A Bat in the Belfry (26 page)

Uphill between ornate old wooden mansions now sagging with neglect or divided into office suites, he slowed as the traffic for the county seat thickened. Lawyers and their clients, jail visitors, courthouse workers and dog license applicants, real-estate title searchers, seekers of building permits, applicants for assistance …

They all came here, and they all needed a parking spot. So when one opened up right across from his target area, Hank took it as a sign and nipped straight into it, earning a glare from a guy in a Prius who clearly thought his right to the spot trumped Hank’s. A sickly whonk from the Prius’s anemic horn emphasized this, but Hank ignored it, not even flipping the guy his tobacco-stained middle finger.

Because the guy meant nothing and neither did his vehicle. Only this place was important, and this time, and the shot Hank would get off from the Marlin in the back seat, loaded and ready.

Across the street, the Washington County courthouse was a three-story brick building with a massive brick archway over the front door; inside, Hank knew, a wide hallway with doors along it led to the courtrooms, and to the grated window of the public information desk. Downstairs, a cramped but orderly reading room resembled a library, filled with books of real-estate records. A sort of perfume hung in the air there, of aged paper and leather bindings, the constantly running copy machine, and floor wax.

Hank knew all this because at one time it had been his job to clean down there, to dust the big old books of deeds on the metal shelves and polish the floors, vacuum the venetian blinds, and empty the wastebaskets. A time when he had been clean and sober, with a pretty young wife and a new baby girl at home …

He shut off the thought. The main courthouse building wasn’t his focus now, anyway; rather, it was the section to the right and rear of it that interested him, the newer structure where the bars on the windows were barely visible from outside.

But they were there. It was the county jail, whose interior layout Hank also knew well, although not from cleaning it. He’d spent many a night there while waiting to be arraigned on charges stemming from whatever shenanigans he’d been up to.

Now Hank waited until no cars or pedestrians were near, then leaned into the back seat for the rifle, laying it across his lap with the blanket covering it from view. Business as usual went on in and around the courthouse, whose entrance had a metal detector just inside and a cop standing just beyond that, Hank happened to know, in case of …

In case of guys like me
. Angry, mistrustful, and determined to get a job done, one no one else would do: just blow the damned head off a murdering bastard and get it over with.

Don’t have enough to charge him yet
, Bob Arnold had said. Hank snarled at the thought, gripping the gun reflexively. That kind of BS was everywhere nowadays, keeping creeps out on the street. Keeping the guy who’d killed Hank’s baby girl from getting what he deserved, pronto.

But, surprise
, Hank thought.
I got news for you
.

News, and something else. The box of cartridges on the seat beside him still contained eighteen of its original twenty rounds. One in the magazine, one in the chamber … that was the rule he’d always followed for hunting, and he’d stuck with it today.

Big news
. Because the guy they had in there would do one of two things, sooner or later. Either he’d be released, and walk out the side door of the jailhouse section of the building.

Or he’d be charged and they’d take him upstairs to one of the courtrooms, for a hearing. After that, the state cops would take custody of him, to transport him to one of the Maine state prisons where he’d remain for who knew how long.

Years, maybe, comfortably awaiting trial while Hank Hansen’s daughter lay cold in the cold ground. Eating, sleeping, watching TV, while Karen could do none of that. Which was … unacceptable.

Intolerable. But Hank knew from his experience as a janitor here that when the state cops took custody of someone, they did it in state-cop style, marching like soldiers with their prisoner between them straight out the front door.

Which was where Hank and his dad’s old Marlin would come in, when the guy came down the hall from the courtroom, out past the metal detector’s aluminum turnstile, and down the wide front steps, the son of a bitch blinking, maybe, his eyes unaccustomed to daylight after the fluorescent overhead lights inside.

Forty yards away, the guy would be if he came out directly across from where Hank was parked. If it was the side door, maybe eighty yards.

But through long practice, Hank’s shooting eye was good, and his hands never shook when there was a gun in them. And the Marlin’s deadly range with those Remmies in it was two hundred yards for a bear or deer, less for a man, especially if Hank got a head shot.

So: sooner or later, one door or the other. In a strange car that nobody was looking for and with the rifle across his lap, he settled in to wait for as long as it took.

“D
ylan. Dylan Hudson?”

He lay in a white bed, in a white room. In a white haze, the load of painkillers they’d given him—how long ago?—only now beginning to wear off.

The nurse called his name again. “Time to wake up, bud.”

She smiled down at him. “You were in a car accident, you’re in Eastern Maine Medical Center, and you’re fine,” she recited. “Just a seatbelt injury, it turned out. You’re a lucky man.”

Pretty girl, young, wedding ring, he assessed automatically as she bustled around the hospital room. But he didn’t really care; now that he was conscious again he had other things on his mind. She took his temperature and blood pressure, adjusted his IV, and opened the curtains.

It was light outside. “You’re going to have an X-ray soon. That’s why I had to wake you up.”

She left the room.
Good
. He wanted out of here. Hospitals all smelled the same to him, like medicine and boiled cabbage.

Or like his wife’s illness and death; he shook the memory off as best he could. So: peel the tape, slide the needle out. He tied the IV tube in a knot to stop its leaking onto the floor.

Next: feet over the side. Fortunately, the nurse had put the bed-rail down. He had a woozy moment but it cleared.

His clothes were in a locker, unlocked. He hauled them all to a chair, sat, and got them on, keeping one eye on the door for the promised X-ray technician. He got the sling back onto his arm without much trouble, but his jacket was a bitch, heavy enough to hurt his shoulder even when he’d gotten it settled and snapped. But never mind; checking the inside pockets, he found his things there. Keys, wallet, phone …

No weapon. He glanced around frantically before realizing that he’d handed it and his badge to Bob Arnold, just after the accident. At the sink he splashed water on his face;
gah
, he thought at the red-rimmed eyes and beard stubble in the mirror, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it.

Out on the street, he caught a bus to a nearby Hertz place and rented a car, then threaded his way through Bangor traffic to the bridge over the Penobscot. Twenty minutes after that, he was on Route 9, zipping between tall granite ledges topped by stands of spruce and pine, speeding across foaming rivers, and powering past loaded log trucks.

Dumb, maybe. His collarbone already felt as if broken glass was in there, grinding around. But back in Eastport, Lizzie was doing who knew what.

Finding out who knew what, too. He had to be there to keep things under control, or …

Without warning, a huge deer bolted out from the forest that lined both sides of the highway and sprinted across, causing a propane truck in front of Dylan to brake, swerve, and just miss a van-load of kids. The deer vanished into the trees on the other side, no doubt laughing its head off.

Exhaling, he sped through a series of S-turns and up a hill that would’ve been better managed by about a ton of dynamite and however many trucks it took to haul it away. Everything in Maine was like this: trees, animals, and inconvenient land features.

He’d only come here because Sherry had said—through a haze of morphine and the static of the tumor already fritzing up her brain’s wiring—she’d always wanted to live here. Hell, it was the least he could do; buried her here as well, and now here he was, himself.
Wherever you go, there you are …

Stuck. And in job limbo, too; heck, you choke the shit out of some pill-pushing little weasel, you’d think Dylan had spat on a lighthouse, or defiled a lobster trap with a blueberry pie on top of it from all the fuss the suits had made. But unfortunately, the pill hound had beat the charges by using a color snapshot of the finger-marks around his neck, so the suits probably hadn’t had too much choice.

At least he hadn’t been fired, Dylan thought as the piece-of-crap car he’d rented struggled up the last big hill before the long glide down to the coast. He’d hung on and all he cared about now—besides the anguish in his shoulder, which felt as if one of Maine’s meanest wild animals was biting into it—

All he cared about now was Lizzie. A careful plan, a few bold moves, and a piece of tremendous good luck—good for him, anyway—had gotten him this far: back into her life, and even halfway into her good graces.

Which was where he wanted—needed—to be. Seeing her again had made him certain, and now all he had to do was stick with his plan a little longer … he hoped.

He took the turn off Route 9 onto the River Road—
damn, but that hurts
—headed toward Eastport, feeling strongly that his luck was about to change. He had lost big-time but soon he would win again.

That is, if he got there in time. He had something to tell her, something she absolutely had to learn first from him, not by figuring it out for herself.

He hoped he wasn’t already too late.

  
10

B
ob Arnold pulled the squad car up the long, rutted driveway to Hank Hansen’s house. The place stank of a burn barrel whose fire had been doused by the recent rain and of a septic tank that urgently needed attention.

He could’ve delegated this trip to Paulie Waters, but Paulie was sulking today, like a bratty kid who thought all his siblings were getting a treat and he wasn’t. Showing up for work late, he’d tossed his newspaper onto his desk with a snotty flick of his wrist, then sneered at Bob’s perfectly civil greeting before stomping out again, blasting out of the parking lot like his hair was on fire and his tail feathers were catching.

So Bob had decided to let Paulie get over whatever it was, and instead had come up to Hansen’s place himself, to see if he could figure out where the sozzled old coot might be going. And in what vehicle, too, if he wasn’t on foot, since the first thing Bob saw when he pulled in was Hank’s rusty old Toyota 4Runner, sitting on a flat.

And Hank had no other vehicle; hell, from the looks of it he barely had this one. Climbing out of the squad car into the muddy yard, Bob nearly stepped on an old brown mutt, well fed but its eyes pleading anxiously with him.

“Oh, hell, Maxie.” He patted the dog. “I’d take you home, but my kid’s got asthma.”

Maxie followed him up to the asbestos-shingle-sided house. A long time ago, those shingles were the hot new thing: cheap, easy to maintain, and halfway decent insulation to boot. An easy sell in a part of the world where paint peeled nearly as fast as you brushed it on, he reflected; his own home back when Bob was a kid had been sided in asbestos, too.

Nowadays, of course, it was a health hazard. But asbestos was the healthiest part of this dump, Bob thought as he climbed a shaky set of cinder-block steps and yanked open the back door.

Inside, the smells were different and thicker. Burnt food, an overflowing garbage pail, bad drains … Bob popped a mint into his mouth and made his way through a squalid kitchen, its frilly curtains falling to pieces at grimy windows overlooking a rancid, trash-strewn backyard.

Bob found some dog kibble, poured some into Maxie’s bowl and refilled his water basin at the dish-heaped sink before setting it down, then proceeded to the dining room.