Page 63 of The Furies

“What damage?” he said, just as I kicked in his office door.

* * *

A LITTLE LATER, I sat in my car while Tony Motti glared at me from the entrance to the Braycott Arms. Wadlin had called him while I was still working on demolishing his door, but Tony was only good for ejecting drunks and collecting debts from people too frightened or ignorant to know their rights. Unless he could also do carpentry, he wouldn’t be much use.

It had been stupid of me to take Wadlin’s word on email as the sole means of contact with Kepler, and he might yet live to regret what he’d done if the police became interested. It turned out that Wadlin, perhaps wisely, was more scared of Kepler than he was of me. He had possessed a cell phone number for Kepler all along. The cell phone was the primary means of contact, Wadlin admitted, but only by text message, because the number was never answered. After I’d left the Braycott the night before, Wadlin had messaged Kepler to admit disclosing the email address to me. Now attempts to send text messages to Kepler’s number were proving unsucccessful, and I got no result from feeding the number into a locator app, meaning the SIM had already been removed or destroyed so the user couldn’t be traced.

I hadn’t laid a finger on Bobby Wadlin, but only because it would have landed me in a cell, and he would likely have sued me into the bargain. But I knew what he’d done, and I planned to hold it over him, even if the law never got to hear about it. A pressure point might prove useful in the future, because I had no doubt that I hadn’t seen the last of the Braycott Arms.

I was driving off when Moxie Castin’s secretary got in touch to say that a guest named Kepler had been staying at one of the chain motels by the Maine Mall, but had checked out the day before. I asked her to keep looking, but I didn’t hold out much hope. I had a feeling that when Kepler surfaced again, it would be for the last time.

I watched the sun mark the decline of the day. Within hours I would have to share with the police what little I had learned. It would represent an admission of failure on my part: failure to help Will Quinn, failure to protect the Sisters Strange, failure to save Raum Buker from himself, and failure to locate a man who couldn’t have been more distinctive if he’d arrived in town with a brass band in tow. Some cases you chalk up to experience, but they take their toll.

In the aftermath, I would speculate on how long Kepler had been following me, but I thought it might have been since the night before. While I sat outside the Braycott Arms, Kepler had been nearby, my car in sight, the faintest outline of my form visible behind the windshield. By then he must have been in so much pain that sleep was beyond him, so he had distracted himself from his own extinction by observing a man who had mistaken himself for a hunter.

When he made himself known to me at last, it was almost a relief.

CHAPTER LXIX

I parked at my home and stood in the driveway as the winter sun was setting on the marshes. I had spoken with Will Quinn to advise him that, having achieved so little, I would no longer be charging him, and whatever else I might manage to do for him would be on my own time and at my own expense. I also told him I’d be speaking to the police before the night was out, and the Sisters Strange would be advised to have their stories straight by then, although it would be better if they came forward of their own volition. Eleanor Towle would just have to take her chances.

Will didn’t make a final effort to talk me out of it. He thought, mistakenly or otherwise, that Dolors and Ambar would be fine, because he wanted to believe that they had done nothing wrong. I chose not to comment.

“I’ll ask them both to meet me at Ambar’s house,” said Will. “I’m about to make a late delivery to Westbrook, so I’ll be in the vicinity. If I can’t talk them around, I’ll go to the police with you. I’d go alone, but I get nervous around the law.”

“That’s because you’re honest,” I said. “I bet you also worry about being convicted of a crime you haven’t committed.”

“Don’t even joke about it,” said Will. “You know, I really wish Raum Buker had never been born.”

“You’re not the first,” I said, “but the way things are going, you may be the last.”

* * *

I HUNG UP AND checked my watch. Angel and Louis were probably already back in Portland by now. I felt the need of their company. Maybe the police could wait until morning, which would give Raum Buker and the Sisters Strange a final opportunity to see reason. I could even make the first approach to the Portland PD through Sharon Macy. We’d begun seeing each other again, if tentatively, so much so that both of us were reluctant even to acknowledge that we might be laying the foundations for something longer term. She’d been in Quantico, Virginia, for ten weeks, participating in an extended development course for law enforcement liaisons run by the FBI’s National Academy, and had followed it with some downtime in Florida, but she was now back in town. I was careful about maintaining a professional distance between us to avoid complications for her, but in the matter of the Sisters Strange I’d done nothing wrong. I simply had information that might prove useful in the course of an investigation, one that involved police in another jurisdiction, and Macy was the primary point of contact between the Portland PD and outside agencies.

My phone beeped with an incoming text message. It came from a number I did not recognize, and contained only one word: Kepler. I called the number. Seconds later, a phone rang behind me.

I turned, and he was there.

CHAPTER LXX

Kepler was dressed as in the video from the Great Lost Bear, all tans, creams, and browns, but his clothing hung more loosely than before, cut for a man with more meat on his bones. His cheeks were marred with lesions that did not bleed, and the skin around his eyes sagged as though his face was coming away from his skull. His eyes were so white that the world must have been little more than mist and shadows to him. But the gun in his right hand did not waver, and when he spoke, his voice was firm.

He killed the call and let the phone fall to the ground. I held mine in my hand, and kept my arms away from my body.

“Do you have a gun?” he said.

“Left side.”

“Left thumb and forefinger only.”

Awkwardly I removed the gun from its holster.

“Toss it into the bushes, and you can send your phone along after it.”

I did as I was told.

“Now sit, legs folded beneath you.”

---