John Connolly - Bad Men

“Can I ask your name, ma’am?”

The woman jerked as if she’d just been hit with an electric shock.

“Marianne Elliot,” she said. “My name is Marianne Elliot.”

“Were you having trouble with the taxi?”

“Just a disagreement about the fare, that’s all. In the end, I paid a little over the odds, but it’s a bad night. It was good of him to take me over after I missed the ferry.”

Macy examined the woman’s face but saw no reason to doubt her story. She patted the car roof and moved back.

“Well, Miss Elliot, you take care on the road. I know you’re in a hurry, but you want to get back to your son safe and sound, don’t you?”

For the first time, the woman seemed to truly notice her.

“Yes,” she said. “More than anything else in the world.”

Thorson was sipping coffee in the cabin of the ferry when Macy came onboard.

The captain offered her his flask and a spare cup, but she declined.

“You’re not making another crossing, right?” she asked. Dupree had told her to check, although he had been pretty certain that Thorson would not be taking the ferry out again.

Thorson stared out into the night. He even looks like a ferry captain, thought Macy: white beard, red cheeks, yellow oilskins. He was a good captain, according to Dupree; in all its long history, there had never been an accident involving Thorson’s ferry. He was just more respectful of the sea than most.

“You kidding? There’s already a small-craft advisory in place, and even the Casco Bay ferries are going to stop running in an hour. There won’t be a boat on the water after that. Soon as I finish my coffee I’m heading home, and that’ll be me done until the morning.”

“Okay, just thought I’d make sure. Say, you know the captain of that water taxi that came in just now?”

“Yeah, that’s Ed Oldfield. I was surprised to see him out so far on a night like this.”

“He say anything to you about the woman he brought over?”

“Marianne? No, just that she seemed to want him to wait for her and take her back to Portland. He wouldn’t do it. If he waited any longer he’d be stuck here overnight, and he’s got a family at home on Chebeague.”

Macy thanked him and returned to the Explorer, then headed back through town toward the station house. Dupree was still hunched over his desk, painstakingly typing details into the primitive-looking computer on his desk as he tried to avoid hitting two keys simultaneously with his big fingers. He looked up as Macy entered, brushing snow from her jacket.

“Anything unusual?”

“A few locals, and a water taxi. Just one passenger onboard. She said her name was Marianne Elliot.”

Macy picked up on the look that crossed Dupree’s face.

“You know her?”

“Yeah,” he said.

Was he blushing, she wondered?

“She’s a friend.”

“She was in quite a hurry. Said she was late to pick up her kid. Thorson said he thought she might be trying to get back to the mainland tonight.”

Dupree frowned. “Nobody’s going back to Portland tonight. Maybe I’ll take a run by her place later, make sure she’s okay.”

Despite herself, Macy felt one of her eyebrows arch.

“What?” said Dupree.

“Nothing,” said Macy, trying to sound innocent. “Nothing like a concerned, active police force.”

“Yeah.” He sounded dubious. “Speaking of concerned and active, you mind taking a short ride out?” Dupree was worried about Marianne now. He couldn’t understand why she would want to return to Portland before morning, unless there was something wrong. He’d use his own Jeep to drop in at her place as soon as he had finished his paperwork.

“No problem, but that snow is falling pretty heavily and the wind is picking up some. Soon, it’s going to start to drift.”

“I don’t want you to make a full circuit of the island, not in this weather. Larry Amerling told me you were out by the main watchtower today. You think you can find it again?”

“It’s easy enough to find: take a right on Division and straight on till morning, right?”

“That’s it. Heard you ran into Carl Lubey while you were out there.”

“He was charming. Still single too. Quite a catch.”

“Yeah, like catching rabies. Could you swing by Lubey’s place?” He pointed it out to her on the wall map. “It’s a shithole, so you can’t miss it, even in this weather. Couple of rusted-out cars in the drive and a big screw-you satellite dish in the yard. Last night, I had to roust him from the bar along with a mainland lowlife named Terry Scarfe. According to Thorson, Terry didn’t come back over today, but I still don’t like the fact that he and Lubey were spending time together.”

Macy zipped up her jacket and got ready to go, but Dupree stopped her.

“I guess you already know it, but Carl Lubey is the brother of a man I shot. I killed him. Carl’s a sleazebag, but he’s harmless alone. If I go out there, I’ll only rile him up, and the next thing we know we’ll have him cuffed to the chair over there, smelling up the place until morning. I hate to do this to you on your first night and all, but it will put my mind at rest if I know that Carl Lubey is tucked up safe in his bed. The tree coverage should mean that the road is still okay, but you run into any problems and you just come right back, y’hear?”

Macy told him that she would. Secretly, she was pleased to be leaving the station house. The TV wasn’t working properly and she was likely to be cooped up inside until morning. One last trip out would kill some time and leave her with more of her book to read. She drove carefully up Island Avenue until she left the street lamps behind, then put her headlights on full and followed the coast toward Division.

Carl Lubey was not tucked up safe in his bed, although he was starting to wish that he was. Curiously, he was thinking about Macy, just as Macy was now thinking about him, because he was staring into the innards of his truck, a truck that right now just would not start.

The cop had warned him. She said she’d seen it billowing fumes, but he just hadn’t listened.

Son of a bitch.

It had been driving okay earlier in the day, but now, just when he needed it to run, the engine was turning over with a click. The battery was new, so it couldn’t be that. Inside his garage, with the lamp hanging from the hood, Carl took a rag and wiped the oil from his hands. It could be the starter, he figured, but that would take time to repair and he didn’t have that kind of time. He had people to meet, and if Scarfe was telling the truth, they were the kind of people who wouldn’t take kindly to being kept waiting. He didn’t want them to wait, either. The sooner they got what they wanted, the sooner he would get what he wanted, which was a big dead policeman.

Carl was a coward. He knew he was a coward, although sometimes, when he was liquored up, he liked to tell himself that he was just smart, and that men like him, smaller and weaker than those around them, had to find other ways to fight back when people did them a bad turn. If that meant stabbing them in the back, then so be it. If they hadn’t crossed him, they wouldn’t have had to worry about their backs anyway.

Carl’s brother was different-strong and hard and, hell, maybe even kind of mean, but a real man, one who had stood up for his little brother time and time again. And because Ron had been a stand-up guy for Carl, when the time came, Carl had been a stand-up guy for him.

Carl still remembered the call. They’d both been out drinking in Portland, and Ron had headed off with some woman he’d picked up in Three-Dollar Dewey’s. She looked kind of familiar to Carl. According to Ron, she was Jeanne Aiello, all grown up. Generations of Aiellos had lived out on Dutch until Jeanne’s parents had grown tired of the isolation and had left for more “civilized” surroundings. Now little Jeanne was back in Maine, working in one of those tourist stores in the Old Port, and seemed real happy to be making Ron’s acquaintance once again.