Riptide

  Oh, yes, it all made sense now to everyone. Tyler had bashed his wife on the head—she probably wanted to leave him, that was it—and then he’d bricked her in the wall in Jacob Marley’s basement. And little Sam knew something, because he’d changed right after his mother disappeared.

  Tyler remained stoic during the following days, saying nothing about all the speculation, ignoring the sidelong looks from people who were supposedly his friends. He went about his business, seemingly oblivious of the stares.

  He was in misery, Becca knew that, but there was nothing she could do except say over and over, “Tyler, I know it isn’t Ann. They’ll prove it was someone else, you’ll see.”

  “How?”

  “If they can’t figure out who she was, then they’ll check for runaways. There are DNA tests. They’ll find out. Then there are going to be a whole lot of folk apologizing to you on their hands and knees.”

  He looked at her and said nothing at all.

  Becca went shopping at Food Fort at eight o’clock the next night, hoping the store would be nearly empty. She moved quickly down the aisles. The last item on her list was peanut butter, crunchy. She found it and picked up a small jar, saw that it had a web of mirrored cracks in it, and started to call out to one of the clerks, only to have it break apart in her hands. She yelped and dropped it. It splattered all over jars of jams and jellies before smashing onto the floor at her feet. She stood there staring down at the mess.

  “I see you buy natural, not sugar-added. That’s the only kind I’ll eat.”

  She whirled around so fast she slid on the peanut butter and nearly careened into the soup. The man caught her arm and pulled her upright.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Let me get you another jar. Here comes a young fellow with a mop. Better let him wipe off the bottom of your sneaker.”

  “Yes, of course.” The man not two feet from her was a stranger, which didn’t mean all that much since she hadn’t met everyone in town. He was wearing a black windbreaker, dark jeans, and Nike running shoes. He was careful not to step into the peanut butter. Her first impression was that he was big and he looked really hard and his hair was on the long side, and as dark as his eyes.

  “The only thing,” he continued after a moment, “it’s a real pain to have to stir the peanut butter before you put it in the refrigerator. The oil always spills over the sides and on your hands.” He smiled, but his eyes still looked hard, as if he looked at people and saw all the bad things they were trying to hide, and was used to it, maybe even philosophical about it. She didn’t want him looking at her that way, seeing deep into her. She didn’t want to talk to him. She just wanted to get out of there.

  “Yes, I know,” she said, and took a step back.

  “Once I got used to it, though, I found I couldn’t eat the other peanut butter, too much sugar.”

  “That’s true.” She took another step away from him. Who was he? Why was he trying to be so nice?

  “Miss Powell, I’m Young Jeff. Ah, Old Jeff is my pop, he’s the assistant manager. Just hold still and I’ll clean off your sneaker.” He picked up her foot, nearly sending her over backward. The man held her up while Young Jeff wiped a wet paper towel over the bottom of her sneaker. He was very strong, she could feel it since his hands were in her armpits. “I’m sure glad you’re here, ma’am. I wanted to know if that poor dead skeleton was Mrs. McBride. Everyone is talking about how it can’t be anybody else, what with Mrs. McBride just up and disappearing like she did not all that long ago. Everyone says you know it’s Mrs. McBride, too, that you were sure, but how could you be? Did you meet Mrs. McBride?”

  He finally released her foot. She pulled away from Young Jeff and the man, a good two feet. She felt cold, very cold. She rubbed her hands over her crossed arms. “No, Jeff, I never met Ann McBride. I didn’t know anything about her. No one said a single word to me about her. Also, everybody is being premature. Now, I’ll just bet that we’ll be hearing very soon that the poor woman I found can’t be Ann McBride. You tell everyone I said that.”

  “I will, Miss Powell, but that’s not what Mrs. Ella says. She thinks it’s Ann McBride, too.”

  “Believe me, Jeff, I was there, and I saw the skeleton; Mrs. Ella didn’t. Hey, I’m sorry about the mess. Thanks for cleaning off my shoe.”

  The man stuck out his arm and helped her over the shards of glass. “Young Jeff is a teenage boy with raging hormones,” he said, very aware that she had pulled away from him again. “I’m afraid you’re now the object of his affection.”

  She shuddered. “No, I’m the object of everyone’s curiosity, nothing more, including poor Young Jeff.” She stopped. The man couldn’t help it that she was spooked. She drew a deep breath, gave him a nice big smile, and said, “I’ve got a few more things to buy, Mr.—?”

  “Carruthers. Adam Carruthers.” He stuck out his hand and she automatically shook it. Big hand, hard, just like the rest of him. She’d bet the last dime in the bottom of her purse that even the soles of his feet were hard. She knew without being told that he was very disciplined, very focused, like soldiers or bad guys were focused, and that made her so afraid she nearly ran out right that minute. Which was silly. Only one thing she really knew for sure—she didn’t ever want to have to tangle with him. Actually, if she never saw him again, it would be just fine by her. “I haven’t seen you around town before, Mr. Carruthers.”

  “No, I just got here yesterday. The first thing I heard about was your finding that skeleton. The second thing I heard was it was the missing wife of your neighbor, Tyler McBride, and that you were seeing him and now wasn’t that interesting?”

  A reporter, she thought. Oh God, maybe he was a reporter or a paparazzo, and they’d found her. Her brave new world in the boondocks was going to be over just as it was beginning. It wasn’t fair. She began backing away from him.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m very busy. It was a pleasure to meet you. Goodbye.” And she was nearly running down the aisle lined with different kinds of breads, hamburger buns, and English muffins.

  He stared after her. She was taller than he’d expected, and too thin. Well, he’d be skinny, too, if he’d been under as much pressure as she was. What mattered was that he had found her. Amateurs, he thought, even very smart ones, couldn’t easily disappear. He thought about how he had managed to misdirect the FBI, and grinned at the jars of low-fat jams and jellies. They had more procedures, more requirements, more delays built into the system, a system that could have been designed by a criminal to give himself the best shot at escaping. Another thing they didn’t have was his contacts. He was whistling when he carried his can of French roast drip coffee to the checkout counter. He watched her climb into her dark green Toyota and drive out of the parking lot.

  He went back to his second-floor corner room at Errol Flynn’s Hammock, booted up his laptop, and wrote a quick e-mail:

  I met her over a broken jar of peanut butter in Food Fort. She’s fine, but nervous as hell. Understandable. You won’t believe this, but now she’s embroiled in a mess here in Riptide. A skeleton fell out of her basement wall. Everyone in town believes it’s a neighbor’s wife who disappeared over a year ago. Who the hell knows? Will keep you informed. Adam

  He sat back in his chair and smelled the coffee perking in the Mr. Coffee machine he’d bought at Goose’s Hardware when he’d gotten into town.

  She was wary of him, maybe even afraid. Well, he couldn’t blame her, a big guy trying to pick her up in Food Fort after she’d found a skeleton in her basement, while already on the run from the FBI, the NYPD, and a murderous madman. He didn’t think she’d been amused by his peanut butter wit, which meant she wasn’t a dolt.

  He poured a cup of coffee, sipped it, and sighed with bone-deep satisfaction. He leaned back in the dark-brown nubby chair, which was surprisingly comfortable. The TV played quietly on its stand against a far wall, providing background noise. He closed his eyes, seeing
Becca Matlock again.

  No, now she was Becca Powell. Under that name she’d quickly rented the Jacob Marley place and promptly had a skeleton fall out of her basement wall after that incredible storm that had battered the Maine coast.

  The woman had pretty sucky luck.

  Now all he had to do was make her come to trust him.

  Then, just maybe, he would have a very big surprise for her.

  But first he had some reconnaissance to do. It never paid to rush into things.

  So Adam kept his distance the next day, watched her house during the morning and saw Tyler McBride and his little boy, Sam, pay her a visit around eleven o’clock. The kid was really cute, but he didn’t yell and jump around like other kids his age. Was everyone right? Had the son witnessed McBride killing his mother, or was it just talk?

  Adam wondered what was going on between Tyler McBride and Becca Matlock/Powell. He watched Sheriff Gaffney pay her a visit, even overheard the sheriff speaking to her outside the front door, on the big wraparound porch. He heard them clearly.

  “Nothing yet from the medical examiner’s office, Sheriff?”

  “They say hopefully tomorrow. I just wanted to go over the basement again, see what I could sniff out. My boys didn’t find any fingerprints, but just maybe there’s something there that we all missed. Oh, and another thing, Rachel Ryan asked me to tell you that some boys would be arriving to remove the tree and fix the window for you.”

  The sheriff left after an hour, a chocolate chip cookie in his hand. Adam knew it was chocolate chip. He could smell the chocolate from twenty yards and was salivating.

  He sent an e-mail after lunch and within an hour knew all about how Becca Matlock had met Tyler McBride at Dartmouth College. Had the two of them been college sweethearts? Lovers? Perhaps. It was interesting. And now everyone believed the skeleton was Tyler McBride’s missing wife, Ann. He’d find out everything he could about Tyler McBride. He supposed there was a certain possible irony at play here. What if she’d managed to get away from one stalker only to stumble upon a man who’d done away with his wife?

  Yep, her luck sucked, big-time.

  He still wasn’t ready to approach her, she was too spooked. So he kept an eye on her that evening as well. She didn’t leave the house. Since it stayed light so late in Maine during the summer months, five guys, all armed with chain saws, came to take care of the old fallen hemlock that lay along the west side of the house. They pulled the limb out of the upstairs window and sawed it up. They cut off and sawed up the branches from the tree, then wrapped thick chains around the trunk and dragged the tree away.

  Through all of this, Becca read outside on the wraparound porch, sitting in an old glider, rocking back and forth until he was nearly nauseated watching that slow back and forth, that never-ending back and forth, and hearing the small creaking sounds that went with every movement in between the loud grating bursts from the chain saws.

  She went to bed early.

  Around noon the next day, Becca was thanking the windowpane guy for replacing the glass in her bedroom window. Not half an hour later, Tyler and Sam were there, eating tuna fish sandwiches at her kitchen table. She said, “We should be hearing from Sheriff Gaffney soon, Tyler. It should be today, that’s what he said when he came yesterday. They’re sure taking their time. Then all this nonsense will be over.”

  He was silent for the longest time, chewing his sandwich, helping Sam eat his, then said finally, some anger in his voice, which surprised her, “You’re quite the optimist, Becca.”

  But she wasn’t thinking about the skeleton at that moment. She was wondering why that man—Adam Carruthers—was watching her house. He was standing motionless just to the right, in amongst the spruce trees, not twenty feet away. He wasn’t the stalker. It wasn’t his voice, she was sure of that. The stalker’s voice was not old, not young, but unnervingly smooth. She knew she would recognize that voice from hell anywhere. Carruthers’s voice was different. But who was he? And why was he so interested in her?

  Adam stretched. He went through a few relaxing tae kwon do moves to ease his muscles. He was just in the process of slowly raising his left leg, his left arm extended fully, when she said from behind him, “Your arm is a bit too high. Lower your elbow at least an inch and extend your wrist, yeah, and pull your fingers back a bit more. That’s better. Now, don’t even twitch or I’ll shoot your head off.”

  He was faster than she could have imagined. She was a good six feet behind him. She had her Coonan .357 Magnum automatic, chambered with seven bullets, aimed right at him, and in the very next instant, his whole body was in motion, moving so fast it was a blur, at least until his right foot lightly and gracefully clipped the gun from her hand, and his left hand smacked her hard enough in the shoulder to send her flying backward. She landed on her back.

  Becca grabbed the gun, which lay on the ground two feet to her left, and brought it up only to have him kick it out of her hand again. Her wrist stung for a moment, then went numb.

  “Sorry,” he said, standing over her now. “I don’t react well to folks holding guns on me. I hope I didn’t hurt you.” He actually had the gall to reach out his hand to help her up. She was breathing hard, her shoulder was aching and her wrist was useless. She scooted backward, turned, and tried to run. She wasn’t fast enough. He grabbed her and hauled her back against him. “No, just hold it a minute. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She stopped cold and became very, very still. Her head fell forward and he knew in that moment that she had simply given up.

  He knew her shoulder had to hurt, that her wrist was now probably hanging numb. “It’ll be all right. You’ll get feeling back in your wrist soon. It’ll burn a bit but then it’ll be okay again.”

  Still drawn in on herself, she said, “I didn’t think he could be you—your voice is all wrong, I would have sworn to that—but I obviously was wrong.”

  She thought he was the stalker, the man who had murdered that poor old woman in front of the museum, and then shot Governor Bledsoe. Automatically, he let her go. “Look, I’m sorry—” He was speaking to the back of her head. She’d taken off the second he’d let her go. She was off at a dead run, through the spruce trees, back toward her house.

  He caught her within ten yards, grabbed her left arm, and jerked her around. She moved quickly. Her fist hit him solidly on the jaw. His head snapped back with the force of her sharp-knuckled blow. She was strong. He grabbed both her arms, only to feel her knee come up. His fast reflexes saved him, just barely, thank God, and her knee got him in the thigh. It still hurt, but not as bad as if she’d gotten him in the crotch. That would have sent him to the ground, sobbing his guts out. He whirled her around and brought her back against his chest. He clamped her arms at her sides and simply held her against him. She was breathing hard, her muscles tensing, relaxing, then tensing again. She was very afraid, but he knew she’d act again if he gave her the opening. He was impressed. But now he had her.

  “I don’t know how you found me,” she said, still panting. “I did everything I could think of to hide my trail. How did you track me down?”

  “It did take me two and a half days to track you to Portland, actually longer than I’d expected.”

  She twisted her head to look at him. “You bastard. Let me go.”

  “Not just yet. I want to hang on to my body parts. Hey, you didn’t do too badly for an amateur.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Will you stop with the violence? I can’t stand violence. It makes me nervous.”

  Her look was incredulous as she chewed her bottom lip. Finally, she nodded. “All right.”

  He let her go and took a quick step back, his eyes on her right knee.

  She was off and running in a flash. This time, he let her go. She was fast, but he knew that from her dossier. She’d spotted him watching her house. It amazed him. He was always so very careful, so patient, as still as one of the spruce trees. In the past, his life had depended on it
more times than he cared to remember. But she’d cottoned on to the fact that someone was out there, with her in his sights.

  Well, the stalker had been after her for more than three weeks in New York. That had sharpened her senses, kept her alert. There was no doubt she was afraid, but it hadn’t mattered. She’d come out and confronted him anyway. He whistled as he walked over and bent down to pick up her Coonan automatic. It was a nice gun. It had a closed breech that gave it very high velocity. His brother had one of these babies, was always bragging about it. It was steady, reliable, deadly, and not all that common. He wondered how she handled the recoil. He dumped the seven rimmed cartridges into his hand, then dropped them into his pocket. He paused a moment, wondering if he shouldn’t leave the gun in her mailbox or slip it just inside her front door.

  He imagined she wouldn’t feel safe without it.

  He saw Tyler McBride and his son leave about ten minutes later. He saw her wave from the front porch. He saw her looking over toward where he quietly stood, surely not visible through the trees. She went back into the house after Tyler McBride and his son drove off. He waited.

  Not three minutes later she was back, standing on the front porch, looking toward him. He saw her thinking, weighing, assessing. Finally, she trotted toward him.

  She had guts.

  He didn’t move, just waited, watching her. He realized when she was only about ten feet from him that she had a big kitchen butcher knife clutched in her hand.

  He smiled. She was her father’s daughter.

  9

  Slowly, he pulled her gun out of his pants pocket and aimed it in her general direction. “Even that big honker knife can’t compete with this Coonan you managed to get off that guy you met at the restaurant in Rockland. He was, however, pissed that you wouldn’t go to bed with him.” He grinned at her. “Hey, you got what you needed. You did good.”