The Price of Malice Page 20

  Joe stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes straight ahead.

  In the ensuing silence, Sam asked, “Boss? You there?”

  “Yeah,” he answered dully.

  “You okay? You sound weird.”

  “Fine.” He was staring at Lyn’s empty car.

  Sam wasn’t sure. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Well, we think that gives us enough for a court order, right? I mean that’s the way we’d like to go, so we can round up the rest of the family’s DNA and maybe nail down a solid suspect.”

  Joe was circling the car slowly, studying it for anything unusual. “Sounds good. Go for it.”

  “I don’t see little Richard playing a part,” Sam continued. “Which leaves Nicky or Ryan.”

  Joe reached out and tugged at the driver’s door. It was locked. “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he told her. “Include a cut in the warrant.”

  “A cut?”

  Joe scowled, the distraction with Lyn’s car making him want to simply throw the cell phone into the harbor. “A cut, a wound,” he said testily. “Something to explain why the blood was on the corpse in the first place.”

  He could tell he’d brought her up short.

  “Right. Got it.”

  “It’s not a great blood sample,” he explained. “And it may not improve with the mini-STR expansion, which means we’ll need more than just DNA to make a case stick.”

  “Like a cut,” she said. “No problem.”

  “Keep in mind,” he added, virtually thinking on autopilot, “that won’t be enough, either. When did the bloodstain get there? Before the killing? Afterward? It doesn’t necessarily point to the killer. We know it belongs to a male, but that may not be relevant, and there may be others that the lab missed. Plus, what I’m calling a cut could’ve been a nose bleed, meaning you won’t be able to find it now.”

  “I understand.”

  “And last as well as least, probably, have we absolutely ruled out all the other males related to Karen? Does she have a brother in town we don’t know about yet? Or a father or uncle? We’ve still a long way to go with just the standard case-building here.”

  She was clearly taking notes by now. “Right, right.”

  “You know all this shit,” he concluded. “Call me back when you get more.”

  She hesitated before asking, “You’re not coming in anytime soon?”

  He thought about lying, bringing her into his turmoil. She deserved more than he was giving her. They all did.

  “No,” he said. “Keep in touch.”

  He closed the phone, pocketed it, and pressed both his hands against his throbbing temples. God damn it, Lyn. Where are you?

  Lyn was looking at Wellman Beale staring down at her, after an engine-thrumming, two-hour voyage across smooth seas. Ever since childhood, she’d preferred any and all of the discomforts of an open deck to the diesel-tainted warmth of a fishing boat’s cabin. Age had done nothing to change that.

  “What now?” she asked querulously, her nausea as yet unresponsive to the engine’s silence. She’d managed to reposition herself, so that she was no longer supine. She was now sitting up, with her back against the paneling.

  His eyes hardened. “Watch it. I could stop being Mr. Nice Guy.”

  She laughed sharply. “Right. Pardon the hell out of me. Wouldn’t want you to kidnap me or anything.”

  In the few seconds that they glared at each other, she began wondering how far she could push the man, and even why, aside from pure rage.

  For the moment, he merely shook his head and muttered, “Fucking broads—what monster even invented you bitches?”

  “Problems with Mommy?” she shot back without thinking.

  He leaned into her fast as she mentally kicked herself, placing his hand flat against her chest, and pressing her hard against the hull.

  “Don’t think for a goddamn minute that if I threw you overboard right now, anybody would know or care.”

  She knew she should now keep quiet, but his words proved too provocative.

  “That’s right,” she said, trying to breathe. “ ’Cause you’ve had practice with that, haven’t you?”

  He straightened, looking baffled. “What the fuck is your problem?”

  “You’re the one with the problem,” she countered. “I just wanted to talk, but . . .”

  “Oh, bullshit,” he interrupted her. “I know exactly what you want. You walk into a biker bar, say your name is Silva and that you want a meet, and you think I can’t put that together? I have been harassed by the cops about this crap, they sicced the prosecutor onto me, and when that didn’t stick, they even spilled it to some fucking reporter, who went creeping around asking all kinds of questions. I have just about had it with the name Silva.”

  “You killed my father and my brother,” she said, fixing him with her eyes.

  He returned the look. “You are full of shit.”

  He briefly made fists of his hands, his whole body a study of frustration, and she thought he might beat her. He fished into his back pocket instead, extracted a switchblade, and sprang it open with an ominous snap.

  Lyn felt her stomach turn over.

  “Turn around,” he ordered. “We’re going ashore.”

  Relieved, she cooperated, allowing him to cut the tape from her wrists.

  “Stand up and keep your yap shut,” he continued, pushing her toward the ladder. “And I mean it, not one word.”

  They climbed up into the darkened wheelhouse, and from there to the stern, where Lyn discovered that they were tied up on the edge of a small, almost empty town. She looked around, trying to distinguish its features by a line of streetlights stretching out beyond the end of the landing. To the left of them were several more docks, the mysteriously dark and tranquil oil-black water of the bay, and in the distance—at a ninety-degree angle—a large humpbacked bridge, arcing to the opposite shore. This had to be Lubec, complete with its span to Canada. In fact, she now remembered from planning those vacation trips with her father, the bridge was actually connected to Campobello Island, made famous as the summer retreat of Franklin Roosevelt. Back in those days, however, Abílo Silva had only talked about Lubec. They’d never been here as a family.

  “Come on, come on.” Beale pushed her again, getting her to climb the rail, latch on to a ladder, and pull herself up.

  She strolled to where the dock met the road, and read on a sign that the street straight ahead was predictably named Water Street. There was a restaurant nearby, barely populated, a few cars parked by the curb, and only one pedestrian, halfway down the block and walking away.

  “Go right,” Beale ordered in a low voice, prodding her with a discreetly held gun.

  A second sign told her they were actually on Commercial Street, which she now made an effort to memorize. Out in the gloom of the inner bay, to her right, she could barely make out some distant fish pens—gigantic, round cages—used to raise domestic salmon. Lubec was at the base of the Bay of Fundy, with one of the world’s greatest tidal exchanges—crucial for flushing the wire pens free of the waste of thousands of penned-up fish.

  This town, she recalled, steadying herself mentally, had once thrived on the fishing business, then the lobster trade, then the sea urchin harvest, and now domestic salmon, all with ever-diminishing returns for the general population. No wonder Lubec felt like a ghost town—it was far from any of its former glories.

  It was also quickly slipping from her sight. As Beale kept prodding her down the street, the lights of the main drag dropped back, as did the distant view of the bridge, until they were walking completely alone, in the virtual darkness, their path illuminated only by the moon above. They were heading for a derelict collection of abandoned buildings—either an old fish-packing factory or some other kind of plant.

  “What are you doing?” she asked nervously.

  “Shut up.”

  A hundred feet farther on, he guided her off the street, down a dirt emba
nkment, and up against the wall of one of the low buildings.

  “Stay.” Beale pulled a key from his pocket and fitted it to a padlock hanging from a rough plywood door cut into the wall. He removed the lock, slid back the hasp, and kicked the door open with his foot.

  “Go.”

  She went cautiously, completely blind in the total darkness.

  A sudden narrow shaft of light shot forth from a small flashlight in his hand. “Down that way.”

  She could make out a series of rooms ahead, all interconnected via a string of aligned doorways. There was rusted and broken equipment everywhere, and a thick carpet of debris and trash underfoot.

  “What’re you going to do?” she asked again.

  He grabbed her hair from behind and pulled her head back, speaking directly into her ear. “I told you to shut the fuck up. Walk.”

  Still holding her hair, he propelled her through the first door, making her stumble. Two rooms later, they stopped. In the middle of the floor was a square hole, the top of a ladder protruding from its depths.

  “Down we go,” he said.

  The satisfied tone of his voice made her fear what he truly meant.

  A trim young woman in uniform slid out of the green Maine Marine Patrol pickup, crossed the parking lot, and entered the café as Joe rose from the counter stool to greet her. It was getting late and he was the only customer left.

  They shook hands just inside the door.

  “Joe Gunther?” she asked. “Randy Coffin. Cathy Lawless said you needed help.”

  “I’m up the proverbial creek,” he admitted. “I really appreciate your coming.”

  “She told me a friend of yours may have met someone at the pier and then vanished?”

  “I know it’s a little lame, and maybe a total waste of your time.”

  She shook her head. “Not if the guy was Wellman Beale. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what she told me on the phone,” he admitted, and in concise detail, told her how Beale, the Silvas, and he had become intertwined—all while leading her to a stool and buying her a cup of coffee.

  “But,” he concluded ten minutes later, “I don’t know what happened to Lyn. It’s got me really worried. That’s why I called Cathy. I still didn’t expect you to come out in the middle of the night.”

  Coffin raised her eyebrows at him. “You’d do the same for me in Vermont, wouldn’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She smiled and touched his cup with her own. “Well, what’s good for Vermont law enforcement works for us, too.”

  She drained the mug, placed it on the counter, and stood up, adjusting her service belt. “So, let’s go disturb a few people.”

  “You got some ideas?” Joe asked, dropping a bill beside the empty mugs.

  “This is my patch,” she explained, talking over her shoulder as she headed for the door. “That’s why Cathy called me. I spend more time working snitches on shore than I do on patrol nowadays, and believe me, you have no clue what snoops are till you’ve seen a fishing community.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sam answered the phone out of a deep sleep on the second ring, noticing as she did so that Willy’s eyes were already open. She rarely actually saw him asleep.

  “Martens,” she answered softly as Willy, on the far side of her, rolled over onto his back and sighed.

  “Hey, Sammie,” the voice on the other end said cheerfully, “it’s Ron. Sorry to wake you guys up again, but I thought you’d be interested—Becky Kerr was just taken to the ER.”

  Sam hit the speakerphone button so Willy could hear. “Why?” she asked.

  “Something about a laceration. That part’s not real clear. My guy wondered about it maybe being a suicide attempt.”

  Both of them were already out of bed and putting on their clothes.

  “Who called 911?” Willy asked.

  “Hey, Willy,” Ron greeted him. “Sorry to wake you up.”

  “Answer the fucking question.”

  Ron laughed. “Her mom. She was a basket case, screaming her head off on the 911 tape. Dispatch told me the paramedics on the way to the ER were definitely laid-back, though, so I don’t think anybody’s hanging on for life.”

  “Who else is at the hospital?” Sam asked, tying the quick-lace boots she favored. “I’m hoping we can pick and choose who we talk to.”

  “The mom, for sure. Don’t know about anyone else.”

  “Do me a favor, Ron?” Sam asked, about to hit the Off button.

  “Shoot.”

  “Call HCRS and get somebody over there to hook up with us. I want to have a crack at this little girl.”

  “You got it.”

  “Jesus,” Willy complained as they headed outside for the car. “Did you have to drag them into it?”

  “Spare me,” was her only response. HCRS stood for Health Care and Rehabilitation Services—a crucial mental health agency when it came to interactions between cops and people on the emotional edge, but a pain in the neck to people like Willy, whose instincts were always to fly solo.

  At the hospital, ten minutes later, they found an unusually quiet ER, its hallways empty, one of its two glassed-in staff stations abandoned, and the other one held down by the ever-present Elizabeth Pace—who, Sammie was now convinced, had been there when they’d constructed the building around her.

  “Hey, Elizabeth,” she called out as she passed through the sliding-door entrance.

  “Hey yourself,” Elizabeth greeted them. “How’re you two doing? Here to see our young lady?”

  “Eventually,” Sam answered her as Willy continued to wander the hallway, looking around idly. “Gotta wait for HCRS. Who did she come in with?”

  Elizabeth indicated the waiting-room wall behind her. “You got one mother and two brothers.”

  “The girl okay?”

  “Oh, sure. Mom’s the most worked up. Daughter’s just pissed off.”

  Sam glanced over at Willy. “Want to join me?”

  “Sure.”

  They circled around to the waiting room’s inner door and entered to find Karen Putnam sitting on a couch beside a pale-faced Richard Vial, while his brother Nicky paced the room like a restless animal, his eyes downcast and his fists in his pockets.

  Sam’s face broke into a smile at the sight of Richard. “Hey there,” she addressed them both, sitting down quickly to be on their level. “How’re you guys holding up?”

  Richard smiled wanly as his mother broke out, “How do you think? Crazy kid. What the hell was she doing?”

  Willy, intrigued to finally set eyes on Nicky after both the blood drop finding and what Dan Kravitz had described, approached the boy at an angle that should have forced him to stop and exchange some form of greeting.

  “Hi,” Willy began, but Nicky brushed between him and the wall, eyes still averted, as if Willy were part of the furniture.

  Rebuffed, Willy sat down beside Sam without saying another word. The latter waved a hand in his direction, explaining, “This is my colleague, Willy Kunkle.”

  Karen nodded and wiped her eyes. She looked terrible, her mascara smeared, her face haggard.

  “What was she doing, Karen?” Willy asked with the surprising gentleness he always kept in reserve.

  “She had a razor blade in her hand. She was slicing herself. There was blood . . .”

  Willy leaned forward and rested his hand on her knee, very briefly—barely a brushstroke. “Hang on, hang on. I think I understand. Was there music?”

  Karen stopped and stared at him. “What?”

  “The music,” Willy resumed. “And the lighting. Did it look different than usual? Kind of theatrical, like she was trying to set a mood?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, surprised.

  “And the blood. Was it a thin line, with something to absorb it underneath, like a towel or some Kleenex?”

  “Yes.”

  “So there wasn’t a lot of it?”

  “No.”

>   “Sam told me that Becky’s been in the dumps lately. Is that right?”

  Karen flared a little at that. “Not enough to make her kill herself.”

  “I don’t think she was trying to,” Willy reassured her.

  Karen’s voice rose. “She cut her wrist, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Her wrist or her arm?”

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened to respond and then closed.

  “Her arm,” Richard said in a small voice.

  “That’s key,” Willy quickly added. “That’s not suicide.” He leaned forward and repeated the hand gesture, leaving it longer on her knee this time. “Your daughter was cutting herself, Karen. Huge difference.”

  “What do you mean?” Karen’s voice had settled back down.

  “It’s what a lot of girls are doing to make themselves feel more in control,” Sam contributed.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “It’s kind of an anger thing,” Willy told her. “We see it all the time. Most girls in middle and high school will try it at least once.”

  “Cutting themselves with a razor?” Karen asked incredulously.

  “It takes their minds off their troubles,” Sam explained. “Some say it’s like pulling the plug on their anxieties.”

  “Like booze is for adults,” Willy added. “We do it to numb the pain; they do what they do to make the pain something they can see.”

  Karen was shaking her head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Not to us,” Sammie agreed. “But it works for them.”

  “You were totally unaware she was into this?” Willy asked.

  “She’s not ‘into it,’ ” Karen protested.

  “What do you think?” Sam suddenly asked Richard.

  “She’s been sad.”

  “Sadder than usual?”

  “Yeah. We used to play more, and now we don’t.”

  “Under the trailer?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you two used to do?”