Mary sat on the dock, her legs pulled up into her chest. The Dante’s mast rattled in the heavy wake. She closed her eyes, as Williams had instructed them to do so long ago in Seminary East, and tried to make sense of all she had found. The only photograph she hadn’t explained was of the dog, the black Labrador. But there would be no dogs here, of course.
The dock rocked gently, and she pulled herself farther into her coat, until almost no skin was exposed. She thought about Deanna Ward, wondered where she could be, all these years later. Deanna, and Polly, and Professor Williams. So many questions answered, but still so many left. She thought about that day in 1986, when Polly was brought mistakenly back to Wendy Ward. What must Wendy have thought when she saw Polly? Was she being punished for her tryst with Dean Orman? Did she feel, in that moment, as if she had deserved that fate?
“Ma’am?” said a voice above her.
Mary sat up and blinked at the man. It was the man she had seen earlier, in the office.
“You were asleep,” he said. “We don’t really like people to sleep on the docks. Afraid they’ll roll off into the water. It’s happened a few times.” The orange eye of the cigar pulsed and then swung down to his side.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Mary said. She scrambled to her feet. It took her a moment to orient herself, but then it came to her. The marina. Then she thought, Pig. “What time is it?” she asked the man.
“It’s about nine forty-five,” he said. “You been out here for a good while. I bet you’re about froze to death.”
Now that he mentioned it, Mary was numb. Her feet were stiff and aching. Her hands, which she had squeezed tight into the sleeves of her coat, were sore from where she had clenched her fists so fiercely.
She thanked the man and walked away from him toward the bank. In the parking lot, she sat in her Camry with the heat on, waiting. How would she know Pig Stephens? Maybe he was the owner of the black Labrador. Maybe he kept it in his truck, a sort of companion on his rounds at the marina. She assumed he would pull up and stop, get out of his vehicle, and approach The Dante. She waited, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. What would she do when he got here? She had no idea. She might approach him, possibly, as she had done to Dean Orman. She figured by now, after playing the game for so long, that she would be used to acting on instinct. At least she hoped so.
To her right, she heard a truck pull into the lot. The truck swung close to the river and stopped. A man got out. He was carrying a heavy flashlight, and he shined it down on the docks. Mary got out of her Camry and walked toward the man. “Pig?” she called, but her voice caught on the wind and was carried away. She called his name again, and the man turned. He swung the spotlight at her, and momentarily she was blinded.
“Who’s that?” he asked. His voice was deep, inflected with a thick Southern accent.
“I just want to ask you some questions,” she said, the light still piercing her eyes.
“Kind of questions?” he asked.
“Some questions about Ed Orman.”
He lowered the flashlight. “Go on,” he said.
“What do you know about him?” she asked.
“I just know he cuts me a check every month. That’s good enough for me.”
“Do you know that he fathered a child with one of his students?”
The man shifted. Mary still couldn’t see his face, but she could see that he was overweight, his stomach bulging out over his belt. “What business is it of mine?” Pig asked.
“It’s just that your name has come up in some of Ed Orman’s doings.”
“Doings?”
“The disappearance of a girl named Deanna Ward, for instance.” Mary was pressing on now, trying to reach something. Whatever inhibitions she had at the beginning of the day had now dissolved, and there was something enlivening about standing in front of him and talking as if she were the one in control of the situation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said.
“Ed Orman thinks you do.”
They let that hang between them. Down the bank, the Thatch rocked and swayed, and the boats banged in their slips, making a cacophony of sound in the night. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, the flashlight exploded on again and she lost her vision. Mary held her arm up to her eyes, and she was able to see his feet-just his boots, walking toward her. She scrambled away from him, but he was grabbing her, forcing her back toward him. Still blind, she smelled his breath, musty and thick and strangely earthy.
Mary pulled away from him and ran. She felt him, felt his heat, close behind her. She saw her Camry, its door still open. There was a ringing coming from inside it: her cell phone. It seemed like a thousand miles away, but the car could have been no more than a hundred feet in front of her. Oh God, Mary. What have you done? Somehow, she made it to the driver’s seat and shut the door. Pig was a step behind her, and when she tried to slam the door his hand was inside. “Arrrrrll,” he growled, falling back onto the car beside hers. Behind the wheel, she backed out onto Montgomery Street and gunned the engine toward Winchester. By the time she was out on the highway, she had forgotten the phone.
47
Mary drove the long way toward campus, trying to lose Pig Stephens. There was a wail in her ears, a piercing red scream, and she could barely hold on to the wheel. She knew that if Pig caught up to her, he would surely kill her. She had gotten herself into something she could never imagine. But now-now, she knew, there was no way out.
She drove toward Professor Williams’s house. If she could somehow tell him that she was in danger, maybe he would help. Her mind was spinning, torturing her with fear. Repeatedly, she checked her rearview mirror for Pig Stephens’s truck.
What have you done, Mary? What have you gotten yourself into?
Mary drove into the Winchester campus, going sixty miles per hour in a thirty-five zone. It was 10:30 p.m. now, and the campus was almost entirely deserted. Only a few remaining students strolled around here and there. She stopped at the light on the corner of Pride and Montgomery, her car rocking violently to a stop. She checked behind her, but there was no sign of Pig. Please, she thought. Please God turn, please turn.
Finally, the light turned green.
As she began to pull through the light, something flashed in the corner of her vision. She jammed the brakes and lurched forward, the seat belt snapping her back into the seat. When she managed to look up, she saw someone crossing in front of her. It was a man. He was leading a dog on a leash.
A black Lab.
Mary watched him cross the street. He was wearing a Windbreaker he had zipped high on his face and a Boston Red Sox cap pulled low over his eyes, and when he got directly in front of her car he glanced at her. That was all, one short glance. But she knew what it meant.
The man began to walk down Pride, and she turned right and followed him. He broke into a jog, but he did not turn into the trees of the campus proper; he kept on Pride so that she could easily stay behind him. He passed Professor Williams’s house, and then Dean Orman’s mansion on Grace Hill. At the corner of Pride and Turner, he took a right and headed into the heart of campus. Mary stayed close behind. The man ran all the way to the edge of Up Campus, and then he cut into the woods beside the gymnasium. She pulled to the curb and watched him disappear into a ground floor entrance of a shadow-cloaked building about a hundred yards from where she had stopped.