A Hidden Clue
I didn’t mention Sauter’s call. But I did break the skeleton news as I served out the pesto tortellini. The kids were all fascinated by the mysterious bones.
“I knew the Coddingtons,” Jane said, digging in. “The mother and the aunt. I had the daughter Lizzy in a creative writing class I taught a few years ago. Sad girl. All her stories were about orphans adopted by pirates—”
“Ocean pirates or space pirates?” Tim interrupted.
“Sorry, they were boring old ocean pirates. She had one about a street urchin who turned out to be the daughter of some eccentric millionaire.”
“Sounds like Dickens,” I said.
“Except Dickens could write. She described a Nantucket blizzard as a ‘wild and wondrous winter wonderland of white.’”
I nodded. “Much better than those regular old winter wonderlands of white.”
“She had potential, though. I made her think of some specific detail and she said, ‘everything’s wearing a hat of snow. Even the garbage cans.’ Hey, it was a start.”
“Did you go out to Tuckernuck, Dad?” Caroline asked.
“Yeah, but we didn’t find anything.”
“Pressman’s stowing those drugs in plain sight somehow,” Jane said. We were camped out at the Darling Street house, surrounded by boxes of books and newspaper-wrapped dishes. The transitional chaos was confusing, but spirits were high. The kids loved the new house and seemed utterly blasé about moving in with Jane and her little boy. The only thing missing was a dog, but Tim and I had exhausted that topic on the way home from school. The problem was, he didn’t really want anything else for Christmas. I hated to play Scrooge, but I couldn’t afford to buy him a dog, the ones at the MSPCA looked weird and mangy, and I doubted our new landlord would appreciate having all those wide, soft-gloss white-pine boards scratched up by canine claws. Mike Henderson made it clear when he refinished a floor: “Dogs void the warranty.”
Everything else about the change of address looked good, and I wasn’t the outlier in this stage of divorce—Miranda had moved in with her fellow real estate broker, Joe Arbogast, more than a year ago, and they were talking about getting married, though it was still just talk. I had a huge advantage because the kids liked Jane and found Joe tedious at best. He was one of those salesmen who love to tell you that everything is about selling—even friendship, love, and child-rearing. “You gotta sell yourself,” he told me at some drunken party when Miranda first met him. If he was right, he was doing a bad job. My kids weren’t buying.
He treated his own son Jimmy with a ludicrous favoritism, teaching him how to make a sauce Béarnaise while he banished my kids from the kitchen. Jimmy got an eight-hundred-dollar bicycle for his birthday. My kids got socks. They didn’t care. They thought it was funny. And it certainly made Jane look good.
Tim liked her idea of Pressman hiding his drugs in plain sight. And I liked thinking about the small aneurism his mother would have if she heard us talking about drug trafficking at the dinner table. It was Miranda’s firm belief that if you didn’t talk about something, it ceased to exist. Expecting that trick to work with drugs on Nantucket was borderline crazy, like refusing to discuss coal dust in Kentucky.
“So, where would he put the drugs?” Tim asked now. He had finished his meal and taken out his hacky-sack bags. He had two of them going, but it was an accident waiting to happen
“Not at the table,” I said.
“Okay, sorry, I—aaakkk!”
One of the bags dropped into the middle of Caroline’s plate, scattering mesclun greens and salad dressing onto the table and into her lap.
“Shit!” she screeched. “What are you doing? What is wrong with you?! Omigod, you are such a useless little freak. You ruined my shirt! And my jeans! These are my favorite jeans.”
“I can get the stains out,” Jane said.
“It’s olive oil!”
“You just pre-treat it with dish soap and wash it in cold water. It’ll be fine. Come on, let’s get this stuff in the wash and get you changed.”
When they came back, Caroline was mollified, wearing a Regina Spektor sweatshirt that said, “I’m the hero of this story, I don’t need to be saved” and a pair of “destroyed” jeans—yes, you pay extra for the wear and tear. Jane had saved the day. Carrie was happy to take a slice of the Bartlett’s pumpkin pie I’d picked up for dessert.
But Tim could never let a subject drop if he was interested. He was like a dog with a buried bone. He always found his way back. “So Jane…” he began again now, the bone clamped firmly in his jaws. “You were saying before? About hiding drugs?”
Jane took a sip of coffee. “Right. Sure. There’s lots of places. You could hide cocaine in a sugar bowl, for instance. Or marijuana in your spice rack. I heard some geology teacher in Ohio camouflaged his meth with some rock crystal samples. The big chunks look just like quartz.”
“You’re making this up,” I told her. I turned to Tim. “She’s spinning ideas for her next book. Real people aren’t that clever. Especially real people who deal drugs.”
He nodded. “I guess.”
I had one more question for Jane, though. “Do you know anyone who wears a New York Giants hooded sweatshirt? I seem to recall we noticed someone dressed that way at a Whalers game a few weeks ago, and I saw someone in a Giants hoodie bolt from Pressman’s house as the boat was docking.”
“A drug dealer?” Tim asked, wide-eyed.
“More like a drug customer. He definitely didn’t want to deal with the police, though.”
“I know,” said Jane. “It’s that Arnold Sprockett, whose kid got hurt in the West Bridgewater game. Maybe he wants painkillers.”
“Or he’s going into business with Pressman so he can afford some expensive treatment. He could have lousy insurance, and the school’s indemnified unless there’s total negligence involved.”
“Which there wasn’t.”
“I think I’ll have a talk with him tomorrow.”
With her pie hoovered up to the last crumb, Caroline said, “Did you finish the Christmas poem for Mr. Springer, Dad? Because Mrs. Gumport wants to use it in my English class.”
This was getting out of hand. “How does Mrs. Gumport even know about it?”
“I guess teachers talk. They have a lounge.”
“It’s the least you can do, Henry,” Jane said. “I wrote a whole play just so my son could be an elf.”
Caroline turned on her. This had obviously been building up for a while. “And he has one line and he can’t even learn it!”
“I’m trying!” Sam said.
“He’s only seven years old,” Jane added.
“Yeah! I’m little!”
Caroline turned on him “I hope you’re not trying! Because if you’re actually trying, that would be so totally lame.”
“He’ll get it,” I said
“We open this week!”
“You have to be patient.”
“We. Get. Our. Own. Christmas. That’s five words. He’s an elf, he’s been making Christmas for a zillion kids since forever and he’s finally getting a tree and a stocking and some presents—all because of me. It’s not like it’s a stretch. He’s standing right in the middle of the first elf Christmas ever. All he has to do is say it! Ugh! Yesterday at tech I gave him the line, I said, ‘You got your own Christmas, remember that, Sam?’ You just stared at me like I was a rattlesnake and I was going to bite you if you moved.”
“I was scared! You’re scary.”
He had a point there.
Jane said, “Sam has stage fright.”
Caroline sniffed. “We all have stage fright. It’s part of the job.”
I bit down a laugh. Her impression of the haughty professional diva was pitch-perfect—Maggie Smith dismissing some neophyte walk-on.
Caroline gla
red at me; she knew exactly what I was thinking. “It’s true!”
Time to change the subject.“Want to hear the poem?”
“Yes!” Tim exclaimed, pulling his fist to his shoulder and driving his elbow down.
I launched:
“From the age of fifteen
Christmas was a lost cause for me.
A spending spree,
A lot of presents I didn’t care about
Commercialization, cheap decoration
Nothing mysterious or sublime
Just tinsel
And cards from people you’d never hear from
Any other time.
It meant less and less as I got older.
I got married, my wife loved trimming the tree
But I told her
It meant nothing to me—
Six weeks of bad music in the grocery
And mercenary corn
And then my children were born.
Without a moment’s transition,
Without a break or a pause—
I was Santa Claus.
I was orchestrating the delight
On those tiny faces,
Making the holiday happen
In their eyes.
Well, time flies
They’re growing up now.
But this is still the finest gift under any tree:
My kids have given Christmas
Back to me.”
“It’s great!’ Tim crowed.
“Are you insane?” Caroline shrieked. “It’s horrible! You weren’t supposed to write a poem about us! Omigod! This is a total nightmare! You can’t let anyone see this! Daddy, please. I am so dead if people hear that.”
“Well, I like it,” Tim announced. “And Mr. Springer will, too. Besides,” he said turning to Caroline, “you don’t have to give it to Mrs. Gumport. It wasn’t an assignment.”
“But everyone will know!”
“I think they suspect we’re related anyway, Carrie.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“So what were you expecting? Some generic poem about sleigh bells and reindeer?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I was expecting! Why couldn’t you just do that, like any other dad would have?”
“Christmas is about family. You’re my family. Sorry.”
She gave up. “Whatever. I’ve got homework.”She got up and left the table.
Tim patted my arm “She’s just being a bitch.” I squinted at that word, and he backtracked: “A fink, a rat, a meanie…who cares? But the poem’s really good, Dad. Thanks.”
“Any parent will get it,” Jane said.
“I liked it,” Sam offered.
“Thanks, kid.”
“And Mr. Springer has three kids,” Tim added.
“It’s not too cheesy?” I asked Jane.
“Hey, don’t ask me—I wrote a play where Santa’s daughter makes peace among the reindeer and takes over Christmas. Total cheese patrol.”
“But fun.”
“I hope.”
I turned to Tim. “I’ve been thinking about your other problem. I have a theory about the fingerprints on that test answer sheet. I’m going to test it out tomorrow. All I need is a football.”
“I have a football.”
“I know. Let me borrow it for the day and we may get some answers, thanks to the miracle of modern forensic science.”
“Cool.”
He cleared his plate and went upstairs to wrestle with his own math homework. He knew better than to ask me for help. Sam took another slice of pie and Jane squeezed my hand. “Thanks for dinner.”
“It was great,” Sam said. “Mom’s the worst cook in the world.”
“The whole world? I hear there’s a really terrible cook in Yugoslavia somewhere.”
He laughed and said, “She’s worse!” through a mouthful of pie.
I sat back, contented. I had to rate our first family dinner a success. It was like we’d been eating together for years.
Now perhaps I could find a murderer, close down a drug ring, stop the raffle rigging, and generally carry over a little of that winning record to my police work.
The first order of business—clear my son of cheating.
Chapter Fifteen
Fun with Forensics
The Nantucket Whalers were using a modified form of the West Coast offense, and the coach had given me a couple of tight-end pass plays to call. Hector Cruz knew them—he knew the whole playbook—but this would be the first time he’d gotten a chance to actually run one of them—even if it was only in the high school parking lot.
I saw him open the rust-acned door of his old VW Rabbit and climb out. His jacket was unzipped and he wore no hat or gloves despite the thirty-degree temperature and the sharp east wind: he was too macho for all that sissy cold weather gear. That might drive his parents crazy but it suited me fine this morning.
“Hector,” I shouted. “FB West, Right Slot!”
He turned. “What?”
I mock threw the football. “Come on! 372 Y Stick!”
He took off parallel to the playing field fence and then broke for the right side line as I chucked the ball. Not a perfect spiral but he snatched it out of the air and ran a few more steps.
“Good one!” I called out.
He flipped the ball back to me. “Tell that to the coach.”
“I will.”
***
I took the football back to the station and gave it to Monica Terwilliger to scan for prints.
“Is this the deflated one?” she asked me.
“I thought no Patriot fan believed that story.”
She shrugged. “He’s a cheater. But he’s my cheater.”
I wondered if she felt the same way about her husband, whom the Nantucket rumor mill had long convicted as a serial philanderer. But I wisely kept my mouth shut on that score, and brought things back to the job on hand. “This one is personal.”
“Then I’ll make it a priority. Come back after lunch. I’ll have a full report.”
Gusto and enthusiasm—that’s what I was looking for. And it was about to get better, with last night’s modest prayer for some progress answered emphatically when I got upstairs to my office. Things were shaking loose. Not an avalanche yet, but I could sense it was coming—the snowpack creaking in the early spring thaw.
Haden Krakauer had set the soil sample report in the middle of my desk, and formaldehyde was the least of it. The list of chemicals was astonishing and scary: cyanide, arsenic, benzene, and lead. Was the Nantucket earth this toxic everywhere on the island? Or just near the dump? No, no, no—it couldn’t be. The well water would be undrinkable with this stuff seeping through the ground. We’d all have been poisoned long ago. Anyway, you’d know it on your tongue—the tap water in places as diverse as Washington, D.C. and Montpelier, Vermont, had the same unmistakable chemical tang, like drinking from a swimming pool. Nantucket’s water—from a glacial moraine single-source aquifer—was the best I’d ever tasted, one of the great quiet luxuries of life on the island, like Bartlett’s Farm’s tomatoes or the clean Atlantic air.
So what was going on?
I made myself a cup of coffee, sat down at my desk, and called Haden’s friend at U. Mass —Professor Lawrence Haas, professor of plant, soil, and insect sciences at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture.
He was teaching a class. His secretary said he’d call me back within the hour.
I turned to Karen Gifford’s preliminary report. She had gone through the names listed by the Inquirer and Mirror as participating in the annual Christmas bird count over the years—it took the enthusiasts to the area of Madaket where Coddington’s skeleton was found, at roughly the correct season. She had gotten in touch with fifteen people,
none of whom recalled anything unusual beyond rare sighting of a Bullock’s oriole or a Western kingbird.
Karen had ten people left to call, but didn’t offer much hope. Birders were a sociable lot and if any of them had discovered a newly dug grave, all of them would have known it. She had also started on the police logs for the area—DUIs, deer-jackings, gun target practice, used appliance-disposal arrests, illegal disposal of toxic chemicals, two runaway kids found at the west end of the island. There had been search parties; she was tracking down the names.
Her final note: “I’ll keep looking.”
I was setting the printout aside when Professor Haas called back.
“Chief Kennis! Sorry I missed your call.”
“No problem. Thanks for calling back. I was hoping you could clear up some questions about the soil sample Haden Krakauer sent you.”
“Chewing tobacco.”
“Excuse me?”
“Or chaw, as its devotees call it.”
“I’m not sure what—”
“That’s what we found in the soil, Chief Kennis. Residues of chewing tobacco.”
“All those chemicals are in chewing tobacco? Lead? Cadmium? Benzene?”
“Don’t forget cyanide. But the giveaway is the N-nitrosamine. It’s formed during the curing and fermentation of plug tobacco.”
“But there was no nicotine in the sample?”
“It’s water-soluble. Five good rainstorms would wash it away. But these other compounds have staying power. Except the polonium-210—it’s a radioactive isotope commonly found in these products. But it has a short half-life and decays to lead. Which explains the lead in your sample.”
“This is nuts.”
“Well, it explains a lot of mouth cancer.”
“Yeah. So…how much of this stuff would have to have been mixed with the dirt for it to still be there after all these years?”
“Well, I don’t want to go all ‘inside baseball’ with you, Chief, or put you to sleep with technical jargon, so the term I’d be most likely to use is—a shitload.”
I laughed. “But why?”
“Not sure, but the most likely idea is preserving the grave. You have a rat problem over there?”
“I—uh, no. Not a problem. But we do have rats. Especially at the dump. And—”
Nantucket Red Tickets Page 17