Nine Lives, page 13
But first he needed a place to sleep. He’d passed several inns and motels on Route 1, but unless he absolutely had to, he preferred to not stay overnight at a place where he had to use a credit card. He was being overly cautious, he knew, but so far in his life being overly cautious had worked out for him. He got back in his car, and drove further north, hitting side roads until he found a trailhead with no cars parked in its lot. He walked about a hundred yards down a dark narrow trail hemmed in by thick stands of pine until he came to a clearing just big enough for his one-man tent. He set it up, then went back to his car.
His plan was to go back into town and eat at the fancy-looking restaurant that had the oysters and the cod cheeks. He’d see if he could get a window seat so he could watch cars and people go by. Then he’d drive back to the trailhead, park the car, and go sleep in the tent, making sure that he was up and back on the road by dawn. That gave him a whole day tomorrow to hunt for a white Camry and for Jessica Winslow. She was somewhere here and he’d find her.
9
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 11:14 A.M.
For the first time since she’d arrived two days earlier, Jessica picked up the telephone that was secured to the kitchen wall of the cottage and checked for a dial tone. There was one, which surprised her, mostly because the phone itself was so old-fashioned. It was a pale green, the color of dated kitchens, and the handset was connected by a long, twisted cord.
The night before, she’d checked her messages; there was one from Aaron, congratulating her on giving her protective detail the slip, and also providing a phone number for Arthur Stearns Kruse, the father of Arthur Kruse. He’d told her to not call Kruse until the following day at the earliest, that he was set to be questioned by one of the agents in charge of the investigation.
Despite desperately wanting to speak with Art Kruse, to find out if he really did know her own father, she’d waited. Her first day in Maine had been spent almost entirely inside the cottage, although she’d taken an early morning walk, first down to a white lighthouse on the tip of a rocky peninsula. Because of a cold, impenetrable fog Jessica couldn’t even see the ocean that no doubt stretched beyond the lighthouse, its lamp rotating, its horn blasting in periodic bursts. It was as though a gray curtain had descended along the shoreline. No, that wasn’t quite it. It was like looking at nothing, as though the world simply ceased to exist beyond a certain point.
From the lighthouse she’d walked to the village of Port Clyde, a small cluster of docks and buildings along a busy harbor. There was one restaurant, one ice cream shop, one general store. Jessica went into the store and bought enough groceries and wine to last her a few days, then carried the heavy bags back up the hill to her cottage.
For the rest of the day, Jessica tried to acclimate to her new, temporary life. The book she’d started was good—all about life after a devastating plague—but in between bouts of reading she was nervous and restless, pacing through the house. At dinnertime she made herself pasta with clams and drank half a bottle of Chardonnay. Then she turned on the television, spent thirty minutes trying to figure out the three separate remotes, and finally settled in to watch Rio Bravo on TCM. She was familiar with the movie because it had been one of her father’s favorites, although she didn’t remember its being as funny as it was. It made her want to call him, even though that was impossible. He was in the memory wing of an assisted living facility, and, lately, he was having trouble recognizing family members when they stopped in to visit, let alone when they called.
I should call my mom, Jessica thought. At least to let her know that she was in the middle of a case and might be hard to reach for a while. She could also ask her mom about Art Kruse, although she doubted that her mother would know anything about him. Still, she supposed she could ask her mom to ask her dad about Art Kruse. Even though his condition was getting worse, he still had moments of lucidity, especially when it came to the distant past.
So the first call she made, the following morning at half past eleven, was to her mom’s cell phone number, and received a chirpy “Hello.”
“Mom, it’s Jessica.”
“Oh, my phone didn’t recognize your number. I wonder why not?”
“I’m calling from a different number. That’s why I’m calling you. I’m swamped with work and I’m off of my cell for a few days.”
“What’s going on? No, don’t tell me. I’ll only worry. Are you at home? Can I call you at your home number?”
“I haven’t had a home number for three years, but if it’s an emergency, send me an email okay?”
“Okay, honey. Guess where I am right now?”
“I don’t know. Where?”
“I’m at Margie Lowry’s house for lunch. You remember Margie?”
“Kind of, I think.”
“You remember Danny Lowry?” A memory surfaced of a painfully shy boy with thick glasses and bright red hair. He’d been in Jessica’s class from kindergarten all the way through senior year of high school, although she doubted they’d ever exchanged a single word.
“I remember Danny. You’re at his mother’s house?”
“She’s having a little luncheon reunion for all the ex-troop leaders, the Brownie moms.”
“Oh, fun. I won’t keep you, but can I ask you to do one thing for me?”
“Of course,” her mom said, and now Jessica could hear chatter in the background, the sound of elderly women gossiping.
“When are you next going to visit Dad?”
“I was thinking of going over this afternoon after lunch, because Margie now lives in Westford so I’m halfway there as it is.”
“When you see him, can you ask him a question about one of his old friends? Someone named Art Kruse.”
“Art Kruse? One of your father’s old friends?”
“I’m pretty sure he was. The name doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“Not really, honey, but maybe. You know your father—”
“I know. Just ask him. I’m not expecting much. Will you remember the name?”
“Can you text it to me?”
“I can’t, actually.”
“Right, right. No phone. You said it was Art Kruse. Can you spell it for me?”
Jessica spelled out the name, and her mother promised to ask her father about him. She doubted it would lead to anything, but it couldn’t hurt.
After finishing the call with her mother, she punched in the number that Aaron had given her for Art Kruse in Florida. After several rings, a man’s voice, hoarse-sounding, said, “Hello?”
“Is this Art Kruse?” Jessica said.
“Depends on who’s calling.”
“Mr. Kruse, this is Agent Winslow calling from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m pretty sure that you’ve talked, already, with my colleague …”
“Yes, yesterday. He gave me a list of about a hundred people, none of whom I’d heard of, but wouldn’t tell me what it was all about. Something to do with my son’s death, I guess.”
“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.
When he reached the outskirts of Port Clyde, Fischer slowed down so that he could look at all the cars in the driveways. He drove toward the lighthouse again, wanting to get a look at it when the fog wasn’t so thick. He parked and got out of the car. He was amazed how many islands were visible, some not too far from the shore. The water was speckled with lobster buoys, catching the remaining light in the day. He wanted to stay for a while, just take it all in, but got back in his car and drove into the center of the village, looking for any side streets he hadn’t tried yet. The first left heading northwest from the general store was Horse Point Road, and he turned down it. The road rose slightly to provide expansive views of the harbor, and several of the quaint shingled cottages had signs out front, advertising themselves as rental properties.
About three-quarters of a mile down the road Fischer spotted a white Camry parked in front of a two-story gray house with blue trim. He slowed, just long enough to confirm that the license plate was correct, that it was Jessica Winslow’s car.
He’d found her.
A small surge of excitement coursed through him, prickling the back of his neck. But as he scanned the house before turning back to the road, he caught a glimpse of a figure in a first-floor window, looking out toward him.
He’d been spotted, as well.
Horse Point Road was a dead end, and he turned around slowly. He considered for a brief moment pulling into the driveway of the house that Jessica Winslow was hiding in, busting down the front door, and taking her in the house, but it would be foolish on so many levels. She was an FBI agent and would almost certainly have a gun. And even if he got the drop on her there would be no way he could make her death painless, and that was one of the instructions from his client.
He drove back down the road, not turning his head to look at either the car or the cottage. Maybe there was a chance that she simply thought he’d come down a dead-end road by accident.
11
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 4:22 P.M.
Jessica Winslow was on the phone with her father when she spotted the gray Chevy Equinox slow down in front of her house. Inside the car, the man—although she supposed it could have been a woman—turned his head to look at her car. He wore a baseball cap but that was all that she could see.
Her road was a dead end so she told her dad she’d call him right back, and raced upstairs to the guest bedroom, grabbing the pair of fancy binoculars that she’d spotted on the top of a bookshelf earlier. She went to the master bedroom, put a desk chair in front of one of the two front-facing windows, and adjusted the focus on the binoculars. She only had to wait about thirty seconds before the car, not slowing down this time, cruised past the house. She got a good look at the license plate, but it was smeared with mud, and all she could make out was the number 3 and maybe an L.
The fact that the plate number was obscured, intentionally, meant that she’d been found. A combination of fear and triumph surged through her. He was so close. And how had he managed it? She assumed that she’d been followed from Albany, or possibly her phone conversation with Gwen had been tapped, although how that was possible she had no idea. And if she had been followed here, then it must have been a multi-car job. She hadn’t spotted anything.
She did wonder if the person in the car was the architect behind the list, or merely some employee. Maybe someone sent to kill her, or maybe someone just sent to find her. Her whole body hummed with what felt like electricity, and she went and got her handgun—the Glock 27—just to have it near her.
She was trying to decide what to do next when she remembered that she needed to call her father back, if only because she had told him that she would. When she’d asked him about Arthur Kruse there’d been a long silence, followed by his asking if Arthur was someone he should know.
“No, Dad,” Jessica had said. “I was just curious if you knew him. He’s someone you would have known many years ago.”
Another pause. Then, he said, “I keep wondering where I left my car.”
That had been the last thing he’d said before Jessica quickly told him she’d call him back. She didn’t really need to; he wouldn’t remember the phone conversation. But because she’d said she would, she called him anyway.
“Hi, Dad, it’s Jessica calling you back. Your daughter.”
“I know you’re my daughter.”
“I just thought I’d say a proper goodbye since we got cut off abruptly before.”
“That’s a good thing,” he said, and he sounded as though he had a little cold.
“What’s a good thing?”
“A proper goodbye! No one really says them anymore.”
