The End of The Road (17 page)

It might have been dark and cold outside, but it was warm and cozy inside. So, for the time being, I gave up speculations on who had been in my house while I was away and whether it might have been the woman Lew had mentioned seeing at Duggan’s bar. Instead, when
60 Minutes
was over I turned off the television, propped the shotgun within reach as I had promised Lew, and settled myself comfortably on the sofa to start one of the Ellis Peters mysteries I had picked up at Annabel’s.

Stretch had already gone out and come quickly back inside, shaking a scanty amount of snow from his feet that instantly melted into several small puddles, which I had wiped up with a paper towel. He had then settled in his usual place on the rug in front of the fireplace and was snoozing. Mixed with the crackle of the firewood burning I could hear his small snore from where I sat on the sofa and had to smile. He is such good company, interested in almost everything, well behaved, and never boring.

Thank you, Daniel,
I thought, not for the fir st time. What would I do without Stretch’s company?

When my Daniel died, Stretch had wandered around for days expecting his lord and master to come home, but slowly seemed to accept that I was all he had left and decided that he would have to be responsible for me instead. He still thinks he is, and perhaps, in a way, he’s right.

I was totally relaxed, warm from the fire and the afghan I had tossed over my legs, and well into the third chapter of the story when I fell asleep with the book in my lap.

I was startled awake and sitting straight up, ready for fig ht or flight, at the sound of someone knocking on my door.

Stretch was on his feet and barking as he headed toward the door to guard his territory—and mine.

The insistent knocking stopped for a moment as someone rang the doorbell. Then it started again. It sounded important—or demanding. I couldn’t decide which, but really didn’t care as I picked up the shotgun, tucked it under my arm with the barrel pointed at the floor, and headed for the door, sending Stretch back into the living room as I passed him.

“Stay and hush!” I told him, so he did both, but made it clear with a small growl that it was not his choice.

Retreating a foot or two, he stopped barking, but remained a few steps behind me intending defense, should he decide it was necessary and shouldn’t be left to me. It always amuses me that such a small being, so low to the ground and short-legged, should be so fearless and determined to protect his place and people.

Instead of going directly to the door, I went to the kitchen window, from which I could see most of the yard and front step.

There was a car next to mine in the drive and someone’s footprints in the snow led from it to where she stood on that step, right hand raised to knock again, but in the darkness I couldn’t see who it was.

I reached for the switch between the window and the door and turned the outside light on.

The expected knock did not happen. Evidently the woman had decided that her summons was about to be answered. She waited, looking down, and I couldn’t see her face, but could tell she was not someone I recognized as having seen before.

After laying the shotgun on the kitchen counter within easy reach, I went around to the door, opened it to the length of the chain that keeps it from opening completely, and peered out at the woman who stood there, now looking up.

She was, as expected, completely unknown to me.

For some reason I had expected that it might be the woman who had flown with me to Anchorage, who I had definitely seen in the Hilton Hotel, and possibly caught a glimpse of in Wasilla. This was a different, thinner face. Her dark hair was shorter, and she wore glasses. It was also not the woman in the photograph that Andy had found in the O’Brian book I had returned for John Walker. But there was something about her . . .

“Can I help you?” I asked.

She looked at me silently for a moment, then nodded.

“I think maybe you can,” she said. “Please, could I come in and talk with you?”

“What about?” I asked.

She looked down again, hesitated for a moment, then squared her shoulders, looked up, and took a deep breath.

“I think you knew my brother—John,” she said in a voice that hoped I would believe her.

I was so astonished that for a moment or two I couldn’t say anything or move. I stood staring at her as the idea took hold.

It was her eyes that convinced me. They had a tired, haunted look that made me feel that I should accept what she said. I could believe that she
was
his sister—a little younger, not so tall, but somehow I thought she was telling me the truth, though she didn’t look like him.

“Let me open the door,” I told her, then closed it enough to slip the chain out of its track and opened it wide so she could step in. I closed it behind her and invited her to hang the coat she was wearing on one of the handy hooks.

She nodded, took it off, and tucked her gloves into one of the pockets before turning to me.

“Thank you,” she said, with a wide-eyed glance at the shotgun on the counter.

“Don’t let that worry you,” I assured her. “I just came back from a trip and found that someone had been staying uninvited in my house while I was gone. I’m just a bit flinchy at the moment . . . probably being excessively cautious.”

“It wasn’t me,” she assured me quickly.

“I’m glad to hear that. I live alone, except for Stretch, the bonzer boy here,” I said and waved a hand at him. He had come closer, seeing from my actions that this person was acceptable and expecting to be introduced.

“Hello, Stretch,” she told him, crouching to give him a pat. “I like your name.”

He licked her hand in acceptance as she smiled and rubbed his ears.

Hardly anyone can resist those liquid coffee eyes.

Rising, she turned back to me and held out a hand.

“I haven’t introduced myself,” she said. “I’m Amy Fletcher, John’s sister. And I already know that you’re Mrs. McNabb.”

“Just Maxie, please,” I responded. “Everyone calls me Maxie. It’s good to meet you, Amy. Come and sit down and I’ll make us both a cup of tea.”

She sat at the dining table and watched as I put the kettle on to heat water for the tea before joining her across its width.

“However did you find me?” I asked her.

“The woman at the Driftwood Inn gave me your name last Friday and a nice man at the bar across the street told me where you lived. I came by that day and Saturday, but you weren’t here.”

“And John? How did you know it was your brother? He seems to have taken great care that no one would know who he really was, where he came from, or why. How did you know he had been staying at the Driftwood?”

She sighed and a sad and tired kind of resignation narrowed her eyes.

“I saw the article in the paper,” she said, “and knew it was my brother. There were a couple of reasons for my knowing.

“First, I knew that he had always wanted to come to Alaska. He used to talk about it frequently and I remember knowing things about glaciers and polar bears and mountains, because John told me and showed me pictures. He had a collection of books and videos about Alaska. When I lost track of him in Seattle, I decided he might have gone north, so I gave it a try.

“Second, after all my searching I knew he wasn’t using his real name—didn’t want to be found. He had walked away from everything and everyone in his life when his wife died. I think he just couldn’t stay in the city and be confronted every day with the fact that she was gone. I can understand that. They really loved each other, were like two halves of the same person in a way. I don’t think that happens very often and he simply didn’t know how and didn’t want to live there without her.

“It took me a long while, years, to look for him state by state, city after city, clue by clue. But then I showed his picture to a trucker in New Mexico and learned that he was using an assumed name. I knew he had in other places he passed through and that sometimes they were, like John Walker, taken straight off whiskey bottles. Jack Daniel was one, Austin Nichols, another—that one when he was working construction in Texas. He must have found a way to forge the identification that he needed.

“I never caught up with him—just found clues to where he had been when I got there too late. But after I became convinced that he wasn’t dead and had just walked away, I knew I had to try, so I started hunting every time I could take off from my job. Two years ago I gave that up and started looking almost full-time, taking a part-time job, whatever I could find when I ran low on money. I only found where he had been temporarily—jobs he had worked for a short period of time. You see, he never stayed anywhere long enough for me to catch up with him. So I tracked him through trial and error from one place to another. My fin ding my way here is just the end of a very long road for me—eight years of off-and-on searching in a lot of places. You see, for a time I was in shock—so sure he was dead. By the time I started looking he was long gone and difficult to follow.”

. . . the end of a very long road . . .
I caught the phrase and remembered once again what John had said the day I met him:
Maybe I’ll decide to spend what’s left of my life at the end of the road
. So he had. And now, she had come there as well—unfortunately too late.

“Do you have a picture of your brother?” I asked, convinced, but wanting to make sure we were really talking about the same person.

“Yes.” She had brought a shoulder bag to the table with her and now reached into it for a notebook with many fat pages that seemed filled with writing. From between those pages she took a photograph and handed it across to me.

It was not a snapshot, but a professional photograph. But it
was
John—the man I had fir st met out on the spit—looking straight into the camera. He was dressed much differently, however, in a dark gray suit, white shirt, and red tie with tiny blue stripes, neat and professional looking. His hair was shorter than it had been as I knew him, but his smile was the same, warm, self-confident, and friendly. He looked quite a bit younger than the man I had met, and certainly less worn. I remembered the lines in his forehead and around his mouth and eyes that were not evident in the picture. His shoulders had been broader and I remembered his scarred and callused hands.

I nodded and handed it back.

“This is a younger John than I met. Did you take the picture?” I asked Amy.

“No. I found it in their apartment after . . . well, later. Probably taken by some offic e photographer. But I think his wife, Marty, may have taken it. Not long after they were married in nineteen ninety-eight.”

“He was married?”

“Yes. And I thought for some time that they had both died at work when the World Trade Center towers fell. They both worked there, you see. That’s where they met.

“Marty died. They never found her body, like many others. But things I found out made me believe that John had not been killed too. Days later, a coworker of his who made it out told me that he was sure John was gone on some business errand that morning and wasn’t in his office in the second tower. But another survivor said that he had come back just before the first plane hit. It was confusing, but enough to make me believe he might be alive and to start me hunting.

“I went to their apartment. At first I couldn’t bear to go there, but less than a week after the attack on the towers I did and I found some things missing that should have been there if he was dead—small things I figured that he had probably taken with him: their wedding picture, for instance, some casual clothing he wouldn’t have worn to the office—jeans, a sweatshirt or two, a heavy jacket, underwear, socks. His shaving gear was missing.”

“Stay here a minute,” I said, getting up. “There’s something I want to show you.”

I crossed the room, took the photograph Andy had found in the book, and returned to her side of the table. Holding it out to her, I told her, “This was in a book he was reading and left for me. Is this his wife—Marty? I assume from the background it was taken in New York—Central Park, yes?”