Gray Ghost (15 page)

“Ours?” said Dunbar. “Boston Whaler. It’s just an eighteen-foot runabout with a forty-horse motor. Nothing fancy. I got it before … what happened. I thought, you know, it would be fun to take the family out in the boat, spend some time on the water, have picnics on the islands, explore the rivers, dig some clams, do some trolling.” He shook his head. “Since … well, we pretty much stopped doing family outings. Benjie uses the boat mostly, now.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“At the marina. The Saco Marina, right there in the river.” He frowned. “Why are you asking about my boat?”

Calhoun smiled. “I’m interested in boats, that’s all.”

“Well,” said Dunbar, “I’d sell that damn thing if it wasn’t for Benjie. You know what it costs to rent a slip in a marina? He keeps saying he might want to try lobstering, and I think it would be good for him, a good thing for a boy to do, if he could ever got off his butt.”

Calhoun nodded and pushed open the screen door. From somewhere outside came a rhythmic thumping sound that he identified as a ball bouncing on pavement.

The sheriff turned to Meredith Dunbar and said, “I wonder if I could use your bathroom ?”

“Of course,” she said, and led him back into the house.

Calhoun went outside. Benjie Dunbar was shooting a basketball at the hoop on the side of the driveway. He was working hard at it. He’d shoot a long jump shot, then go charging in to grab the ball before it hit the pavement, and he’d shoot again. Then he’d grab the ball, dribble back a distance, make a couple of fakes and pivots, and shoot again.

He hardly ever missed.

After a minute, Calhoun said, “You on the team?”

The boy stopped suddenly and looked over. “Jesus,” he said. “You scared the shit out of me, man.”

“Sorry. I was watching you. You’re very good.”

“Yeah,” said Benjie. “I’m hoping to be a starter this year. I don’t know. I’ve got to work on my left hand.” He suddenly snapped the ball at Calhoun.

Calhoun reached up, snagged it with one hand, and bounced it tentatively. It felt familiar, and he knew that he had dribbled a basketball before. Without thinking about it, he raised the ball over his head and flicked it toward the hoop in a smooth, comfortable motion that felt utterly natural, and he knew that his muscles had repeated that motion hundreds of times.

His shot ticked off the front of the rim and fell short.

Benjie grabbed the rebound and laid it in. “You gotta follow through,” he said. He held up his arm and flopped his hand forward at the wrist.

Calhoun clapped his hands. Benjie passed him the ball. He shot again, this time following through with his hand and wrist, and it slipped through the net without touching the hoop.

“There you go,” said Benjie. “Lookin’ good.” He retrieved the ball and passed it back to Calhoun.

He fired again. Swish.

Benjie grabbed the ball, dribbled to where Calhoun was standing, and handed it to him. “Come on,” he said. “Give me your best move.” He bent his knees and held his hands loose at his sides.

Calhoun figured that if he thought about it, he’d probably trip over his own feet, so he blanked his mind, and the next thing he knew, he had twitched his hip, dropped his shoulder, and rocked back, and then he took one big crossover step around Benjie, dribbled for the basket, launched himself into the air, twisted his body, and dropped the ball through the hoop from the other side.

Benjie caught the ball as it came through the net and zipped it at Calhoun. “Try that again.”

Calhoun held up his hand. “I’m an old man. You want me to have a heart attack ?”

“I wasn’t ready for you,” said Benjie. “I can stop you.”

“Sure,” said Calhoun. “I know you can.” He bounced the ball toward the boy.

Benjie picked it up, made a ball-fake at Calhoun, then pivoted and tossed in a fallaway jumper. He retrieved the ball and threw it hard at Calhoun.

Calhoun knocked the pass down, then picked up the ball. “You mad at me or something?”

“You beat me once and then you quit? You can’t do that.” hure 1 can.

“Come on, man,” said Benjie. “See if you can stop me.”

“Sure,” said Calhoun. “Okay.”

They moved out about twenty feet from the basket. Calhoun gave Benjie a bounce pass, then got down into a defensive position.

Benjie held the ball in both hands, his elbows out, knees bent, weaving his head side to side, and Calhoun knew he was going to fake left, hesitate, give him a quick jam step, then drive to the right.

When Benjie did it, Calhoun pretended to go for the fake, and Benjie drove in for a fancy over-the-shoulder lay up.

Calhoun trailed behind him and caught the ball as it fell through the net. “Nice move. I left my jock back there somewhere.”

“Wanna go again?”

Calhoun blew out a breath. “Nope. I was lucky once. Let’s leave it at that.” He handed the ball to Benjie.

Benjie shrugged. “A move like that isn’t luck. You played in college, right? I mean, you’re pretty good for somebody your age. Where’d you play?”

Calhoun shrugged. He had no idea when or where he’d played basketball. It was one of the myriad things that had happened before a bolt of lightning obliterated his memory. Still, it was pretty obvious that he had played, and the memory of it lived in his muscles, if not his brain.

Benjie put the basketball down on the blacktop and sat on it.

Calhoun squatted beside him. He was breathing hard. “Wow,” he said. “I’m out of shape.”

“So somebody killed that bastard who raped my sister, huh?” said Benjie.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

Benjie laughed harshly. “Yeah, me, neither. It’s the big family shame, our terrible secret. You wouldn’t know it, but before that happened, my dad was a hot-shit guy. Took us fishing and camping, played ball with me, told jokes. He hasn’t shot hoops with me since then. Not once.”

Calhoun glanced at Benjie and saw that tears were glittering in the boy’s eyes. He stood up and looked back toward the house so Benjie wouldn’t see that he’d noticed.

The sheriff was standing there on the edge of the driveway with his arms folded across his chest, watching them.

“Look,” said Calhoun to Benjie, “I’ve got to go. You want to talk sometime, give me a call.” He found one of the shop’s business cards in his wallet. “Call me here. It’s where I work when I’m not

playing deputy sheriff. If I’m not there, leave a message. I’ll get it. Maybe we could go fishing sometime.”

Benjie swiped his wrist across his eyes, then took the card and looked at it. “Calhoun, huh?”

“Stoney. That’s what they call me.” He held out his hand.

Benjie shook it. “Thanks, man. Maybe I’ll do that.” He put the card in his pocket, then picked up the basketball and held it out to Calhoun. “Try another move on me.”

Calhoun held up both hands. “That was my only move. It works only once. I better quit while I’m ahead. You take it easy.”

Benjie grinned. “You, too.”

Calhoun turned and went over to where the sheriff was standing. “Ready to go?”

The sheriff was shaking his head. “You keep surprising me, Stoney Calhoun.”

“Me, too,” said Calhoun.

When they were in the Explorer headed back to Calhoun’s house, the sheriff said, “So what do you think, Deputy?”

“What Watson did wrecked that family,” he said. “Bonnie wasn’t the only victim. All of them are screwed up. It’s hard to feel bad about what happened to that son of a bitch. He got what he deserved.”

“Somebody murdered him,” said the sheriff. “Don’t lose track of that.”

“I know.” Calhoun nodded. “Paul Vecchio’s the one I care about, though. I wouldn’t be here with you doing this if it was just about what happened to Errol Watson.”

“I figure,” said the sheriff, “if we find who killed Watson, we’ll also have the man who killed Vecchio.”

“I guess so,” said Calhoun. “You think Dunbar’s a good suspect?”

“He had means, motive, and opportunity,” said the sheriff. “He’s a very good suspect. That was excellent, Stoney, by the way, asking about the boat. That establishes that Dunbar had the means to get Watson out to Quarantine Island.”

“I guess his wife could’ve helped him.”

“Or his son,” said the sheriff.

Calhoun nodded. “That kid’s got a lot bottled up in him. He doesn’t like his father very much. Wanted to take my head off back there. Couldn’t stand it that I beat him one-on-one.”

The sheriff was smiling. “That was a helluva move.”

“Don’t ask me where it came from.” Calhoun shook his head. “It’s hard to imagine any of those people doing something like what happened to Watson.”

“It always is.” The sheriff chuckled. “It’s hard to imagine you as a basketball star. You want to stop for some coffee ?”

“No,” said Calhoun. “I want to get home.”

“You worried about Ralph?”

“I guess so.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then Calhoun said, “So now what happens?”

“Now,” said the sheriff, “I’m going to write up a report for Lieutenant Gilsum. I’m going to remind him that what Dunbar said in court actually happened. Watson had his dick cut off, and then he was set on fire, just like Dunbar said. I’m going to report that Dunbar’s burgundy-colored Saab was seen at Watson’s house, and that he admitted going there, and that he lied about it at first. I’m going to say that he also lied about knowing that Watson was out of prison, and that, in fact, he tried to do a lot of lying, but he wasn’t very good at it. I’m going to say that he has no alibi for the Saturday night when Watson was probably killed. I’m going to say that we’ll never find anybody with a better motive than Franklin Dunbar.”

“Then what?”

“Then?” The sheriff blew out a breath. “That’s up to Gilsum. I’d be surprised if he didn’t haul Dunbar in and give him a good grilling. Maybe the wife, too. Question them separately. We were pretty gentle with them.”

Calhoun was shaking his head. “All that,” he said, “but I still don’t see Dunbar doing it.”

“Not the type? That what you’re thinking?”

Calhoun nodded. “Yeah, maybe. He seems too … passive. He’s a broken man. Defeated. Just full of regret and sadness. He’s beyond anger or revenge. I don’t see him doing much of anything. You know what I’m saying?”

“People lie,” said the sheriff. “Everybody lies. Everybody’s got something to lie about. Most people aren’t any good at it, but some are. They lie and dissemble, and the only way you can tell is by getting the right facts. In this business, you’ve got to assume they’re lying.”

“I know that,” said Calhoun.

“There is no type,” said the sheriff. “Anybody can do anything.”

When Calhoun steered the sheriff’s Explorer into the yard, Ralph came bounding out of the darkness. Calhoun got out and squatted down so Ralph could jump on him and lick his face. He realized that all the time he’d been gone, the possibility that Ralph wouldn’t be there when he got back had been tugging at the edges of his mind.

The sheriff got out and came around to the driver’s side.

“You want some coffee or something?” said Calhoun.

The sheriff shook his head. “Better not. Jane’s expecting me.”

“That’s nice,” said Calhoun, “having a woman at home waiting for you, caring where you’ve been.”

“You’ve got a dog,” said the sheriff. “Notice that he didn’t look at his watch, tap his foot, and tell you he’s been worried.”

After the sheriff drove off, Calhoun went up to the house. He found a Milk-Bone in the cabinet and a Coke in the refrigerator and took them out to the deck. He gave Ralph the Milk-Bone and took a long swig of Coke. He wanted to wash away the bad taste in his mouth. Grilling a devastated family about the murder of the man who’d destroyed them was unpleasant business.

He could do it, and he understood the necessity of it, but he didn’t like it.

He had to agree with the sheriff. Objectively, Franklin Dunbar made a very likely suspect. He supposed he could imagine Dunbar’s ice-eyed wife or hotheaded son doing it, too. He could imagine all three of them doing it together.

What he couldn’t imagine was punishing them for it. Four and a half years in prison was no punishment for what Errol Watson had done to them. Having his dick cut off and stuffed down his throat and then going up in flames, that was more like it. It was hard to feel too bad about that.

If Franklin Dunbar killed the man who wrecked his family, he deserved a big round of applause.

It would be a different story, though, if Dunbar murdered Watson and then turned around and shot Paul Vecchio.

As the sheriff said, anybody could do anything. You couldn’t know what went on inside another person’s head. An outwardly weak, shattered man like Franklin Dunbar might have a cold, steely center to him. Calhoun knew the sheriff was right in theory, but in this case, he did not believe that Franklin Dunbar—or his wife or their son—was capable of murdering a man like Paul Vecchio.

So Calhoun was left with a logical conundrum. Errol Watson and Paul Vecchio had been murdered. By the timing of it, and by the fact that Vecchio had discovered Watson’s body shortly before getting killed himself—and by the fact that both murders were connected to Calhoun, too, for that matter’it logically followed that both men had been murdered by the same person.

Franklin Dunbar was the best suspect for the Watson murder, but there didn’t appear to be any reason why he’d kill Paul Vecchio.

Maybe the two murders were unrelated, and all of the connections were coincidental. Or maybe Franklin Dunbar didn’t kill either of them. Or maybe he killed both Watson and Vecchio, in which case, they needed to find his connection with Vecchio.

They were going at it wrong. They were looking for Watson’s killer because it was easier. Watson was an evil man, the kind of man who accumulated enemies and had no friends. You could understand why someone would want to kill him. Anybody who knew the man made a good suspect. So there were plenty of possible killers with plausible motives, and you could keep yourself busy tracking them all down and interrogating them, and you’d feel like you were doing a good job.

But what did it matter? Watson was dead, and he deserved to be dead, and there was no justice in punishing his killer.

Calhoun just didn’t want to do it anymore. He didn’t care if they caught Errol Watson’s killer. Actually, he kind of hoped they wouldn’t. He couldn’t see punishing Franklin Dunbar, if that’s who did it. He should be given a medal.

He sat there in his Adirondack chair with his head tilted back looking up at the stars and listening to the owls. He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to quit the whole distasteful business. His instincts had been right the first time. He should never have gotten involved.

He decided to do it. He would quit. He’d tell the sheriff first thing in the morning. He’d return the badge and the damn cell phone, shake his hand, wish him luck, tell him most sincerely he hoped they’d still be friends. Then he’d go back to guiding fishermen and tying flies and chopping wood and working in the shop. Life was too damn short and uncertain to keep doing things that didn’t feel right and that you didn’t believe in.

The instant he made the decision, he felt better.

He stood up, and so did Ralph, who’d been lying on the deck beside him, and they went into the house. Calhoun took the deputy badge and the sheriff’s cell phone out of his pocket and put them on the table. Then he loaded the automatic coffeemaker, made sure Ralph’s water dish was full, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.

Quitting the case made him feel pure and clean, and he fell asleep almost instantly.

Calhoun woke up thinking about Paul Vecchio. Through his bedroom window, he could see the black sky dotted with bright stars and the pine boughs waving in the breeze. His internal clock read five forty in the morning.

He felt twisted-up and conflicted all over again, the way he’d been feeling before he decided to quit working with the sheriff.

There had been a dream, of course, but he had no specific memory of it. Just that Vecchio had been in it. That was part of the tension he was feeling. His dreams always did that.

Calhoun had spent enough time with Paul Vecchio to know that he liked him. You share a boat with a man, chase some fish, it doesn’t take long to get a pretty good idea of what kind of man he is. Vecchio was solid. He was smart and self-contained. He didn’t take himself too seriously. He liked the ocean and fishing.

It hadn’t been enough time to say they were friends, but it was enough time to believe that he and Paul Vecchio would’ve ended up being friends. If he hadn’t been murdered.

Calhoun had decided to quit working with the sheriff. It wasn’t quit that simple, though. He couldn’t quit on Paul Vecchio.

With Vecchio’s murder, unlike Errol Watson’s, you started without any motive. Vecchio appeared to have no enemies. He wasn’t a drug dealer or pornographer or rapist. Calhoun felt sure that he was just what he appeared to be, an inoffensive college professor. Nothing that Gilsum’s detectives had learned so far contradicted that. There was no place to start with Vecchio. Without a motive, you had no suspects, and no way to start looking for them.

Apparently whoever killed Paul Vecchio had followed him to Calhoun’s house in the woods. It was a good, solitary place to commit a murder, and that made it personal for Calhoun.

Not even to mention the fact that when they came to kill Vecchio, Ralph ran away and took his time coming back. Ralph wouldn’t do that unless they’d taken a shot at him or tried to kick him. That made it very personal.

The question was: Why did Paul Vecchio go to Calhoun’s house two days after their fishing trip?

Calhoun lay there in the dark and replayed that morning in the boat with Vecchio, beginning with the first time he laid eyes on the man two hours before sunrise under the orange lights of the parking area at the East End boat landing. They shook hands. Vecchio had a couple of rod cases in his hand and his black L.L.Bean gear bag slung over his shoulder. Calhoun told him he didn’t need his fly rods, then pointed at the bag and gave his little speech about forbidding electronic gadgets on his boat. Vecchio went back to his Subaru to leave his rods and his cell phone. Then they went down to the boat. Vecchio patted Ralph, stored his gear bag in the waterproof locker under the seat, and …

Calhoun fast-forwarded through the morning to the sheriff telling Vecchio he couldn’t go back to Quarantine Island with them, and Vecchio reluctantly getting out of the boat, then standing there watching them go, disappointed, maybe a little pissed off, not waving.

Calhoun studied that picture in his memory. He clearly saw that Paul Vecchio did not have his L.L.Bean gear bag in his hand or slung over his shoulder or sitting on the ground beside him.

He remembered that right before they landed on Quarantine Island, Vecchio had taken the bag out of the waterproof compartment under the middle seat. He held it on his lap, sitting on the front seat facing forward, and he rummaged around in it. After a couple of minutes, he lathered himself with sunscreen. Then he zipped up the bag, turned around, and put it back under the middle seat.

Sunscreen. There was that bottle of sunscreen on the deck beside Paul Vecchio’s dead body, as if he’d been applying sunscreen when he got shot.

Except you didn’t put on sunscreen at the end of the day, which was when Vecchio had gone to Calhoun’s house. So he’d left it there for a different reason. It was a message for Calhoun from a man who realized he was about to be killed.

The gear bag. That’s what had been nagging at the edges of Calhoun’s memory for the past few days. Paul Vecchio had left his gear bag in the boat that day.

Maybe that’s why he came to Calhoun’s house. He wanted to retrieve his L.L.Bean bag, which was still in the boat, trailered there in the yard.

That’s when he got murdered.

So why hadn’t he called Calhoun at the shop or at home, told him he’d forgotten his bag, and arranged for Calhoun to get it back to him? Why had he come all the way to Calhoun’s house in Dublin? What was in the bag that was so important that he couldn’t wait to get it back ?

He rewound the scene and replayed it, and he heard Vecchio tell him what he kept in his gear bag. Windbreaker, camera, pliers, fish knife, boxes of flies, dry socks, sunscreen, insect repellent.

He took out the camera before he stored the bag in the compartment under the seat. He used the sunscreen in the boat.

If the killer was after something in the bag, then Vecchio hadn’t told Calhoun everything, because nobody committed murder for a pair of socks or a box of flies.

Well, if the bag wasn’t in the boat now, it meant the killer had taken it.

If it was still there in the waterproof compartment under the middle seat, Calhoun would open it up and see if it contained something of particular and unusual value to Paul Vecchio, and maybe to his killer.

Or maybe the bag had nothing to do with his getting killed. Coming to Calhoun’s isolated house to retrieve it just created a convenient opportunity for the killer.

No. Vecchio had dropped that bottle of sunscreen on the deck to remind Calhoun about his gear bag.

Calhoun turned on the light beside his bed, got up, and pulled on his pants.

Ralph, who was curled on the floor at the foot of the bed, lifted his head and blinked at him.

“Go back to sleep,” said Calhoun. “I’ll be right back.”

He turned on the floodlights, went down to where his boat was parked, and lifted the lid of the middle seat. Paul Vecchio’s L.L. Bean gear bag was there.

He took it out and carried it back up to the house. He put it on the kitchen table, opened it up, and put everything he found inside on the table.

Socks, fly boxes, sunscreen, insect repellent, rolled-up wind-breaker, pliers, fish knife.

He picked up each item, looked at it, turned it over, put it back on the table.

When he unrolled the windbreaker, he found a wrinkled scrap of notebook paper tucked inside.

He smoothed the paper on the table.

Keelhaul Albie
9/6 9:00 was written on it.

The letters were slightly blurred, as if they’d been exposed to dampness, but clearly legible, printed with a black felt-tip pen.

He turned the paper over. On the reverse side was an abstract design scratched with a pencil. It was a big inverted letter 17, like an upside-down bowl or an umbrella, with a dozen or more crudely shaped roundish blobs of various sizes scattered around the paper as if they’d spilled from the bowl. Four of the little blobs had X’s crossed through them.

Calhoun looked at it. It didn’t mean anything to him. Just a big upside-down U and a bunch of shapeless circles.

He figured it probably meant something to Paul Vecchio.

He flipped the paper over again.
Keelhaul Albie,
it said, with what appeared to be a date and time—9/6 9:00. That would be September 6, nine o—clock. He counted back. The sixth was the Saturday before he took Paul Vecchio fishing. Exactly a week after the ME said Errol Watson had been killed.

Vecchio, Calhoun remembered, had called the shop Sunday afternoon, the seventh, to arrange their trip., and he’d talked to Kate. Calhoun recalled her telling him about her conversation with this new client. He’d told her he was really eager to go, hoped to go out that same day, if possible, or Monday would be good. Said he didn’t care whether he went with Kate or Calhoun. Kate had explained that it was too late to go out Sunday and they were closed on Monday, so Tuesday was the first date that anybody was available for guiding, and that it was Calhoun’s turn.

Maybe this scrap of paper wasn’t connected in any way to what happened to Paul Vecchio, but it was the closest thing to a clue anybody had come up with so far.

Was fetching this piece of paper the reason Paul Vecchio had come to Calhoun’s house? Was it what got him killed?

Keelhaul Albie?

Was Calhoun’s fishing trip with Paul Vecchio on Tuesday the ninth the result of somebody named Albie getting keelhauled on Saturday the sixth at nine o—clock?’

Keelhauling was a traditional form of punishment at sea. It was way more severe than tying a misbehaving sailor to the mast and lashing him. To keelhaul a man, you tied ropes to his arms and legs and lowered him over the bow, and the crew held the ropes taut so that the victim was spreadeagled, and they walked back to the stern, dragging the poor outstretched bastard under the vessel, scraping him along the keel.

Victims of keelhauling who didn’t drown first generally died from having their flesh flayed off by barnacles.

Maybe “keelhaul” was figurative. Maybe it just meant: Punish Albie severely and cruelly. Or maybe it meant kill. Keelhauling was usually fatal.