Читаем Bad Men полностью

“I don’t understand why you need that,” Moloch said. He still felt groggy and ill. He needed sleep, proper sleep. The tapping sound that he had heard in his dream had not gone away now that he was awake. Instead, it remained there, like water trapped in his inner ear.

“It’s not about needing. I like the feel of a bow.”

“You ever kill a man with a bow?” asked Powell.

“No. Killed one with an arrow, though.” Dexter grinned.

“You really think we’re going to need all this stuff up here?” Braun asked Moloch.

Moloch shook his head, as much in answer as in an effort to rid himself of the infernal noise in his head.

“We get there, find her, make her return my money, then we kill her. We don’t want to make trouble for ourselves and bring them down upon us. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll have her before they even know we’ve been there.”

“So, like I asked, why do we need all of this?”

Moloch looked at him the way he might have looked at a slow child.

“Because nothing ever goes according to plan,” he said simply.

The ferry to Portland contained just two passengers: an old man going to see his oncologist, and Marianne. She missed Danny and wished that he were with her, but she had to visit the banks and he would quickly have become bored with the waiting and the filling out of forms.

Bonnie had asked her little about her date, apart from inquiring whether it had gone well. She told her that Danny and Richie had enjoyed their evening together, and she didn’t mind if he stayed with her for the best part of another day. Richie had cheered at the news. Richie was a wonderful kid-she could never think of him as anything but a kid-and the people on the island looked out for him. In some ways, Dutch was the best environment for a boy like him. No harm could come to him, and in the close-knit community, he knew affection and support. To Danny, he was almost like a big brother, even though Danny, who was a smart boy, recognized that his playmate was different and that, in some ways, Danny had to look out for Richie more than Richie had to watch out for Danny.

But she had warned Danny not to follow Richie when he went exploring on the island. She knew that Richie liked to ramble through the woods and that Bonnie had given up trying to discourage him from doing so because Richie would go anyway, sneaking out of the house and sending her wild with worry. Better that he told her where he was going than to have him simply disappear without a word. While Marianne liked Richie, she knew that he was incapable of looking after her son, and Danny had been told, on pain of eternal grounding and loss of his allowance for the rest of his life, not to go anywhere with Richie unless Bonnie went along too.

Ahead of her, she could see the boats bobbing at the docks on Commercial. Resigned now to a day without Danny, she was looking forward to getting a few things done. She planned to visit her hairdresser, eat a leisurely lunch, maybe even head out to the Maine Mall for a while. She would have the best part of four hours to herself.

But first, there was the money to take care of. Once that was done, she would breathe a little easier. She was wearing a money belt beneath her sweater, and while she would certainly have preferred not to have to carry so much cash around, Portland’s streets didn’t worry her. She would not be walking them at night.

Behind her, gray clouds gathered. There would be snow by morning, according to the Weather Channel. She had checked the forecast before leaving, and the worst of the weather would not hit until much later that night. Thorson had announced that the ferry would leave Portland at six-thirty that night, with a final sailing at ten. She would probably make the six-thirty, or else the last sailing with time to spare, and she and Danny would be locked up safely at home by the time the snows came.

In her kitchen, Bonnie Clauson was watching CNN while chopping vegetables for dinner. She thought that she might make something special, since Danny was with them: a pot roast, perhaps, and a pumpkin pie.

On the TV, she could see a vehicle being pulled from a river somewhere in the south. It looked hot down there, and the backs of the policemen’s shirts were dark with sweat. She wondered if Mike, her current boyfriend, might be persuaded to chip in some cash so that they could take Richie away this summer. She’d ask him when she saw him next weekend. Mike drove trucks for a living and was sort of quiet, but he was patient with Richie and kind to her, and that was enough for Bonnie for the present.

Now the picture had changed, and a man’s face filled the screen. He looked handsome, she thought, apart from his eyes. They were sort of narrow, an impression accentuated by the thin vertical lines that ran down each cheek, and the intelligence in them was marred by contempt. Maybe it was just the law he despised, she mused, but she didn’t think so. She figured this guy hated just about everything.