and eventual death would hit him hard.
Angel and Louis were following me to Falls End in their own car. I informed them of my conversation with Jackie when we stopped for coffee along the way. Both of them immediately told me to keep whatever Epstein was paying for their time and expertise, and pass it on to Jackie. I planned to do the same.
It was clear that something was wrong in Falls End as soon as we reached the town. There were patrol cars from the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department parked on the street, along with state police cruisers and the MSP’s mobile crime scene unit. Parked on a side road to the east, just at the edge of the forest, I saw a concentration of vehicles, among them one from the Maine medical examiner’s office, and standing beside it the medical examiner herself, talking to a couple of detectives whom I recognized.
I knew that Marielle Vetters lived at the northern end of town, and it was there that a second group of law enforcement vehicles had congregated. Because it was still hunting season the town was filled with strangers and their vehicles, so we did not stand out, but I was concerned about being seen by any lawman who might recognize me. I still didn’t know for sure that something had happened to Marielle, but I feared the worst.
‘Damn,’ I said, and I spoke out of concern not only for Marielle but also for myself. My message was on her answering machine, assuming that she hadn’t erased it after listening to it. Being connected in any way with what might have happened to her wouldn’t be productive. I parked in the municipal lot, and Angel and Louis pulled up alongside me. Angel went scouting for information while Louis and I waited in my car. Angel returned half an hour later carrying coffees in a cardboard tray. He got in the back of the car and passed them around before speaking.
‘Marielle Vetters is alive,’ he said. ‘So’s her brother, but they’re both in comas. It’s all anyone is talking about in the local diner, which seems to be ground zero for gossip. I just had to sit and listen. Two people are dead, both shot. One is a guy called Teddy Gattle. Marielle’s brother was staying with him, and there’s speculation that they may have got into an argument at Gattle’s place, and maybe Grady Vetters shot Teddy there before heading over to his sister’s house to commit the second killing. He and his sister might have had some falling out over money and the house, but the Grady-Vetters-as-killer theory is coming from the cops at the moment, not the locals. Most folk don’t believe that Grady Vetters could have shot anyone, but there are rumors that a gun was found beside him, and if it’s the murder weapon, well . . .
‘But, Charlie, the other dead man is Ernie Scollay. He was found shot in the back in Marielle Vetters’ house.’
I said nothing. I had liked Ernie Scollay from the moment I’d met him. In his careful, cautious way, he’d reminded me of my grandfather.
It was a set-up; it had to be. Marielle Vetters might have been having difficulties with her brother, but she had given no indication that she was worried about him becoming violent. Then again, there were a lot of victims of domestic killings who had never seen it coming, never suspected that someone of their own blood would turn against them. If the potential for violence was that easy to spot, there would be far fewer dead people. Was it too much of a stretch to imagine that, on the same evening attacks were launched on two other people connected with the list, the Vetters family, also linked to the list, should become embroiled in a domestic dispute that left two people dead and two others apparently in a coma?
But if Grady Vetters was not, in fact, a killer, how had he and his sister been found by those who had also sought to silence Eldritch and Epstein? Both Marielle and Ernie Scollay had known the risks involved in telling anyone else of what they knew. Ernie hadn’t even wanted me to be brought into their little circle. That left Grady Vetters, because he had been with his sister by their father’s bedside when the story of the airplane in the woods had been told.
I had to make a decision. Unless Marielle had erased my message after listening to it, it would only be a matter of time before the police came knocking on my door. I could come forward immediately and tell them what I knew, or try to avoid them for as long as possible. The second option sounded best. If I spoke to them I’d have to tell them about the plane, and that would mean the fact of its existence becoming public. I recalled Epstein’s refusal to share what he knew even with SAC Ross in the FBI’s New York office for fear that it might reach the wrong ears, and Ross was his tame federal agent, a man whom we both trusted, even if I didn’t trust him quite as far as Epstein. For now, telling the police anything about that plane was not an option.
I went for the worst case scenario: Grady Vetters had not killed his friend Teddy Gattle, or Ernie Scollay. He and his sister had been found by those who were seeking the plane, and Gattle and Scollay had been killed because they were in the way. Marielle and Grady had probably been forced to share whatever they knew, and then silenced. The decision not to kill them was odd: if someone was trying to frame Grady Vetters for murder, having him shoot his sister and then himself would have left the police with a tidy murder-suicide. Instead, according to gossip – and who knew how true that might be? – there were two potential witnesses still alive, but in comas. On the other hand, leaving them breathing but incapacitated would concentrate the focus of the investigation on the survivors, and muddy the waters for a while. If Marielle or Grady had revealed some new information about the location of the plane, whoever was responsible for what had just occurred in Falls End wouldn’t need to distract the police for long: just until the plane was found and the list secured.
‘What now?’ said Louis.
‘Find us a couple of rooms at a motel, and tell Jackie Garner where you’re at. I’ll be back here by evening.’
‘And where are you going?’ asked Angel, as they got out of my car.
I started the engine.
‘To ask an old friend why he lied to me.’
42
Ray Wray wasn’t happy.
He had arrived at Joe Dahl’s camp just south-west of Masardis knowing only that there was a job waiting for him, a job that would pay him a couple of grand for a couple of days’ work involving an airplane, which meant that the work was probably illegal. Illegal work in that part of Maine generally meant smuggling, and the only thing really worth smuggling was drugs. Hence Ray Wray had decided that what he and Joe Dahl were looking for in the Great North Woods was a crashed plane full of drugs.
Of course, Ray Wray had no trouble with drug smuggling. He’d done enough of it in the past to know how to limit the risk of getting caught, which was the main worry in that line of work. Getting caught caused all kinds of difficulty, and not only with the law: the individuals who paid folk to smuggle their drugs for them often took it amiss when the consignment didn’t reach its intended destination. Paying your debt to society was one thing; paying your debt to the bikers, or the Mexicans, or a piece of shit like Perry Reed was another thing entirely.
So the fact of smuggling wasn’t the issue for Ray, and neither was securing the plane and its cargo without getting caught. What he did have trouble with was the fact that a woman and a boy were sleeping like vampires in Joe Dahl’s place, the drapes drawn on the windows of the little cabin, the woman curled up on the camp bed and the boy sleeping beside her on the floor. Ray could see that the woman’s face was badly disfigured when he peered around the thick sheet that separated the sleeping area from the rest of the room, but he’d been troubled more by the kid, who had woken suddenly when Ray appeared and shown Ray the business end of a knife.
Now Ray was sitting on a roughhewn bench overlooking the Oxbow with a cup of coffee in his hand, Joe Dahl beside him, and Dahl was so jittery that he was giving Ray a case of the jitters too.
‘This plane?’ said Ray.
‘Yeah, what about it?’
‘When did it come down?’
‘Years ago.’
‘How many years ago?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How come nobody’s found it before now?’
‘They didn’t know where to look.’ Dahl pointed to the forest beyond with his own cup. ‘Come on, Ray, you could lose a jumbo jet in there, you know that. What we’re talking about is a small plane. Folk could have passed within feet of it and not have seen it if they weren’t already looking for it.’
