Hemlock Bay

Aaron could see. He had his cell phone out, calling for backup, calling for an ambulance. And Aaron realized that his fingers looked normal. He thought he’d seen them burned, just like he’d seen Possner burned.

    • Savich was running, searching through the streets. There weren’t that many folk around, no tourists at all, it being fall and much too chilly for beach walks in Bar Harbor. He held his SIG at his side and made a grid in his mind. He’d studied the street layout. Where would she go? Where had she come from?
    Then he saw her long, dark blue wool coat, thick and heavy, flapping around a corner just half a block up Wescott. He nearly ran down an old man, apologized but didn’t slow. He ran, holding his SIG Sauer against his side, hearing only his own breathing. He ran around the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. The alley was empty except for that thick wool coat. It lay in a collapsed pile against a brick wall at the back of the alley.
    Where was she? He saw the narrow, wooden door, nearly invisible along the alley wall. When he got to it, he realized it was locked. He raised his SIG Sauer and fired into the lock. Two bullets dead on and the door shattered. He was inside, crouched low, his gun steady, sweeping the space. It was very dim, one of the naked bulbs overhead, burned out. He blinked to adjust his vision and knew he was in grave danger. If Tammy was hidden in here, she could easily see his silhouette against the streetlight behind him and could nail him.
    He realized he was in a storeroom. There were barrels lining the walls, shelves filled with boxes and cans, paper goods. The floor was wooden and it creaked. The place was really old. It was dead quiet, not even any rats around. He swept over the room, hurrying because he didn’t believe she’d stayed in here, no, she’d go through the door at the far end of the storeroom. It just wasn’t in Tammy’s nature to hide and wait.
    He opened the door and stared into a bright, sunlit dining room filled with a late-lunch crowd. He saw a kitchen behind a tall counter on the far side of the dining room, smoke from the range rising into the vents, exits to the left leading to bathrooms, and a single front door that led out to the sidewalk. He stepped into the room. He smelled roast beef and garlic. And fresh bread.
    Slowly the conversations thinned out, then stopped completely, everyone gaping at the man who was in a cop stance, swinging a gun slowly around the room, looking desperate, looking like he wanted to kill someone. A woman screamed. A man yelled, “Here, now!”
    “What’s going on here?”
    This last was from a huge man with crew-cut white hair, a white apron stained with spaghetti sauce, coming around the kitchen counter to Savich’s left, carrying a long, curved knife. The smell of onions wafted off the knife blade.
    “Hey, fellow, is this a holdup?”
    Savich slowly lowered his gun. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, just couldn’t believe that he’d come through a dank storeroom into a café and scared a good twenty people nearly to death. Slowly, he reholstered his gun. He pulled out his FBI shield, walked to the man with the knife, stopped three feet away, and showed it to him. He said in a loud voice, “I’m sorry to frighten everyone. I’m looking for a woman.” He raised his voice so every diner in the big room could hear. “She’s mid-twenties, tall, light hair, very pale. She has only one arm. Did she come in here? Through the storeroom door, just like I did?”
    There were no takers. Savich checked the bathrooms, then realized Tammy was long gone. She might have remained hidden in the storeroom, knowing he’d feel such urgency he’d burst into the café. He apologized to the owner and walked out the front door.
    In that moment, standing on the Bar Harbor sidewalk, Savich could swear that he heard a laugh—a low, vicious laugh that made the hair on his arms stand up. There was no one there, naturally. He felt so impotent, so completely lost that he was hearing her in his mind.
    Savich walked slowly back to Hamlet’s Pics. When he got there, he stood a moment outside the shop, incredulous. There’d been mayhem when he’d burst out of there. But now there were no cop cars, no ambulance, no fire engines. Everything was quiet, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary.
    He walked into the photo shop. There were three agents standing on the far side of the shop just staring down, talking quietly