Bad Men (2003) Read online

  Barron didn’t usually go for women like Macy—hell, he didn’t usually care much for grown women, period—but Macy was thin, with kind of a boyish ass, and Barron was all for experimentation. Plus, he’d been out of the loop for a time, keeping his head down. He’d let his appetites get the better of him a little while back, and had almost brought a ton of trouble down on his head. He needed an outlet for his frustrations.

  “It’ll be cold out there on the island,” he said. He rubbed his hands over hers, as if trying to increase the circulation to frozen limbs. She smiled at him, then drew her hands away and hid them beneath the table.

  Damn, thought Barron. Not a good sign.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m kind of looking forward to it. I’ve never been out there before.”

  Barron took a long pull on his beer. “There’s nothing ‘out there,’ ” he said. “Just a bunch of yokels living some damn island fantasy. Inbreds, mostly. Banjo players.”

  She shook her head. “You know that’s not true.”

  “You haven’t seen it. Believe me, just twenty-four hours of island life and this place will seem like New York and Vegas combined.”

  Barron had that tone when he spoke, the know-it-all one that really grated on Macy. Then again, Macy was just a probationary patrol officer, while Barron was her field training officer. She’d put in her eighteen weeks of basic training, and now was at the end of her six weeks under an FTO. She had almost another two years of probation to go, with transfers to new duties every six months, but she didn’t mind that so much. She would just be happy to get away from Barron. He creeped her out, and his attitude toward her wasn’t simply that of a senior patrolman to one fifteen years his junior. Barron was just plain bad news. The force was already under federal review, and morale was suffering. A lot of good cops were simply working toward their twenty-five so they could retire and open a bar somewhere. Cops like Barron only made things worse.

  Still, he’d offered to buy her a beer to celebrate the end of their time together and she hadn’t been able to refuse. There were one or two other cops in the Sebago, although it wasn’t a regular haunt. Barron didn’t go to the cop bars. Macy figured that she wasn’t the only one who felt uneasy around him.

  Macy sipped her beer and watched the cars pass on Middle Street. She was still getting used to Portland, but it reminded her a little of Providence, where her parents lived. There were a lot of young people, although Portland’s university wasn’t quite as grand as the one back home, and it still had kind of a small-town feel. She liked the fact that there were good bars and decent places to eat in the center of the city. She didn’t miss Providence too much, and was happy to leave the bulk of her bad memories there. If things had worked out there, then Macy would have been married by now, might even have been talking about having a child. Things hadn’t worked out, of course, which was why she was sitting in a bar 150 miles away with tired legs and an aching back.

  It was strange, but one of the things that she had liked about Max was the feeling he gave her that, even half a century down the line, she would still be discovering new things about him. In the end, it had taken barely eighteen months for her to discover a new thing about Max that blew any hopes of marriage out of the water. Max couldn’t remain faithful. Max would screw a keyhole if there wasn’t already a key in it. When he couldn’t pick up a desperate student on Thayer Street, or a bored secretary during the five-to-eight happy hour (which was how Macy, a bored secretary in a law office, had met him, come to think of it), he’d screw hookers. He even seemed to prefer hookers, she discovered, when he was released on bail and they’d met for that last time, after she had packed her bags and returned in humiliation to her parents. He confessed everything, spewing poison and bile out onto the table of the diner, so that it seemed that the Formica would corrode beneath it. He would tell the hookers that he was single and would get a kick when they asked how a good-looking guy like him could be single. Even as he spoke about it, his career in tatters around him (associating with hookers was the least of his professional problems, for he had been under surveillance for some time, a consequence of the investigation into the mayor’s operation in Providence, and was now facing charges of graft and corruption), she sensed that he still found it flattering. Max was sick, but the sickness was moral as much as psychological. She was just grateful that she had found out the truth before the wedding and not after it.

  That was two years ago, and Macy had begun toying with the idea of becoming a cop shortly after. She had been helping out at a center for women who were victims of domestic abuse, and had heard horror stories from some of them about their dealings with the police. There were good stories too, hopeful stories, but it was the bad ones that stayed with Macy. She wanted to make a difference. It was as simple as that. She had visited Portland in the aftermath of the breakup, while she was still trying to come to terms with what had happened, and had decided that it suited her. It was close enough to her parents to enable her to drive home when she chose, yet far enough away that she would be in no danger of meeting any of Max’s old associates (or, God forbid, Max himself). The cost of living was reasonable, and the force was recruiting. Her modicum of legal knowledge and her experience in the battered women’s shelter had made her a shoo-in as a recruit. She had no regrets, although working with Barron had been her most trying ordeal yet.

  She noticed that Barron had gone quiet. She saw him looking across the bar, and the expression on his face was so hostile that she immediately wanted to leave him there, to get as far away from him as possible, even though his eyes were not on her. Instead, he was watching a man of slightly more than medium height talking to the bartender. He was kind of cute, thought Macy, in a brooding way. He flashed some form of ID, asked a couple of questions, then prepared to move on. He barely paused when he spotted Barron, but it was enough. He held the cop’s eyes until Barron looked away, then left the bar. Macy watched him climb into an old Mustang and drive toward the Franklin Arterial.

  “Who was that?” she asked.

  “Nobody. A fuckup.”

  He excused himself to go to the john and told the bartender to rack up two more beers. Macy was barely halfway through her first and she wasn’t planning on having another. She looked around the bar and saw Odell from Property. He stepped up beside her and touched his glass to hers.

  “End of your six,” he said. “Congratulations.”

  She shrugged and smiled. “Hey, you know who that guy was, the one who was talking to the bartender a couple of minutes ago? Drives a Mustang.”

  Odell nodded. “Charlie Parker.”

  “The PI?” As an investigator, she knew Parker had managed to track down some bad guys. He had quite a reputation, even if it was a mixed one. She had heard talk that Parker was nosing about in the department. She was curious to know why.

  “The very same.”

  “I got the impression that Barron doesn’t like him.”

  “There aren’t a whole lot of people Eric Barron does like, and Parker isn’t the kind of guy to top that list. They had a run-in a couple of years back. Parker was looking into the death of a woman, Rita Ferris. She’d been hooking a little to make ends meet. After the case was closed, Barron saw Parker at Old Port Billiards and made some comments about the woman.”

  “And?”

  “Barron went to the men’s room. Couple of minutes later Parker followed him in. Only Parker came out. Barron never spoke about what happened in there, but he’s got a scar at the right side of his mouth”—Odell pointed with his finger to his own mouth—“that maybe I wouldn’t mention to him, you see what I mean?”

  “People who mess with cops don’t usually walk away from it so easily.”

  “You see anyone rushing to defend Barron’s honor?”

  “I guess not. I hear Parker’s been asking about cops.”

  “Cops, rent-a-cops, private security. He’s pissing off all the wrong people.”

  “You know why?
”

  “Case a couple of months back. Someone tried to pull a boy from the street, over in Gorham. Kid was huffing lighter fuel and was pretty much off his head to begin with, so he couldn’t recall much, but he claimed the guy was wearing a uniform under his jacket, and he thought he could see a gun. His parents have money and they’ve hired Parker to ask some questions. They’re afraid the guy might make a play again, either on their kid or someone else’s.”

  Barron returned from the men’s room, and nodded a curt greeting to Odell.

  “See you ’round, I guess,” Odell said to Macy. He nodded at Barron—“Eric”—then went back to his buddies

  “What did he want?” asked Barron.

  “Nothing, just wanted to congratulate me on finishing my six.” She could sense Barron simmering beside her. He had a short fuse, and it seemed a good idea to try to stamp it out before the powder keg ignited.

  “Tell me more about the island,” she said.

  Barron told her that Dutch Island, or Sanctuary as it was sometimes known, was within the jurisdiction of the Portland Police Department, despite its status as the most remote of the inhabited islands on Casco Bay. Dutch wasn’t the only island that required a police presence of this kind, but it was the least hospitable. Most Portland cops never had to spend time there. It had one resident policeman, and a couple of others who traveled out on a rotation system. On the other island policed by the Portland PD, Peaks Island, two officers headed out on a boat every day. But when the boat left for Dutch, there was often only one cop on board.

  “Why has it got two names?”

  “To make it sound interesting,” said Barron. “But believe me, it isn’t. What more do you want to know?”

  “What’s he like?” asked Macy.

  “Who?”

  “You know, Dupree.”

  Barron clicked his tongue in disgust. “Melancholy Joe? He’s a freak.”

  “They say he’s a giant. I mean, a real giant. Like in the circus, or like that wrestler guy, the one who died.”

  “Andre the Giant. No, Joe ain’t as big as Andre. Still a big son of a bitch, though. Strong, too. Nobody fucks with Melancholy Joe.”

  “Why do they call him that?”

  “Because he’s a miserable bastard, that’s why. Doesn’t say much, keeps to himself. You better take some books out to Dutch Island, because you sure ain’t going to be kept up nights talking to Joe.”

  “You spend time out there?”

  “Just once, when flu took out half of the regular guys. Didn’t care much for it. Didn’t care much for Joe Dupree, either.”

  I bet it was mutual, thought Macy.

  “I suppose nothing much happens out there.”

  “Not a whole lot. Bored kids stealing cars, breaking into summer houses. The occasional DUI. It’s community policing, mainly.”

  “But not always?”

  “What do you know?” asked Barron.

  “Someone said—”

  “Who?”

  “Just someone. He said Joe Dupree once killed a man out on the island.”

  Barron made that clicking sound again. “Yeah, he killed one of the Lubey brothers. Ronnie Lubey. If he’d been a little faster, then maybe his partner might not have taken a load of buckshot in the leg. Lubey was drunk, Dupree and Snowman arrived—”

  “Snowman?”

  “Yeah, dumb fucking name for a dumb guy. If he’d taken the buckshot in the head, it probably would have done him less damage. Anyway, Dupree and him arrive, Snowman gets shot, and Dupree kills Ronnie Lubey. He was taken off duty for a while, but the investigation cleared him. That’s it. Nobody shed too many tears for old Ronnie. He was a bad one. His brother still lives out on Dutch. He hates Joe Dupree like wood hates fire.”

  Barron paused. He felt dumb saying what he was about to say, as if Macy was going to laugh at him or call him a liar, but when he’d joined the force, his first partner, Tom Huyler, had sat him down over a beer and told him pretty much what he was about to tell Macy, and old Huyler wasn’t the type to joke around. He was Dutch Protestant, and when those people cracked a smile, it was like watching Arctic ice break, but Huyler knew his history. After all, they were some of his people that went out there in the beginning.

  His people who were slaughtered.

  Because, sure, Dutch Island was quiet, most of the time. There was the odd domestic dispute, the occasional drunk that tried to drive up a tree. But he recalled Huyler telling him the story of the first settlers on the island, how they’d retreated out there after skirmishes with the local Indians in the late 1600s.

  Then, according to the history books, there was some internal dispute among the islanders, and somebody had been banished. He’d come back, though, and he brought others with him. The entire population—ten, twelve families, all with children—had been slaughtered. It was only in the last hundred, hundred and fifty years that people had started returning to Dutch in numbers, and now the community was large enough to need full-time cops out there.

  And sometimes, people went missing. They were the bad ones, mostly. That was the odd thing about it. They were the ones that were no use to anybody, not even to their own families. They were the fighters, the abusers, the wife beaters. True, not all of them went that way, and Dutch still had its share of bad sorts, but they tended to be pretty careful about where they walked and what they did. They didn’t stray too far from their homes and they stayed away from the woods at the center of the island, and far away from what was known as the Site, the burial place of the original settlers.

  Huyler was dead now, died of a heart attack two years before, but Barron could still see him sitting there, a glass of beer in his hand, talking in those soft tones of his, the occasional strange intonation creeping into his speech, a relic of his family’s heritage. Barron had never doubted a word that he had said, not even when he’d told him about his final tour on Dutch Island, and the death of George Sherrin. Because George Sherrin was the reason Dutch’s less salubrious residents didn’t go walking in the woods at night anymore. Nobody wanted to go the way old George had, no sir.

  There had always been talk about the Sherrins. Their kids were rebellious and educationally subnormal, real difficult types. Old Frank Dupree, Melancholy Joe’s father, had been forced on more than one occasion to haul one or the other of the Sherrin kids back to his old man and tell him how the kid had been caught breaking windows or tormenting some poor dumb animal, and the kid would be quiet as he was led back to the house, and Frank would always feel a tug at his belly as the kid was led inside by George and the door closed silently behind them. Frank suspected that there was something going on there, something vile and rotten, but he could never convince Sherrin’s mousy wife, Enid, to talk, and any social workers who ever went near the Sherrins risked getting a gun waved at them or had to run to escape the dogs barking at their heels.

  And then, one day, George Sherrin went missing. He didn’t come home from a trip out into the woods, his truck loaded up with a saw and chains so he could do a little illegal cutting and collect some cheap fuel for the winter. It was two days before his wife bothered to report it, and Frank Dupree figured that if she hadn’t killed him herself, then maybe she was just relieved to have two days without his presence in the house, because if George Sherrin was doing bad things to his children, Frank didn’t doubt that his wife knew about it, and that maybe she tried to get him to do bad things to her instead on occasion, just to give the kids a break.

  So Frank Dupree and Tom Huyler had made their way into the woods, and after a few hours they’d found George Sherrin’s truck, and beside it George’s saw. There was a gash in a big pine tree nearby, where George had just started cutting, but then something seemed to have interrupted him, because he never got to finish his task. They had a good look around for George, but there was no trace of him. Later they came back with twenty islanders and they formed a line through the forest and scoured the bushes and the trees, but George was gone. After a
few days, they stopped looking. After a few weeks, they stopped caring. George’s kids started getting on better in school and a social worker began calling at the house, and then a couple of times a month, Enid Sherrin and the kids took the little ferry over to the mainland and got to talk things through with a doctor who had Crayolas in her drawer and a box of Kleenex on her desk.

  One year later, a bad storm hit the coast, and Dutch, being right out there, took the brunt of it. There was thunder, and two trees were felled by lightning bolts, and under one of those trees they found George Sherrin. The pine had been torn partway out of the ground but its fall was arrested by the surrounding trees so that its broad root structure gaped like a toothed mouth. In the hollow that it left in the ground, George Sherrin’s remains were discovered, and a murder investigation was initiated. There was no visible damage to his bones—no breaks, no fractures, no entry wounds—but somebody must have put George Sherrin under that tree because he sure hadn’t dug himself a hole beneath it and then covered himself up. They took Enid Sherrin in and quizzed her some, but she had her kids to back her up and they all told the same story. Their momma had been with them the whole time after their daddy disappeared. Who else was going to look after them?

  There were more puzzles for the investigators to mull over. When the tree and the bones were analyzed, the results made no sense. The way the experts figured it, George Sherrin would have to have been buried under there for thirty years for the roots to grow through his bones the way they had, for they had curled around and through him as if holding him in place. But George Sherrin had been missing for only one year, and there was just no way to account for that degree of growth. No, there had to be some other explanation for the nature of the root spread.

  Except nobody had ever come up with one.

  “That’s the story,” said Barron.

  Macy looked at him closely to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.

  “You say other people have disappeared?”