Trap Door by Sarah Graves Read Free Book Online Page A

as isolated as an asteroid in space.
    As lonely, too, probably. But I’d learned long ago that Jemmy would tell me the truth when he was ready, or as much of it as he ever did. Now he opened his mouth to spin more of his goofball story, got a glimpse of my face, and decided against.
    We pulled out of the woods and into the hilly headlands of the St. Croix River tidal basin. Below the cliffs edging Route 1 on our right, the crisscrossed nets of herring seines hung from long, slender poles, their reflections forming wavery X’s on the moving water. A trio of seals gorged themselves on the catch in one of the seines, getting in their morning meal before the net owner showed up with his rifle.
    Across the bay the red-tiled gabled roof of the hotel at St. Andrews spread grandly, the cream brick building at this distance like a castle in a fairy tale. We zoomed through Robbinston, a bayside settlement consisting of a Grange hall, a boat landing, several churches, two motels, and a cluster of houses pulled up tightly to the road as if eager to observe whoever went by. A pickup hauling a boat trailer backed expertly toward the water as we passed, the driver casually turning the wheel with one hand.
    “What’s Walter Henderson got to do with it?” I asked. Jemmy was not, I noticed, carrying any kind of bag, which meant he’d gotten out of wherever he’d been last with just the clothes he was wearing; ye gods.
    He examined his fingernails. Ahead the road widened and improved, acquiring decent pavement and a discernible shoulder as we approached Calais, the nearest market town to Eastport.
    “Well,” he said at last, “Henderson’s got the contract. On me, that is. So I figured… ”
    To kill him, Jemmy meant. As punishment for stealing the money. “Walter Henderson?” I repeated, letting a surprise I didn’t feel creep into my tone.
    Jemmy didn’t know the identities of all my old clients back in the city. He nodded again as Ellie glanced significantly at me: so Henderson was a hit man. This to her would ordinarily have been big news all by itself. But…
    “Wait a minute.” I was still unsure I understood all of what Jemmy was telling me. “Just one contract? I thought whole squads of guys were after you.”
    “They were. Only the rest have all given up and gone on to other things. I have,” he added, “managed to collect pretty good info on that.” He grimaced. “Henderson, though. He’s a whole different breed of cat. He’s had subcontractors, bad guys in a whole bunch of different cities, beating the bushes.”
    Which was, I recalled, a technique for driving an animal into a trap. Jemmy saw me thinking this, smiled wanly at me with his surgically altered face.
    “So anyway, now you’re here.” Ellie’s tone conveyed just how welcome he was in her opinion; i.e., not very.
    “Yeah. And if you want to know the truth, I’m in kind of a fix.”
    “The mind,” she agreed acidly, “boggles.”
    Mine certainly did. It had been a long time since I’d had to take seriously any similar situation, up close and personal. Back in the city sometimes a guy would visit my office wanting to put all his possessions in his family’s name, and by the way could I sign him up for a brand-new, hideously expensive life insurance policy, too?
    Not worried about the size of the premiums, usually paying the first one right across my desk in cash. That’s when I’d know I wasn’t going to see the guy again, and pretty soon nobody else would either.
    And that the guy knew it, too. I stared at Jemmy, who made a silent “what can you do?” shrug but didn’t elaborate.
    After a few more miles, Ellie took the unmarked turn onto the lake road, which devolved in a hundred yards to rutted gravel and finally to dirt. While we bumped between trees barely budded into pale springtime nubbins, I found my voice.
    “But he’s expecting you here, Jemmy. He must be.” Because I was here. And wherever I was, Jemmy always showed up