“Bring up all of the lights,” Harmon told Todd. Todd went to a box of switches on the kitchen wall and flicked a line of them. Instantly the grounds were illuminated. Todd led the way out. I followed, picking up a flashlight from a rack on the wall along the way. Harmon hung back. After all, he didn’t have a gun. Regrettably, I didn’t have a gun either. It seemed rude to bring one to a stranger’s dinner party.
The lights took out most of the shadows in the garden, but there were still patches of dark under the trees by the walls. I used the flashlight to probe them, but there was nothing there. The ground was soft, but there was no sign of footprints. The surrounding wall was eight or nine feet high, and covered in ivy. Anyone climbing the wall would have damaged the ivy, but it appeared to be intact. We made a cursory search of the rest of the grounds, but it was obvious that Todd believed Maria had been mistaken.
“She’s kinda jittery at the best of times,” he said, as we walked back to where Harmon waited for us. “Everything is ‘Jesus’ and ‘ Madre de Dios.’ She’s a looker, though, I’ll give her that, but you got a better chance of getting laid by a busload of nuns.”
Harmon raised his hands in a “What’s happening?” gesture.
“Nada,” said Todd. “Not a sign.”
“A lot of fuss over nothing,” said Harmon. He headed back into the kitchen, shot Maria a disapproving glance, then went to release his guests. Todd followed. I stayed behind. Maria was putting plates into a big dishwasher. Her chin was trembling slightly.
“Can you tell me what you saw?” I said.
She shrugged.
“Maybe Mr. Harmon is right. Maybe I no see,” she said, although I could tell from the expression on her face that she didn’t believe her own words.
“Try me,” I said.
She stopped what she was doing. A tear caught in her eyelash, and she brushed it away.
“It was a man. He dress in clothes. Brown, I think. Muy sucio. His face? White. Pálido, sí?”
“Pale?”
“Sí, pale. Also-”
Now she looked frightened again. She touched her hands to her face and mouth.
“Here and here, nada. Nothing. Empty. Hueco.”
“Hueco? I don’t understand.”
Maria glanced over my shoulder. I turned to find the cook watching us.
“Della,” said Maria, “ayúdame a explicarle lo que quiere decir ‘hueco.’”
“You speak Spanish?” I asked her.
“Some,” she said.
“So, any idea what hueco might mean?”
“Uh, I’m not sure. I can try to find out.”
Della exchanged some words with Maria, who made gestures and signs to help her along. Eventually, she picked up a decorated ostrich egg that was used to hold pens and tapped her fingers lightly on the shell.
“Hueco,” said Maria, and the cook’s face briefly brightened before she too looked troubled, as though she had somehow misunderstood what was being said.
“Hueco means ‘hollow,’” she said. “Maria says he was a hollow man.”
Back in the hallway, June was waiting for me. Harmon hovered nearby, seemingly anxious to be rid of us all. Todd was on the phone in the hall. I heard him thank someone before he hung up. He clearly wanted to tell Harmon something, but wasn’t sure if he should wait until we were gone. I decided to nudge him.
“Anything wrong?”
He glanced at Harmon for permission to speak in the company of others.
“Well?” said his boss. “What did they say?”
“I called the Falmouth P.D.,” said Todd, directing the explanation to me as well as his employer. “Just seemed like it was worth checking to see if they’d spotted anything out of the ordinary. They usually keep a close eye on the houses along here.” By that, I presumed that he meant they kept a close eye on Joel Harmon’s house. He could have bought and sold most of his neighbors ten times over. “Someone reported a car cruising the area, maybe even parked for a while over by the eastern wall of the property, and got suspicious. By the time the cops came, the car was gone, but could be that it was connected to what Maria saw.”
“They get a make, a number?” I asked him.
Todd shook his head. “Just a medium-sized red car,” he said.
Harmon must have seen something in my face.
“Does that ring a bell with you?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “Frank Merrick, the man who was bothering Rebecca Clay, drives a red car. If I found the connection between you and Clay, then so could he.”
“Friendship,” Harmon corrected me, “not connection. Daniel Clay was my friend. And if this man Merrick wants to talk to me about him, then I’ll tell him just what I told you.”
I walked to the door and looked out at the pebbled driveway, illuminated by the lights of the house and the lamps that stood along the verge. It was Merrick, it had to be. But Merrick ’s description did not match that given by Maria of the man whom she had glimpsed in the garden. Merrick had come here, but he had not been alone.
Hollow.
“I’d be careful for the next few days, Mr. Harmon,” I said. “If you go out, keep Todd with you. I’d have your security system checked too.”
“All because of this one man?” asked Harmon. He sounded slightly incredulous.
“He’s dangerous, and he may not be just one man. As you said yourself, better to be safe.”
With that, June and I left. I drove, the electronic gates opening silently before us as we left the Harmon house behind.
“My,” said June, “you do lead an interesting life.”
I looked at her. “You think that was my doing?”
“You told Joel that the man in the car might have made the same connection that you did-or, rather, that I made for you-but there is another possibility.”
There was only the slightest hint of a rebuke in her voice. I didn’t need her to tell me why. I had figured it out for myself, even though I was reluctant to say it aloud in front of Harmon and had instead forced it back like bile in my throat. Just as I had tracked Merrick, so, too, perhaps Merrick was tracking me, and I had led him straight to Joel Harmon.
But I was also troubled by the appearance of the man in Harmon’s garden. It appeared that Merrick ’s inquiries about Daniel Clay had drawn something else, a man-no, men, I corrected myself, remembering a feeling like foul breezes separating before me, and letters scrawled in dust by a childlike hand-shadowing his movements. Was he aware of them, or was their presence something to do with Eldritch’s client? Yet it was hard to see half-glimpsed men climbing the rickety stairs to an ancient lawyer’s office, or dealing with the harridan who guarded the gateway to the upper levels of Eldritch’s business. What had seemed at first like a simple case of stalking had become infinitely stranger and more complex, and I was glad that Angel and Louis would soon be with me. Merrick’s deadline was about to expire and, while I had set in motion a plan for dealing with him, I was aware that he was, in a sense, the least of my worries. Merrick I could deal with. He was dangerous, but he was a known quantity. The Hollow Men were not.
Chapter XIII
Early the next morning, I was standing by the Portland Public Market’s parking lot. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and the weathermen were saying that it was likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future, which, in Maine terms, meant that it might begin to improve sometime around April. It was a damp cold, the kind that left clothing moist to the touch, and the windows of coffee shops, diners, even passing cars, were steamed up as the heat caused the moisture to evaporate, lending an uncomfortably claustrophobic atmosphere to anywhere but the least crowded of places.
While most people had the option of seeking shelter indoors, there were some who were not so fortunate. Already a queue had formed outside the Preble Street Resource Center, where the city’s poorest gathered each day to be served breakfast by volunteers. Some would be hoping to take a shower or do their laundry while they were there, or to pick up some fresh clothing and use a telephone. The working poor who couldn’t make it back for midday would be served a bag lunch so they wouldn’t go hungry later. In this way the center and its partners, the Wayside and Saint Luke’s soup kitchens, served over three hundred thousand meals every year to those who might otherwise have starved or have been forced to redirect money from rent or essential medicines just to keep body and soul together.