Tess managed a mouth-only smile. “Something memorable, at least.”
She had Carl call the name in to Dorie Starnes as they drove back to the city. Even from the driver’s seat, Tess could hear her mercenary friend’s voice booming over the cell phone’s unsteady line.
“Remind Tess that I charge extra-”
“I know what she charges for a rush job. Just tell her to do it. Pull out all the stops.”
They were ten miles outside Baltimore before the phone rang. Tess grabbed it from the well beneath the radio, forgetting again her principles about using a phone while driving.
“There’s a bunch of William Windsors in the MVA records,” Dorie said. “You go nationwide, you’re looking at hundreds.”
“Start with Maryland and worry about the rest of the nation later. And narrow the search to someone who’s in his early thirties. Also, this would be a license that’s dormant, hasn’t been renewed for a while, but is still in the system.”
“Dormant licenses aren’t in the system.”
“Yes, they are, Dorie. I know someone who moved out of state and came back twelve years later, and there was still a record. Had to take the written test again, but her records were still there. Look again.”
Silence, then more costly little clicks as Dorie strolled and scrolled through her computer records.
“Here’s a William Windsor, thirty-one. No, thirty-two-he just had a birthday. Got his license a few months after his sixteenth birthday but never renewed it.”
“What’s his address?”
“It’s kind of screwy. I’ve never seen one like this. There’s no street- well, there’s no street number. In fact, I think it’s a typo.”
“They don’t make typos on driver’s licenses.”
“Oh, yeah? Then how come I once had a license with an expiration date that predated the issue date? Caused me all kinds of trouble when I tried to renew. This one, I think they just left the number off, or maybe it’s a real little street or in one of those gated communities where you don’t need a number-”
“What does it say, Dorie?”
“Yelling like that is going to cost you,” Dorie said. “It says Hackberry Street, Harkness.”
“Harkness? Where’s that?”
“I don’t do geography,” Dorie said.
Carl was already looking for the Maryland map in Tess’s crowded glove compartment, unfolding it with what seemed to be almost elaborate care, turning it around and around, searching the index, finding the grid on the map, turning it again. It seemed an eternity before he looked up.
“Harkness is in the Crisfield zip code,” he said quietly, “but it’s on Notting Island. There are two towns there, Harkness and Tyndall Point. We visited Tyndall when we went looking for Becca Harrison. Harkness is on the north side of the island.”
Tess glanced at Carl, then turned her attention back to the road just in time to brake for a tractor-trailer that was merging into the right lane, heedless of her little Toyota. Carl’s stubby index finger was stabbing at the map, punching it again and again. As if this map were to blame, as if the place were to blame.
Perhaps it was. Perhaps if the bay had succeeded in breaking up Notting Island years ago, this native son, this monster, would never have made his way into the world.
CHAPTER 33
On their second approach to Notting Island, Tess imagined the residents watching them, waiting for them, laughing at them. It was a gray day, rain threatening, the bay choppy and rough. May had never been as moody as it was this year. Their old friend, the semi-ancient mariner, had been reluctant to rent them his boat, even at double the price. He quizzed them about tides, asked if Carl knew where the shallows were. But in the end he allowed them to go.
“Don’t know why anyone wants to go to Notting Island on a day like this,” he said, pocketing Carl’s driver’s license and credit card as insurance against their return. “Don’t know why anyone wants to go to Not-ting Island at all.”
The trip out seemed to take forever, now that they knew what they hoped to find. It couldn’t be more than fifteen miles, Tess calculated. But fifteen miles in a boat that vibrated if it went above 30 mph was a thirty-minute journey. Despite the overcast skies, the day was muggy and warm. She shrugged off her denim jacket, but she was still warm in her T-shirt and jeans.
“You going to go around like that?”
“Like what?”
“With your gun showing?”
She glanced down at her holster. She was getting used to its feel. After all, she wore it all day, up until dinner, when she placed the weapon on the table in front of her as she ate. At night, it sat on the bedside and waited, its barrel staring into the darkness like some one-eyed creature, for Crow to come home. The gun then watched, as they made love. And they made love every night these days, at Tess’s insistence.
Crow eventually fell asleep, but Tess didn’t, not really. She was untroubled by her insomnia, had no desire to fight it or cure it. She believed her body knew she could not afford much more than catnaps, like the one she had allowed herself this morning, on the long drive to Crisfield.
She would sleep again later, when she was safe.
“Why don’t you have a gun?” she asked Carl.
“I’m not a cop anymore, as you like to remind me all the time. I had a service revolver. I turned that in.” He looked wistful. “It was sweet, a nine-millimeter. I’m surprised you use a thirty-eight.”
“It’s what I’m used to. Look, I think you should get a gun. There may even be a provision to get the waiting period waived, or we could drive down to Virginia, pick one up there. They’re a lot looser about these things in Virginia.”
“I don’t need a gun.”
She sensed something beneath his words. Not machismo or mere contrariness. He had thought about this.
“Why not?”
“For one thing, he doesn’t kill men.”
“What about Michael Shaw?”
“I don’t think he wanted to kill him. And he did it with a car, not a gun. Killing men-it’s like The Leech Woman, you know?”
“Is this another movie reference?”
“Well, yeah.” Carl’s voice was stiff, as if she had hurt his feelings, but he kept going. “A woman, a vain woman, learns about this potion that keeps her young. The only drawback is it requires blood, a man’s blood. Like a junkie, she needs more and more. The effects don’t last as long. Finally, she kills a woman-only it turns out that makes her go the other way.”
“She becomes a lesbian?”
Carl blushed, as she knew he would. She loved baiting him. “No, she starts aging, really fast, and she’s so horrified she throws herself out the window.”
“So William Windsor didn’t kill Michael Shaw because that would-well, what would it do, Carl? I’m not following you at all.”
“I’m just saying it didn’t give him pleasure. He only did it because he thought he had to, for some reason. Hazel too, I bet. He shoots his girlfriends.”
“He shot Julie Carter.”
“She was an ex-girlfriend. Besides, that’s how a junkie is going to die. He tailored the deaths to fit scenarios that seemed possible-a jogging doctor gets killed in a hit-and-run, a spinster dies in a fire, a junkie gets shot in a drug burn.”
They bounced along the water, absorbed in their own thoughts. Tess finally broke the silence.
“Do you think he gets confused?”
“What?”
“About his names. He’s had at least three in the past thirteen years, probably four, maybe more. He has to memorize different birthdays, birthplaces, remember where his Social Security number was issued.”
Carl thought so hard his face puckered.
“My best guess? He’s probably a very quiet guy who listens more than he talks. He doesn’t trip up because he doesn’t speak about himself. Doesn’t tell stories on himself, turns the conversation back to others. I think he says things like Tell me what you were like as a little girl, that kind of stuff.”