The Charlie Parker Collection 1

  ‘I mean, was it for business, or personal, reasons?’

  ‘When you’re in partnership with your friend, then all business is personal,’ he replied. This time, he did look away when he said it.

  ‘That’s not answering the question.’

  I waited for a further reply. The silence of the kitchen was broken only by the sound of his breathing. On the screen to my left, the children drifted down the river on a small boat, the preacher tracking them along the bank.

  ‘Have you ever been betrayed by a friend, Mr. Parker?’ he asked at last.

  Now it was my turn to flinch. ‘Once or twice,’ I answered quietly.

  ‘Which was it – once, or twice?’

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘The first one died.’

  ‘And the second?’

  I heard my heart beating in the few seconds it took me to reply. It sounded impossibly loud.

  ‘I killed him.’

  ‘Either he betrayed you badly or you’re a harsh judge of men.’

  ‘I was pretty tense, once upon a time.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I take deep breaths and count to ten.’

  He smiled. ‘Does it work?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never made it as far as ten.’

  ‘I guess it don’t, then.’

  ‘I guess not. Do you want to tell me what happened between you and Jack Mercier?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t want to tell you, but I get the feeling you have your own ideas about what might have happened.’

  I did, but I was as reluctant to say them out loud as Peltier was to tell me. Even thinking them in the company of this man who had lost his only child so recently seemed like an unforgivable discourtesy.

  ‘It was personal, wasn’t it?’ I asked him softly.

  ‘Yes, it was very personal.’

  I watched him carefully in the lamplight, took in his eyes, the shape of his face, his hair, even his ears and his Grecian nose. There was nothing of him in Grace, nothing that I could recall. But there was something of Jack Mercier in her. I was almost certain of it. It had struck me most forcefully after I stood in his library and looked at the photographs on the wall, the images of the young Jack triumphant. Yes, I could see Grace in him, and I could see Jack in her. Yet I wasn’t certain, and even if it was true, to say it aloud would hurt the old man. He seemed to sense what I was thinking, and my response to it, because what he said next answered everything.

  ‘She was my daughter, Mr. Parker,’ he said, and his eyes were two deep wells of hurt and pride and remembered betrayal. ‘My daughter in every way that mattered. I raised her, bathed her, held her when she cried, collected her from school, watched her grow, supported her in all that she did, and kissed her good night every time she stayed with me. He had almost nothing to do with her, not in life. But now, I need him to do something for her and for me, maybe even for himself.’

  ‘Did she know?’

  ‘You mean, did I tell her? No, I didn’t. But you suspected, and so did she.’

  ‘Did she have contact with Jack Mercier?’

  ‘He payed for her graduate research because I couldn’t afford to. It was done through an educational trust he established, but I think it confirmed what Grace had always believed. Since the funding began, Grace had met him on a few occasions, usually at events organized by the trust. He also let her look at some books he had out at the house, something to do with her thesis. But the issue of her parentage was never discussed. We’d agreed that: Jack, my late wife, and I.’

  ‘You stayed together?’

  ‘I loved her,’ he said simply. ‘Even after what she’d done, I still loved her. Things were never the same because of it, but yes, we stayed together and I wept for her when she died.’

  ‘Was Mercier married at the time of . . .’ I allowed the sentence to peter out.

  ‘The time of the affair?’ he finished. ‘No, he met his wife a few years later, and they were married a year or so after that again.’

  ‘Do you think she knew about Grace?’

  He sighed. ‘I don’t know, but I guess he must have told her. He’s that kind of man. Hell, it was him who confessed to me, not my wife. Jack just had to relieve himself of the burden. He has all the weaknesses that come with a conscience, but none of the strengths.’ It was the first hint of bitterness that he had revealed.

  ‘I have another question, Mr. Peltier. Why did Grace choose to research the Aroostook Baptists?’

  ‘Because she was related to two of them,’ he replied. He said it matter-of-factly, as if it had never occurred to him that it might be relevant.

  ‘You didn’t mention it before,’ I said, keeping my voice even.

  ‘I guess it didn’t seem important.’ His voice faltered and he sighed. ‘Or maybe I thought that if I told you that, I’d have to tell you about Jack Mercier and . . .’ He waved a hand dispiritedly.

  ‘The Aroostook Baptists were what brought Jack Mercier and me together,’ he began. ‘We weren’t friends then. We met at a lecture on the history of Eagle Lake, first and last we ever attended. We went out of curiosity more than concern. My cousin was a woman called Elizabeth Jessop. Jack Mercier’s second cousin was Lyall Kellog. Do any of those names mean anything to you, Mr. Parker?’

  I thought back to the newspaper report the previous day and the picture of the assembled families taken before they departed for northern Aroostook.

  ‘Elizabeth Jessop and Lyall Kellog were members of the Aroostook Baptists,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s right. In a way, Grace had links with both of them through Jack and me. That’s why she was so interested in their disappearance.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I should have been open with you from the start.’

  I rose and put my hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’m sorry that I had to ask.’

  I released my hold on him and moved toward the door, but his hand reached out to stop me.

  ‘You think that her death has something to do with the bodies in the north?’ Seated before me, he seemed very small and frail. I felt a strange kind of empathy with him; we were two men who had been cursed to outlive their daughters.

  ‘I don’t know, Mr. Peltier.’

  ‘But you’ll keep looking? You’ll keep looking for the truth?’

  ‘I’ll keep looking,’ I assured him.

  I could hear again the soft rattle of his breathing as I opened the door and stepped out into the night. When I looked back he was still seated, his head down, his shoulders shaking gently with the force of his tears.

  Chapter Five

  Curtis Peltier’s confession not only explained a great deal about Jack Mercier’s actions; it also made things a whole lot more difficult for me. The blood link between Mercier and Grace was bad news.

  There was more bad news waiting for me when I got back to the Scarborough house. I couldn’t tell why, exactly, but something seemed wrong with the place as soon as I pulled up in front of the door. At first I put it down to that feeling of dislocation you get when you return home after being away, however briefly, but it was more than that. It was as if someone had taken the house and shifted it slightly on its axis, so that the moonlight no longer shone on it in quite the way that it once had and the shadows fell differently along the ground. The smell of gas from the mailbox served as a reminder of what had taken place that morning. Spiders in the mailbox were bad enough, but I wasn’t sure that I could handle recluses in my house.

  I approached the door, opened the screen, and tested the lock, but it remained secure. I inserted the key and pushed the front door, expecting to see some scene of desolation before me, but there was nothing at first. The house was quiet and the doors stood slightly ajar to allow the flow of air through the rooms. In the hallway, an old coat stand that I used for keeping mail and as a place to lay my keys had been pulled slightly away from the wall. I could see the clear marks o
n the floor where the legs had once stood, now slightly tarnished with speckles of dust. In the living room, I had the same sensation, as if someone had gone through my house and moved everything marginally out of kilter. The couch and chairs had been lifted, then imperfectly replaced. In the kitchen, crockery had been shifted, foodstuffs in the fridge removed and then returned in a haphazard manner. Even the sheets on my bed were tossed, the top sheet pulled loose at the end. I went to my desk at the back of the living room and thought I knew then what they had come for.

  The copy of the file on the case had been taken from me.

  I spent the next hour doing something that was unexpected but, upon reflection, natural. I went through the house, cleaning it, vacuuming and brushing, dusting and polishing. I took the sheets from my bed and threw them in a laundry bag, along with the small selection of clothes in my closet. Then I washed all of the cups and plates, the knives and forks, in boiling water and left them on the draining board. By the time I had finished, sweat was running down my face, my hands and face were filthy, and my clothes were stuck to my back, but I felt that I had reclaimed my space a little from those who had intruded upon it. Had I not done so, everything in my house would have felt tarnished by their presence.

  When I had showered and changed into the last of the clothes in my overnight bag, I tried calling Curtis Peltier’s house, but there was no reply. I wanted to warn him that whoever had searched my house might try to do the same to his, but his machine clicked on. I left a message, asking him to call me.

  I drove down to Oak Hill and dropped off my laundry, then turned back and headed for the Kraft Mini-Storage on Gorham Road, close by my house. I used my key to open one of the storage bays I kept there, still filled with some old possessions of my grandfather’s, along with items I had kept from the Brooklyn home I had shared briefly with Susan and Jennifer. In the bright light, I sat on the edge of a packing crate and went through the police reports one by one, concentrating in particular on those prepared by Lutz as the detective responsible for the investigation into Grace Peltier’s death. His involvement in the case didn’t fill me with a great sense of reassurance, but I could still find nothing in his reports to justify my suspicions of him. He had done a perfectly adequate job, even to the extent of interviewing the elusive Carter Paragon.

  When I returned to the house, I went to my bedroom and removed an eighteen-inch section of the baseboard from behind the chest of drawers. I took a bundle wrapped in oilcloth from out of the gap I had made. Two other bundles, one larger, one smaller, also lay inside, but I didn’t touch them. I took the bundle into the kitchen, lay a newspaper on the table, and unwrapped the gun.

  It was a Third Generation Smith & Wesson Model 1076, a 10-millimeter version developed especially for the FBI. I had owned a similar model for a year, until I lost it in a lake in northern Maine while running for my life. In some ways I had been glad to see the last of that gun. I had done terrible things with it, and it had come to represent all that was worst in me.

  Yet two weeks after I lost it, a new 1076 had arrived for me, sent by Louis and delivered by one of his emissaries, a huge black man in a Klan Killer T-shirt. Louis called me an hour or two after its delivery.

  ‘I don’t want it, Louis,’ I told him. ‘I’m sick of guns, and especially this gun.’

  ‘You feel that way now, but this was your gun,’ he said. ‘You used it because you had to use it, and you was good with it. Maybe a day will come when you be glad you have it.’

  Instead of throwing it away, I had wrapped it in oilcloth. I did the same thing with my father’s .38 Colt Detective Special and a 9-millimeter Heckler & Koch semiautomatic, for which I didn’t have a permit. Then I had cut away the section of baseboard and placed the guns safely in the space I had made for them. Out of sight, out of mind.

  Now I released the magazine, using the catch at the left side of the butt. I pulled back the slide in case there was a round in the chamber, still sticking to the old safety routine. I inspected the chamber through the ejection port, then released the slide and pulled the trigger. For the next thirty minutes I cleaned and oiled the gun, then loaded it and sighted at the door. Even fully loaded, it weighed a little over two and a half pounds. I tested its lines with my thumb, ran my finger over the serial number on the left-hand side of the frame, and felt inexplicably afraid.

  There is a dark resource within all of us, a reservoir of hurt and pain and anger upon which we can draw when the need arises. Most of us rarely, if ever, have to delve too deeply into it. That is as it should be, because dipping into it costs, and you lose a little of yourself each time, a small part of all that is good and honorable and decent about you. Each time you use it you have to go a little deeper, a little further down into the blackness. Strange creatures move through its depths, illuminated by a burning light from within and fueled only by the desire to survive and to kill. The danger in diving into that pool, in drinking from that dark water, is that one day you may submerge yourself so deeply that you can never find the surface again. Give in to it and you’re lost forever.

  Looking at the gun, feeling the power of it, its base, unarguable lethality, I saw myself standing at the verge of those dark waters and felt the burning on my skin, heard the cool lapping of the waves calling me to fall into their depths. I did not look down, for fear of what I might see reflected on the surface.

  In an effort to pull myself away, I rose and checked my messages. There was one from Rachel phoning to say ‘Hi.’ I returned her call immediately, and she picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Hey, you,’ she said. ‘I got those tickets for the Wang.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic’

  ‘I haven’t had such a good day. I got assaulted by a policeman for mocking his belief system, and someone threatened to take my head off with a nine iron.’

  ‘And you’re usually so naturally charming,’ she said, before her voice grew serious. ‘You want to tell me what’s going on?’

  I told her a little of what I knew, or suspected, so far. I didn’t mention Marcy Becker, Ali Wynn, or the two policemen. I didn’t like talking about it over the phone, or in a house so recently violated by strangers.

  ‘Are you going to continue with this?’

  I paused before answering. Beside me, the Smith & Wesson gleamed dully in the moonlight.

  ‘I think so,’ I answered quietly.

  She sighed. ‘Guess I should cancel those tickets, then.’

  ‘No, don’t do that.’ Suddenly I wanted to be with Rachel more than anything else in the world, and anyway, I still had to talk to Ali Wynn. ‘We’ll meet up, as arranged.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Never been more sure of anything.’

  ‘Okay, then. You know I love you, Parker, don’t you?’ She had taken to calling me Parker sometimes, simply because nobody else close to me ever called me that.

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Good. Then take care of your damned self.’

  And with that she hung up.

  The second message on the machine was distinctly unusual.

  ‘Mr. Parker,’ said a male voice, ‘my name is Arthur Franklin. I am an attorney. I have a client who is anxious to speak with you.’ Arthur Franklin sounded kind of nervous, as if there was somebody standing in the shadows behind him brandishing a length of rubber hose. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d call me as soon as you can.’

  He’d left a home telephone number, so I called him back. When I told him who I was, relief burst from him like air from a punctured tire. He must have said ‘thank you’ three times in as many seconds.

  ‘My client’s name is Harvey Ragle,’ he explained, before I had a chance to say anything further. ‘He’s a filmmaker. His studio and distribution arm is in California but he has recently come to live and work in Maine. Unfortunately, the state of California has taken issue with the nature of his art, and extradition proceedings are now in trai
n. More to the point, certain individuals outside the law have also taken some offense at Mr. Ragle’s art, and my client now believes that his life is in danger. We have a preliminary hearing tomorrow afternoon at the federal courthouse, after which my client will be available to talk to you.’

  He came up for air at last, giving me an opportunity to interrupt.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Franklin, but I’m not sure that your client is my concern, and I’m not taking on any new cases.’

  ‘Oh no,’ replied Franklin. ‘You don’t understand. This is not a new case. This is in the nature of assistance with your current case.’

  ‘What do you know about my caseload?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Franklin. ‘I knew this wasn’t a good idea. I told him, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Told whom?’

  Franklin let out a deep breath that quivered on the verge of tears. Perry Mason he wasn’t. Somehow, I got the feeling that Harvey Ragle was going to be getting some California sunshine in the near future.

  ‘I was told to call you,’ continued Franklin, ‘by a certain individual from Boston. He’s in the comic book business. I think you know the gentleman to whom I am referring.’

  I knew the gentleman. His name was Al Z, and for all intents and purposes he ran the Boston mob from above a comic book store on Newbury Street.

  Suddenly I was in real trouble.

  Chapter Six

  The sun shone brightly through my windows when I awoke, the thin material of the curtains speckled with thousands of tiny points of light. I could hear the buzzing of bees, attracted by the trilliums and hepaticas growing at the end of my yard and the pink buds of the single wild apple tree that marked the start of my driveway.

  I showered and dressed, then took my training bag and headed into One City Center to work out for an hour. In the lobby I passed Norman Boone, one of the ATF agents based in Portland, and nodded a hello. He nodded back, which was something, Boone ordinarily being about as friendly as a cat in a bag. The feds, the U.S. marshals, and the ATF all occupied offices at One City Center, which was the kind of knowledge that made you feel pretty safe and secure while using the gym, as long as some freak with a grudge against the government didn’t get it into his head to make his mark on the world with a vanload of Semtex.