I stopped at the police station. The missing girl was still my reason for being. Delcastro was off duty, but Ferry was there, crisp and intent despite his long hours. He got up and came to the counter. He had found the arrest report on Ben Nickerson that I'd asked for. “You were right about the time frame. It was nineteen years agoâand it was for trespassing. He was above mean high tide. Landowners are allowed to own down to the high water mark, below that is public land. If he was arrested, it means he was higher up the beach. He insisted he was looking for seashells and marine life. He was held overnight, and then charges were dropped. It seems a bigger case came along, a drowning.”
“Who was Nickerson's arresting officer?”
Ferry grinned. “Patrolman Delcastro.”
“He was a busy man.”
“He certainly was. He was destined to make chief.”
I was wasting irony again. I didn't tell him about the dates. Had Nickerson been looking for specimens and found something else? A tentacle of something cold coiled up from my belly. “Was the drowning victim named Ginny Carvalho?”
Ferry looked surprised. “How'd you know that?”
“Was there a coroner's inquest?”
“If so, there's no indication of it here.”
“But wouldn't there have been? An accidental death? The state requires it.” I tried to remember if that had been true twenty years ago.
“I'm not sure. It seems likely.”
“Could you check for me?”
“I should clear it with the chief.”
Who would pour cold water on itâor a bucket of smoke. Ferry spread his hands on the counter. “What's this all about, Mr. Rasmussen?”
I hesitated. “In your law enforcement courses, is it all straightforward? Procedures, law, science?”
“Mostly that. I'm taking statistical analysis next term.”
“Do any of your instructors ever talk about gut feelings, instincts?”
“Well ⦠yeah, sometimes. One of them used to be a Boston PD detective.”
I nodded. “In answer to your question, I'm not really sure what this is about. But again, could you check on the autopsy for me?”
He hesitated, fingered his sparse blond mustache, and then went over to a filing cabinet. He looked for a few moments, opening several drawers. He stepped back shaking his head. “There's no trace of it here. In fact, there's nothing on that drowning incident at all.”
Â
Â
Paula was at the beach house. I told her that I needed to go to Lowell, and she asked to go along if I could drop her at her home. I made a quick phone call, then we locked up and left. It was just after 1 P.M. On the ride, I filled her in on some of what I'd been doing; I didn't trouble her with all the stuff that seemed extraneous to finding Michelle. When we got to Apple Valley, she said she could arrange to use Ross's car, and told me to hang on to the Blazer for as long as I needed it. Before she got out, she hesitated a moment, then gave me a hug. I hugged her back. It seemed to be something we both needed. On the way over to the city, I got Ed St. Onge on my cell phone.
“What's going on down there in Quaintville?” he asked.
I didn't have the inclination to tell it all, or the luxury of time. Maybe some of the Ted Rand shorthand was in order. “Do you know John Milton's
Paradise Lost
âthe part about man's fall from grace?”
He grumbled. “You know I don't, for Christ's sake. John Milton.” I could tell the taste of the words was making his face pucker. “You sound like one of those phony library-shelf detectives, where the guy's a working stiff who goes around quoting Shakespeare and all these literary illusions.”
“
Al
lusions,” I said.
“Who cares? The world doesn't run because of people like that. It runs because people in crummy offices, with tired feet and driving cheap cars, go out and find answers that add up, and are ready to
do
something about them.” He sputtered to silence. After a tentative pause, he said, “What about Milton?”
So much for shorthand. “Who?” I told him I might need another favor.
“I'm in the market for a few myself.”
“I know,” I said. “I owe you.”
“That's money in the bank.”
“If I need you to, I want you to call the police chief in Standish and vouch for me.”
“And say what?”
“You'll know.”
“And if he asks how you left the job?”
“Talk to him cop to cop.”
“You overestimate this fraternal network idea. Assuming I was disposed to say a good word, what makes you think people in one jurisdiction talk to people in another any more than sanitation workers do? Or school secretaries?”
“I guess it's the existential nature of the work. Riding out there on point all the time does things to people, bonds their souls.”
“You've got to quit watching TV cop shows.”
“I just need him to believe I'm not some flake. Maybe it'll keep him from arresting me before I can put this all together.”
“And
I'm
your spokesman?”
Ed St. Onge, who could spot an out-of-date registration on a license tag at forty yards on a rainy night but missed the bigger meanings of life. He grunted but said he'd make the call if I needed itâbut it would have to be soon; he and his wife were leaving tomorrow to visit their daughter in New Mexico. I gave him the Standish PD number in the event. Before I could end the call, he asked, “You know the one about the raccoon that got across both sides of a divided highway?”
“What?”
“True story. This raccoon managed to scamper across both sides, eight lanes. Only, on the far side was a chain-link fence. And that's where he ended up, dead.”
“Is that a homily of some sort?” I asked.
“Hardly. You've got to watch that last fence.”
Â
Â
Woody Allen kept me covered with his carved-soap gun. Beyond the door I heard the scrape of a police lock being dragged aside, a fitting noise amid the wrecking yards and the restless prowling of mean dogs. Charley Moscowitz opened the door, finger-combing his damp pompadour. He was dressed in fresh jeans and a white shirt. “What happened to you?”
I realized he meant my face, more than my being late. “Genetics, environment, I'm not sure.”
He didn't chase it. He shut and locked the door behind me. “I was expecting you earlier. I've got a date.”
“Sorry, I was an hour away when I called you, not counting a few detours.”
“When Hitchcock was making
Lifeboat,
he told Max Steiner he didn't want music. âThey're in a lifeboat,' Hitchcock said, âwhere's the music coming from?' Steiner says, âYou tell me where the cameras are coming from, I'll tell you where the music is coming from.'” Everyone had stories for me today. I didn't press him on his point.
“Okay,” he went on, “I called some people I know on the South Shore, and one told me a guy came in yesterday and tried to sell him a dark blue Grand Cherokee. No name given, naturally. Anyway, this isn't my thing. You can try yourself. The place is Mandino's,
in Scituate.” It was the town next to Standish. “Ask for Waxy. Now, this other ⦔ He waved me in back and unlocked one of the old cabinets and brought out a shotgun. For a moment I thought he'd fetched the wrong oneâthe barrel glowed with blueing and the wood shoneâbut it was the same. He'd rasped away the worm-eaten portions and oiled it, replaced some screws, but the shotgun looked like a genuine antique.
“It'll shoot?” I asked.
“And it won't kick like an Arkansas muleâas long as it's hanging over the fireplace, next to your rocking chair,” he added with heavy emphasis. “You getting this?”
“Wouldn't miss it. Got any shells?”
“Serves me right for waxing sentimental.” He got a box of twelve-gauge double-O buckshot shells and clumped it on the desk. “How many you want?”
I scooped the box into my jacket pocket, which sank the hem on that side practically to my knees. He gave me a scrutinizing frown. “You know what you're doing, right?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
“You got about five yards.”
“Come again.”
“To take a man down. Anything beyond that, you're out of luck.”
I didn't comment. I put a hundred cash down on the work, with the rest on account.
“You ought to wrap that shotgun in something,” Charley said.
“Got a violin case handy?”
But he was thinking about keeping body oils off the blued steel, more than concealment. I still had images of a panicked old pizza twirler tumbling into my office with a sandwich bag. Charley got some newspaper, which he used to wrap up the shotgun florist-style, minus the ribbon and little card. I thanked him and carried it out like a bundle of long-stemmed death. Behind me I heard the police lock rattling into place. I put my package in the back of the Blazer, under a Pendleton blanket. Driving away, I reflected on how I would never sell the shotgun to anyone who might use it in the commission of a crime, and yet I would consider using it myself. For menace?
For death? I'd let the opinion editors at the
Globe
grope through the ethical tangles of that. I was at my apartment in fifteen minutes.
I got a directory listing for Mandino's Auto Salvage in Scituate and called. The kid I talked to said, “Waxy went out for supper, but he'll be back.” I said I'd try later. I removed the bandage on my head and examined the damage. Nothing gray had leaked out, at least. I showered and put on fresh clothes, minus the hardware this time. I swabbed some antiseptic on my wounds, but didn't reapply dressing. Jack Nicholson could walk around through half of
Chinatown
with a gob of bandage on his nose the size of a snowball, but he was Nicholson. I was running out of snappy replies for when people asked me what'd happened.
I looked in the refrigerator a couple of times, but it was a nervous reflex. I still didn't have much appetite, which was just as well, unless I wanted to eat mayonnaise on slabs of moldy Muenster with a can of Blue Ribbon. I put on the TV to catch the six o'clock news. The top story on Channel 4 was the pollen explosion. “If it sneezes, it leads,” joshed one of the anchors. The weatherman promised rain later for the South Shore, the Cape, and the islands. I grabbed a light jacket, along with my .38, and headed out.
There was an envelope in my mailbox that hadn't been there when I'd arrived. It was sealed with tape and addressed with just my name. Inside was a four-by-six color photo of a woman sitting at an outdoor table and smiling for the camera. Attached was a note, penned in the same clumsy hand as the address: “Guess whose girlfriend?! Told you we could work together someday.” It was from Grady Stinson. I looked at the woman. She was brown-haired, attractive, though not as pretty as Paula Jensen, to my eye, at least, but that wasn't for me to say; neither of them was my woman. Stinson had likely snatched the photo on his nighttime raid of Ross Jensen's office, and now, thinking he was proving his chops, he had laid it on me. He was wrong. I would have torn it up on the spot, but there was no place to put the litter. I slid the photograph into my pocket.
Mandino's Auto Salvage was at the rear of a small industrial park, in a corrugated-steel shed. With assorted wrecks scattered in the yard, it was an ad for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I got out and heard the high-speed shrieking of a rotary saw cutting steel. I wandered over to the big open doors and peered into the dim interior. Someone was hunched over a fender, showers of sparks flaring around him. I didn't see anyone else around, and I didn't want to come up on the guy unawares and have him whirl my way. I waited until he set his saw aside before I went over.
“Is Waxy around?” I called.
He pushed goggles up onto his forehead. “You found him. What can I do for you?”
He wore greasy gray coveralls and an old GI cap turned bill backward. Lank gray hair spilled under the sides of it. With the pale area around his eyes in contrast to his work-stained face, he looked like one of the Beagle Boys in negative. I guessed him to be about fifty. I mentioned Charley Moscowitz, and he nodded. “Yeah, he said you might be in touch. About the Jeep.”
“What can you tell me?”
“This guy comes in yesterday morning and asks me how much
I'd give him for a late-model Grand Cherokee. Dark blue, he said. He tried to make it seem like it made all the sense in the world, bringing it in and selling it for scrap. âHow bad is it totaled?' I asked him. Oh, it wasn't totaled at all; it was just that he needed cash fast and didn't want the bother of selling it. Well, that story made about as much sense as freezing Ted Williams, so I asked to see the car and the title. That got him backing and filling the holes in his story, but he said he'd return later with both, and I said fine, we'd talk then.”
“Meanwhile, back in the real world ⦠Twenty dollars says he didn't leave a name.”
“I lose. I can describe him, though. Medium-sized, sort of tough-looking. Younger than you by a few years.”
It didn't describe Ben Nickerson, but then I hadn't expected it to. The car fit, though.
“What's your read?” I asked.
He plucked off his goggles and cap and scrubbed at the flattened gray hair. “If it was his own, he could be working a scam to collect on it, but if the title was clean, it'd make more sense to just sell it. If the car was hot, no title, police maybe looking, you run a risk trying to sell it, so you could look for a chop shop. Which this ain't.”
“Did you notify the police of his approach?”
“No reason to. If he'd brought the Jeep in and I wasn't convinced, I would've.”
I offered him the twenty anyway, but he waved it off. “If Charley ever found out I took money off a friend of his, he'd raise the devil at the next wedding, or funeral.” He saw my puzzled look. “Didn't he tell you? We're second cousins or something, about three marriages removed.”
As I drove off, I saw the sparks spitting in the shrieking gloom, like meteors on an August night.
Â
Â
I called the Standish police station and asked for Delcastro. He didn't seem angry at hearing my voice, merely resigned, the way cattle get to biting flies. I told him about the Cherokee.
“It doesn't automatically follow that it was Nickerson's,” he said.
“No, but it's a big coincidence. And if it is his, it raises the question, what happened to Nickerson?”
“I'll put out a BOL,” he said, sounding reluctant. “I've got the California tag number. Anything else?”
I thanked him and we hung up. Not that I really expected a beon-the-lookout would produce the car. Having failed with Waxy Mandino, whoever had the Jeep could since have found a chop shop, or a crooked used-car dealer, or have it stashed in a garage to cool off. It could be anywhere, or nowhere. I hadn't forgotten where Jillian Kearns's car had ended up.
At the beach house, as I got out of the car, I noticed a dark Lincoln parked in close to the thicket of beach roses. The driver, who evidently had been waiting, got out. In the dusk, I saw it was Rand. I bristled. As he walked toward me, I did a quick scan of the surrounding area, bracing for a flying wedge, but he appeared to be alone. Studying my face, he raised an open palm, I guess to show he came in peace. “I'm sorry about what happened. I overreacted. I do that.” His voice was soft, breathy. “It's a failing, I know. There's no excuse for it. None.”
What was he expecting, a hug? I stared at him. He had on the Dartmouth sweatshirt and plaid swim trunks, his white hair a froth of curls. “I'll pay your doctor bill, your car repairs. Whatever you need.”
“I've got insurance.”
“I appreciate that it didn't end up on the police blotter.”
“Would it be there long?”
He sighed. “Look, I am sorry, but I felt I needed to make a point. I overdid it, obviously. It's just that there's more going on here than you can possibly know.”
“Then why the hell don't you tell me, so folks won't have to keep saying that. So I don't decide to even the score right now.”
His laugh was uncertain, almost grateful. “Good, mad I can deal with. I do apologize, and I mean that.” And something in the brightness of his eyes made me believe he did. “It's this land development,” he went on. “It's ridiculously complicated. It's a wonder anyone ever gets anything built. There's so much regulation and expense ⦠and the timing.” He flung his hands skyward. “These deals sometimes sit
a hair's breadth from disaster you wouldn't believe. I can't afford anything that might queer it.”
“Does my visiting your son threaten something?”
“I'm just sensitive where he's concerned. Too sensitive, I suppose.”
“Because you've got him in a VA ward instead of private care? Look, the question has occurred to meâit's my nature to wonder about thingsâbut frankly it's none of my concern. I'm sure you have reasons. And probably I was off base going over there. But I'm looking for Michelle Nickerson. That's the only thing on my radar.” That and wanting to get in the house and use the bathroom; a long car ride will do that.
“Of course,” Rand said. “But if she were here, you'd have found her by now, wouldn't you? Or Vin Delcastro would have. He runs a tight ship.”
“So did Captain Bligh.” I was thinking about Red Dog's roust over smoking a joint. “Even so, people can slip away. Like you say, any one of us sits a hair's breadth from disaster. Wasn't there a teenage girl who went missing some years ago and was never found?”
His brow crinkled. “That goes back. A runaway, I think. And anyway, it was never confirmed that she actually disappeared in Standish. You think there's a connection?”
“My point is, the police can't know everything. If Michelle Nickerson was here, she may still be around.”
“Granted. Or you might be wasting your time.”
Time and the Jensens' money. But my time wasn't important; only Michelle Nickerson's wasâand what might be happening to it. “If I'm going to give up looking here, I need a convincing reason whyâand that's what I don't have. I've got no stake in interfering in any deal of yours,” I said. “But right now, I've got to use the bathroom or I'm going to be tap dancing.”
He chuckled. “Go, go.”
When I went back out, Rand was waiting for me on the deck, facing the sea, where dark clouds were hastening the coming night. It was the spot where I'd stood when I'd first laid eyes on him, four days ago. “All right,” he said. “I'm going to help you. I know lots
of people in town, maybe someone's seen the girl. But first I want to swim. If I put things off, I end up not doing them. The ocean is magic when it comes to clearing the mind.” I followed him down the steps to the sand. He pulled off the sweatshirt. His torso was sun-browned, his chest covered with woolly gray hair. “You're welcome to join me.”
“I still don't have a swimsuit.”
“Then, neither do I.” He bent and drew off his trunks, dropping them on the sand. In the surrounding darkness I couldn't tell he was naked except for the pale patch where he wasn't tanned. “It's up to you,” he said. “You'll do okayâthough I have to tell you, muscles don't float. I'll do better, being full of hot air.”
“The forecast is for rain,” I said.
“It always is.” With a chuckle, he waded into the low surf and dived under. He resurfaced a few yards farther out, swept back his hair and started swimming. Not sure why, except that I sensed it was important somehow and should not be put off, I did as he had done. When I'd laid my clothes aside, I headed for the water.
Moving with a lot more style and efficiency than I, Rand continued to stroke outward, foam flashing in his wake. I was soon panting. I worked too hard at things in life to be graceful at most of them, though I usually got to the places I needed to get to. “Will we need passports?” I called.
I changed strokes, and we kept going. After a while, he slowed and turned, waiting for me to reach him. “This is good,” he said when I had. “Look.” He nodded toward the shore, where the short row of beach houses stood, night-lit in the distance, like scale models in an architect's display. The water was surprisingly warm and buoyant, and I could feel a slow current moving down where my feet hung. I suddenly felt great empathy with the woman in the
Jaws
poster.
“Lord Byron had a deformed foot,” Rand said. “What used to be called a clubfoot. Maybe being the wild lover poet was compensation. He liked to swim out into the ocean ⦠way, way out, until he was totally exhausted. He'd swim out to his absolute limit, where he couldn't swim another stroke.”
I spat some water, listening, wondering if he was going somewhere,
or just rhapsodizing. The salt stung the cuts on my face, but it helped keep my mind off the tiny core of fear I'd always felt in deep water. I tried not to imagine how deep it might be.
“Ah, but then he had the life-or-death challenge of getting back to shore.” Rand paddled around to face me. “I was born poor, come from a long line of it. That was
my
limiting factor.”
“You went to Dartmouth?”
“God, no. They were recruiting my son pretty heavily. I wish he'd gone. Me, I'm a humble man.”
“Who reads Byron and quotes âDover Beach,'” I said.
He drew a dripping hand from the water and gestured toward the dark sweep of Shawmut Point off to the left. “âAh, love, let us be true to one another! For the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new.' Thanks for reminding me.” He laughed.
“Of what?”
“That's all mine,” he said, with a note of half-surprise. “Not literally. Some of it is. But I possess it in my imagination. I've envisioned what it can become and have taken steps to see it happen.”
“I heard something about it,” I said.
“Understand, not everyone's happy with the idea. I'd like them to be, of course. I try to spread things around and make it work for everyone. But I can't worry too much about folks who choose not to see it that way. The fact is, anytime a person makes something happen in this world, he's going to acquire enemies.”
“You must have your share. I know I do.”
His eyes twinkled with reflected starlight. “My good friend the judge told me you'd made some in the legislative ranks. I told the judge that probably just meant you've got character.”
I found it interesting that I'd been a subject of conversation between busy men, but I was more interested in Ted Rand. “What about
your
enemies?” I asked.
“Well ⦠there'll be some attempts to block me. Obscure zoning laws are bound to come up. Or EPA rules no one's ever noticed before. Hell, we found some old bones, and people wanted to shut me down.” He gave a bark of amazed laughter. “But the bones are safely housed in a Native American collection now, and maybe the
state will approve a casino soonâGod knows it'd spur the economyâand most people are happy.”
Rand cleared water from his eyes. “I've learned not to rely on anyone but myself. Most people, when they push past their limits, get into trouble. They sink.” Like Ben Nickerson? I wondered. “I'm prepared for obstacles. They're like the traps on a golf course. I expect them,
relish
them. They add zest and challenge to the game, and when you overcome them, the satisfaction is high. You see, I've got a vision for Standish.”
“I guess you're not a strong adherent of the old one-man/one-vote concept.”
“Oh, absolutely. A wonderful notion. But votes aren't what make things happen. Power is, and power always flows from money.”
It sounded like an anthem for good old-fashioned buccaneer capitalism. Money and powerâand progressâwas the charge that arced between the two poles ⦠a circuitry of golf links and shops and big homes on the point, which sparked with the electricity of wealth and the cool green promise of more. Certainly, I had no interest in stopping him. Puffing with the exertion of treading water, I said, “How do you propose to find Michelle Nickerson?”