63
ROY SAT AT THE table in her room watching her struggle. He finished both pieces of cake before he got undressed and came to the bed. He wanted to take his time. He was tired, but he was up for this. He folded his clothes neatly and then ripped the strap of her dress. It fell away, revealing her breast.
A shock like lightning went through him. Maybe it was the coke, maybe it was just knowing what he was going to do and how he was going to do it that made him so excited, but the thrill of it shot through him like electricity, up his arms and all the way down his spine.
Zee stared, terrified, as Roy moved closer.
64
HAWK SPOTTED THE BROKEN kitchen window as Rafferty pulled in. His eyes scanned the street for the red truck. He might have felt relief at not seeing it, but he didn’t. He was out of the car before Rafferty had a chance to pull over.
Hawk ran into the kitchen, saw the cross and the coke still on the table.
“Upstairs!” he yelled back at Rafferty, taking the stairs two at a time.
Rafferty got to the top of the stairs as Hawk pulled Roy off of Zee. Hawk threw him with such force that Roy immediately went into spasm, his back arching wildly, bending him backward until his head almost touched the ground as the first wave of the strychnine hit him.
There were eight spasms in all before he died. In between he collapsed limply while his body gathered energy for the next spasm.
Rafferty called for both backup and an ambulance. Beyond that, there was nothing anyone could do but watch.
PART 5: September-October 2008
The North Star is one of the truest stars in the sky, its location the most constant. But it is often not bright enough to be counted on. One’s bearings must be taken from other stars that sit lower in the sky, stars that rise and set along the horizon.
65
MELVILLE PULLED THE OLD lobster boat up to the wharf on Turner Street and helped Zee aboard, taking her duffel bag and a few other things she had brought along and stowing them in the cabin for her.
“Careful,” he said, holding her arm as she jumped in. “It’s slippery.”
At the end of the season, Melville had finally gotten his boat back into the water after it sat dry-docked in Finch’s driveway for as long as he could remember. There were a few repairs he’d had to make, but all in all it was in surprisingly good shape.
Bowditch lay in the stern, sunning and snoring. When Zee jumped aboard, he lifted his head and wagged his tail, though he didn’t get up.
Melville had talked her into this. She hadn’t wanted to come today.
“You know what I always did when things got to be too much for me?” he’d said.
“You ran?” she answered, remembering how he had disappeared.
“I went to sea,” he said. “Until things cleared up.”
“How long did that usually take?” she asked.
“One time it took four months, and the next time it took two years.”
“I haven’t got two years,” she said. “Or four months, for that matter.”
“I could argue that point with you,” he said. “Instead I’m going to suggest a week or two.”
“Where would we go?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Not really,” she said.
“South,” he said.
“Okay.”
THEY HEADED DOWN TOWARD CAPE Cod, cutting through the canal and out the other side and then on over open ocean to the Vineyard. Melville picked up a mooring from the Edgartown harbormaster, and they stayed on the boat. Though there were plenty of bunks below, Melville would often awaken to find Zee sleeping on the bench in the stern of the boat, as she had done as a child in the years after Maureen died. Bowditch snored loudly, asleep next to her on the deck.
Melville called once a day to see how things were going at home. Sometimes he talked to Ann or Mickey, who were taking shifts visiting Finch, but mostly he spoke with Jessina.
“He’s well,” she told him. “What I mean to say, in other words, is he’s not worse. No falls, no new developments. He’s eating a lot of my cookies.”
The fact that Jessina considered the cookies a positive sign might have alarmed Melville even a few weeks ago. Now he was grateful that Finch had an appetite and wasn’t showing signs of depression at Zee’s absence.
“I’m doing what you would want me to do for our girl,” he said aloud. Lately he’d been talking to Finch as if he were here, hoping that whatever earthly rules and constraints we come to accept as normal no longer applied in whatever mental realm Finch now inhabited. It was clearly an act of faith, something new for Melville.
There were phone and text messages from Hawk and from Michael. He answered the ones from Mattei.
“How is she?” Mattei asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” Melville said. “She doesn’t want to talk.”
“I can understand that,” she said.
“I’m worried about her.”
Mattei considered. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’ll talk to you when she’s ready.”
Melville’s sense of time seemed to be shifting. Summer was slipping into fall. September turned to October. The maple leaves were turning yellow and red.
When it was too cold to stay on the boat, Melville rented them adjoining rooms at an inn in town, a place that would allow pets. She took her duffel bag and he took his. Then he went back to the boat to get another load. He handed her some other items she’d brought along, some books, a jacket, and a mahogany case he didn’t remember seeing before.
“That’s not mine,” she said when he put it in her room.
“It’s not mine either,” he said.
He opened it up and saw the brass sextant.
“That belongs to Hawk,” she said. “How did you get it?”
“I don’t know. I thought you brought it.”
