The Widow

CHAPTER 27

Doyle read a chatty e-mail from Katie three times before he shut down his computer and headed to the kitchen to take some pork chops out of the freezer. His wife had told him in great detail about what she was doing in England -the kinds of things she was learning, the people she’d met, the sights she’d seen. She wrote like she talked. They hadn’t called each other much since she’d left, with the time difference, their busy schedules, the cost of international calls.

As much as he missed her and would have wanted her counsel-her support-if she’d been there, Doyle didn’t want to tell her about what was going on at home, not when there was nothing she could do about it but worry.

The boys liked to instant-message her right after dinner. Doyle had never figured out the whole IM thing.

He looked out the window over the sink. Sean and Ian had gone off on their bikes. He’d told them not to go near Mattie’s house, but otherwise what could he do? Keep them inside all the time? Make them afraid of their own shadows?

The search for Mattie continued. If he was still up in the woods and hadn’t found food and water, he risked dying of exposure, thirst. Doyle had envisioned that scene a million times over the years-Mattie Young, dead in a pile of leaves, dead on the rocks, dead in a car crash. Better than him killing someone else while driving drunk, or so Doyle had always told himself.

He left the pork chops on the counter and walked out to the living room. He’d have the chops in the oven before they could breed bacteria. So far, he’d managed not to poison himself and the boys.

Abigail Browning stood on the other side of his screen door at the front entrance. He hadn’t heard her drive up. Then he saw Owen behind her, both of them grim-faced. Doyle’s heart lurched. Had something happened to Sean or Ian? Katie? He immediately told himself to calm down. It’d been the kind of day for grim faces.

“Come on in,” he said.

“Hey, Doyle.” Owen stepped past Abigail and pushed open the door. “We saw the boys on their bikes. They look like they’re having a great time.”

“They know we’re looking for Mattie. The rest-I haven’t told them.” He held up a hand, nipping any well-intentioned protests in the bud. “I’m not planning to, either, until I have to.”

“Your call.”

Abigail glanced around the country-style room. “I haven’t been in here in a few years. You and Katie have done a nice job with the place.”

“Thanks.” Doyle pointed to the couch. “Have a seat-”

“I can’t stay,” she said. “Mattie?”

“No sign of him since we found his bicycle. I left the station an hour ago. Lou was still there. The FBI guys wanted to talk to Linc Cooper.” Sighing heavily, Doyle sank onto his easy chair. “I don’t get Mattie. I guess I never will. He never could get his shit together. He had his chances, just like the rest of us, but he was always looking for an angle. It was Mattie first. Always Mattie first.”

“We still have a lot of unanswered questions.”

He didn’t even get on her for saying “we,” as if she had an official role in the investigation.

“You can’t know what it’s like. Either of you. I have this picture in my head of Pa Browning taking Mattie, Chris and me out on the boat on a freezing cold day long after the tourist season had ended. We had the best time. And now-hell. Pa and Chris are gone. Mattie might as well be.”

Abigail had that relentless look Doyle had seen in her before, and she didn’t indulge him in his moment of self-pity. “You knew Mattie was an FBI informant?”

He threw his head against the tall back of the chair and thought about throwing them both out and watching television. Just not think about his work, his life, for a half hour.

Owen said quietly, “I didn’t know.”

Doyle sat forward. “‘FBI informant’ is too strong. Mattie kept his ear to the ground and told Chris what he heard. Mostly it wasn’t much of anything, but he happened onto a drug smuggling operation into Canada. The feds were on to it, but Mattie had names, a meeting place. It helped. So, Chris threw some money his way. It was all on the up-and-up.”

“Then Mattie started drinking again, and Chris pulled back.”

“Yeah. That’s pretty much the story.”

“I don’t want ‘pretty much’ the story, Doyle. I’d like to hear the whole story.”

“All right.” He put both hands on the arms of his chair just to keep himself from launching to his feet and strangling her. “That’s the whole story. Better?”

She didn’t react to his sarcasm. “And Grace Cooper. Did you know she was in love with Chris?” But when Doyle’s eyes flickered to Owen, Abigail sucked in a breath and swore. “Damn it. You all knew.”

“He was never for her,” Owen said. “We all knew that, too. And it was over a long time ago.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Doyle got heavily to his feet. “It was for Chris. Yeah, he never had a romantic interest in Grace. But for her? She’ll never get over him. Who knows, maybe he’d still be alive today if he’d fallen for her instead.”

Owen grabbed his friend’s arm. “That’s enough. You’re upset. Don’t make matters worse.”

Abigail had gone pale, which, in the mood he was in, Doyle considered something of a victory. But she didn’t raise her voice when she spoke. “If you thought Chris should be marrying someone else, why did you agree to be his best man?”

“Because he asked me, and he was my best friend. He thought I’d come around one of these days and see what he saw in you.”

“Another of his little secrets,” she said without bitterness.

A bike clattered out in the driveway, and one of the boys yelled, “Dad!”

Sean, Doyle thought, surging for the door, even as Ian called out to him. “Dad, Dad, come quick! It’s Mattie!”

Moving like a bolt of lightning, Owen shot out the front door before Doyle could get there, Abigail on his heels. He took the steps in one leap, then charged across the lawn to his driveway and detached one-car garage, where his sons were tangled up in their bikes.

Ian stood up, his knees skinned. “We tripped. We were running-” He sobbed. “I thought Sean saw the ghost!”

Owen knelt down, getting at eye level with Sean as the boy pointed at the garage. “Mattie was in there! I know he was. He made this bed…”

“We’ll check it out,” Owen said, calmer than Doyle would have been. “Did you see him?”

Ian shook his head, Owen’s presence steadying him. “He’s not here.”

The garage didn’t have an automatic door. Doyle didn’t protest when Abigail went around to the side door, still half-open from when the boys were in there. “Sean and Ian didn’t have to unlock the door,” he told her. “Lock’s busted. It’s been busted for weeks. I haven’t gotten around to fixing it.”

She nodded, going inside. He raised the main door, entering the garage a half second after she did. Katie’s sedan filled up most of the space. On various hooks and shelves were tools, supplies, snow shovels, sleds and pieces of junk that she insisted she’d use one day for various craft projects.

“Car’s locked?” Abigail asked.

“Yeah. Keys are in the house.”

At least Mattie-if the boys were right and he’d been there-hadn’t bashed in a window and made his bed in the car. Doyle walked around to the hood, where Abigail pointed to a blue tarp that had been spread out on the concrete floor, on top of it a rolled-up car blanket and a camp pad that he’d forgotten they even owned.

“Looks as if he helped himself to your pantry,” Abigail said.

Doyle saw what she meant-a box of Wheat Thins, a pop-up can of pears, a package of Oreos. Everything looked empty. What Mattie hadn’t eaten, he must have taken with him.

And it was Mattie. Doyle knew he didn’t have to say anything. The smell, the strands of long hair on the makeshift pillow, the hair tie-enough proof for both him and Abigail.

“He must have slipped into the kitchen while I was out looking for him last night,” Doyle said. “He doesn’t have a key, but he’d know where I keep mine. I never thought…”

“Don’t beat yourself up. Staying here might have saved his life.”

“At least I didn’t have any beer in the house.” But as she walked past him, Doyle grabbed her arm. “About what I said earlier. I didn’t mean half of it.”

She had the grace to smile. “Which half?”

When they got back outside, Sean and Ian bolted away from Owen, and Doyle scooped them up, one in each arm. He nodded to his friend. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

But Owen had his eyes on Abigail. “It was Mattie?”

She nodded without comment. She’d pulled back inside of herself, protective, focused on the job she was there to do. “I’ll go call Lou,” she said, moving off toward the house.

Doyle hadn’t seen what was happening before, but he damn well did now. Here was another friend falling for Abigail Browning. “She doesn’t trust any of us right now,” he said to Owen.

“Would you?”

“Probably not.”

“Dad,” Sean said, “what’s going on?”

Doyle knew push had come to shove. He had to tell his sons as much as he could about Mattie, about Chris. All of it. He set them back on the driveway, could feel their tension and curiosity in their slim frames. But he addressed Owen. “If you want to check the area and see if you can pick up Mattie’s tracks, that’d be a help.”

“No problem,” Owen said, and when he started for the garage, he had the look of the experienced search-and-rescue specialist he was.

Mattie clung to wet moss and a protruding root on the steep hillside next to the zigzag steps eccentric Edgar Garrison had carved into the Mt. Desert granite a century ago.

His head pounded behind his eyes and cheeks. His teeth ached, his sinuses reacting to the strong smells of evergreen, moldy pine needles and pinecones. Hiking back out there from Doyle’s garage, sticking to the woods as much as possible, avoiding the cops, had been pure torture.

He’d had little sleep. Stretched out on his tarp, scared out of his mind, he had lain in the dark garage last night, listening to his cop friend snoring through his open bedroom window. Worse than a damn freight train.

If Katie had been there, Mattie might have gone into the house and begged her to help him figure out what to do. She was levelheaded. She could stand back from the situation and think. He didn’t know what Doyle would have done. Shoot him on the spot?

And the state cops. Hell. He was a freaking marked man.

Everyone thought he’d tried to kill Abigail. They thought he had killed Chris.

And then there was Linc’s money. The blackmail.

“Fuck the money,” Mattie whispered.

He crept along the slippery, treacherous, near-vertical hill to a crevice where he and Doyle had hid as kids, spying on the Garrisons. It was just a little inset in the granite. It reminded him of Tolkien and hobbits.

As he huddled against the rock ledge, Mattie pulled a cheap green camouflage rain poncho he’d lifted from Doyle’s garage around him. He had a jug of water and some chocolate. He hoped to have a plan well in hand before he starved to death or died of thirst.

He shivered against the cold rock. He didn’t dare light a cigarette.

“God,” he whispered, “what I wouldn’t give for a hot shower.”

He debated going up the steps and knocking on Ellis’s door. Hey, I’ll do some yard work for you if you’ll let me use your shower and keep your mouth shut.

But who knew with Ellis? He was discreet. Otherwise, no one would trust him, and in his work off-island, trust was everything. He was also a control freak who’d fuss about two Japanese beetles on his rosebushes instead of being happy there weren’t hundreds. Mattie had no idea how Ellis had reacted to his yardman’s predicament. Was he sympathetic to the police and determined to be helpful? Or was he more worried about having to handle his gardens by himself?

Didn’t matter, Mattie thought. If he tried to move now, he’d never make it. He’d fall and crack his head open. He was exhausted and so damn confused, and there were just a few inches between him and a straight drop down to one of the crazy stone landings. He half expected to hear police sirens and helicopters, or see some big, nasty police dog drooling over him.

A drink would calm his nerves. He didn’t care about “working the program” or “one day at a time”-any of it. He’d reform when his life wasn’t so complicated.

He was facing too many unknowns, and was up against too many different agendas of smart, powerful people.

You’re the damn yardman.

And he was a slimeball. Mattie had betrayed his friends’ trust in him. He’d let alcohol and entitlement and resentment fuel his anger and screw up his judgment.

His eyes drooped and shut, and he felt his body go slack.

Would he fall off the ledge in his sleep?

Would the search dogs find him?

I don’t care.

Ah, Chris.

Did you lie there bleeding in the tide thinking I’d killed you?

Did you, my friend?