Chosen for Death (13 page)

"They weren't mean," I said. "They were good parents, and they loved her very much. The need to search doesn't happen because the adoptive family is bad. A lot of adopted kids just have a powerful need to find their roots, to see what their biological heritage is. Maybe it was harder for Carrie because she was so different from the rest of us."

"You can say that again," said Lorna, lighting her third cigarette.

"Did Carrie talk to you about her search?"

"Sometimes. A few weeks ago, she said she thought she was getting very close. She'd gone down to Massachusetts, a few weekends. I think she found something there that got her real excited. She never told me what it was."

"Did she find her birth parents?"

Lorna shrugged. She was getting bored with this conversation. "She didn't tell me." She got up and began prowling restlessly around the room, aimlessly picking things up.

"What about her boyfriends? Did you meet them?"

"I don't know about her boyfriends," she said quickly. But I could tell that she did.

"Did the police talk to you about Carrie?"

"A couple different ones. I only remember this one. Big guy with bristly hair and a poker up his ass. Like some hot-shot ex-marine. Mr. Detective Trooper. I don't remember his name." That was OK. I knew whom she was describing. "He wanted to know who she hung out with and if they were kinky. I told him I didn't know."

"But you do know, don't you?" I said.

"Look," Lorna said, making a show of checking her watch, "I've gotta go now. OK? Nice talkin' to ya. I'm real sorry about your sister. She was a good kid." She grabbed her bag and headed for the door, but I beat her to it. She glared at me. "Come on. Move it, will ya? I said I've got to go."

"I heard you," I said. "Answer my question and you'll be out of here in a flash. Maybe we can talk about whatever it is that's making you hesitate, but you've got to understand something—there is no way Carrie's killer will ever be caught unless people are willing to tell what they know. He isn't going to walk in and surrender." I guess I wasn't being very persuasive. She was still glaring, and she didn't seem to be about to tell me what I wanted to know. I tried again. "Carrie is dead now. You don't need to protect her. It won't do her any good. There's something you're holding back, something you know that you don't want to tell me, and I need to know what it is. It's about some guy, right?"

Her reaction told me I was right. "So what?" she said. "How will catching the guy do her any good?"

"It will get him off the street. He won't be able to do it to someone else. And he won't get away with it. No one should be allowed to do what was done to Carrie and walk away from it. Do you know what he did to her?"

She refused to meet my eyes. "Hit her on the head with a rock," she muttered.

"The detective didn't tell you the rest?"

"What rest?" she asked, suspiciously.

"That he raped her with a tree branch while she was alive, and left her lying there in the dirt with that thing sticking out of her. Did he tell you that?" It made me sick to say it, but I had to find a way to shock her out of her reticence.

Lorna backed away from me like I was crazy. "No," she said, shaking her head slowly from side to side. "He didn't tell me that. Oh, God! That is so sick!" Clutching her stomach, she dropped onto the sofa. "How do you know that's what happened? It wasn't in the papers." She pulled out a cigarette and lit it with trembling hands. "Is there anything around here to drink? I need something real bad."

I got out Carrie's cheap Scotch and poured one for each of us. Scotch is not my drink. I prefer bourbon, but Scotch is what we had, and I didn't want Lorna to feel like she was drinking alone. She downed hers in one gulp. I took the glass back and fixed another. She set it on the table and stared at me with troubled eyes. "How do you know?" she repeated.

"I saw pictures of her body," I said. "They made me sick. I couldn't believe someone did that to Carrie. To my baby sister. I loved her, Lorna. I fed her and changed her when she was tiny. Read to her. Stuck Band-Aids on her cuts. Taught her to ride a bike. I can't let the person who did this to her get away with it—smash her head and violate her like that and then just walk away. If you know anything that might help find the person—the monster—who did that to her, you'd better tell me."

She considered what I'd said, obviously shocked but still reluctant to share what she knew. "It might not be a good idea," she said, hesitating. "Carrie was mixed up with a guy... she was seeing two guys, maybe more, but two was all I heard about. This cute guy, I never heard his name, blond, like her, sorta looked like he could have been her brother—I don't know anything about him—but there was this other guy who was kind of a bad dude. You've probably got much worse, down in Massachusetts, where he came from. Handsome guy, but sort of mean, and some of the guys he hangs around with are real bad news. He does some dealing, you know what I mean? I don't know if he'd like me telling you about him. He might come after me, if he knew it was me that told you about him."

"Not if he's arrested and taken off the street. If he's a dealer, it shouldn't be hard to get him arrested."

"There's parole, honey," she said. "Everybody gets parole, and besides, he's got friends."

"Did you tell this to the police?"

Lorna laughed. A short, bitter bark. "Sure, and have them go right to him and tell him that I'd sent them? Do I look that dumb? The guy likes his privacy." She swallowed half her drink.

"Look, honey, you aren't from around here. To you this probably looks like a peaceful hick town with some friendly locals and the nice rich folks who moved here from away—flatlanders they call 'em now, but that's not a Maine term—and all the happy tourists. But that ain't all that's here. There's lots of people so poor they don't mind what they do to make a buck, and others so far gone on booze or drugs they don't know what they're doing. And then there's the smart ones, who just like to make money, running the other two groups. This guy is one of the smart ones."

Now it was my turn to gulp some Scotch. "Are you telling me Carrie was mixed up with drugs?"

She smiled faintly. The worn smile of a burned-out teacher whose feeble pupil finally gets the point. "I'm telling you that Carrie was involved with a guy named Charlie. And that anything that has to do with drugs around here has Charlie's name on it. And that's all I know. The cops know all about Charlie, but they can't lay a finger on him. He's one smart dude. I doubt if the cops know Carrie and Charlie were an item, but I'm not going to be the one to tell 'em." She tilted her glass and drained it. "You got any more of this stuff?"

I poured out the last inch, added an ice cube, and gave it to her. "What's Charlie's last name?"

"Who knows? Just Charlie the gorgeous hunk." Her words were beginning to blur.

"What does he look like?"

She smiled. "The devil. A handsome devil. Big, with wide shoulders and hips like a snake. Strong as an ox. Black curly hair like a rock star. A thin, mean mouth." She got a dreamy expression on her face as she described him. It sounded to me like the reason she hadn't told the police about him was that she had hopes in that department herself and didn't want to screw things up.

"All I want to do is talk to the guy," I said, "and see if he has any ideas about what happened to Carrie. Do you know where he lives?"

"I do," she said coyly. "Yeah, I've been there. With Carrie. He's got a nice place. But don't get any ideas. I'm not going with you. You wanna go, you go on your own. You unnerstand? But he's mean. I think he hit Carrie sometimes. I wouldn't let no man do that to me."

"Just give me directions," I said. "I'll find my own way."

She leaned forward, exhaling a long cigarette and booze sigh, and put a hand on my arm. "Don't waste your time," she said, digging in her long fingers. "Stay away from him. Why would he want to talk to you about a dead girl? He likes 'em lively." She laughed. A foolish, alcoholic snort. "And he likes to be left alone."

"Do you think he killed her?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Naw. If I did, I never would have mentioned him to you, or I'd of told the police about him."

I didn't believe her last remark, but I let it pass. I pulled a notebook and pen out of my purse, and shoved them toward her. I had an idea about this Charlie from Massachusetts. He sounded a whole lot like a nasty brat named Chuck that Carrie used to hang around with. "Directions," I said. "How do I get there?"

She got a little unsteadily to her feet. "Oh, hell, you'd never find it on your own," she said. "I'll show you the road. It's just a dirt track leading down to the lake. But I'm not driving down it. You can do that part alone. I wouldn't want Charlie to know I sent you. You promise you won't tell, OK?" I promised, and that seemed to satisfy her.

If she hadn't had three drinks, I was sure she would have refused to help me. From what I'd seen of Lorna's nature, refusing to help just to be perverse would have been more in character. But she was helping, which was all I could ask, and if I was lucky, she'd stay awake and on the road long enough to lead me to this guy Charlie. I locked the door and followed her uncertain steps out into the night, wondering what kind of a friend she could have been if she was so hot for Carrie's guy. Not, if it was Chuck, as I suspected, that that would have been any loss.

Chapter 10

Like a dog of uncertain parentage, Lorna's car, which had once been an olive green Fury, sported the characteristics of its mongrel lineage. One fender was blue, the other yellow, each bravely defending the pale green hood. One headlight had been bent skyward, the front bumper had been replaced by a battered two-by-four, and only one taillight worked, except when she hit a bump. Then the other came on momentarily, flickered, and went out again. It made her easy to follow even though the combination of flickering lights and three quick drinks made her progress somewhat erratic. Eventually, after I'd followed her down what seemed like every narrow country road in the state, she pulled over. I parked behind her and walked up to her open window.

"It's that dirt road there on the right," she said. Her face was grim. In her mind, I knew, she thought she was making a mistake, leading me to Charlie. "The cottage is about a mile down the road, first one you come to, right on the pond. He's got a red Bronco, so if that's there, he's probably home. You be careful, especially if he's got people there. Some of the guys he hangs with are real scum. And no matter what, don't you tell him it was me that sent you. You're wasting your time, you know." She gunned the engine and took off in a shower of gravel and oil fumes.

I got back in the Saab and started down the road. I could see why Charlie owned a Bronco. It wasn't much of a road. The bottom of the car kept bumping on the hump between the tracks, and the tracks themselves were pitted and studded with rocks. My headlights leapt drunkenly through the darkness as I rolled over the washboard. Halfway down, if Lorna was right about the mile, a smaller track forked off to the left, into a clearing where someone was building a house. I drove on down the road, watching for Charlie's cabin.

The night was clear, with a gibbous moon, and the road stretched out white in front of me, making the visibility good. I hardly needed my lights. The window was open and loud insect sounds filled the night. The wind was light, and I was almost warm enough with the window down, but I wished I'd brought a jacket for later. It showed that I wasn't thinking too clearly. If I'd been thinking clearly, I might not have been doing this at all. But my instincts told me that the guy I was going to see was Carrie's old boyfriend, Chuck, and even though Lorna had tried to portray him as a bad, maybe even dangerous drug dealer, I knew Chuck, and he was nothing more than a punk and a bully. An overgrown brat, and I wasn't afraid of brats and bullies. Besides, I just wanted to talk to this guy, Charlie, and that couldn't be too bad.

The faint lights ahead became windows as I got closer. Windows in a small white two-story cottage with decorative black shutters. A shiny red Bronco was parked in the driveway. I pulled the Saab in behind it, shut off the engine, and got out. Loud rock music poured out through the open windows, jarring in the tranquil night. I could have been the Russian army approaching, and no one would have heard. In the pause between tracks, I heard the lunatic call of loons out on the water. Little waves slapped the shore. The night smelled green and good, more like spring than fall. I walked over to the nearest window and looked in. The windows were small and high. I could just see in if l stood on tiptoe. Four men sat around a table playing cards, surrounded by empty beer bottles. There were more bottles on the floor. I couldn't see any of their faces.