‘Where did he get the money for these tickets?’ I asked Shaky. ‘From earlier loans he called in?’
‘Guess so,’ said Shaky. ‘And bottles and cans.’
Portland’s homeless, like most people in their position, made a little money by scouring the trash for drink containers. Tuesday evenings were particularly profitable, since Wednesday was pickup day for recycling.
‘Did he say why he wanted to go to Medway?’
‘No.’
‘But it must have been something to do with his daughter?’
‘Yeah. Everything had to do with his daughter these last few weeks.’
I looked again at the tickets. The main reasons to go to Medway were hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and skiing, and I couldn’t see Jude doing any of those, whether they were in season or not. Perhaps his daughter had ended up there, but at this time of year there wasn’t a whole lot happening. The snow might eventually start melting, but a lull would follow before the summer tourists started arriving.
I flicked through the book. There was something there, something that I couldn’t quite grasp. It danced at the edge of my awareness. Maine and English churches.
Then it came to me: a tower with an ancient church, an English church.
‘Prosperous,’ I said aloud, and a nurse gave me a curious glance. ‘But what the hell would Jude be doing in Prosperous?’
It didn’t take long for the police to find Brightboy. He’d bought himself a half gallon of Caldwell Gin and found a quiet spot in Baxter Woods in which to drink it. He hadn’t even bothered to ditch the items that he’d taken from Jude’s basement. After they cuffed him and put him in the back of the car, Brightboy told them, without prompting, that he wasn’t sorry for hitting Shaky with the empty Old Crow bottle.
‘I’d have hit him with a full one,’ he said, ‘if’n I could have afforded to.’
When he was questioned at Portland PD headquarters, once he’d sobered up some, Brightboy could add little to the sum of knowledge about Jude’s death, and Shaky didn’t want to press charges over the assault, arguing that ‘Jude wouldn’t have wanted me to.’ Then again, Jude was dead, and he wasn’t the one who’d been smacked over the head with the Old Crow.
A bed was reserved for Shaky at one of the shelters, and the staff had agreed to keep an eye on him for any signs of concussion. He looked comfortable when I spoke to him about Brightboy, but an emergency shelter didn’t seem like the best place in which to try to recover from a head injury. As good fortune had it, Terrill Nix was one of the respondents to the initial assault, and between us we agreed to see if something could be done to move Shaky up the housing placement list in return for his efforts in tracking down Brightboy.
The police continued to question Brightboy about Jude, and what he might or might not have seen in the basement. Brightboy didn’t prove too helpful on that count – not out of unwillingness, but because he had seen nothing beyond Jude’s corpse and the consequent open season on his possessions. The cops could have charged Brightboy with petty theft, for the total value of the cash and items taken from the basement was less than $500, and for interfering with a possible crime scene, but in the end the decision was made just to put him back on the streets. The court and prison systems were overburdened as it was, and a spell behind bars was unlikely to impact much on Brightboy one way or another.
Macy joined Nix while I was at the hospital, and I mentioned the bus tickets to her, and the book on church architecture.
‘What the hell would someone like Jude be doing in Prosperous?’ she said.
‘You know,’ I replied, ‘those were almost precisely my own words.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Macy. ‘You’re going to pay a visit to Prosperous in the near future.’
‘Probably.’
‘I’ve talked to my lieutenant,’ said Macy, ‘and his view is that this is all just complicating what should be kept simple. We have enough to keep us busy for the next twelve months without adding Jude to the list. He thinks we should let it slide for now. I’ll keep an open mind on it, though. If you find out anything solid, you let me know. Terrill?’
She looked to Nix for his view. I had to admire the way that she worked. There were detectives who wouldn’t have bothered to cut a patrolman in on a discussion like this, let alone seek his opinion. The potential downside was that it could make the detective look indecisive, or lead to a situation where patrol cops might feel they had the right to drop in their two cents’ worth without an invitation, but I got the impression Macy wouldn’t have those problems. She didn’t give too much. She gave just enough.
Nix took the path of least resistance.
‘The more I sleep on it, the more it looks like Jude took the drop of his own free will. I spoke to one of the psychiatrists at the Portland Help Center. He said that Jude suffered from depression for most of his life. It was one of the reasons why he couldn’t hold down the permanent housing they tried to find for him. He’d just get depressed and head back to the streets.’
I understood their position. Jude wasn’t a pretty USM sophomore, or a nurse, or a promising high school student, and the narrative of his death, however incomplete, had already been written and accepted. I’d been there myself, once upon a time.
‘Did someone ask Brightboy about a knife?’ I said. I was still troubled by how Jude had cut the rope, assuming he had even done so himself.
‘Shit,’ said Macy.
She slipped away and made a call. When she returned, she looked troubled.
‘Brightboy had a penknife in his possession when we picked him up, but he says it’s his own. He didn’t recall seeing a knife at the scene. He could be lying, though, and he admits that he was out of his skull for most of the time he was in that basement. I don’t think Brightboy remembers much of anything, even at the best of times.’
But she seemed to be talking to convince herself more than me. I let it go. The seed was planted. If it took root, all the better.
Macy left with Nix. I watched her go. A passing doctor watched her too.
‘Damn,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘My sentiments exactly.’
The next time I saw Macy, I was dying.
20
A pall hung over the house of Harry and Erin Dixon after the departure of Chief Morland and Hayley Conyer. A visit from either one of them would have been enough to unnerve the Dixons at the best of times, for they were the two most powerful citizens in Prosperous, even allowing for the fact that Morland did not sit on the board. But a visit from both of them, especially under the circumstances, was sufficient to push Harry and Erin to breaking point.
They had let the girl go because they wanted to be free of this madness – and perhaps because she reminded them of a daughter that they had never had, but for whom they had always wished – and now they were being drawn deeper into the town’s insanity just because they had tried to do the right thing. In a way, Erin thought, it might be the shock to the system that they needed. Something of their torpor, their acquiescence to the town’s edicts, had already been challenged, or else they could not have acted as they had in freeing the girl. Now, faced with the prospect of kidnapping a replacement, any remaining illusions they had were being profoundly dissipated.
As their vision grew clearer, so too did their desperation to get away from Prosperous increase, but so far neither had spoken about what was being asked of them. To a greater, in the case of Harry, or lesser extent, in the case of his wife, they were like children, hoping that, by ignoring the problem, it might go away, or some other solution might present itself. Harry, in particular, had sunk into denial. He found himself almost wishing that some stray girl – a waif, a runaway – might pass through Prosperous, or be picked up at the side of the road by one of the selectmen: a safe, older man like Thomas Souleby or Calder Ayton who would offer her a ride into town and buy her soup and a sandwich at Gertrude’s. He would excuse himself to go to the men’s room, and a conversation would ensue behind closed doors. A woman would approach the girl, a mother figure. Concern would be expressed for her. A place to stay would be offered, if only for a night or two until she had a chance to clean herself up. There might even be work for her in Gertrude’s, if she wanted it. Gertrude’s was always shorthanded. Yes, that would work; that would do it. That would take the pressure off Harry and Erin, and they could continue to plan for their eventual escape. Yes, yes …