Dreams in the Key of Blue (32 page)

“Don’t tell me that Jasper let her walk.”

“She didn’t have anything to hold her on,” Jaworski said.

“What ever happened to attempted murder? Squires tried to blow away Gretchen Nash.”

“News still travels slow around here,” he said, “when it
moves at all. Jasper didn’t know about the shooting. Squires said she’d stay at the Clear Skies and be available for further questioning. I called the motel. She isn’t there. Never checked in.”

“Of course she never checked in!” I roared. “What was Jasper thinking?”

“I ain’t the psychiatrist,” Jaworski said, “but I figure Jasper can’t picture a woman committing these crimes. Some of it’s the contradictions we’ve got in the evidence. Mostly I think she can’t imagine doing something like this, so she can’t imagine any woman doing it. Then you’ve got Ms. Amanda. Either she’s damn convincing, or you’re wrong about her.”

Amanda Squires had appeared from nowhere, left her mark on Portland, then zipped up the highway and run her scam on a Quantico-educated state detective.

I collapsed into a chair. “I’ve been wrong,” I said. “I went to Squires’s Danforth Street apartment. She has a collection of snakes in aquarium tanks and a stack of uncashed checks signed by Paul Crandall. The whole thing is a prop. The rest of the building is empty.”

“Jasper says it ain’t Squires’s voice on the tape log.”

I rested my neck against the back of the chair. My eyes wanted to close and dissolve all thought into the deepest sleep. Perhaps adrenaline would lose this one.

“Squires isn’t the only player,” I said. “When I was at Danforth Street, a guy showed up. He knocked me on my ass and took off.”

“I read through the notebook,” Jaworski said, pointing to Lily Dorman’s journal. “I’d wonder about anybody who didn’t fall to pieces after growing up like that.”

“We’re fortunate that not everyone who lives through hell takes up murder,” I said, struggling to fight off the urge to sleep. “I stuck Stu Gilman in a room. He is Paul Crandall.”

“Lucas, Jasper and the feds want you in Ragged Harbor today. Hubble Saymes wants me there.”

I forced myself to get up. I needed an extra charge to break from my inertia, and Jaworski had given it to me.

“Things are happening too fast, Herb. There’s no time to get an army up to speed. We need to pay another visit to Martin International. This time we take our own vice president with us.”

AS WE MADE THE SHORT DRIVE TO MI’S CORPORATE
headquarters, Gilman dozed in the cruiser’s backseat. His night of blood, sweat, and wine had taken a toll. He smelled bad. I was far from floral, but fairly certain I was not wearing eau de sleeping wino.

Jaworski radioed Portland P.D. for a records check on the licence plate
NORT.
It was a mystery that should not have been; the plate came back to Norton Weatherly.

“I could’ve told you that,” Gilman mumbled.

“Why the fuck didn’t you?” the chief snapped.

The first change at MI since our last visit was apparent when we drove into the parking lot. There were no cars.

“Ain’t no holiday that I know about,” Jaworski said, pulling and pushing his bulk out of the car and unwrapping a stick of gum.

I poked Gilman awake, and the three of us walked to the gate.

“Where are the dogs?” Jaworski asked.

I gazed along the fence. There was no sign of the menacing shepherds. I grabbed the chain-link barrier and shook it, creating a metallic din. Still no dogs.

“That’s strange,” Gilman said. “They’re always on the grounds.”

“How do people get in and out of the place?” I asked.

“The dogs wear electronic collars. These two, Mark
and Twain, don’t respond to voice commands. They remain on alert until they receive a radio signal from inside.”

Gilman slipped a plastic card through a black box on the gate. Nothing happened.

“Huh,” Gilman grunted. “The signal lights aren’t on either.”

“Power’s off,” Jaworski said, gazing up at MI’s flags snapping in the brisk wind. “Probably a tree blew down on some wires.”

“We have our own generators,” Gilman said. “They start automatically if there’s an outage.”

“No way I’m climbing over that sucker,” Jaworski said, retreating to his cruiser and opening the trunk. “Does the V.P. authorize forced entry?”

Gilman shrugged. “I don’t know if I can do that. I guess so.”

In seconds, Jaworski returned with a crowbar. “You’d be amazed at the uses I’ve found for this thing,” he said, and worked the gate lock. “Bought it at the local hardware for a buck-seventy-five, forty years ago. Best investment I ever made.”

The gate popped open. “When those dogs get their collar buzz,” Jaworski said, “do they restrain the intruder or shred him?”

“I don’t know,” Gilman answered helplessly.

Jaworski gave me the crowbar and slipped his gun from its holster. “Let’s go,” he said, pushing through the gate.

Bulbous black clouds rolled across the leaden sky. When we reached the main door, Jaworski watched for Mark and Twain, Gilman stood with his hands in his pockets, and I added to my résumé of authorized illicit entries.

“You’re good at that,” Jaworski said when the door squealed open.

“I watched you at the gate,” I reminded the chief.

“Bullshit. You could be your own one-man crime wave if you ever set your mind to it.”

He had no fucking idea.

We stepped into Martin International’s entry hall, a vast cavern of exposed beams, slate floor, and a massive abstract marble sculpture. Skylights allowed shafts of the day’s dim illumination to descend at angles into the room. The effect was similar to the sally ports in jails that I have visited, except that this foyer smelled considerably better.

“Which way?” Jaworski asked Gilman, his voice echoing through the halls.

“The place is empty,” Gilman muttered, staggering ahead to a large, glass-walled room. “There should be a dozen clerks in there.”

“Where are the executive offices?”

“Up there,” Gilman said absently, pointing to a stairwell.

We climbed the stairs and stepped into another, smaller foyer. Gilman crossed the carpeted area and stared at a door.

“My nameplate is gone.”

“Pry open that end door,” Jaworski instructed. Gilman wandered over. “That’s Melanie Martin’s office.”

The door was not locked. I pushed it open and gazed into the vacant room.

Jaworski checked two more offices with the same results. “Nothing,” he said.

“I was here two days ago,” Gilman said. “It was business as usual. I don’t believe this.”

I stepped into the office and crossed the room to an open wall safe. It was empty except for two small, rectangular pieces of heavy paper jammed into a corner at the back.

“You find something?” Jaworski asked.

“Photographs,” I muttered, staring at the image of a woman in her early twenties, dressed in jeans and a Portland State University sweatshirt.

“Know who she is?”

I shook my head and slipped the photograph into my jacket pocket. “But I know who this is,” I said, handing Jaworski the second photo.

“It’s a mug shot. Where have I seen this?”

“Stanley Markham.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Stu, where does Norton Weatherly live?”

“South Portland, near the water. I can show you.”

“Lucas, we’ve broken a lot of laws here,” Jaworski said. “What the hell is going on?”

“These folks were reaping millions. Their operation was threatened. If we can catch up with Weatherly before
he
disappears, he’ll answer your question more completely than I can.”

WEATHERLY’S NEIGHBORHOOD RESEMBLED GILMAN’S
. Half a dozen modern Cape Cod houses shared the left side of the road. Wind churned the Atlantic Ocean into a black froth opposite the houses.

I climbed from the car and stared at the sea.

“Storm’s coming fast,” Jaworski said. “By suppertime, maybe a little later, we’ll get hit.”

The salt spray stung my face.

“The last northeaster we had, I stood on the breakwater in Ragged Harbor and watched tenfoot waves snap mooring lines and flip motor launches and sailing yachts like they were toys. Rusty Haggard’s forty-foot lobster boat smashed to kindling on the breakwater, fifty yards from where I stood. Some of the old-timers call a storm like that ‘devil’s breath.”’

As Jaworski talked, I remembered sitting in the sand on Nantasket Beach in Massachusetts as a teenager, watching a hurricane race toward land. Towers of black clouds rolled across the sky as ocean swells crested and broke and re-formed, then finally smacked down on the shoreline with a lingering roar. I remembered hearing the clacking of rocks tumbling over rocks as the tons of water retreated.

“I don’t see Nort’s car,” Gilman said.

Jaworski’s knock brought a woman in her forties to the door. She glanced quickly at Jaworski and me, then focused on Gilman. “Oh, hi, Stu,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re looking for Nort, Viv.”

Viv and Nort were in dire need of name modification.

“He’s at the office. Why aren’t you there?”

“He’s not at the office, ma’am,” Jaworski said, and introduced himself.

“What do you want with Nort?”

I wanted to deck the bastard, but bit my tongue.

“I have a few questions to ask him,” the chief continued. “When did you last see him?”

“This morning at breakfast. He took his briefcase and went to MI.”

I watched Viv Weatherly’s eyes and listened to her evenly modulated voice. Her tone lacked alarm, concern, even curiosity.

“Stu and I will wait in the car,” I told Jaworski, grabbing Gilman by the arm and leading him back to the cruiser.

“You ever been in their backyard?” I asked.

“For barbecues. Sure.”

“Could I get to the road through there?”

Gilman thought for a moment. “This street circles around. There’s a hedge in back of their house. If you go
through the hedge and cut across the neighbor’s yard, I think you come out on this street at the other end.”

“Stay in the car,” I told him, and jogged down the road.

I slowed at the property abutting Weatherly’s and watched the hedge. In seconds, I heard someone battling through the thick vegetation. Weatherly burst into the open, spotted me immediately, and said, “Oh fuck,” then broke into a run directly at me.

I resolved not to get cuffed again, but debated whether to tackle him or step aside and trip him as he went by. My moment of deliberation cost me. Weatherly hammered me in the chest with his forearm, and I crashed down on my ass. He ran into the street, his legs pumping up and down like a lanky teenager who was awkward but fast.

I pushed myself to my feet and trotted after him. He was forty yards ahead of me and increasing the distance. I spotted his Mercedes parked on the right. I knew that I would not catch him before he got to the car, so I slowed to a walk, watching him and promising myself that I would teach this guy a few lessons at the first opportunity.

Weatherly slipped into the Mercedes. In an instant, the car’s front end lifted off the ground. Flames flashed from the engine compartment, followed by black smoke and a roar. Fire engulfed the car. When the gas tank exploded, the Mercedes lifted again, shuddered, and returned to earth a shattered mass of twisted metal, melting in its own inferno.

Jaworski jogged up behind me. “What the hell?”

“Damn. I wanted to punch that prick,” I said. “He should have let me catch him. I wouldn’t have done that to him.”

I WAITED IN THE CRUISER WITH GILMAN WHILE JAWORSKI
talked with the Portland police.

“What happened?” Gilman asked, watching police and fire equipment pass.

“Someone planted a bomb in Weatherly’s car.”

“He’s dead?”

I nodded.

“Oh God,” he moaned, covering his face with his hands.

Suddenly he dropped his hands. “Clea and the girls,” he yelled, grabbing my shoulder.

“A Portland detective found them at the Radisson,” I said, prying away Gilman’s hands. “They’re safe, and they have protection.”

“I don’t know what’s happening here.”

The operation that Weatherly ran at MI might bring any crazy out of the woodwork, from a disgruntled client to a street thug. I did not seriously think that either scenario had played out on posh, residential Atlantic Way. I imagined something more sinister, connected to the other killings.

Jaworski stuck his head through the car window.
“They’re going to need written statements from everybody,” he said.

I shook my head. “There’s no time, Herb. Have them start with Gilman. You and I can return later.”

“What the hell is the rush?”

“MI disappeared. People are flocking to the cemetery by the busload in body bags. Squires walked in and out of your P.D. This is like Barnum and Bailey, three rings, and all the clowns are making their exit.”

Jaworski relented. “I’ll walk Gilman over. They aren’t going to like this.”

While I waited, I considered what I had and what I did not have. Weatherly was dead. Gilman probably knew more than he had told me, but he was distraught, sleep-deprived, hungover, and unaware of the significance of what he might know.