward him, insane and senseless. Neglected children. Tony. Loreen. Nancy. Elizabeth. In the mind of the murderer, neglected. But Eunice? Her mother, Molly, watched over her like . . . her mother, Molly, hated Eunice. Eunice starts rolling in the hay like a common whore, some would say, maybe to spit in her mother's face . . .

Dear God, the one person who might be able to see in this insanity some sort of design was one of the victims . . .

He was still trying to piece it together when his radio started squawking, bristling with what sounded like overlapping voices. But it was only Donny, his deputy. He lifted the mike and pushed the button. “DeGheyn.”

“Sheriff? Sheriff?” Donny always seemed to be questioning just who that was.

Sam sighed. “Yes. It's the sheriff.”

“Listen, Sheriff. Maud Chadwick's kid—you know him?—her kid's trying to get in touch.”

Sam held the handset away from him. Donny was shouting. Donny always shouted, because he didn't appear to believe contact was ever being made over airwaves, radar, whatever. “Stop shouting. What about Chad?”

“What? What?” Donny bellowed. “Okay. Listen, the Chadwick kid needs to talk to you.”

Sam frowned. “Did he say why?”

There was a silence.

“Did he say why? Donny?”

Nothing. Had the damned fool signed him off? He did it all the time.

“Sheriff? You there? No. He didn't say.”

“Where was he calling from?”

Fade-out again. Then the voice crackled back. “From Meridian. I think that's where.”

Meridian was about fifty miles out of Belle Harbor, about a hundred miles from here. What the hell was Chad doing there? “Donny?”

Nothing but static and distant, tinny sound. Donny could have been beating a plate with a spoon for all Sam knew. He hadn't been Sam's first choice for deputy, certainly. “Donny?” Now Sam was shouting.

“Jail.”

“What're you talking about? Chad's in jail?”

Dead silence. Donny was probably messing with the board and he'd cut Sam off again.

He replaced the mike and switched on the engine. The car lurched along the dirt road and took the turn onto Main with two wheels an inch off the ground.

•  •  •

He banged the door of the office shut and told Donny to get his feet off the desk and go and help out Sedgewick's men.

Recognizing this was indeed the sheriff, Donny yanked his belt and holster from a shelf and scrambled for the door.

Sam didn't bother sitting down; he placed the call to Meridian.

•  •  •

“No, he ain't exactly arrested.”

Involuntarily, Sam put his hand on his holster. His nerves were on edge, and the Meridian police force—if you could call it that—was a cluster of Donnys. “Well, if he ain't exactly, then how about letting the kid go?”

“It's this car. The kid was driving this Jag that was reported missing.”

“You're saying Murray Chadwick stole the car?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what, exactly?”

“This real bad accident out on twenty-nine. About ten miles from here, you know?”

“No, I don't know. What's that have to do with the Jag?”

“It's all the same people. I mean, the Jag owner—well, some family member—was in the accident. We're just trying to put it together. It was reported, see. This Jag that the kid was driving. Some car, lemme tell you. No wonder it got stole.”

Jesus. “I thought you said he didn't steal it.”

“Yeah. Well, not exactly.”

“Let me talk to him.”

•  •  •

Chad told Sam what had happened. “I wasn't stealing the fucking car, Sam. And I don't think Mr. Bond ever reported it that way. I don't think he'd do that, and anyway, he wouldn't care about a fucking car at this point.” He was close to weeping; he sounded like he already had, and a lot.

“They don't think you did. They're just trying to get the whole
thing figured out. That might take them some time, and I don't see why you should have to hang around for it.”

“I was on my way home. I tried to call Mom, but no one answered. Is she down there on the fucking pier?”

He sounded little-boy enraged. It would all be, in some part, Maud's fault. Sam smiled. “Yeah, she's down on the fucking pier. If there's any problem about leaving there, just tell them to call me. They know me. It's probably as much excitement as Meridian's seen in a year.”

Chad laughed. A weak sound, but better than before. “Right. It shouldn't take me more than a couple of hours.”

“For Christ's sake, you might have a Jag, but don't get picked up for speeding. I'm going to see your mother.”

There was a brief silence. Then he said, “Listen, thanks, Sam.”

“Don't mention it. Just get here.”

“You going to tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

Now there was a longer silence, an in-depth silence, as if the boy were turning over the years.

“I don't know.” He sounded puzzled.

“N
o, of course you can't,” said Wade. “Don't know what got into me. Course you can't put on the dress. Sorry—I guess I wasn't thinking, Maud. A lot's happened.”

Maud felt relief for a second, loosened her grip on the arms of the rocking chair, but tightened up again almost immediately. It was still Dr. Hooper's dress, wasn't it? And Wade was looking at her, a look she did not return; she just kept her profile to him, her eyes on the dock opposite.

He was still there, the man or boy, the tiny red eye of the cigarette winking on and off.
Chad.
She concentrated as hard as she could on the name and the figure over there.
Chad.
She closed her eyes tightly, trying to project the name across the water.

“Things that's been happening, Maud, I thought maybe you'd understand.” He paused. “What's wrong? You got your eyes shut tight as a baby.”

“Baby.” The word sounded, in his mouth, obscene. But she opened her eyes. Her throat worked. Maud raised her fisted hand to cough delicately, to see if any words would come out, for she'd seen, and given no sign whatever she'd seen, the knife. “Why, nothing, Wade. Nothing at all. I guess I'm just surprised you'd be out this late.” It amazed her that she sounded perfectly natural. Amazed her she had the control—even the control to smile a little. “You strike me as someone usually in bed at sundown. With the ch—” She coughed. And then she knew why she'd not said the word “chickens.” Because of Eunice out there in the barn. He'd killed Eunice, too. All of them.