The Inn(18)

“If I can assist in any way, you’d like me to?” I asked. When I entered the kitchen I’d thought of giving Clay the gun I’d confiscated from the boy named Squid. But his distress and confusion at the missing-person case on his hands made me change my mind. I decided not to share my concerns about drugs in the town.

“I can’t ask you to assist.” Clay struggled to find the words. “Not without officially deputizing you. And I have men of my own, you know. It’s just … well, in Boston, you got big-city experience. That’s why some people around here ask you to do things, I suppose. You know how to handle big-city problems. Sometimes the badge is a blessing, and sometimes it’s a hindrance. You’ll work faster than me, not having to report on everything, and maybe if someone needs to have his head put in a vise, you’d be able to do that.”

The head-in-a-vise comment caught me off guard and I laughed. Clay seemed so gentle on the outside, but I sometimes wondered if a darker, harder man lived beneath the squishy, flabby exterior of the sheriff. A man who wouldn’t mind using pain as a tool. I’d watched Clay snarling at the television during a Red Sox game once and I’d been shocked at the malice in his voice and on his face.

“I’ll be your eyes and ears, Clay,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

Clay smiled, satisfied. He washed a bite of the sandwich down with the bourbon and pickle-juice chaser, noticing as I grimaced. “You want me to make you a pickle-back?”

“Thanks, no.”

“You sure? They’re good.”

I never like to be the Debbie Downer in a room, so I relented. Clay poured me a pickle-back and I gulped down the salty, sour combination.

“Geesh!” I swallowed hard.

“Good?”

“I don’t know if that’s the word.”

“It’s ninety percent amazing,” he said proudly. “Ten percent terrible.”

“Like most things in life, I guess.” I squinted.

“Well, congratulations,” he said. “You’re a true local now.”

“I’ve been here two and a half years. I was already a local.”

“A few more of those pickle-backs and you could run for mayor,” Clay said. He fished something out of his jacket pocket. “While you’re here, can I give you this? It fell off this morning. I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

He put a brass doorknob on the table between us.

“Just what I need,” I said. “Thank you.”

The boards beneath us shuddered as someone hopped up the back stairs of the house and then burst through the door. Effie. She stopped at the sight of us, pointed at my face, and made a sign I recognized: her hand above her head, indicating a tall person.

Nick.

She put her index finger out, thumb extended, her eyes wide with alarm. I recognized that sign too.

Gun.





CHAPTER NINETEEN





I LEFT CLAY to guard the house and followed Effie into the night. The sea beyond the trees was illuminated by a nearly full moon, but she led me into the forest where she must have seen Nick disappear, the pine needles silencing our footsteps. In the blackness, we stood together, holding our breath, listening. Somewhere, an owl moaned and took flight, startled by our presence.

I took Effie’s bony wrist and led her to a slice of light between the trees.

“What did you see?” I asked. “Is he hurt?”

She put both hands up, fingers out like pistols aligned. A rifle. She ducked her head and I made out her features becoming pinched, the eyes narrowed and mouth hard.

Nick was stalking someone out here with a gun.

I felt the air leave my lungs in a heavy rush. A collection of horrible possibilities flashed before me: Nick hunting down and shooting someone out here, Effie or a stranger or himself. My thoughts tumbled into one another. Nick coming to himself, realizing what he had done, what the trauma of his past had bred in him. A distressed, tormented beast pushed down too long. I had to find my friend. I called his name, and my voice seemed closed in by the dark, hardly reaching.

Nick was suddenly upon us, a hot, heavy presence. I could feel he had been running; his sweat-slick hand brushed mine. I grabbed him, tried to draw him to me, but his body was hard, tensed with energy.

“Nick!” I said. “What the hell is going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m glad you’re here, Cap.” He dragged me into a crouch, seeming to miss Effie’s presence altogether. “I tracked the target from the northeast. We’ve got him pinned in a dead end between the cliffs.”

He pointed. There was, of course, no dead end to speak of, no cliffs anywhere near where Nick was pointing. Beyond where his finger stabbed into the dark, there was more pine forest, the distant road, the curve of uninhabited beach. The rifle was slung over his shoulder, the barrel pointing up toward the sky. My heart ached as I realized he was not with me. His eyes were blind to the trees around us, to the night.

“Nick,” I said. “It’s me. It’s Bill. We’re home. There’s no one out here—”

Effie’s approach to Nick’s fantasy wasn’t as calm and collected as mine. She grabbed the rifle, underestimating his whip-fast reflexes in his heightened state of fear. Nick reached out and shoved Effie away like she was a child, sending her sprawling on her back.