Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“You going to go around like that?”

“Like what?”

“With your gun showing?”

She glanced down at her holster. She was getting used to its feel. After all, she wore it all day, up until dinner, when she placed the weapon on the table in front of her as she ate. At night, it sat on the bedside and waited, its barrel staring into the darkness like some one-eyed creature, for Crow to come home. The gun then watched, as they made love. And they made love every night these days, at Tess’s insistence.

Crow eventually fell asleep, but Tess didn’t, not really. She was untroubled by her insomnia, had no desire to fight it or cure it. She believed her body knew she could not afford much more than catnaps, like the one she had allowed herself this morning, on the long drive to Crisfield.

She would sleep again later, when she was safe.

“Why don’t you have a gun?” she asked Carl.

“I’m not a cop anymore, as you like to remind me all the time. I had a service revolver. I turned that in.” He looked wistful. “It was sweet, a nine-millimeter. I’m surprised you use a thirty-eight.”

“It’s what I’m used to. Look, I think you should get a gun. There may even be a provision to get the waiting period waived, or we could drive down to Virginia, pick one up there. They’re a lot looser about these things in Virginia.”

“I don’t need a gun.”

She sensed something beneath his words. Not machismo or mere contrariness. He had thought about this.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, he doesn’t kill men.”

“What about Michael Shaw?”

“I don’t think he wanted to kill him. And he did it with a car, not a gun. Killing men-it’s like The Leech Woman, you know?”

“Is this another movie reference?”

“Well, yeah.” Carl’s voice was stiff, as if she had hurt his feelings, but he kept going. “A woman, a vain woman, learns about this potion that keeps her young. The only drawback is it requires blood, a man’s blood. Like a junkie, she needs more and more. The effects don’t last as long. Finally, she kills a woman-only it turns out that makes her go the other way.”

“She becomes a lesbian?”

Carl blushed, as she knew he would. She loved baiting him. “No, she starts aging, really fast, and she’s so horrified she throws herself out the window.”

“So William Windsor didn’t kill Michael Shaw because that would-well, what would it do, Carl? I’m not following you at all.”

“I’m just saying it didn’t give him pleasure. He only did it because he thought he had to, for some reason. Hazel too, I bet. He shoots his girlfriends.”

“He shot Julie Carter.”

“She was an ex-girlfriend. Besides, that’s how a junkie is going to die. He tailored the deaths to fit scenarios that seemed possible-a jogging doctor gets killed in a hit-and-run, a spinster dies in a fire, a junkie gets shot in a drug burn.”

They bounced along the water, absorbed in their own thoughts. Tess finally broke the silence.

“Do you think he gets confused?”

“What?”

“About his names. He’s had at least three in the past thirteen years, probably four, maybe more. He has to memorize different birthdays, birthplaces, remember where his Social Security number was issued.”

Carl thought so hard his face puckered.

“My best guess? He’s probably a very quiet guy who listens more than he talks. He doesn’t trip up because he doesn’t speak about himself. Doesn’t tell stories on himself, turns the conversation back to others. I think he says things like Tell me what you were like as a little girl, that kind of stuff.”

It was just what Tess had decided, en route to Saint Mary’s.

“So he woos these women, loves them, takes care of them. Then one day, without warning, he kills them. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Carl said. “Maybe the answer is up ahead.”

Notting Island had come into view.

“Saying the name William Windsor around here,” Carl said an hour later, “is like farting in front of a duchess.”

Tess knew what he meant, although she might have expressed it differently. The locals’ faces had frozen at the mention of the name, and while a few said yes, Billy Windsor had lived in Harkness once, they offered little more. The family was gone, he had no kin here, no one knew what had become of him. One older man, who appeared to be hard of hearing, pointed out the Windsor house, but it was clearly vacant and had been for some time. Someone was keeping the lawn trimmed at the white clapboard house, but the snowball bushes at the front had not been cut back for years. Bursting with heavy blue flowers, they almost blocked the front windows.

When Tess tried to follow up with questions about Becca Harrison, the older residents of Harkness said pointedly, “She lived down to Tyndall. We didn’t know her at all.”

If Tess had been alone, she might have given up. But Carl wouldn’t let her. They had come too far, literally and figuratively.

“Remember the old lady down at the general store in Tyndall Point?” he asked, as Tess slumped on a splintery old bench on the dock.

“Sure.”

“At least she admitted to knowing Becca Harrison. Maybe she’ll tell us something about Billy Windsor, too.”

“It’s worth a try.”

The distance between the two towns was no more than three miles, and they thought about starting off on foot or trying to convince one of the local teens to drive them. But there was no road that went all the way through, begging the question of why people here bothered to have cars at all. The only way to get from Harkness to Tyndall was by boat. No wonder those who lived in Harkness felt so separate from the residents of Tyndall.

The old crone was alone today, listening to a shortwave radio that crackled with watermen calling back and forth to each other as they worked. She seemed bored at first, indifferent to her visitors. But something flickered in her eyes at the mention of Billy Windsor, something bright and hard.

All she said was, “Ah, half the people in Harkness were named Windsor once upon a time. But they weren’t a hardy lot. Billy’s long gone, his father longer gone, and his mother lives with you.”

The syntax confused Tess. For a second she thought it was meant literally, that she was harboring Billy Windsor’s mother without knowing it. Then she realized the woman meant only that the mother lived on the mainland.

“But there must be people here who remember Billy. No one in Harkness seemed to know anything.”

“Of course they remember him. But why should they speak of him to you? They don’t know who you are or what you’re after.”

Tess realized that gossip was the most powerful currency at this store, that the woman would give as good as she got. Yet how could they risk telling her the truth?

“Nothing bad,” she said. “Quite the opposite. He may have come into a bit of money. At any rate, we’ve been asked to find him.”

“By who, Becca Harrison? I’d like to see her face when you tell her he drowned himself over her all those years ago. But she was cold then, and I suppose she’s cold now.”

Tess hesitated, but Carl picked up the lie, sure and confident. “She didn’t tell us why she wanted to find him. Just to find him.”

“Well, it’s an old story, probably not worth telling.” The woman was being coy. At first Tess thought she was teasing for money, a bribe. But she was just trying to stretch out the encounter, enjoying this variation in her usual daily routine.

“Please,” Carl said. “We’d really like to know. Becca hasn’t told us why she wants to find Billy Windsor, only that it’s important to her.”

“It’s a short story. Becca Harrison and her father moved here when she was thirteen, maybe fourteen. Billy Windsor fell for her so hard he was never the same again. Swagger die, it was like he had a killick around his neck. And that’s probably how he ended up.”