Darkness peering (18 page)

"Billy, that's all in the past. Dad loved you ..."

"Past? Past!" He chucked the words at her like pieces of gravel, too
small to hurt but sharp enough to sting. "I'm afraid to get close to
anyone. Do you know what that's like? I'm afraid of losing control.
I've lived my whole life in a prison I've been trying to either blow up
or burn down ..."

"Billy," she said, lime green walls undulating in her peripheral

vision. "I don't know what to say. I wasn't there. I wish I
could've helped ... I'm trying to help you now."

He held her eye an indignant moment, then rubbed his exhausted face.
His coffee was getting cold. "I've known Claire for three years," he
said, "and she was like this big mystery to me. She's a strange
person, Rachel. Real open, and yet real private. Before last year, I
only knew her casually, the way you'd know somebody at staff meetings
and stuff. Not very well. But last year, we taught class together and
got pretty tight. Christ." He groaned and lowered his head. He ran
his hands through his hair; he never reminded her of their father so
much as when he did that. "We were just starting to get..." He fell
silent.

"What, Billy?"

"We were just starting to get..."

Her knuckles whitened around her pen. He paused for so long, she
thought maybe he'd fallen asleep. "Just starting to get what,
Billy?"

"Close."

"How close?"

He didn't answer her directly. "You know," he said, "I've always lived
my life as if I cared, as if I felt something ... but I didn't. Not
really. Not until I met Claire."

She stared at the top of his head, the swirling innocence of his brown
hair. Their father's hair.

"And then something strange happened ..."

These words shattered her self-imposed calm like rubber bullets.

"Oh God." He didn't speak for the longest time. He started to
tremble. Terrified that her own brother might be on the verge of
confessing, she put down her pen and rested a hand between his shoulder
blades.

"What is it, Billy?" she whispered, feeling each sob like a silent
hiccup. "You can tell me."

"Oh God."

"Tell me."

He sat up abruptly, as if he might hit her. Eyes blazing, back
stiffening. "If something's happened to her, it would be brutal. It
would kill me, it really would."

"Billy," she said, carefully choosing her words. "After you dropped
Porter off ... is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts?"

He shook his head.

"Billy..."

"I think I know who might've done something," he said, voice drained of
all emotion. "An ex-boyfriend was writing her these threatening
letters."

"In red envelopes?"

"Yeah." He looked up. "She told me he was crazy. She'd get a red
envelope about once or twice a month."

"What's his name?"

"I don't know, but she said he used to accuse her of all this crazy
stuff, and she finally got up the courage to leave him."

"When?"

"A couple years ago. Rachel ..." He looked at her angrily.
Accusingly. "Not everything is my fucking fault."

"I know, Billy." She reached for his hand and he let her hold it
momentarily. "I know."

THAT AFTERNOON A FULL-SCALE SEARCH-AND-RESCUE WAS

launched in conjunction with the Maine State Police. Helicopters
buzzed the county, while officers with K-9 dogs searched every inch of
the downtown area in a grid pattern. The dogs picked up Claire's scent
at the diner where she was last seen but

lost it several yards out the door, diverted perhaps by the confusion
of foot traffic on Main Street and the pouring rain. The rescue team
penetrated the dense forest north of town, pushing past sodden fir
boughs and sliding down ravines slippery with rain. They searched the
swampland west of the Triangle, the cornfields, the parks, and came up
empty-handed. Claire Castillo had simply disappeared.

She'd undoubtedly come to harm, Rachel thought. This was a woman who'd
hardly missed a day of work, who was in constant contact with her
family. "It's the kind of case I dread," McKissack told her that
afternoon over the phone, and she imagined his tense face couched in a
jagged halo of disarranged hair.

"I found out who wrote those letters," she said.

"Who?"

"An ex-boyfriend. He lives outside of Bangor. I got a phone number
from her parents. He's agreed to an interview."

"Go, girl."

"I'm on my way."

It was a two-hour trip. The setting sun flared across the horizon by
the time she arrived in Sayerprayers, Maine, a real knees and-elbows
town. WELCOME TO SAYER PRAYERS a sign in one of the town's many bars
read, HUB OF THE UNIVERSE.

Rachel crawled along a rutted road, looking for Buck Fo lette's street.
Ramshackle houses spread like acne across the face of this shabby old
burg, muddy lawns strewn with trash--fast-food wrappers, doggie chew
toys, rusting tricycles. She took a right onto the aptly named Devil's
Reach Road and drove past a six-pack of silent teenagers until she
reached the dead end. As she got out, a cold pocket of air snaked
around her head.

Her heels clicked up the flagstone walkway. The house was dark, the
rest of the street deserted. The porch floorboards creaked and the
rusty screen door had fallen off its hinges. Biting back her
trepidation, Rachel knocked.

A man in his mid-thirties answered. He was good-looking with
red-rimmed eyes and kept sniffing, as if he'd done a few lines and
wasn't afraid to let it show. He had an aristocratic nose, chiseled
cheekbones and long, wavy yellow hair he pushed back behind his ears.
His eyes were cunning and mean, and he resembled nothing so much as
your average Irat boy from hell. She detested him on sight but
recalled her father's words: You catch more flies with honey than
vinegar.

"Officer Storrow?" He extended a tanned hand, his breath reeking of
alcohol.

"You must be Mr. Folette."

"I must be. C'mon in."

The place was squalid, pizza boxes imprinted on the dirty toast-colored
shag, beer bottles strewn like rose petals at a wedding, stolen hotel
ashtrays bristling with butts. The TV set was on, tuned to some
forgettable 1980s sitcom.

"You'll have to forgive the place, it stinks like the crack of God's
ass." He flashed her a million-dollar smile. "Beer?"

"No, thanks."

"Yeah, right. Not while you're on duty." He fell backward into a
pea-colored armchair, a cloud of dust puffing up around him. A path
from the sofa to the kitchen had been worn threadbare in the shag rug,
and the only light was coming from the TV set. She strained her eyes
for a place to sit.

"Just push those magazines off," he said, pointing at a sofa covered
with auto magazines, "Sorry about the mess." He stared at her,
transfixed. "So what's this little visit about, Ossifer?"

A million thoughts raced through Rachel's head. She preferred to
conduct interviews on tape and had brought a mini recorder for that
purpose, despite the fact that most interviewees refused to allow
themselves to be recorded. Predictably, Buck declined, and so she took
out her pen and a statement form. She would listen, take notes and
shape a written statement for him to sign.

Since it was highly likely that Buck might become a suspect, Rachel
reminded herself to read him the non custodial rights warning, which
was like the Miranda warning only with a difference: the suspect did
not have the option of having a lawyer appointed for him and was
advised he could cut the interview short at any time. Although he was
not under arrest, the non custodial warning would subsequently
establish that she had given him every opportunity to exercise his
constitutional rights.

After she'd handled these bits of business, Rachel got right to the
point. "Claire Castillo has been missing since Wednesday evening."

"Oh yeah? Missing, how?"

"Missing, as in gone."

"Gee whiz." He seemed amused. "That's too bad."

"Where were you Wednesday night, Mr. Folette?"

He gave her a winning smile. "I'm Buck to my friends."

The hairs rose on the back of Rachel's neck. Was Buck the "b" in
Claire's Day-Timer? "Where were you Wednesday night, Buck?"

"Right here." He slapped the arm of his chair and another puff of dust
rose up. "Planted in front of the tube like a tulip."

"Can anyone verify that?"

"My landlady. Lives upstairs."

"Is she home now?"

He shrugged.

"Mind if I talk to her after our interview?"

"Long as you don't mind if I smoke."

"Go right ahead."

"You can trust a man with a vice, my papa used to say, but never trust
the Sober, the Smoke-Free, the Slender or the Sweet Smelling." He got
up from his chair and knelt in front of the coffee table where he
proceeded to roll his own cigarette. When he was done, he sat back on
his haunches and sparked up. Picking bits of tobacco off his tongue,
he said, "Man, that girl was

nuts about me. Her old man hated my guts, though. One summer we were
living in Flowering Dogwood, and her father used to spy on us. He'd
drive by the apartment all the time, so we moved back here."

"Do you still communicate with her?"

"No," he said, mouth growing hard.

"Phone calls? Letters? Email?"

"Nope." He sat back smugly in his chair.

"Well, somebody's been sending her letters on red stationery, in red
envelopes."

"Not me." Smoke bled from his cigarette.

"They're pretty abusive, these letters."

"I wasn't mean to her," he said defensively. "I never slapped her
around or called her bitch or anything."

"That's not what I hear."

"Yeah, well, you know ... we could both get pretty liquored up." He
grinned at the thought. "Man, I was in love! You only fall in love
for real once in your life. From day one, that girl was all over me
like a cheap suit. She'd get jealous if I even looked at another woman
sidewise."

"I heard you hit her a couple of times."

He stared at her oddly. "No, ma'am."

"There's a police report..."

"Oh. Wait. The microchips in my brain are a little rusty." He
laughed. "Once. Just that one time. Cops wouldn't listen to me. I
mean, if you want the truth, Claire used to beat the crap outta me. I
had scratches all up and down my arms here ... on my neck and shit.."

"In one such incident, you gave her a black eye. I have a copy of the
police report." Rachel swallowed back the bile rising in her throat.
Her feelings for this man weren't important. She needed to adjust
herself psychologically so that she and Buck were in harmony. She
could be hard-nosed when she had to, but the sympathy approach rarely
failed.

"Yeah, well, maybe I did hit her once or twice," he hedged. "She
could drive a man nuts with a capital N. Peace, love and parking lots."
He extinguished his cigarette, cracked another beer. He seemed to want
the conversation to end there, but Rachel persisted.

"You said in your letters--"

His entire body tensed as he leaned forward. "You read them?"

"Yes."

"Do you have them?"

"Not on me. They're down at the lab being dusted for prints. So you
admit you wrote them?"

He looked away, profile bathed in TV light, and set his facial muscles
into a glare.

"Look, we've all been in relationships," she said, "good and bad .."

"You can't just waltz into my house and completely impose yourself."
His icy gaze tickled the base of her spine. This interview was on the
verge of becoming an interrogation, and Rachel silently gave herself
permission to try for a full confession. She wanted a confession, even
if it meant he might go free later on. If a suspect confessed and
supplied information about a crime, such as where the body was hidden,
and if his attorney had the confession ruled inadmissible later on,
then none of the evidence collected from the confession would count.
This was called "fruit of the poison tree." McKissack liked to get his
confessions last, once most of the evidence was in, but in the case of
a kidnapping, there simply wasn't time.

"When was the last time you took a vacation?"

"Huh?" He squinted at her through the flickering TV light.

"You know, just got away from it all?"

"Not in a while." His eyes misted over. "My folks have this place by
the seashore ..." His eyebrows dropped. "Okay, so I wore the same
clothes all summer long, so what? I was wasted eight ways to Sunday,
too stoned to change my clothes, okay?

She made such a big deal out of it, and here she was, this incredible
slob ... you ever seen her place?"

"Yes, I have."

"You know, when it comes to other people's personal shortcomings,
Claire was an idiot savant on the subject." He swallowed some beer and
looked at her. "You married?"

"No." Rachel strained forward during the silence that followed,
listening for any stray sound that might alert her to Claire's presence
in the apartment. Soon she would ask his consent to search the
premises. She'd brought along a consent form for that specific
purpose.

"No, I'm not," she admitted. "I'm not married."

"Pretty cop like you?" He smiled his indigent frat-boy smile. "Never
been proposed to?"

"We're not talking about me."

"Why not?"

She could feel her face getting hot. "Because."

"I got you." He grinned.

"Mr. Folette--"

"Call me Buck."

"Buck ... in these letters, you accuse her--"

"The bitch was after me." His mouth had a bitter downturn. He looked
at her and slammed his fist on the arm of the chair.

Reflexively, she thought about her gun. It was awfully dark in here.
Buck probably had a weapon hidden somewhere inside the house. Welcome
to Sayerprayers--guns in the homes, guns in the pickups, guns at the
7-Eleven ... "She wanted my soul. She kept doing things ... plotting
against me .."