“He pretended what never happened?”
“What we’d done. When we were kids.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jessica said, keeping her voice gentle. Her father was starting to sound agitated, the way he got when some memory was just out of reach. “Why do you think he didn’t want to talk about it?”
“Because he didn’t want to think about it, that’s why? That’s why people don’t want to talk about things, usually.”
“I agree. But you didn’t want to forget, Dad. You must have wanted to remember because you wanted to talk about it with him.”
“What are we talking about again, Rose?”
Rose was Jessica’s mother’s name, but she ignored the slipup. She knew her dad was about to lose the thread, so she said, “We’re talking about Art Kruse, little Artie Kruse you called him, and what he didn’t want to talk about.”
There was a long silence, and Jessica knew that she’d lost him. When he spoke again, he said, “Am I supposed to know him?”
“No, I don’t suppose so, Dad,” she said. “It must be close to your dinnertime there.”
“Probably macaroni and cheese again.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, I guess not.”
“All right, Dad, I love you, and I’m going to hang up now.”
“I love you, too, Rosie.”
Jessica began to pace, her handgun in her holster toward the back of her hip. There was so much to think about, and she was trying to organize her thoughts. First of all, there was a connection, a definite connection, between her father and Arthur Kruse’s father, and something—something bad—that they had done. Whatever that bad thing was, it was the key to what was going on. She was sure of it. But the more pressing matter was the gray Equinox that had slowed down in front of her house. She’d been marked, but she’d also marked him. She wondered if he would try to get to her tonight, and she somehow doubted it. She was in a locked house with a gun. She felt relatively safe. A part of her was actually hoping he’d make an attempt.
She did wonder if he’d seen her in the window as he first drove past, if he knew that she’d spotted him. If that was the case, he might just take off, assuming that she’d call in reinforcements. But she wasn’t going to do that, at least not yet. She thought she could get to this guy. She knew what his car looked like, and she knew he was in the area. It was getting dark now, and she would batten down the hatches. Tomorrow she would hunt him down.
12
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 11:41 P.M.
Fischer had lost the last game, so he put eight quarters into the coin slots to release the pool balls, then racked them, while Donald Bennett looked on with the forced concentration of the very drunk, leaning a little on his pool stick.
“Rack ’em right this time,” he said.
“Sure thing, boss,” Fischer said. “But it won’t make a difference. You still break like a pussy.”
Donald made a sound that began as a word but ended in a raspberry, and smiling broadly, stumbled toward Fischer, taking playful swings at him. The fingers of his right hand grazed Fischer’s wig, the dark one with the slight mullet cut that made him look like the type of idiot who just might lose a game of pool to the drunkest guy in the bar.
He’d spotted Donald two hours earlier, saying something to the tired bartender that made her roll her eyes as soon as she turned her back to him to fetch his Miller Lite from the cooler. The bar was called the Lobster Pot, a single-story concrete structure that was just off the main road, halfway back up the peninsula from Port Clyde. Fischer, since arriving at eight, had slowly nursed three beers, and eaten one dry hamburger, while looking for someone who might be of some use to him. But there were surprisingly few solo drinkers—or not surprisingly, considering it was a Wednesday in September. One woman came in alone, teetering on stiletto heels, but she’d been there to gossip to the bartender, drink one amaretto sour, and leave. And there’d been a lone male drinker, a guy in his sixties who drank his draft beer almost as slowly as Fischer was drinking his. And despite his greasy hair and threadbare coat the guy looked intelligent and, more important, wary.
Fischer had been about to give up when Donald Bennett arrived, unsteady already. As he’d settled onto the vinyl-covered stool, the bartender held her hand out to him, palm up, fingers cupped. He’d slapped her hand, saying, “What’s up?” in a loud, braying voice, then he’d laughed and dug into his jean pockets to hand over his keys. Then he’d said something else to her that Fischer couldn’t make out.