Page 55 of The Furies

Bobby extracted a square of notepaper from a drawer, scribbled the address, and pushed it through the slot in the screen. I looked at it, folded it, put it in my pocket, and prepared to wipe the dust of the Braycott from my feet.

“What address did you use to send your messages?”

“I made up a new one on Gmail,” said Wadlin.

“I want that as well, and the password.”

“You can’t mean it. That’s private stuff.”

“Do I look like someone who doesn’t mean what he says?”

Wadlin concluded that I didn’t, and gave me the address and password.

“Look,” said Wadlin, “you won’t tell this guy I rolled over, will you?”

For a moment I thought he couldn’t be for real, until I realized that he was.

“Of course not,” I replied. I let Wadlin’s shoulders sag with relief before adding, “He’ll be able to figure it out for himself.”

* * *

THE EMAIL ADDRESS USED by Kepler—random numbers, symbols, and letters—was temporary and anonymous, and generated by Guerrilla Mail. I knew because I’d come across the sharklasers.com domain name before. It would be untraceable, and set up so that the recipient was alerted any time a message came through. It was a reasonably efficient way to operate, and obviated the necessity for a phone number, which could more easily be traced and located.

I opened up Gmail, entered the details given to me by Wadlin, and sent a simple three-word message to the Guerrilla Mail account: Buker has returned. Then I sat back to wait. I spent close to three hours outside the Braycott Arms, my car positioned facing the side of the building so I could see anyone entering or leaving through the front or back doors, but none of those who came or went matched the description offered by Wadlin, and all appeared to be residents. Kepler wasn’t coming. He had not taken the bait. I thought I knew why, but I was tired, and payback could wait.

CHAPTER LXII

It was long after midnight when I got to Will Quinn’s home, but he had waited up for me. He hadn’t wanted to speak on the phone because he was a man who preferred to conduct serious business face-to-face. I shared with him most of what I’d learned that day, holding back my suspicion that Eleanor Towle might have been entrusted with some of the coins from the cache, although not the one Kepler was seeking most keenly. She was too streetwise for that, and may have given its myth enough credence not to want to hold on to it. Neither did I mention to Will the demise of Reuben Hapgood, because Will was distracted enough as things stood. In turn, he told me that Dolors hadn’t been in the mood to talk about very much upon her return to Portland, and had barely glanced at the pictures Will had taken of the dead squirrel nailed to her door, or the bloodied mark on the wood.

“It was like it was nothing she hadn’t seen before,” said Will. “The mark, I mean. Maybe the squirrel, too, because who knows? But I thought the mark at least might have drawn her interest.”

Not if she was already aware of what it meant, I thought, but this, too, I kept to myself. Just how much of his predicament had Raum shared with the Sisters Strange?

Will had failed to persuade Dolors to relocate to the Inn at St. John, which meant that Ambar was still at her own place as well. It couldn’t be helped for now, but I thought I might make a final effort to change their minds the following day. Dolors had assured Will that she would keep her door locked and her cell phone with her at all times, and had instructed Ambar to do the same, but it didn’t exactly equate to pulling up the drawbridge and calling out the guard.

“Does either of them keep a gun in the house?” I asked.

“Ambar does,” said Will. “Dolors doesn’t like firearms. She has pepper spray somewhere, she told me.”

It was better than nothing, I supposed, assuming she could find it, and it retained some potency.

“Did you find out if Ambar had also been away?”

“Dolors said she went along to keep her company,” said Will.

“Where?”

“North, somewhere.”

“There’s a lot of north. She wasn’t more specific?”

“She displayed an aversion to further questioning, shall we say.”

“I’m sure the police will take her sensitivities into account.”

“Dolors has made her position clear on the subject of police involvement.”

“You saw what Kepler did to that squirrel. Soon there will come a point where Dolors’s feelings won’t matter a damn, unless Raum does the right thing.”

---