Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

“Yeah.”

“How close?”

“Pretty close.” He grinned at me. I found I was grinning too, for some reason.

“One time she made me sing the Kenny Rogers parts of ‘Islands in the Stream,’” he said.

I laughed hard. “You’re just a man,” I said. “What could you do?”

Our smiles faded. When I looked over, Nick’s face had darkened. I was steeling myself to pass Monica Rink’s house when Nick suddenly put a hand out.

“Pull over,” he ordered.

I drove the car onto the shoulder. In the woods, a man with a dark beard and long hair was walking his dog, his eyes on the fallen leaves at his feet. Nick got out of the car and went to the rear tire. I leaned over and watched him in the side mirror as he pretended to examine the tire, then took out his phone and snapped a picture of the man with the dog over his shoulder.

He got back in. “Drive.”

“What the hell was that?”

“That dude.” Nick was ducking his head to watch the man disappear in mirror as we drove away. “That’s the third time this month I’ve seen him near the house.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I’ve seen him around. That’s Living the Dream.”

“Who?”

“I’ve spoken to him a couple of times. I just say, ‘Hello, how are you?’” I said. “He always says, ‘Living the dream.’”

“What does that mean?” Nick said, almost to himself. He was typing something into his phone. I glanced over and saw there was a list of times and dates, pictures of the bearded man. “Living the dream?”

I waited for Nick to tell me he was joking. He didn’t.

“Nick, he’s just a dude walking his dog.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “That’s what it’s supposed to look like. Just like that mother with her baby.”

One of Nick’s grisly tales from his time in Iraq was what he referred to as the Mother-Baby Story. His battalion had been traversing the desert from their base camp outside Alqosh to a small town called Jambur, moving supplies. Blistering sunlight, featureless sandy plains so wide you could see the curvature of the Earth. The lead vehicle had stopped when a middle-aged woman in a niqab ran out of a house in the desert waving her arms and crying, calling for assistance. With the soldiers’ guns trained on the woman, the unit’s interpreter had determined that a baby had stopped breathing inside the little house. The captain gave permission for two armed guys, the interpreter, and a medic to go assess the situation while the rest of the battalion remained where they were in the convoy. The four members of the team hadn’t even shut the door behind them when the house exploded, spraying the convoy with dust and debris.

Thinking about Nick’s Mother-Baby Story had made me forget completely that I was approaching the house of the woman responsible for Siobhan’s death. I realized with relief that the house was now behind us, but the relief was short-lived. Nick’s surveillance of Living the Dream and his dog was leading to an episode.

I had seen Nick fall victim to this before, when the mind that was so ravaged by his time in the service inched too far across the sanity line into dark territory and he was suddenly back there on the tour, where people were not who they seemed to be and any moment could be shattered by violent deaths. The bomb of Nick’s terrifying hidden memories had been ticking for a while now, and there was no telling when it was going to blow.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

VIOLENCE WAS ABOUT to break out at the Greenfish Bar.

Nick and I took the short end of the counter and I saw him right away, an old man tearing a cardboard coaster to shreds over a quarter glass of whiskey. His shoulders were up around his ears and his jaw was flexing, and I could see what remained of the muscles in his neck twitching. He was looking away from me and Nick at a group of men celebrating what seemed to be someone’s return. A skinny, pockmarked shrimp of a guy at the center of the group kept getting pats on the back and comments on his body, the men busting his balls about his lean arms.

While Nick was in the bathroom, the shrimpy guy walked down the bar and ordered a drink, leaning in a little too close to the elderly whiskey drinker.

“I’m catching those death stares you’re throwing my way, old man,” the shrimp said. The old man flinched. “Keep it up. It doesn’t bother me. I’m gonna have a few drinks here with my buddies, and then I’m going home to my wife. We’re trying to have another baby.”

The shrimp pushed the old guy’s drink over. It spilled and ran off the edge of the bar. The bartender rolled her eyes and poured the old man another while the shrimp walked away.

I don’t make it my business to get involved in bar fights, but I recognized the old guy. He had stood over Siobhan’s body in the medical examiner’s office the night I lost her. I’d been called in to identify her, and he’d put a hand on my back, warm and heavy. It had felt like the only thing keeping me from floating off and becoming nothing, that hand on my shoulder. The mere sight of Dr. Eric Mayburn now stole my breath away. Siobhan was everywhere. Inescapable.

Nick came back and ordered drinks for us, then slid an elbow out on the bar and surveyed the Greenfish’s sticky laminated menu. Lobster rolls and Jack Daniel’s–flavored hot wings.

“So here’s the plan,” Nick said. “We take the gun to Susan. Get her to run the serial number. I’m guessing whoever the jerk is, if he isn’t just some poor sap who’s had his gun stolen, he’s the kingpin and he gave the gun to Squid. We get the address and go around there, threaten him with what we know. He’s supplied a deadly weapon to a minor. He won’t want his house raided. He’ll move on.”

“I have a few problems with what you’re saying,” I said. “First, Susan doesn’t want to help us. She avoids anything that has to do with the Bureau.”

“I can’t work that woman out,” Nick said. “What’s she doing at the house? Why tell us she used to be Bureau if she’s not willing to tell us everything—what she did there, why she left. She’s too young to have retired. Maybe she got herself kicked out and she’s blacklisted.”

I shifted in my seat. Nick was wandering into territory that was dangerously familiar to me.

“Maybe she’s undercover, working on something,” Nick mused. “But then why tell us she used to be a fed at all? Maybe it’s all lies. Maybe she was supposed to marry a guy with Mob ties but left him at the altar.”

“You’re very creative,” I noted. “But whatever it is, I’m sure it’s none of our business. In any case, we have to decide what we’re going to do with this big-ass gun. Maybe we should take it to Clay.”

“What do you need a handgun that size in Gloucester for?” Nick said. “You know, I came to Gloucester to get away from guns, sirens, and crackheads. The fact that these creeps are handing out samples means they’re new in town, trying to lock in some long-term clientele. We stomp on them now and we won’t have ourselves another Baltimore.”

Nick was a Baltimore native, but he’d told me when he moved in here that he had returned to his city to find it worse than some of the war-torn villages he’d rolled through in Iraq. A drug epidemic had ravaged Baltimore, and its overcrowded rehab clinics, overwhelmed cops, and warring gangs had given it a dangerous reputation. Nick left for Gloucester after an elderly woman was beaten to death in the hallway of his apartment building for her handbag. He’d found her lying there stone-cold dead, the other residents too scared to dial 911 for fear of being called on as witnesses.

“Nothing like Baltimore is going to happen,” I said. “Not here.”

“You’re damn right it’s not,” he said. “So give me your plan.”