Bad Men

So Powell kept his mouth closed and waited, amusing himself by imagining Leonie in a variety of poses with white girls, Chinese, Latinos, and Powell himself slap bang in the middle. Man, he thought, if she only knew what I was thinking…

Sharon Macy spent the morning doing laundry, collecting her dry cleaning, and generally catching up on all of the stuff she had let pile up while she was working. She then drove out to Gold’s Gym over at the Maine Mall and did her regular cardiovascular workout, spending so long on the StairMaster that her legs felt like marshmallow when she stepped off, and the machine itself was drenched with her sweat. Afterward, she headed over to the Big Sky Bread Company and was tempted to undo all her good work with a Danish, but instead settled for the soup-and-sandwich deal.

She ate in one of the booths while looking over the southern edition of the Forecaster, the free newspaper that dealt with local news in South Portland, Scarborough, and Cape Elizabeth. A cop in the Cape Elizabeth PD was seeking donations of mannequin heads to display his collection of hats from police departments around the world; the South Portland Red Riots golf team had donated a new bus to the school system; and a pair of men’s gloves had been found on Mountain Road, Falmouth. Macy was still amazed by the fact that someone would take the time to place an ad in the Forecaster in order to return a pair of lost gloves. They were strange people up here: they kept to themselves, preferring to mind their own business and let other folks mind theirs in return, but they were capable of acts of touching generosity when the circumstances called for it. She recalled last year’s first snowstorm, a blizzard that had swept up the coast from just above Boston and blanketed the state as far north as Calais. She had heard sounds in the early morning coming from the parking lot of her apartment, and had looked out to see two complete strangers digging out her car. Not just her car, either, but every car in the lot. They had then shouldered their spades and, identities still unrevealed, had moved on to the car in the next driveway. There was something hugely admirable about such anonymous kindness to strangers.

She skipped to the “Police Beat” page, scanning the names in the list of arrests and summonses: the usual DUIs, thefts by unauthorized taking or transfer, a couple of marijuana collars. She recognized one or two of the names, but there was nothing worth noting. If there had been, she figured that they would have heard about it on the grapevine by now.

Her meal finished, she drove downtown and parked in the public market’s parking garage. She bought some fresh produce from one of the stalls in order to get her parking validated for two hours, then headed up Congress to the Center for Maine History. She walked down the little pathway by the side of the Wadsworth-Longfellow House and entered the reading room, ignoring the sign that invited her to register her name and the reason for her visit in the library’s logbook. The librarian behind the desk was in his late seventies, she figured, but judging from the gleam in his eye as he smiled at her, he was a long way from dead.

“Hi, I’d like to see whatever you have on Dutch Island,” she said.

“Sure,” said the librarian. “May I ask what your interest is in Dutch?”

“I’m a police officer. I’m heading out there soon. I’m just curious to find out a little about it.”

“You’ll be working with Joe Dupree, then.”

“Yes, so I understand.”

“He’s a good man. I knew his father, and he was a good man too.”

He disappeared among the stacks behind the counter, and returned with a manila file. It looked disappointingly thin. The librarian registered her expression.

“I know, but there hasn’t been too much written on Dutch. Fact is, we need a good history of the islands of Casco Bay, period. All we got here are cuttings, and this.” He removed a thin sheaf of typescript pages from the folder, stapled crudely along the spine.

“This was written maybe ten years ago by Larry Amerling. He’s the postmaster out on the island. It’s about the most detailed thing we have, although like as not you’ll find something too in Caldwell’s Islands of Maine and Miller’s Kayaking the Maine Coast.”

He retrieved the books in question for her, then settled back in his chair as Macy found a space at one of the study tables. There were one or two other people doing research in the library, although Macy was the youngest person in the room by almost half a century. She opened the folder, took out Amerling’s A Short History of Dutch Island, and began to read.

Torres and Misters led Moloch back to the Land Cruiser, deliberately keeping up a fast pace, the restraints on Moloch’s legs causing the prisoner to stumble slightly on the final steps.

“You asshole, Moloch,” said Torres.