If Joel Tobias had told Bernie Kramer to stop taking his medication because it was interfering with his assigned tasks, might he also have been responsible for Damien Patchett setting aside his Trazodone?
‘Did Bernie seek professional help?’
‘I got the impression that he was receiving some kind of help, because of the way he started talking about his condition, but he never said from whom. After Bernie died, I called Tobias and told him that he wouldn’t be welcome at the funeral, so he stayed away. I haven’t seen him since. I found the letter that Bernie had written about his post-traumatic stress among his private papers, and decided that it should be printed in the newspaper, because people should know how these men and women have been treated by their own government. Bernie was a lovely man, a gentle man. He didn’t deserve to end his life that way.’
‘You mentioned Bernie’s private papers, Mrs. Fannan. Do you still have them?’
‘Some of them,’ she replied. ‘The rest I burned.’
There was something here. ‘Why did you burn them?’
She had started to cry, and I had trouble understanding some of what she said next. ‘He’d written page after page of just… madness, about how he was hearing voices, and seeing things. I thought it was all part of his illness, but it was so disturbing, and so insane. I didn’t want anyone else to read it, because if it got out I thought it would detract from the letter. He was talking about demons, and being haunted. None of it made any sense. None of it.’
I thanked her and let her go. A message had appeared in my mailbox. Ronald Straydeer had come through for me: he’d printed one of the photographs, marked it, then scanned the image again and returned it. There was a short note above it:
After you left, I remembered something else about the funeral that struck me as odd. There was a veteran of the first Iraq war hanging around with Tobias and the others at Sully’s. His name is Harold Proctor. As far as I can tell, he never gave a damn about anyone or anything, and there’s no reason why he should be close to Tobias unless he’s part of what’s happening. He owns a rundown motel near Langdon, north-west of Rangeley. You don’t need me to tell you how close that is to the Canadian border.
Proctor wasn’t in any of the photographs. I knew that there was a system in place whereby veterans of former wars met returning soldiers, but I had no idea how to find out if Proctor had participated, or if he might have been among those who had met Damien Patchett when he got back home. But if Ronald was right in his assessment of Proctor, and I had no reason to doubt him, then the older man seemed an unlikely candidate for a meet-and-greet.
Ronald had given me two more names: Mallak and Bacci. Beside Mallak’s name he’d written: ‘Unionville – but raised in Atlanta.’ He’d also formally identified the black man as Vernon, and a short, bearded man next to him as Pritchard. He’d put an X over the face of a tall man wearing glasses, and had written ‘Harlan deceased’: next to it. Finally, barely visible in the distance to the left of the image, there was a muscular man in a wheelchair: Bobby Jandreau. Kyle Quinn’s words returned to me, spoken as I looked at the photograph of Foster Jandreau in the newspaper.
A bad business.
I picked up my pen, and formally added Foster Jandreau’s name to the list of the dead.
12
Tobias made the run to Harold Proctor’s motel early the next morning. He supposed that it was fate: he’d been on his way to Proctor’s place when the Mexicans had taken him, so it didn’t exactly throw him to be told to proceed there anyway, even without a cargo to deposit. The reason for the trip was more unexpected, although when he had time to think about it he believed that he had foreseen just such an eventuality.
‘Proctor’s flaking on us,’ said the voice that morning on the other end of the line. ‘He wants out. Take whatever is left there, and pay him off. It’s mostly small stuff that’s left anyway.’
‘You sure he’s not going to talk out of school?’ said Tobias.
‘He knows better than to do that.’
Tobias wasn’t so sure. He planned to have a few words with Proctor when he saw him, just to make certain that he understood where his obligations lay.
His face and hands were hurting. The ibuprofen that he’d taken had dulled the pain somewhat, but not enough to help him sleep properly. Lack of sleep was nothing new to him, though, not lately. In Iraq, he’d slept through mortar fire, he’d been so tired all the time, but ever since he’d returned home he’d been having trouble getting a good night’s rest, and when he did sleep he dreamed. They were bad dreams, and recently they had begun to get worse. He thought that he could even trace the start of his recent problems to one of the runs that he’d made to Proctor’s place a month or so ago. Ever since then, he hadn’t been right.
Tobias wasn’t much for hard liquor, but he could have used a serious drink right about now. Proctor would give him one, if he asked, but Tobias didn’t intend to impose on Proctor’s hospitality for that long. Anyway, the last thing Tobias wanted was to be stopped by the cops with booze on his breath while driving a rig: a rig, what’s more, that would probably contain more potential wealth per square foot than any other that had ever previously been driven through the state.
As if to remind him of the wisdom of his decision to wait until he got back to Portland before slaking his thirst, a border patrol vehicle passed him on the road, heading east. Tobias raised a hand casually in greeting, and the gesture was returned. He watched the border cop in his mirrors until he was gone from sight, then breathed more easily. It would be just his luck to cross the cops after what had happened the night before. Proctor was simply the shitty icing on that particular turd cake.
Tobias didn’t care much for the older man. Proctor was a lush, and he believed that the fact they had both served in the military meant that they were brothers deep inside, but Tobias didn’t view the world in that way. They hadn’t even served in the same war: their conflicts were separated by more than a decade. He and Proctor were on different paths. Proctor was drinking himself to death, while Tobias was looking forward to making some money and improving his life. He thought that he might ask Karen to marry him, and once they were hitched they’d head south, get away from the damn Maine cold. The summers were better up here, not so humid as Florida or Louisiana, some August days excepted, but they weren’t good enough to make up for the winters, not by a long shot.
He thought again about a drink. He’d settle for a couple of beers when he returned to Portland. He hated himself when he got messy, and hated seeing others get messy too. He flashed to Bobby Jandreau in Sully’s, Bobby shooting his mouth off and attracting attention, even in a place like Sully’s where most people were too busy getting drunk to pay any mind to whatever might be going on around them. He pitied Bobby. Joel wasn’t sure that he could have gone on living if he’d been wounded as badly as Bobby had. His own injuries were enough for him: he limped with every step, and he still experienced phantom pain where the tips of his missing fingers should have been. But Bobby’s injuries didn’t excuse him from getting loud and saying the things that he’d said. They’d promised him a cut, and Joel had been willing to keep to the deal, even after what was said at Sully’s, but now Bobby didn’t want it. He didn’t want anything to do with them, and that worried Joel. It troubled the others too. They’d tried reasoning with Bobby, but it had done no good. Joel figured that his pride had been hurt by what they’d done with him at Sully’s, but they’d had no choice.
Nobody gets hurt: that was the essence of the arrangement that they had. Do no harm. Unfortunately, that wasn’t always possible in the real world, and the principle had been subtly altered to ‘Do no harm to our own.’ The detective, Parker, had asked for what had happened to him, and Foster Jandreau had too. Tobias might not have pulled the trigger on him, but he’d agreed on the necessity of it.