Page 53 of The Furies

“Do that. How did Dolors react when you told her about the dead squirrel on her door?”

“She asked me to get rid of it. When I suggested talking to the police, she told me she’d never see me again if I got them involved. I mean, what the hell is going on here?”

I told him I had some answers, if not enough of them, and I’d drop by later that night to go over what I’d learned. I also recommended that Dolors and Ambar find somewhere else to stay for a while, and even take time off work, if possible. I recommended the Inn at St. John, because I’d used it in the past when clients needed somewhere safe to hole up for a night or two. If Will mentioned my name, the staff would do what was required. He said he’d try to convince Dolors, and she could then talk to her sister, but he hung up a disturbed man.

If the police were drawn into this, I’d have to tell them about Eleanor Towle and her brother, and for some reason I felt a perverse sense of obligation to the Towle woman. She had been using me, feeding me enough information to set me on Kepler’s trail in the hope that I might become another means of keeping him at bay, but she hadn’t tried very hard to hide it and I thought the world would be a more diverting place with her in it. As for Egon, if by some miracle he answered his sister’s call, and could be made to see sense, it might yet be possible to resolve the issue. Admittedly Raum remained a problem, but I hoped he could be persuaded to hand over some, or all, of what had been taken from Kepler—to save his own hide as much as anyone else’s. Yet the situation was escalating, as indicated by the mutilated squirrel: a man who will hurt an animal is just as capable of hurting a human being, or even burning one to death, because there remained the fate of the coin dealer, Reuben Hapgood.

I pulled over to fill up at a gas station, and used the opportunity to look into the Hapgood case. Arson had yet to be confirmed, but Eleanor Towle’s information placed me in an awkward position, because theoretically I was now in possession of knowledge that might aid a police investigation, even if it was only a name—Kepler—and a story about a stolen coin. If I went to the police with what I knew, any number of people could conceivably be dragged down as a consequence. It might have been that Raum Buker and Egon Towle—even, at a stretch, Eleanor—deserved no better, but the Sisters Strange would also find themselves under scrutiny because of their relationship with Raum. I had no way of knowing what the police might discover once they began digging into the lives of Dolors and Ambar, but the chance existed that they knew more than they had shared with Will Quinn or me. Even if they did not, as soon as the police began pulling loose threads from the tapestry of a person’s history, it was difficult as all hell to put it back together again. Ambar’s job might be lost, Dolors’s business could go under, and the resulting resentments would endure. Call me a sentimentalist, but I didn’t want Will Quinn to have employed me to ruin his life.

It might have been the wrong thing to do in the eyes of the law—actually, strike “might have been”—but I decided to give it twenty-four hours before talking to the police. If Raum and Egon Towle could be induced to hand over the potin coin at least, it would act as an enticement for Kepler, like placing meat at the heart of a snare. I think I wanted to catch sight of him. Maybe, like others who were privy to the stories about him, I wished to confirm he existed, and that all I had seen and heard so far—runic symbols on glass, tales of coins and extended lives—was not part of some elaborate hoax cooked up by Raum Buker and the Towles to shroud a straightforward crime of theft. Once persuaded of the fact of his existence, I could determine how to deal with him. If I failed to trap him, I would have no qualms about sharing with the police a redacted version of what I knew, once I’d had time to decide what to leave out. It was an imperfect solution, which made it a perfect one for an imperfect world.

* * *

THE TRAFFIC WAS LIGHT all the way to the Maine border, and even sparser from there. Eleanor Towle contacted me as I passed Newfield.

“My brother isn’t answering his phone,” she said. “My calls go straight to voice mail, but that’s not odd for Egon.”

“How long does it usually take him to respond?”

“That depends on his mood, but he always checks his phone before he goes to bed, and again first thing in the morning. He doesn’t leave it on overnight. Egon likes his beauty sleep.”

“Let me know when you hear from him,” I said.

“And if he doesn’t get in touch?”

There was no point in dissimulation.

“Then he’s dead,” I said. “I think you need to get out of that house, Ms. Towle, and you need to do it right now.”

She hung up without saying another word.

CHAPTER LIX

If, as seemed increasingly likely, Kepler had already tracked down Egon Towle, then it was Towle who had directed him toward Raum Buker. But Kepler was also aware of Raum’s involvement with the Sisters Strange, which was why he’d placed his mark on Ambar Strange’s door. He wanted Raum to know that Ambar was in play, and if Raum wasn’t prepared to hand back what he’d taken for his own sake, he should consider doing so for hers. I pictured again the extent of the damage to her door. It had struck me as excessive and pointless at the time, but no longer: Kepler might have been responsible for the initial destruction, but it was Raum who had vandalized it still further in an effort to hide the presence of the rune.

Yet if Kepler had indeed located Egon Towle, he appeared more reluctant to tackle Raum directly. This wasn’t surprising. From what I knew of Towle, he sounded as though he would have presented an easy target. Raum, by contrast, was many things, but easy wasn’t one of them, and prison had only made him harder. So far, Kepler was avoiding a face-to-face confrontation, but that couldn’t be put off for much longer. It made me more concerned than ever for the safety of the Sisters Strange.

It was only as I saw the exit sign for the Maine Mall and its motels that I realized what had been nagging me about the peephole in the door of Raum’s unit at the Braycott Arms. Although it was getting late, I continued into the center of Portland and parked on the curb outside the hotel. The inner lobby door was closed, but Bobby Wadlin was at his post, bathed by the light from the TV screen. If he was pleased to see me, it didn’t show, but then pleasure was probably an alien concept to him, unless it involved someone being shot from a horse.

“Has Raum Buker been back?” I said.

“No,” said Wadlin, “but I’m holding the room for him, despite the demand—although you’re shit out of luck, in case you’re considering asking. I’m particular about my tenants.”

I contemplated how low in life I might have to sink before I was forced to go knocking on the door of the Braycott Arms. Not quite so low, perhaps, as I might have to sink in order to be turned away.

“I need to take another look at his room,” I said.

“It’s late.”

“Indulge me, Bobby.”

“I don’t approve of indulgence. Anyway, we got rules.”

He tapped the sign forbidding entry to nonresidents after 5:00 p.m. The spelling of “visiters” had been crudely altered with a crayon. The sign now read NO VISETERS AFTER 5PM.

“I’m not visiting,” I said, “because there’s no one for me to visit.”

“Come back tomorrow. Even better, don’t.”

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