Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

That reassurance was short-lived. One of the girls pointed up the street and started laughing. “Someone called the real boys in blue on your asses.”

I turned and saw a familiar vehicle heading our way. Sheriff Spears’s friendly beep of the patrol-car siren was made more cheerful by his wave through the windshield as he approached.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CLINE SMILED THE thin-lipped, dead-eyed smile of a snake as he watched Sheriff Spears ease his bulk from the squad car. I noticed Marni in the back of the vehicle, leaning over to look up at the turret at the front of Cline’s house.

“Someone else call in Cline’s crew?” I asked Clay. “You got backup on the way?”

“Ah, no.” He looked puzzled, then glanced at Cline and his cronies. “I’m actually here about you. Some quack at Addison Gilbert called in a disturbance in the parking lot, gave us your license plate.”

“Tell me this fool ain’t the local sheriff.” The big goon with the knuckle tats eyed Clay. “I knew cops liked chillin’ in doughnut shops, but this guy looks like he owns the chain.”

The punks around us snickered. Clay smoothed the front of his shirt and swallowed hard as he took in the sight of the crushed Escalade windshield. “Is there some kind of trouble here? Can I offer assistance?”

“You cool, you cool,” one of the girls said. “We ain’t got no leftovers to get rid of.”

The whole crew laughed, but not Cline, who wasn’t paying much attention to Clay at all. His eyes followed me as I walked Clay back to his car. The sheriff was blushing at the collar of his shirt, sweat spotting his sides.

“Ignore those idiots,” I told him. “What’s Marn doing in the back of your car? Is she in trouble?”

“No, no.” Clay wiped his brow. “I got a call about a kid walking the train tracks. She told me she was just taking a shortcut home.”

I asked Nick to take my car back to the Inn, said I’d ride in the squad car with Marni. Cline watched us roll out, one corner of his mouth turned down regretfully, like he’d been enjoying the banter and wanted to toy with us a little more. I hoped he got what I tried to communicate as I climbed into the back of Clay’s car: I was not done with him yet.

Marni watched the people at the house through the back window as we turned for home.

“Squid again,” she said. “Does he live there? Wow. He’s done pretty good for a kid who couldn’t turn up to school on time even once in his whole life.”

“He’s not done well at all, if you ask me,” I said. “And I’d like it if you didn’t go anywhere near the people at that house, Marn.”

“Whatever.” She folded her arms.

“I know, I know.” I put my hands up. “You don’t want lectures. But this is serious. They’re bad news. Your friend Squid is tied up with some very dangerous people and I don’t want you doing the same.”

Marni chewed her nails, shrugged.

“Why didn’t you go to work today?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just bored with that place.”

“I’m not surprised.” I imitated her lazy face from the day before. “‘Thin crust. No anchovies. Double cheese.’” She grinned.

“You’re better than that and you know it,” I said. “But if you’re going to quit, you should quit right. Line something better up first. Give them notice.”

“I guess.” She looked out the window, watched the world go by. “I’m supposed to have a shift tonight too.”

“Call them when you get home and tell them you’re sick,” I said. “Take the night off. We’ll have a nice dinner and then you and me will sit and make a plan for what you’re going to do.”

“I wouldn’t know what else to do.” Marni sighed. “Wherever I go, it’ll be the same sort of thing. Make pizzas at Dough Brothers. Sell stamps at the post office. Gut fish on the docks. What’s the difference?”

“Marni, that is not your future,” I said. “I’m telling you. You’re smart, funny, and tough. Better things are waiting for you. You can’t see them, but I can.”

“Things like what?”

“Like music,” I said. “You’ve got talent, Marn. Go ahead. Roll your eyes. But you’ve got something there, something special. You tell great stories, and you kick ass on the violin. You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like a born musician. Someone who plays and writes music for adoring crowds. Who tells interviewers that she dropped out of high school and worked in a crappy pizza joint before she made it big.”

She looked at me, and I knew she was wondering if I could be right. I tried to look as confident as I could. But she knew, and I knew, that I hadn’t done well predicting my own future over the past couple of years. Siobhan was the plan maker, not me. But even as I sat doubting myself, a smile grew on Marni’s face, and I felt for a moment that I had done my job.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

WHEN WE ARRIVED home, Clay followed me to the front of the house, his head down and his shoulders high, as if he expected to be hit.

“I’ve got a problem,” he said. We stopped by the corner of the porch. “I actually know those guys back there.”

“Cline and his crew?” I said.

“Yeah.” Clay kept smoothing his shirt over his belly like he might be able to flatten his gut with his hands. “The missing guy? Newgate? He was one of them. I’ve got a witness says she saw two of Cline’s guys, Russell Hamdy and Christopher ‘Simbo’ Jackson, dropping Newgate’s kid at his house on the morning he went missing. Newgate leaves with the kid, then later the kid’s dropped home, no one sees Newgate again. A cleaner found his phone and wallet in a garbage can near the beach.”

“He’s dead,” I said. “Must have pissed off the boss somehow. These guys go through soldiers like tissues.”

“It gets worse.”

“How?”

Clay took a deep breath. “They found a head.”

“A what? A head? Newgate’s head?”

“Nope.” Clay massaged his brow. “Local woman named Mary Ann Druly. Her daughter’s an addict. Couch-hopping around Boston, so I heard. Mary Ann Druly confronted Cline in a restaurant last night. Made a big scene. I get a call at five this morning at the station from a couple of hysterical tourists down from Maine. They found a head in front of the memorial.”

The memorial to fishermen lost at sea was a bronze statue of a man at the helm of a ship positioned right on the waterfront in town. It was a symbol of all that was Gloucester, its pride in its history as America’s oldest fishing port, its tenacity in times of crisis.

“I’ve never seen a head before. Just a head on its own like that.” Clay looked queasy. “The crime-scene tech picked it up by both ears like it was a soup pot.”

“Did they find the rest of her?”

“Mary Ann’s husband followed her cell phone signal out to Dogtown and located the body in the woods. Got there before we could.” Clay looked helplessly at the sky. “I’m out of my depth here, Bill.”

“You’re not out of your depth,” I said. “You just need to take this one step at a time. Bring in the witnesses from the restaurant. The ones from outside Newgate’s house. Get the security-camera footage from the waterfront.”

“That’s the thing,” Clay said. “The witnesses—the ones in the Newgate case and the Druly case—they talked to me on the phone and told me everything they saw. Then I sent my guys out to get it on the record, and suddenly no one knows anything. All the witnesses have clammed up. The cameras on the waterfront seemed to have been working last night but no one can find the tape. It almost makes me think … but no. It’s not possible.”