A Bat in the Belfry (9 page)

The overtaking vehicle’s roof bar flashed on, strobing the night with yellow. A single
whoop-whoop
from the car’s siren confirmed what she had already figured out: cops. And from the way they roared by, swerving expertly to the left and then back in again before their taillights vanished around a sharp curve, they were on their way to something.

A crime scene, she thought. Or a bad accident, something hot and fresh. The last reflected glow of departing taillights paled and died, leaving her there in the dark with her heart pounding again.

Thirty minutes later she was cruising over a long, curving causeway toward the island town of Eastport. The dashboard clock said one in the morning. Back in Boston, headlights and neon would still be ablaze, but here it seemed no one was on the road. She slid the window down again, smelling salt water and wet sand. In the distance, foghorns moaned guttural warnings to any sailors foolish or unlucky enough to be out on a night like this; nearer by, a bell buoy clanked monotonously.

The sky ahead, though, glowed red. Some natural phenomenon, the northern lights, maybe, she thought, or a house fire. But then she recognized the glow’s deep hue: the same cherry-beacon flaring that she’d seen on the dark road half an hour ago.

I quit my job, I quit my job
. The words went on thudding in her head. But they didn’t matter, she realized suddenly.

That color on the sky, as if the clouds had been pumped full of blood … just the sight of it set her heart racing again, her mind fizzing with gritty anticipation.

Cop-car red. Crime-scene red. A
lot
of cop cars …

Murder red.

URGENT WEATHER MESSAGE
WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU MAINE

FOR INTERIOR HANCOCK-COASTAL HANCOCK-CENTRAL WASHINGTON-COASTAL WASHINGTON-INCLUDING THE CITIES OF … EASTPORT … PERRY … PEMBROKE … CALAIS … LUBEC … MACHIAS

 … WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT EDT TOMORROW NIGHT …

THE WEATHER SERVICE IN CARIBOU CONTINUES URGENT WEATHER ADVISORIES FOR HEAVY RAIN, GALE FORCE WINDS, TIDAL FLOODING

* PRECIPITATION TYPE … RAIN HEAVY AT TIMES. LOCALLY AS MUCH AS 1 INCH PER HOUR.

* ACCUMULATIONS … RAIN 3 TO 5 INCHES TOTAL EXCEPT WHERE DOWNPOURS FREQUENT.

* TIMING … STORM IMPACTS WILL OCCUR IN TWO DISTINCT WAVES WITH A HURRICANE-LIKE EYE OF RELATIVE CALM, TODAY INTO TOMORROW NIGHT.

* TEMPERATURES … IN THE LOWER 40S.

* WINDS … NORTHEAST 35-65 MPH. WITH POSSIBLE HIGHER GUSTS ESPECIALLY COASTAL. CALM PERIODS MAY BE DECEPTIVE. STAY ALERT FOR DETERIORATING CONDITIONS.

* IMPACTS … EXPECT TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. WIND DAMAGE AND POWER OUTAGES LIKELY. LOCAL FLOODING LIKELY AND MAY BE PROLONGED DUE TO WIND VELOCITIES.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS … TRAVEL DELAYS WILL OCCUR. DO NOT UNDERTAKE UNNECESSARY TRAVEL. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL, PLAN EXTRA TIME TO REACH YOUR DESTINATION. SECURE LOOSE OBJECTS, STAY AWAY FROM WINDOWS DURING PERIODS OF HIGH WIND. DO NOT DRIVE THROUGH FLOODED AREAS.

THIS IS PRIMARILY A COASTAL STORM. WINDS STRONGEST ON ISLANDS AND ALONG THE SHORE. FLOODING AT HIGH TIDES PROBABLE. HIGH WINDS WILL IMPACT COMMUNICATIONS IN AFFECTED AREAS. LOCAL EMERGENCY ENTITIES SHOULD TAKE NOTE.

  
4

T
he Motel East’s empty parking lot gleamed like wet licorice as Lizzie pulled gratefully into a space by the Office sign, then turned the car off.

Made it
. The trip from Boston had taken eight hours, all of it in darkness and most in the kind of rain that turned driving into an eyestrain exercise, enough to smear up the windshield but never enough to rinse it clean.

Lizzie let her head roll back, then side to side. Not that it would help; since getting the envelope with the unfamiliar pictures in it, she’d felt like an iron rod was stuck between her shoulder blades and up through the base of her neck.

The motel’s small office was dimly lit. Five minutes after entering the office, she was letting herself into her new home-away-from-home. She dropped her duffel bag and snapped all the lights on, starting with the ones in the large, reassuringly clean bathroom. Next came the lamps on the bedside tables, the ones by the chair and on the desk, finally the wall sconces and the overhead in the tiny microwave-and-mini-fridge-equipped kitchenette.

She finished by snapping on the pair of lights just outside the sliding glass doors, on the small wooden balcony. The motel was built into a steep bank overlooking the bay, so the drop from the balcony to the courtyard below was at least thirty feet.

Perfect, she thought; pretty much intruder-proof. Sissy had always raved about how safe Eastport was, how hardly anyone even locked a door and how when Nicki got older she could play outside without an adult hovering over her every minute.

But then look what happened to Sissy
.

The silence in the motel room was stunning, making the words in her head sound even louder. Lizzie turned abruptly from the sliding glass windows, unable to see the bay in the darkness but knowing it was there, the ice-cold water that had swallowed her sister. Fiercely she forced her mind back to her own well-being; her drive into town on the main street running along the water’s edge had showed only rows of darkened storefronts.

Nowhere open now to eat, she realized, and she’d skipped dinner. But a few individually packaged snack cakes rested in a plastic basket on the room’s kitchenette counter; ordinarily, she’d never have touched them. She could fill up on them, though, wash their too-sweet gumminess down with what was left in the bourbon-and-Starbucks thermos, and, if necessary, with a couple of swallows from the bourbon bottle itself.

Why was she thinking about food anyway? She wasn’t even hungry. But she knew. It was so she wouldn’t think about a certain guy, not even his name, and most certainly not the fact that she was here in the same state with him instead of safely far away, in Massachusetts.

Far
away, where she couldn’t just call him and he could be with her in a few hours. If he wanted to be, which was another whole questionable subject …

Stop
. She jumped up, facing herself in the mirror behind the dresser. Glaring back at her was a woman whose three-inch-heeled black dress boots defiantly increased her height; at five foot nine she was as tall as many of the men she’d worked with, taller than a few. She ran an impatient hand over her dark hair, whose short, spiky messiness made her look like a punk rocker, drew a spit-moistened index finger under each eye to wipe away smeared mascara.

None of which helped much, nor did the short denim jacket, slim black Levi’s, or black silk turtleneck she wore.
All I need now is a pierced eyebrow to make sure everyone in Eastport thinks I just dropped in from Mars
. Her halfhearted try at mascara-gunk removal hadn’t done much good, either. Still …

Screw it
, she thought defiantly again. She didn’t want a shower, and even as tired as she was, the idea of sleep was beyond ridiculous.

Because she was here. She’d done it. And she might very well end up done for, at least professionally, on account of it.
I quit my job I quit my …
Oh, shut up, she told the nagging voice in her head, and for once it actually obeyed.

For now, anyway. Turning from the mirror, she dug into her duffel bag for her pink wool scarf. She wrapped the scarf around her neck, noting that a big slug of hot pink improved things immensely, then tucked the scarf ends into her jacket front.

Suddenly she looked decent, if still not exactly ordinary. She made sure that the .38 auto was in her bag, that it was loaded and the safety was on. When she stepped outside, the glow of cop-car lights still pulsed redly on the night sky, only a few blocks distant. The faint but unmistakable sputter of a dispatch radio suggested that this might’ve been what the squad car was racing toward, on the road earlier.

Damn, though. Because sure, it was interesting. But it could turn out very unhelpful; she’d planned to check in with local law enforcement first thing in the morning, introduce herself and see if anyone remembered her sister and Nicki. But now it looked as if the local cops might have plenty on their plates already.

Still, she had nothing else to do. In the chilly drizzle, she crossed the motel’s parking lot and the empty street and headed uphill past an old red-brick library with tall arched windows and a cannon bolted to a concrete block set into its lawn.

Ten minutes later, she was still walking; it was farther than she’d thought. But eventually a steep downhill stretch to a sharp right-hand curve brought her to within a half block of the bright white crime-scene lights set up in front of a church; two churches, actually, but only one was lit, the other, its near-twin, lurking half-visible in reflected glare from the first.

Somewhere nearby, a man’s voice kept shouting something. A name, Lizzie realized, howled raggedly over and over. Then she noticed another man walking too, a dozen yards ahead of her, and where the hell had he come from?

He hadn’t been there a moment ago. From between the houses lining the street, maybe, slipping out of a backyard …

But then she caught herself. This was Eastport, not Boston. Probably the guy lived in one of the white clapboard houses, each with its bay window, tiny front yard, and gabled roof, that seemed to have multiplied like white rabbits here. Still …

Tan slacks, light blue jacket, sneakers with some kind of a silvery reflecting logo on their heels; maybe she was being silly but she committed the details to memory anyway, along with his pale hair and the cautious way he slowed near the corner, as if he didn’t want to be seen by the people in front of the church.

There was a rabbit’s foot on a chain dangling from his belt loop, she noticed. And then suddenly he was gone; frowning, she quickened her step, but he’d slipped away somewhere, into one of the dark, narrow yard areas between the houses, maybe, or behind one of them.

But
which
one? She didn’t like not knowing where he’d gone; automatically her hand went to her bag to find her weapon as she paused under a streetlamp whose anemic glow was sickly yellow. Ahead stood more old houses, some dark and vacant-appearing but others with porch and multiple interior lights blazing, probably on account of all the activity around the church.

You’d have to be deaf not to hear that guy yelling the same name over and over. And the lights made the church front resemble a movie set, the building’s massive white front rising up and up into the streaming mist.

The shouting stopped. As she watched, a man dropped to his knees on the church’s front lawn, face in hands. Cop cars clogged the street and a small but growing crowd had gathered.

Lizzie scanned the personnel inside the crime-scene tape, picking out a man with a medical bag and clipboard. A couple of guys in state cop uniforms conferred by the two big front doors, propped open with folding chairs so the scene lights illuminated a small foyer. A bulletin board on the foyer’s wall displayed the words BAKE SALE in green letters.

A boxy white EMS vehicle backed up onto the lawn near the weeping man. The lights in the patient compartment were on but no one was inside; when the doors opened, Lizzie could see the vacant gurney with empty IV hooks dangling over it.

She approached the lit-up scene until she reached the yellow tape barrier. The man on the lawn looked up desperately as if he might see—somehow, miraculously—what had been taken from him.

A pang pierced her. He was probably the spouse, or parent, maybe, of whoever the victim was here, someone whose loved one would lie unceremoniously where they’d been found until all the photos and measurements and samples had been taken, the careful collection of evidence more important, now, than the empty husk of a human being.