He wondered if Norah was having an affair. He didn’t think so, but he was surprised at how little he was troubled by the possibility. As for himself, he wasn’t the kind, not that any women were currently throwing themselves at him, demanding that he take them in interesting ways. If – or when – he and Norah divorced, he’d try again, but until then he’d just do without significant female comfort, whether physical or emotional. He didn’t believe he could handle the stress of his troubled home life and a second, secret existence as an adulterer. He’d give himself a heart attack.
The gas station was a comparative rarity, which was why he’d chosen it for his respite: a mom-and-pop operation, with none of the brash, impersonal neon of the big providers. The building itself was painted red and white, so that it looked more like a small coastal diner than anything else. A mural of two dogs had been added to the wall at the far right, and beneath it was a water bowl and a second container filled with dog treats. Inside, the registers were to the left, and to the right was a seating area with pine tables and stools, and a ledge that looked out over the forecourt. Burnel had stopped there for gas on a few occasions, but never stayed any longer than was necessary to fill up and pay. He recalled that a sign beside the coffeepot identified all muffins and pastries as homemade, and they sat on wooden shelves, resting on the paper on which they’d been baked instead of sweating inside plastic wrap.
Burnel parked at the side of the gas station. The dampness in the air hit him as soon as he stepped from the car, and by the time he stepped inside the first drops had begun to patter on the ground. The interior was warm, and smelled of fresh coffee, with a faint underpinning of gasoline. Music was playing: some light jazz that wouldn’t frighten the horses. From behind the counter, a man in his late sixties and a girl in her twenties who resembled him so much that she could only have been his daughter were engaged in conversation with an elderly woman who was leaning against the empty newspaper stand, holding a cigarette pack in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other, which she was using to emphasize a particular point and guide the argument, like a conductor wielding a baton before an orchestra. The older woman was wearing mismatched carpet slippers and a raccoon-fur stole that looked like the contributing raccoons had departed this life many decades earlier, but put up a good fight before they went. All three greeted Burnel as he entered, then returned to their discussion, which centered on the price of heating oil, always an issue in Maine as winter loomed.
The older woman’s name was Kezia, judging by how often the man behind the counter was being forced to say ‘Now look, Kezia’ and ‘Don’t go all wrathy on me, Kezia’ in response to her diatribe. Kezia, in turn, referred to him as Bryce, and seemed to be appealing to his daughter as a voice of reason, as in ‘Paige, you tell your father Bryce here …’, as though the older man were suffering from some form of selective deafness, or had forgotten his station in life. It was all pretty good-natured, though, and both of the old-timers struck Burnel as serious wigs.
The coffee was hot and smelled of vanilla. He filled a paper cup and selected a muffin from the shelf. It wasn’t warm to the touch, but he could tell that it was still pretty fresh. It didn’t have the cold, unpleasantly moist texture of a pastry that had been defrosted for consumption. He’d become expert in such matters during his years on the road. He went to the counter, paid for his food, and took a seat at the window. He had brought his satchel with him – the briefcase, complete with its worthless stones, remained in the car – but he left his laptop untouched, even though he still had some work to do. It would give him an excuse to avoid Norah when he got home. She always left him alone when he was working. If nothing else, she knew the value of a dollar, and Burnel brought many more of them into the house than she did. Norah owned fifty-one percent of a vintage clothing store in South Portland, and was also the manager. Burnel was far from being a fashionisto, but even he could tell that most of what his wife sold had been tasteless crap back in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, and was still tasteless crap now, which was why so much of it stayed on the racks gathering dust. Norah’s partner, Judie, had a better eye, and it was she who found the premium items capable of supporting the kind of mark-ups that kept the store in business.
So, instead of checking e-mails and collating orders, Burnel removed a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo from his bag and picked up where he’d left off earlier in the day. The book was a monster, and he only ever got to read it when he was traveling, or when Norah was out. If she saw him with a book in his hand, she took it as a sign that he was free to be disturbed. Norah didn’t read. She didn’t watch TV either, except for fashion and makeover shows. Mostly she just smoked and talked to her friends on her cell phone, or stared into space imagining other existences that fate had so far denied her.
Burnel heard two vehicles pull into the gas station’s lot. He glanced up in time to see the lights of a gray van die, a dark sedan beside it, followed by the appearance of two men who walked slowly toward the building in which he sat, seemingly untroubled by the rain. Initially Burnel thought that some distortion of the glass, combined with the patterns of the rain, had conspired to alter the appearance of the taller of the two, but as they entered he saw that the new arrival was unnaturally thin, his fingers twisted by what was probably early onset arthritis. His heavy eyelids might have suggested someone trapped between sleeping and waking were it not for the spiderlike gleam of his dark eyes. When they flicked toward Burnel, he felt as though small, sharp legs were crawling across the skin of his face, and he could not help but try to brush them away.
The gray van looked familiar to Burnel, but he couldn’t quite place it. He thought that he’d seen it earlier that evening. It wasn’t distinctive, exactly, just memorable for the wrong reasons, like a bad party or a poor meal.
The shorter of the two men went directly to the counter and asked for a pack of cigarettes. While he did so, the taller man turned to the door and twisted the lock, securing the door.
‘Hey,’ said Kezia. ‘Chupta?’, the five words of the question flowing neatly into one.
When she received no reply, she shouted to Bryce, ‘Hey, Bryce! This fella’s gone and locked the door.’
The tall man twisted and punched her hard in the face. The blow sent Kezia to her knees, and left her attacker shaking his twisted hand in pain. By then, his companion had pulled a gun and was pointing it at Bryce and his daughter.
‘No alarms,’ he said. ‘No screams. Kill the lights outside. Dim the ones in here.’
He kept the gun on Bryce as he moved to a set of switches on the wall beside the registers. Meanwhile, his partner advanced on Burnel and pulled him from his stool, sending him sprawling to the floor. The lights outside were extinguished, and seconds later only a handful at the back of the store remained lit.
‘The registers are near empty,’ said Bryce. ‘My daughter went to the bank this afternoon.’
‘Shut up,’ said the gunman. ‘Get to the back, down by the sodas.’
He gestured with the gun, and Bryce and Paige started to move. Burnel noticed that Paige hadn’t said a word since the men entered. She had gone gray at the first sight of the gun. Some atavistic sense had told her that this could not, would not, end well. Later, with the blood still fresh on her, she would tell the police that she had watched the expression on the gunman’s face as he looked at her, and in his eyes she had seen an image of herself despoiled and then gutted like a fish.
‘You!’ The gunman looked toward Burnel. ‘Help the old woman up.’
Burnel, who had stayed down, stood slowly. Monitored by the tall man, he went over to where Kezia lay slumped amid fallen packs of bubble gum. He noticed that she was still holding on to her cigarette, although it had snapped when she fell. She was bleeding from the mouth, but conscious, and the look on her face was profoundly hostile as she glared at the man who had hit her.
‘Fucker,’ she said, as Burnel assisted her in standing up, and the tall man responded by dis
playing his very white, very even teeth. They clicked as the two rows met, then clicked again, and again, and Burnel knew that, in his mind, this scarecrow was already biting down on flesh.
‘Hush, now,’ said Burnel, and she was smart enough to heed him and stay quiet until they both reached the back of the store. Paige and Bryce were already seated against the wall by the side of the coolers. To their left was a closed door protected by a combination lock.
‘Is anybody back there?’ the gunman asked Bryce.
‘No, it’s just us.’
‘If you’re lying—’
‘I’m not. Please, take what you want, but don’t hurt anyone’ – he looked over at Kezia, whom Burnel was easing into a comfortable position – ‘any more than you already have.’
‘Are you telling me what to do?’ The gunman’s tone was very even, but Bryce was too smart to be lulled by it.
‘No, I’m asking. Begging, if you like.’
The gunman nodded.
‘That’s better. Cell phones out and on the floor. Now.’
Kezia’s had fallen from her pocket as she fell, and the tall man added it to the rest. Bryce’s was on his belt, Paige’s in the back pocket of her jeans. Both tossed them at the gunman’s feet, but Burnel had already beaten them to it with his own. He, too, had a holder on his belt for his phone. It was on the opposite side from his gun, and he very much did not want to give these men a reason to search him, because not only might they find the revolver, but also the gems in their pouch. In fact, he was surprised that the men hadn’t bothered searching their captives to begin with, but perhaps they believed themselves to be better judges of character than they were.
‘What’s the combination for the door lock?’ the gunman asked Bryce.
‘Five-zero-zero-five-six.’
‘What’s in there?’
‘Storage. An employee restroom. The office.’
‘The recording system for your security cameras?’
A pause.
‘Yes.’
‘A gun?’
‘No.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
The gunman exchanged a look with the monstrous other. Burnel saw that his right hand was not as gnarled as his left. It now reached beneath his overlong jacket, and Burnel heard the sound of metal on leather. When the hand reappeared, it was holding a short machete.
‘Jesus,’ said Kezia, and Paige began whimpering.
‘Please,’ said Bryce again. ‘Please …’
‘My bro—’ the gunman began, then paused. ‘My friend here,’ he corrected himself, ‘is going to keep an eye on you all while I take a look behind that door. He doesn’t care much for firearms. He’s better with a blade. Don’t make him prove it.’
He pointed his gun at Paige.
‘You, missy. Up you get. You’re going to open that door for me, and show me around.’
Paige didn’t move. She knew what was going to happen behind the door.
‘No,’ she whispered.
The gunman squatted before her, and pushed the muzzle of the gun against her mouth so hard that the sight split her lip.
‘I think you misheard me,’ he said.
He snagged the sight under her teeth, and used it to draw her to her feet. As he did so, he looked from her to Burnel.
‘And you,’ he said. ‘I like your jacket.’
Which was when the Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputy pulled up outside.
20
Back at the Bear, Burnel took a sip of beer.
‘Have you ever been in that position?’ he asked Parker. ‘You know, at the mercy of someone without mercy?’
He smiled at his own formulation, and Parker was given a brief glimpse of the man Burnel once was – and somewhere deep inside, might still be: clever, but not overly so; confident and educated, but not arrogant. But the kind of man to store child pornography in both physical and electronic form, and not secure it?
That remained to be seen.
‘We all have,’ said Parker, which was when Louis joined them. ‘Well,’ Parker added, regarding Louis, and reconsidering his own answer in light of his presence, ‘most of us.’
‘And you survived,’ said Burnel. He looked from Parker to Angel and Louis, then back again.
‘The fact that you have an audience suggests we did,’ said Angel. His tone gave no indication that his attitude toward Burnel had softened in the course of his tale.
‘And the other party involved?’
‘It’s happened on more than one occasion,’ said Parker.
‘The parties involved, then.’
There was silence for a time, until Louis answered the question.
‘They didn’t come out of it so good.’
‘But,’ said Parker to Burnel, ‘we have that in common, don’t we?’
‘Yes,’ Burnel replied, ‘I think we do.’
And he returned to his story.
21
Sagadahoc County was the smallest county in the state of Maine, with a lot of inhabitants of Scots-Irish Presbyterian heritage, of which Deputy Ralph Erskine was one. He was named after a prominent eighteenth-century Presbyterian churchman, a statue of whom stood in the center of the town of Dunfermline in Scotland. Deputy Erskine intended to have his photograph taken alongside his namesake just as soon as he had enough money on which to retire, and thus enable him to make a pilgrimage to his ancestral homeland.
Erskine felt that he’d gotten off easy when it came to his nomenclature: his older brother, Ebenezer Erskine, was also named after a Scottish cleric, who had been, in turn, the older brother of the original Ralph Erskine. All of this had come about because Deputy Erskine’s late father, a man of impressive miserabilism, had been a Teaching Elder in the Presbytery of Northern New England. Upon his death, it was revealed that, in addition to leaving various small sums to his family in his will, and larger sums to his beloved church, he had also set aside a figure of $500 for a ‘modest celebration of his life’, as long as it was spent on nothing stronger than tea and lemonade. Just to be sure that everyone got the message, his will had included the relevant portion of the constitution of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, which advised that ‘it is altogether wise and proper that Christians refrain from the use, sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages.’ It had given Deputy Erskine no small amount of pleasure to redirect some of that $500 toward the purchase of a bottle of fifteen-year-old Balvenie, which he and Ebenezer had shared by their father’s graveside.
Deputy Erskine was one week short of his fifty-third birthday when he pulled up outside the Dunstan family gas station. He had a wife, four children, and a grandchild. He also had a liking for the pastries cooked by Bryce Dunstan’s wife, Dot. Since he was prediabetic, this was a weakness which his own wife regularly warned might kill him someday.
On this particular evening, Erskine had not intended to indulge himself with a crafty muffin, as he’d just eaten a Firehouse sub back in Topsham, but the absence of lights at the gas station had drawn his attention. Bryce sometimes closed up early if the mood struck him, but early for him was nine p.m., and that was still more than an hour away. Erskine pulled up outside, walked to the door, and tested it. Most of the lights were out, apart from a couple at the rear, and he caught signs of movement. He rapped on the glass, and called Bryce’s name, but received no reply.
‘Hey, all okay in there?’ he asked.
Bryce appeared at the back of the store, and waved to him.
‘Fine,’ he shouted. ‘Just closing up.’
But he did not approach the door.
Ralph Erskine was slightly overweight and, when under stress, was inclined to stammer. He’d never aspired to be sheriff, or even chief deputy. Neither did he want to be a lieutenant, a sergeant, or a corporal. Promotion might have meant more money, but it would also have involved administration, and additional paperwork, and meetings, and Erskine hated meetings more than he hated hemorrhoids.
None of
this meant that Erskine was not smart. He just liked being a patrol cop, and he was good at it. It was as though he’d been bred for it in the womb. Now he felt instinctively that something was wrong at Dunstan’s, and only the requirement to establish some certainty about it prevented him from returning to his car and calling for backup.
Erskine kept his voice as casual as he could.
‘Come on, Bryce. I’m cold and damp, and I need a cup of coffee. Do the Christian thing here.’
Bryce’s face was hard to see from where Erskine stood, but he was pretty damned sure that the old man was listening to someone standing to his left. He could glimpse it in the slight inclination of Bryce’s head. Erskine turned his body and let his hand slip to his holster, where he gently undid the strap securing his weapon.
‘I just threw out the pot,’ said Bryce, finally.
‘Then you can darn well make another one. You can afford it, prices you charge.’
Bryce started walking toward the door, but he moved like an actor playing a role, a performer with an unwanted audience. Erskine watched him come, but his eyes were also taking in the spaces around Bryce. The angle of the shelves obscured his view, but he didn’t want to make his surveillance too obvious. Dot might be back there, or Bryce’s daughter Paige, and if Erskine was right, then they weren’t alone.
Bryce reached the door, but didn’t unlock it.
‘I’m real tired, Ed,’ he said. ‘And I don’t feel so good. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to just finish up and head home.’
Ed. Not Ralph: Ed. Ralph Erskine and Bryce Dunstan had known each other for decades. This wasn’t a mistake.
Erskine held his gaze. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I understand. Is Dot around to help you?’
‘No, but Paige is here.’
‘Nobody else?’
Bryce licked his lips. ‘We had a couple of folks in here earlier—’ he began, which is when the man who called himself Henry appeared from behind the register and shot Ralph Erskine through the glass. The first bullet took Erskine high on the left shoulder, but he managed to draw his weapon before the second bullet hit him in the chest.