The Killing Kind

I nodded, walked into Rachel's room, and handed the gun to Angel. As I turned to leave I felt a light tug at my waistband, and the coolness of his Glock sliding against my skin. I took my jacket from the chair, nodded politely to Angel, then followed MacArthur down the hallway.

Mercier's last log entry recorded that the Revenant contacted the Eliza May shortly after 9 A.M., about forty miles out from port. The northwest wind might have been ideal for yachting, but it could also carry a cruiser in distress out to sea, and the Revenant was in trouble. The Revenant's distress call came in on VHF but the Eliza May was the only boat to hear it, despite the fact that there were other boats two and three miles away. The radio on the smaller vessel had been set to low range, maybe one watt, to prevent anyone else hearing the signal and answering. The Revenant's batteries were almost dead, and it was drifting. Mercier adjusted his course and went at full speed to his death.

I told MacArthur almost everything, from my first meeting with Jack Mercier to that morning's encounter with Mr. Pudd. The omissions were few, but crucial: I left out Marcy Becker, Mickey Shine's murder, and our unscheduled early viewing of Carter Paragon's body. I also made no mention of the fact that I suspected that someone in the state police, possibly Lutz, Voisine, or both, might have been involved in Grace Peltier's death.

“You think this Pudd killed the Peltiers?”

“Probably. The Fellowship, or at least what the public saw of it, is just a front for someone or something else. Grace Peltier found out what that was, and it was enough to get her killed.”

“And whatever Grace knew, Pudd thought Curtis Peltier also knew, and now he thinks you might know too?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But you don't.”

“Not yet.”

“If Jack Mercier's dead, there'll be hell to pay,” said Wallace fervently. Beside him, Ramos nodded silently in agreement as Wallace leaned back to look at me.

“And don't think you'll get away without picking up your share of the check,” he added.

We drove along U.S. 1 south before turning left onto 9 and heading for the coast, past the redbrick Baptist Church and the white bell tower of St. Jude's Catholic Church. At the Pine Point Fire Department on King Street, seven or eight cars were parked in the lot and the doors were wide open. A fireman in jeans and a fire department T-shirt waved us on toward the Pine Point Fishermen's Co-op, where Marine 4 was already in the water.

The Scarborough PD used two boats for marine duty. Marine 1 was a seventy-horsepower inflatable based at Spurwink, to the north of Pine Point, and launched from Ferry Beach. Marine 4 was a twenty-one-foot Boston Whaler powered by a 225-horsepower Johnson, based at the Pine Point Co-op and berthed, when not required, in the fire department. It had a crew of five, all of whom were already on board as we pulled up at the gray-and-white co-op building. The harbormaster's boat was alongside the Whaler, and there were two Scarborough PD officers on board. Both carried 12-gauge Mossberg shotguns. There were two more policemen in the Whaler carrying M-16s. All wore blue windbreakers. From the jetty, curious fishermen looked on.

Both Ramos and MacArthur shook on their waterproofs as I followed them to the boat. MacArthur was climbing down to the Whaler when he saw me.

“The hell do you think you're going?”

“Come on, Wallace,” I pleaded. “Don't do this. I'll stay out of the way. Mercier was my client. I don't want to be waiting here like an expectant parent if something has happened to him. You don't let me go with you, I'll just have to bribe a fisherman to take me out and then I'll really be in the way. Worse, I might just disappear and then you'll have lost a crucial witness. They'll have you back directing traffic.”

MacArthur glanced at the other men on the boat. The skipper, Ted Adams, shrugged.

“Get in the damn boat,” hissed MacArthur. “You even stand up to stretch and I'll feed you to the lobsters.”

I followed him down, Ramos behind me. There were no more windbreakers so I pulled my jacket tight around me and huddled on the plastic bench, my hands in my pockets and my chin to my chest, as the Whaler pulled away from the dock.

“Give me your hand,” said MacArthur. I extended my right hand and he slapped the cuffs on it, then locked me to the rail of the boat.

“What happens if we sink?” I asked.

“Then your body won't drift away.”

The boat surged through the dark, gray waters of Saco Bay, white foam erupting upward as it went. Behind us the sun was starting to set, and the waves were afire. MacArthur stood beside the covered cockpit looking back to Scarborough, the horizon bobbing merrily with the movement of the boat on the sea.

In the wheelhouse, Adams was responding to someone on the radio. “Still moving,” he said to MacArthur. “Only two miles out now, same course.” I looked past the seated policemen, beyond the crew at the cockpit, and imagined that I saw, like a tiny rip in the sky, the long, thin mast of the yacht. Something clawed at my insides, the last desperate scratchings of a cat left to drown in a bag. The prow dipped and sent a fine spray lashing over the deck, soaking me. I shivered as gulls glided above the surface of the water, calling noisily over the sound of the engine.

“There she is,” said Adams. His finger pointed to a small green dot on the radar screen while, simultaneously, the half-seen needle of the mast joined a dark spot on the horizon. Beside me, Ramos removed his Glock.40 from its holster.

Slowly the shape acquired definition: a white seventy-footer with a tall mast, drifting on the waves. A smaller boat, the lobster fisherman out of Portland that had first spotted the yacht, shadowed it from a distance. From the north came the sound of Marine 1 approaching. The two boats always responded to a call together for safety reasons.

Marine 4 turned to the south and came around so that it was on the yacht's eastern side, its lines silhouetted before the failing sun. As the Whaler circled it, there was blood visible on the deck that even the salt water hadn't managed to fully remove, and the wood was pitted with what looked like bullet holes. Close to the bow of the boat was a black scorch mark where a flare appeared to have ignited on the deck.

And at the top of the mast, partially concealed by the furled sail, a body hung with its arms outstretched and tied to the crossbeam. It was naked but for a pair of white boxers, now stained black and red. The legs were white, the feet tied together, a second rope around its chest lashing it to the mast before heading down taut at an angle, tied off to one of the rails. The body was scorched from the stomach to the head. Most of its hair was gone, its eyes were now dark hollows, and its teeth were bared in a rictus of pain, but still I knew that I was looking at the remains of Jack Mercier, hanging dark against the reddening sky like a black flag set in the firmament.

The Whaler hailed the yacht and, when no response came, drew up off the port side while a young crewman climbed on board the Eliza May, killed the engine, and tied Marine 4 off. Ramos and MacArthur joined him, pulling on protective gloves before they stepped shakily on board.

“Detectives,” the crewman called from the cockpit. They headed toward him, trying not to touch anything with their hands as the boat rocked gently in the waves. The crewman pointed to where a long, dark trail of blood followed the steps down. Someone had been dragged, dead or dying, belowdecks. MacArthur knelt down and examined the steps more closely. The end of a long, blond hair curled out of the blood. He rummaged in his pockets and removed a small plastic evidence bag, then carefully lifted the hair and stored it away.