“Man,” said his buddy, “lucky you weren’t the cops.”
“Helps if you lock the door,” I said, “or even just close it. Makes it harder for them to enter.”
Ronald’s friend nodded sagely. “That is so right,” he said. “Soooo right.”
“This is my friend Stewart,” said Ronald. “I served with his father. Stewart here fought in the Gulf first time around. We were talking about old times.”
“Fuckin’ A,” said Stewart. He raised his beer. “Here’s to old times.”
Ronald offered me a beer, but I declined. He popped the tab on another Silver Bullet and almost drained it before letting it part from his lips.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said. “He might have been in the service. He’s got a tattoo of an eagle on his left arm, and a taste for children. I thought that, if it didn’t ring any bells for you, you might be able to ask around, or put in a word with your NSO friend, Hyland. This guy is bad news, Ronald. I wouldn’t be asking otherwise.”
Ronald considered the question. Stewart’s eyes narrowed as he tried to concentrate on what was being said.
“A man who likes children wouldn’t go around advertising it,” said Ronald. “I don’t recall hearing about anyone who might have those tendencies. The eagle tattoo could narrow it down some. How do you know about it?”
“One of the children saw it on his arm. The man was masked. It’s the only clue I have to his identity.”
“Did the kid get a look at the years?”
“Years?”
“Years of service. If he served, even if he just cleaned out latrines, he’d have added his years.”
I didn’t recall Andy Kellog mentioning any numbers tattooed beneath the eagle. I made a note to ask Aimee Price to check it with him.
“And if there are no years?”
“Then he probably didn’t serve,” said Ronald simply. “The tattoo’s just for show.”
“Will you ask around anyway?”
“I’ll do that. Tom might know something. He’s pretty straight but, you know, if there are kids involved…”
By now, Stewart had stood and was browsing Ronald’s shelves, bopping gently to the barely heard sound of Hendrix, a fresh joint clasped between his lips. He found a photograph and turned to address Ronald. It was a picture of Ronald in uniform squatting beside Elsa.
“Hey, Ron, man, was this your dog?” asked Stewart.
Ronald didn’t even have to turn around to know what Stewart had found.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s Elsa.”
“Nice dog. It’s a damn shame what happened to her.” He waved the photograph at me. “You know, they ate his dog, man. They ate his dog.”
“I heard,” I said.
“I mean,” he continued, “what kind of fucking people eat a man’s dog?” A tear appeared in his eye and rolled down his cheek. “It’s all just one big damned shame.”
And it was.
Chapter XX
Merrick had told the police that he was mostly sleeping in his car, but they didn’t believe him, and I didn’t either. That was why Angel had been detailed to follow him when he was released from jail. According to Angel, Merrick had picked up a cab at the rank beside the bus station, then had checked into a motel out by the Maine Mall before closing his drapes and, apparently, going to sleep. There was no sign of his red car at the motel, though, and when, after six hours, Merrick had still not made an appearance, Angel had taken it upon himself to find out what was going on. He had bought a take-out pizza, carried it into the motel, and knocked on the door of Merrick ’s room. When there was no reply, he broke into the room, only to find Merrick gone. There was a police cruiser at the motel, too, probably dispatched for the same reason Angel had been, but the cop had enjoyed no more luck than Angel.
“He knew that someone might put a tail on him,” Angel said, as he and Louis sat in my kitchen, Walter, now returned once more from the care of the Johnsons, sniffing at Angel’s feet and chewing on the ends of his laces. “There must have been three or four different ways out of the place. That was probably why he chose it.”
I wasn’t too surprised. Wherever Merrick had been holed up prior to his arrest, it wasn’t at a shoppers’ motel. I called Matt Mayberry to see if he had turned up anything useful.
“I’ve been kind of busy; otherwise, I’d have called you myself,” Matt said, when I eventually got through to him. He told me that he had concentrated his initial search on tax assessors’ offices in the city of Portland and its immediate vicinity, before expanding it to a sixty-mile radius. “I’ve found two so far. One is in Saco, but it’s still tied up in litigation after nearly four years. Apparently, the city published a pending sale notice for its tax liens on some middle-aged man’s property while he was receiving treatment for cancer, then without notice allegedly prematurely conducted a sealed-bid sale. Get this, though: when he refused to leave the property upon his release from the hospital they sent in a SWAT team to remove him forcibly. The guy didn’t even have hair! The hell is up with you people in Maine? The whole business is making its way through Superior Court at the moment, but it’s moving at the pace of an arthritic tortoise. I’ve got copies of pretrial memoranda if you want to see them.”
“How is Eldritch involved in it?”
“He’s the owner of record, as trustee. I ran a couple of additional searches on him, though, and I’ve found his name attached to various property sales as far west as California, but they’re all old references, and when I followed them up title had passed on again. The Maine sales are the most recent by a long shot and, well, they don’t follow the pattern of the others.”
“In what way?”
“Well, I couldn’t swear to this, but it looks like at least part of Eldritch’s business lies, or lay, in sourcing properties for individuals or companies who didn’t want their names attached as owners. But, like I told you, most of the references I can find are prehistoric, which leads me to guess that Eldritch has since moved on to other things, or he’s just not doing it as much, or he’s simply learned to hide his tracks better. Some of these properties have a paper trail after them like you wouldn’t believe, which could be a way of disguising the fact that, despite a blizzard of additional sales and transfers, de facto ownership of the premises in question remained the same. That’s just a suspicion, though, and it would take a whole team of experts with a lot of time on their hands to prove it.
“The Saco sale looks like an error of judgment. Maybe Eldritch was instructed to find a property for a client, this one looked like a steal, then it all went to hell in a handcart because the city mishandled the whole business. It was probably just crossed wires, but the result was that Eldritch got caught up in the kind of legal quagmire that he seems to have spent so much time and effort trying to avoid.
“Which brings us to the second property, purchased within weeks of black flags rising over the Saco sale. It’s near someplace called Welchville. You ever hear of it?”
“Vaguely. I think it’s somewhere between Mechanic Falls and Oxford.”
“Whatever. I couldn’t even find it on a regular map.”
“It’s not the kind of place that people put on regular maps. There’s not a whole lot there. Hell, there’s not a whole lot in Mechanic Falls, and Welchville makes it look like a metropolis.”
“Well, remind me to search someplace else for my retirement home. Anyhow, I found it eventually. The property is on Sevenoaks Road, close by Willow Brook. Doesn’t look like there’s much else nearby, which fits with what you just told me, so it shouldn’t be hard to find. Number Eleven-eighty. Don’t know what happened to numbers one to eleven-seventy-nine, but I guess they’re out there somewhere. Those two properties are it for Maine so far. If you want me to widen the search, it’s going to take more time than I have, so I’ll have to pass it on to someone else, and he may not work for free like I do.”