Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 13

Well, now he knew better. He missed Carolyn, her abrasive, demanding way of looking at everything, her self-absorption, and her instant, reflexive belief that people were going to arrange things the way she wanted them.

Or else. Chip sniffled, not caring anymore how pathetic he was. Maybe if he'd been a little more like Carolyn, he wouldn't be in this trouble.

But it was too late to worry about that now, too, wasn't it?

And anyway ... a sob racked him and he let it, unashamed, as this last thing occurred to him: That anyway, Carolyn was probably dead.

WHEN THE THREE EASTPORT WOMEN CAME OUT OF THE Dodd House on Washington Street, it was full dark. Fog like a thick, damp sponge m.u.f.fled all sound, and in the glow of the streetlights the pavement gleamed wetly black. A few cars pa.s.sed, their dashboard lights tiny beacons and their wipers smearing the drizzle.

Jake picked her way down the wrecked front steps. The weird forbidden-thrill feeling of exploration and discovery had faded fast as they came down the dusty hall toward the front door. Now behind her the lovely old house stood silent, as if too proud to acknowledge the fact that it was being abandoned again.

Sam, she thought. A foghorn moaned distantly. "I've got to get back," Ellie said. "Your father's waiting for me, and George might call."

There had been no word from the husbands-Jake checked her cell phone again, without result-but if the wardens Bob Arnold had promised to alert had found the hunters, they might be out of the woods by now, perhaps even on their way home.

She nodded, hunched up under her jacket against the damp air. Another car went by downhill, its tires spinning crystalline droplets that vanished as they flew off into the darkness.

Bella tucked the sheet of paper with the map on it into her coat. Its delicate, revealing smears of soot wouldn't survive for long, but she knew what it had showed, and she would remember.

"I'm going downtown to see Bob Arnold," she said.

"Bella, we can call him from home. It's awful out here-"

The housekeeper turned. In the gloom her long, hard face was like an antique wood carving, deeply grooved. "I'm going," she repeated, and when she got like that, there was no point arguing with her.

"All right," Jake gave in. "Tell him-"

"I know what to tell him," said Bella flatly. What they'd found, where they'd found it, what it was ...

Well, that much was obvious. Even Jake, no expert marine navigator, recognized Digby Island. The barest, most unappealing and inaccessible little spur of jagged stone for a hundred miles, it lay about halfway between the north end of Deer Cove and the Canadian port of L'Etete, just barely on the Canadian side of the line. Its nickname was Nothing Rock because it had no place to put ash.o.r.e and nothing on it to put ash.o.r.e for.

According to Sam, who had once gotten stuck there with a c.r.a.pped-out bilge pump, the only reason anyone would try was if they were already sinking, and even then it was even money if they'd get to the sh.o.r.e alive, because the channel around Digby was so deep in some spots and rock-infested in all others.

Drown, smash, or get hung up at low tide and capsize later at high: those were your choices in the waters around Digby, Sam had reported. He'd survived the episode, but Sam was so expert on the water that he practically had gills.

So, why had Randy drawn a map of the place? So he could avoid those rocks? To put people off his track? Or for some other, even worse, reason?

Bella's final comment cut into Jake's thoughts. "If that miserable Roger Dodd is around, I'll know what to tell him, too," she declared as she marched off.

Ellie put her arm around Jake and then released her. "Listen. It looks bad now. But this is going to be-"

All right. "I know," Jake said. But it wasn't. She managed a weak smile. "Sam's pretty capable. I'm sure if there's anything he can do, he'll be-"

"Of course he will," said Ellie, and with that they parted, Ellie heading downhill toward the thinly shining lights of Water Street and Jake turning into the dark, dripping alley beside the nursing home, toward her own house on Key Street.

By the time she reached the porch steps, the need to go out and find Sam for herself felt like a toxic compulsion; it was all she could do not to get into the car at once. Even driving around aimlessly would be better than this awful waiting and fearing.

Instead she went inside, let the dogs out and fed them and petted them, and then put coffee on. She reset the phone, and turned the lamps on, pausing in each of the empty rooms in case their silence should have something to communicate to her.

But none of them did. At last she ventured upstairs to Sam's room, where the sight of his neatly made bed struck her anew with the force of a well-aimed blow. On the dresser his Morse code notebook lay open. His seaweed experiment grew in its aquarium.

His penknife wasn't there, nor the compact emergency fire kit-flint, steel, and a dozen strike-anywhere wooden matches-she'd given him the previous Christmas.

So he had those, anyway. And his textbooks stood in a pile on his desk like a mountain he had not yet finished climbing. But he would.

Surely he would; looking out his window to the dark street below, she promised it to him. Yet she had no idea how she would manage this, and after watching the silent street for a while she went back downstairs to the doork.n.o.bs and the X-Acto knife.

She poured coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and opened the bag of doork.n.o.bs. They were really very pretty ones, and fully salvageable. She looked at the X-Acto knife, at the paint on the old china k.n.o.bs, at her hands, and at the knife again.

And then it hit her, what else Sam had said when he'd returned from his unpleasant adventure on Digby Island: That not only was it wild, inaccessible, and protected by rocks so sharp you might as well jump feet-first into a bag of razor blades.

He'd said that at low tide, it had a sandbar. No problem at high tide, he'd allowed, expanding on his adventure, when twenty feet of water lay between it and your boat's hull.

But at low tide it could catch you up and strand you, put your vessel on its side quick as a wink, and when the tide came back in again you'd go swirling straight to the bottom.

A sandbar, Sam had said, so wide you could walk across it. She dropped the X-Acto knife and dashed into the parlor. On the mantel stood a device like a clock but with just one black hand.

It was a tide clock. Sam had given it to her last Christmas. High, Ebbing, and Low, said the words on the dial, then Flowing and back to High again.

At the moment, the hand pointed at High. So, right now the sandbar Sam had described didn't exist. But in a few hours the tide would be going out again from Pa.s.samaquoddy Bay. Then for an hour or so there would be a land bridge over to Digby Island.

Only ... from where? Sam hadn't said. She flew to the right-hand bottom drawer under the kitchen cabinets, yanked it out, and rummaged in it, tossing all the many electronic-equipment manuals out onto the floor while the dogs sniffed curiously around her.

Because beneath the electronics manuals, Bella kept other books, including a DeLorme Maine Atlas and Gazetteer. The information it con tained was very detailed... .

She found it and pulled it out, laid the large paperbound volume open on her lap as she sat on the floor, and began paging hurriedly through it. Randy Dodd knew the water around here, the tides and currents, coves, inlets, and islands. Whoever he'd drawn a map for, she felt certain, it had not been for himself.

And who it had been for was a question for another time, as well, because for now it didn't matter. For now, all she knew was that she needed to find her way to where a cunning fugitive might be holding Sam captive.

Bella would give the soot-smeared map tracing they had found to Bob Arnold. Bob knew the waters around here as well as Randy Dodd or better; if the map turned out to be useful, he would use it.

And that was all well and good. But if she didn't try, too, and Sam didn't get found, she would never forgive herself.

So she had to. She just had to. And the DeLorme- "Come on, come on ..." she murmured impatiently, flipping to the next page, and the next.

-the DeLorme was a whole book of maps.

CAROLYN DREAMED OF WATER. SHE WOKE WITH A STRANGLED shriek that came out a painful croak to find the man standing over her. An empty plastic quart jug was in his hand; he'd emptied it onto her.

Desperately she licked at the moisture on her face, felt the cool liquid relief spread like a blessing onto her parched lips and tongue ... only not enough.

Not nearly enough. Pleadingly she gazed up at him, her eyes like two hot stones, aching and burning.

He kicked her. "Get up." Then he walked away, the plastic jug with a few precious droplets perhaps remaining in it hanging loosely from one big hand.

Aching, she shifted tentatively and found that while she'd been out cold, he'd taken the tape off the blanket she was rolled in. Pains shot from her joints as she tried to move, to get up; with a groan, she fell back onto the deck.

He was at the wheel of the boat, his back turned to her. "You don't get up and I'm gonna just shoot you where you're lying there."

She didn't believe him. It was not a part of his plan. She recalled very clearly the look in his eyes as he'd held the knife to her throat. A look of longing to push the knife in. Now ...

But something had changed. His face when he'd found that the slip of paper he'd had was missing ... He'd been afraid.

So she thought he wouldn't kill her; not yet. And not with a gun ...

He stomped down through the hatchway. First loud thumping, then the ugly sounds of choking came from it. Next came cursing and barked orders. Quit whining. Get up, on your feet.

Or the man would ...

Killyoukillyoukill ... Shivering uncontrollably, she fought to silence the murderous refrain, as constant now in her mind as the low thrum of engine from the boat's diesel shack.

It was still dark, and so cold she could see her breath. She tried getting up again, put her weight on her hurt hand and nearly screamed with the onslaught of pain that roared up her arm and shoulder.

In the dim light from the boat's control console, her swollen hand was a fat blue club. She couldn't move the fingers, could barely even lift the arm, as she struggled to sit.

She looked around, saw nothing. Where were they? And ... what was he planning to do now?

As if in answer, he returned. "Get up."

Gasping, she tried to obey. If she tried grabbing the gun, she would only drop it, one hand unusable and the other so cold she couldn't feel it.

She made it over onto her side, caught her breath as another stab of agony pierced her hand. She got both her legs underneath herself and pushed.

There ... She struggled to a shaky crouch, prayed that would satisfy him for now. But he seized her bad shoulder, ignoring her croaked shriek, and dragged her up the rest of the way.

Then he shoved her against the boat's rail, where she clung, too frightened even to weep.

Too scared to fight. This was how they felt, the old Carolyn thought clearly from somewhere inside her, the part that could still think at all.

The part who'd seen photographs of crime scenes and burial sites, and in her spoiled, safe stupidity had thought that she understood them.

Pictures of girls in graves. Well, she understood now, all right. She couldn't have known better what they were all about if they'd opened their eyes and looked at her, parted their ruined lips and spoke.

Here we are, those broken girls seemed to say to her now. We had lives, too, like you. Blonde, brunette, redhead, students and c.o.c.ktail waitresses. Soccer moms, nurses, doctors, lawyers, even a few priests, and whoever we were, we were ... special.

All of us were. This couldn't happen to us. To other girls, maybe. Not us.

But it did. It had. And now ...

The man grabbed her hair. He'd stuffed all the money into a bag like a doctor's satchel, but he couldn't get the top closed. The money stuck out like a funny ill.u.s.tration in a cartoon about bank robbery.

But it wasn't funny. She staggered and nearly fell as he hauled her along, a grunt of pain escaping her as he pushed her ahead of him up a low step stool to the boat's opposite rail. She perched there, nearly losing her balance but not quite.

"Don't you move." He backed away, toward the boat's wheel again. From where she stood now, she could see down through the hatchway to a rough below-deck cabin furnished with a plastic lawn chair and a table made of a plank laid on two sawhorses.

Something had changed; it took her a moment to realize what. It wasn't dark anymore down there. Instead, in the sallow yellow light from a dangling bulb, a man stood bent over with his hands braced on the tops of his thighs.

He was bleeding, fat red droplets falling from his lip onto his hands. He was young, in his early twenties, she thought, with dark, curly hair and a long lantern jaw.

Tall, athletic-looking but not muscle-bound, he took slow, deep breaths as if trying to steady himself. She understood this just by looking at the young man, that he was trying to follow their captor's orders, trying to catch his breath and get hold of himself.

Trying to survive. He turned his head very slowly and saw her. He tried to straighten, grimaced as a spasm of pain hit him, then straightened some more.

Still looking at her, as if the sight of her was helpful to him. She wanted to say something to him, something encouraging, and once, she could have.

Back in that other life. Back when she didn't belong surely and completely to the company of the girls with dead eyes, when a silent scream wasn't the only thing she could think of.

He moved toward the hatchway. His cheek had a bruise on it and his lip was still bleeding, but otherwise he didn't look bad. She wondered why he'd stayed down there so cooperatively, not trying to escape.

Then she spotted the chain around his leg, fastened with a padlock and attached to ... she squinted, trying to see through the gloom. An anchor.

His leg was chained to an anchor. Stiffly he put one foot out, pulled against the chain with the other. The anchor didn't budge. He looked at it, bent to it.

Lifted it, heaved it up out onto the deck with a groan. The anchor hit with a dull thud and a rattle of chain. The man at the boat's wheel looked over impa.s.sively.

The guy with the chain around his leg climbed the steps on his hands and knees, crawled out onto the deck beside the anchor, and struggled to his feet once more.

"You throw that thing at me and I'll slit your throat right here and gut you like a fish, you understand me? Now get over there with her."

The man at the wheel spoke calmly, jerking his head in her direction. But he didn't sound calm. Something had gone wrong, it was why she was still alive, she could tell by the way he held back, didn't let himself get outwardly excited.

Didn't let himself do what he wanted to do, only on account of having something more crucial to deal with first. Because on the inside, he was very excited. When he looked at her, when he'd touched her ...

Shuddering, she concentrated on not losing her balance, poised at the rail. Beneath her the boat b.u.mped and rumbled. The air all around smelled of salt water, fish, and diesel fuel, a mix that now made her feel nauseated.

A bird flapped by invisibly, very near, with a wet-sounding rush of wings. Reflexively she flinched away, caught her breath, and nearly fell.

The chained man had made it to her side; he reached out and caught her. His accompanying grimace of pain said it had cost him something to do it. She felt a rush of grat.i.tude for him, warmth suddenly replaced by fear as she noticed that his lip wasn't the only place he was bleeding from.

His light blue chambray shirt collar poked out over a forest green sweatshirt with the word MAINE lettered on it in white. Between the N and the E, a small slit oozed. The cloth around it was sodden-looking and nearly black.

Blood. He grinned weakly, then staggered as his face went abruptly pale and his eyelids fluttered. Putting out a hand, he fell against the rail and leaned there.

"Okay," he whispered. "You're gonna be okay now. Just hang in there."

Talking to himself, as well as to her. And that was good, that was ...

But then he coughed; white foam flecked with darkness came onto his lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, dragged in a breath that sounded like wet cloth ripping.

Their eyes met. His look, amazingly, was apologetic, as if he knew his being hurt was terribly inconvenient for her.

From somewhere inside herself she managed to produce a weak smile. "You don't look so good."

His eyes smiled back, though his face wasn't quite able to go along. "You're no oil painting yourself."

The man stopped what he was doing, strode over to them as if to confront them, hands on hips. "Sam, meet Carolyn."

He turned. "Carolyn, meet Sam."