Part 10 (1/2)
Chip looked around a final time for someone to stop him. He debated leaving a note, decided an undamaged, promptly returned boat and a hundred bucks would probably soothe any hurt feelings that developed.
He pulled the iPod out again, chose another playlist of cuts he'd a.s.sembled himself. Hercules and Love Affair, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend ...
He resettled the earbuds in his ears. He centered himself on the boat's transom seat. Then he slid the line off the dock cleat and reversed out of the slip.
Finally he s.h.i.+fted forward and began motoring out of the boat basin, still expecting to hear someone yelling at him to stop. But no one did.
”I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE IS. HE JUST WALKED AWAY WHEN I wasn't looking.”
Hours after Chip Hahn vanished out of the yard, Jake stood in the phone alcove clutching the phone, trying to make Bob Arnold understand that yet another visitor to Eastport had gone suddenly missing.
Or rather, Bob got the missing part all right. It was the part about her not having anything to do with it that he seemed to be having trouble absorbing. And it was driving her nuts.
”Bob, when I got up this morning, all I needed to do was put enough shredded cellulose to insulate a battles.h.i.+p into my house, and now Sam might be with a murderer.”
She took a breath. ”I can't reach Wade, and in a situation like this it might be nice to have my husband around. Ellie's got her hands full, because her husband is with my husband, so she's on full-time parenting duty.”
Ellie had gone straight home from the police station after they'd found Chip there. After that, she had called every twenty minutes to be updated on what was happening.
But at age four, Ellie's little daughter, Leonora, was a handful; whenever George was away, the mornings when the child attended prekindergarten were just about the only waking hours that Ellie didn't spend das.h.i.+ng after her offspring. So when Ellie had Lee, Jake didn't have Ellie-not for snooping purposes, anyway.
”And as if that weren't enough, I've got some idiot prankster calling here, saying he's going to kill me,” Jake said. ”So, Bob, if you could just stop-”
Pestering me to tell you things I couldn't possibly know, she wanted to finish. But of course he wasn't doing that. He was trying to help, she told herself firmly.
Which gave him a chance to talk, but he didn't say that Sam had been found. And since that was the only thing she wanted to hear, it just made her furious again.
”How'd Randy even get hold of a boat, anyway?” she demanded.
”Seems Roger helped him out there, too,” Bob replied. ”A few days ago, Roger called the marine store and asked them to get it out of storage, put it in the water.”
In the boat basin, he meant. Bob went on: ”Roger rented a slip for it, said he was going to sell it and wanted it out where somebody could try it out. So,” he finished, ”we think Randy's on that.”
”Oh, that's just great,” she began, but Bob was talking over her. Or trying to. Exasperated, she interrupted Bob's well-meant advice to stay calm, sit tight, and- ”Bob, I've been babysitting this phone for hours now. I'm losing my mind here, just doing nothing. Can't I even-”
Drive around some more. Walk up and down the street calling Sam's name. Give one of the dogs his sock to sniff, and let them go roaming around trying to find him.
But Bob just kept talking. In his voice she heard the same rea.s.suring tone that in the past she'd heard him use while telling recent automobile accident victims that they weren't seriously injured, even when they were.
In other words, he was handling her. The thought frightened her badly. ”All right,” she said, chastened. ”And I appreciate it, Bob, you know I-”
In the kitchen, Bella Diamond went on scouring the sink. Any minute now she would polish through the enamel, right down to the steel beneath.
Jake thought about taking up a useful activity, too. Putting in all the insulation material using a teaspoon instead of an air compressor sounded about right at the moment.
”Yes,” she told Bob Arnold again. ”I know someone's got to be here to answer the phone, in case-”
But at the thought of what exactly she might need to answer it in case of, her throat closed.
”-and if Chip gets in touch, I'll let you know right away,” she finished.
”Yeah, do that,” he agreed dryly. ”I'll get in touch with the wardens up north, too, see if they can get hold of Wade and George Valentine.”
Wade's hunting partner, he meant: his best friend, and Ellie White's husband. ”And, Jake, one more thing. Right now it seems like maybe Randy Dodd's got himself some hostages. That's bad enough. But-”
”What?” Because what could possibly be worse? But he sounded very uncomfortable, so something must be.
”Randy had to be somewhere all this time while we thought he was dead-when he wasn't here, that is-and now Roger says it might have been South Carolina that Randy went to. I mean, after he supposedly drowned.”
That traffic ticket, she thought. The one Chip had found a record of. She'd forgotten all about it. She told Bob about it now.
”Yeah, well. Seems Randy'd been there before,” Bob continued, ”and Roger thought that maybe he might've gone there to work construction.”
”What?” she demanded again. ”What are you trying to say?”
”Jake, the thing is, some things happened down South.” Bob sounded sorrowful. ”Women went missing. Three of 'em. While maybe Randy was around.”
He liked it, Roger had said when they were with him in the police station. I think he got a taste for it.
Killing, Roger had meant. Her knees went watery.
”Of course, we're not sure of anything,” Bob said. ”Maybe it was just a coincidence, but-”
She sat down. It was not a coincidence. There was no such thing as that much coincidence. She told Bob about the speeding ticket again, meanwhile trying very hard to keep her voice from quavering and her hands from shaking.
But Bob already knew; cops, as it turned out, could check records better than even Chip Hahn could. And doing so was the first thing Bob had thought of, as soon as Roger Dodd mentioned his rogue brother's possible hiding place.
”So,” she said, ”maybe we should try wrapping our minds around the idea that Sam's in real-”
Trouble. Bad trouble. The kind he wasn't going to get out of without help. But Bob knew that, too. He was just trying not to scare her. Or no more than she already was.
”Yeah.” He sighed resignedly. ”I'm just saying, Jake. Don't do anything dumb. Because Randy's got his money, probably. That means he's happy. But maybe he's also got Sam and this girl who's missing. One good thing, he doesn't know yet that his plan's gone all to h.e.l.l. So let's not do anything to make him feel-”
Worse. Like he's got to kill them right away.
Unless he decides to do it for fun. She bit her lip.
”Okay, Bob,” she managed, and after that he rea.s.sured her some more: State cops, Canadian authorities, local law officers, and marine enforcement, including two coast guards on both sides of the water, were on the job.
The coast guard services were most familiar with possible hiding places and ways to get out of the country, Bob added. That last being what fugitive Randy Dodd would want most if he knew people were onto him.
And Randy was very familiar with the water and coastline, too, from his fis.h.i.+ng days. All the little hiding places, inlets and coves ... There was no guarantee that anyone, even marine law officers, would be able to find him.
”So let's not any of us tell Randy, by word or deed, that he needs to get any sneakier than he already is,” Bob finished, and hung up.
”Yeah, right,” Jake whispered to no one. Around her the big old house seemed to hold its breath, as if just waiting for Sam to return and bring life back into it.
IN THE DINING ROOM, THE GOLD MEDALLION WALLPAPER glimmered in the thin light of a November afternoon. In the hallway, the stairs were silent, no young-man feet thudding energetically up and down them.
In the kitchen, the dogs sniffed around restlessly, hunting for their pal. At this time on any other day, Sam would've had them out for a walk.