Impact

fucked-up situation. Maybe this time he would make an exception--and take pleasure in the kill.

60

A warm summer breeze was blowing off Great Salt Bay as Abbey darted up to the door to an old building in downtown Damariscotta, firescape looming above her, framed against a starry sky. She buzzed Jackie's apartment, giving the button a quatrain of long, insistent pushes. A moment later a muffled voice said, 'What the fuck?'

'It's me, Abbey. Let me in.'

The buzzer went off and Abbey pushed open the door and mounted the rickety stairs. They had ditched the stolen truck in the parking lot of a depressed mini-mall along Route 1, where it seemed unlikely to be noted, at least for a while, and had hiked two miles through the woods and on back roads to get to Damariscotta.

She arrived at the apartment door. 'Jackie?'

She heard a querulous grunt. 'Go away.'

'Wake up, it's important!'

A groan. The sound of feet hitting the floor. The locks turned and Jackie opened the door. She stood squinting in a nightgown, her hair disheveled. 'It's two in the frigging morning.'

Abbey pushed her way in and shut the door. 'I need your help.'

Jackie stared at her. A sigh. 'God, you in trouble again?'

'Big time.'

'Why am I not surprised?'

Round Pond Harbor lay black under the night sky, the water lapping around the oak pylons. Abbey paused at the top of the pier. She could see Marea II on its mooring about fifty yards off. It was three o'clock, dark as a tomb, Moon obscured by clouds, about half an hour before the lobstermen normally began arriving. Close enough to the normal hour that a boat firing up and heading out would not be noted as anything special.

Jackie Spann and Wyman Ford stood on the dock behind her, Ford with his ubiquitous briefcase in hand. 'Wait here. I'll bring the boat around to the floating dock, then you come down and get in fast.'

Abbey untied her father's dinghy, unshipped the oars. As she rowed out to the waiting boat, she hoped her father wasn't up yet. She had left a short note, but there was no way of knowing how he would react to her 'borrowing' his boat again for some unspecified purpose--and then asking him to lie about it.

She pulled hard. The splashing of the oars and the tapping of rigging against the masts of the sailboats at anchor were the only sounds in the quiet harbor. Even the gulls were sleeping. She arrived at the Marea II, boarded, and started the engine, the sudden rumble shattering the peace of the summer night. She was pretty sure no one would notice. Boat noise, even in the middle of the night, was a way of life in a working harbor.

She eased it into the floating dock, not even bothering to bring it to a full halt as it drifted along. Jackie and Ford tossed in their supplies and hopped in, and she turned the wheel and headed out of the harbor, past the blinking light on the can marking the channel, into the sound.

'So,' said Jackie, settling down in a seat in the pilothouse and turning to Ford with a grin. 'Who are you and what the hell's going on?'

61

Mabel Fortier left the Wand-o-Matic Laundromat with her laundry in a wire basket, wheeling it across the parking lot toward her car. At the far end of the parking lot she could see the usual group of scruffy kids that hung out there with their souped-up cars, talking on their cell phones, cursing, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and throwing the butts on the ground.

Once again Mabel tried to tell herself that these were nice boys letting off steam. She had even taught some of them in the first grade before she retired. They were such nice little kids then. What had happened? She shook her head; all teenagers smoked these days, and swearing today wasn't what it used to be in her time.

Trying to keep these charitable thoughts in her mind, she stacked the laundry on the backseat, folded up the basket, and put it in her trunk. In the background she heard a fresh screech of tires as another car arrived at the teen gathering. She looked up and saw a metallic blue Camaro--the Hinton boy's car--tearing into the far end of the parking lot at a high rate of speed, announcing its arrival with a blaring horn. He was driving too fast, way too fast. The car made a turn with a squeal of rubber and then she heard a smack! and the grinding sound of metal against metal as bits of plastic went skittering across the macadam. The fool in the Camaro had taken the corner too sharply and clipped the back end of a white pickup truck parked in front of a row of vacant storefronts at the far end.

She watched as the fellow driving the Camaro halted, got out, and bent down to examine the three-foot-long gouge in the side of his car. Didn't even bother to look at the damage to the pickup, with its taillight obliterated, the bumper pulled halfway off. She could hear his terrible curses all the way across the lot, answered by laughs and jeering from the crowd of youths. Then he got back in the Camaro and roared out of the parking lot with another screech of tires.

Mabel Fortier stared, shocked. The boy had just left the scene of an accident. And now the other boys were climbing into their cars and leaving, all of them 'beating a retreat' before the police arrived.

It was outrageous. Outrageous. The Hinton boy had done thousands of dollars' worth of damage to somebody's vehicle and driven off, just like that.

This was the last straw. They wouldn't get away with it. Enough was enough. Mabel Fortier took out her cell phone and grimly dialed the police.

62

Abbey awoke in the shack to the smell of bacon and eggs on the woodstove, the sun streaming in the windows, the lapping sound of water on the cobbled beach outside. As she came into the main room, Ford was at the kitchen table, hunched over the laptop connected to the NPF drive. She could see he was paging through the pictures.

'About time!' Jackie cried from the stove. 'It's the crack of noon.' She pushed a coffee cup into her hands, prepared just the way she liked it, with tons of cream and sugar.

'Come outside and have breakfast.'

With a glance at Ford, Abbey left the shack and walked over to a weather-beaten picnic table set up in front.