Page 67 of The Furies

I called Kepler’s name, but he didn’t respond.

“He’s not moving,” said Angel from somewhere to the left, and slightly ahead.

“Any sign of a gun?”

“On the ground, by his right hand.”

We advanced, drawing closer and closer to the wounded man until at last we surrounded him. Kepler was lying with his back to one of the pines. The front of his body was drenched with blood, and his eyes were barely open. He did not react as Louis eased the Colt out of his reach. I could hear his ragged breathing. His mouth tried to form words, and I knelt to listen.

“Perfidious,” he said. “I told you.”

It might have been the scudding of clouds, or the shifting of the branches in the night breeze, but for an instant there was movement on Kepler’s skin—no, not on, but under, so that the shape of his face was transfigured. Beneath his own features I descried those of another, the lines sharp and animalistic, the teeth jagged and keen, and I smelled, amid the man’s floral scent, a hint of burning.

And then it was gone, and Kepler with it.

CHAPTER LXXII

We returned to Ambar Strange’s house. Sirens were already approaching, so Louis and Angel ditched their weapons in the compartment beneath their vehicle’s spare tire while we waited for the ambulance and police to arrive. I checked on Will. He was hurting, but still conscious. Close to the edge of the blaze in the fireplace I saw a small stain, and a melted residue. I thought it might have been liquefied metal. Over by the door, Ambar’s tan Timberlands lay on their side, mud caking the soles and staining the leather.

The police came, and I told them all I knew, omitting only my suspicions about Eleanor Towle, because she already had enough sorrows of her own. I listened, in turn, as Dolors Strange described Kepler’s sudden entry into the house from the backyard, and Ambar’s reaction: two shots, one of which hit its target. The Sisters Strange denied all knowledge of the whereabouts of Raum Buker or whatever he might have stolen, admitting only that they had assisted him in getting to the County. A prosecutor with nothing better to do might have gone after them for aiding and abetting, but since Raum hadn’t been wanted for any crime when the Stranges accompanied him north, that prosecutor would have been wasting time and energy. In the meantime, Ambar’s shooting of Kepler would certainly fall under the Maine Criminal Code’s definition of legitimate force and the right to self-defense. Kepler was dead, and that was the end of it.

But that night, as I prepared to sleep, I thought again of the residue in the fireplace. It was just what a small coin might have looked like after melting.

CHAPTER LXXIII

Kepler’s death made all the papers and TV news shows, along with variations on the story of the robbery, yet Raum Buker did not emerge from his hiding place. Some said that he’d gone west after all, and started a new life with the proceeds from the sale of Kepler’s collection. But if Raum was selling off treasures, he was doing so discreetly, and discretion was not a word that had ever previously been associated with him. This is what I now believe: Raum should never have come between the Sisters Strange, and would never leave the County.

I think he’s still up there, buried as deep as the winter dirt would allow.

CHAPTER LXXIV

Even in death, the man who called himself Kepler remained an enigma. His vehicle, a tan 1977 Cadillac Coupe DeVille d’Elegance, was found parked near Ambar Strange’s cottage. It was empty apart from an old medical bag containing clothing, minimal toiletries, and a small, ornate clock with multiple dials, each now stopped at a different time. The numerals on the dials were subsequently identified as ogham, an ancient Irish system of letters. The clock appeared to be of Kepler’s own devising, because no record of a comparable mechanism was ever discovered. The Cadillac was registered to a New Mexico limited liability company with a tax ID number from a ghost address that turned out to be another box number, this one in Mississippi. His South Dakota driver’s license gave his name as Johannes Kepler, after the German astronomer and mathematician. The address on the license was a disused shack in Wall, owned by the same LLC. In the pocket of his coat were two pairs of loaded dice, made from bone that was later determined to have come from a young female. The dice were four centuries old.

Eventually, some weeks after Kepler’s driver’s license photo had first appeared in newspapers, a woman in Perth, Ontario, contacted the Portland PD to say that she thought she recognized the man in the picture. She knew him as Christopher Cattan, another borrowing from history: Cattan was a noted sixteenth-century geomancer, geomancy being the use of patterns in soil, stones, and sand to divine hidden knowledge. This Cattan, she said, was only an occasional visitor to Perth, and didn’t socialize, but he kept a small house off Highway 7 on the road to Peterborough. Sharon Macy was dispatched to Canada to liaise with the Ontario Provincial Police, joined by Detective Peter Condell from the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation, for whom the death of Kepler marked a likely conclusion to the Edwin Ellerkamp case. A warrant to search a named property, located by the Tay River, was obtained from the Ontario Court of Justice in Perth.

The house, Macy later told me over dinner at the Corner Room, was unprepossessing from the outside—a simple two-story building in wood and brick, the woodwork much the worse for wear, ivy embedded in the brickwork—but the windows and doors were strong, and it had an alarm system in place, although it did not activate when the police entered. Two armed OPP officers accompanied Macy, but it quickly became clear that the house was unoccupied. Inside they discovered a broken safe and shards of glass from display cases swept into a corner; portable storage racks for coins, all full; a library of books on numismatics and the artifacts of ancient civilizations; multiple bone dice of various ages, all weighted; and an entire room of shelves laden with Sunday newspapers going back thirty years or more, many apparently unread, and sealed in plastic in bunches of ten. The décor didn’t look as though it had been refreshed since the fifties, and the walls were unadorned. There was no TV, no radio, and no phone, only books and old newspapers.

Upstairs, just one room was furnished as a bedroom, with a small double bed. A safe was concealed in the bedroom closet, although, unlike the main one downstairs, it had not been forced open. When a locksmith did gain access, it was found to contain $20,000 in assorted currencies, along with a range of official identification documents: passports and driver’s licenses in a number of names, including Faber, Galeotti, Bacon, and Dee, all four being historical astrologers or alchemists. The earliest of the paperwork dated back to 1924—a New York State driver’s license in the name of William Backhouse—but the photos on each document showed some version of Kepler. The official explanation was that Kepler had belonged to a long line of dishonest men. Who was to say this was not close to the truth?

CHAPTER LXXV

The Sisters Strange went back to their old lives, once all the fuss had died down. Ambar continues to work at the dental practice, and has had some improvements made to her cottage, but other than the occasional nice vacation, she doesn’t lead an extravagant existence. Strange Brews is still in business, and has even expanded to new premises in Saco and Old Orchard Beach, although Dolors can normally be found in the original coffee shop in South Portland, surrounded by bad art, and maybe, at times, bad memories. She and Will Quinn don’t see each other anymore. Will and I had a long talk about the Sisters Strange, and I voiced suspicions that he had perhaps only countenanced during sleepless nights, as Raum Buker’s silence dragged on and on. Will is now dating Kestrel Carroll, sole detective at the Cape Elizabeth Police Department, and there are rumors of an engagement on the horizon. Will, it can safely be said, is over his fear of the law.

Eleanor Towle no longer lives in Ossipee. Last I heard, she’d moved to Florida, and I doubt I’ll ever see her again because I don’t like Florida. I spoke to her briefly in the days following the discovery of her brother’s body, to express my condolences. She thanked me and hung up.

Sometimes Angel calls to say that an unusual coin has come on the market, either at auction or as part of an under-the-counter transaction. For the most exceptional items, the seller is often a woman, although not always the same woman in every case. The description of one frequent consignor matches that of Eleanor Towle, which would be understandable given her late brother’s interests, but the other sounds a lot like Dolors Strange.

THE FURIES

1

The vast cities of America, the fertile plains of Hindostan, the crowded abodes of the Chinese, are menaced with utter ruin.

—Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826)

CHAPTER I

The Braycott Arms was a stain on the character of the city of Portland, a blight on its inhabitants, and a repository for criminality, both aggressively active and relatively passive, the latter frequently due only to the temporary requirements of a parole board. It had always been thus, even beyond recall. The Braycott was one of a number of railroad hotels that had sprung up in the vicinity of Union Station, now departed these sixty years, of which only the Inn at St. John and the Braycott survived. But while the former was comfortable, hospitable, and carefully maintained, the Braycott catered to those who were less than particular about their surroundings, and valued the company of rough men and rougher women over clean sheets and a peaceful night’s sleep.

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