STONE, DINO, HOLLY AND SETH went out to the dock and got the picnic boat ready for departure. The skies had clouded up, and darkness was complete. Seth got the engine started, and the lights from the dashboard instruments and the GPS plotter offered a little light in the cockpit.
“Look,” Seth said, pointing to the plotter screen. “The creek is on the electronic chart; that will make it a piece of cake to find, even in the dark. All we have to worry about is moored boats and rocks, and I pretty much know where those are.”
“Let’s go,” Stone said. “It’s going to start to get light soon, and I want to at least be in position off the creek before that happens.”
Seth moved the boat away from the dock, and at idle speed they began moving up the inlet, away from the harbor. They could hear nothing, except the rumble of the engine. Seth increased power a little. “We could go faster, if we use the spotlight,” he said.
“As long as we can navigate safely in the dark, I’d rather not announce our presence,” Stone said.
Then, without warning, they heard the whine of a big outboard engine, and a Boston Whaler flashed past them, rocking their boat with its wake.
“Shit,” Seth said. “I didn’t hear that coming; he must have been doing twenty knots.”
“Was that Caleb’s boat?” Stone asked.
“Hard to tell with no light,” Seth replied. “Lots of Whalers hereabouts.” They continued their way up the inlet, passing moored boats along the way, making seven knots, according to the speedometer. “Creek up ahead,” Seth said. “One o’clock and a hundred yards.” He throttled back to idle.
HAM BARKER WATCHED from the rear seat as Ed Rawls’s Range Rover turned onto Caleb Stone’s driveway.
“Lights off,” said Sergeant Young from the front passenger seat. “I don’t want ’em to know we’re here until they open the door.”
“BMW convertible dead ahead,” Rawls said.
“That’s the twins’ car,” Young replied. “They’re back from Nantucket.”
The car stopped, and Ham and Lance got out of the backseat.
“Lance,” Young said, “you and Ham go around to the back door and make sure your cell phone is on. What’s the number?”
Lance gave it to him, and he tapped it into his own phone and pressed the send button. Lance opened the phone. “I’m on the line,” he said.
“Good,” Young replied. “If you hear any kind of commotion or yelling, kick in the back door and come in with your weapons drawn. You’ve got a flashlight; use it if you have to.”
“Right,” Lance said, and he and Ham began to walk to the rear of the house.
Ham drew his Colt .45 auto, racked the slide and flipped the safety on with his thumb, then he took a small Surefire flashlight loaded with high-powered batteries from a holster on his gun belt. That light, he knew, was enough to nearly disable a man when it hit his face in the dark. Once, he had seen a soldier throw up after such an experience.
They reached the back of the house, walked quietly up the back steps and waited on the landing by the door. Lance put the phone on speaker, and they could hear the footsteps of Young and Rawls as they came onto the front porch. Then, faintly, they heard a doorbell ring.
STONE, DINO AND HOLLY sat in the picnic boat off the mouth of the creek, while Seth kept it hovering in place, using the joystick to control the boat’s movement.
“I see a faint light,” Stone said, pointing. “There, through the trees.”
“Looks like a lantern or maybe a candle,” Dino said.
“We’ve got some light in the sky,” Stone said. “Let’s go slowly up the creek, Seth. Dino and I will go onto the foredeck and keep the brush and branches out of the way as much as possible. If you hit anything solid, back off.” Stone and Dino crept forward.
The going was easier than Stone had thought it would be. It was as if someone had trimmed the larger branches, leaving only the smaller stuff. For five minutes they moved on up the creek at the rate of a couple of knots, and then there were no more branches, only clear water ahead. The boathouse stood before them, twenty-five yards ahead, a soft glow coming from its windows. Stone looked back at Seth and drew a hand across his throat.
Seth turned off the engine, and they drifted forward, ghosting into the boat bay of the house. Stone and Dino hopped onto the catwalk and stopped the boat’s progress. Holly joined them, and they made the boat fast. They had made remarkably little noise.
Stone pressed the speed dial on his cell phone for Sergeant Young’s phone and got a busy signal. He closed his phone. “Somebody’s upstairs,” he whispered to Dino and Holly. “Come on, we’re going in.” He led the way to the stairs, and in single file they began to creep upward, keeping to the inside of the treads to avoid squeaks. They came to the door, which was ajar an inch. Stone looked inside but could see only a small slice of the room. He looked at Dino and Holly and pumped his fist twice; they were going in.
THE SOUND OF A woman’s voice raised in protest coming from the cell phone jerked Ham to attention. “No, you can’t come in!” she was saying.
“That’s it,” Lance said. He turned the doorknob, found it locked, then backed up a step and kicked the door open.
Ham was in the darkened house immediately, his flashlight on, his gun hand cradled on his left wrist. They were in a kitchen, and another door was ahead. He peeped through that and saw a light down a hallway. He could hear the voices clearly now, without the cell phone.
“We have a search warrant, Mrs. Stone,” Young was saying. “You sit down over there and don’t interfere, or I’ll arrest you and handcuff you.” The woman’s voice stopped. “Ham, you and Lance take the upstairs; Ed and I will take this floor.”
Ham went into the main entrance hall and ran lightly up the stairs, gun and flashlight at the ready. All he found were empty rooms, neatly kept. He switched on the ceiling light in what was obviously the twins’ room. It was as neat as all the others. He and Lance went through it, checking every closet or cabinet large enough to hold a man, until they were satisfied there was no one on the second floor. They went back downstairs.
Young and Rawls came out of a bedroom. “Nobody but Mrs. Stone in the house. Where are your husband and your sons, Mrs. Stone?” She appeared to be drunk.
“I was sleeping,” she said.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t they in bed? My boys flew into Rockland tonight.”
“Let’s get to the boathouse,” Young said, and they all headed for the Range Rover.
STONE PUSHED THE door open with his foot, gun before him, and stepped into the room. He saw a double bed, a table, an old sofa, a couple of seedy, overstuffed chairs and not much else. He could see the top of the head of what was apparently a sleeping man sitting in one of the armchairs, his back to them.
Stone switched on his flashlight and approached. “Wake up,” he said. “Keep your hands where I can see them.” Then he saw the pistol on the floor, near the man’s dangling right hand, and he knew what else he was going to see.
THEY WERE GATHERED in the boathouse, looking at the dead body of Caleb Stone, a bullet through his right temple.
“They did a better job on Caleb’s suicide than with Dick’s,” Stone said. “At least, the angle is right.”
“The computer was on that table in the corner,” Holly said, “along with a little printer and a briefcase.”
“The twins think they have a million two in a Singapore bank,” Stone said, “and that had to be them in the boat that passed us when we were on the way in. I wonder where they’re headed.”
Young spoke up. “Their mother said they flew into Rockland.”
“We’ll never catch them in the boat,” Stone said. “Come on, Ed. Drive me to the Islesboro airstrip, and maybe we can beat them to Rockland.”
“I’ll call for backup,” Sergeant Young said, “but I don’t know where our cars are tonight, and I don’t know how long it will take them to get to Rockland Airport.”
“We don’t have time to wait for backup,” Stone said. “Once those boys are off the ground, it’s going to be hell to find them.” He ran for the stairs.