The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  “Everyone’s gone missing,” Rafferty said, mostly to himself. Two in one month, that was strange enough, but it wasn’t difficult to see that these two were connected. Eva had helped Angela more than once, giving her food and sometimes shelter. And Eva was the one whom Angela went to when she got herself in trouble. At least that’s what she’d done the last time. That time Eva had sent her out to the shelter, to May. And Cal had hated Eva for it. Actually, Cal hated Eva for a lot of things.

  “Strange year,” Ann said. “You’re not allergic to cats, are you?”

  “Just dogs,” he said.

  “Sit.” Ann gave the command as if speaking to a dog.

  Rafferty couldn’t help smiling. He liked Ann and her sense of humor. It was subtle most of the time, and most of the time people didn’t get it at all. Rafferty moved a third cat out of the way and took a seat.

  “You filed this?” Rafferty held up the folder. Ann was the one who had filed the missing-persons report on Angela, if you could call it that. It was more of an “I haven’t seen her around the docks lately” report, a general sounding of the alarm. Angela had disappeared before, about six months ago, after being beaten by the Calvinists. She had gone back to them voluntarily, and against everyone’s better judgment.

  Angela fit the profile of a kid who would end up in a cult. She was sixteen, a dropout, and a runaway. Definitely fucked up. Probably abused early on. Anything that promised any kind of safety or salvation would be seen as the perfect fix for a kid like that.

  The thing that stood out most to Rafferty wasn’t who had filed the report about Angela but who hadn’t. The last time Angela took off, the Calvinists had called the station every day, accusing the witches first and then Eva of kidnapping Angela. Rafferty’s friend Roberta, who worked at Winter Island, had told him that Angela had been thinking of moving on, maybe to warmer climes.

  “I heard she was thinking of heading south,” Rafferty said.

  “South? Yeah, I guess so, if you consider Eva’s boathouse south.” Ann pointed out the window. “She’s been staying there for the last few weeks. Hiding there, actually, I’d say. She just came out at night. Did a little Dumpster diving behind Victoria Station, from what I hear. I only found out because I caught her picking tomatoes out of my pots over there.”

  “Jesus,” Rafferty said.

  “I started leaving things in the pot for her. Fast food. Healthier stuff when I could find time to cook. I feel sorry for her. She’s a good kid.”

  “Why didn’t she come to me?”

  Ann just looked at him. “Right.”

  “Or go to the shelter at least.”

  “Her eye was black when I saw her. She had bruises all the way down the side of her face. She made me promise not to tell anyone I’d seen her.”

  Rafferty nodded. May was right. She should have stayed on the island. He should have made sure she stayed rather than letting her return to Cal and his group.

  “You couldn’t have stopped her.” Ann knew what he was thinking. “And she hated Yellow Dog Island.”

  Rafferty shivered.

  “I couldn’t live out there,” Ann said. “Milking cows, growing flax. I’m as crunchy granola as they come, but I couldn’t do it.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Three days ago. She was on the docks that night, and I was open late. I saw her walking down toward Shetland Park. Sometimes she used to sit on the rocks over there. But the Calvinists were down on the docks that night. Proselytizing. Picking through the tourists, looking for new recruits.”

  “You think the Calvinists dragged her back?”

  “I don’t know what I think. She’s not at the boathouse. Maybe they dragged her back. Maybe they just scared her off. I don’t know. I don’t know why she didn’t file charges the first time they beat her up. I sure as hell would have.”

  “Food, shelter, lodging.” Rafferty’s list sounded like a highway sign.

  “What?”

  “Old story,” he said. “Power, dependence. If you add saving her soul, it’s the total package.” He had a really bad feeling about this. But nothing he felt like sharing. “Did Eva know she was staying at the boathouse?”

  “Eva gave her the key…after the last time she got herself beaten up.” Ann hesitated before saying the last part. It was a sore subject for him, and everybody knew it.

  Rafferty pulled the flashlight from his glove compartment. He left the cruiser double-parked in front of Ann’s shop and walked across Derby Wharf toward the boathouse.

  If Angela had left in a hurry, she had locked up as she went. Rafferty shone the light through the windows, but they had been boarded from the inside. He started down toward the dockside, where the boathouse faced the harbor. High tide. He scrambled over slippery pilings only to find the first-floor opening closed and boarded up. Without a Sawzall, the only place to get in was the wooden doorway to the second-story loft. He cursed a couple of times. Then he went back to the cruiser for a rope.

  Some boaters watched as Rafferty climbed the rope. There was applause as he reached the top, then more as he swung back and kicked through the loft door.

  It was dark in the little room above the boathouse. Rafferty trained the flashlight on each of the four corners. Somebody had been staying here all right. The place was a mess. Full of fast-food wrappers and old rat droppings. No big surprise there. The water rats on the wharf were as big as cats. They were a diverse population: Indian, Chinese, Caribbean rats whose lineage dated back at least three hundred years to a time when Salem imported goods from all over the world. The restaurant owners complained about them a couple of times each summer, but they were a hardy bunch.

  Rafferty scanned the room, noting everything: A wine bottle with a candle. Dusty. Candle burned out. An old pack of cigarettes stuck into a corner nook. Cot in the corner, unmade, covered by a faded Indian bedspread with a hole burned dead center.

  A sound echoed from downstairs. Rafferty turned. Shone the light. “Angela,” he said, “it’s me, John Rafferty.” No answer. He pointed the light down the stairs. Heard the lapping water. He started down the stairs into the full dark below, the flashlight scanning like a lighthouse beam, highlighting an old sailboat, an oarlock, an ancient Boston Whaler with a hole in its bow. He knocked a spiderweb aside, spit part of it out of his mouth, then spit again.

  The bottom stair was rotted, and it collapsed under his weight, sending him sprawling, throwing the flashlight out of his hands. He watched it roll crazily toward the water’s edge. He started to curse.

  The light caught a loose board nail and stopped rolling. Rafferty got to his feet, realized his hand was bleeding. He cursed again.

  Something smashed. The noise silenced him. Rafferty grabbed the light, spun around, and shone it toward the sound. The sound was coming from the water, or below the boathouse floor, he couldn’t tell which. He pointed the beam into the water along the far wall of the boathouse, revealing a small half-moon indentation just above the waterline. Tidal erosion, probably, but then he spotted a rat, the size of a small car, he thought—well maybe not a car, but it was huge. The rat looked back, and the beam of light caught his red eyes, and then he scrambled into the hole, which was not tidal erosion at all but a giant rat hole. His tail hung out for a second, then slithered snakelike into the hole and disappeared. “Enough,” Rafferty said, starting back up the stairs. Hard to believe that Yellow Dog Island was worse than this.

  Rafferty stood at the top of the loft window, looking out over the harbor. Jack’s boat was back in its slip; he could see the light on in the cabin. Jack was facedown on the bunk. Passed out, Rafferty thought, noting the empty bottle sidewise on the galley table. Then, for some reason, Rafferty looked toward the island and noticed the two lights, May’s signal. She might think she was moving someone tonight, but Rafferty knew better.

  He went out the way he’d come in. Not with the rope this time; he looped it up and tossed it down to the wharf before he jumped ou
t the window. High tide, he thought gratefully as he dropped into the cold black water, thankful he wasn’t going to smash himself to pieces on the rocks.

  Rafferty changed clothes, then stopped at the station to pick up the warrant, and finally headed over to see the Calvinists.

  Winter Island was at the mouth of Salem Harbor. The only thing beyond it was Salem Willows, where Rafferty lived. This was a different part of Salem, more island life than port city, a Victorian enclave set apart by a thin stretch of road that skirted the power plant with its huge pile of coal and the freighters that brought it into port.

  Winter Island faced the harbor and Derby Wharf and downtown on one side, open ocean on the other. It connected to the mainland by a small causeway. On the ocean side stood the Plummer Home for Boys. Imposing, Victorian style, it looked like an old hotel. One of Rafferty’s pigeons had grown up there. That’s what they called the newcomers in the AA program, pigeons. Because when you tried to help them out, they’d invariably shit all over you, then fly away. AA humor. Still, Rafferty’s latest pigeon was a good enough kid, and Rafferty had taken him under his wing—no pun intended—because the kid had asked him to, and you didn’t say no to a kid like that even if you knew how much trouble he was going to give you.

  The Plummer Home was an old mansion with arguably the best oceanfront location in town, so it wasn’t horrible by anybody’s standards, but it was still a place where unwanted kids ended up. Both brothers, Jay-Jay and Jack LaLibertie, had done a stint there after their mother died, when their father had taken off to work his traps up in Canada and didn’t bother to come back for almost a year. Those kids had turned out okay. At least Jay-Jay had. He was annoying as hell, but he was a good kid. Jack was another story. A drunk like his father, Jack had tried AA a number of times, but he just couldn’t stick with it.

  Jack LaLibertie had other problems besides the drink, not the least of which was what had happened with Towner Whitney. Like a lot of alcoholics, he had the victim role down. The old wound had never healed, and Jack kept picking at the scab, making it bleed and fester until, when it got bad enough, he would show up at a meeting drunk as hell and start ranting about Towner and what she did to him, as if the whole thing had happened just last week and not almost fifteen years ago. Obviously tonight had been one of those nights.

  But Rafferty didn’t want to think about tonight. He didn’t want to think about Jack LaLibertie or about his own failed date with Towner, if you could even call it that. Hell of a date. Home before ten. He would have laughed out loud if it weren’t so pathetic.

  Rafferty’s mind kept coming back to Angela. It was a bad situation all around. It had only been a question of time until something happened. He realized now that he’d been waiting for it. Rafferty couldn’t help wondering whether things would have been different for Angela if she had stayed at May’s place on Yellow Dog Island. Or if when she first came here she’d been able to stop one driveway sooner, if the Plummer House had been a home for unwanted kids and not just boys. Maybe Angela would be here now if she had been welcome there and hadn’t gone that one step further, to Winter Island, where Cal and his crazies were waiting to save her soul.

  Rafferty had a bad feeling about Angela. And apparently so had Eva. She’d been the one who called him when Angela had first taken up with the Calvinists. “Can’t you do something about this?” she asked. Rafferty knew her history with Cal Boynton. Eva had been Cal’s mother-in-law. She had reported him more than once for his abuse of her daughter, Emma. There was no love lost between Eva and Cal.

  Tonight Rafferty was very worried about Angela. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was really wrong. His cop’s instincts had always been spot-on, the exact opposite of his dating instincts.

  When Rafferty pulled into Winter Island Park, the revival meeting was still in full swing. He checked his watch a second time—10:47. Thirteen more minutes and he could shut them down for disturbing the peace. He’d done it before. Several times. Used to make a practice of it last summer if the weather was good. He’d take the cruiser over to the Willows and walk around, stopping to play a few games of pinball at the arcade and maybe get a chop suey sandwich. Then he’d come back to Winter Island and raid the place promptly at eleven o’clock. It worked for a while, until Cal got wise to it and bought himself a Rolex.

  Rafferty stopped at the guard shack and rolled down his window.

  Roberta opened the slider without looking up from her Cosmo. “Twenty-five dollars a day,” she said, still not looking up. “And yes, that includes the holiday.” She was reading an article entitled “Make His Summer Sizzle.”

  “Cash only,” she said, reluctantly closing the magazine.

  “Just put it on my tab,” Rafferty said.

  He watched her turn over the magazine so he wouldn’t see the cover.

  “Too late,” he said, laughing. “Busted.”

  She didn’t think it was funny. “I thought you were out on some date,” she said, not even trying to disguise her sarcasm.

  “Jesus,” Rafferty said, incredulous. “You gonna tell me what I ordered for dinner, too?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Roberta was wearing her new park uniform, with a white jersey top she had intentionally purchased one size too small. Her bleached-blond hair was spiked with gel, still growing out from a cut she’d tried to give herself one night a few months ago when she’d temporarily fallen off the wagon.

  He knew her from AA. She was one of the first people he’d met when he came to town, his first friend besides Eva. She had a thing for cops, she’d told him as they stood by the coffee machine. He’d poured a half inch of coffee, greasy black stuff that had been sitting way too long. The styrofoam cup shocked his teeth with static electricity as he brought it to his mouth. He made a face, then threw the whole thing into the trash and took a seat by himself in the back of the room, wondering how many other potential new friends he’d just managed to offend.

  The next meeting Roberta had brought him Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. He could see her losing her confidence even as she’d handed it to him. “Did I mess it up? You’re not a Starbucks snob, are you?”

  “No,” he’d said, laughing. He was worse than a Starbucks snob, but he didn’t tell her that. He didn’t even drink Starbucks coffee. Used to. Then, last year, his daughter had saved up her allowance and bought him a French press for Christmas, and now he couldn’t drink his coffee any other way.

  Still, Rafferty had appreciated the gesture. He’d taken the cup and thanked her, and he’d even gone out of his way to sit next to her, pretending to sip the coffee all through the meeting and taking the still-almost-full cup with him when he left.

  They’d gone out only a few times. Mostly because she’d done the asking. Rafferty was still new to town and lonely. He’d tried his best to turn it into friendship. In his favor, he’d never slept with her, though her bed would have been an easy one to fall into.

  “How was your vacation?” he asked her.

  “It pretty much sucked,” she said. “My mother backed out of babysitting, and my sister had to bring the kid.”

  Rafferty nodded. He’d never met her sister or the kid, but he’d heard her stories. She talked about her sister a lot at AA meetings. Not in a good way. Whenever Roberta fell off the wagon, it was usually after spending time with her sister.

  “So what are you doing here?” Roberta asked, partly curious, partly just annoyed. “You two didn’t hit it off?”

  “Angela Rickey has been reported missing.”

  “What? Again?”

  “You seen her?”

  “Contrary to popular opinion, I am not her keeper.”

  “I didn’t ask you to take her in again. I only asked if you’d seen her.”

  “Negative,” Roberta said, thinking about it. “Not for a while.”

  Roberta had told him very little about the few weeks Angela had stayed with her. Only that she’d gone back to the Calvinists. And good riddance. />
  “You didn’t see anyone fighting? Or hear anything unusual before she left?”

  “Define ‘unusual,’” she said.

  As if on cue, the wind pitched easterly and the screams echoed up from the deserted coast guard hangar where Cal was preaching. The sound of human agony chilled the already cooling air. What night was this? Thursday? Thursday was teen-exorcism night. It was a family outing, drawing crowds from as far away as Rhode Island. It was one of Cal’s most popular family events.

  And one of the noisiest. Evidently the demons didn’t depart from their teenage hosts without putting up a good fight, one that echoed across the parking lot and up out over the water, startling even the nesting gulls, who quickly relocated. Even the wind rejected the sound, trying to shift directions again, throwing itself in circles with its efforts, knocking things about wildly: an old metal sign, the limb of a dying tree. Finally it caught and grabbed the breeze that held the big brass-band music from the pavilion and blended the two sounds until it seemed as if John Philip Sousa had written a score to march the demons right out of their victims and blow them out to sea.

  Rafferty could just hear the calls coming in back at the station. Sound carried far over the water, even on a windy night like tonight. The townies were used to this by now. Most of the calls came from the summer people. Usually they thought it was some freaky tour that stayed open too late. Or one of the haunted houses. Rafferty had instructed the officer on duty to say, “We’ll take care of it,” or “We’ll look into it.” He had discovered from experience that telling callers the real source of the screaming did little to calm their already fraying nerves.

  “This is too weird,” one particularly perturbed woman had complained. “Can’t you people do anything?”

  Truth was, they couldn’t. As long as the services didn’t exceed the prescribed decibel level or continue past 10:00 P.M., the Calvinists were within their rights. The one time Rafferty had tried, Cal had countered by having his church members call the station six times to report a disturbance by a late-night folksinging traveler down on Winter Island’s Waikiki Beach who was trying to master Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages,” then, failing that, had moved on to several rousing choruses of “Kumbaya.”