could hear you scratch, there were big cities that would suit you better. If you wanted to scratch in peace, then Maine was the place. Even his local clients rarely ventured beyond the hall when they stopped by to drop off papers or clear up some item of business. Out of politeness he would usually offer coffee, or ask them to take a seat, but they rarely took up the invitation, and when they did the girl showed little interest in them. In her way, she was as solitary a soul as he was. They were twin dark stars, bound together by the gravitational pull of the past.
Nevertheless, Randall was not a hermit. He attended meetings of the town council, and took care of its accounts gratis. He assisted at charity events, went out with his shovel in winter to clear paths for the older folk, and had even, very briefly, dated a divorcee who moved to Pastor’s Bay from Quebec to paint landscapes, and who volunteered at the library. Their halting relationship had occasioned some gossip in the town, not least because it had generally been assumed that Randall Haight was gay. The fact that he wasn’t disappointed those who thought that having a gay accountant, even a closeted one, added some much needed color to the social makeup of Pastor’s Bay, and strenuous efforts were made to find someone else who might be gay in order to make up for the perceived imbalance.
The relationship hadn’t ended badly as such. There had been no big argument, no accusations of one party misleading the other. Randall had simply stopped calling, and then had left town for a couple of weeks in his car without informing the woman of where he was going, or when he might be back. By the time he returned the woman had packed up her belongings and was preparing to move away, having decided that she could paint just as well in a place where there were more than two bars, and more than two eligible men. She had liked Randall, though. She told her friends that she couldn’t understand why he’d suddenly gone cold on her.
But the girl knew why Randall had stopped calling her. The girl had drawn him a picture. She’d used a lot of red, and she’d left a rusty nail with it, just in case Randall was a little slow on the uptake. Randall was hers, and hers alone. They had been together for so long that she would not countenance the possibility of another person coming between them. Similarly, Randall had experienced an acute sense of betrayal on the two occasions that he had slept with the woman from Quebec in her messy bedroom, surrounded by half-finished canvases, the smell of paint and spirits making his head spin. Even as he moved with her, her face buried against his chest, he had found himself seeking a hint of the girl’s familiar bloody, perfumed aroma, and when he closed his eyes and tried to lose himself in the act it was her face that he saw.
He sat up in bed. The clock read 4:13 a.m…
‘Where have you been?’ he said, but she did not, could not, answer. She simply remained where she was, lodged in the corner, her hands clasped in her lap.
‘You want me to read to you?’
She shook her head.
‘I’ve got a real busy day tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘I’ll need a clear head. I’ve got to get some rest, and you know I can’t sleep with you watching me.’
The girl stood and walked to the bed. Her lips moved, and the ruin of her tongue flicked like a snake head in the pit of her mouth. She was talking to him, but he couldn’t follow the shapes that her mouth formed. He thought that there was a kind of tenderness to the way she was staring at him. She had never looked at him that way before, and he saw her pity for him. She reached out and laid her hand on his cheek. He shivered at her touch.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What do you want?’
And then she smiled, and it stilled his heart. In all their years together, she had never smiled at him. The fear of her that was always with him, but that he tried to hide from himself and from her, welled up. Her touch was so cold that it burned his skin, spreading from his face like poison seeping through his veins until every inch of him felt as though it were being consumed by a cold fire.
She took her hand away, and walked from the room. He tried to follow her, but his limbs would not respond. He sank back on the pillow, and sleep took him instantly. When he woke the next morning, his left cheek was sore and red, and the girl was gone from his house forever.
24
The third anonymous text was waiting for me when I turned on my cell phone first thing that morning. It read:
CHIEF ALLAN THE PEDOFILE IS GETTING ANXIOUS. HE MISSES HIS COOZE.
I stared at the message. It didn’t take long to pinpoint what it was about it, apart from its contents, that bothered me. It was the spelling. ‘Pedophile’ was still misspelled, just as the word ‘preys’ had previously been misused. This time, it was the word ‘anxious’ that stood out, but only because it was spelled correctly. Perhaps I was trying to see a pattern where there wasn’t one, but it struck me that ‘anxious’ was a difficult word to spell. Someone who genuinely had difficulty with the word ‘pedophile,’ and who couldn’t make the distinction between ‘prays’ and ‘preys,’ would quite possibly misspell ‘anxious’ as well, or simply avoid using the word entirely. It raised the possibility that a smart individual was playing dumb in order to cast aspersions on Kurt Allan’s reputation, but to what end?
As it happened, Allan himself was standing near Aimee’s office building, drinking coffee and smoking a roll-up behind a tree, when I pulled into the lot before noon. His uniform shirt was sharply ironed, and his shoes were freshly shined, which made the sight of the roll-up more incongruous. I acknowledged him with a nod as I approached the door, but wasn’t going to speak to him until he raised a hand and asked if I had a minute.
‘Your mysterious client isn’t here yet,’ he said. ‘In fact, you and I are the first to arrive, Ms. Price excepted.’
He opened his tobacco pack and offered me one of the premade roll-ups inside.
‘You smoke?’
‘No.’
‘You ever smoke?’
‘Couple as a teenager. I never saw the point. I preferred to spend my money on beer, when I could get it.’
‘I wish I’d been that smart,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried quitting, but there’s nothing like that first one in the morning with a cup of coffee, except maybe the second.’
Despite his lean, muscular build, there was no glow of good health about Allan. He had a shaving rash on his neck, and bags under his eyes. Seen up close, his mustache was ragged and poorly trimmed. A missing-child case will wear a man down, I thought, but a guilty conscience would have a similar effect. Fairly or unfairly, I knew that I was now seeing Allan’s character refracted through the prism of the anonymous messages, but I had already taken steps to investigate the substance of the secret allegations being made against him.
‘Was there something in particular you wanted to discuss, Chief?’ I said. ‘I’d like some time to consult with Ms. Price before our client arrives.’
‘Sure, I understand. I just wanted to apologize for the way you were treated at the station. I think we started off on the wrong foot, and it just got worse from there on. We could have –
He sounded sincere. He looked sincere. Maybe he even was sincere, although one thing didn’t necessarily follow from the other.
‘I’ve been treated worse,’ I said.
‘Pat Shaye told me that you had some trouble with your car. He said that he helped you out. I was glad to hear it.’
Allan seemed anxious to ingratiate himself with me. I couldn’t understand why. Then it came.
‘You seen the newspapers this morning?’
I had. There had been some criticism in the Portland and Bangor papers of the handling of the investigation so far, with particular emphasis on the response of the Pastor’s Bay Police Department when it had first been alerted to Anna’s disappearance, as well as a perception that the authorities were not briefing reporters sufficiently on what progress, if any, was being made. It was mainly reporters blowing off steam, inspired in part by the closed nature of the community in Pastor’s Bay, but Allan’s response to the criticisms as reported in the articles made him
