Folly

by Laurie R. King

“Without a boat of my own, it would have been difficult. Would you like another drink?” Both glasses were empty.

  “Better not. Two’s more than I usually have in a day.”

  “Coffee, then? You know, I really don’t know if I can call you … that name. It’s just too weird for me.”

  “A lot of people call me Mike, from my last name.”

  “Mike. Michael okay?”

  “Sure. And I would kill for a cup of coffee. It’s one of the things I can’t risk, down in the cave. Any odor that stands out against the smell of seaweed, I have to avoid.”

  As Rae was filling the kettle, she suddenly chuckled. “You know the joke about Adam naming the animals?” Allen/Michael shook his head.

  “Well, it’s not really very funny. But anyway, Adam is sitting there in the Garden of Eden naming the animals. God’s bringing each one and Adam takes a look and says, ‘I’ll call this one a parrot, and that one’s a tiger, the next one’s called a giraffe.’ God is waiting for Adam to find Eve, you see, to choose another creature he wants to spend his life with, and Adam just keeps on inventing these names—porcupine, cat, rhinoceros. So the day’s wearing on, God is getting a little impatient, and Adam’s names are getting more and more outlandish—guppy, he says, platypus, hippopotamus—and finally God’s getting tired of the whole thing, and when He brings in this weird-looking animal and Adam says, ‘Aardvark,’ God just explodes. ‘Why on earth are you giving My creatures these bizarre names?’ He shouts. ‘No one will ever respect an animal with a name like aardvark.’ ‘Well,’ says Adam, who’s pretty fed up with the whole thing himself, having spent the day expecting a wife and getting all these damned animals instead, ‘what would You name it?’ And God says, ‘How about Mike?’”

  Rae looked at Allen and Allen looked at Rae, and Allen spoke first, his face straight but twitching. “You’re absolutely right. The joke’s not really very funny.”

  They collapsed simultaneously into howls of laughter, sweeping away the last dregs of tension.

  “No,” Rae admitted eventually, “but it’s appropriate.” She turned to pour the steaming water onto the coffee grounds, and the aroma filled the air.

  “So what, you want to call me Aardvark?”

  “Now there’s a thought,” she replied. “What do you take in your—”

  But he was not to get any coffee that night. A powerful engine that neither of them had noticed was coming into the cove; the sound cut through the easy camaraderie like an axe. There was a quick scurry from the other side of the fire pit, and Rae turned to find Allen Carmichael vanished into thin air; only the gentle rising of the canvas seat betrayed his existence. For the first time, Rae called his name; the sound of footsteps on the other side of the tent halted.

  “Look,” she said to the shadows, “you’re welcome to use the cave, and anything else on the island you need. I won’t say anything to your brother. In fact, let me know if I can help, if you need money or something.”

  “Thank you,” came his low voice. “I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks. I’ll let you know when I get back.”

  “Good luck,” she told the tent wall.

  “Hide the glass I was using,” he ordered, and with a scrabble of his boots on the hillside, Folly’s ghost was gone.

  Vibram soles, she noted to herself. She missed him already.

  She picked up his glass from the tree-stump table and put it on the ground behind the corner of the tent, then lit the lamp again. As she walked down to the dock with it to see what had brought Jerry Carmichael to her island at eleven-thirty at night, she found she was humming. It took her a moment to identify the tune, and when she did, she shook her head at herself: “Someone to Watch Over Me” …

  At least Jerry hadn’t brought flowers. And he was in uniform, although it was clear even by the light of a kerosene lamp that his clothing lacked its customary crisp polish.

  “You look like you’ve had a long day,” she told him.

  “Very long. Sorry it’s so late—I took a chance you’d still be up, and when I saw your fire going I thought it’d be okay. Bobby Gustafsen decided to break up a fight by himself last night, got stabbed in the arm. He’ll be fine, but I got the call at two in the morning, and that’s when my day began. So yeah, it’s been a long one.” He collapsed into the chair that his brother had just so hastily vacated. The frame gave an alarming creak, but he stretched out his long legs toward the fire with a sigh, making himself at home. “Is that coffee I smell?”

  Startled, Rae glanced at the cooktop where the French press pot stood, its plunger still waiting. There were two cups next to it, but since there were three more lined up behind them, the intended use was not too glaring.

  “I felt like a cup,” she told him.

  “Looks like you felt like a whole pot.”

  “Well, you know how it is, you get in the habit of making certain quantities of things. My grandmother was incapable of making less than a gallon of potato salad, even when it was just for her and her husband.” You’re babbling, Rae, she cautioned herself sternly. “Sorry, but I don’t have any milk.”

  “I’ll have some sugar, if you have any. For the energy.”

  She handed him the tight-lidded tin of sugar and a clean spoon. “If you’ve had such a long day, what couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

  “I had a call this evening. Sam Escobar charged the two men you identified, and they’ve confessed.”

  “Oh, God, Jerry. What a relief. Oh, thank you for coming to tell me. Both of them?”

  “Both. And—maybe you should sit down for a minute.”

  “Why? What is it?” He just looked pointedly at the chair until she plunked down onto it, then he went on.

  “It wasn’t just the assault.”

  “What do you mean? What else was there?” She was going to strangle him in a minute, if he didn’t start talking.

  “Remember when you told me that you’d been hallucinating noises outside your house?”

  “And you said how did I know they were hallucinations, and I told you I knew.”

  “Well, maybe some of them were. But it was also these two. They’d been hanging around your place for a couple of weeks.”

  “Hanging arou—you mean, around the house itself? Jesus, how creepy! But why?”

  “That was what they were paid for, not the attempted … assault. To harass you at night, every night, till you were going nuts.”

  “It sure as hell worked,” Rae said, barely aware of what she was saying.

  “I’m afraid, however, that they couldn’t identify the man who hired them. He reached them at a bar phone, and he’d call them the same way every couple of days. They’d tell him what they’d done, what you were doing; he’d give them orders on what to do next. He paid them in cash, envelopes dropped and picked up, so they never even saw him. They stayed in a motel near the freeway, slept days, drove out and parked in a back road the guy told them about, hiked over the ridge to your house. In the dark—one of them was fed up with that side of it, and was about to quit when the voice on the phone told them they could finish up the job in one more trip.”

  He was watching her closely to gauge her reaction; but the possibilities this revelation opened up were too enormous to grasp all at once. She felt a moan building in her throat, swallowed it down, and asked a more or less random question that might have concerned someone else entirely.

  “What… what exactly did he tell them to do then?”

  “They were to hurt you, but not badly, and it wasn’t to look like you’d been beaten up, but maybe like you fell down. Mostly he wanted them to frighten you. Terrify you. That’s what he was after.”

  Not to rape me? she thought.

  Were there no imaginary Watchers, then? Rae asked herself in wonder. None at all? My Watchers and the two men on the road that day, one and the same, equally real and solid? All the Watching eyes and the footsteps? All that time, in the house, along the road, in the night…?

  No, she d
ecided, reluctant but sure. Uh-uh; not possible.

  “He paid them two thousand bucks each,” Jerry went on. “He promised them double that, but he never called back with the directions for picking up the last payment. Escobar’s trying to work backward to find how the guy got ahold of them in the first place, how he knew they’d be willing. It’s going to take a while.”

  It was going to take a while for Rae to work out the meaning of this to her, as well. One thing she knew, though, beyond a doubt: Some of those Watchers had indeed been no more corporeal than the shift of synapses in her brain. But to think that there were other, actual live bodies tapping on her windows and walking across her deck … After the initial shock, she began to feel giddy with relief. She was not insane—or yes, she was, but perhaps not as dreadfully out of touch with reality as she and everyone else had assumed.

  The sheriff was staring at her with an expectant and worried expression; Rae roused herself. “Sorry, what did you just say, Jerry?”

  “I said, we have to face the fact that the man behind this is still out there. I think you should move into Roche Harbor for a while, at night anyway.”

  She scrubbed at her numb face for a minute, then looked up at him. “Are you saying that as a sheriff, or as a friend?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, then paused. When he started to speak again, Rae could see what his answer was going to be, by the abashed look he wore.

  “I guess I just don’t like the idea of your being out here all alone.”

  “In other words, there’s no reason to believe that this nameless … what do you call it? Stalker? That he hasn’t crawled back into his hole? Are people on San Juan still getting phone calls asking about me?”

  “No, not in a couple of weeks.”

  “And there’s no rumors about people asking for thugs-for-hire in a bar on Orcas, no sudden appearance of strange men with ominous bulges under their left arms?”

  “It’s not funny, Rae. Don’t joke about it.”

  She suddenly felt unutterably weary, as though the last three days had turned into a steamroller that was in the process of slowly running her down. Airports filled with strangers and the close-up face of a would-be rapist, a smashed house and a smuggler of abused children, to be crazy and then not crazy—one more thing, and her brain would explode. “What else can I do, Jerry? What the fuck else can I do? We’ve been through all this before. You’ve got no evidence there’s anyone out there, have you? Jerry, I’ve been dealing with bumps in the night since you were playing with cap guns. I can’t handle someone else’s paranoia as well as my own.” Go away, Jerry, she thought. Leave me alone. She wanted nothing but to sleep for a week, even if some faceless Watcher crept up and murdered her while she slept. “Unless you’re keeping something from me, it sounds suspiciously like paranoia.”

  “No,” the sheriff admitted. “I don’t have any evidence that you have an active stalker.”

  The defeat in his voice roused her. “Jerry, you could well be right. There could be someone after me. Like the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean the world isn’t out to get you.” God, Rae, you’re just full of awful jokes tonight. “If you come up with something firm, I promise I’ll listen. Hell, I probably won’t sleep for a week anyway, and we’ll be lucky if I don’t shoot off the flare gun every ten minutes. But as far as my safety goes, I’m better off here than in Roche Harbor. You yourself said it’s nearly impossible to sneak up on me here.” And Petra’s safety? her treacherous mind asked. She refused to think about that.

  “Okay,” he said, throwing up his hands. “But we’re going to step up surveillance, so don’t be surprised if you see a lot of county boats around and get buzzed by floatplanes from time to time.”

  “Fine. Whatever you like. And, Jerry? Thanks. You’re a friend.”

  She had intended nothing more than a heartfelt thank-you, and that was precisely what Jerry heard: nothing more. He rose heavily to his feet and gazed down at her, his half-shadowed face looking older than that of his brother.

  A day ago, she might well have reached for him, might have taken him to bed, good sense be damned; tonight he was a friend, and nothing more.

  Rae saw his hurt. On top of his long day and her refusal to be coddled, she couldn’t bear leaving it at that; she blurted out the first impulsive thing that came to mind.

  “Nikki loves you, Jerry.”

  The big man reared back, as startled as if she had jumped at him.

  Rae blundered on, laying it on thick. “Age doesn’t matter, Jerry. Previous family ties shouldn’t stand in the way. She needs you, and she really, really loves you. It’s hurting her that you don’t see it. And Caleb adores you. Give it a chance.”

  His mouth opened and closed a few times, with no sound. The poor man didn’t know what hit him, Rae saw; his only response was to turn and retreat back to his boat, leaving Rae to her revelations.

  Which was worse: imaginary Watchers or real ones? Knowing that at least some of the bumps in the night had been real was both vastly reassuring and frankly terrifying. Any number of times during the night she found herself wishing that Jerry had just cuffed her to his boat and dragged her off the island.

  On the other hand, her knowledge did not actually change anything. She had known for a while that someone had been out to harass her, she just hadn’t known the scope of that harassment. And she still had no doubt that some of her demons were imaginary, even if others were not. So although things were different, things were also much the same. And she still had just as much work to get through as she had before Jerry arrived with his earthshaking tidbit.

  Seven days now before the descent of her daughter’s sharp-eyed, suspicious, and litigious family, and Rae threw herself into her labors. She kept the eyes in the back of her head fully open at all times, she slept fitfully, aware of every crackle and creak, and she never left her gun farther away than the bedside table next to her pillow. Engines approached with regularity, planes dipped overhead. It didn’t take long to figure out that only some of those vehicles were owned by the county, and the thought that she had been made a ward of the entire population infuriated her, until Jerry, on one of his near-daily visits, assured her that those in the know were few and discreet. After that, she tried her best to ignore the mechanical intrusions, or sang aloud the old song that had come to mind following Allen’s visit—except that, with the boats and planes, the words “watch over me” took on a strong flavor of irony.

  Jerry and Nikki came to see her on Monday, bringing Caleb with them, now that school was out for the summer. Rae said nothing about the coincidence of the sheriff and ranger’s having a day off together but, watching closely, she caught subtle changes in the glances Jerry cast on Nikki—he was less certain of himself, almost shy. She allowed her visitors to help out by building a shower cubicle from odd bits of wood and helping her connect the propane water heater to the shower line, then she sent them on their way. Later that night, glowing and content after a deliciously hot shower, Rae sat on her beach and listened to the neighbors across the strait drumming up the full moon. How long would it be before Nikki had Jerry Carmichael drumming with the others on that beach?

  On Tuesday night, Rae finished her stairway. It was rough still—bare feet would not be a good idea in any part of the house—and it lacked a handrail, but it was sturdy, and it had the bones of beauty. Rae’s two floors were now linked.

  Finally, on Thursday morning, the day of reckoning dawned. Several fretful hours later, Ed De la Torre arrived to take Rae to Friday Harbor.

  All the way over, two refrains throbbed through her mind. The phrases from Desmond’s diary—My brother comes tomorrow … the thought of seeing his face—alternated with Pam Church’s: Are you nuts? Asking for trouble. Over and over again. Ed spoke little, sensing her turmoil if not fully understanding its source. Her face was shuttered, and she would only pray it remained that way when Don came off the ferry (seeing his face … terrible dread). For ever
yone’s sake, she had to stay calm and aloof when she clasped the snake to her metaphorical bosom.

  She and Ed were half an hour early at the town. Rae hung around the terminus and nervously drank bad coffee until the ferry docked; then she grimly went forward to meet the Collins family on the pedestrian bridge. Petra was dressed in full-flowering grunge, from black-dyed hair to black-painted fingernails, but she flung her arms around Rae as if she were a gingham-clad child of six. Tamara presented her mother with a cool cheek, and shifted her suitcase into the other hand. Rae looked back up the walkway.

  “Where’s Don?” she asked, when it became obvious they weren’t waiting for a third passenger.

  “It’s a long story,” Tamara said with a glance at Petra.

  Rae took the hint and subsided, but it was with a stir of hope in her heart that she escorted her daughter and granddaughter to Ed’s waiting boat, and to Folly Island.

  Fifty-two

  Desmond Newborn’s

  Journal

  May 29, 1927

  A roof, boys, a roof! With the closing in of the roof over my head it all comes full circle. I have fashioned myself a cave, I have made a shelter of stone and tree that both protects me and cuts me off from the firmament of the heavens. I stand apart from God’s other creatures; I am a man again, a member (however solitary) of the community of house dwellers, no longer a creature of the woods and hills. I sit by my fire and warm my stockinged toes with no concern for rain dripping down the back of my neck, and I laugh at the misery of the lesser creatures outside my door.

  This untoward happiness makes me uneasy. The soldier who lets his guard down is the soldier who gets a bullet between the eyes. Even behind the front there are unexploded shells, buildings waiting to collapse, booby-trapped rooms.

  But I will push the unease away, because I am safely wrapped in stone and wood. I have rejoined the human race, and I find myself looking around for companionship, thinking: I need to hold a party.