While I watched her quietly, Rachel tore into a piece of beef so rare she had to hold it down with her fork to keep it from making a break for the door. Beside it, potatoes and carrots and zucchini lay heaped in little mountains.
“Why aren’t you eating?” she asked, when she came up briefly for air.
I curled my arm protectively around my plate. “Back,” I said. “Bad dog.”
To my left, Walt’s head spun toward me, a brief flash of confusion visible in his eyes. “Not you,” I reassured him, and his tail wagged.
Rachel finished chewing, then jabbed her momentarily empty fork at me. “It was that call today. Am I right?”
I nodded and toyed with my food, then told her Elliot’s story. “He’s in trouble,” I concluded. “And anyone who sides with him against Earl Larousse is going to be in trouble too.”
“Have you ever met Larousse?”
“No. The only reason I know about him is because Elliot has told me things in the past.”
“Bad things?”
“Nothing worse than you’d expect from a man with more money than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the people in the state: intimidation, bribery, crooked land deals, brushes with the EPA over polluted rivers and poisoned fields, the usual stuff. Throw a stone in Washington when Congress is in session and you’ll hit apologists for any one of a hundred people like him. But that doesn’t make the loss of his daughter any less painful for him.”
An image of Irv Blythe flashed briefly in my mind. I swatted the thought away like a fly.
“And Norton is certain that his client didn’t kill her?”
“Seems that way. After all, he took over the case from the original lawyer and then stood bail for the guy, and Elliot isn’t the kind of man who risks his money or his reputation on a losing prospect. Then again, a black man accused of the murder of a rich white girl could be at risk among the general population, assuming somebody got it into his head to make a name for himself with the grieving family. According to Elliot, he either bailed his client or he buried him. Those were the options.”
“When is the trial?”
“Soon.” I had gone through the newspaper reports of the murder on the Internet, and it was clear that the case had been fast-tracked from the beginning. Marianne Larousse had been dead for only a few months, but the case would be tried early in the new year. The law didn’t like to keep people like Earl Larousse waiting.
We stared at each other across the table.
“We don’t need the money,” said Rachel. “Not that badly.”
“I know.”
“And you don’t want to go down there.”
“No, I sure don’t.”
“Well, then.”
“Well, then.”
“Eat your dinner, before I do.”
I did as I was told. I even tasted some of it.
It tasted like ash.
After dinner, we drove out to Len Libby’s on Route 1 and sat on a bench outside to eat our ice cream. Len Libby’s used to be on Spurwink Road, on the way to Higgins Beach, with tables inside where people sat and shot the breeze. It had moved out to its new location, on the highway, a few years back, and while the ice cream was still good, eating it while looking out at four lanes of traffic wasn’t quite the same. Instead, there was now a life-size chocolate moose beside the ice cream counter, which probably counted as some form of progress.
Rachel and I didn’t speak. The sun set behind us, our shadows growing longer before us, stretching away ahead of us like our hopes and fears for the future.
“You see the paper today?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t get a chance.”
She picked up her bag and rummaged through it until she found the piece she had kept from the Press Herald, then handed it to me. “I don’t know why I tore it out,” she said. “I knew you’d have to see it sometime, but part of me didn’t want you to have to read about him again. I’m tired of seeing his name.”
I unfolded the paper.
Thomaston-The Rev. Aaron Faulkner will remain at Thomaston State Prison until his trial, a Department of Corrections spokesman said yesterday. Faulkner, indicted earlier this year on charges of conspiracy and murder, was transferred to Thomaston from the state Supermax facility a month ago, following what appeared to be a failed suicide attempt.
Faulkner was arrested in Lubec in May of this year following a confrontation with Scarborough-based private detective Charlie Parker, during which two people, a male calling himself Elias Pudd and an unnamed female, were killed. DNA tests revealed that the dead man was in fact Faulkner’s son, Leonard. The woman was identified as Muriel Faulkner, the preacher’s daughter.
Faulkner was formally indicted in May for the murders of the Aroostook Baptists, the religious group headed by the preacher that disappeared from its settlement at Eagle Lake in January 1964, and conspiracy to murder at least four other named individuals, among them industrialist Jack Mercier.
The remains of the Aroostook Baptists were uncovered close by Eagle Lake April last. Officials in Minnesota, New York and Massachusetts may also be examining unsolved cases in which Faulkner and his family were allegedly involved, although no attempt has yet been made to charge Faulkner outside Maine.
According to sources within the Maine attorney general’s office, both the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI are also examining Faulkner’s case, with a view of trying him on federal charges.
Faulkner’s attorney, James Grimes, told reporters yesterday he remained concerned for the health and well-being of his client and he was considering appealing to the State Supreme Court following the decision of a Washington County Superior Court to refuse bail. Faulkner has said he is innocent of all charges and was kept a virtual prisoner by his family for almost forty years.
Meanwhile, the consultant entomologist employed by investigators to catalogue the collection of insects and spiders found at the Lubec compound occupied by Faulkner and his two children told the Press Herald yesterday that he had almost completed his work. According to a state police spokesman, the collection is believed to have been assembled by Leonard Faulkner, alias “Elias Pudd,” over many years.
“So far, we’ve identified about two hundred different species of spider, as well as about fifty other species of insect,” Dr. Martin Lee Howard said. He said the collection contained some very rare species, including a number that his team had so far failed to identify.
“One of them seems to be some form of extremely nasty cave spider,” said Dr. Howard. “It’s certainly not a native of the United States.” Asked if there were any patterns emerging from his research, Dr. Howard said that the only common factor uniting the various species at this point was their “general unpleasantness. I mean, insects and spiders are my life’s work and even I have to admit that there are a lot of these guys and gals I wouldn’t like to find in my bed at night.”
Dr. Howard added: “But we did discover a lot of recluse spiders, and when I say a lot, I mean a lot. Whoever assembled this collection had a real affection for recluses, and that’s not something you’re going to find too often. Affection is pretty much the last thing the average person is going to feel for a recluse.”