12:40 A.M., Monday, August 24, 2009
Pleasant Point, Maine
Staying away from the roads, traveling cross-country, avoiding contact with the cops or, for that matter, anyone else, Harlan spent most of the day and much of the night getting as far as the Passamaquoddy tribal lands at Pleasant Point. The most dangerous part of the trip lay just ahead. If the troopers were already out in force, as he suspected they were, passing over the narrow causeway on to Moose Island and then into Eastport was where he’d most likely be spotted. Cops didn’t take kindly to anyone taking down one of their own. At least he hadn’t killed the sonofabitch. Though he’d been sorely tempted.
It hadn’t been a conscious decision to head for Eastport to find Tabitha. Harlan’s legs just seemed to know where they were supposed to go. He supposed it was destined to come to this. Right from the beginning he’d told Tiff it was a dumb idea to steal the drugs, an even dumber idea to ask an eleven-year-old kid to hide them for her. But Tiff, being Tiff, insisted she knew best. Anyway, he was in the middle of it now. He knew what he had to do.
Harlan’s plan was simple in concept, trickier in the details. First find Tabitha Stoddard. Somehow convince her to give him the Oxycontin. Once he had the pills and Tabitha was safe, he’d use them as bait to lure Riordan into the open. Get the fucker to show his face. Then kill him. As slowly and painfully as he had killed Tiff. He owed Tiff that much. Owed himself that much as well.
When Riordan was dead and the drugs destroyed, Harlan didn’t much care what happened next. If it turned out to be violent death at the hands of a state police SWAT team, so be it. If he had to turn his own gun on himself, that was okay too. The only thing he wouldn’t let them do is lock him up. Not now. Not ever.
As he walked, his mind flashed back to the night that began the final act of his affair with Tiff. He remembered the dancing and the loving and the song that was destined to become the soundtrack for what he guessed would be the last days of his life. I will follow you into the dark.
It had been a warm, wet Tuesday near the end of June. Tiff was working the bar at the Moose and Harlan came in late like he usually did. The place was empty except for a couple of regulars shooting pool in the side room. He slid on to the last stool and Tiff came over. They started shooting the shit about nothing in particular. He bought her a drink and she put on some music she liked. A Ray LaMontagne song. Since there was nothing else to do, she told him she felt like dancing. He wasn’t much of a dancer but she came out from behind the bar, took his hands and pulled him on to the floor. He put his arms around her and they started slow dancing, though he supposed some people wouldn’t have called it dancing at all.
Mostly it was the two of them standing there, holding on to each other and swaying to the soft, sexy sound of LaMontagne’s ‘All the Wild Horses’, which, for some reason, Tiff had set to play over and over. ‘All the Wild Horses’. He guessed it was just Tiff’s kind of song.
Tommy kicked them out at one in the morning. Told Tiff to take Harlan home if that’s what she was planning to do. Told her not to worry about the cleanup. He’d take care of it himself. Wasn’t much to do anyway.
They drove in convoy through a summer rain back to her place. Then ran up the wooden stairs on the side of the building, Tiff just ahead of him, his hands on her ass, pushing her up to her place on the second floor. They stopped on the deck and kissed for a while before she had a chance to find the key.
Once inside, there was a hurried tearing at clothes until they both fell naked on to the bed in Tiff’s room. Not really a bed. Just a king-sized mattress on the floor. The first time they made love that night it was eager and urgent and they both came quickly.
After they finished, and Harlan was lying there still breathing hard, Tiff got up and put on some more music. Not LaMontagne’s ‘Wild Horses’ this time but Death Cab for Cutie’s ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark’.
With the music on, Tiff came back to bed and they made love again. Not fast and hungry like the first time but slowly, sweetly and full of promises he knew, even then, they’d never get to keep. When they finished, the two of them lay side by side, a warm breeze from the window playing over their naked bodies, the prophetic lyrics playing in the background. I will follow you into the dark.
That night, for the first time since they’d started seeing each other, he told her he loved her. She laughed a wicked laugh and told him to be careful using words like love because one of these days she might make him prove that he meant what he said.
He told her he was ready to prove it any time she wanted.
She tucked her body in close to his, her head resting on his chest, one leg draped over the two of his.
‘If I asked you,’ she whispered, ‘would you go away with me? Just pick up and get away from this place as far as we can go? Never let anybody know where we are and never come back?’
He asked her what she was getting at. What this was all about.
‘Just answer the question,’ she said. ‘Would you do it? Go away with me? Follow me into the dark?’ she said, mimicking the song.
He laughed and said he would.
‘Even if it was dangerous? Even if somebody might try to kill us if we left?’
He thought at first she was kidding. But there was something in the way she said it that told him she wasn’t. So he told her yes, he was ready to risk dying if it was for something as good as her. He meant it, too.
That’s when she first told him about Conor Riordan and the drugs. About arranging the boat for him. About Riordan’s run to Canada and back. How she was in it up to her ears and, even though she wanted out, she knew he’d kill her if she tried walking away. She said there was only one way anybody ever left a job with Conor Riordan and that was dead.
‘Conor Riordan? That his real name?’
‘I don’t know. I think it’s just a name he uses. Nobody knows his real name.’
‘But you know he’s killed people?’
‘I can’t prove it but I know it. He likes hurting people. He likes hurting me. It turns him on.’
He didn’t ask her what Riordan did to hurt her because he didn’t want to know.
She told him about her plan to steal some of Riordan’s drugs. ‘He goes away sometimes,’ she said. ‘Two or three days at a time. Sometimes more. I don’t know where he goes but it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is I found out where he keeps the stash,’ she said. ‘The drugs and the money.’
‘He doesn’t take the stuff with him?’
‘No. Too easy to get caught with it.’
‘How’d you find out?’
She smiled a wicked smile and told him she knew how to find out things.
‘No, really.’
‘It’s better you don’t know too much. But the next time he leaves, I’m going to take what I figure he owes me. Y’know? For services rendered? No more. No less. He’s got so damned much I’m not sure he’ll even notice what’s missing. We can use what I take for seed money to start a new life together as far away from this fucking town and this fucking county and this fucking state as we can possibly get.’
Harlan lay there thinking about what she said and the more he thought about it the surer he was it wouldn’t work.
‘Tiff, listen to me. Forget the drugs. Forget the money. Wherever we go we can make out on our own. We can work. We can get jobs.’
‘The money’s mine, Harlan. I earned it. I want it.’
He shook his head. ‘If you take the drugs, what do you think this guy Riordan’s going to do? Just shrug his shoulders and say, “Oh well, I guess I owed Tiff that much”? Baby, he won’t. We’ll be looking over our shoulders the rest of our lives. Every time somebody looks at us a little funny we’ll be thinking the next sound we hear is gonna be the bullet that blows our brains out. Only we won’t hear it, ’cause by the time the sound gets to us, we’ll already be dead.’
‘Not if you kill him first,’ she said.
‘I’m not killing anyone,’ he said. ‘At least not so I can start selling drugs to a bunch of fucking addicts. I don’t want you selling them either.’
She got pissed when he said that. Jumped out of bed and started pacing around the floor. Insisted she wasn’t going to go away poor. With him or anyone else. Wasn’t going to go without her share of Riordan’s nearly five million dollars. She’d worked too hard for it, taken too many risks. She’d earned her share and she wanted it.
‘Harlan, I know you killed people in the war and maybe you’ve had enough of killing. But you say you love me and I’m telling you I’ve had enough of living poor. Last thing I want is to end up living like my parents. I’d kill myself first. Or take the chance that Riordan’d do it for me. If you won’t help me, I’ll handle it myself.’
Harlan didn’t agree to it. But he didn’t tell her no right away either. That didn’t come till later. When he finally knew he wanted no part of it. And he never agreed with her idea of hiding the drugs with Tabitha. Which he always thought was nuts.
That night after Tiff calmed down and came back to bed, they lay together for a while listening to the sound flowing from the expensive speakers she’d bought with money earned from selling drugs. Then they made love for a third time listening to the words. I’ll follow you into the dark.
After crossing over on to Moose Island, Harlan found himself a hidey-hole. A shallow depression in the earth surrounded by thick vegetation where he couldn’t be seen by anybody unless they practically tripped over him. Since he figured he couldn’t go knocking on Pike Stoddard’s door till morning, he might as well get a few hours’ sleep. He spread his ground cloth on the cool earth and lay down. But sleep wouldn’t come. His mind kept going back to the cop who’d wanted to kill him. Detective Emmett Ganzer. He was sure Ganzer had intended to shoot him. What he couldn’t figure out was why.
Last night at the Moose, Maggie told him, because he and Tiff were lovers, he’d automatically be considered a suspect. Okay, fair enough. But there had to be more than a little wiggle room between being a suspect and getting yourself shot for no good reason at all.
Unless, of course, the cop, Ganzer, had something to gain from shooting him.
Harlan could only think of two possibilities.
One ugly. The other uglier.
Ugly was Ganzer killing him, then planting evidence ‘proving’ that Harlan had killed Tiff. Ganzer gets credit for clearing the case. Gets a raise or a promotion or whatever the hell they give you in the state police for being a good cop.
Uglier was Harlan’s growing suspicion that maybe Ganzer was Conor Riordan. He’d never considered the possibility that Riordan might be a cop. But why not? Wouldn’t be the first cop in history who turned bad. And with what Tiff’d told him was a nearly five million dollar payoff Ganzer/Riordan had a whole lot more to gain from killing Harlan than just a promotion or a pat on the back.
The more Harlan thought about this scenario the more likely it seemed.
Which is when a definite ‘oh shit’ thought struck him for the first time. What if Ganzer/Riordan knew Tabitha had the drugs? What if he’d tortured the information out of Tiff before he’d killed her? Harlan got to his feet and got his shit together. He had to get to Stoddard’s house long before morning. If he wasn’t already too late.