Darkness First Read online

  25

  11:45 P.M., Saturday, August 22, 2009

  Machias, Maine

  The pool tables in the side room at the Moose were crowded with the usual assortment of players and hangers-on. She spotted Harlan in a game at table three and leaned in against the wall under the head of a long-dead bear some taxidermist had stuffed with its mouth open and fangs exposed, in full roar. The creature looked like it was seconds away from leaping off the wall and gobbling up the nearest player.

  She watched her kid brother sweep the table till all that was left was the eight ball pressed against the far rail about a foot from the pocket. He had a good eye, that was for sure. Probably why they’d made him a sniper in the Corps.

  Harlan sized up the table. The cue ball lay all the way down on the other side at only a slight angle to the eight. A tricky shot. He walked the table, checked the angles then leaned down and drew back his stick. As he glanced up at the eight he spotted Maggie standing in the corner and smiled a smile that was uniquely his. She smiled back. He nodded. She nodded back. Raised her bottle in silent salute.

  ‘Hey, Harlan, you shootin’ pool or pickin’ up pussy?’ hollered some goofball who was leaning on a cue stick and wearing a t-shirt with a slogan that made even Maggie smile. ‘Save a tree. Wipe your ass with an owl.’

  ‘Watch your mouth, asshole, there’s a lady in the room,’ said Harlan, then added in a softer voice, ‘Far corner right.’ He gently tapped the cue ball and watched it roll, laying it in exactly where the eight ball met the rail. The eight slithered right, sticking to the rail, rolling so slowly Maggie thought it would surely stop before it arrived. But it had just enough behind it and fell gently into the pocket.

  ‘A lady who happens to be my sister.’ Harlan picked up a small pile of bills from the side of the table, handed his cue to the guy with the t-shirt. ‘Your game.’

  He stuffed the money in his pocket, retrieved his beer and walked to where Maggie stood.

  ‘Hello, Magpie. Didn’t know you were coming to town.’

  ‘I didn’t either. Not until about two o’clock this morning.’

  He wrapped his muscular arms around her and gave her a hug, still hanging on to his beer bottle. She hugged him back, still hanging on to hers.

  ‘Good to see you, Harlan.’

  ‘Yeah, you too. What brings you to God’s country?’

  ‘Partly the old man. Partly murder.’

  ‘Tiff Stoddard?’

  ‘Yeah. Heard you used to hang out with her.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Harlan leaned in close, eyes narrowed. ‘Now who exactly did you hear that from? Tommy been shootin’ off his mouth again?’

  ‘Don’t take it out on Tommy. I’m a certified expert in getting people to say more than they intend. Including Tommy.’

  ‘Buy you a drink?’ asked Harlan.

  She held up the mostly full bottle of Geary’s. ‘Haven’t finished the one I’ve got. Listen, why don’t we grab that booth over there. Those people are leaving.’

  They waited while a waitress cleaned off the dirty dishes and gave the table a quick swipe with a rag. They slid in. Harlan ordered a burger and fries and another beer. Maggie declined food.

  ‘You did hang out with her, didn’t you? Tiff Stoddard I mean.’ The place was crowded and noisy enough so Maggie could speak in a normal voice and be confident no one outside the booth could hear them.

  Harlan looked as if he was weighing his response. Then he shrugged. ‘Tiff ? Yeah. We saw each other. Mostly back when she was working here. Not so much lately.’

  ‘What was your relationship?’

  ‘We messed around from time to time.’

  ‘Messed around?’

  ‘I’m not really sure it’s any of your business. But, yeah, you know, messed around. We liked each other. We had, what do you call it? Good chemistry. I’d come in. Sit at the end of the bar. On slow nights we’d start bullshitting about this or that. Some nights, by the time most of the customers were gone and Tommy was getting ready to close, we’d still be yacking away. I’d wait while she finished cleaning up. Then we’d go over to her place. Sometimes sit around and talk some more. Sometimes more than that. Really we were more friends than anything else.’

  ‘Friends with benefits?’

  ‘Like they say.’

  ‘Always her place? Not yours?’

  ‘Hers was closer.’

  ‘Where are you living these days?’

  ‘Out in hell and gone. Single-wide in Whiting. Kind of a dump. Nowhere you’d want to visit.’

  ‘When did you find out about the murder?’

  ‘Heard the radio reports this morning coming in on the truck. Got some construction work helping renovate a summer place in Bucks Harbor.’

  ‘Did you know Em was nearly killed by the same guy who killed Tiff ?’

  ‘No.’ Harlan blinked across the table at his sister. ‘No, I hadn’t heard that.’ Em and Harlan were close. She’d taught him most of his best moves on the basketball court. ‘She gonna be okay?’

  ‘Yes, thank God, it looks like she will.’

  Harlan nodded. ‘Good.’

  ‘You don’t sound very shocked by Tiff’s death.’

  ‘I’m not. I feel bad about it. Real bad. But I’m not shocked.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Partly because Tiff was into stuff she shouldn’t have been. Partly, I guess, because death hasn’t shocked me for a very long time,’ said Harlan. ‘Seen too much of it.’

  Harlan waited for Maggie to say something. When she didn’t he started explaining, ‘That’s what war does to you, Magpie. What it did to me anyway. It saddens me to lose friends. And to be honest Tiff was way more than a friend. But I’m no longer shocked by it.’

  ‘Not even by the death of a woman you made love to?’

  ‘No, not even by that.’

  Maggie realized Harlan was staring blankly over her shoulder as he spoke. She turned to see who or what he was looking at but there was nothing there.

  ‘Sometimes after a roadside bomb there was nothing left of your buddies but an arm or a leg and it was tough to figure out who the hell it belonged to. One time all they could find was an ear. I always wondered if the guys who collected body parts ever sent that ear home to the guy’s family for burial. What the fuck do you do with an ear? Stick it in a six-foot box in a six-foot hole and play taps? Requiem for an ear? But sometimes that was all that was left to send.’

  ‘You killed people there as well.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he said, his voice flat, without affect, still gazing over her shoulder. ‘Twenty-three insurgents. Three of them women. One not much more than a kid. Twelve in Fallujah. Eight in Ramadi. Most through a scope from a distance but a couple pretty close up.’ He spoke as if reciting statistics that had nothing to do with him, as if he was watching himself perform these acts of violence, narrating a documentary film that ran only in his mind. ‘I killed one guy close up with a knife. I remember him standing right up against me. Smelling food on his breath.’

  ‘Harlan,’ Maggie said, trying to break into wherever his mind was and failing.

  ‘Guy’s trying to get me and I’m trying to get him. We’re holding on to each other like a slow dance on prom night.’

  ‘Harlan,’ she said louder this time, putting both her hands over his right fist that was clenched tightly on the table.

  He heard her this time. Shook his head as if waking from a dream. His eyes darted around the room checking for anyone watching. Or listening. No one was. His smile returned. A thin smile.

  ‘Where were you just now?’

  ‘Right here with you, Magpie. I never left.’

  ‘Don’t lie.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m a liar.’

  ‘This happen a lot?’

  ‘It happens. They’re called flashbacks. Shrink in the hospital in Bethesda said a lot of combat guys get ’em. Usually, I flashback to Fallujah or Ramadi. They were the worst. Sometimes some other place.�
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  ‘It’s not like you’re just remembering it?’

  ‘No. It’s not like remembering. It’s like being there. In Fallujah where I killed that guy with the knife, I was back there just now. I could smell the fear on the guy. Feel the warmth of his blood pouring out over my hand. Anyway,’ he said, shaking it off, ‘tell me what happened with Tiff. Somebody got her with a knife’s what I heard.’ There was still no emotion in his voice.

  ‘Yeah, he got her all right. Most of the gory details have been on TV all day.’

  He sat quietly for a few seconds, thinking, she supposed, about Tiff’s death. ‘Hey, want another beer or anything?’

  ‘Harlan, was there something more between you and Tiff Stoddard than you’re telling me?’ Maggie looked straight into the soft, brown eyes everyone said were nearly identical to her own.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like, oh, I don’t know, like maybe you were in love with her?’

  He sighed. Looked at her. Nodded, finally engaged. ‘Yeah, I guess. Tiff and I could have had something special. Been something special. But she wouldn’t let it happen. It had to be her way or no way. We were good together. Good chemistry. Great sex. So yeah, I guess I loved her. But as for her getting hung up with the likes of me? No way. Never happen.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It would have screwed up all her plans for the future. Tiff always said she was never gonna let what happened to her mother happen to her. At least her old man owned a fishing boat. I couldn’t even offer her that.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘About a week ago. When we broke up. When she dumped me.’

  ‘Why’d she quit the Moose?’

  ‘Like I said before, Tiff was into stuff she shouldn’t have been. It was taking more and more of her time.’

  ‘Dealing?’

  Harlan looked around to see if anyone was listening. No one was. Even so he lowered his voice so Maggie had to move closer to hear him. ‘Big time. Tiff wanted to get rich quick, and Ox seemed to her the fastest way to go about it. I told her more than once she was messing around with the wrong kind of people and sooner or later she was gonna get hurt by it. But whenever I said anything like that she’d just laugh it off. Thought she was tough enough to handle it. Hell, Tiff thought she was tough enough to handle anything.’

  ‘I need to know if you have an alibi for last night, Harlan.’

  ‘Wait a minute. You’re asking me if I have an alibi?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m asking you.’

  ‘You’re telling me you think I killed Tiff ?’

  ‘No. But because you had a sexual relationship with her some people might. So I’m asking you where you were when it happened. It’s my job, Harlan.’

  ‘You working on this or something?’

  ‘Yeah. Or something. TDY. With the state police. So where were you last night?’

  ‘I was here. Shooting pool. Probably twenty people’d swear they seen me.’

  ‘What time did you get here?’

  He shrugged. ‘Ten. Ten-thirty. Thereabouts. Left when Tommy closed up. Round one-thirty.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Spent the rest of the night at the Bluebird Motel.’

  Maggie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who with?’

  ‘See that little blonde up there banging away on the tambourine?’ He nodded toward the band. ‘Name’s Francie something or other.’

  Francie something or other saw Harlan looking at her and smiled.

  ‘A replacement for Tiff ?’

  ‘Not even close. More like a one night stand. The lady may or may not want to confirm my presence in her bed since she was wearing a wedding ring at the time.’

  ‘How about before you got here? Say between eight and ten?’

  ‘Home. Alone.’

  ‘Tiff ever mention the name Conor Riordan?’

  Harlan spent longer than he should thinking about how to answer that. ‘Look, Magpie, you’re my sister but you’re also a cop. So’s my old man. There are people around here who hold that against me. Try not to put me in a difficult position.’

  ‘Who’s Conor Riordan, Harlan?’

  ‘Where’d you get the name from?’

  ‘Let’s just say from an unnamed source. Tiff ever mention it?’

  There was an almost imperceptible hesitation. ‘Yeah, she mentioned it,’ Harlan said in a low voice barely audible in the noisy bar. ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘The man that never was. The man nobody is willing to admit they knew. Tiff knew. But now she’s dead. And that, big sister, is all I’m going to say on the subject.’

  ‘What do you know about Conor Riordan?’

  ‘Stop asking about Conor Riordan.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Harlan shook his head and blew out a long sigh. He took both his sister’s hands in his and looked her straight in the eye. ‘Do us both a favor, Magpie. Forget Conor Riordan. Don’t go looking for trouble you don’t need. Have a nice visit with the old man and then go back to Portland and forget you ever heard the name. I don’t care how good a cop you are or how many pals you’ve got on the state police. You’re my sister and I love you and I don’t want to see you get hurt. Or worse, killed.’

  26

  12:51 A.M., Sunday, August 23, 2009

  Machias, Maine

  Light from a solitary lamp and the flickering images of what looked like a Red Sox game shone through the living-room window as Maggie climbed the porch steps. Since it was nearly one in the morning, the game either had to be a rebroadcast or the Sox were playing on the coast. She peered in. The only sign of life was a pair of size 13B, stockinged feet hanging over the arm of the sofa. Her father must have dozed off in front of the box.

  She checked for the key under the geranium pot to the left of the front door. Still there. Anya hadn’t changed that. Least not yet. Maggie let herself in.

  Her father was stretched out fully clothed, a baby-blue afghan that Joanne Savage had crocheted decades ago covering the lower half of his long frame. Maggie turned off the TV and studied her father’s face in repose. Dark shadows from the single lamp accented circles under his eyes. She saw no point in waking him just so he could go upstairs to sleep in a bed.

  She thought about a framed photo, still upstairs she supposed, on the bureau in her parents’ bedroom. It showed a much younger John Savage, waist deep in the bone-numbingly cold Maine water, hoisting a three-year-old Maggie over his head, expressions of unutterable joy lighting both their faces. The idea of this impossibly strong man, this force of nature, his big, bony hands forever holding her high in the air, forever holding her tight, the idea of this man, her first true love though she hoped not her last, the idea of John Savage ever succumbing to the frailties of age or disease, of somehow needing her more than she needed him, seemed ludicrous. The inevitability of losing him was something to be fought to the bitter end. Never give up. Never give in.

  She made a silent vow to visit more often while she still could and then bent down and kissed him on the forehead. Gently so as not to wake him.

  She hauled her bag up to her old room. Nothing had changed here except for the clean set of towels neatly laid out for her on the wooden chair in the corner. Feeling a need to wash off the accumulated grubbiness of the last twenty-four hours, she pulled off her clothes, wrapped herself in a big, fluffy towel and tiptoed down the hall, hoping the sound of the shower wouldn’t wake Anya. She had no idea whether or not her father’s second wife was a light sleeper.

  She let hot water course over her tired and aching body and resolved not to think about the case. The resolution lasted less than a minute. So many strands of what had happened to Tiff Stoddard seemed woven around the most intimate relationships of her own past. Emily. Savage. Sam Harkness. And now Harlan. She worried most about Harlan. He seemed the most vulnerable. Her mind was whizzing around in circles. She told herself to slow it down. She washed her hair.

  La
ter, dressed in her standard summer sleep outfit, a pair of men’s boxers, size small, and a Sea Dogs t-shirt, size XL, she sat down at her old desk, the one she’d used through high school, and opened her laptop. Went to Google first. Feeling a slight sense of betrayal, she typed the words ‘Iraq War Veterans Murder PTSD’ into the search box. She was stunned. Six-hundred and twenty-seven thousand hits. Probably two years’ worth of reading. She read the first couple of pages, articles one through thirty, the most interesting being a series by the New York Times about soldiers coming home from Iraq who’d committed murder, suicide and/or sexual assault. Sometimes raping or killing total strangers. Sometimes loved ones. Wives, children, girlfriends. Often members of their own families.

  The numbers cited in the articles were large, though Maggie wondered how much larger they were than the numbers you might find in any random sample of unhappy or angry young men who’d experienced violence and were comfortable with the use of firearms. Still, it seemed logical that service in the random chaos and brutality of the war in Iraq could lead a veteran to a greater propensity to violence when he got back home. Harlan told her he’d killed twenty-three people, one with a knife. Killing was nothing new to him. Death no longer shocked him. Even the violent death of someone he loved.

  Harlan, even more than Sam, had to be considered a suspect. He had no alibi for the hours between eight to ten, when Stoddard was killed. And only an unreliable alibi for the hours after leaving the Moose. If Francie the tambourine player was indeed married, it was unlikely she’d publicly testify that a man she met only hours before had spent the night in her bed. It sure as hell wouldn’t do her marriage any good.

  On the other hand, there was no evidence at all that Harlan had had anything to do with the murder. At least none she was aware of. Also she was sure the vicious sexual aggression visited on Stoddard’s body was something Harlan wouldn’t do. Couldn’t do. Certainly not the Harlan she’d grown up with. Though how well she knew the Harlan who’d come home from Iraq, she wasn’t certain.

  Moreover, even if her brother was innocent, if he was accused of the crime and it somehow went to trial, any prosecutor worth his salt would try to use his war record and the possibility of PTSD as levers to prove his guilt. At this point, she wasn’t even sure his own father would rush to his defense.