Gray Ghost (6 page)

Calhoun understood that he’d known things—secrets, he guessed, information that was important and valuable—and whoever the Man in the Suit worked for didn’t want him to remember them.

Calhoun understood that remembering would be dangerous.

The fact was, he remembered nothing, but the Man in the Suit had made it clear that even if something from before did pop into Calhoun’s head, it would be in his best interest to deny it.

So each time the Audi pulled into Calhoun’s dooryard, they danced their little dance, the Man in the Suit asking Calhoun what he remembered, and Calhoun saying he remembered nothing, and the Man in the Suit never knowing whether he was lying or telling the truth. As far as Calhoun could tell, the Man in the Suit always assumed that he was lying, but he never pushed it.

When the Man in the Suit first started coming to visit, Calhoun threatened to shoot him, and he was at least half serious. The whole idea of the Man in the Suit scared him and made him mad. Pretty soon the Remington twelve-gauge became a kind of joke between them.

Not that Calhoun trusted him, or especially liked him. The Man in the Suit worked for the government. He knew everything about Calhoun’s forgotten life. He used what he knew to bribe and bully Calhoun, who protected himself by pretending it was all irrelevant to him.

The Man in the Suit came up the steps and sat in the same Adirondack chair that Kate had been sitting in barely an hour earlier. “Who’s that?” he said.

“Who’s who?”

“The music. On the piano.”

“That’s Oscar Peterson. Everybody knows Oscar Peterson.”

The Man in the Suit shrugged. “It’s nice.” He jerked his chin at Calhoun’s coffee mug, sitting on the table. “What’re you drinking?”

“Coffee. Want some?”

“No. Got a Coke?”

Calhoun went inside and returned the shotgun to its pegs on the wall. Then he snagged a can of Coke from the refrigerator, took it back out, and put it on the table in front of the Man in the Suit.

“Thanks, Stoney.” He cracked it open, took a swig, put it down, and peered at Calhoun. “So—”

“I don’t remember anything.”

The Man in the Suit nodded. “Okay.”

“So you can leave now. I’m going to bed.”

“Anything you’d like to know?” said the Man in the Suit. “From before, I mean?”

Calhoun shook his head. “Nope. I’m all set.”

The Man in the Suit smiled. “I understand you’ve had some, um, stress recently.”

How the hell did he find out about Kate so quick?
Calhoun thought. The son of a bitch had a way of worming into Calhoun’s life, of knowing things that were none of his damn business. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“Sheriff Dickman. He needs you, he asked for your help, and you turned him down. Why’d you do that, Stoney?”

“That ain’t your affair.”

“Sure. You’re absolutely right about that. Still, I don’t understand. There’s that murdered body, throat cut, burned and mutilated, which is pretty damned interesting, and you got a chance to help out, help a friend, help your society, and you refused. That’s not being a good citizen.”

“I’m not interested in some murdered body,” Calhoun said, “whether it’s burned and mutilated or not. And I don’t care about being a good citizen. And I don’t care whether you understand or not. And it pisses me off that you’re so damn nosy.”

The Man in the Suit shook his head. “Sometimes you disappoint me, Stoney.”

“Disappointing you don’t bother me one bit.” Calhoun gazed up at the stars for a minute, then looked at the Man in the Suit. “You saying I should agree to be the sheriff’s deputy? That why you’re here ? To tell me that ?”

“I was a little surprised, that’s all. I don’t like to be surprised. I kinda thought you’d jump at the chance, and you didn’t. It makes me think I don’t understand you.”

Calhoun shrugged. “That burned-up body ain’t my problem, just because I happened to find it.”

“No man is an island, Stoney.”

“Oh, Christ. You gonna burst into song?”

The Man in the Suit smiled. “The sheriff could use you. It’d be good for you. You’ve got talents, you know. You shouldn’t let them go to waste.”

“I got talents, all right,” said Calhoun. “I can steer a boat in the fog. I can smell bluefish from a mile away. I can cast a whole fly line with just one backcast. And if you don’t get the hell out of here, you’ll see how accurate I can be with that twelve-gauge of mine.”

The Man in the Suit held up both hands. “You’ll do what you want. I know that. I’m just saying, as a friend, you ought to reconsider working with the sheriff. Just give it some thought.”

“If I say okay, will you go?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’ll give it some thought.”

The Man in the Suit drained his Coke, then stood up. He held out his hand. “Shake on it, then.”

Calhoun shook his hand.

“That’s smart, Stoney.”

“I only said I’d think about it. I didn’t say I’d do it.”

“But,” said the Man in the Suit, “you will think about it, because whatever else you are, you’re a man of your word.”

“I don’t expect to change my mind.”

“Oh, I expect you will.” The Man in the Suit bent down, patted Ralph, who was snoozing on the deck, then straightened up and went down the steps to his car.

Calhoun didn’t bother waving as he turned and drove out the driveway.

Calhoun opened the shop at eight thirty the next morning. He’d left Ralph home to bark at the chipmunks and sleep under the deck. Ralph got restless if he had to spend the whole day cooped up in the shop. Kate was off on a guide trip, so except for a few customers, Calhoun had a quiet day for listening to the radio, tying flies, and thinking about things.

A little after three in the afternoon Kate pulled her truck with her boat trailered behind it into the side lot.

Calhoun went out to help her unload the boat and get the trailer off her truck.

He asked her how it went.

She said good. They caught some fish. The clients seemed to enjoy it. Anything happen in the shop?

Calhoun said nothing special.

Then some customers showed up, and he went back inside to wait on them.

Kate hosed out her boat, then came into the shop. She went to her office and turned on her computer.

At five, Calhoun went back to say he was leaving.

She looked up, smiled, and said have a nice evening.

You, too, he said.

Business partners. It was going to take some getting used to, he could see that.

Something was wrong. He sensed it just about the time he turned into his driveway. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t know where that spooky feeling of unease came from. He’d felt it before, though, and he knew enough to trust it.

So instead of continuing to drive his truck down the rutted driveway to his house, he pulled off the side into the bushes. He got out, pulled his .30-30 Winchester Model 94 lever-action deer rifle out from the floor behind the seat, jacked a cartridge into the chamber, and walked. He went slowly, holding the rifle at port arms, careful not to snap a twig or rustle a branch, and when he knew his house was just around the next bend, he slipped off the roadway into the woods.

He took a curving route that brought him to the rear of his house. He paused there behind the bushes that bordered the yard. He saw no movement except the rustle of leaves in the breeze. He heard nothing except the caw of a distant crow. He smelled nothing except pine needles.

He slipped around through the woods to the front of the cabin, and that’s when he saw the strange vehicle parked in the turnaround next to his boat.

It was a small green SUV, a Subaru Forester. Calhoun went to the place in his brain that remembered all the vehicles he’d noticed in the past six years, scanned down through the images, and identified this one. He’d seen it just a few days earlier, in the parking area at the landing in Portland. The area had been dimly lit, and Calhoun hadn’t paid any conscious attention to the vehicle, but there it was, vivid and specific in his memory.

This vehicle belonged to Paul Vecchio, the history professor from Penobscot College, the man Calhoun had taken fishing, the man who’d discovered that burned-up body on Quarantine Island.

He held the short-barreled deer rifle like a pistol, the barrel resting on his shoulder, stepped out of the woods into his yard, and called, “Hey. Mr. Vecchio.”

Two bad things happened.

First, Mr. Vecchio did not answer.

Second, Ralph did not come scampering down off the deck or in from the woods to greet him, which he normally did without being called when Calhoun came home.

Again Calhoun called. “Mr. Vecchio. Paul. You here?”

Then: “Ralph, where the hell are you?”

No response from either of them.

He crept up the stairs to his deck, moving silently on the balls of his feet, holding his rifle with both hands, ready to shoot.

When he saw Paul Vecchio, he lowered the weapon.

Vecchio was sitting in the same Adirondack chair where Kate, and then the Man in the Suit, had sat the previous evening.

Except Mr. Vecchio’s eyes were half-lidded, and he had a shiny red blotch on his chest, and it was pretty obvious that he was dead.

Calhoun laid the .30-30 on the table and went over to look at Paul Vecchio. The blood that smeared the front of his pale blue shirt was dark and sticky-looking. There appeared to be three wounds, two high on the right side of his chest, the other lower, in the middle of his belly. The ones in his chest had done most of the bleeding. Calhoun couldn’t tell how big the bullet holes were under Vecchio’s shirt.

He squatted down on the deck so that he was eye-level with Paul Vecchio. Even in death, the professor looked mild-mannered and friendly. He seemed to be looking at Calhoun out of the sides of his half-closed eyes, and one corner of his mouth was crinkled into half a grin, as if he were sharing some joke, waiting for Calhoun to laugh.

He remembered how Vecchio had whooped and hollered and shouted how much fun he was having when they’d found the blitzing stripers and blues. He was the kind of man who hugged life against his chest, who jumped in up to his ears.

Now he slouched there in Calhoun’s Adirondack chair, still as a stone. Those twinkling eyes were cloudy. His grin was frozen on his face.

Son of a bitch.

Calhoun blew out a breath and pushed himself to his feet. If he couldn’t save Paul Vecchio’s life, maybe he could avenge it.

And if something had happened to his dog …

He went to the deck railing and yelled for Ralph.

He waited. Yelled again.

Where was that dog?

Without thinking about what he was doing, Calhoun surveyed the crime scene. He looked around the deck for spent cartridge casings or anything else that might be evidence. All he found that hadn’t been there when he’d left in the morning was a purple plastic sunscreen bottle lying beside the chair Vecchio was sitting in. It looked like it might have fallen out of his hand when he was shot. Calhoun remembered that Mr. Vecchio was pretty sold on the importance of sunscreen.

He knew better than to touch anything, even a fallen bottle of sunscreen. He continued looking around the deck for spent cartridges and found nothing, which meant that either the shooter had picked up his empties or he’d been using a revolver.

He climbed down off the deck and looked under it in case one of the cartridge cases had fallen through the cracks between the floorboards. None had. Then he scanned the parking area. He didn’t have much hope of finding tire tracks or footprints. There hadn’t been any rain for a week, and the ground was hard and dry, and anyway, there had been quite a bit of traffic at Calhoun’s house lately. The sheriff, Kate, the Man in the Suit, Calhoun himself with his truck and trailered boat, and now Mr. Vecchio.

Still, Calhoun looked carefully, mentally dividing the area into quadrants and studying each one systematically.

He noticed nothing.

Next he climbed back onto the deck and went into the house. He looked around, touching nothing, comparing what he saw with the memory images of how each room had looked when he’d left that morning.

He was convinced that nobody had been inside.

He thought about looking into Vecchio’s Subaru for clues, but decided against it. He figured he’d better leave that to the police.

Judging by the length of the shadows and the color of the sky, he judged it was about ten minutes before seven in the evening. The sheriff was probably home by now, but since he’d refused to become a deputy and help him with his investigation, Calhoun felt funny about calling him at home. You could call a friend at home for any reason, even business. When you were no longer friends, you didn’t do that.

So he picked up the portable phone in the kitchen and called the sheriff’s office and, as expected, got the answering service. He gave the woman his name and number and assured her that it was an emergency.

She said the sheriff would call him right away.

He took the phone out onto the deck and put it on the table. He went to the railing and yelled for Ralph again. The fact that he had to call him at all was seriously worrisome. Ralph never needed to be called. Whenever Calhoun came home from the shop or after a day of guiding, no matter what time it was, Ralph was always there, trotting out of the woods or down from the deck, wagging his stub tail, wanting a scratch behind the ears and a rub on the belly. Ralph would come to investigate any vehicle that he heard pulling into their yard, and he always came when he was called.

Mr. Paul Vecchio was dead on his deck, and that was an extremely bad thing. But Ralph Waldo had gone missing, and as far as Calhoun was concerned, that was even worse.

He tried to take comfort in the fact that he hadn’t found Ralph’s body, the way he’d found Paul Vecchio’s.

The phone rang about five minutes after Calhoun hung up with the answering service. He picked it up and said, “Sheriff? That your

“It’s me,” said the sheriff, not sounding any too cheerful about it. “What is it?”

“I got a dead man sitting here on my deck. It’s that Mr. Vecchio, the guy I took fishing the other morning.”

“The man who found the body on Quarantine Island?”

“Yep. Him.”

“You sure he’s dead?”

“He’s got three bullet holes in him. Two in his chest, one in his belly. I’d say he’s been dead for a few hours.”

56

The sheriff blew out a breath. “Okay. We’ll be right there. You know how it works. Don’t touch anything. Try to keep Ralph from messing up my crime scene.”

“That’s another thing,” said Calhoun. “Ralph’s gone.”

The sheriff hesitated, then said, “Gone? What do you mean?”

“I mean, Ralph ain’t here. I left him here in the morning, and now he’s gone.”

“You sure?”

“I guess I ought to know.”

“Right. Sorry. So what do you—”

“I looked around and didn’t find a damn thing by way of clues unless you want to count a bottle of sunscreen that ain’t mine. Nothing about what happened to Mr. Vecchio, and nothing about where Ralph is at.”

“I’m sorry about Ralph,” said the sheriff, “but I expect he’ll turn up. Ralph’s a pretty resourceful dog. He’s probably off in the woods chasing partridges.”

“I got a bad feeling, Sheriff. I sure hope you’re right.”

Sheriff Dickman was silent for a minute. Then he said, “You’re a hard man to stay mad at, Stoney, but I intend to keep doing it. I truly do hope Ralph’s all right, but my plan here is to focus on this dead man you’ve got for me. You sit right there. I’ll be with you shortly.” He hung up.

Calhoun started a pot of coffee brewing, then went out onto the deck and yelled for Ralph.

Ralph did not appear.

After a while, Calhoun went into the house and poured himself a mug of coffee. He took it back out onto the deck, sat in the chair beside Mr. Vecchio, thought about the good morning of fishing they’d had just two days earlier, and waited for the sheriff to arrive.

Darkness was seeping out of the woods into the clearing that surrounded Calhoun’s house. The stars were winking on one by one. A couple of bats had come flapping out from the trees to chase mosquitoes. The barred owls were calling to each other.

It was past Ralph’s suppertime.

Calhoun sat there sipping his coffee, keeping Mr. Vecchio company and trying not to worry about Ralph, and after a little while he heard the sheriff’s Explorer turn into the driveway. A minute later, headlights came bouncing out of the woods and cutting through the gathering dusk. Then the sheriff pulled in, parked beside Calhoun’s truck, and got out. He was wearing his uniform, flat-brimmed hat and all, and he had a big cop-sized flashlight in his hand.

He came up the steps to the deck, frowned at Paul Vecchio sitting dead in the chair, then turned to Calhoun and said, “Did you shoot him, Stoney?”

Calhoun rolled his eyes. “You feel obligated to ask?”

“That’s your truck parked in the bushes out at the end of your driveway, right?”

“Yep.”

“Why is it there?”

“That’s where I left it.”

The sheriff blew out a breath. “I’m trying to be patient, here, Stoney. So why’d you leave it there?”

Calhoun shrugged. “I had a bad feeling.”

“A bad feeling.”

Calhoun nodded.

“What kind of bad feeling?”

Calhoun shrugged. “The kind of bad feeling you get when you know there’s something unpleasant waiting for you but you don’t know what it is.”

The sheriff smiled quickly. “And as a result of this bad feeling you had, you decided not to drive all the way in, so you got out of your truck and came sneaking back here to your house. You came around through the woods, did you?”

“That’s right.”

He pointed at Calhoun’s .30-30 on the table. “Did you bring that rifle with you?”

“I did.”

“You keep it in your truck ?”

Calhoun nodded. “Behind the front seat.”

“What did you find when you got here?”

Calhoun tilted his head at Mr. Vecchio.

“Nothing else?”

“Just Mr. Vecchio. And that bottle of sunscreen there.” He pointed at the purple bottle.

“That’s not yours?”

Calhoun shook his head.

“You didn’t touch it, did you?”

“ ‘Course not.”

“What about Ralph?” said the sheriff. “Has he come back?”

Calhoun shook his head. “Look,” he said, “I’m damn sorry I let you down.”

The sheriff waved the back of his hand at him. “Don’t worry about it.”

“The thing is,” said Calhoun, “for a man who’s mad at me and doesn’t want to be my friend, it’s a pretty damn friendly thing to ask about my dog before you even take a serious look at this poor man’s dead body.”

“He’s a good dog,” said the sheriff. “I like Ralph. Too bad I can’t say the same for his master.”

“Well,” said Calhoun, “he’s gone.”

“He’ll be back.”

“He never did this before. It’s past his suppertime.”

The sheriff shrugged and went over to where Paul Vecchio was sitting. As he gazed down at the dead man, he pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and snapped them onto his hands. Then he turned on his flashlight and shined it on Vecchio. He bent close to the man’s body, studying his face, and the wounds on his chest and belly, and his hands, which were resting in his lap.

Without turning around, the sheriff said, “I could use some of that coffee.”

Calhoun went inside, poured a mug of coffee, and brought it out. He put it on the table. “There’s your coffee, Sheriff.”

“Thanks,” the sheriff muttered.

Calhoun sat at the table and watched him.

After a couple of minutes the sheriff straightened up, pulled off the gloves, and stuffed them into his pocket. He sat at the table and took a sip of coffee. “What time did you leave the shop this afternoon, Stoney?” he said.

“Little after five.”

“Kate there with you?”

“Yup. She was still there when I left.”

“So about what time did you get home?”

“Takes an hour, give or take five minutes. Why? How long has Mr. Vecchio been dead ?”

The sheriff shrugged. “Not that long. Few hours at the most.”

“You think I came home and killed him?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Well,” said Calhoun, “I wouldn’t.”

“I meant,” said the sheriff, “have you got anything like a motive I ought to know about?”

Calhoun shook his head. “I just met him that once. We had good fishing. I liked him. I didn’t let him pay me, because we had to quit early. On account of that damn body out on Quarantine Island.”

“So you had no disagreements or arguments.”

Calhoun shook his head. “You think I’m lying to you?”

The sheriff shrugged. “No, I don’t. Not me. But I can’t speak for the others who’ll be coming.” He took out his cell phone. “I better call this in.” He pecked out a number, talked for a minute, then snapped the phone shut and took another sip of coffee.

“State cops?” said Calhoun.

The sheriff nodded. “The whole shebang. Detectives. Forensics. Medical Examiner. You name it. They’ll all be here.”

Calhoun nodded at Paul Vecchio’s body. “You want to do some brainstorming about this?”

“With you?” The sheriff shook his head. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Look,” said Calhoun, “I gave you my reasons for turning you down. It would’ve been easier just to say yes.”

“A gold star for taking the hard way, then,” said the sheriff.

“I never knew you to be sarcastic before, Sheriff.”

“I never had a friend spit in my face before.”

Calhoun nodded. “Some things’ve changed since we had that talk.”

“Finding a man sitting on your deck with three bullet holes in him is a new thing, all right,” said the sheriff.

“Other things’ve changed, too,” said Calhoun. “The other day I was telling you how damn perfect my life was, and I guess I cursed myself pretty thoroughly by saying those things, because now my life ain’t even close to perfect.”

The sheriff squinted at him. “This about Ralph going missing?”

Calhoun shrugged. “It’s about Ralph, sure. I guess it’s about Kate, too. And it’s about you asking for my help and me refusing because I was just thinking about myself instead of considering what it meant to be your friend. Mainly, I suppose it’s about this dead body here on my deck. You and I both know it ain’t a coincidence. It’s connected to that burned-up corpse we found on Quarantine Island.” He blew out a long breath. “Anyway, I guess I’ve been a dumb-ass, and I’m sorry. I don’t like not being your friend.”

Sheriff Dickman nodded. “You sure can be a dumbass sometimes. You’re right about that, at least.”

Calhoun held out his hand.

The sheriff gripped it. “I’m happy to be your friend again, Stoney, but I can’t hire you on.”

“Because I’m a suspect?”

“Whether you’re my suspect or not,” said the sheriff, “the others are going to look all squinty-eyed at you no matter what I say.”

Calhoun shrugged. “I got nothing to lie about, so I ain’t worried. Look. I don’t want to be your deputy. I got no desire to go sleuthing around with you. That hasn’t changed. But I do want to be your friend, so if you want to talk about it.. .”

“Okay. Why not.” The sheriff took off his hat and put it on the table. “Let’s do that. Let’s give some thought to what we’ve got here.” He ran the palm of his hand over his bald head. “We got Mr. Vecchio sitting here in your chair, and it appears to me that this is where he was sitting when he was shot.”