Chapter One
It was an overcast late November morning, the grass splintered by
hoarfrost, and winter grinning through the gaps in the clouds like a bad
clown peering through the curtains before the show begins. The city was
slowing down. Soon the cold would hit hard, and, like an animal, Portland
had stored its fat for the long months ahead. There were tourist dollars
in the bank; enough, it was hoped, to tide everyone over until Memorial
Day. The streets were quieter than they once were. The locals, who
coexisted sometimes uneasily with the leaf peepers and outlet shoppers,
now had their home almost to themselves once more. They claimed their
regular tables in diners and coffee shops, in restaurants and bars. There
was time to pass idle conversation with waitresses and chefs, the
professionals no longer run ragged by the demands of customers whose names
they did not know. At this time of year, it was possible to feel the true
rhythm of the small city, the slow beating of its heart untroubled by the
false stimulus of those who came from away.
I was sitting at a corner table in the Porthole, eating bacon and fried
potatoes and not watching Kathleen Kennedy and Stephen Frazier talking
about the secretary of state’s surprise visit to Iraq. There was no sound
from the TV, which made ignoring it a whole lot easier. A stove fire
burned next to the window overlooking the water, the masts of the fishing
boats bobbed and swayed in the morning breeze, and a handful of people
occupied the other tables, just enough to create the kind of welcoming
ambience that a breakfast venue required, for such things rely on a subtle
balance.
The Porthole still looked like it did when I was growing up, perhaps even
as it had since it first opened in 1929. There were green-marbled linoleum
tiles on the floor, cracked here and there but spotlessly clean. A long,
wooden counter, topped with copper, stretched almost the entire length of
the room, its black-cushioned metal stools anchored to the floor, the
counter dotted with glasses, condiments, and two glass plates of freshly
baked muffins. The walls were painted light green, and if you stood up,
you could peer into the kitchen through the twin serving hatches divided
by a painted “Scallops” sign. A chalkboard announced the day’s specials,
and there were five beer taps serving Guinness, a few Allagash and
Shipyard ales, and, for those who didn’t know any better, or who did and
just didn’t give a rat’s ass, Coors Light. There were buoys hanging from
the walls, which in any other dining establishment in the Old Port might
have come across as kitsch but here were simply a reflection of the fact
that this was a place frequented by locals who fished. One wall was almost
entirely glass, so even on the dullest of mornings the Porthole appeared
to be flooded with light.
In the Porthole you were always aware of the comforting buzz of
conversation, but you could never quite hear all of what anyone nearby was
saying, not clearly. This morning about twenty people were eating,
drinking, and easing themselves into the day the way Mainers will do. Five
workers from the Harbor Fish Market sat in a row at the bar, all dressed
identically in blue jeans, hooded tops, and baseball caps, laughing and
stretching in the warmth, their faces bitten red by the elements. Beside
me, four businessmen had cell phones and notepads interspersed with their
white coffee mugs, making out as if they were working but, from the
occasional snatches that drifted over to me and could be understood,
seemingly more interested in singing the praises of Pirates coach Kevin
Dineen. Across from them, two women, a mother and daughter, were having
one of those discussions that required a lot of hand gestures and shocked
expressions. They looked as if they were having a ball.
I liked the Porthole. The tourists don’t come here much, certainly not in
winter, and even in summer they hadn’t tended to disturb the balance much
until someone strung a banner over Wharf Street advertising the fact that
there was more to this seemingly unpromising stretch of waterfront than
met the eye: Boone’s Seafood Restaurant, the Harbor Fish Market, the
Comedy Connection, and the Porthole itself. Even that hadn’t exactly led
to an onslaught. Banner or no banner, the Porthole didn’t scream the fact
of its existence, and a battered soda sign and a fluttering flag were the
only actual indication of its presence visible from the main drag of
Commercial. In a sense, you kind of needed to know that it was there to
see it in the first place, especially on dark winter mornings, and any
lingering tourists walking along Commercial at the start of a bitter Maine
winter’s day needed to have a pretty good idea of where they were headed
if they were going to make it to spring with their health intact. Faced
with a bracing nor’easter, few had the time or the inclination to explore
the hidden corners of the city.
Still, off-season travelers sometimes made their way past the fish market
and the comedy club, their feet echoing solidly on the old wood of the
boardwalk that bordered the wharf to the left, and found themselves at the
Porthole’s door, and it was a good bet that the next time they came to
Portland, they would head straight for the Porthole again, but maybe they
wouldn’t tell too many of their friends about it because it was the kind
of place that you liked to keep to yourself. There was a deck outside
overlooking the water, where people could sit and eat in summer, but in
winter they removed the tables and left the deck empty. I think I liked it
better in winter. I could take a cup of coffee in hand and head out, safe
in the knowledge that most folks preferred to drink their coffee inside
where it was warm, and that I wasn’t likely to be disturbed by anyone. I
would smell the salt, and feel the sea breeze on my skin, and if the wind
and the weather were right, the scent would remain with me for the rest of
the morning. Mostly, I liked that scent. Sometimes, if I was feeling bad,
I didn’t care so much for it, because the taste of the salt on my lips
reminded me of tears, as if I had recently tried to kiss away another’s
pain. When that happened, I thought of Rachel, and of Sam, my daughter.
Often, too, I thought of the wife and daughter who had gone before them.
Days like that were silent days.
But today I was inside, and I was wearing a jacket and tie. The tie was a
deep red Hugo Boss, the jacket Armani, yet nobody in Maine ever paid much
attention to labels. Everyone figured that if you were wearing it, then
you’d bought it at a discount, and if you hadn’t and had paid ticket
instead, then you were an idiot.
I hadn’t paid ticket.
The front door opened, and a woman entered. She was wearing a black
pantsuit and a coat that had probably cost her a lot when she bought it
but was now showing its age. Her hair was black, but colored with
something that lent it a hint of red. She looked a little surprised by her
surroundings, as though, having made her way down past the battered
exteriors of the wharf buildings, she had expected to be mugged by
pirates. Her eyes alighted on me and her head tilted quizzically. I raised
a finger, and she made her way through the tables to where I sat. I rose
to meet her, and we shook hands.
“Mr. Parker?” she said.
“Ms. Clay.”
“I’m sorry I’m late. There was an accident on the bridge. The traffic was
backed up a ways.”
Rebecca Clay had called me the day before, asking if I might be able to
help her with a problem she was having. She was being stalked, and, not
surprisingly, she didn’t much care for it. The cops had been able to do
nothing. The man, she said, seemed almost to sense their coming, because
he was always gone by the time they arrived, no matter how stealthily they
approached the vicinity of her house when she reported his presence.
I had been doing as much general work as I could get, in part to keep my
mind off the absence of Rachel and Sam. We had been apart, on and off, for
about nine months. I’m not even sure how things had deteriorated so badly,
and so quickly. It seemed like one minute they were there, filling the
house with their scents and their sounds, and the next they were leaving
for Rachel’s parents’ house, but, of course, it wasn’t like that at all.
Looking back, I could see every turn in the road, every dip and curve,
that had led us to where we now were. It was supposed to be a temporary
thing, a chance for both of us to consider, to take a little time out from
each other and try to recall what it was about the other person with whom
we shared our life that was so important to us we could not live without
it. But such arrangements are never temporary, not really. There is a
sundering, a rift that occurs, and even if an accommodation is reached,
and a decision made to try again, the fact that one person left the other
is never really forgotten, or forgiven. That makes it sound like it was
her fault, but it wasn’t. I’m not sure that it was mine either, not
entirely. She had to make a choice, and so did I, but her choice was
dependent upon the one that I made. In the end, I let them both go, but in
the hope that they would return. We still talked, and I could see Sam
whenever I wanted to, but the fact that they were over in Vermont made
that a little difficult. Distances notwithstanding, I was careful about
visiting, and not just because I didn’t want to complicate an already
difficult situation. I took care because I still believed that there were
those who would hurt them to get at me. I think that was why I let them
leave. It’s so hard to remember now. The last year had been … difficult. I
missed them a great deal, but I did not know either how to bring them back
into my life, or how to live with their absence. They had left a void in
my existence, and others had tried to take their place, the ones who
waited in the shadows.
The first wife, and the first daughter.
I ordered coffee for Rebecca Clay. A beam of morning sunlight shone
mercilessly upon her, exposing the lines in her face, the gray seeping
into her hair despite the color job, the dark patches beneath her eyes.
Some of that was probably due to the man she claimed was bothering her,
but it was clear that much of it had deeper origins. The troubles of her
life had aged her prematurely. From the way her makeup had been applied,
hurriedly and heavily, it was possible to guess that here was a woman who
didn’t like looking in the mirror for too long, and who didn’t like what
she saw staring back at her when she did.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before,” she said. “Portland has
changed so much these last few years, it’s a wonder that this place has
survived.”
She was right, I supposed. The city was changing, but older, quirkier
remnants of its past somehow contrived to remain: used bookstores, and
barbershops, and bars where the menu never changed because the food had
always been good, right from the start. That was why the Porthole had
survived. Those who knew about it valued it, and made sure to pass a
little business its way whenever they could.
Her coffee arrived. She added sugar, then stirred it for too long.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Clay?”
She stopped stirring, content to begin speaking now that the conversation
had been started for her.
“It’s like I told you on the phone. A man has been bothering me.”
“Bothering you how?”
“He hangs around outside my house. I live out by Willard Beach. I’ve seen
him in Freeport too, or when I’ve been shopping at the mall.”
“Was he in a car, or on foot?”
“On foot.”
“Has he entered your property?”
“No.”
“Has he threatened you, or physically assaulted you in any way?”
“No.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Just over a week.”
“Has he spoken to you?”
“Only once, two days ago.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me that he was looking for my father. My daughter and I live in
my father’s old house now. He said he had some business with him.”
“How did you respond to that?”
“I told him that I hadn’t seen my father in years. I told him that, as far
as I was aware, my father was dead. In fact, since earlier this year he’s
been legally dead. I went through all of the paperwork. I didn’t want to,
but I suppose it was important to me, and to my daughter, that we finally
achieved some kind of closure.”
“Tell me about your father.”
“He was a child psychiatrist, a good one. He worked with adults too,
sometimes, but they had usually suffered some kind of trauma in childhood
and felt that he could help them with it. Then things started to change
for him. There was a difficult case: a man was accused of abuse by his son
in the course of a custody dispute. My father felt that the allegations
had substance, and his findings led to custody being granted to the
mother, but the son subsequently retracted his accusations and said that
his mother had convinced him to say those things. By then it was too late
for the father. Word had leaked out about the allegations, probably from
the mother. He lost his job and got beaten up pretty badly by some men in
a bar. He ended up shooting himself dead in his bedroom. My father took it
badly, and there were complaints filed about his conduct of the original
interviews with the boy. The Board of Licensure dismissed them, but after
that my father wasn’t asked to conduct any further evaluations in abuse
cases. It shook his confidence, I think.”
“When was this?”
“About six years ago, maybe a little more. It got worse after that.” She
shook her head in apparent disbelief at the memory. “Even talking about
it, I realize how crazy it all sounds. It was just a mess.” She looked
around to reassure herself that nobody was listening, then lowered her
voice a little. “It emerged that some of my father’s patients were
sexually abused by a group of men, and there were questions asked again
about my father’s methods and his reliability. My father blamed himself
for what happened. Other people did too. The Board of Licensure summoned
him to appear for an initial informal meeting to discuss what had
happened, but he never made it. He drove out to the edge of the North
Woods, abandoned his car, and that was the last anyone ever saw or heard
of him. The police looked for him, but they never found any trace. That
was in late September 1999.”
Clay. Rebecca Clay.
“You’re Daniel Clay’s daughter?”
She nodded. Something flashed across her face. It was an involuntary
spasm, a kind of wince. I knew a little about Daniel Clay. Portland is a
small place, a city in name only. Stories like Daniel Clay’s tended to
linger in the collective memory. I didn’t know too many of the details,
but like everyone else I’d heard the rumors. Rebecca Clay had summarized
the circumstances of her father’s disappearance in the most general terms,
and I didn’t blame her for leaving out the rest: the whispers that Dr.
Daniel Clay might have known about what was happening to some of the
children with whom he was dealing, the possibility that he might have
colluded in it, might even have engaged in abuse himself. There had been
an investigation of sorts, but there were records missing from his office,
and the confidential nature of his vocation made it difficult to follow up
leads. There was also the absence of any solid evidence against him, but
that didn’t stop people from talking and drawing their own conclusions.
I looked closer at Rebecca Clay. Her father’s identity made her appearance
a little easier to understand. I imagined that she kept herself to
herself. There would be friends, but not many. Daniel Clay had cast a
shadow upon his daughter’s life, and she had wilted under its influence.
“So you told this man, the one who’s been stalking you, that you hadn’t
seen your father for a long time. How did he react?”
“He tapped the side of his nose and winked.” She replicated the gesture
for me. “Then he said, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire.’ He told me that he’d
give me some time to think about what I was saying. After that, he just
walked away.”
“Why would he call you a liar? Did he give any indication that he might
know something more about your father’s disappearance?”
“No.”
“And the police haven’t been able to trace him?”
“He melts away. I think they believe I’m making up stories to get
attention, but I’m not. I wouldn’t do that. I -”
I waited.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The Unquiet
by John Connolly
Copyright © 2007 by John Connolly .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Atria
Copyright © 2007
John Connolly
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9893-3
