At the door, Forbes told her to find someone to look after her child, because when they came back with an arrest warrant they’d be taking her to Gray for questioning. It was Walsh who played good cop, figuring that Schrock was a young woman who responded better to male authority figures, particularly older males. He told her that they didn’t want her to get into any trouble but they needed to talk to Allan, and if she had heard from him then she ought to tell them. He reminded her that there was a girl missing, a girl who might at this very moment be suffering grave torments, who was probably very frightened and at risk of death. All they were asking for was any help that she could offer.
Schrock began to cry. She was, in the end, little more than a child herself. She told them that Allan sometimes used her cell phone when he visited, both to make and to receive calls, but deleted the numbers before he gave the phone back to her. Schrock did not have online access to her account, as she simply topped up her phone credit when necessary. Walsh sought and received permission to access her call records from her service provider when she told him that Allan had used her phone the day before. Walsh made them coffee in the kitchen while Forbes called Engel about the cell phone records on the grounds that the feds could retrieve the relevant information faster than anyone else could. While they sat on the uncomfortable furniture, drinking cheap coffee and looking at the bare walls of Schrock’s dingy, dark apartment, the baby began to cry, and wouldn’t stop until Walsh took a turn with it, whereupon it promptly fell asleep in his arms.
At that point, Schrock admitted that she had first had intercourse with Kurt Allan when she was fifteen.
Both of the numbers called by Allan, and from which he had received calls, were traced to throwaway phones bought in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as was the final call made from the gas station the previous night. The cell phones in question, though, had not been thrown away. One was found in the pocket of Tommy Morris, and the other in the car used by the hunters to drive to Pastor’s Bay. Allan had not only sold out the man he believed to be Randall Haight; he had also sold out Tommy Morris to his enemies. The apartment building in Lincolnville had previously been owned by a shelf operation in Boston, UIPC Strategies, Inc., and looked after by a property-management company based in Belfast. While the Belfast company still maintained the property, they informed the state police that the building in question had been sold three months earlier by a Boston bank when the company of ownership had defaulted on its loan. That company, UIPC, had been a front for Tommy Morris’s property investments. The trail became clearer: Allan had been one of Morris’s tame cops in Boston and had kept up the connection after moving to Maine, keeping an eye on Morris’s estranged sister while feeding him information that might be of use to him and facilitating the movement of drugs, weapons, and other contraband when required. In fact, it seemed likely that Morris had pointed Allan toward the job in Pastor’s Bay in the first place. In return, Morris paid him a retainer, and eventually gave his girlfriend and his child a place to live. But as Morris’s problems had mounted so Allan’s cash supply had been cut off, and his new family was no longer able to live free, or at a reduced rent, on Morris’s dime. The disappearance of Anna Kore had provided Allan with an opportunity to make some money off Tommy Morris’s scalp, and so he had lured him to Pastor’s Bay, baited his trap with Randall Haight, and then informed Oweny Farrell’s crew of where Morris could be found.
A subpoena was immediately sought for access to Allan’s own cell phone records. The previous night, shortly after nine p.m., he had received a call to his cell phone from a previously unknown number. Foster, the Pastor’s Bay officer who had officially been on duty that night, confirmed that when he returned to the station at 9:10 p.m., Allan was gone. The phone used to make the call to Allan had not been found, but through a process of triangulation the source of the call was narrowed down to the woods near Lonny Midas’s home. Attempts to trace Allan by ‘pinging’ his cell phone proved fruitless, just as they had for Anna Kore’s phone. If Allan was still in possession of his cell phone, he had switched it off and removed the battery.
Allan’s truck wasn’t found by the state police or the feds but by a sixteen-year-old boy and his fifteen-year-old girlfriend who had driven to a coastal lookout called Freyer’s Point in order to watch the sun set and enjoy a little quality time together. They spotted a vehicle in the woods as they approached the lookout, and not caring to engage in acts of intimacy when someone might be watching, decided to turn back and find somewhere more private. The boy saw that the driver’s door was open. Concerned, he went to take a look, and thought that he recognized Chief Allan’s truck. Rumors had already begun to spread around Pastor’s Bay that the chief was missing, so the boy called 911. The state police and the feds descended and found two cell phones in the glove compartment: Allan’s own, and the one that had been used to call him from the woods. To the police and the FBI, it seemed that Allan had fled. It was only when $10,000 in twenties and fifties was found hidden beneath the spare tire that they began to reconsider their assessment.
Alongside the money and the phones, tied up in a blue plastic bag and freshly laundered, were Anna Kore’s blouse, skirt, and underwear.
38
I
missed the furor caused by the discovery of Allan’s truck. Once Engel and Walsh had consented to let me leave the station house, although not the environs of Pastor’s Bay, I went to the disturbingly low-key bed-and-breakfast inn off Main Street operated by the twin sisters of uncertain age, and asked for a room. I was in no state to drive. My perforated eardrum was still causing me pain, although the feelings of nausea and vertigo had almost gone, but I was exhausted and my head ached. When I arrived at the door of the B and B, my clothes caked with dried mud, I expected to be told to find a tolerant motel or sleep in my car. Instead, the sisters, who answered the door together dressed in identical pale-blue dresses, showed me to their largest room ‘because it has a bath.’ They pointed out the robe in the closet and told me to leave my dirty clothes in a bag outside my door. They asked if I wanted something to eat, or a pot of coffee, but all I wanted to do was sleep. Their kindnesses were offered in an unsmiling, matter-of-fact way that made them all the more affecting.
I slept from noon until after four. When I woke, there were three messages on my phone. I hadn’t even heard it ring. One was from Angel, pointing out in the most discreet way, without mentioning any names, that they hadn’t been able to remove the tracking device from Allan’s car before leaving town, and maybe I might like to see about rectifying the problem. He also advised me to check my email.
The second message had been left by Denny Kraus’s attorney, informing me that the judge had just decided that Denny was mentally incompetent to stand trial, based on Denny’s proposed solution to the whole problem of the killing of Philip Espvall.
‘Look,’ Denny had apparently told the judge that morning, his face a picture of reasonableness, ‘I’ll just get another dog . . .’
The third message, which reduced some of the benefits that my rest had brought, came from Gordon Walsh, ordering me to return his call as soon as I received his message, or face the direst consequences. He hadn’t left me much choice, so I dialed his number and let his wrath wash over me. In between calling me every kind of asshole under the sun, he let me know about the interview with Allan’s girlfriend and told me that Allan’s truck had been found, along with a sum of money and clothing similar to that worn by Anna Kore when she disappeared. The tentative assumption the cops were now operating under was that, in addition to double-crossing Tommy Morris by selling him out to his enemies, Allan had also provided a false alibi for Midas. Both men had colluded in the abduction of Anna Kore, and Allan was now a suspect in Midas’s murder, killing him in order to cover his tracks when Tommy Morris failed to do the job for him, then killing Oweny Farrell’s last surviving gunman as well just to be sure. The truck was already being forensically examined, which meant that, if the job was done well, the tracker would be found, and whatever trouble I’d been in up to now would be as nothing compared with what would follow. A fingertip search of both the Midas and Allan properties was also under way.
Walsh then called me an asshole some more, and informed me that Mrs. Shaye had admitted to sending the series of anonymous text messages about Allan to my phone. She told the cops that she’d known about Allan’s relationship with Schrock for some time, based on conversations that she’d overheard between Allan and his then wife, and subsequently between Allan and the girl. While she said that she hadn’t necessarily connected Allan to Anna Kore’s disappearance, she still didn’t feel that he was a suitable person to be involved in such an investigation or, indeed, to be the chief of police. My arrival had given her the opportunity to alert someone to her boss’s indiscretions, and she had taken it. She apologized for any trouble she’d caused, and for not being more open in her approach. She had tendered her resignation from the department but it had been declined, at least while the investigation into Anna’s fate continued.
Walsh then called me an asshole one last time, just in case I hadn’t been listening closely, and warned me that I still wasn’t to leave Pastor’s Bay until he’d had an opportunity to call me an asshole some more in person, and maybe see about having my license permanently rescinded this time.
‘Asshole,’ he said, in conclusion, before hanging up. Even after the substance of the preceding conversation, he managed to make it sound fresh.
There was a basket outside my bedroom door. My clothes, now cleaned and folded, were inside, along with two fresh scones wrapped in a napkin. I showered again, and ate one of the scones while I dressed. I turned on my laptop, but the Internet service for the B and B was password-protected. There was nobody around when I went downstairs, so I left a note to say that I wasn’t checking out yet, and used the second key on my door fob to lock the front door behind me.
The news trucks were back with a vengeance on Main Street, and not just the locals either, while the parking lot of the municipal building was jammed with official vehicles. Danny was still behind the counter at Hallowed Grounds. He was playing the last Roxy Music CD, so he should have been wearing a tuxedo with his bow tie undone instead of a T-shirt featuring the original cover of Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451
.
‘You don’t look so good,’ he said.
‘In this case, appearances don’t deceive,’ I replied. ‘Mind if I check my e-mail?’
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘I’m about to close up, but you take your time. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do first, so I’ll be here for a while.’
I took a seat at a corner table. Without asking, Danny brought me coffee.
‘On the house,’ he said. ‘Hear you were involved in what went down last night.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Still no sign of Anna Kore?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘They’re saying Chief Allan might have taken her.’
‘That on the news?’
‘I don’t watch the news, but if people are talking about it then it soon will be.’
He locked the front door, turned the sign to
CLOSED
, and started cleaning up behind the counter. I checked the local news sites and found Allan’s photo on all of them. He was now officially a suspect in Anna Kore’s disappearance, but speculation abounded that he might have committed suicide, or made it appear that he had done so.
I logged in to my e-mail account. There was a Yahoo message with Angel’s distinctive ‘777’ tag on the temporary address. It contained a new cell phone number, along with the words ‘necessary evil.’ I called it from my own cell. I wasn’t worried about the number being traced back to Angel and Louis. That cell phone would be in pieces by the end of the day.
‘You get the tag from the truck?’ he asked.
‘Have you seen the news?’
‘That’s what concerns us. Pity. It was a nice piece of equipment. We’ll erase everything, clear the tracks.’
‘Send the record of Allan’s journeys to me first,’ I said.
The GPS program automatically recorded the route taken by the trace vehicle. It also allowed for timings to be retained, so that it was possible to figure out how long the subject had spent in any given location.
‘If your laptop is subpoenaed, it’ll be an admission of guilt. Without it, you have deniability.’
‘Send it anyway,’ I said. ‘I lost deniability a long time ago.’
After about fifteen minutes, the record from the tag came through as a series of maps. Angel had separated each journey Allan had taken into a series of files, with the dates and timings recorded beneath. The trips themselves appeared as red lines on the maps.
If nothing else, the trip record confirmed that Allan had killed Lonny Midas and the unknown gunman. It showed him leaving the Pastor’s Bay Police Department at 9:08 p.m. and traveling to the spot at which the bodies had later been found before heading back to the outskirts of town, where he waited for the alarm to be raised.
Allan’s final trip, taken shortly before eleven a.m. that day, followed a route from the municipal building in Pastor’s Bay and west out of town, but Allan’s home lay south, across the causeway. According to the timings, his truck had remained at a point on Red Leaf Road for two hours before continuing southwest to its final resting place at Freyer’s Point.