The Portal Read online

  Which reminded Scott of that disk he’d found hidden in the hardware store, the one that seemed to get all buzzy when Oates came to visit. How did that work into this? Even more important, what about that black speedster Oates arrived in? Charlie Cauble sure didn’t think there was anything normal about it.

  It was late in the morning and Scott hadn’t opened the store yet. Len had probably been by to get some hardware for today’s minor fix-it. A contractor had a delivery due in the afternoon. The horrific and the strange surrounded him, and still the needs of the family business somehow worked their way to the surface anyway. He thought that maybe practicing a bit of normalcy for a few hours would help him clear his head.

  But later today, when that was done, he’d pull that disk out from under the counter for a closer inspection. And then after closing time, after sundown, downtown would turn out the lights and be just about deserted. That would be a good time to check out the boat at the marina without gathering a crowd. The more he could find out about the mysterious Mr. Oates, the better he’d feel.

  And then tonight, no matter what, he’d check on Allie, and see if the day had given her time to forgive him for dragging her through last night’s horror show.

  Pretty stressful schedule for living in a town where nothing ever happens, he thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Officer Milo Mimms hadn’t slept much all day. Graveyard-shift sleep was usually rough, but the excitement from the previous night made it impossible.

  When Scaravelli relieved him that morning, he really hadn’t wanted to go off duty. There was so much real policing to do; documenting the scene, processing Krieger’s van, preparing reports for the state. With a big cup of coffee and a candy bar, Milo could have gone on for hours. But Scaravelli had been insistent, to the point of fury, adding instructions to talk to no one, and to report back to the crime scene the next day.

  That afternoon, Milo paced a thousand laps in his apartment, and tried diverting himself with the mindless drivel of daytime television. By 5 p.m., he couldn’t wait any longer. He put on his uniform and got ready for work. He strapped on his gun belt and checked himself in the mirror.

  For the first time in a long time, a law enforcement officer stared back at him. Maybe it was because he was about to do some real law enforcement work. Maybe it was because in a few small ways, Scaravelli had finally treated him like a law enforcement officer. Until last night, Scaravelli had never called him Officer Mimms. It had always been Milo, always couched in an exasperated sigh. Last night, Scaravelli had entrusted Milo with securing the Canale Road scene. That said something right there.

  Sure, Scaravelli had some lousy traits. He was a miserable communicator and he had the interpersonal skills of a porcupine. He was overweight and looked permanently rumpled. But he had been a real NYPD cop.

  Milo’s insecurity had swelled starting on Scaravelli’s first day. Scaravelli hung pictures of his NYPD glory days on the wall, shots of him flanked by ripped, smiling cops. Milo became self-conscious about his own ill-fitting uniforms. He stopped wearing his bulletproof vest after Scaravelli told him he looked like a kid in a life jacket. Scaravelli’s favorite phrase seemed to be ‘Do I have to teach you everything?’ Every day during the drive to work, Milo felt smaller than the day before, flapping around in oversized clothes, stretching to reach the controls in the wide police cruiser, everything mocking him as a kid playing in a man’s world.

  Milo hated to admit it, but Scaravelli’s approval meant a lot to him. Former Chief Anderson had hired Milo and praised him, but he’d known Milo since he was a kid. Scaravelli wasn’t influenced by any sentimentality. Earning Scaravelli’s approval meant Milo was a real cop.

  As he drove out to Canale Road in the setting sun’s red light, everything was a perfect fit. His shirt’s shoulder seam sat square, the American flag patch beneath it straight and proud. He piloted the cruiser through town, left arm cocked out the open window, right hand on the fat steering wheel, fingerless leather glove tight on the rim. On the open stretch of Canale Road, he flicked on the high beams and punched the gas.

  He coasted to a stop at the crime scene’s dirt trail. He cocked an eyebrow at the scene. A big black Dodge Ram with a cargo bed shell sat parked on the trail, the front bumper stretching the yellow police tape he’d run between the trees. The plates were out of state. The chief’s cruiser was nowhere to be seen. Anxiety prickled the hairs on the back of his neck.

  He stepped out of his car and walked up to the truck. Three empty, grease-stained boxes from Angelo’s Pizzeria lay on the hood. Crushed cans and cups littered the ground. Voices and the sound of rustling leaves drifted in from the forest’s growing shadows.

  He ducked under the yellow police tape and started up the dirt path. He rested one hand on the butt of his pistol. Ahead, sweaty, tired-looking men in black jackets jabbed at the leaf litter with branches and long sticks. The one closest to the road seemed to be directing the other five. An M4 assault rifle hung from his shoulder. The man saw Milo, shook his head in disgust, and moved in Milo’s direction. Everyone’s jacket had FBI on it in big white letters. FBI jacket lettering was always bright yellow.

  “Can I help you?’ The man’s offer came across as an accusation.

  “I’m Officer Mimms,” Milo said. “Night shift in Stone Harbor. Who are you?”

  “I’m Special Agent Kyler,” the man replied. “My men and I are here for the investigation.”

  Milo looked past Kyler’s shoulder at the search team. Even the gathering gloom couldn’t mask hardscrabble faces that belonged to FBI agents about as much as those bogus jackets did.

  “How come I don’t know about this?” Milo said. “I’m the chief’s right-hand man.”

  Kyler looked Mimm’s beanpole physique up and down with a bemused look. Milo felt the shoulder seams on his shirt droop.

  “Take it up with Scaravelli, Milo,” Kyler said. Milo hadn’t told him his first name. “We have the scene secure. Go back to the station.”

  Milo wasn’t about to take condescending directions from a total stranger in a fake FBI jacket.

  “Look Agent Kyler,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going—”

  Kyler stuck his finger against Milo’s chest. He pushed hard and Milo rocked back a step.

  “I said we’re busy here, kid. Take it up with Scaravelli.”

  One of the other men emerged from the woods, Milo’s height, but stocky. The sleeves on his jacket were pulled up to the elbows and his forearms were a blur of faded tattoos. His black hair was brushed straight back from his broad olive face, which bore a pineapple-skin of deep acne pits. A horrific scar stretched from the corner of his mouth across his cheek to his ear, as if a knife had been stuck between his teeth and yanked to the right.

  The man glanced over at Milo. Milo tucked his thumbs in his gun belt and puffed his chest. The man stifled a laugh. Milo’s chest deflated and his gun belt sagged lower on his hips. He backed away to his cruiser.

  “Boss,” the scarred man said to Kyler, “the goddamn thing ain’t here. We been back and forth, up and down, nine hours straight. Maybe someone already took the piece of shit. All I know is, it ain’t here, and I don’t want the blame.”

  Kyler looked pissed.

  “You’re getting to be a lot of trouble, Ricco. First, I gotta keep you from killing Ramirez, and now this bitching. It’s here in the woods, or you wouldn’t be here looking for it. We stay until we find it. You’d rather quit? Let me know. I’ll pass the word to Mr. Oates that you want out.”

  Ramirez’s toughness faded.

  “I ain’t quittin’,” Ramirez said. “I’m just statin’ facts.”

  None of this made any sense to Milo. These guys were more crook than cop, and whatever they were doing out here had nothing to do with Natalie’s murder. He finished his slow, backward shuffle to the cruiser, convinced that staying under
these guys’ radar would be very healthy.

  He got in the cruiser and closed the door. A muffled, sometimes animated conversation continued between Ricco and Kyler, with each intermittently pointing to spots in the woods behind them.

  If the chief thought these agents were the real thing, he needed to know the truth now. Milo picked up the radio mike.

  “Chief Scaravelli, this is Officer Mimms in Unit 2.”

  “This is Scaravelli.” He sounded frustrated. “Where the hell are you?”

  “I’m on my way in, Chief,” was all he said.

  “Hurry it up,” Scaravelli replied.

  * * *

  Minutes later, Scaravelli greeted Milo’s entrance to the station with an irritated “Where’ve you been?”

  Scaravelli looked awful. Dark circles shadowed his bloodshot eyes. It looked like he’d combed his hair with a rake. His nose and cheeks were flushed.

  “Chief, I went straight to Canale Road.”

  Scaravelli rolled his eyes and sighed. “Did I tell you to go up there?”

  “Uh, yes, this morning.”

  “Everything up there is under control,” Scaravelli said.

  “I don’t know, Chief,” Milo said. “Those guys up there look like they’re—”

  “Doing just what I want them to do,” Scaravelli cut in. “They’re professionals. I don’t want you up there in their way.”

  “Chief,” Milo said, “they seem to be looking for something. I saw the van impounded behind the station. What exactly do you have them looking for?”

  “Milo, just leave the crime scene to those men. Understood? Sit your ass here all night. Tell anyone with questions to call back in the morning.”

  The chief stood up and had to steady himself against the desk. He closed the open desk drawer in front of him. A bottle rolled along the drawer’s metal pan and clinked to a stop. He turned the key to lock it.

  “You stick right here,” Scaravelli emphasized. “Anything at all happens tonight, you call me at home. Understood?”

  “Yes, Chief, I understand,” was all he could say.

  Scaravelli slammed the door behind him as he left.

  Milo collapsed into his well-worn chair. Whatever perversion of law enforcement was unfolding in Stone Harbor, Chief Scaravelli looked like he was up to his eyeballs in it. And who was the Mr. Oates whose mention had stopped Ricco in his tracks? Scaravelli was the ultimate authority on the island, but there had to be some other law enforcement avenue Milo could take to find help. State police? The real FBI? Would anyone listen to a nineteen-year-old, even believe he was a cop? Right now, he couldn’t even convince himself.

  He had an interminable, lonely shift to think about it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rene Kyler swallowed two caffeine pills dry and prepped himself for a long night.

  Darkness’s arrival on Canale Road wouldn’t stop the search. Oates said the wooden artifact was out here, hidden under a piece of shale, and Kyler had never known Oates to be wrong.

  Unlike the other five, Kyler had spent years in Oates’ direct employ. He specialized in solo work: assassinations, theft, arson. His first instinct was to balk when Oates told him he’d have five weak links added to his chain, but he nodded and accepted the mission. Oates tended to have pretty violent reactions to the word no. However, as Kyler met each addition to his crew on the ferry that morning, his faith in their ability to execute ebbed lower and lower. He figured that if you were Oates, it was hard to find good help. In Kyler’s experience, the criminal masterminds on TV only occurred in fiction.

  That threat of Oates’ retribution was what made Kyler so uneasy as night fell and the object of the search remained undiscovered. Every slab of shale had been flipped, every square inch of the leaf litter probed with no result. He dreaded the conversation he’d have when Oates inevitably arrived to check on progress.

  “Think of the Devil, and he shall appear….” Kyler heard.

  Joey Oates stood beside him in the same long-sleeved black shirt and black pants he’d assumed for this event. His gold chain gleamed red in the dying sunlight.

  “I don’t see what I’m looking for,” Oates said, eyeing the ground as if the Portal should be lying there.

  A few of the men searching in the woods noticed Oates’ appearance. Hushed whispers passed between them. A more energetic prodding and scraping of the forest floor commenced.

  “Sir, we’ve been over this area for ten hours,” Kyler said. “We’ve raked every leaf and dug up every rock. I’ve been out here every minute hounding these bastards myself and keeping them from maiming each other. We haven’t missed an inch, and it isn’t here.”

  Oates surveyed the darkening landscape.

  “It’s here somewhere,” he said. “Only the girl knew where she hid it. We’re gonna stay ’til we find it.” He added the last sentence loud enough to reach the five laboring in the woods.

  “It’ll be pitch-black soon,” Kyler said. He was explaining, not excusing. “I’d better go into town for some lighting.”

  A yelp from Ricco came from just up the hill. He stood between two tall trees, smacking a stick on something hard between them.

  “Kyler! Check this out!”

  Kyler, Oates, and the other men converged around the two trees. Ricco dropped to his hands and knees. He swept aside the detritus to uncover a flat piece of gray shale beneath the trees’ crisscrossed roots.

  Oates bent down and fingered the edge, broken into a jagged Z pattern. He smiled and nodded.

  “That’s it,” Oates said. He turned and started away. Over his shoulder he added, “You have an hour, Mr. Kyler.”

  The men let out a collective sigh of relief. Their remaining time on Earth had just been extended.

  “There are axes in the truck,” Kyler commanded. “Let’s take down these trees.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Allie arrived at All Souls Church for the adult Bible group thirty minutes early. The empty parking lot made her smile. Beating the rest of the group here meant a little extra time alone with Reverend Snow, and perhaps the answers to some questions. She thought that since he’d been so open with her before, he might want to share a few details about his presence out at the Canale Road murder scene.

  The stained-glass windows glowed in defiance of the gathering darkness. One front door stood open and sent a shaft of inviting light across the front steps.

  Allie stepped inside to see Reverend Snow sweeping the floor around the altar. He faced the huge crucifix on the wall, back to the empty pews. She watched him for a moment. Each slow, deliberate pass of his broom brought a little shudder to the back of his neck. His steps were more like shuffles, short slides as if to lighten the impact on knees and hips. He bent with a slight stoop that Allie had not noticed before. Her first take on the reverend was wrong. He had aged since she’d left Stone Harbor. In the low amber light, he looked every bit of the eighty years old he had to be by now.

  Greeting the reverend with a shout across the sanctuary struck her as sacrilegious. She walked down the main aisle, stepped around the first Reverend Snow’s marker, and stopped just short of the altar.

  “Hi there,” she ventured.

  Bones creaked as Reverend Snow straightened to his full height. His grip on the broom tightened and he took a deep breath. He turned and shone a broad smile down on Allie.

  “Allison, my dear,” he said. “I’m so glad you came.” He stepped down from the altar and laid his broom against the first pew.

  “I’m early.”

  “Indeed you are,” Reverend Snow replied. He lowered himself down onto the altar’s base. “Sit beside me for a moment.”

  A personal conversation with the reverend was going to be easier to start than she’d thought. She took a seat beside him.

  “Allison,” he said. “As a change
of pace, I’ll confess something to you. The adult Bible group doesn’t meet tonight. I just thought we needed to talk a bit.”

  Her plan was to get some answers from him. She really didn’t want to go back over her sordid personal history at this point. She slid a few inches away.

  “Oh, Reverend, I feel much better after our talk today. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  The reverend smiled and patted her knee.

  “You misunderstand, Allison. We’re going to talk about problems bigger than the sum of both of ours. We’re going to talk about Stone Harbor’s problems.”

  This conversation was going to work her way after all. “This is about Natalie’s murder?”

  “Yes, dear, and much more.”

  The reverend paused for a moment, like a weightlifter preparing to clean jerk hundreds of pounds off the floor. He looked out across the church, but the glaze in his eyes said he was seeing well past the walls.

  “Ten generations ago,” he said, pointing to the gravestone in the center of the church floor, “a Reverend Snow started this very congregation. His sons nailed the boards of this church into place. It’s by more than just tradition that a Snow has always led this congregation. Each of us has felt more than just the calling to serve God. We inherited the responsibility to protect Stone Harbor, and the world.”

  “The world?”

  “Do you remember learning about the local witchcraft trial in elementary school?” the reverend said.

  “Five girls were burned alive for practicing witchcraft before the Revolution,” Allie said. “We all know the story. I think the blame fell on moldy wheat that gave the girls an LSD-type experience. It was never as famous as the trials at Salem, and I’m sure glad that we didn’t get that kind of reputation. Most people want to pretend it never happened.”