The Unquiet

ChapterXXXVII

There was one more link, one more co

Joel Harmon was in his garden when I arrived, and it was Todd who answered the door and escorted me through the house to see him.

“You look like you might have spent time in the army, Todd,” I said.

“I ought to bust your ass for that,” he replied good-humoredly. “Navy. Five years. I was a signalman, a damned good one too.”

“You get all tattooed up in the navy?”

“Damn straight,” he said. He rolled up the right sleeve of his jacket, revealing a twisted mass of anchors and mermaids. “I’m real traditional,” he said. He let the sleeve fall. “You got a reason for asking?”

“Just curious. I saw how you handled your gun on the night of the party. It looked like you’d held one before.”

“Yeah, well, Mr. Harmon’s a wealthy man. He wanted someone who could look out for him.”

“You ever have to look out for him, Todd?” I asked.

He stopped as we reached the garden, and stared at me. “Not yet,” he said. “Not like that.”

Harmon’s son and daughter were both home that day, and halfway down the lawn Harmon was pointing out changes to them that he hoped to make to the flowers and shrubs come the spring.

“He loves the garden,” said Todd, following the direction of my gaze and seemingly anxious to move the subject away from his gun and his obligations, real or potential, to Harmon. “Everything out there he planted himself, or helped to plant. The kids lent a hand too. It’s their garden as much as his.”

But now I wasn’t looking at Harmon, or his children, or his garden. I was looking at the surveillance cameras that kept vigil on the lawn and the entrances to the house.

“It looks like an expensive system,” I said to Todd.

“It is. The cameras themselves switch from color output to black-and-white when the lighting conditions are poor. They’ve got focus and zoom capabilities, pan and tilt, and we have quad switchers that allow us to view all camera images simultaneously. There are monitors in the kitchen, Mr. Harmon’s office, the bedroom, and in my quarters. You can’t be too careful.”

“No, I guess not. Who installed the system?”

“A company called A-Secure, out of South Portland.”

“Uh-huh. That was the company Raymon Lang worked for, wasn’t it?”

Todd jerked like he’d just been hit with a mild electric shock.

“I-I suppose it was.” Lang’s shooting, and the discovery of the child beneath his trailer, had been big news. It would have been hard for Todd to have missed it.

“Was he ever out here, possibly to check the system? I’m sure it needs maintenance once or twice a year.”

“I couldn’t say,” said Todd. He was already going on the defensive, wondering if he’d said too much. “A-Secure sends someone out regularly as part of the contract, but it’s not always the same guy.”

“Sure. That figures. Maybe Jerry Legere came out here instead. I suppose the company will have to find someone else to take care of it, now that they’re both dead.”

Todd didn’t reply. He seemed about to walk me down to Harmon, but I told him it wasn’t necessary. He opened his mouth to protest, but I raised a hand, and he closed it again. He was smart enough to know that there was something going on that he didn’t fully understand, and the best thing to do might be to watch and listen, and intervene only if it became absolutely necessary. I left him on the porch and made my way across the grass. I passed Harmon’s kids on the way down as they headed back to the house. They looked at me curiously, and Harmon’s son seemed about to say something, but they both relaxed a little when I smiled at them in greeting. They were good-looking kids: tall, healthy, and neatly but casually dressed in various shades of Abercrombie amp;Fitch.

Harmon didn’t hear me approach. He was kneeling by an Alpine garden flower bed dotted with weathered limestone, the rocks sunk firmly into the ground, the grain ru

My shadow fell across Harmon, and he looked up.

“Mr. Parker,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting company, and you sneaked up on my bad side. Nevertheless, now that you’re here, it gives me the chance to apologize for what I said to you on the telephone when last we spoke.”

He struggled a little to stand. I offered him my right hand and he took it. As I helped him up, I gripped his forearm with my left hand, forcing the sleeve of his shirt and his sweater up on his forearm. The claws of a bird were briefly revealed upon his skin.

“Thank you,” he said. He saw where my attention was directed, and moved to pull his sleeve back down.

“I never asked you how you damaged your hearing,” I said.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” he replied. “My left ear was always weaker than my right, the hearing just slightly worse. It wasn’t too serious, and it didn’t interfere any with my life. I wanted to serve in Vietnam. I didn’t want to wait for the draft. I was twenty, and full of fire. I was assigned to Fort Campbell for my basic training. I hoped to join the 173rd Airborne. You know, the 173rd was the only unit to make an airborne assault on an enemy position in Vietnam? Operation Junction City in sixty-seven. I might have made it over there too, except a shell exploded too close to my head during basic training. Shattered my eardrum. Left me near deaf in one ear and affected my balance. I was discharged, and that was as close as I ever got to combat. I was one week away from finishing basic.”

“Is that where you got the tattoo?”

Harmon rubbed his shirt against the place on his arm where the tattoo lay, but he did not expose the skin again.

“Yeah, I was overoptimistic. I put the cart before the horse. Never got to add any years of service underneath. I’m just embarrassed by it now. I don’t show it much.” He peered carefully at me. “You seem to have come here armed with a lot of questions.”

“I’ve got more. Did you know Raymon Lang, Mr. Harmon?”

I watched him think for a moment.

“Raymon Lang? Wasn’t he the guy who got shot up in Bath, the one who had the child stashed under his trailer? Why would I know him?”

“He worked for A-Secure, the company that installed your surveillance system. He did maintenance for them on cameras and monitors. I wondered if you might have met him in the course of his work.”

Harmon shrugged. “I might have. Why?”

I turned and looked back toward the house. Todd was talking with Harmon’s children. All three were watching me. I recalled a remark of Christian’s that a pedophile might prey on the children of others yet never make any approaches to his own children, that his family might remain entirely unaware of his urges, allowing him to preserve the image of a loving father and husband, an image that was, in a sense, simultaneously both the truth and a lie. When I had spoken to Christian, it was Daniel Clay whom I had in mind, but I had been wrong. Rebecca Clay knew exactly what her father was, but there were other children who did not. There might have been many men with tattoos of eagles on their left arms, even men who had abused children, but the links between Lang and Harmon and Clay, however tentative, could not be denied. How did it happen, I wondered? How did Lang and Harmon come to recognize something in each other, a similar weakness, a hunger that they both shared? When did they decide to approach Clay, using his access to target those who were particularly vulnerable, or those who might not be believed if they made allegations of abuse? Did Harmon bring up that drunken night when Clay had allowed him to abuse Rebecca as leverage against the psychiatrist, for Harmon had been the other man in the house on the night that Daniel Clay, for the first and last time, had shared his daughter with another, and had drunkenly allowed pictures to be taken of the encounter. If these were used carefully, Harmon could have destroyed Clay with them while making sure that his hands were clean. Even an anonymous mailing to the cops or the Board of Licensure would have been enough.