Chapter Thirteen
Damned if it didn't look like he was right.
Just as a very wily and powerful Bennett Carver had predicted, all civil and criminal charges at both the state and federal levels were dropped, and before dinnertime I walked off Rikers Island a free man. I spent the next week and a half wasting a lot of time trying to track down Chick Carver and Roger Wellington, all to no avail. It appeared that Chick Carver had left the country, undoubtedly with a large amount of money his family had given him. Roger Wellington had been rewarded for past services with a solid-gold parachute as severance pay, and was rumored to be sailing somewhere off Tahiti. Carver tankers were delivering their shipments of oil, then obediently cruising back down the Hudson empty of everything but the bilge water and residual pollutants they had previously been flushing into the river. The Cairn Fishermen's Association was making plans for how to spend the hundred thousand dollars Carver Shipping had donated to them in memory of Tom Blaine.
Neither Garth nor I had forgotten the murder, but there seemed to be nothing whatsoever we could do about it. With the suicide of Julian Jefferson, there seemed to be no way to pin anything on anyone, and with the disappearance of Chick Carver and Roger Wellington, there wasn't even anyone to pursue; the ruling echelon of the company appeared to be totally insulated. It would be a waste of time, not to mention a threat to my credibility, to prattle on about a murder I couldn't prove to reporter friends who couldn't print anything I said, even if they wanted to, without having their newspaper sued for libel.
And so, despite my best intentions, I found myself, by default, following Bennett Carver's advice, going back to my work and life. The burning rage that had propelled me onto a tanker in the middle of a storm was now only a memory, and even the smoldering outrage that had replaced it had gradually cooled to a kind of residual anger that came and went like a mild case of malaria. I had become resigned to the fact that I would probably never be able to avenge the riverkeeper's death or the assault on Garth and me. I tried to console myself with the thought that at least my work, now that I was back in the good graces of the state, consisted of something other than the equivalent of stamping out license plates.
That was my general state of mind when Garth called me at six o'clock on a Thursday evening. I'd almost missed the call, as I was on my way out the door to pick up a gift for Harper, who was due back home from the Amazon in the morning; after some hesitation, I went back and picked up the receiver.
"Frederickson and Frederickson."
"Robby?"
"Yeah."
"It's Garth."
"I know who it is. I'm listening."
"Mary and I want you to come up for dinner. We miss you."
"When?"
"Right now."
"I assume you want me to bring along some friends who might be feeling blue and need cheering up?"
"No. Just bring yourself."
"You sure? The company might do you both good."
"No."
I glanced out the window at the clotted traffic on West Fifty-sixth Street and gnawed at my lower lip, trying to think. It wouldn't be dark for almost three hours. "I'm with a client. I probably won't be out of here for another hour or so, and traffic looks bad. It could be two or three hours."
"We'd really like you to come up right now, Robby."
"I told you I can't. If you and Mary get hungry, go ahead and eat without me."
"We'll wait. Get here as soon as you can."
I hung up, walked quickly to the stairway leading up to my apartment on the fourth floor. Robby, indeed. Nobody but our mother and Harper ever called me Robby; that, along with the fact that Garth had not called on my private line, formed a clear warning signal.
Upstairs, I took my Beretta and its shoulder holster out of the safe where I kept it these days, checked to make sure that it was clean, oiled, and loaded, and strapped it on; it had been sometime since I'd carried a gun, and it felt odd. For added measure, I took out my small Seecamp with its ankle holster, strapped that on. I went down to Garth's apartment on the third floor to pick up a souvenir from a case we'd handled many years before-a German-made sniper's rifle and a specially calibrated scope that went with it. Then I went down to the garage to get my car.
There was a tie-up on the George Washington Bridge, and I didn't arrive in Cairn until eight-fifteen, a half hour or so before sundown. I parked in the municipal lot beside the river to check out conditions on the water, center myself, and wait for dark. There was no wind, and the river was about as calm as it ever gets, virtually glassy. That was all to the good. I kept going over the brief conversation with Garth in my mind; I had clearly asked him if he wanted me to notify the police, or bring them along, and his answer had clearly been no. It meant not only that Sacra Silver was in complete control of the situation but that he was, in Garth's judgment, desperate enough to start killing people if he found himself trapped. I was on my own.
The good news, if it could be called that, was that Chick Carver hadn't left the country after all; the definite bad news was that he was back in the faces of Garth and Mary, and was now presumably relying on more than his mouth to do harm. The self-styled ceremonial magician was going to require some smoking out, and I thought I had just the right smoker for the job.
I needed a large, stable rowboat, and I thought I knew where to get one. As the sun dropped below the horizon, I started up the car. I drove north through town, cut west for two blocks to avoid driving in front of Garth and Mary's house, then headed back down toward the river and the huge mansion housing the Fellowship of Conciliation, the pacifist organization to which Mary had once belonged. The Fellowship had been an integral part of an investigation I'd conducted three years before, a case of murder and political intrigue that had brought me to Cairn in the first place and led to my brother meeting and marrying Mary Tree, the love of his life. The people in the mansion knew me; borrowing their rowboat would presumably present no problem. However, I was feeling increasing time pressure, and I didn't want to stand around in their lighted entranceway chatting them up or answering questions while holding a sniper's rifle in my hand. Consequently I parked out on the road, took the rifle and scope out of the trunk, and pushed my way through the hedge surrounding their property.
I made my way through the moon shadows, around the mansion, and down a long, sloping lawn to the river. The Fellowship's sloop was moored out in the river. There was a rack holding the group's three canoes and a kayak, and there was a steel Grumman rowboat tied to the dock. I looked up toward the mansion to see if anyone might be at the window; there wasn't. I untied the Grumman, hopped in. I put the rifle and scope down on the floor, fitted the hickory oars into the oarlocks, and began rowing out onto the river. I went out a hundred yards or so, then pointed the bow south. The tide was going out, carrying me along with it. I rested the oars on the gunwales and allowed the boat to drift, using the time to fit the sniper scope to the barrel of the rifle.
It took less than fifteen minutes to cover the distance to Garth and Mary's home, and from my position I had a partial view into the glass-enclosed music room that looked out over the river. I recognized the tall, slim figure of Chick Carver, backlit by the fluorescent lighting in the room. He had his back to me and was leaning against the windowsill. I couldn't see anyone else.
I trained the rifle on him, then adjusted the scope until I had the back of his head in the cross hairs. But I didn't pull the trigger. I was going to need a very good excuse-not only for the police but for myself-before I blew off a man's head, and Chick Carver aka Sacra Silver, intellectual thug and accessory to murder, taking his leisure in my brother's home, wasn't it. He didn't appear to be holding a gun on anyone, and in fact seemed to have his long arms folded across his chest.