Instruments of Night (28 page)

In his mind Graves saw Edward Davies as he must have appeared at that moment, young and very rich and hopelessly in love with Mona Flagg, but now convinced that his father would never permit him to marry a girl from the “lower orders.”

“‘They’re nothing but criminals,’ my father told me.
‘Every one of them. The whole family. Low-life. Do you think I’d ever let such people get near Riverwood?’ He jerked the papers out of my hand. ‘You have a week, Edward.’ That’s what he told me. A week to decide between Mona and Riverwood.” The burden of his dilemma seemed to fall upon him once again. “I told Mona all about it. She said she wasn’t like her family. She told me she’d broken off with them several years before. We were both pretty upset. I nearly tipped the boat a couple of times. When we got back, I couldn’t find the rope to tie the boat. Mona had trouble getting out. It was a terrible day.” He waited for a question, continued when none came. “But I’d made my decision. I was going to stay with Mona. If she hadn’t … Mona would have lived her whole life and never hurt a soul. That’s why it was so unfair. What my father did. Hiring that cop to check up on Mona and her family. Put what he found out in those papers my father shoved at me.” Again, his anger flared. “But even worse, the way that same cop showed up at Riverwood after Faye’s death. Asking Mona questions like he’d never heard of her before. Had never sneaked around gathering filth on her family.” His mouth jerked into a sneer. “That fat bastard.”

“Are you talking about Dennis Portman?” Graves asked.

“That fat cop, yes.” Davies’ eyes flashed with rage. “He was nothing but a flunky who did my father’s dirty work. I’d seen his name on the report he’d done about Mona and her family. So when he came to Riverwood after Faye died, I knew why he was there. It made me sick, the way he acted. Pretending to be so dedicated. Like he was just trying to find out what happened to Faye. Looking for the truth.” He gave a dry, derisive laugh. “Whatever Dennis Portman was doing he was doing for my father. So he could protect Riverwood. Bury anything
that needed burying. Portman was no more than a servant. He was big and fat. But he was little. A little man. One of my father’s little men.”

“What if he’s right?” Eleanor asked as they headed back to Riverwood. Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “What if Portman’s whole investigation were a sham? What if he never intended to find out who killed Faye? What if his real job was to make sure no one ever did?” She glanced toward Graves, then returned her eyes to the road. “Is that what we’ve left out, Paul? The fact that Portman was Warren Davies’ private henchman?”

“We don’t have any reason to believe that. All we know is that he did some work for Mr. Davies.”

“We know more than that.”

“What?”

“Remember all the follow-up interviews Portman did? The way he checked out everyone’s story? Always trying to find out exactly where everyone was at the time of Faye’s murder. Everyone except Warren Davies, remember? As far as we can tell from his notes, Portman never even bothered to find out if Davies actually went to Britanny Falls that morning, actually met with that man, Brinker, the new mayor.”

Graves remembered the single reference Portman had made to Warren Davies’ having left Riverwood at noon on the day of Faye’s disappearance. Eleanor was right: there had been no follow-up.

“We’ve always assumed that Portman was trying to find the truth,” she continued. “But suppose he wasn’t doing that at all? Suppose he was afraid of Riverwood? Of its power to destroy him?”

Portman rose into Graves’ imagination, fat and stinking
in the summer heat, venal, corrupt, the putrid and repellent creature his cowardice had made him.

“We’ve imagined him as Slovak,” Eleanor added, softly now, in a tone of dark concentration. “Suppose he was like Sykes instead?”

T
he sound came without warning, a hard rap. Graves twisted in bed, his imagination now hooked into the echo, altering it, so that it became a hammer, driving nails into wood, a lid slamming over him. He sat up, tangled in the sheets. The sound became a soft, insistent tapping.

He rose and glanced outside. Eleanor was standing on the porch.

He threw on his clothes and went to the door.

“Brinker is alive,” Eleanor said without preamble. “The man Mr. Davies went to meet in Britanny Falls the day Faye disappeared. I’ve talked to him.” A genuine excitement bubbled in her voice, like Slovak’s when he felt that he was closing in, Kessler just within his reach. “I found Brinker on the Internet,” she explained. “You can access something called the National Directory. I just typed in Brinker’s name. And there it was. Matt Brinker. There were several, of course, but only one of them had a phone number with the same area code as Britanny Falls.
When I called it, an old man answered. I asked him if he was the Matt Brinker who’d once been mayor of Britanny Falls. He said he was. So I mentioned Faye Harrison. The murder. I asked him if he recalled meeting with Warren Davies the day Faye disappeared. He said he did.”

“Did he tell you anything about the meeting?”

“I didn’t ask. I didn’t want him to go into it over the phone. I wanted you to hear whatever he had to say. That’s why I’m here, Paul. Brinker agreed to talk to us at eight-thirty this morning.”

Minutes later they were on their way, Eleanor at the wheel of her black Mazda. She’d opened the sunroof, and Graves felt an unaccustomed pleasure in the play of light upon her face, the way the wind tossed her hair. Then an invisible hand yanked him from this brief delight, and he saw Gwen before him, her eyes open but cold and colorless. Her lips moved mechanically, in a surreal whisper, repeating the words Eleanor had heard years before in the Maine woods,
Come here, sweetie.

Graves felt the bite of the rope that bound him to the chair, heard his voice cry out,
Leave her alone.
He saw Kessler let go of Gwen’s blood-soaked hair, turn to face him.
You want me to leave her alone, boy?
Kessler was coming toward him now, a knife in his hand. The old certainty swept over Graves again, that he was going to die. Then astonishment when he didn’t. He heard the knife slice the rope, felt Kessler’s lips at his ear, whispering softly,
What’s your name, boy?

When he returned to himself, the landscape had changed. Hills had become valleys, the broad estates that bordered Riverwood now broken into small, neat farms.

“Where do you go, Paul?” Eleanor asked. She was watching him intently. “In your mind?”

“Into the past,” Graves said. Which was true. “Old New York,” he added quickly. Which was a lie.

It was exactly 8:30 when they arrived at a rambling, badly run-down farmhouse that rested at the end of an unpaved road. A circular fish pond swept out from behind it. A teenage boy drifted idly in a small boat at its far end. There was a dilapidated barn to the right, along with a corral. Two horses stood just behind the fence. Their heads bobbed slowly in the warm morning air as they munched hay from a long wooden trough.

A screen door snapped loudly as Graves got out of the Mazda. He flinched, then glanced toward the farmhouse. A man had emerged and was now ambling toward them, one hand tightly gripping an aluminum cane.

“Mr. Brinker?” Eleanor called. She began to walk toward him.

“That’s me,” the old man said. He wore baggy pants and a short-sleeved shirt. Despite the cane, he seemed quite agile. “You must be Miss Stern,” he said.

“Yes, I am. And this is Paul Graves, the writer I told you about.”

“It’s good to have a little company,” Brinker told them cheerfully. “I don’t get many visitors anymore. Not living way out here in the sticks.” He lifted his cane and pointed to the pond. “Just my grandson, and he doesn’t know enough about anything to keep a conversation going.” He shook his head despairingly. “I don’t know what they teach kids in school anymore. That kid knows nothing. Absolutely nothing. Couldn’t tell you who Alexander Hamilton was. Doesn’t know a thing about the Civil War. The past is just some vague idea in his mind. There once were other people. They did stuff. That’s all that boy knows.” He scowled, then seemed to grasp that he’d gotten off track. “We’ll sit outside,” he decided. “The house gets a little musty.”

They took their seats on the front porch. Graves and Eleanor sat in ragged wicker chairs, Brinker in an unpainted wooden swing whose rusty chain creaked as he propelled himself backward, pushing against the floor with the heels of a pair of worn brown shoes.

“I’m surprised anybody’s going back over that old murder case,” Brinker began. He was nearly bald, with only wisps of white hair. They trembled delicately with each breeze, then settled down again. But it was his eyes Graves noticed. They were warm and trustworthy, yet unmistakably penetrating as well, the sort that burned through lies with a steady heat.

“I’d just been elected mayor of Britanny Falls when I met with Mr. Davies,” the old man went on. “Inexperienced in politics, that’s for sure.”

“Was Warren Davies one of your supporters?” Eleanor asked, wasting no time, Graves noticed, in getting to the matter at hand.

Brinker waved his hand. “I didn’t need Warren Davies’ support. I was already elected. It was Mr. Davies who needed a favor from me. That’s what the meeting was about.” He sat back and folded his arms over his chest. “There was some town land that bordered Riverwood, you see. And Mr. Davies wanted to buy it.” He smiled. “It was one of those moments, you know, when you take one route or another, and that makes all the difference.”

“What do you mean?” Eleanor asked.

“I mean you stay honest, or you don’t,” Brinker replied. “Mr. Davies wanted me to take this little piece of town property and auction it off. To private bidders, I mean. Of course, there’s no doubt who would have bid the highest. Nobody around here could compete with Warren Davies on that score.” Brinker chuckled. “Of course, Mr. Davies didn’t get to the point right away. He primed the pump a little first. Started with a few compliments
about how lucky Britanny Falls was to have me. Stuff like that. Flattery. Then we talked about the war a little. Where I’d been. What I’d done.” He grabbed the swing’s rusty chain. “But none of that really interested him. He wanted that land. That’s what he’d come to talk to me about. People had been using it as a kind of parking area because it was near the river. Mr. Davies said it ruined Riverwood. Made it too accessible. He didn’t like the public getting that near his property. So he wanted the town to put it up for sale.”

“Are you talking about the parking area at the base of Mohonk Ridge?” Graves asked.

“That’s right.” Brinker nodded. “If he could get hold of that land, he could close it to the public. That’s what he intended to do. He said people parked there and wandered around in the woods. His woods, that is. Riverwood. He wanted to put a stop to that. He said he’d make it worth my while if I arranged for the land to go up for sale. A bribe, flat out. Of course, no particular amount came up, but we both knew what was being discussed.” Brinker’s eyes grew steely, as if he were once again facing the man he’d refused that day. “Well, let me tell you, Warren Davies had a way of looking at a person. Intimidating. I’m sure he could scare most people into doing whatever he wanted.” He lifted his head proudly. “But me, I’d just gotten back from four years fighting the Japs. Mr. Davies didn’t scare me. So I just stood up and said, ‘Good day, sir,’ and I left.”

To Graves’ surprise, Eleanor asked nothing about the bribe, but went on to another issue entirely. “What time did you leave Mr. Davies?”

“It couldn’t have been more than half an hour after we got to the restaurant.”

“Did Mr. Davies leave the restaurant at the same time?”

Brinker shook his head. “As a matter of fact, I think he’d already planned to have another meeting that afternoon. Because the minute I left, he motioned to this other fellow. A guy who’d been sitting at the bar.”

“Did you recognize this other man?”