CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Winter settled in on Westfarrow Island. Ten inches of fresh snow kept most of the residents indoors and muffled the sounds of nature. Anthony Tagliabue stood on the porch of Agnes Ann’s farmhouse observing the land as the sun struggled over the trees to the east, scattering its watery light on the pastures and reaching for the barn. His boots had scoured out a rough trail to the barn when he had trudged over to feed the animals, but the snow was otherwise soft and pristine. A rabbit sat on the lawn and twitched its nose as it tried to detect predators in the new day. It bounded under a bush when Tagliabue turned to reenter the house.

Two months had passed since Jack Brunson gained his freedom and they had heard nothing. Christmas was now on the horizon. Jack had not contacted them, and neither had Coleman or any other official in authority. Both Tagliabue and Agnes Ann went about armed when they left the house, and a loaded deer rifle lay in a sling over the front door. He didn’t think that was enough.

“We need a dog.”

“You’re not bringing that snarly little critter on our property, soldier. Ol’ Mr. Hammet would probably think it was vermin if he ever saw it running around, and then all the neighbors would think we had an infestation. Besides, that dog probably wouldn’t like Auntie Maybelle.”

“No kidding? I was thinking Polly’s kind of small for a guard dog, but if he wouldn’t like Maybelle . . . Hmm. Maybe I should reevaluate the little guy.”

“Very funny.”

He took the mug of steaming coffee she handed him, smiling at her.

“What would you say about a real guard dog?”

“I’d like to have a dog. Can a guard dog be a pet too?”

“I don’t see why not. Let me look into it.”

Tagliabue called for an appointment at Island Kennels and Guardians. The business was located out of town and inland from the sea, a private home on a large lot fenced in cyclone wire. The owner was a trim man with a firm handshake.

“This island is such a peaceful place, we don’t sell many animals to local residents,” Brad Gentry said. Tagliabue refrained from commenting. “Most of our sales are to the mainland. We breed and train the dogs here.”

“People have to fly over here to see the dogs?”

“Some do, when they’ve come to the island for vacation. Mostly they order them by phone or e-mail and they don’t see their new guardian until we bring it to them.”

Tagliabue pondered that, so Gentry continued. “There’s a four-day indoctrination period before we transfer a dog to a new owner, so that’s usually taken care of at their home on the mainland.”

“So, how long does it take after a dog is ordered?”

“We usually have a few dogs about ready to go to a home. It’s all we do. We don’t prepare dogs for show or for businesses. We only train dogs for personal protection. Even a house protector needs to be out of the puppy stage, however, so our Schnauzers are about two before they’re ready to go to work.”

“Schnauzers? Aren’t they a little, uh, small for protection?”

“These are giants. They look like regular schnauzers but they have dane in their blood and are as big as shepherds.”

Tagliabue was so intrigued by the idea of giant schnauzer guards that he ended up spending an hour with Gentry learning about the dogs. When he returned to Agnes Ann and the horse farm, he filled her in.

“I’m so sure you’ll love this female they have that I tentatively bought her. We have to go to the kennels for three hours a day, four days in a row, so the beast will get to know us. And so that Gentry can train us.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She’s a push-button dog. Comes when you call her, walks next to you when you tell her. Attacks on command . . .”

“Housebroken too, I suppose?”

“Oh, yeah. She just needs to transfer her allegiance over to us.”

“What’s her name?”

“Ethyl. It means noble.”

Ethyl the giant schnauzer was soon part of the Tagliabue family. She substituted for Jesse in the food consumption department and was an engine of energy. She toured the farm with her new owners, playing with the goats while Tagliabue and Aggie did their chores. She ran alongside Aggie when she exercised her horses and slept on a blanket outside their bedroom door. No one could come on the Seaside Stables property without Ethyl growling low in her throat and coming to attention.

Jack Brunson wasn’t interested in getting on the Tagliabue property, however. He had a more sinister plan in mind.

When Case #2319 of Sagadahoc County Superior Court convened in Ol’ Woody, the famed knotty-pined courtroom in Bath, the county seat, on February 15th, the big question fueling interest among the curious attendees—dozens of them having whetted their appetites for drama on the stories circulating about Big Anthony’s exploits and Jack Brunson esquire’s chicanery in the matter of drugs and murder and the sinking of the well-known cargo vessel Maven—was whether or not Brunson would show up for his own trial. Opinions were divided among those who thought he had long ago debunked for warmer climes and those who thought he now swam with the flounder and haddock in the cold deep of the Atlantic Ocean off the Maine coast. None of the opinions was educated in the least way, but that fact had no bearing on their durability. After all, validation was everywhere in the courtroom on opening day of the trial: bailiffs looking open-mouthed at the defendant’s door, thumbs hooked under their gaseous bellies within range of their police specials; three lawyers in fitted suits and layered haircuts whispering frenetically among themselves at the defense table; Anthony Tagliabue and his luscious bride chatting with their heads together.

“I guess Jack’s expensive lawyers have been retained but not yet paid,” Agnes Ann said in an aside.

Her husband nodded in what he hoped was a sage manner. He knew he should have smiled at her witticism but was too apprehensive to do so. The sheriff’s office had just finished up a long investigation, but the results seemed tenuous to him. Tagliabue was anxious about the prosecutor’s case. Jack Brunson was up to something, that was certain.

More people pushed in through the oak doors of the courtroom, filling the old space to capacity. A buzz of murmuring swarmed high to the dusty ceiling and back down to the shiny pews in a constant ebb and flow of voices. The room was fusty with the smell of wet clothing.

Into it all strode Jack Brunson, resplendent in a fur-collared greatcoat and merino wool felt fedora. Two bailiffs rushed up to him as spectators looking for seats moved to let him pass. He patted the bailiffs on their shoulders and smiled at them, saying their names. They apparently could not refrain from returning the smile, even though their boss, Judge Andrew Conyers, was waiting in his chambers with ill-concealed fury at the delay to proceedings. The guards led the defendant to the defense table as though they were escorting the prince consort to the altar.

Jack was folding his overcoat on his chair when everyone’s attention shifted to a commotion in the front of the courtroom. The judge burst into view with a flourish of bellowing robes and waving arms. Someone spoke loudly, people clattered to their feet, and sat just as abruptly. Judge Conyers took the dais.

“Are we ready to proceed while it’s still light out, ladies and gentlemen?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“Then let’s get at it. I got me a hot date waiting on me.”

People tittered at the idea of this old curmudgeon with the glistening bald head going out dancing at one or more of the supper clubs squatting in the dust of Portsmouth’s Tan Town, where slick-haired trumpet players wailed the kind of jazz that had been popular in Manhattan a half-century ago. Judge Conyers was a known aficionado of the late Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong.

Daniela Martin presented the case for the prosecution. She was a brassy public servant whose ringlets bounced as she barked out the state’s case against one John C. “Jack” Brunson: “Murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, felonious assault using a deadly weapon, conspiracy to smuggle and/or sell a regulated substance without a license to do so, and transporting an injured person without providing medical care. The state will prove each charge, your honor, with an array of credible witnesses and forensic evidence to authenticate their testimony. We intend to put this rogue attorney away for the rest of his natural life.”

Martin’s heels clacked back to the prosecution table and one of Brunson’s team slouched up to the podium. He stood there, shuffling a few papers in the folder he held in one manicured hand but saying nothing. The judge’s head began to redden.

“You have an opening statement, counselor, or are you going to stand there posing for a picture?”

The lawyer looked up slowly, maybe even insolently.

“I am rendered speechless by the eloquence of Assistant District Attorney Martin’s statement, Judge. I thought you might want to let it seep in, so to speak.”

“Well, you thought wrong, Meathead. Proceed, or one of these fine bailiffs will provide your sleeping accommodations for the evening.”

The lawyer smiled, and brushing an imaginary hair from his forehead with one hand, he held up a few papers in the other. The judge glared at them.

“In that case, your honor, we ask the court to accept this filing, outlining our demand that this fishing expedition against our client be dismissed without prejudice.”

“On what grounds, if I may be so bold to ask?”

The lawyer ignored the sarcasm and spoke plainly. “On the grounds that the state no longer has any witnesses to its overreaching charges. Moses “Red” Fowler and Peter D’Annunzio have just advised this legal team that they will not testify against Mr. Brunson.”

The courtroom burst into an excited collage of chatter. Conyers banged his gavel. Without Red and D’Annunzio verifying that Jack wanted to disable Maven and take from her the bales of hay that contained the drugs, the DA’s case against him would be no more than Tagliabue’s sighting of Brunson on his Hatteras with Carlos’s dying body. The state had no hard evidence. Cuthbert was dead and the Russian defector was off in the bowels of official Washington and would never be allowed to testify against Brunson. His knowledge of Russian communications was too valuable to expose him to any court proceedings. Brunson could be placed on the Hatteras by fingerprints and DNA traces, but the boat belonged to him at the time, so that forensic evidence meant only that Brunson had been aboard his boat at some time in the past. The state’s accusations against Jack Brunson were reliant on the testimony of the men who had been in the room when he and the Magpie plotted to disable Maven and steal the cargo of hay bales. Red and Peter had been granted immunity for their testimony, but apparently that was no longer enough. The district attorney’s case had just fallen apart, and the look on Daniela Martin’s face indicated that she was suddenly aware of that reality. She looked as if she had just discovered the head of a toad in her Starbucks cup. Then she looked down at Tagliabue and whispered, “I was afraid of this. They were starting to become uncooperative with us.”

Over at the defense table, contrariwise, smugness was the order of the day. The lawyers managed not to smile broadly, but Brunson could not prevent a thin grin from brightening his tanned face. He might have money difficulties in the short term, but he was about to be released as a free man.

The judge turned his stare at the prosecution. It took the prompting of another DA office lawyer to haul Martin’s attention to his unstated question: Do you have enough left to continue trying Jack Brunson? She stood stiffly, rummaging fitfully through the papers in front of her.

“Well, uh, your honor, I, er, am caught off guard by this sudden turn of events. Er, we request an overnight stay.”

“I guess you do,” Conyers growled. “Okay folks, we’re going to pause these proceedings until tomorrow at nine A.M. We will continue to conduct this case then. If the state of Maine cannot mount a stout prosecution at that time, I intend to dismiss all charges against the defendant.”

He banged his gavel once, hard, and fled the room in a flurry of black robes and shiny head. By the time the chief bailiff called for everyone to rise, the judge was gone from sight. A roar of voices filled the courtroom once the door to his chambers banged closed. People were on their feet talking to each other and gesturing. Brunson and his team held an impromptu press conference at their table. The prosecution team alternatively rubbed their foreheads and thumbed their smartphones madly. Martin had hers to her ear and was working her mouth rapidly.

“This must be what’s known as a study in contrasts,” Agnes Ann said.

Tagliabue sighed. “Somebody got to Red and Peter. We should have anticipated that.”

“Who could it be?”

“I’m thinking it’s probably the people who financed the drug deal. They wouldn’t want Jack to cop a plea, which he might have done if Red and Peter agreed to testify.”

Sheriff’s Deputy Johnny Coleman made his way over to their seats and suggested a meeting at Tagliabue’s apartment. Once there, he apologized to the Tagliabues for the collapse of the state’s case against Jack Brunson.

“We had Red and D’Annunzio sewed up, but something happened. Some new players got involved, some group with enough juice to make Red and Nunz more afraid of them than they are of us.”

“It’s got to be the mob, don’t you think, Johnny?” Tagliabue asked. “They’re afraid if Jack senses he’s going down, he’ll strike a deal with the prosecution to save his own backside. Jack’s drug deal probably leads back to them.”

“No doubt. The Portland mob don’t want Jack Brunson pointing any fingers. Shit.”

They sat in silence around Tagliabue’s kitchen table, letting cups of coffee grow cold as the heat leached from their own energy. They could feel themselves deflating. Coleman spoke again, in a voice that sounded as hopeless as a treed coon’s cry.

“I don’t guess there’s any chance the feds might bail us out, is there?”

Tagliabue thought about Giselle and her Russian defector, Alexis. She had what The Clemson Project wanted, and they were probably gathering data as fast as they could translate it. She might be willing to help Tagliabue in what to her was a local matter, but never at the risk of compromising her source. He already knew he wasn’t even going to ask her to assist.

“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, Johnny. We’re on our own.”

“I kinda knew you were gonna say that.”

The prosecutor from the DA’s office, Daniela Martin, met with Tagliabue, Agnes Ann, and Detective Johnny Coleman at eight the next morning in a gritty-floored conference room in the old courthouse. Jack Brunson’s trial was due to reconvene in sixty minutes, but Daniela was not hopeful that it would last long.

“I’m afraid ol’ Satch Conyers is going to throw out the case when I tell him that we have not been able to convince either Peter D’Annunzio or Red Fowler to testify against Brunson after all.”

Agnes Ann asked into the mournful silence, “Why do you call the judge Satch?”

The prosecutor smiled, relieved to be able to say something that wasn’t pure pessimism. “The judge plays trumpet in juke joints all over the northeast. Can you believe that shit?”

Tagliabue could not envision Conyers, who seemed devoid of a sense of humor, playing jazz in his spare time. Detective Coleman seemed not to hear the explanation.

“Somebody get to D’Annunzio and Fowler?” he asked.

“Looks that way. They both told me and my investigator again last night that they could not remember anything about any meeting or collusion between Brunson and Marv Harris. They had a lawyer with them. Joel Blanton.”

The detective reacted to the name with a groan. Tagliabue looked at him with his eyebrows raised in a question.

“Blanton is Alphonso Delgado’s main lawyer, his consigliere, if you will. For your information, Mrs. Tagliabue, Delgado is suspected of being the crime boss of Portsmouth, maybe of all Maine. We’ve never been able to nail him on anything serious, mainly because of guys like Blanton. He’s got legal representation on everything his syndicate touches. Delgado is better protected than the pope.”

A uniform from Coleman’s office handed some papers to the detective as the rest of them sat in the plastic chairs, Agnes Ann working on a sticky spot in front of her with a tissue from her purse. After a minute of depressed silence, Tagliabue asked, “We have nothing without the testimony of those two mutts?”

Martin’s face was fallen, her mouth a thin line curving down into the sag of her cheeks. She shrugged her shoulders. “You got anything, Detective?”

“As a matter of fact, I do have something.”

They all looked at Coleman in surprise. He looked half his age when he smiled sheepishly. He was holding a few papers in his hand like an offering to a goddess.

“Over at the stationhouse just now, the forensic department had left me a report. They actually got two partials and one whole fingerprint from the pills Anthony found in the bales of hay. They’re one partial of Magpie, and the other two are Brunson’s.”

The room erupted in noise.

“My word, there were thousands of them,” Agnes Ann exclaimed. “You folks looked at every pill?”

“Musta’ been a slow month in the lab,” Coleman said around his grin.

Prosecutor Martin was transformed into a new vision of herself with the detective’s news. Her posture straightened and she had a glint back in her eye. Coleman handed her the forensic report. After looking it over, she said, “Let’s get back into court and unload our surprise on Jack Brunson.”

When she told Judge Conyers she had verified that D’Annunzio and Fowler were suddenly reluctant witnesses, the old man growled. Brunson and his legal team sat back in their chairs, trying hard not to look overly satisfied. Jeffrey Magnusen got to his feet. He was the second of Brunson’s lawyers, not the one who had infuriated the judge with his attitude the day before. Apparently the team had decided overnight not to press their luck any further with Conyers.

“I’m sorry to hear that the prosecution’s case has collapsed, your honor, although we never thought they had enough to commence this trial in the first place. We ask the court to dismiss the charges against our client and let us all go home to our families.”

Conyers looked at the lawyer as if he was surprised that the man had a family to go home to, but he directed his next question to the state’s attorney.

“Do you have anything to prevent me from agreeing to that request, counselor?”

“I have forensic evidence that will place Mr. Brunson in contact with the confiscated drugs, your honor. We may not be able to prove the other charges against the defendant, but we believe we have more than enough to convict the defendant on conspiracy to smuggle and/or sell a regulated substance without a license to do so.”

Magnusen jumped to his feet.

“This is the first we’ve heard of this evidence, Judge. We need time to process it and arrange our defense.”

“Have you never heard of discovery, Ms. Martin?”

“We just now heard of this evidence, your honor. The sheriff’s office released its forensic report last night on the drugs they seized and I received this report before court this morning. I haven’t even had time to make copies yet.”

Conyers rubbed his face and spoke to the jury. “We will suspend proceedings now and reconvene on the day after tomorrow, Thursday. We will complete the trial expeditiously then. I’m sorry for these delays. I know you have lives to get back to, ladies and gentlemen. There will be no more delays, I promise.”

Before the judge could vacate the courtroom, Jack Brunson walked up to the dais quickly and spoke to him. Conyers’s eyes popped open at this breach of court etiquette. His two lawyers were in the process of leaving the courtroom themselves; they reversed and got to the bench just as Conyers nodded to whatever Brunson had said. The three stood with their heads together in earnest conversation as the judge beckoned to a bailiff and spoke to him. The bailiff hustled after Daniela Martin and asked her to meet in the judge’s chambers with his honor and the defense team. Martin shrugged at Agnes Ann and Tagliabue and went off with the bailiff. They waited for her on the courthouse steps.

When she returned ten minutes later she was smiling.

“Jack wants to cop a plea. I agreed to accept unlawful possession with intent to distribute for fifteen months in the state pen, revocation of his license to practice law, and that he agree to be a witness against the crime boss Alphonso Delgado as party to the transaction.”

“I can’t imagine his lawyers are happy about that deal,” Coleman said.

“They didn’t find out until after Jack told the judge he wanted to plead out. They are, to coin a phrase, pissed off to beat the band. When I heard what he told Conyers, I made a plea offer.”

The four of them laughed and agreed that the bargain Martin had offered was a good one. She told them she would meet with the defense team and the judge in his chambers on Thursday morning.

“I’ll call you on the island and let you know what ensues. I think Jack will take it. He could be out of prison in less than a year.”

The Tagliabues stayed in Bath overnight, treating Johnny Coleman and his wife to dinner to celebrate their win in court, and took the early plane out to Westfarrow. They caught up on farm chores in the afternoon and went to bed early, Ethyl curled at their door. Daniela Martin called them at lunchtime the next day. Agnes Ann listened and put the receiver down gently.

“Bad news, Aggie?”

“Jack was a no-show at court this morning. No one has seen or heard from him.”

They sat and cogitated. Was Brunson changing his mind about his plea bargain? Had he decided not to risk any prison time and gone to ground? Skipping a criminal court proceeding is a serious offense for the defendant. The sheriff’s office was no doubt out hunting for him. Agnes Ann was worried about his legal system truancy; her husband was more sanguine.

“He probably cached his remaining funds somewhere offshore and is lounging on an island in the Caribbean getting ready to spend them. I can understand why he wouldn’t want to be behind bars for even a year.”

“I know you’ve been around the block a time or two, Tony, but you don’t appreciate the evil nature of Jack Brunson like I do. He will want to get even with us. I guarantee it.”

Her frown disfigured her face and her shoulders sagged. She shook her bent head slowly from side to side, her hair framing it in a curtain of concern. Tagliabue was pained by the look of her, wanted to ease her worry.

“Look, Aggie. We have the dog. We go around carrying. And I’m sort of a protection expert.”

She looked up at him, folding her hair behind her ears.

“I’ve never shot at anything or anybody. I’m not sure my little gun will do me any good if he comes seeking his revenge.”

“Well, we stay together until this is settled. After lunch, let’s go out and shoot a few magazines in the ravine. The more you shoot, the more confident you’ll become. I promise. And I promise not to leave you alone.”

She offered a mellow smile to her husband. “I know you want to be my hero, Tony. My protector. But you can’t spend your life looking after me.”

“I can—and will—until this deal with Brunson is finished.”

“When I go to the bathroom, you will not stand outside at attention.”

“I’ll be hiding behind the shower curtain.”

They took the Jeepster in four-wheel mode down into a small basin, reversing it at the bottom and opening the tailgate to lay out their ammunition and weapons. The side of the ravine opposite their entry path was a pronounced rise, ensuring that bullets fired at it could not escape the perimeter. Tagliabue had fixed a strip of chicken wire between two trees. He clipped paper targets to the wire with clothespins.

He watched his wife load rounds into her .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. She leaned forward, arms outstretched, concentration written on her face. She squeezed off rounds smoothly, not jerking the gun or moving her body. Her aim was accurate at five yards.

“If you can hit something at this distance, you will be able to defend yourself.”

Agnes Ann popped open the cylinder of her gun and let the empty brass fall into her other hand. She rested with one hip against the fender of their old car, looking long, slim, and competent. Sitting next to her on the tailgate was a new gun Tagliabue had purchased just for home protection, a deadly looking Remington twenty gauge that was just more than two feet long, with a pistol grip instead of a stock like a normal shotgun. This Model 870 TAC-14 was designed specifically to repel a home invasion. Agnes Ann pumped a round into the chamber like a mountain man. She leaned forward and fired the shotgun from her hip. It boomed—and shredded one of the paper targets into confetti.

She smiled. “Now that’s more like it,” she said.

That night they rested easy, each with a handgun in reach. The shotgun was cradled over the bedroom door. The dog circled her blanket a couple of times before settling in to guard their room.

The wind blew after midnight, keeping Ethyl on alert but quiet. Hours passed. The wind fell off. When she detected movement not caused by the wind, she was no longer quiet.

Tagliabue slipped out of bed and into his jeans. The black dog growled low in her throat. Agnes Ann’s eyes went wide.

“What is it, Tony?” she whispered.

“Something’s bothering her. Sit on the floor with your piece. I’ll let you know it’s me before I come back through the door.”

So, she thought to herself, if someone comes in without announcing himself, I just shoot him. It was a frightening thought. She pulled on her robe and sat on the carpet at her side of the bed, the far side from the door. She cleared her throat and waited. The door clicked closed.

Tagliabue and the dog went downstairs.

They left through the sliding doors on the bay side of the house, the big schnauzer quiet now that the hunt was on. They stopped in a shadow. The two blended in immediately, the man in dark clothes and his black animal. The moon was a waning quarter, the sky cold and clear.

They looked at the Hatteras floating on a steel sea. Tagliabue could detect no movement on the white boat and the water was perfectly calm. No ripples. No bubbles. He touched Ethyl’s head and started around the back of the house. When they slipped through the corral gate, they could hear the horses moving their feet. One snorted. It was late; they should have been asleep in the moist warmth of the barn. Something had disturbed them.

Tagliabue got down and crawled forward on his elbows. The dog stalked beside him. The horses had tramped most of the snow in the corral to mud. It was frozen hard now and he could feel its furrows and ridges on his chest. They crossed the fenced area by moving a few feet, then stopping. They made the back door of the barn. It was closed. The outside latch was set. Tagliabue squinted through a crack between bottom boards. The burning night-light was small, the interior of the barn dim. His field of vision was narrow. He could see Hat Rack with his head over the half door of his stall. The gelding was quiet, but he raised and lowered his head as he peered out.

The horse was looking at something Tagliabue couldn’t see. After his heart rate slowed, Tagliabue raised up an inch at a time, one hand on the dog’s head, thigh muscles straining. He slid the latch bar through its staple. Pulling on the heavy door, he tried to remember if it creaked as it opened. It didn’t. At least, not for the first ten inches, and that was all he needed. Peeking in, he still couldn’t see what the horse was curious about. He sent the dog in with an attack command. Ethyl bolted silently, a black streak through the center of the barn. She erupted into a snarl when she reached the other end. Someone screeched. Scuffling sounds rose in the building and horses started snorting and stamping their hooves. Tagliabue went in at a run.

He found a man up on a mound of hay bales, pointing a handgun at the big dog lunging below him. Tagliabue bellowed and fired his 9 mm at the ceiling.

“You shoot that dog, turkey, and you’re a dead man.”

Horses whinnied in fear and bucked around their stalls. Their goat companions bleated in complement. Tagliabue flipped the main light switch, throwing into stark outline a vision of young Timmy O’Brien with his hands raised high, one holding a black syringe case. He was wild-eyed, open-mouthed. Ethyl barked. The barn was in an uproar.

“I hope you can explain yourself, sonny boy.”

This time Tagliabue kept his piece in his hand, pointing in the general direction of Timothy O’Brien. When he had caught him on Maven the summer before, he had relaxed his gun hand in the presence of a man he considered a friend. The younger man now pressed his back against the wall of an empty stall, his eyes never leaving Ethyl, who sat watching him, her backside flexing silently, her mouth tight and wet.

“Plea—please, Anthony. Call off your dog.”

“You don’t move, she won’t move.”

“I ain’t gonna move. Not a damn inch, I swear. He’s making me nervous, like he’s ready to attack.”

“Getting caught on someone else’s property with intent to harm valuable racehorses is what ought to make you nervous,” Tagliabue said.

He had picked up the syringe case with his handkerchief when O’Brien dropped it. He could feel the syringe in the case. The other animals in the barn had quieted now that they recognized him, and now that his dog had settled into watching mode. The horses were looking out into the passageway but had stopped kicking the ground and whinnying. He pressed Agnes Ann’s number on his cell and told her: “Everything’s okay. Call the constable and tell him to get over here. We have an intruder in the barn.” He clicked off. O’Brien licked his lips.

Tagliabue called Ethyl over. She sat next to him, watching the young man, her muscles hard as stone, vibrating. O’Brien sank slowly to his rear. His face was crumpled.

“It’s all a fucking mess, Anthony. A real fucking mess.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I shouldn’t a done it. Shouldn’t a done it. I done bad things before. This is the worst. I’m really sorry.”

O’Brien began to blubber. Ethyl whined. Tagliabue waited. He had always liked Timmy O’Brien, thought he did remarkably well after the disaster his father, Bronc, had turned into. Timmy was the only bartender he knew who didn’t drink. He had a pleasant wife and two young boys he doted on, spent time with them. Worked two jobs. What could make a man like him go off the rails and do something so dangerous and illegal as this? In a voice so weak Tagliabue could barely hear him, Timmy answered him.

“I’m addicted to pain pills, Anthony. I can’t get by without ’em.”

Tagliabue felt heat rise into his face. His muscles hardened, his pupils dilated. He clenched his teeth before he exploded.

“Is that the best you can do, O’Brien? Whine about how you can’t live without eating some fucking chemical? You’ve got a family, children. You’re supposed to be a man, for God’s sake. You’re supposed to be responsible for them. You’re not supposed to be some Mary who can’t control his appetites!”

His voice had risen, his body also. A roar of anger and profanity was something rarely heard from Big Anthony Tagliabue and O’Brien cowered under the assault, as if he expected Tagliabue to hammer him with his fists as well as his bellowing. He didn’t reply. His face was ashen and his mouth hung open. But Tagliabue’s fire died as quickly as it had risen in him. He sat back down, breathing hard. He had learned years ago not to release his bile. He had learned that he was so strong and fast that he could do serious damage if he lost his temper, so he trained himself to always control any rage that threatened to fill him. The training had worked, but he was so disappointed in this young man he considered a friend and a good person, so dismayed at Timmy’s failure to act responsibly, that his fury momentarily overcame his training in the barn that cold night. Timmy O’Brien moaned. His pain sounded real. Tagliabue forced himself to speak quietly.

“You get your pills from Jack Brunson?”

O’Brien nodded, sniffling and crying.

“You came on my boat last summer when she was tied up near the Pelham Island, doing something for Brunson?”

He nodded again. “I . . . I was supposed to plant some pills, but you heard me.”

Tagliabue exhaled. “Tell me your story and hurry up. Ian Fletcher is on his way.”

O’Brien began to talk. He told Tagliabue how he got addicted and how Jack preyed on his addiction. He told him how he was supposed to medicate Francine on Brunson’s orders. It all came out in a rush.

“I swear to God, Anthony, this is the end for me. Frances will help me get clean. She’s a good wife and she’ll help me. I’ll work this out. I’ll never do you wrong again, Anthony, I swear. Give me a break, man. Please give me a break! I’ll rat jack out if I even see him again.”

Tagliabue raised his sidearm.

“Get your sorry ass out of here, Timmy.”

Tagliabue holstered his weapon. Timmy O’Brien scrambled to his feet and ran out of the barn. Ethyl whined again. She looked from her master to the fleeing felon, but she stayed seated next to him.

“You did a good job, girl. Let’s go tell Aggie what transpired here tonight.”

“You let him go, Tony?”

“Yeah,” Tagliabue sighed. “He promised to get help. He promised to let me know if Jack contacts him again.”

Agnes Ann was silent.

“I know, Aggie. I’m a sap.”

She turned to him as they stood outside in the cold waiting for the island constable. They both had on their lined jackets and wool hats. The air turned their breathing to ice clouds.

“You’re not a sap, Tony. You’re a good man. Good men prove they’re good by their behavior. I think you behaved well just now.”

He smiled and wrapped his left arm around her.

“So Timmy snuck over here because he had to feed his habit. Jack sold drugs, you mean?”

“Not directly, at least, not at first. The Magpie was the dealer who found out Timmy wanted pain pills after he recovered from a hospital visit for shingles. He probably had an aide or a nurse at Bath General who tipped him off. After Marv died, Jack took up supplying a few guys who could help him. Timmy said Jack wouldn’t take any money. He just wanted favors now and then.”

He told her that Timmy O’Brien was supposed to inject “the red horse” with the sedative in the syringe, to slow her morning work so that Agnes Ann would consider selling her back to him. Brunson apparently didn’t know that the racing filly, Francine, was over on the mainland with his own son, Jesse, being trained and worked for her three-year-old season. O’Brien was trying to find a chestnut among the herd when his searching around made the horses nervous and alerted Ethyl. He didn’t think that a sedative would harm Agnes Ann’s horse. Two days later, she and Tagliabue found out that Jack Brunson had lied to his addicted helper. Neither of them was surprised.