Dark Tiger (5 page)

Around midnight they were sitting out on the deck. Kate was wearing a pair of Calhoun's sweatpants and one of his flannel shirts. She was sipping another glass of Old Grand-Dad on the rocks. Calhoun sat in the chair beside her holding a mug of black coffee in both hands.

They'd made love. They'd dozed. They'd cooked dinner, and they'd eaten it. They'd cleaned up the kitchen. Calhoun still didn't know whether Kate was planning to spend the night. Sometimes she did, and sometimes she kissed him good-bye and climbed into her truck and went home. He'd never figured out what impelled her to stay or to leave. It didn't matter. He liked it better when she stayed, and she knew that, but he guessed she had the right to decide for herself what she felt like doing, so he never argued with her.

The almost-full moon was high in the sky. A pair of barred owls, one off to their left and one somewhere behind the house, were hooting back and forth to each other. Ralph was inside, curled up at the foot of the bed, his belly full of steak scraps. Kate and Calhoun weren't saying much. They were pretty comfortable just sitting there listening to the owls and the gurgle of Bitch Creek.

Now's a good time
, thought Calhoun.
I should tell her now, while we're both feeling good and relaxed and worry-free
. He tried it out in his head.
I'm gonna be gone for a month or so, honey. I can't tell you where or why, so please don't ask. You just gotta trust me on this. It's something I've got to do. I'll be back. Okay?

He tried to imagine how she'd respond. Kate was a sweet, loving woman, but she stood up for herself, and she didn't take shit from anybody, including him. Especially him. She didn't
think two people who loved each other should have secrets, he knew that much about her.

She might not question him or argue with him. She might not say anything more than
I guess you better just do what you gotta do, then, Stoney
.

She'd be angry and hurt, though, and she'd have every right.

Not tonight,
he thought.
Let's not spoil this night. Let's hear what Mr. Brescia has to say first. Then I'll know exactly what I'm getting into. Then I'll talk to Kate
.

 

The Stroudwater Inn sat on a bluff overlooking the mouth of the Stroudwater River where it emptied into the Fore River in the southwest corner of Portland. The coffee shop, which appeared to have once been a brick Cape Cod house, was a hundred yards up the river past the inn, separated from it by a couple of modest private homes.

Calhoun parked in front and got out of his truck. It was about three minutes before eleven.

He headed for the front door. Alongside the building under an awning was a bricked patio area overlooking the river with about a dozen round metal tables and matching metal chairs. A single man was sitting at one of the tables reading a newspaper and sipping from a coffee mug. The other tables were vacant.

The man looked up and said, “Mr. Calhoun.” Not a question. He recognized Calhoun.

Calhoun went over to the man's table. “You Mr. Brescia?”

The man pointed at the chair opposite him. “Sit down.”

Calhoun sat.

“Want coffee? A sticky bun?”

As if she'd been listening, a waitress appeared. “Can I get you something, sir?” she said to Calhoun. “Coffee? Some breakfast?”

“Just coffee,” he said.

“Sir?” she said to Mr. Brescia.

“I'm good,” he said.

The waitress left. Brescia put his forearms on the table and leaned toward Calhoun. “I know all about you,” he said.

Calhoun shrugged. “That makes one of us.”

“What would you like to know, Mr. Calhoun?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. I'm all set.”

Mr. Brescia smiled. He was, Calhoun guessed, somewhere in his late forties, early fifties. A bulky man, thick in the shoulders and chest, but not fat. Coarse black hair, cut very short. Swarthy coloring, big lumpy nose. “I probably know things that you'd like to know,” he said. “All you've got to do is ask.”

“Why don't you just tell me what you want,” said Calhoun. “There's no sense trying to mess with my head. It won't do you any good.”

“Fair enough.” Mr. Brescia reached down and picked up a thin attaché case from the brick patio. He put it on the table between them, opened it, slid out a large manila envelope, shut the attaché case, and put it back on the patio floor beside his chair. He unclasped the envelope, reached inside, and took out an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph. He laid it face up on the table and turned it so that Calhoun could look at it.

The photo was taken through the front windshield. It showed two people sitting in the front seat of an automobile—a man behind the wheel, his head thrown back, and a woman slumped against him in the passenger seat. They were obviously dead. The woman's face was pressing against the man's shoulder so that Calhoun couldn't see it very well. She had light-colored hair.

There was a black hole on the side of the man's head, right in front of his left ear. Calhoun put his finger on the hole in the photo and arched his eyebrows at Mr. Brescia.

Mr. Brescia nodded. “Bullet hole.”

“Who're these people?”

“The man's name was McNulty. He was one of our . . . operatives. The woman was a local girl named Millie Gautier. A townie. Sixteen years old.”

“She have a bullet hole, too?” said Calhoun.

Mr. Brescia put his fingertip on the middle of his forehead and nodded. “The weapon was in McNulty's left hand.”

“Murder and suicide,” said Calhoun.

Mr. Brescia shrugged. “Looked like that.”

“But you don't think so.”

“No. For one thing, McNulty wouldn't do that.”

“Somebody shot both of them, then.”

Mr. Brescia nodded.

“Townie,” said Calhoun. “What town?”

“St. Cecelia.”

The waitress appeared with a mug and a carafe of coffee on a tray. She put the mug in front of Calhoun, filled it from the carafe, and put the carafe on the table. “Anything else, gentlemen?”

Mr. Brescia waved his hand in the air. “No, thank you.”

After the waitress left, Calhoun said, “St. Cecelia. That's way the hell up there in Aroostook County, ain't it?”

“Up there on the Canadian border,” said Mr. Brescia. “Potato country. Potato fields and blueberry burns, mobile homes and satellite dishes and rusted-out car bodies.”

“Millie had a boyfriend who didn't take kindly to her being with your McNulty?”

“We think it's more complicated than that.”

“You want me to go up there and figure it out, is that it?” said Calhoun.

Mr. Brescia shrugged. “We want you to go up there and figure out what McNulty was doing that got him shot in the head.”

“You don't know what he was doing?” said Calhoun. “Your own—what'd you call him?—your operative?”

“Our operatives,” said Mr. Brescia, “have a good deal of latitude. Our system is unique among government agencies. We select our people for their intelligence and initiative and resourcefulness, we train them thoroughly, and then we trust them and support them. They are mostly out there on their own, and we don't necessarily expect them to keep us updated on what they're doing or even where they are.” He smiled at Calhoun. “Doesn't that ring any bells with you, Stoney? I've just described your career with us.”

Mr. Brescia hadn't called him by his first name before. It made Calhoun cautious. He shook his head. “Rings no bells with me.”

“Our mutual friend said you'd say that.”

Our mutual friend
being the Man in the Suit, Calhoun assumed. “Why me?” he said.

“In spite of your, um, memory problems,” said Mr. Brescia, “we are convinced that you have retained your training, that you are still a superior operative.”

“I'm intelligent,” said Calhoun. “I take the initiative. Resourceful. That's still me.” He smiled. “What makes you think that?”

“We've kept an eye on you. As you know. We don't miss much, Stoney. You've solved two murders since you've been up here in Maine. Your sheriff calls on you to help him figure things out. You've shown intelligence, initiative, and resourcefulness—and
courage to burn—not even to mention all of the survival and self-defense and problem-solving skills that were instilled in you at great government expense.”

“That make me any different from your other operatives?”

“What makes you different,” said Mr. Brescia, “is that in addition to all that, you are also a registered and licensed Maine guide. Not only that, but a guide with an excellent reputation, a highly sought-after guide. One of the best, we understand.”

“I'm not doing much guiding these days,” said Calhoun. “I've learned I don't like it much unless I'm sharing my boat with somebody whose company I enjoy, and I'm finding there ain't all that many people who qualify. I've been happy taking care of the shop. Kate does some guiding. She's as good at it as me, and she tends to like people.”

Mr. Brescia was smiling. “You even talk like I imagine a Maine guide would talk. Nobody would know you grew up in South Carolina.”

“So what's my bein' a guide got to do with your McNulty getting shot in the head?”

“Last we knew of him before he turned up dead,” said Mr. Brescia, “he was staying at a place called the Loon Lake Lodge, which happens to be a high-end fishing lodge on, you guessed it, Loon Lake, which is one of a series of connected lakes in the northwest corner of Aroostook County. That's genuine wilderness, Stoney, right up there on the Canadian border. Real wild country. Bears and moose and eagles and damn few people. We figure that what happened to McNulty stemmed from what he was doing at the resort. We think he ended up in St. Cecelia, which is about thirty miles south of Loon Lake, connected only by an old logging road but still the nearest township, with that poor dead girl as a way of deflecting attention from the Loon Lake Lodge.”

“So you want me to hire on as a guide at Loon Lake and figure out what got McNulty killed?”

Mr. Brescia nodded. “We want to know what McNulty was investigating. We assume what got him killed was connected to that.”

Calhoun smiled. “I imagine it could get me killed, too.”

“Yes, it surely could,” said Mr. Brescia. “McNulty was a damn good man. Knew how to take care of himself, and look what happened to him. It's a dangerous job, no doubt about it.”

“So why should I do this?”

“I'd think that would be obvious by now, Stoney.”

“Because you can get me and Kate kicked out of our store,” said Calhoun. “Because you can get Walter kicked out of his rehab facility.”

Mr. Brescia shrugged. “Because we can make anything happen.”

“Say I'm willing,” said Calhoun. “I can't just go knock on the door of the lodge and say, ‘Here I am, ready to be hired.' ”

“Don't you worry about that. They're going to come knocking on your door. We're only asking you to agree when they do.”

“That's askin' a lot,” said Calhoun.

Mr. Brescia shrugged. “Consider the alternatives.”

Calhoun nodded. “I know I've got to do it. I don't have to like it.”

“You don't have to like me, either,” said Mr. Brescia, “but you do have to work with me.” He fixed Calhoun with his dark, baleful eyes. “All you have to do is what I ask.”

“What else do I need to know, then?”

“Two things,” said Mr. Brescia. “First, we believe McNulty had latched on to a national security issue. We don't know what, or how it's related to the Loon Lake Lodge, and we realize we
might be wrong. For all we know, he was there just to do some fishing and stumbled onto something. Whatever it was, now he's dead, and that doesn't seem to be a coincidence.”

“National security,” said Calhoun.

“Wish I could tell you more, but that's all I know, and even that is surmise. In any case, we've got to take it seriously.”

Calhoun shrugged. “You said there were two things.”

Mr. Brescia nodded. “The second thing,” he said, “is this. Those bullets weren't what killed McNulty and Millie Gautier. They were both already dead when they got shot.”

Calhoun arched his eyebrows. “Already dead, huh?”

“That's right.”

“What'd they die of?”

“Since it had the appearance of a homicide,” Mr. Brescia said, “the local sheriff turned both bodies over to the state's medical examiner in Augusta. The ME was the one who figured out that the gunshots were postmortem, though she hasn't yet been able to figure out what did kill them. For now she's calling it natural causes.”

“Is that what you think?” Calhoun said. “Natural causes?”

Mr. Brescia shook his head. “No, I don't.”

“Why shoot somebody who's already dead?” said Calhoun.

“That's something you'll find out for us,” said Mr. Brescia. “It could've just been some jealous boyfriend, found the two of them parked in a car in the woods, thought they were sleeping. Hell, it could've been anybody. It might've had nothing whatsoever to do with what McNulty was investigating.”

“You don't believe that.”

Mr. Brescia shrugged. “No, I suppose I don't, but anything's possible.”

Calhoun lifted his coffee mug to his lips. The coffee had gone cold. He put down the mug. “Okay,” he said. “What else?”

“You'll be asked to hire on as a guide at Loon Lake,” said Mr. Brescia. “Take the job. Go up there. Figure out what McNulty was up to. When you do, tell us. Then you can go home. That's all.”

Calhoun smiled. “That's all, huh?”

Mr. Brescia nodded. “Not a word about this. To anybody. No exceptions. Understand?”

Calhoun nodded.