Liberty or Death (27 page)

"That's the craziest thing I've ever heard," Jack exploded.

"Why is it crazy? Isn't Harding the key to this thing?" I exploded right back.

"What on earth did you expect to accomplish? You thought that if you brought his kid to visit, he'd go all soft and spill his guts?"

"No. I'm a realist, Jack. But I thought that making a connection might be helpful."

"And did it?"

"I wanted to let him out of jail."

"You and everyone else in the state of Maine," he growled. Again I was ashamed for pushing him, even though I couldn't help it. I respected Jack. I knew he was a good cop. But he wanted me to be something I wasn't. Compliant. The good little woman. Staying home and biting my nails while I paced the floor and waited for him to bring Andre back to me. But the suit didn't fit.

"He says he doesn't want to go, doesn't want to be let out."

"I know that..."

This, I thought, was part of what he wasn't telling me. "But why, Jack? Why? It doesn't make any sense. He adores his kid. The kid's so upset he tried to run away from home. It's obviously killing him being away from the boy, and Harding's mother is on the verge of collapse with all that care... I should think he'd be moving heaven and earth, trying to get home. Funny thing is that his mother agrees with him. She says he can't come home. But why?"

Jack exchanged glances with the other two troopers. "He didn't tell you?"

"No, he didn't tell me. He wouldn't tell me. But you know, don't you?"

But Jack wasn't listening. "If you think you've got trouble now, being followed around by guys in trucks, just wait until they hear you've been visiting Harding."

"They've heard. I told you. That's why I was summoned to meet with Reverend Hannon, though he claims it's because he thinks I'm an undercover cop. But why should anyone care that I went to visit Harding?" Jack looked like he was having apoplexy. And when I strung it all together, it did sound like I'd been wildly careless and drawn the gaze of the enemy. But when I was there, in place, it didn't feel like that. The way they treated me seemed like just more of their general paranoia.

Jack didn't answer. Instead, he said, "If you're going to stay in Merchantville, you've got to start being more careful. Keep your head down. Stay away from the church. Stay away from Jimmy McGrath." It was a repeat of Theresa's advice, and useless, especially after tonight.

"Then how am I going to learn anything? I can't do it just with pieces of overheard conversation—two guys in a restaurant talking about a gun theft or a couple of Hannon's goons talking about whether one of them's got a weekend job at an armory. It's like trying to do one of those jigsaw puzzles where everything is the same color. And I've never even met Jimmy McGrath. Is there something special about him? Something I should know?" I wasn't the only one who wouldn't tell the whole story, was I?

All three of them were staring at me. "What is it?" I demanded. "What did I say?"

"Armory," Jack said.

"Stealing weapons," Roland added. "What else have you overheard that you haven't told us?"

"Nothing," I said sullenly. "I told Kavanaugh about the weapons theft, and what's so special about a job at an armory?"

But Jack was boring in. "Where did you hear about an armory job?"

"In the church parking lot."

"Know who was talking?"

I shrugged. "Two guys who were acting as guards during the militia meeting. I don't know their names but I could describe them." I looked at Roland. "And I gave him the license plates." Suddenly I was too tired to stay on my feet any longer. "Can we sit down somewhere, Jack? In the house, maybe?"

"Go home," he said. "Get some rest. You look like hell."

"Thanks," I said. "I'd love to. But I've saved the best for last." It was a stupid, ugly way of putting it, especially given what was coming. I wanted to deliver it in a sensible fashion, but I was so tired and overwrought I was almost incoherent, something that rarely happens to me.

He winced. He actually winced, like he didn't want to hear anything more from me. Did he really want me to go away? No. He just didn't want any of this, and didn't know how to deal with me.

"We can sit in the car. As long as the garage is open, we can have the air-conditioning on." He opened the door, and, as I bent to get into the backseat, automatically put a hand out to keep me from banging my head.

When we were settled and had started to cool off, he shoved a package at me. "Here. You need this. It's from Florio." I took the packet and opened it. Bless Dom. He had thought of everything. In the packet were a driver's license, social security card, and a couple credit cards, all belonging to Dora McKusick.

"Now you can give me your real stuff," Jack said. "It will be a whole lot safer."

For once, I didn't argue. I just handed over my own ID stuff and substituted the fakes. It was only then that I remembered the shirt stud. Duh. I didn't know whether it was pregnancy or overwork or emotional overload, not to mention a blood-splattered trailer and being chased by gun-toting men in a pickup truck. I don't normally forget things. But tonight had been unusual. I reached in my pocket and pulled it out. "Hold out your hand," I ordered. He opened his hand and I carefully laid the little thing on his palm.

"What's this?"

"Shirt stud. From a tuxedo shirt."

His eyes seemed to glitter as he stared from the stud to me and back down at his hand. "Where?"

"Stuck between the wall and the floor. In a closet. At Reverend Hannon's church."

"You don't know that it's his."

"Factually, no. Instinctively, yes. He was there. It's just what he would do. Try to leave us something..."

Jack nodded solemnly. "What were you doing in a church closet..." he began. Then stopped. "I don't think I want to know."

"Waiting for my chat with the Reverend Hannon." Jack's eyes rolled heavenward. He started to speak and thought better of it. "You probably know already. It looks like out-of-town militia are arriving."

He shrugged wearily. "And there's nothing we can do to stop them." He studied my face with his knowing cop's eyes. "There's something you aren't telling me."

This was what I was marrying into—a brotherhood attuned to deception, a family where they knew when people lied. I closed my eyes, feeling close to tears. Wanting to cooperate and afraid to. Angry at him for not sharing with me. Frustrated by my lack of success, the ugly despair that gnawed at the edges of my hope. "I broke into the civil-defense office and copied their file on survival shelters." His eyes and mouth narrowed. "I just thought... maybe... because of that conversation I had, that it was a place to look."

"You did what!"

"Well, I didn't break in exactly. I mean I used a key... so they wouldn't know I'd been there... I had to do something."

He shook his head. "You are one Goddamned amazing piece of work." He got out of the car and slammed the door. Then he opened the door again. "You are an idiot, you know that? I don't suppose you thought to bring it with you?"

"I didn't know when we'd be meeting. I mailed you copies." I assumed he'd gotten the papers I'd sent. But I hadn't included a note, told him why they were important. They had the manpower to check things out, but I believed that a general sweep wouldn't work, that the militia was sufficiently well organized so that we needed a—what did they call it on the TV news?—surgical strike. Otherwise, they'd go after shelters one and two, and the word would spread, and by the time they got to three and four, Andre would be dead or gone. I'd sent them to him, but I thought only I would know if what I'd found meant anything. Maybe. And then again, given Jack's forthcoming nature and the cops' penchant for playing close to the vest, they might know stuff which would make my data useful. If only I had time to think.

"You got that shelter stuff, right?"

He looked at Roland. "Did we?" Roland nodded.

"Jesus, Jack. I risk my life and you don't even know if you got the stuff?" I sounded sullen and bitchy. I felt like weeping and I hadn't gotten to the most important part. We were all hot and sweaty and tired and I wasn't feeling well. I was poisoned once, by someone who thought I was getting too close to the truth, and I was having some of the same unpleasant crampy sensations now. Not desperate and violent, as things had been then, but definitely like something I'd eaten hadn't agreed with me. Even if the house was a mess, I was going to use the bathroom before I got back on the road. It sure beat a roadside ditch, especially in a world filled with mosquitoes.

"What was Andre working on just before he was taken?" I asked.

Jack didn't answer. He had the right to remain silent, I thought. I didn't. I was supposed to spill my guts, even though anything I said could and would be used against me. Just as I had gathered myself to tell him about Paulette Harding, he started to talk, another lecture about how I had to be more careful. I've never done well, being lectured at. It brings out the worst, most pigheaded side of my nature. Then he started in with a slew of questions about my visit to Jed Harding, but I held up my hand to ward him off. I had something I had to talk about. I'd put it off long enough.

"Paulette Harding." Just saying the name sent my adrenaline racing again. "I know what happened to her. I know where she was killed. And I know why..."

If he hadn't been sitting in the backseat of a car, he would have jumped to his feet. "Holy shit!" he said. And Jack never swears around me. "What do you know? Tell me everything."

It felt, suddenly, as though there was no oxygen in the car. Being around him made me as jittery as he was. I felt weird and spacey and wired, all at the same time. "Have you got a map? I can show you where she lived... where she was killed." Jack was still staring at me like I had two heads. "She was the one who called Gary Pelletier. The one he was going to meet. They killed her because she did that... it's horrible, Jack. It's horrible, what they did...."

I turned to Jack, unable to articulate the slaughterhouse horror of it. Grabbed him by the shirt and screamed in his face, "Why don't you find Andre? Why, Jack, why? Tell me what's going on, Jack. Tell me!"

Jack Leonard was pale, barely able to speak. "You think we're not doing everything we can?" he said.

"They killed her with a chainsaw, Jack. And an ax. Bit by bit. Suppose they've done... suppose they do that to him?"

I let go of his shirt. Got out of the car, and stood there, one hand against the wall. I closed my eyes but it didn't make any difference. I could still see the room giving silent testimony to what had happened there. Pain shot through me as if I were being stabbed. First one sharp pain and then another. Awful, tearing pains that made me gasp. Pains that had nothing to do with food poisoning, nor with what I'd just seen. I sat down on the floor, pressing my hands against my abdomen, trying to hold back the pain. The pain and what I knew was coming with it.

"Thea..." Roland Profit's voice barely penetrated my fog. "Thea... Jesus, Jack. Tell her. Andre's alive. We've had a picture. Taken with yesterday's paper, so we could see the date."

When I didn't respond, he spoke more loudly. "Andre's alive, Thea. Now tell us about Jed Harding's wife, Paulette."

But I couldn't talk about that. I was somewhere else now. Traveling into a place where only women can go. Now I understood why I had felt slightly out of kilter all day. Askew. Unbalanced. It hadn't been lack of sleep, my backache hadn't come from carrying all those heavy trays, and all those vague pains hadn't been food poisoning. They had been separation. They had been the beginning of a small death. They had been signs that just as unexpectedly as he or she had come, attaching to me and
filli
ng me with unanticipated joy, Claudine or Mason or Oliver was leaving now. Tearing loose from the moorings and going away. Following Andre into the void. Leaving me completely alone.

 

 

 

Chapter 18

 

I wrapped my arms more tightly around myself and hung on, needing to do it, even though I knew it wouldn't make any difference.

"Thea? Thea? What's wrong?" Roland Proffit's anxious voice dragged me back into the garage, the night, the horror of what I'd seen, the reality of what was happening to me. He was kneeling down, so his head was level with mine, and staring at me anxiously, so close I could see the flecks of gold in the irises of his eyes. Roland was a nice guy, and he'd been there for me during some pretty scary moments. I knew he was good and steady and that I could throw myself into his arms and blurt out my troubles and he'd be as tender and caring as I needed him to be. He'd take me where I needed to go, no questions asked. Hold my hand for as long as I wanted.

Trouble was, right now, I didn't know what I needed, whether I needed hospitals and doctors, drugs and procedures or whether I could just crawl into my cave and do this by myself. I only knew what I wanted. If I couldn't do this with Andre to hold my hand and rub my stomach, if I couldn't brace myself against his warm bulk and listen to the rumble of his voice, I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be home, too, but that was hours from here, and I was in shape to drive.