Chapter 34 Jo
Jo
A Russian assassin is coming to my town.
A Russian assassin is coming to my town.
She didn’t doubt that what the Martini Club had told her was true, yet she could not quite believe it would really happen.
She drove down Main Street, past shops that were not yet open, past the library and the historical society, familiar places that looked the same as they always did.
In the Marigold Café, the coffee would already be brewing, the griddle heating up to sizzle eggs and pancakes for the breakfast crowd.
She drove down to the harbor, where windjammers bobbed at their moorings and lobster boats were puttering out to the bay for their daily haul of traps.
This was the town where Jo’s parents and grandparents were born, where she’d learned to drive a boat and tie a bowline and wrangle tourists when they got drunk.
Now malevolent forces were rolling in, like black clouds from some alien land beyond the horizon.
As angry as she was with the Martini Club for their questionable actions early this morning, she understood why they’d chosen an unconventional, if not outright illegal, approach to dealing with the situation.
Jo didn’t know if there was a legal way to handle this, before a crime was actually committed.
She couldn’t arrest someone just because he looked like a hit man; she might accidentally snag a tourist instead.
No, the Martini Club’s strategy had a certain logic to it.
Wait for the killer to make his move, and then spring the trap.
It’s what they planned to do afterward that worried Jo. She was on board when it came to an arrest and interrogation, but she drew the line at waterboarding. Not that she really believed they’d do that.
Then again.
She parked in her assigned stall at the public services building and walked into the police station. Mike was at his desk, and the scent of freshly brewed Colombian drew her to the coffee maker.
“Hey, Mike,” she said.
“Hey.” He turned and frowned at her. “Isn’t this your day off? I thought you were going up to Katahdin.”
“I was.”
“So what’re you doing here?”
“I thought I’d just check in, see how things are going.”
“Bruce said it was a quiet night, no calls.”
Lucky Bruce. He didn’t get pulled out of bed at four a.m.
She filled a mug with coffee and sank into her chair. Thought about how much she should tell Mike about the situation, as the Martini Club called it. She had to tell him something, for his own safety at least, but she couldn’t spook him to the point he shot some innocent tourist.
“I think we should all wear Kevlar today.”
“What?” He looked up. “Why?”
“The town bought us those vests. And the town manager’s annoyed we never use them.”
“He’s always annoyed anyway.”
“Just for this week, okay? Let’s make him happy.
And if you get any, um, unusual calls, or you come across any visitor who seems out of place, give me a heads-up.
I’d like to—” She paused as Agent Minnihan walked in the door.
Now there was someone who seemed out of place.
Or at least, out of sorts. He had changed into his usual suit and tie, which made him painfully conspicuous in a town filled with tourists in blue jeans.
“We need to deal with these people,” he said. He didn’t need to say who these people were.
She sighed. “I’ve been saying that for a while.”
Minnihan glanced at Mike, then looked at Jo. She got the hint and stood up.
“Let’s talk in the back room,” she said.
Purity PD’s interview room was little more than a windowless cave with scuffed white walls, a table, and four chairs.
Over the years, it had also become storage space, and they had to squeeze around unused video equipment and boxes of office supplies to reach the chairs.
They sat down facing each other, and the harsh ceiling lights emphasized the bruise-like shadows of fatigue under Minnihan’s eyes.
Jet lag must be a hell of a thing, she thought.
“These people—” he started.
“They call themselves the Martini Club.”
“Whatever they call themselves, they’re out of control. Behaving like vigilantes. What are you going to do about them?”
“For the moment, I can’t do anything. They had permission to be in the Slocums’ house, so they weren’t trespassing. And they legally own their weapons.”
“They had me zip-tied!”
“They didn’t know you were a federal agent.”
“You just tolerate having these people in your town?”
“They’re law-abiding citizens.” For the most part. “And the truth is, they’ve come to my assistance in the past. Maybe they do it in unconventional ways, but they have been helpful.”
“You’re just going to sit back and let them do their thing?”
“Have they broken any laws?”
“It’s clearly on their to-do list!”
“And I’ll have the handcuffs ready.”
He glared at her. “I see that small towns operate differently.”
His phone rang, and he looked down at his screen.
“Excuse me,” he said, and walked out of the room.
She glanced at her watch. Checked her phone for messages.
Wondered if she should check in with Maggie Bird and company to find out the latest, but they were probably tucked in bed by now, catching up on their sleep. She should be too.
The door opened, and she looked up, expecting Minnihan. Instead it was Mike standing there with a quizzical look.
“What’d you say to him, anyway?” Mike asked.
“What?”
“He took off like a bat outta hell.”
“He didn’t even say goodbye. I have no idea what happened.”
“Maybe it has something to do with that BOLO the state police just put out.”
“Who’re we on the lookout for?”
“Andrei Petrov. That waiter at the Cod Cove Resort, the one from Belarus. He’s disappeared, and they think he’s gone on the run.”
How could I be so wrong? Jo thought as she drove to the cottage that Andrei Petrov had shared with two other resort employees.
When she arrived, she saw three vehicles parked in the driveway, and she pulled up behind a black SUV that she knew all too well.
State Police Detective Alfond would be annoyed to see her. He always was.
She walked up to the front porch, where a barefoot young woman sat smoking a cigarette and looking thoroughly pissed off.
Her short black hair stood up like porcupine quills ready to be launched at anyone who approached too closely.
Wrapped around her forearm was a tattoo of a dragon with green scales, spitting red flames.
The woman squinted up at Jo. “How many cops does it take to search one frigging room?”
“When did they all get here?”
“Crack of dawn. Got me outta bed with all that banging on the door. Don’t even know who they all are. State police, FBI, maybe the fucking CIA for all I know.” She blew out a cloud of smoke. “Who are you?”
“Chief of police. Town of Purity.”
“Whoop-de-doo. Tell them I want my house back. I gotta get to work in an hour.”
“What’s your job at the hotel?”
“Housekeeping. Started on Thursday, and I’m already regretting it. Seems like everyone’s either quitting or getting murdered. But it comes with a place to stay, so here I am. Only until I find something better.”
Jo regarded the young woman’s scowl and her tattoos and thought: Good luck with that.
She stepped inside to find the house in disarray.
The sofa cushions had been upended, and half a dozen evidence boxes were lined up against one wall.
Only two weeks ago, Jo had sat on that same sofa, sipping tea and asking Andrei about his dead housemate, Karen O’Brien.
But that was before the FBI had invaded Jo’s town.
Before a case of what looked like Ebola became a national security threat.
Jo approached the doorway of what had been Andrei’s bedroom and came face-to-face with Alfond.
“We’re working with the FBI on this,” he said. “This man may be guilty of a double homicide, so this is no longer a local police matter. If you could step outside?”
She looked past him into Andrei’s bedroom, where Agent Minnihan and another federal agent were searching through the dresser drawers. “Minnihan,” she said.
He looked at her. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Yet another man telling her where she shouldn’t be. Which made her feel like this was exactly where she should be.
“How long has Andrei been gone?” Jo asked.
“Didn’t show up for his six a.m. shift at the restaurant, and he doesn’t answer his phone. The housemate doesn’t think Petrov even came home last night.”
“He could’ve had a bike accident. Maybe he’s lying hurt somewhere. Maybe he needs help.”
“Come on, Thibodeau,” said Alfond, lurking behind her. “Give them room to work.”
“And he left all his stuff behind,” said Jo, scanning the room. She saw a sweater draped over the chair, a toilet case on the dresser. “Did he even take his toothbrush?” She looked at Agent Minnihan, who gave a noncommittal shrug. “It doesn’t look like he planned this departure.”
“The man took off,” said Alfond. “That smells like guilty to me.”
“To me, it says scared. You people freaked him out. That’s why he ran.”
“Then why don’t you go out there and look for him? By now, he’s probably made it across the border to Canada.”
She watched Minnihan and his colleague empty the dresser drawers, spilling underwear and socks onto the bed.
They picked minutely through every item, as if one of those balled-up socks might hide some precious nugget of evidence.
To them, she was no more than a fly buzzing in their ear. Not worth listening to.
She walked out of the cottage. The spiky-haired young woman was still sitting on the porch steps, blowing out smoke rings. Very impressive smoke rings.
Jo sat down beside the woman. “I’ve got a few questions.”
“Already answered ’em.”
“Not my questions. What’s your name?”
A smoke ring puffed out and hung in the air for a few seconds before dissipating. “Keely Kern.”
“Where are you from?”
“Appleton.” Keely squinted up at the sky. “I’d still be there, but I got in a fight with my mom’s asshole boyfriend and she kicked me out. Only reason I took this job.”
“Did Andrei tell you where he was going?”
“I knew him, like, three days, and we hardly got a chance to talk to each other. We work different hours, different parts of the hotel. I clean toilets, and he gets to work in the dining room and troll for tips. That hardly seems right. I mean, he’s the foreigner.
” Keely took a last puff and tossed her cigarette on the walkway. “I’d like to work in the dining room.”
“Do you have any idea where Andrei went?”
“They already asked me that question. No, I don’t know. He hardly said boo to me. He just went to work, came back to sleep, and kept his door shut.” Keely looked at Jo. “Is it true he’s a Russian spy?”
“That’s just a theory. As far as I know, he hasn’t done a thing wrong.”
“’Cause I wouldn’t be surprised. Always holed up in his room, talking on the phone.”
“To his family in Belarus?”
“No, he was talking English.”
“You have any idea who he was talking to?”
Keely shook her head. “No idea. I mean, who did he even know here? It’s not like he had a ton of friends.”
But he did have one, thought Jo.
She climbed into her vehicle and drove to Blackberry Farm.