Nine Lives(43)

“He pretended what never happened?”

“What we’d done. When we were kids.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jessica said, keeping her voice gentle. Her father was starting to sound agitated, the way he got when some memory was just out of reach. “Why do you think he didn’t want to talk about it?”

“Because he didn’t want to think about it, that’s why? That’s why people don’t want to talk about things, usually.”

“I agree. But you didn’t want to forget, Dad. You must have wanted to remember because you wanted to talk about it with him.”

“What are we talking about again, Rose?”

Rose was Jessica’s mother’s name, but she ignored the slipup. She knew her dad was about to lose the thread, so she said, “We’re talking about Art Kruse, little Artie Kruse you called him, and what he didn’t want to talk about.”

There was a long silence, and Jessica knew that she’d lost him. When he spoke again, he said, “Am I supposed to know him?”

“No, I don’t suppose so, Dad,” she said. “It must be close to your dinnertime there.”

“Probably macaroni and cheese again.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No, I guess not.”

“All right, Dad, I love you, and I’m going to hang up now.”

“I love you, too, Rosie.”

Jessica began to pace, her handgun in her holster toward the back of her hip. There was so much to think about, and she was trying to organize her thoughts. First of all, there was a connection, a definite connection, between her father and Arthur Kruse’s father, and something—something bad—that they had done. Whatever that bad thing was, it was the key to what was going on. She was sure of it. But the more pressing matter was the gray Equinox that had slowed down in front of her house. She’d been marked, but she’d also marked him. She wondered if he would try to get to her tonight, and she somehow doubted it. She was in a locked house with a gun. She felt relatively safe. A part of her was actually hoping he’d make an attempt.

She did wonder if he’d seen her in the window as he first drove past, if he knew that she’d spotted him. If that was the case, he might just take off, assuming that she’d call in reinforcements. But she wasn’t going to do that, at least not yet. She thought she could get to this guy. She knew what his car looked like, and she knew he was in the area. It was getting dark now, and she would batten down the hatches. Tomorrow she would hunt him down.





12





WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 11:41 P.M.


Fischer had lost the last game, so he put eight quarters into the coin slots to release the pool balls, then racked them, while Donald Bennett looked on with the forced concentration of the very drunk, leaning a little on his pool stick.

“Rack ’em right this time,” he said.

“Sure thing, boss,” Fischer said. “But it won’t make a difference. You still break like a pussy.”

Donald made a sound that began as a word but ended in a raspberry, and smiling broadly, stumbled toward Fischer, taking playful swings at him. The fingers of his right hand grazed Fischer’s wig, the dark one with the slight mullet cut that made him look like the type of idiot who just might lose a game of pool to the drunkest guy in the bar.

He’d spotted Donald two hours earlier, saying something to the tired bartender that made her roll her eyes as soon as she turned her back to him to fetch his Miller Lite from the cooler. The bar was called the Lobster Pot, a single-story concrete structure that was just off the main road, halfway back up the peninsula from Port Clyde. Fischer, since arriving at eight, had slowly nursed three beers, and eaten one dry hamburger, while looking for someone who might be of some use to him. But there were surprisingly few solo drinkers—or not surprisingly, considering it was a Wednesday in September. One woman came in alone, teetering on stiletto heels, but she’d been there to gossip to the bartender, drink one amaretto sour, and leave. And there’d been a lone male drinker, a guy in his sixties who drank his draft beer almost as slowly as Fischer was drinking his. And despite his greasy hair and threadbare coat the guy looked intelligent and, more important, wary.

Fischer had been about to give up when Donald Bennett arrived, unsteady already. As he’d settled onto the vinyl-covered stool, the bartender held her hand out to him, palm up, fingers cupped. He’d slapped her hand, saying, “What’s up?” in a loud, braying voice, then he’d laughed and dug into his jean pockets to hand over his keys. Then he’d said something else to her that Fischer couldn’t make out.

“The same, Donald,” she responded, after dropping his keys into an empty goldfish bowl at the back of the bar.

While getting his beer Fischer clocked the eye-roll. The dough-faced man in the jean jacket and the Steelers cap was a regular, and an unliked one.

All Fischer had to do was buy a roll of quarters from the bartender, then go over to the pool table. After shooting a little by himself, the man came over, introduced himself as Donald Bennett, made a few suggestions on how Fischer should hold his stick, then asked to play a game. By the time they’d played seven times, and Fischer had bought Donald three beers and two shots, they were best friends. Fischer had told Donald that he was from New Hampshire, that he’d just driven down to check out some property for sale, that he was thinking about opening up a paint gun place. Donald didn’t know much about that—he repaired the netting on lobster traps for a living—but he did know that if Fischer was looking for some poontang he’d come to the wrong goddamn bar. Then he’d laughed like a hyena, revealing a row of teeth that looked like rotten stumps. If he was in a movie, Fischer thought, he’d be a cliché that would make his wife groan and talk back at the screen.