The Chain(22)

“That doesn’t mean much. I hear the Boston PD will arrest you for anything.”

Rachel sees a small opportunity here. A little seed of something that might never grow but that is nevertheless a seed.

“Yeah,” Rachel says and then adds with seeming indifference, “They’ll arrest you for jaywalking, arrest you for banging a uey.”

The distorted voice stifles a laugh and mutters, “Very true,” before immediately getting back to business. “We may allow this ex-brother-in-law of yours. Send me his details on Wickr.”

“I will.”

“Very good. We’re making progress. This is how it’s worked for many, many years. The Chain will get you through, Rachel,” the voice says and then the line goes dead.

The Lowell cop exits the Patterson house and walks to his car. Wendy comes to the door and waves.

It’s time to leave this street and this town.

Rachel puts the key in the Volvo’s ignition. The car backfires, and the cop turns to look at her. She has no choice but to wave to him through the window. Yet another person who has seen her do something weird or suspicious today.

She drives along Route 1A onto Rolfes Lane, takes the turnpike, and goes over the bridge to Plum Island.

Half a block from her house, she sees Kylie’s geeky friend Stuart approaching. Shit!

She rolls her window down, stops the car. “Hello, Stu,” she says casually.

“Mrs. O’Neill, um, I mean, Ms. Klein, um, I was wondering…I was wondering where Kylie was today? I didn’t get a text from her. Mrs. M. said she was sick.”

“That’s right, Kylie’s not well,” Rachel says.

“Oh? What’s wrong?”

“Um, stomach flu, that kind of thing.”

“Wow. Really? She seemed OK yesterday.”

“It was very sudden.”

“Must have been. She texted me this morning and didn’t say anything. I thought she might have been trying to get out of that Egyptology presentation, which is crazy because, you know—”

“She’s the expert, I know. Like I said, it was, uh, very sudden.”

Stuart seems puzzled and not entirely convinced. “Anyway, we all texted her and she never got back to us.”

Rachel tries to think of a reasonable explanation. “Um, yeah, we’ve lost wireless in the house, which is why she’s been out of touch. She can’t text or Instagram or anything.”

“I thought she still had minutes left on her phone?”

“Nope.”

“Hey, do you want me to come over and look at your wireless? It might be a router issue.”

“No, better not. I’m coming down with the flu bug as well. It’s very contagious. Don’t want to get you sick too. I’ll definitely tell Kylie you were asking for her.”

“Um, OK, ’bye,” he says, and she stares at him until, intimidated, he turns and waves and walks back down the road again.

She drives the remaining fifty yards to the house. She hasn’t thought of that. Kylie’s school friends text and message all the time. If Kylie goes radio silent for more than an hour, it creates a big vacuum in their lives. And soon she’ll start running out of plausible excuses. Another thing to worry about on top of everything else.





19

Thursday, 5:11 p.m.



Pete isn’t home yet but he can’t take it anymore. He’s been in the woods all day.

His skin is crawling; his skin is on fire. It is, as old man De Quincey said, the itch that can never be scratched.

He pulls the Dodge Ram off Route 2 and into the Wachusett Mountain State Reservation. There’s a pond there that nobody ever goes to.

He reaches over the seat and grabs his backpack.

He looks up and down the road but there’s no one around. From the backpack he removes a small plastic bag of premium-grade Mexican heroin. The DEA crackdown on legit opiates has affected all the patients who get their meds through the VA; Pete was able to fill the gap through the dark web for a while but then the feds got active there too. Heroin is actually easier to obtain than OxyContin now, and heroin is much more effective anyway, especially golden-triangle H and the new stuff coming up from Guerrero.

He takes out a spoon and his Zippo lighter and a syringe and a rubber arm tie. He cooks the heroin, ties off a vein, sucks the drug up into the syringe, and flicks the needle to get the air bubbles out.

He injects himself and then quickly puts the paraphernalia in the glove compartment in case he passes out and a National Park Service clown gets nosy.

He looks through the windshield at the fall foliage and the azure pond water. The trees aren’t at their peak but they’re still beautiful. Fiery oranges and reds and crazy sunburned yellows. He relaxes and lets the heroin dissolve in his bloodstream.

He’s never looked at the statistics, so he has no idea how many veterans are opiate addicts of some sort, but he imagines the number is quite high. Especially for people who have done a couple of combat tours. During the ’08 surge, every single member of his company had been injured or wounded. After a while people just stopped reporting themselves to the medics. What was the point? Nothing they could do about a concussion or a broken rib or a sprained back. You were just taking up a bed when your buddies were out there clearing roads and removing explosive charges from bridges.