Bloodline (19 page)

I put the water on the stove and got out two mugs. There was herbal tea in the jar on the shelf, but I got the real thing from the box. I just wasn't in an herbal sort of mood.

We stood and waited for the watched pot to boil. It did, and I poured the water in the mugs. We dabbed the tea bags up and down, and Clair's looked incongruously dainty hanging from his gnarled-oak fingers. With the shotgun behind him, he looked like some British
Army officer taking a break from the battlefield. Colonel Varney. I passed him the milk.

“Supposed to rain hard later in the morning,” Clair said, putting the mug back on the counter after his first sip.

“Oh,” I said.

“Gonna be a little soggy in that truck of yours, don't you think?”

“Probably.”

I walked over and took a chamois shirt off the hook by the door and put it on. Clair leaned against the counter and drank his tea.

“Bring her over later and we'll drop a new one in,” he said. “Chevy pickup windows are a dime a dozen. We can pick one up at a junkyard.”

“Sounds good.”

We drank the tea. Stood for a minute and said nothing. Finally, it was Clair who broke the silence.

“You and this kid musta really hit it off,” he said.

“Just clicked. Sometimes it happens.”

“And sometimes it doesn't.”

“Look at the bright side,” I said. “At least he left his gun at home. From shotguns to rocks. Next time it'll be water balloons. What you call de-escalation.”

“That's a Vietnam word,” Clair said. “I always hated it.”

“Sorry.”

“No problem. But I think you're wrong. About the de-escalation.”

“Why' s that?”

“I don't think this kid, or kids, is gonna just go away. He's got a thing for you.”

“It's my rugged good looks.”

“Whatever it is, he wants to get a rise out of you. You don't do anything, he's gonna just turn up the heat more to make you react.”

“So what would you suggest?”

“If the cops can't scare him, you mean?”

“I don't know if they've even found him,” I said.

“But he can find you. I think before he does something serious, you ought to have a chat with the boy. Face-to-face. Man to man. It's what they do in the army. Sometimes it's to your advantage to demystify yourself in the eyes of the enemy. Harder to kill somebody when you know 'em.”

“But we did that. He said I was a narc and he was gonna kick my ass. Or something like that.”

“Which he's doing,” Clair said.

“Does this mean I have a glass jaw?”

“It means he's gonna keep it up until something happens.”

“And you're sick of getting up at three in the morning.”

“Yeah, but mostly I'm sick of seeing you in your friggin' underwear.”

“I've known a woman or two who came to feel that way,” I said.

Clair put his mug down on the counter.

“Speaking of women,” he said, “I've got one at home who might even notice I' m gone, if I stay away long enough.”

“So go home. You can take the shotgun.”

“You want me to?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I couldn't sleep with a loaded gun in the house.”

“A lot of people can't sleep without one.”

“Yeah, well, I guess things haven't gotten to that point. Yet.”

Clair walked to the door and picked up the shotgun. He put it in the crook of his arm, nodded to me, and left. When he closed the door behind him, I felt very much alone.

Alone in the house. Alone in the town. Alone in the state. Alone.

So all by my lonesome, I finished my tea and considered what to do next. What had been simple—a story about children having children—was turning into something very tangled, very complex. I could write a story about just Missy Hewett and the events that led up to her having a baby, the ramifications of her decision to give it up. Her mother. Her sisters. What did they think of Missy and her desire to break out of the family track? And where was the baby now? What would Missy have to do to get it back? What had she done to give it up? What had made her change her mind?

It wasn't going to be an easy story to do. And having to dodge a psychopath with a shotgun and a truckful of rocks wasn't going to help things.

I sat at the kitchen table and pondered it all. The house was still except for an occasional flutter from upstairs. I sat there in the dark and then in the half-light and then in the gray gloom of dawn. Finally, as the birds were tuning up their orchestra, I picked myself up out of the chair and climbed the stairs to bed. My last thought before dropping off to sleep was that maybe Clair was right. Maybe I should talk to Kenny, find out what made his time bomb tick.

I slept soundly, strangely enough. When I stirred, the first thing I heard was the sound of rain drumming on the roof. For a moment it was almost cozy there in the warm cocoon of bed, but then it all came rushing back—Kenny, the truck, Clair and his gun. I kicked the covers back and sat there on the edge of the bed, wondering if I had any plastic.

The plastic was for the back window of the truck. I found a roll of clear poly sheeting in the clutter of Millie's old studio, and after pulling on jeans and a sweatshirt, went out to the truck. I cut the
plastic to size with a utility knife and taped it to the inside of the cab with duct tape. Not only would the plastic keep the rain out, but if I had to make a sudden stop and the window fell in, I wouldn't get glass down the back of my shirt.

Just call me Handy Andy.

It was a diligent rain, falling steadily from a dark, cheerless sky. I got out of the truck and felt the damp spot on the back of my sweatshirt from the wet seat back. Maybe I could wear a raincoat whenever I was behind the wheel. That little son of a bitch.

The rock was still in the truck bed, big and wet and probably of no use for evidence, unless, of course, the DA called in a forensic geologist. (“Yes, Your Honor. From my examination, I would say that this particular boulder is from the Pleistocene Period, most likely dropped by the receding glacier roughly ten thousand years ago in the Midcoast region, whereupon it sat until being picked up and thrown into Mr. McMorrow's truck window.”)

I left the rock where it was, even if it was for nothing more than dramatic effect.

Like me, the house was cold and damp. I crumpled up some newspaper and shoved it in the firebox of the woodstove. A handful of broken cedar shingles went in next, and then some small split sticks of maple. I lit the newspaper with a lighter and then closed the door and opened the damper. As I rummaged for something for breakfast, the cedar snapped and crackled.

It was a little after eleven-thirty. I was supposed to meet Missy in Portland at four-thirty, which meant I should leave before three. That gave me a couple of hours to accomplish something, or at least make an attempt. As the fire warmed the kitchen, I sat down to an
English muffin with peanut butter and considered where to make my next stab at this story.

I considered looking for Kenny and his friends, but as a pacifist and a procrastinator, decided to leave that for another day. It seemed to me that it would be more constructive, and much safer, to try to learn something about the adoption process, of which I was woefully ignorant. If I was going to write about this stuff, I'd better know at least the basics. That meant it was time for a crash course.

My first stop might be probate court, where I assumed the legal end of adoptions were handled. The nearest one was in Belfast, and I could stop there and get some information and then continue on to Portland. There were also adoption agencies, the places that matched kids with adoptive parents. For that, I'd need an appointment. I could make some calls before I left, see if I could set something up for this week.

And then there were those advertisements in the newspapers, the ones placed by couples desperate to have a child. I went to the stack of papers by the stove and found a section of classified ads from the Waterville newspaper. There they were, just under the number for Overeaters Anonymous:

               
Bob and Nadine seek precious baby. We have city home, vacation home on lake with boat. A wonderful life to share with your baby. Confidentiality and support for you. All expenses paid. Call collect.

I looked down the column. Bob and Nadine. Roger and Linda. Tom and Carmella. The ads were so plaintive. The prospective parents so willing to do anything to have what most people took entirely for granted: a child.

Please let us have your baby. Please pick us. Please.

I read down the column. One poignant plea after another. Offers of boats and cats and big backyards. How could someone like Missy decide? It was one thing to be born to parents. It was another to choose your child's life so deliberately. Do I go with Bob and Nadine or Roger and Linda? But then Tom and Carmella sound nice.

God, I thought. What an absolutely mind-boggling responsibility.

I took scissors and clipped the column from the paper. As I looked for more in the stack, the phone rang. I picked it up and a woman answered, looking for Jack McMorrow.

“Right here,” I said.

“Jack. Maddie at
New England Look.
Just checking to see how the story's coming.”

I had to think for a second.

“Good,” I said. “It's going pretty well. It's really quite fascinating.”

“Great. Have you connected with the right people?”

Connected with the right people. I thought again.

“Well, I think so. I've met one girl—woman, I guess—who I think will be a good person to focus on. I think that might be the way to go. Let this woman be the example.”

“Rather than a broader focus?” Maddie said.

“Well, yeah. I don't know. These situations are really kind of fascinating. I think doing one in-depth treatment is the only way to do justice to it.”

“I know what you mean. And like it. Now what about art? When can we send up the photographer? I'm going to tell you that we're considering this for the cover story for the magazine. But we can't make that decision finally until the art is in hand. We have a guy in New Hampshire we'll probably use. I can get him up there in a day or two.”

A day or two, I thought.

“Too soon,” I said. “This story is, I don't know, kind of sticky. I need more time. I don't want to scare the girl off.”

“Okay,” Maddie said. A trace of unease crept into her voice.

“Are we going to have a problem with that deadline?”

“No. I don't think so. It just takes time to get these people to open up. Have you ever been up here?”

“Oh, yeah,” Maddie said. “My husband's family has a summer place in Camden.”

Oh, Lord, I thought. And she thinks she knows Maine.

“Well, these people aren't exactly the same as the people in Camden. They're not like people in New York. They're more private, I guess you'd say. They don't just open up to you right away.”

“Are things not going well, Jack?”

The unease was more than a trace now.

“No, they're fine,” I said.

As I said it, I heard the sound of a car in the driveway. I moved to the window and saw Poole's unmarked car.

“Because if there's a problem, I need to know very soon,” Maddie was saying. “We've got these stories all lined up, and if one stalls, the whole process is shot. I think you know that.”

Poole was looking at the broken window in my truck.

“No, it's going fine,” I said.

“Because we've got to communicate on this,” she was saying. “I don't like surprises—”

Poole was knocking on the door.

“No, I don't either. No surprises. Right. Hey, listen, Maddie. There's somebody at the door. Could I call you right back?”

Poole knocked again. Impatient little bugger.

“Coming,” I called.

“No need, Jack,” Maddie said. “Just keep me posted. Remember: I have to know if things get screwed up.”

“You'll be the first,” I said, and hung up and went and opened the door. Poole was there, and he had somebody with him.

“Mr. McMorrow. This is Detective Parker of the Maine State Police. Could we come in?”

Parker was big and a little thick but strong, like an ex-football player who still worked out. His face was broad and tanned with deep-set brown eyes, and he was good-looking like a television cowboy. Like Poole, he was wearing jeans and a short-waisted light jacket, the kind cops wear to cover the guns tucked in their waistband holsters. They walked as far as the kitchen and stopped. Neither of them wanted coffee. Neither of them offered to shake my hand.

“I understand you had some sort of problem here last night, Mr. McMorrow,” Poole said. “I was telling Detective Parker that you seem to have made some enemies in Prosperity.”

“At least one. But I didn't make him, he made me.”

“Right. Guy's name is Kenny White.”

He turned toward Parker, to his left, my right.

“Kenny's a regular customer around here.”

Turned back to me.

“Detective Parker doesn't usually work this area. But listen, I heard you called and reported somebody tossed a rock at your truck or something. Tell us what happened.”

I did, starting with hearing the sound of Kenny's truck, which sounded a bit farfetched as I said it. Then the sound of the rock hitting
my truck. Running outside. Seeing a truck, one that I believed to be Kenny's four-wheel-drive, driving off.

“The rock's still in the truck bed,” I said.

“We saw it,” Parker said.

It was the first time he'd spoken.

“So what time was all this?” Poole said.

“A little after three.”

“And you called right away?”

“Still in my shorts. I thought maybe you guys might be nearby and you could catch him going up to some quarry to reload.”