"Yep. Diane asked to borrow my binoculars. See, my wife and I are bird-watchers. We belong to the society." He scratched his chin. "Diane's a solitary kind of woman. Be a real good birder if she put her mind to it."
Laura nodded absently, turned, and looked at the stone cottage again. The mailbox had a peace sign painted on it. In front of the cottage stood an abstract clay sculpture, all sharp angles and edges.
"Diane's a real popular lady all of a sudden," the old man said.
"What?"
"Real popular," he repeated. "Diane usually don't have no visitors. She comes over and plays chess with me sometimes. Beats my socks off, too. Other fella was askin' about her yesterday."
"Other fellow?" Mark frowned. "Who?"
"Friend of hers," he said. "Fella with a bad throat. Had to plug a doohickey into his neck and talk through a speaker. Damnedest thing."
"Did Diane tell you who she might be going to visit?" Laura asked, getting the conversation back on track.
"Nope. Just said she was goin' away for the weekend. Headin' north, she said."
It was obvious the man didn't know anything else. "Thank you," Laura said, and the old man wished them a good day and closed his door.
On the walk back to Laura's BMW, Mark kicked a pinecone and said, "Sounds weird."
"What does?"
"About the guy with the bad throat. Sounds weird."
"Why? Maybe he's one of her pottery students."
"Maybe." Mark stood next to the car and listened to the wind roaming in the bare trees. "I've just got a funny feeling, that's all." He got into the car, and Laura slid behind the wheel. Their drive up from the South had been, for Laura, an education in radical philosophy and the teachings of Zen. Mark Treggs was a fount of knowledge about the militant struggles of the sixties, and they had gotten into a long discussion about the assassination of John F. Kennedy as the point when America had become poisoned. "So what do we do now?" he asked as Laura started the engine.
"I'm going to wait for Bedelia Morse to come home," she told him. "You've done your part. If you want, I'll buy you a plane ticket back to Chattanooga."
Mark deliberated as they drove back toward Ann Arbor. "Didi won't talk to you if I'm not there," he said. "She won't even let you in the door." He swept his long hair back over his shoulders and watched the countryside pass. "No, I'd better stick around," Mark decided. "I can get Rose to call in sick for me on Monday. No problem."
"I thought you'd be eager to get home."
"I am, but… I guess I'd like to see Didi. You know, for old times' sake."
There was something Laura had been meaning to ask, and now seemed the time. "In your book you dedicated a line to Didi: 'Keep the faith and love the one you're with.' Who were you talking about? Is she living with someone?"
"Yeah," Mark said. "Herself. I talked her out of slitting her wrists last summer." He glanced quickly at Laura and then away. "Didi's carrying a lot of heavy freight. She's not the same person she used to be. I guess the past eats at her."
Laura looked at her hands on the steering wheel and realized something that almost startled her. She was wearing no fingernail polish, and her nails were dirty. Her shower this morning had been a speed drill. The diamond of her engagement ring – a link to Doug – looked dull. Before this ordeal she'd been meticulous about her manicures and her ring cleaning. Such things now seemed incredibly pointless.
"A dude with a bad throat," Mark said quietly. "Asking for Didi. I don't know. That gives me the creeps."
"Why?"
"If he was one of her students, wouldn't he know she was going out of town for the weekend?"
"Not necessarily."
He grunted. "Maybe you're right. But it still sounds weird to me."
Laura said, "This okay?" and motioned to a Days Inn coming up on the left. Mark said it was fine with him, and she turned into the parking lot. The first thing she was going to do when she got to her room was call the FBI in Atlanta and check with Kastle, but she had no intention of betraying either Mark or Bedelia Morse. She knew she was going to be climbing the walls until she got a chance to talk to Didi face-to-face.
As Laura and Mark were checking into the Days Inn, the tall, gaunt man who had parked his dark blue Buick on a dirt road a half mile from Bedelia Morse's cottage walked back to his car through the woods, his boots crunching on dead leaves. He wore brown trousers and a gray parka with a hood: colors that helped camouflage him in the winter-gnawed forest. Around his neck was a Minolta camera with a zoom lens, and over his shoulder was a camouflage-mottled bag that held a small SuperSnooper listening dish, earphones, and a miniature tape recorder as well as a loaded.45 automatic. The man's face was hidden by the hood, but his breathing rattled.
When he reached his car, he unlocked the trunk and put the camera and shoulder bag into it, next to the black leather case that held a Valmet Hunter.308 rifle with a telescopic sight and a nine-round magazine.
His own house was about fifteen miles northwest, in a town called Hell.
He drove there, his black-gloved hands tight on the wheel and his grin demonic.
7: The Devil of All Pigs
Behind Mary Terror was New York City. Above her was the gray sky, armored in clouds. Beneath her was the deck of the boat, ferrying a group of tourists across the wind-whipped water to what lay before hen the weeping lady on Liberty Island.
Mary stood within the glassed-in cabin, out of the wind, with Drummer in her arms. The weeping lady grew larger and larger, torch in one hand and book cradled against her breasts. The other passengers were mostly Japanese, and they took pictures like crazy. Mary rocked Drummer and cooed to him, and her heart slammed in her chest as the Circle Line boat neared its destination. In her large shoulder bag was her Magnum pistol, fully loaded. Mary licked her lips. She could see people walking around the base of the weeping lady, could see someone feeding sea gulls on the concrete dock where the boat would pull in. Mary looked at her wristwatch. It was about eight minutes before two o'clock. She realized how big Liberty Island was. Where was the contact supposed to be made? The message in the Stone hadn't said. A little burst of panic threatened her composure; what if she couldn't find Jack? What if he was waiting for her but she couldn't find him? Steady, she told herself. Trust in karma, and keep an eye on your back.
Drummer started to cry. "Shhh, shhh," she said softly, and she fed him his pacifier. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her sleep had been uneasy, and filled with phantoms: pigs with rifles and shotguns, converging on her from all sides. She had taken stock of the tourists waiting for the boat as she'd bought her ticket: none of them smelted like pigs, and none of them wore shined shoes. But out here in the open she didn't feel safe, and once she set foot on Liberty Island she would unzip her bag so she could get to her gun in a hurry.
The boat began to slow, the weeping lady gargantuan before her. Then the boat's crew threw out ropes, the craft sidled up against the dock, and a ramp was tied down. "Watch your step, watch your step!" one of the crewmen cautioned, and the tourists started getting off the boat with a chatter of excitement.
It was time. Mary waited for everyone else to get off, and then she unzipped the carryall and took Drummer across the ramp onto the concrete of Liberty Island.
Sea gulls screeched and spun in the eddies of cold air. Mary's eyes darted right and left: an elderly couple walked together near the railing; a heavyset woman herded two children along; three teenage boys in leather jackets jostled each other, their voices raucous; a man in a gray jogging outfit was sitting on a bench, staring blankly toward the city; another man, this one wearing a beige overcoat, was tossing peanuts to the sea gulls. He was wearing shined wingtips, and Mary walked quickly away from him, the back of her neck prickling.