Salem Falls (3 page)

She nodded. “If you want the job, it’s yours.”

No application, no references, no questions about his past employment. And anonymity-no one would ever expect to find him washing dishes in a diner. For a man who had determined to put his past firmly behind him, this situation seemed too good to be true. “I’d like it very much,” Jack managed.

“Then grab an apron,” said his new boss.

Suddenly, he remembered that there was something he needed to do, if Salem Falls was going to become his new residence. “I need about an hour to run an errand,” he said.

“No problem. It’s the least I can do for the person who saved me.”

Funny, Jack thought. I was thinking the same thing.

Detective-Lieutenant Charlie Saxton fiddled with the radio in his squad car for a few moments, then switched it off. He listened to the squelch of slush under the Bronco’s tires and wondered, again, if he should have stayed with the Miami Police Department.

It was a hard thing to be a law enforcement officer in the town where you’d once grown up. You’d walk down the street, and instead of noticing the IGA, you’d remember the storeroom where a local teen had knifed his girlfriend. You’d pass the school playground and think of the drugs confiscated from the children of the town selectmen. Where everyone else saw the picture-perfect New England town of their youth, you saw the underbelly of its existence.

His radio crackled as he turned onto Main Street. “Saxton.”

“Lieutenant, there’s some guy here insisting he’ll talk only to you.”

Even with the bad reception, Wes sounded pissed. “He got a name?”

“If he does, he isn’t giving it up.”

Charlie sighed. For all he knew, this man had committed murder within town lines and wanted to confess. “Well, I’m driving into the parking lot. Have him take a seat.”

He swung the Bronco into a spot, then walked in to find his guest cooling his heels.

Literally. Charlie’s first thought, pure detective, was that the guy couldn’t be from around here-no one who lived in New Hampshire was stupid enough to wear a sports jacket and dress shoes in the freezing slush of early March. Still, he didn’t seem particularly distraught, like the recent victim of a crime, or nervous, like a perp. No, he just looked like a guy who’d had a lousy day. Charlie extended his hand. “Hi there. Detective-Lieutenant Saxton.”

The man didn’t identify himself. “Could I have a few minutes of your time?”

Charlie nodded, his curiosity piqued. He led the way to his office, and gestured to a chair. “What can I do for you, Mr. . . .”

“Jack St. Bride. I’m moving to Salem Falls.”

“Welcome.” Ah, it all was falling into place. This was probably some family man who wanted to make sure the locale was safe enough for his wife and kids and puppy. “Great place, great town. Is there something in particular I can help you with?”

For a long moment, St. Bride was silent. His hands flexed on his knees. “I’m here because of 651-B,” he said finally.

It took Charlie a moment to realize this well-dressed, soft-spoken man was talking about a legal statute that required certain criminals to report in to a local law enforcement agency for ten years or for life, depending on the charge for which they had been convicted. Charlie schooled his features until they were as blank as St. Bride’s, until it was clear that his former words of welcome had been rescinded. Then he pulled from his desk drawer the state police’s form to register a sexual offender.

March 2000

Salem Falls,

New Hampshire

“W hat are you doing?”

Jack spun at the sound of his new employer’s voice. He hid his fists behind his back. “Nothing.”

Addie’s lips tightened, and she stuffed her order pad into the waistband of her apron. “Look,” she said, “I don’t put up with anything shady on this job. Not drugs, not drinking, and if I catch you stealing, you’ll be out on your butt so quick you won’t know what kicked you.” She extended a hand, palm up. “Give it over.”

Jack glanced away from her and passed her the steel wool he’d been using.

“This is what you’re hiding? A Brillo pad?”

“Yeah.”

“For God’s sake . . . why?”

Jack slowly uncurled his fist. “My hands were dirty.” He stared again at the pads of his fingers, still black with ink from when Detective Saxton had taken a set of prints for the station’s records. The baby wipes at the booking room had been ineffective, and Jack could have asked to use the men’s room, but the feeling of having his fingers rolled one by one, again, was so unsettling that he wanted only to put the building far behind him. By the time he’d arrived at the diner, the ink had dried, and no amount of soap had managed to remove it.

He held his breath. There was no way she’d be able to tell, was there?

“Ink,” Addie announced. “It happens to me, too, when I read the newspaper. You’d think they could figure out a substance that stays on the page instead of your fingers.”

With relief, Jack followed her into the small pantry off the kitchen. She held out a bottle of industrial cleaner. “I got this from a customer, once, a farmer. It’s probably used to cure leather or something . . . but it also cleans just about every mess you can imagine.” Smiling, she held up her hands-chapped, red, cracked. “You keep using Brillo, you’ll wind up looking like me.”

Jack nodded and took the bottle from her. But what he really wanted to do was touch her hand, feel the tips of her fingers, see if they were the catastrophe she made them out to be or if they were simply as warm as they looked.

Roy sat up in bed with a start, cradling his head. God, it hurt. The room was spinning, but that was nothing compared to the noise that was nearly splitting his skull. Scowling, he stood. Damn Delilah Piggett, anyway. The cook thought she had a right to play alley cat with the pots and pans when people were trying to sleep just above her.

“Delilah!” he roared, stamping down the stairs that led into the kitchen.

But Delilah wasn’t there. Instead, a tall blond man who looked entirely too polished to be working as a dishwasher was standing at the big sink, rinsing out cookware. He finished another cast-iron pot and set it down-with a righteous, ear-splitting clank-onto a makeshift drying rack. “Delilah went to the bathroom,” the man said over his shoulder. “She should be back in a second.”

Delilah had left several burgers going on the grill. Fire hazard. He never would have done that in his days on the line. “Who the hell are you?” Roy barked.

“Jack St. Bride. I was just hired as a dishwasher.”

“For crying out loud, you don’t do it by hand. There’s a machine just over there.”

Jack smiled wryly. “Thanks, I know. It’s broken.” He stood uneasily before the old man, wondering who he was and why he’d appeared from a back staircase. The alcohol fumes coming off the guy could have pickled the cucumbers Delilah had sliced for garnish. Jack grabbed another dirty pot and set it into the soapy water. As he scrubbed, black smoke began to rise from the grill. He looked at his hands, at the pot, then at the older man. “The burgers are burning,” Jack said. “Do you mind flipping them?”

Roy was two feet away from the grill; the spatula lay within reach. But he sidled away from the cooking area, giving it a wide berth. “You do it.”

With a muttered curse, Jack turned off the water again, wiped his hands dry, and physically pushed Roy out of the way to flip the hamburgers. “Was that so hard?”

“I don’t cook,” the older man said succinctly.

“It’s a hamburger! I didn’t ask you to make beef Wellington!”

“I can make a hell of a beef Wellington, matter of fact, if I feel like it!”

The swinging doors that led to the dining room swelled forward like an eruption, then parted to reveal Addie. “What’s going on? I can hear you yelling all the way up front . . . Dad? What are you doing down here? And where’s Delilah?”

“Bathroom.” Jack turned to the sink, assuming his hired position. Let the old man explain what had happened.

But she didn’t even ask. She seemed delighted, in fact, to find her father in the kitchen. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a guy who can’t get any rest because someone’s downstairs banging around.”

Addie patted his hand. “I should have warned Jack that you were upstairs napping.”

Napping? Comatose, more like.

“Jack, if you’ve got a minute . . . there are some booths in the front that need clearing.”

Jack nodded and picked up a plastic bucket used for busing tables. His heart started to pound as he entered the front of the restaurant, and he wondered how long it would take until he no longer felt like his every move was being watched. But the diner was empty. Relieved, he cleared one table, then headed toward the counter. Jack put a coffee cup into the bin, then reached for a full plate, the food cold and untouched. French fries and a cheeseburger with extra pickles-someone had paid for a meal and hadn’t even taken a bite.

He was starving. He’d missed breakfast at the jail because he was being processed for release. Jack glanced around . . . Who would ever know? He grabbed a handful of fries and quickly stuffed them into his mouth.

“Don’t.”

He froze. Addie stood behind him, her face white. “Don’t eat her meal.”

Jack blinked. “Whose meal?”

But she turned away without a response and left him wondering.

At fifteen, Thomas McAfee knew he was going to be a late bloomer. Well, at least he sure as hell hoped so, because going through life five feet five inches tall, with arms like a chicken, wasn’t going to make for a pleasant adolescence.

Not that ninth grade was supposed to be pleasant. After taking medieval history last semester, Thomas figured high school was the modern equivalent of running the gauntlet. The hearty survived and went off to Colby-Sawyer and Dartmouth to play lacrosse. Everyone else slunk to the sidelines, destined to spend their lives as part of the audience.

But as Thomas stood on Main Street after school that day, freezing his ass off, he was thinking that Chelsea Abrams might like to root for the underdog.

Chelsea was more than just a junior. She was smart and pretty, with hair that caught the sunlight during the keyboarding class Thomas had with her. She didn’t hang with the cheerleaders, or the brains, or the heads. Instead, she was tight with three other girls-including Gillian Duncan, whose dad owned half the town. Okay, so they dressed a little weird, with a lot of black and scarves-a cross between the art freak Goths who hung out in the smoking pit and gypsy wannabes-but Thomas knew, better than most, that the package was far less important than what was on the inside.

Suddenly Chelsea turned the corner with her friends, even Gillian Duncan, who had been too sick to go to school but had made an amazing enough recovery now, to be out and about. Chelsea’s breath fogged in the cold air, each huff taking the shape of a heart. Thomas squared his shoulders and came up from behind, falling into step beside her.

He could smell cinnamon in her hair, and it made him dizzy.

“Did you know the alphabet’s all wrong?” he said casually, as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation.

“Sorry?” Chelsea said.

“The letters are mixed up. U and I should be together.”

The other girls snickered, and Gillian Duncan’s voice fell like a hammer. “What’s it like at the moron end of the bell curve?” She looped her arm through Chelsea’s. “Let’s get out of here.”

Thomas felt heat rising above his collar and willed it to go away. Chelsea was tugged forward by her friends, leaving him standing alone. Did she turn back to look at him . . . or was she only adjusting the strap of her knapsack? As they crossed, Thomas could hear Chelsea’s friends laughing. But she wasn’t.

Surely that was something.

Charlie Saxton ate a peanut butter sandwich every day for lunch, although he hated peanut butter. He did it because for some reason, his wife Barbara thought he liked it, and she went to the trouble of packing him a lunch each morning. Around Valentine’s Day, she’d bought those little sugary hearts with messages on them, and for a month now she’d been sticking one into the soft white bread: HOT STUFF! CRAZY 4 U! With a fingernail, Charlie edged out the candy of the day and read its message aloud. “Kiss and tell.”

“Not me, boss. My lips are sealed.” The station’s receptionist hustled into his office and handed him a manila folder. “You know, I think it’s sweet when a guy over forty can still blush. This just came in on the fax.”

She closed the door behind her as Charlie slid the pages from the folder, scanning the court records of Jack St. Bride. They showed his arrest for a charge of felonious sexual assault against a minor . . . but a final disposition for simple sexual assault, a misdemeanor.

Charlie dialed the Grafton County attorney’s office, asking for the name of the prosecutor listed on the fax. “Sorry, she’s out for two weeks on vacation. Can someone else help you?” the secretary said.