John Connolly - The White Road

“What did you see?”

“I told you. I saw-”

The gun cocked.

“What did you see?”

And Virgil at last understood.

“Nothing,” he said. “I saw nothing. I wouldn’t know the guys if I saw them again. Nothing. That’s all. Nothing.”

The gun moved away from his head.

“Don’t make me come back here, Virgil,” said the man.

Virgil’s whole body shook with the force of his sobs.

“I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

“Now you stay there, Virgil. You keep kneeling.”

“I will,” said Virgil. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said the man.

Virgil didn’t hear him moving away. He just stayed kneeling until at last the sun began to rise and then, shivering, he rose and walked back to his little house.

THEY BEGAN TO drift into the state over the next two days, in groups and alone, always by road, never by plane. There was the couple that checked into the small motel outside Sangerville, who kissed and cooed like the young lovers they appeared to be yet slept in separate beds in their twin room. There were the four men who ate a hurried breakfast in the Miss Portland Diner on Marginal Way, their eyes always returning to the black van in which they had arrived, tensing whenever anyone approached it and relaxing only slightly when they had passed by.

And there was the man who drove a truck north from Boston, avoiding the interstate whenever possible, until at last he found himself among forests of pine, a lake gleaming in the distance before him. He checked his watch-too early-and headed back toward Dolby Pond and the La Casa Exotic Dancing Club. There were, he figured, worse ways to kill a few hours.

The worst-case scenario came to pass: Supreme Judicial Court Justice Wilton Cooper carried out the review of the decision to deny bail to Aaron Faulkner. In the hour preceding the decision, Bobby Andrus and his team had presented their arguments against bail to Wilton Cooper in his chambers, pointing out that they believed Faulkner to be a substantial flight risk and that potential witnesses could be open to intimidation. When he asked them if they had any new evidence to hand, they had to admit that they had not.

In his submission, Jim Grimes argued that the prosecution had not presented sufficient evidence to suggest that Faulkner might have committed formerly capital crimes. He also offered medical evidence from three separate authorities that Faulkner’s health was deteriorating seriously in prison (evidence that the state itself was unable to contest, since its own doctors had found that Faulkner appeared to be suffering from some illness, although they were unable to say from what, precisely, except that he was losing weight rapidly, his temperature was consistently higher than normal, and both blood pressure and heart rate were abnormally high); that the stresses of incarceration were endangering the life of his client, against whom the prosecution had not yet been able to establish a substantial case; and that it was both unjust and inhumane to keep his client in prison while the prosecution attempted to amass enough evidence to shore up said case. Since his client would require medical supervision of the highest order, there was no real risk of flight and bail should be set accordingly.

Annoucing his decision, Cooper dismissed most of my testimony on the basis of the unreliability of my character and determined that the decision by the lower court not to grant bail had been erroneous, since the prosecution had not demonstrated sufficient probable cause that Faulkner had himself committed a formerly capital offense. In addition, he accepted Jim Grimes’s submission that his client’s poor health meant that he was not a danger to the integrity of the judicial process and that his need for regular medical treatment meant that he did not constitute a flight risk. He set bail at $1.5 million. Grimes announced that the cash was on hand. Faulkner, chained in an adjoining room under the guard of U.S. marshals, was to be released immediately.

To his credit, Andrus had foreseen the possibility that Cooper would set bail and, reluctantly, had approached the FBI and requested that they serve a warrant for Faulkner’s arrest on federal charges should he be released. It was not Andrus’s fault that the warrant had been improperly presented: a secretary had misspelled Faulkner’s name, rendering it null and void. When Faulkner left the courthouse, there was no warrant waiting.

Outside Courtroom Number One, a man in a brown Timber-land jacket sat on an empty bench and made a call. Ten miles away, the cell phone in Cyrus Nairn’s hand buzzed.

“You’re good to go,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Cyrus killed the phone and tossed it into the bushes by the side of the road, then started his car and drove toward Scarborough.

Flashbulbs opened fire as soon as Grimes appeared on the courthouse steps, but Faulkner was not with him. Instead, a Nissan Terrano, with Faulkner hidden beneath a blanket in the rear, turned right from the courthouse and headed toward the Public Market parking garage on Elm. Above it, a helicopter buzzed. Behind it, two cars shadowed. The AG’s office was not about to let Faulkner disappear into the depths of the honeycomb world.

A battered yellow Buick pulled in behind the Terrano as it reached the entrance to the garage, causing the following traffic to brake suddenly. There was no need for the big jeep to pause for a ticket because its arrival had been prepared for well in advance: the ticket dispenser had been disabled by the simple application of industrial adhesive while the security guard was distracted by a fire in a garbage can and the garage had been forced to leave both the entrance and exit barriers permanently raised while the damage was being repaired.

The Terrano passed through quickly, but the Buick following itground to a halt, blocking the entrance. Crucial seconds passed before the police in the tracking cars realized what was happening. The first car reversed, then headed up the exit ramp, speeding, while two detectives from a second car rushed to the Buick, pulled the driver from his seat, and cleared the entrance.

By the time the agents got to the abandoned Terrano, Faulkner was long gone.

At 7 P.M. Mary Mason left her house at the end of Seavey Landing for her date with Sergeant MacArthur. Beyond her house, she could see the marsh and the waters of the Scarborough River as they wended their way around the pointed finger of Nonesuch Point and into the sea at Saco Bay. MacArthur was her first real date since her divorce had come through three months earlier, and she was hopeful about a relationship with him. She had known the policeman by sight and, despite his rumpled appearance, thought him kind of cute in a hangdog way. Nothing in their first date had caused her to revise her estimate downward. In fact, he had been quite charming and when he had called her the night before to confirm that a second date was still on, they had talked for almost an hour, surprising him, she suspected, as much as she had surprised herself.

She was almost at the car door when the man approached her. He came from the trees that hid her property from the view of her neighbors. He was small and hunched, with long dark hair that trailed his shoulders and eyes that were almost black, like those of some underground, nocturnal creature. She was already reaching for the Mace in her bag when he struck her backhanded across the face and she fell. He knelt on her legs before she could react again and she felt the pain in her side, an immense burning as the blade entered below her ribs and began to tear its way across her stomach. She tried to scream but his hand was over her mouth and all she could do was wriggle impotently as the blade continued its progress.