John Connolly - Bad Men

Shit.

Marianne saw the cab at almost the same instant that Willard began to speed up his progress. The lights were changing to amber over by Chili’s restaurant, and the cabdriver seemed inclined to stop. She waved her hand frantically, causing cars to honk their horns as she ran across the road, and saw the driver glance to his right, where a competitor was exiting from the Hampden Inn with an empty cab. In that second, he made his decision and hit the accelerator, shooting through the lights as they turned to red in his rearview mirror. He pulled in alongside her and she clambered in, just as Willard started to run.

“Commercial,” said Marianne. “Please, and quickly.”

The cabdriver glanced in the rearview as he got ready to pull out, and spotted Willard.

“Hey,” he said, “you know this guy?”

Marianne looked back. Willard was running between the traffic, dodging the oncoming hoods almost gracefully. He was maybe thirty feet from the cab.

“A guy I once dated,” she said. “I really don’t want to talk to him. There’s ten bucks in it for you.’

“For an extra ten, I’ll date him myself,” said the cabdriver. He swung out and shot away from the curb. Marianne heard a noise from behind, like fingers vainly dragging along the trunk of the cab, but she did not look back.

Willard stood on the curb, watching the cab head off toward Portland. Had the lights at the mall entrance gone red, then he might have caught up with them, but the cab had a free run to the main intersection. Willard took a deep breath and debated whether or not he should tell Moloch what had occurred. He might have been wrong about the woman, of course, but the look on her face as she had seen him approach through the back window of the cab told him that his suspicions were correct. It was her. She knew who he was, and if she knew that, then she must also know that they had come for her at last. The shock on her face told him one more thing: she didn’t know that Moloch was free, otherwise she wouldn’t have been trying to pass an idle evening with some shitty movie.

He had to tell Moloch. Already, the woman would be preparing to run again.

Willard was surprised by how calm Moloch appeared to be, at least initially. As it turned out, the calm didn’t last long.

“You’re certain it was her?” said Moloch.

“Pretty sure. Her hair is different, and she looked kind of dowdy, but I saw her face as that cab pulled away. She knew me.”

“How? There’s no way that she could have known who you are.”

“Maybe she picked up on me when I was tailing her, back before she ran.”

“If she did, then you’re the shittiest tail I ever knew.”

Willard bridled at the insult but said nothing.

“You should have caught her. Now she knows we’re here.”

“Where can she go? There’s no way she could have made the ferry.”

“You think that’s the only boat down there? They have water taxis. She could go to another island and get someone to bring the kid to her. You think we have time to scour every island for her? Get the others. Describe her to them, and set them to looking for her in town. If nobody has found her by seven, we bring everything forward.” Willard left him. Moloch called Braun in his room. Braun listened, then hung up.

“We need to get going,” he told Dexter.

“The hell are you talking about?” asked Dexter. “This shit is only starting to get good.”

“Willard saw the wife. He thinks she made him.”

Dexter swore, then turned off the TV. They packed up and joined Moloch and the others in his room. Shepherd and Tell had just arrived. Tell still had sugar on his sweater.

“An extra twenty-five thousand for the one who finds her,” said Moloch. He looked at Willard. “And I want her intact, you hear?”

Willard didn’t even nod, but he could see Dexter grinning at him. Once again, he recalled the look that had passed between Dexter and Moloch. Willard decided that he was going to have to deal with Dexter, and sooner rather than later.

The cab dropped Marianne on Commercial, footsteps from the ferry dock. The dock was empty and she could see the lights of the ferry disappearing into the evening darkness. She swore and felt the fear wash over her. It almost reduced her to tears. She tried to hold herself together.

They would be expecting her to head back to the island, if only to get Danny. Maybe if she could get someone to pick up Danny and get him off the island, then she could avoid going back to Dutch at all. Briefly, she considered calling the cops and telling them everything, but Marianne was afraid that they would take Danny away from her, perhaps even jail her. No, the cops were not yet an option.

Except…

She dialed 911 and told the dispatcher that she had seen a man out by the mall who looked like the guy on TV, you know, the blond guy. She gave an accurate description of Willard’s dress, right down to the baseball cap, then hung up.

That would give them something to think about.

She didn’t have much time. She dropped some coins in the slot and rang Bonnie Claeson’s number. The phone rang three times and then was picked up.

“Hello?” she said.

There was static on the line, but it wasn’t regular static. It ebbed and flowed. At first, it sounded a little like soft cotton being rubbed between someone’s fingers. For an instant, an image came to her unbidden: an insect beating its wings, while around it a host of others did the same in preparation for some great flight.

Then the line died.

She tried again, and got only a busy signal. She tried three more numbers, including Jack’s, with the same result.

Finally, Marianne gripped her bag and ran for a water taxi, just as the first flurries of snow began to fall.

Shepherd arrived first at the pier, only to see the water taxi disappearing from sight, a tiny puff of smoke seeming to mock him as it went. He removed a pair of binoculars from his pack and found the woman in the prow of the boat. She was, as far as he could make out, the only passenger. As he stared at her, she looked back toward the pier and he was certain that she was looking at him. He thought he could read fear in her eyes.

Tell appeared beside him, and Shepherd smiled.

“She’s going home.”

Willard’s instincts were honed to perfection. He saw the patrol car before the cop inside could spot him, and slipped into the Starbucks in the Old Port, stripping himself of his coat and hat as he went. He didn’t know who they were looking for, but he could guess. The woman had seen him, and she had called the cops to make life difficult for him.

Willard didn’t care. Life had always been difficult for him.

He ordered a coffee, then slipped back out onto the streets and lost himself from view.

As soon as Willard told him of his encounter with Marianne, Moloch called Scarfe and headed for the meeting place he had suggested, the rocky outcrop by the twin lights in Cape Elizabeth. The rocks and the small beach were deserted. With the approaching storm, even the locals had retreated to their homes.

There were two men waiting on the beach, snow already whitening their shoulders and hair. One was Scarfe. The other was Barron.

“So this is the tame cop?”

Moloch looked at the policeman with a mixture of distaste and amusement. Barron was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a padded jacket. He looked uneasy.

“I’m not your tame cop,” he said.

“What would you prefer to be called? Pedophile cop? Child molester cop? Please, let me know. I want you to be as comfortable as possible in your dealings with me.”

Barron’s face flushed, but he didn’t reply.

“You should have been more careful, Officer. Your tastes have made you the bitch of anyone to whom your creditors choose to offer you.”