The Killing Kind

Marcy Becker was squirming furiously beneath me. She was in her late twenties, with light brown hair and plain, blunt features. Her shoulders were large and muscular and she looked like she might once have been a swimmer or a field athlete. When I saw the expression on her face I felt a twinge of guilt for scaring her.

“Take it easy, Marcy,” I said. “We're here to help you.” I lifted my weight from her and let her rise. Almost immediately, she tried to run again. I wrapped my arms around her, gripped her wrists in my hands, and twisted her so that she was facing Louis.

“My name is Charlie Parker. I'm a private investigator. I was hired by Curtis Peltier to find out what happened to Grace, and I think you know.”

“I don't know anything,” she hissed. Her left heel shot back and nearly caught me a nasty blow on the shin. She was a big, strong young woman, and holding her was taking quite an effort. Louis just looked at me, one eyebrow raised in amusement. I guessed that I wasn't going to get any help from that quarter. I turned her again so that she was facing me, then shook her hard.

“Marcy,” I said. “We don't have time for this.”

“Fuck you!” she spat. She was angry and frightened, and she had good reason to be.

I felt Rachel's presence beside me and Marcy's eyes shifted to her.

“Marcy, there's a man on his way here, a policeman, and he's not coming to protect you,” said Rachel quickly. “He found out from your parents where you were hiding. He thinks you're a witness to Grace Peltier's death, and we think so too. Now, we can help you, but only if you'll let us.”

She stopped struggling and tried to read the truth of what Rachel was saying from her eyes. Acceptance altered the expression on her face, easing the lines that furrowed her brow and dousing the fire in her eyes.

“A policeman killed Grace,” she said simply.

I turned to Louis. “Get the cars out of sight,” I said.

He nodded and ran back up the hill. Seconds later, the Lexus pulled into the yard above us, hidden from the road by the house itself. The Mustang quickly joined it.

“I think the man who killed Grace is called Lutz,” I told Marcy. “He's the one who's coming. Are you going to let us help you?”

She nodded mutely. I picked up her bag and handed it to her. As she reached for it, I pulled it out of her grasp.

“No hitting, okay?”

She gave a little frightened smile and said, in agreement, “No hitting.” We started up the hill to the house.

“It's not just me that he wants,” she said quietly.

“What else does he want, Marcy?” I asked.

She swallowed, and that scared look darted into her eyes again. She raised the rucksack.

“He wants the book,” she answered.

As Marcy Becker packed the last of her things, the clothes and cosmetics she had abandoned as she fled from us, she told us about Grace Peltier's last hours. She wouldn't let us look in the rucksack, though. I wasn't sure that she completely trusted us yet.

“She came out of the meeting with the Paragon guy in a real hurry,” she told us. “She ran straight up to the car, jumped in, and started to drive. She was really angry, as angry as I've ever seen her. She just kept swearing all the time, calling him a liar.

“That night, she left me at the motel in Waterville and didn't come back until two or three in the morning. She wouldn't tell me where she'd been, but early the next morning we drove north. She abandoned me- again -in Machias and told me to knock myself out. I didn't see her for two days.

“I sat in my room most of the time, drank some beers, watched some TV. At about 2 A.M. on the second night, I heard this hammering on the door and Grace was there. Her hair was all damp and matted and her clothes were wet. She was really, really pale, like she had seen something that frightened the hell out of her. She told me we had to leave-quickly.

“I put on my clothes, grabbed my rucksack, and we got in the car and started driving. There was a package on the backseat, wrapped in a plastic bag. It looked like a block of dark wood.

“ ‘What is that?’ I asked her.

“ ‘You don't want to know,’ was all she told me.

“ ‘Okay, so where are we going?’

“ ‘To see my father.’ ”

Marcy stopped talking, and looked at Louis and me. Louis stood by the window, looking down on the road below.

“We better get going soon,” he warned.

I knew Lutz was on his way, but now that I had got Marcy Becker talking I wanted her to finish.

“Did she say anything else, Marcy?”

“She was kind of hysterical. She said ‘He's alive,’ and something about them taking him into town because he'd gotten sick. She'd seen him collapse on the road. That's all she would say. She told me that, for the moment, it was better if I didn't know anything else.

“We'd been driving for maybe an hour. I was dozing on the backseat when Grace shook me awake. As soon as I woke up, I knew we were in trouble. She kept looking in the rearview. There was a cop following us, with lights flashing. Grace just stepped on the gas and tore away until he was out of view, then pulled off the road and told me to get out. I tried to get her to tell me why, but she wouldn't. She just threw me my bag and then handed me the package and all of her study notes and told me to look after them until she contacted me. Then the cop appeared and I opened the door and headed into the bushes to hide. I guess something about the way Grace was acting transferred itself onto me, because now I was scared and I had no reason to be. I mean, what had we done? What had she done? And anyway, this guy was a cop, right? Even if she had stolen something she was maybe going to get in some trouble, but nothing worse.

“Anyway, I could see her trying to start the car, but the cop walked up to her door and told her to kill the engine. He was a big guy smoking a cigarette. He kept his gloves on, even while he smoked. I could hear him talking to her, asking her what she was doing, where she had been. He wouldn't let her get out of the car, just kept leaning over her. I could hear him ask her, ‘Where is it?’ again and again, and Grace telling him that she didn't know what he was talking about.

“He took her car keys, then made a call on his cell phone. I think it must have been fifteen or twenty minutes before the other guy arrived. He was a big man, with a mustache.”

Marcy began to cry. “I should have tried to help her, because I knew what was going to happen even before he took out the gun. I just knew. I felt him thinking about it. I saw him climb in and I was going to cry out. I thought he was trying to rape her, but I couldn't do anything, I was so scared. I could hear Grace crying and he hit her on the head to shut her up. After that, he searched the trunk and the rest of the car, then started checking along the road. I moved back, and once I thought he might have heard me, because he stopped and listened before he went back to what he was doing. When he didn't find what he was looking for, he slapped the hood of Grace's car and I heard him swear.”

She paused.

“Then he stepped over to the driver's side with the gun in his hand. He shouted at Grace again, pushing her head with the gun. She reached up to stop him; there was a struggle. The gun went off and the windows turned red. The other policeman started screaming at the big guy, asking him what he thought he was doing and what were they going to do now. But he just told him to be quiet.

“After that, he leaned in and did something to the back of Grace's head. When I saw him again, he had a piece of her hair in his hands and he was looking out at the trees, as if he guessed that I was out there somewhere. I crawled away on my belly. I could see Grace through the windshield, Mr. Parker. Her head was hanging to one side and there was blood all over the inside of the car. She was my friend, and I let her die.”