Chapter LXXXVI

We dumped our stuff at the inn. Contrary to expectations, it was run not by a pair of gay men, but by a tiny retired woman named Bella whose tastes began and ended with exposed woodwork and ersatz Native Americana. Whatever happened over the next few hours, we wouldn't be leaving Gretton without causing a ruckus, and it made sense to have privacy to prepare for what was coming. We also needed somewhere for Sabine Drew to stay, because I didn't want her with us at the Michaud place. Our issues were with the living, not the dead.

David Southwood had gotten back to me with the information I'd requested, and more. Ellar Michaud had not one but two sisters, both of whom lived with him on the family property. The older of the two was Aline, fifty-five. Ellar, at fifty-six, was the eldest child. The youngest by a distance, at thirty-eight, was Eliza. Both parents were dead, and the siblings were now the joint legal owners of a considerable acreage of land, one that had been in their family for generations.

Southwood emailed copies of three driver's licenses. Ellar Michaud was over six feet tall, and heavy with it. His sisters were smaller, but not by much, and neither was exactly pretty; in the right light, Eliza might have passed for inoffensively plain, and in the wrong one, Aline could have made a few extra bucks scaring crows. I compared the picture of Eliza Michaud with the blurred image of Mara Teller. The resemblance wouldn't have convinced a jury, but it was enough for me. I was looking at the same woman.

Three vehicles were registered to the address: a Buick truck, a white Nissan, and a blue Chrysler. None of the Michauds had a criminal record, though complaints of intimidation and trespass had been made against Ellar Michaud by his neighbor, Den Hickman. The Michauds had filed no similar counterclaims, but it evinced a territorial spat that was always running hot without ever boiling over.

I was still looking through the license photos, familiarizing myself with the faces, when my phone rang again, this time from a number I didn't recognize. When I picked up, it was Beth Witham.

"I asked around about Stephen Clark and that girl from Gretton," she said. "A mutual friend said he couldn't be sure, because it was a long time ago, but he thought it might have been one of the Michauds."

I gave nothing away. Beth Witham had come through, but I didn't know her well enough to confirm it for her.

"What can you tell me about them?"

"I never had anything to do with them. I know the family was old Gretton—I mean centuries—and kept themselves to themselves. The guy who gave me the name still lives up in Piscataquis, not far from town. He said people tried to stay out of the Michauds' way then, and still do, which was what made it so memorable that Stephen fucked one of them."

"Are they bad news?"

"Not bad news so much as odd. You know, just not right. The guy said he heard locals used to approach Mother Michaud for help with work, or their love lives. Crossing her palm with silver, that kind of thing. She performed abortions, too, back before Roe v. Wade. I asked my dad about it, and he said it was true."

I told her I was grateful for her help, then sat at the window of my room, moving between pictures of Eliza Michaud on my cell phone: one with Stephen Clark, her face slightly turned away from the camera, the other from her driver's license, staring straight at me. I was now convinced that Eliza Michaud had been responsible for the abduction of Henry Clark, but she had not been unaided.

ANGEL, LOUIS, AND Iwalked from the inn to my car. Each of us wore a gun beneath our jackets, while I had a pistol-grip Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun stored in the trunk. It was a gift from Moxie, but so far I hadn't had any call to use it. I kept it in the trunk because I wasn't sure what else to do with it. I showed Angel and Louis the email from Southwood and pointed to Eliza Michaud's picture.

"In the absence of a better candidate," I said, "that's Mara Teller."

"They're all the right height for modeling work," said Louis, running through the licenses and faces, "but otherwise that's one grim family."

Angel was still focused on Eliza Michaud.

"Why would anyone have an affair with her?" asked Angel.

"Who knows the ways of the human heart?" I said.

"Yeah, but what about the ways of human eyes? Though compared to her sister, she's a regular Aphrodite."

"I don't think this was ever about an affair," I said. "It sounds like madness, but I'm starting to believe that Stephen Clark might have facilitated the abduction of his own child, and not in return for any sexual relationship with Eliza Michaud."

Stephen Clark: a man who didn't want to be a father, and had beaten a previous girlfriend for becoming pregnant, but later pressured his wife into having a child; a man with little interest in sex, but who seemingly had an affair with a woman he had once screwed years earlier in the parking lot of a bar.

"If not sex, then why?" asked Louis.

"I don't know. Take away sex and what's left? What could she give him that would justify handing over his son to her? What could she offer him that he didn't already have?"

"Money?" suggested Louis.

"Money doesn't feel right to me. That isn't what drives him."

"So what does?"

"How about ambition?" said Angel.

And I thought, Yes, that might be it. Professional success and recognition were what Clark desired more than anything else, yet his own limitations prevented him from obtaining them. But how could Eliza Michaud have guaranteed his professional advancement? She lived in the woods with two older siblings, close to a remote, unloved town.

"I suppose we'll just have to ask the Michauds," I said.

LYLE DRUMMOND GOT INtouch as we were passing Private Road 7 for the second time, trying to get some measure of the Michaud land. We couldn't see any buildings or lights, but we knew from Google Earth that the main house was in there, along with a second structure that might have been a ruin.

"Are you still in Gretton?" asked Drummond.

"You lied," I said.

"I did?"

"It makes Dexter look like Vegas, not Reno."

An animal ran from one side of Private Road 7 to the other: a weasel, from the length of its tail, embarking on a nocturnal hunt.

"To each his own," said Drummond. "You were asking about Maynard Vaughn. He was last seen getting into a blue Chrysler registered to an Ellar Michaud of Private Road Seven, Gretton, but the witness says it was a woman behind the wheel. The witness also says she saw Maynard in the same car at least once before, but that time with two women, including the same one who picked him up more recently."

"How reliable is the witness?"

"She's a drunk who once managed to set herself on fire with denatured alcohol. That aside, she's more reliable than you might think, with an enviable memory that goes back years, decades.. But even combined with what you told me, it's not halfway enough to get a warrant, not for a property outside my jurisdiction. But I was considering taking a trip up there tomorrow, once I've made the requisite courtesy calls to local law enforcement, and assuming Maynard doesn't show up in the meantime, which he may well do."

"Who's the law in Gretton?"

"A constable, Poulin. He has full investigatory and enforcement powers, murder excepted."

"Have you had dealings with him?"

"A few, but nothing consequential. My opinion, not for circulation, is that he's spent too long up there. I don't think he colludes in permitting lawbreaking so much as fails to see much of anything at all. If I'm arriving into his jurisdiction, I'll be obliged to inform him, but I might test the ground with the sheriff's office and the state police first."

I decided to be open with Drummond. If things went south, he'd find out soon enough.

"We're out by the Michaud property," I said. "The man we're looking for came to Gretton in search of that same blue Chrysler."

"Shit," said Drummond. "Look, I need to send this up the chain before we act, and that's not going to happen before tomorrow morning."

"Last time I checked, we hadn't been deputized. I'm not sure the chain applies to us."

"Don't be obtuse. It's already dark. You step onto that land now and you could legitimately be shot as trespassers. Jesus, if you three arrived uninvited in my yard at any hour, I'd shoot you on principle. Is it going to hurt to wait till there's light in the sky?"

I muffled the phone with my hand.

"No point in being shot at if we don't have to be," said Louis. "I've been shot before, and didn't enjoy the experience."

"You're getting old," I said.

"It comes with not getting killed. As for you, if someone decides to shoot you, they'll have trouble finding a spot that doesn't already have a hole in it."

"Angel?"

"I'm going to die somewhere," he replied, "but I'd just as soon it wasn't out here in the dark."

"What about Reggio?"

"If he did go onto that property," said Louis, "and asked the wrong questions of the wrong people, he's already dead. If they didn't kill him, he's either alive there or alive someplace else, and that situation is hardly in danger of imminent change. In other words, us stumbling around at night isn't going to improve matters. But if you're intent, I got nothing better to do."

"The moment Drummond starts reaching out to local and state law enforcement," I said, "word will spread. I've never met the constable around here, and have no idea of his loyalties, but we can't rely on his discretion when it comes to the Michauds. If we wait, we do so only until predawn, then we go in."

"I can live with that," said Louis, and Angel concurred.

I returned to the call.

"That took a while," said Drummond.

"The perils of living in a democracy. We'll wait." It was the truth, but also kind of a lie. We would wait, but not for Drummond.

"You make it sound as though you're doing me a solid," he said. "And there I was thinking it was the other way around."

"Don't get all mushy. You can thank me later."

"I'll add it to my list of things I look forward to doing, right below donating a kidney."

"That's the spirit," I said. "Be a giver."