Nine Lives(41)

“I’m very sorry about that, by the way, Mr. Kruse,” Jessica said.

“Oh, well. We weren’t close, but he was my son, I guess.”

“I’m not going to ask you a lot of questions, but I did want to follow up on just one of the names, and make sure that he’s not someone whom you know. Is that okay?”

“Sure. I doubt I can give you any more information today than I could give you yesterday, but go ahead anyway.”

“It’s Gary Winslow. He’d be about the same age as you are now. Take a moment and think about it.” She wondered if he’d remember that she introduced herself as Agent Winslow and make a connection, but somehow doubted it.

He cleared his throat. “I knew a couple of Garys in my lifetime, and it’s possible that one of them was named Winslow, but I’m not so sure.”

“How did you know this person?”

“Well, let me think a moment. It was a long time ago now, but I think there was a Gary who came to visit at the lake house in New Hampshire. I would’ve been in college then.”

“Whose lake house?”

“My parents bought a lake house up on Squam after I graduated from high school. It’s not there anymore, or it’s there but no one in the Kruse family owns it. I remember there was this kid, Gary, with long hippie hair and a beard. His parents were friends with my parents. And I think those parents were called Winslow. I’m not really sure about any of this, but it sort of rings a bell.”

“Do you remember anything else about Gary, other than the hair?”

There was a long pause, and Jessica wished very badly that she could see Art Kruse’s face at this particular moment. Even listening to him on the phone she felt certain he was holding something back. “Nope,” he finally said. “Bit of a druggie, I remember thinking.”

“What about Gary’s parents. What do you remember about them?”

“I’m not too sure I could pick them out of a lineup. They looked like my own parents, and they all played cards together. And I remember my mother complaining that they’d overstayed their welcome.”

“How long did they stay?”

“I have no idea. A couple of weeks, probably, and Gary stayed the whole summer.”

“Gary stayed the whole summer?”

“Yeah, he got a job up there at the gas station on the lake, and he stayed with us.”

“So you must have known him pretty well.”

“Like I said, not really.”

Jessica asked him a few more questions, hoping to shake something loose, but he either couldn’t remember much about her father or he wasn’t saying. Before ending the call, she told him again how sorry she was about his son.

“Right,” he said.

“I spoke with him, on the phone, less than a week ago. He seemed very nice.”

“Yeah, well, I guess he made his choices.” Jessica imagined she heard a little crack in his voice, some vestige of emotion, but maybe it was just the hoarseness of his voice. Like her own father, he’d probably been a heavy smoker.





10





WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 3:03 P.M.


Fischer had been in his car for the majority of the day, systematically working his way south from Rockland, checking every small coastal village, every side road, every dead end, for any sign of Jessica Winslow or her car.

He was beginning to worry that whoever had tailed her as she fled to Maine, then lost her south of Rockland, might have truly lost her. If she’d continued to head north, and the tail had missed her on Route 1, then she could be anywhere. She could be in Canada for all he knew. And if that was the case, then Fischer was going to need either a miracle or some outside help to locate her.

But for now, he was operating on the assumption that she had turned off Route 1 somewhere between Damariscotta and Rockland. He was in Damariscotta now, sitting in his parked car, studying a map he’d bought at a general store called Renys, when his cell phone rang. It was Brandon.

“Hey,” Fischer said.

“Hey. Any luck?”

“No, nothing.”

“It’s possible I have something,” Brandon said.

“Please tell me.”

“It might be nothing, but I’ve compiled a list of all of Jessica Winslow’s contacts from her defunct Facebook page, plus also her LinkedIn page that she doesn’t use anymore, and I even managed to scrape a few names from her old Friendster account. I’ve been going through the social media accounts of everyone on that list, and one of her contacts, a Gwen Murphy, who was in her graduating class at college, has an Instagram account. Murphy lives in Boston now but there are a lot of pictures of Maine on her feed. Looks as though she has a house there. The majority of the pictures are from Port Clyde, which is a village—”

“On St. George Peninsula.”

“That’s right. You’ve been there already, I take it,” Brandon said.

“I have but I’ll go back and give it a second look.”

“It’s not much but I thought I’d report it.”

Fischer started his car, very happy to have a lead, even if it turned out to amount to nothing. All along he had thought that Jessica Winslow might have borrowed a summer place that belonged to one of her friends. It made sense. And maybe Gwen Murphy was that friend. He turned off the main road back onto the peninsula, passing through the now-familiar landscape of rolling meadows and early fall color and low afternoon light. It was nice here, in Maine, and he’d already been starting to think about taking the family on a vacation, maybe next summer. They usually rented a house in the Smoky Mountains, but Maine would be a nice change of pace. Being close to the ocean did remind him of his shitty childhood in Florida, but he could get over it. Besides, his youngest daughter, like him, loved any kind of seafood.