Vineyard Prey (18 page)

Back at our house, I went through the rooms and verified that no one had tossed the place since I'd left. Maybe I really should get some locks, although they wouldn't do much good against a pro. I thought of the poisoned needles in Kate's bed and reading chair, and looked uneasily at my own upholstery and bedding, but there was no sign of any disturbance of any kind.

What a way to get killed: by sitting or lying on a needle. I wondered once again if as much human ingenuity was expended on helping people as on harming them. Once, long ago, after several beers, I'd broached the same question to a friend just home from a trip to England. He had answered it by contrasting the armor collection in the Tower of London with the nonviolent scientific devices that filled the museum at Greenwich.

When I went to London, he said, I could go to both museums and decide the question to my own satisfaction.

But I still haven't been to London and still don't know.

I checked the gun cabinet and found all our weapons in place. Why shouldn't they be, since the Bunny already had his own shotgun?

I watered our indoor plants, then refilled the food and water dishes belonging to Oliver Underfoot and Velcro before schmoozing with them for a while. They, like most cats, pretended to be above the need for human companionship but actually were very social in their catty way. Oliver wrapped himself around my ankles as was his wont, and Velcro buzzed in my lap when I carefully sat in my Archie Bunker chair and dialed Joe Begay's cell phone number.

When Joe answered I said I wanted to see him and hung up before anyone could trace the call. Actually, I didn't know anything about how long it took to trace calls, but I figured the less time I was on the line, the less likely the trace.

My technological knowledge and skills were clearly far out-of-date, and I wondered yet again if I should do something about it. Maybe. On the other hand, maybe not, because the prospect of spending much time learning things that didn't interest me failed to inspire me, even though the knowledge would clearly be to my advantage as I engaged the world.

The thing was, I didn't want to engage the world. I had come to Martha's Vineyard precisely to become disengaged, to get away.

But of course, there is no away, as my present circumstances proved.

As I drove to Aquinnah, snow began to fall. A light mist hung close to the ground and it, combined with the falling snow and the contrast between the snow-covered ground and the dark, leafless
trees, gave the island an almost ethereal appearance. On either side of the road I could see into the woods, but couldn't tell exactly how far, and I was reminded of Bev Doolittle paintings, where the spotted horses blend and become one with the snow and trees.

It was akin to sailing through fog in a light wind: there's a circle of sight around your boat, but it's impossible to know whether the space is a few yards in diameter or half a mile.

I passed parked pickups and wondered if it was still shotgun season or whether the hunters were now using black powder. Did the Bunny own a muzzle-loader that would allow him to walk up to his next victim as he must have walked up to Arbuckle?

A snowy mist hung over Menemsha Pond and around the tops of the Aquinnah hills. The old Land Cruiser's heater hadn't been much good for a long time, and I was chilly as I drove.

I turned right toward Lobsterville, then left onto Lighthouse Road. Off to my right was Dogfish Bar, where once you could find easy parking and easy access to one of the island's prime spots for bass, but where now parking was hard to find and new landowners preferred that fishermen stay away.

So things go.

I turned in to Uncle Bill Vanderbeck's house and parked. Kate's rental car was gone, but Bill's old Ford was there. Where was Kate?

There were boot tracks in the snow, leading from the barn to the house. I went to the front door, knocked, and heard Joe's voice telling me to come in.

The room was comfortably warm after my chilly ride in the truck. Joe turned from a window and waved at the stove. He had a steaming cup in his hand.

“Help yourself to some coffee.”

I did that and we sat in two of Uncle Bill's comfortable old chairs.

“Any news?” I asked.

Joe shook his head. “No, but he'll come. Soon, I think. He's already been on the island too long for his own safety.”

“Maybe. Were you over at your house when I called?”

“Yes, but never mind that. If he shows up there while I'm here, I'll see his tracks when I go back. What brings you here?”

“I want you to tell me about the first mission you did with Kate. You and she and Susan Bancroft and a guy named Stephen Harkness were the team. You told me you trusted her because of that job.”

“Yes.”

“Even though she'd slept with Stephen? That sort of thing usually causes trouble.”

He nodded. “It usually does, but part of Kate's genius is that she may leave them sad, but they're rarely mad. They're mostly grateful, in fact. Besides, I wasn't heading that mission. Susan was, and she put Stephen in his place when he came on to her. She didn't have a problem with whatever had passed between him and Kate, but she wanted none of Stephen herself.”

“How did Stephen take it?”

“He was our communications man, and he didn't like it when Susan sent him back to his own bedroll, but it didn't keep him from doing his job.”

“How did he feel when Kate made a play for you? Because, knowing Kate, she surely did.”

Begay's hawk face showed no expression, but his dark eyes gleamed. “I told her I was unavailable, and she went away from me.”

“And how did she take it?”

“She took it well enough for me to accept her later as part of the trade mission. As I just said, Kate's private life has never intruded on her work.”

“What went wrong on the first mission? I know that Stephen was badly injured.”

He thought for a while, deciding what to tell me, if anything. Then he said, “The job was done, but we had to get past one more checkpoint on our way out. Kate, Susan, and I had good papers, but Stephen had lost his somewhere along the line, so we sent him through the brush while the rest of us diverted the guards' attention at the checkpoint.

“Kate and Susan sweet-talked the corporal of the guard and I gave cigarettes to the squad that manned the post. Everything seemed fine, but the corporal spotted Stephen and one of the soldiers shot him. He was hit badly, but we got him over the hill to the cars that were waiting and to a hospital and eventually back to the States.” He paused. “He doesn't have much control over what happens below his waist, but he lived.”

“What about the guards at the checkpoint?”

He shrugged. “There were only the three privates
and the corporal, and they were all looking at Stephen.”

“You killed them?”

He gave another shrug, but said nothing.

“What became of Stephen after he got Stateside?”

“The IC takes care of its own. He got an office job that doesn't require legs. He still had his security clearance, so he was a valuable asset.” His lips tightened. “I heard that his wife had to be institutionalized when she first learned what had happened to him. This kind of work can be hard on the women at home.”

I could attest to that. My first wife left me because she couldn't bear the pressure of being married to a cop and never knowing if I'd come home alive. Her second husband was a schoolteacher who offered her a less stressful life.

I drank and thought and said, “How did he happen to lose his papers?”

“Ah,” said Joe, “that very question came up during debriefing, but there was never an official finding. Lost, strayed, or stolen are the three possibilities. We had some hectic times on that job, and anything could have happened.”

“Stolen?”

“We worked with native assets we didn't get to choose. Some of them probably weren't above putting their hands into our packs if they had a chance. It's even possible that some of the target's agents were mixed in with ours.”

“What did Stephen think?”

“They debriefed him at the hospital. I'm told that
he favored theft. Of course, that's exactly what he could be expected to say. If he had just lost the papers, what happened to him would be his own fault.”

“What do you think?”

“All I know is that Stephen had bad luck at the checkpoint. If that corporal had been looking at Kate and Susan like his buddies were and like he had every reason to, he never would have spotted Stephen.”

My coffee was cooling. I sipped some more of it.

“Who headed up the second mission, the trade mission?”

“I did.”

“Did you get to select the people who went with you?”

“Mostly. I suppose that if the Boss really wanted somebody in particular to go, I'd have taken him; but that didn't happen; I chose the people I wanted.”

“And you chose Edo and Kate along with Francis and Susan. Had you worked with Francis and Edo before?”

“No, but I'd heard of them and I talked with people who knew them as well as you can know anybody in this business.”

“But later Susan OD'd. Was she a drug addict when she was on the trade mission?”

“Susan wasn't an addict,” said Begay. “She was murdered. Somebody shot her up after she was unconscious.”

“Do you think Edo was murdered?”

“Edo was killed on a mission. I don't know if anybody murdered him.”

“How about Francis?”

Begay's smile was less sardonic than sad. “The story is that he happened to be in a deli when it was robbed, and he got shot by a kid with a habit who got himself arrested less than a block away. There's irony for you. You work dangerous jobs in dangerous parts of the world and you come home and get killed down the street from your apartment when you go to get a pound of salami.”

I studied him over the rim of my cup. “One murder doesn't add up to revenge killings by the Easter Bunny.”

“What I know is that there are only three of us left from my last two overseas jobs: Kate, me, and Stephen Harkness. And that it wasn't an accident that killed Arbuckle.”

“I talked to the Chief in Edgartown this morning. I asked him to have Jake Spitz check out the names I've gotten from you and Kate.”

“Good.”

“Have the DIA people been in touch with you?”

“This morning. They're not happy about Arbuckle. I don't think I was much help to them.” He glanced at his watch. “I'm going to check out my house. Do you want to come along?”

“I'm not carrying.”

“Here.” He magically produced a smallish pistol. “My backup gun. It's a Kahr P40. Double-action, no safety, six-shot magazine and one in the chamber. You point and pull the trigger.” He put it in my hand. “Shall we go?”

“Yes. Should I take my car?”

“We'll walk. I see you're wearing your Bean boots, so you should be fine.”

The snow had stopped falling. We walked to the barn. We went in the front door and out the back door and into the woods. There was a thin layer of fresh snow over the older snow beneath our feet and on the needles of the evergreen trees. We walked in silence for twenty minutes, then Begay put out a hand and gestured downward. I knelt in the snow and looked ahead.

There, through the trees, I could see Joe's house, with Toni's snow-covered car parked in front of it. Joe pointed and I looked at the driveway and saw tire tracks.

The tracks were of a car that had driven in, turned around, and left. Footprints led from the car tracks to the front door of the house, then around the house, then from the house around Toni's car and back to the tracks of the unknown car.

Hmmmm.

“Fresh,” said Joe. “I was here when I got your call and this has happened since.”

“Could be friend or foe,” I said. “Any chance that somebody's stashed in the house, waiting for you to show up?”

“Not unless he wears the same boots as the guy who got back in the car and drove away.”

“He has small feet,” I said.

“Most people have small feet compared to ours,” said Joe.

True. When I danced, I was a serious threat to my partner's feet, and Joe's boots were at least as big as mine.

I studied the tracks, then said, “Why don't I go out to the end of the driveway and see if anybody's hanging around?”

“Do that.”

I went through the cold trees, over the thin snow, out to the road. The snow showed that the car had come from the direction of the lighthouse and had returned the same way. It was gone. The road was empty. I knelt for a while, slowly moving only my head as I studied the road and the trees on either side of it.

Nobody.

Nothing.

I looked some more, then went back to the house, my breath making gray clouds in the winter air.

Joe's footprints led from the trees to the front door, then around the house as he followed the prints of his visitor.

Not eager to have him mistake me for someone else, I called his name as I, too, went around the house. He was looking at a rear window.

“Anything?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. All my markers are still there.”

We went on around the house and he checked every window. No one had entered.

“Maybe it was just a neighbor looking for you,” I said. “Or maybe somebody who was looking for Toni, wondering why she hasn't been around lately.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe it was Kate.”

“Not unless her feet have grown.”

We walked out to Toni's car. The visitor had brushed snow from the driver's-side window and had created a confusion of footprints around the car.

I wondered if it was locked and reached for the door handle.

“I wouldn't do that,” said Joe sharply.

I took my hand away.

He got down on his knees and looked under the car, then moved to a new spot and looked again. He repeated this until he seemed satisfied with his search. He stood and looked at the car from all sides.