9 

“So far I don’t think I’m in trouble,” I said. “All Green Coat knows about me is that I know Kate. If he checks up on me, that’s still all he’ll know. I’m just a local guy with a family. The more he checks, the less reason he’ll have to think I’m anything else.”

“Fine,” said Joe. “Then go back to your family and leave the Bunny to Kate and me. It’ll be over pretty quickly, I think. When it is, I’ll get a message to you on your cell phone and you can take your family home again.”

“And later you’ll tell me the whole story.”

He smiled. “Sure I will.”

I smiled back. “Sure you will.” I looked at Kate. “Since I may not see you again, there’s one thing you can tell me: How’d you get your last name?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You don’t look like a Celt. Besides, I like to know a little something about people who try to kill me.”

She shrugged. “My father is an engineer. A wandering Scot. He met my mother while he was building a railroad in Indochina. I’m the result. But I didn’t try to kill you. If I had, you’d be dead. I was deciding whether to do it when Joe, here, showed up.”

“Joe makes a habit of saving my hide,” I said. I shook hands with him, nodded to her, and went out to my truck. As I drove down-island I checked my rearview mirrors. No one was following me.

Maybe Green Coat didn’t need to follow me around anymore because he knew where I lived and figured he could wait for me there. Or maybe he’d managed to stick an electric tracking device on my car and could find me whenever he wanted.

Or maybe he’d decided I wasn’t a danger to him and didn’t merit further attention.

I wondered if he was the Easter Bunny.

If not, who was he and why was he interested in Kate MacLeod?

Was he, after all, just a guy anxious to jump her lovely bones? If so, why follow me?

I was long on questions and short on answers. One thing I was pretty sure of was that if Joe Begay did terminate the Bunny, I’d never learn where or how and nobody outside of his professional circle would even know it had happened. The Bunny would simply be gone.

On the other hand, if the Bunny killed Joe and Kate, there was a good chance that he’d make a spectacle of his work, to show people who cared about such things that he was more than capable of tough jobs that others in his field might shun and that he was not a man to mess with. It would be good publicity and could lead to a fee hike for his services.

I wondered why no one had a good photo of him. He must have passport pictures, at least. Why didn’t Joe’s agency have a copy? Some agency must have one; why didn’t the members of the fatal trade mission have copies?

I was glad to be out of the Bunny business, but I wasn’t sure that was actually the case. I might think I was, and Joe and Kate might think I was, but the Bunny might not think so and Green Coat might not think so and maybe there were other people I didn’t even know about who didn’t think so. And if any of them didn’t think so, I might be a target.

Good grief! I was getting paranoid! Pretty soon I’d be hearing voices and thinking that everybody in the whole world was a Bunny!

Maybe I was paranoid and being followed at the same time.

Maybe this, maybe that. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe nothing at all.

As I passed a parked pickup, two hunters in orange camouflage coats and caps came out of the woods. One carried two shotguns and the other had a deer slung over his shoulder. They looked tired but happy. I’d once been a hunter so I knew how they felt. There’d be venison for their supper tonight. My mouth grew moist at the thought.

For them, life was good and the Easter Bunny didn’t exist.

I thought of the torturer’s horse and of the boy falling from the sky while the ship sailed calmly by. The world didn’t stop turning for love or for loss. It had turned as Abelard and Héloïse lay abed, it had turned as Rome fell, and it would turn the day they buried me.

In my mind an image appeared of the wheels of my truck turning on the turning earth. It was a hint that I was wasting time thinking shallow thoughts. Enough of that! I had most of the day left, so I’d do something useful for a change. I decided to go home, get keys for the houses I looked after during the winter, and put in a few hours of caretaking.

But, just in case, I was careful when I drove down our long, sandy driveway. I checked the woods on both sides, drove slowly, and eased into the yard. Nothing seemed unusual. Oliver Underfoot and Velcro ran to meet me, giving me their usual lectures. I studied the house, then got out and petted the cats.

The tape was still at the bases of the front and back doors, so I went inside and checked the rooms. Everything looked the same as when I’d left it earlier that morning.

I got the keys and was walking toward the front door when I heard a car coming down the driveway. I looked out a window. It was a black sedan.

I tossed the keys onto a table and trotted to the gun cabinet. I hurriedly opened it and loaded my old .38 revolver while listening for the silence that would follow the sedan’s engine stopping and the sound of the driver’s door shutting behind him.

But the engine didn’t stop and the car door didn’t close. I went back to the window. The car had stopped beside my truck. The man in the green coat was only partially out of the car and was sagging against the door as if he was too tired to go farther.

As I looked, he lurched to his feet and staggered toward the house, and I saw blood on the front of his coat and the hand that he held against his chest.

I shoved the pistol in my belt and ran out of the house to meet him. He put out his other hand, reaching toward me. His knees let go as I got to him, and I caught him as he fell.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I’ll call nine-one-one!”

I started to rise, but he grasped my coat and stared into my face. His mouth was full of blood, and when he tried to speak the sound was lost in red bubbles. He turned his head and spat out the blood then again looked up at me. I put my ear near his mouth and he said in a very distant voice, “Not the Bunny. Tailgate.”

Just those four words, and then he left his body behind and went wherever the dead go next.

I looked down at him. His still-open eyes were blue, I now saw, and his hair was brown and cut fairly short. A nice-looking guy in an average sort of way. He wore a wedding ring and a gold wristwatch that had cost a lot more than mine. You should never pay more than nine dollars for a wristwatch. The expensive ones don’t keep time any better and they get lost or broken just as often.

I unzipped his coat, then went into the house, washed the blood off my hands, and put on a pair of the disposable rubber gloves we keep in a box under the sink. Back at the body I avoided as much of the blood as possible while I found the man’s wallet in a breast pocket and a flat black semiautomatic pistol in a belt holster. The wallet held money, credit cards, a photo of a young woman and two children, a driver’s license, and some business cards. The license had his photo and his name and address. Samuel Arbuckle had lived in Alexandria, just outside Washington. The business cards gave his name, phone number, e-mail address, and profession. According to the cards, Sam had worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Hmmmmm.

I had read about the DIA. It was the Pentagon’s private spy outfit, meant to provide it with better intelligence than it was getting from the CIA. It not only conducted its own analysis of data, it had its own agents, including spies, counterspies, and other human assets.

I went through Sam’s pockets but found only the usual stuff. No magic decoding ring or cyanide pill. In an inside coat pocket I did find his official DIA ID card.

I kept one of the business cards but put everything else back where I found it. Then I zipped up Sam’s coat and went to the car and shut off the engine. A window sticker identified it as a rental car from an island agency. There was a smear of blood on the side of the car just behind the driver’s door.

I went inside the house, buried the gloves in the trash container under the sink, and called 911.

The EMs, the Edgartown Police, and an ambulance got there almost at the same time. Tony D’Agostine of the Edgartown PD spoke to me, looked at the body, and called Sergeant Dom Agganis of the state police, because in Massachusetts, except for Boston, which has its own homicide detectives, the state cops are in charge of all murder investigations.

Dom arrived with Officer Olive Otero, with whom I did not get along and who didn’t like me either.

“I should have known you’d be involved,” she said as she looked at me. “Covered with blood and standing over a dead body. At least we don’t have to figure out who did it. I’ll take that pistol.”

I’d forgotten the pistol in my belt. I dug it out and handed it to her.

“My gun hasn’t been fired, and the man died in my arms,” I said to Dom, ignoring Olive. “I’d like to take a shower and get into some clean clothes.”

“Later,” said Dom.

“We’ll need the medical examiner to make it official,” said an EM, coming up to us, “but I’d say the deceased died from an acute case of lead poisoning.”

Dom nodded and looked at me. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. “I was inside when he drove down here. He tried to make it into the house but this is as far as he got. He died pretty fast. I turned the car engine off and called nine-one-one. The car’s a local rental, so he’s probably from off-island.”

Another police car came down the driveway and parked. Policemen with cameras and evidence bags got out. They said hello to Dom and began to look around and take pictures.

“See if he’s got any ID on him,” said Dom to Olive. “Wear a pair of rubber gloves.”

“Yes, sir,” said Olive.

“And put that gun in an evidence bag.”

“Yes, sir.” Olive was all business.

“Now,” said Dom, “if you don’t know this guy, why do you suppose he drove down here so he could die in your front yard?”