Hidden

by Karen E. Olson

  He had said he was only the first one here. Now I know for sure he was not lying.

  As I watch, Carmine Loffredo pushes the door open to Veronica’s gallery.

  The driver’s door opens, and Steve climbs in, starting up the SUV.

  ‘You OK?’ he asks softly.

  I have stopped crying, but my anxiety is no longer just about my house. Carmine Loffredo is here. On the island. This is whom he was waiting for. This is whom he’d warned me about. And Carmine has found at least one of my friends. It won’t be hard for him to find Jeanine. Steve. And finally, me.

  While I want to rush to the gallery, warn Veronica, I do know Carmine won’t hurt her. He will merely use her and her penchant for conversation to get one step closer to me.

  Steve still has no idea why I am upset, and within minutes we are past the harbor and the hotels and restaurants and up the hills and into the heart of the island. He finally pulls over next to a stonewall that snakes its way up and down and out of sight.

  ‘Tell me what’s happened,’ he said.

  There is a stone in my throat, one that’s keeping me from talking. I shake my head until I feel his hands on my cheeks and he is forcing me to look at him.

  ‘What happened, Nicole?’ Steve’s voice is firm. He is not going to let me get away with not telling him.

  I try to concentrate on why I ran to him in the first place. ‘My house,’ I manage to whisper, and then it comes out – everything I found when I got home from the beach. Steve is not touching me anymore. He is leaning back against his door, his usually bright eyes dark. ‘You left it like that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, wiping my nose with the back of my hand, leaving a long streak of tears and snot.

  Steve is nodding, and I can see he is thinking hard about something. Finally, he turns and puts the car into gear. We head back down toward town.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask, but I don’t really have to. I knew the moment I told him that he would take me to the police station. So when he pulls into the parking lot, I am not surprised. I don’t really want to do this; I can’t have the police probing into my life. But unless I tell Steve everything, I cannot say no.

  I am still not ready to tell any more than I already have. So I go with Steve into the building and he demands to see the police chief, who happens to be having a coffee and doing something on the computer when we are brought into his office.

  It’s not as though I don’t know Frank Cooper. We have had drinks together at Club Soda and we’ve played darts. You cannot live on an island this small and not know mostly everyone. But Frank Cooper, for the first time, will know that I have a past. That I have a past with a man who carries a gun. A man I’ve described as being FBI. Because that is going to come up. It’s inevitable.

  ‘Nicole’s place was trashed, and her bike was stolen,’ Steve tells Frank, his voice husky with anger.

  Frank immediately stands up; his face clouds over with concern. ‘What happened?’

  I tell him what I told Steve. How I came home from the beach and what I found.

  Frank puts his hands on his hips. ‘It’s that guy, isn’t it? The one staying at the Blue Dory?’

  For a second, I am thrown off. I don’t think I told anyone where he was staying, except maybe Steve. But it’s possible Veronica knew, since he’d commissioned the painting. I nod, despite my new suspicions. I cannot mention Carmine.

  ‘Zeke Chapman, is it?’ Frank says, going around the back of his desk and dropping down in to his chair, reaching for the phone.

  I want to stop him, but I am unable to.

  Steve squeezes my hand as Frank calls the Blue Dory and finds out that Zeke Chapman has not yet checked out.

  ‘Don’t mention this to him, Alice, OK? I’m going to be stopping by in a few, but I don’t want him to know.’ Frank thanks her, says goodbye and hangs up, standing up again and facing me. ‘I’m going over there. You stay here with Steve until I get back.’ He starts for the door.

  ‘Frank?’ Steve holds his hand up. ‘One thing: he’s FBI and he’s carrying a gun.’

  Frank stops and looks from Steve to me, nothing in his expression giving away what’s going through his head. And then he finally speaks.

  ‘No, he’s not, Steve.’ He gives me an apologetic smile. ‘Nicole, I’m sorry I did this without talking to you first, but Veronica bugged me to check this guy out for you. You have to keep in mind that she was only looking out for you.’

  I know what’s coming now. I pull my hand out of Steve’s and hold my hands in front of me tight so as to keep them from shaking.

  ‘I’m afraid Zeke Chapman isn’t who he told you he is. I don’t know who he is, but Zeke Chapman, the real FBI agent, died fifteen years ago.’

  FIFTEEN

  Steve is staring at me, and I am unable to look him in the eye.

  ‘Stay put,’ Frank says again as he leaves the office.

  It is quiet for a few seconds before Steve says, ‘Nicole? What’s this all about?’ Steve is the only one I’ve told about having a relationship with him all those years ago. He is also smart enough to put two and two together: that I have been here for fifteen years and that when I knew him, it must have been before the real Zeke died.

  ‘Nicole? Who is Zeke Chapman?’ Steve asks when I don’t answer.

  Again I have the urge to tell him everything, to get it all out there, but I cannot do it here. I cannot do it while in the police chief’s office. It would be far too easy to be overheard and thrown in jail, something I have been avoiding successfully all this time.

  I sink down in one of the straight-backed chairs behind me, my head in my hands. I have to think – and think fast.

  Steve misunderstands and sits next to me, his hand on my back, gently massaging it.

  ‘Was he impersonating this FBI agent even back then, when you knew him?’ he asks.

  This question makes it easier. I look up and smile sadly. ‘It appears so.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He truly is, too, and I feel guilty about deceiving him. We had both taken other names back then. It’s how we got to Paris, those fake passports easier to get through Tracker’s contacts than they would be now, after 9/11 and Homeland Security.

  As I am remembering, the old irritation surfaces. He used me in so many ways. I was the one with the computer skills and the one with the contacts. I was such a little fool.

  I am still a fool now, to get caught up with him again.

  He was so good at that, though, making me believe in him. And the attraction had been there from the start, was still there – enough to make me, a grown woman with a real life now, forget about all of it and let him seduce me. Seduce me with a laptop.

  I am thinking all of this to keep myself from remembering what happened at the end, why I had to leave.

  It would’ve been better if he’d been caught. If he’d been thrown in prison.

  If I’d never sent that postcard.

  This was all my fault, the mess I found myself in now.

  ‘I need to go home and clean it all up,’ I say.

  ‘The police will go over there first,’ Steve warns me. ‘They’ll need to take evidence.’

  Fingerprints. A panic rushes through me. They will find my fingerprints, too. I cannot let that happen.

  The tears begin again, but this time I have conjured them. ‘I have to be there. I don’t want to know that they’ve gone through my things, too.’

  Steve nods, as though he understands. ‘I’ll take you over there, but you have to come home with me. I can’t let you stay there by yourself.’ His words are said matter-of-factly. He has settled it without my OK. But as long as I can get there, I might still be able to do something.

  ‘I want to go now.’

  ‘We have to wait for Frank.’

  ‘I don’t want to. I want to go home.’ I sound like a petulant child. ‘Do you think Frank sent someone over there already?’

  Steve opens the door and disappears. I begin to pa
ce, my hands shoved in my pockets, every muscle tense. This is not happening.

  Steve comes back with Reggie McCallum. I know Reggie from Club Soda; he’s a good dart player.

  ‘Nicole, I need to get your prints,’ Reggie says. ‘We need to take prints from your house, but we need to eliminate yours first.’

  They can just match my prints up with those in the house. I actually have no idea if my fingerprints are in a federal database. It’s possible that they were taken from a glass or something else I touched at my house. Do they have his prints? He said they didn’t catch him, but they did know where we’d been.

  My whole life is unraveling, yet I cannot let anyone know. I force a smile at Reggie and say, ‘What do I need to do?’

  He takes Steve and me to a counter in a small room, where he has laid out the equipment: an ink blotter and a small card with spaces for each of my prints. Reggie apologizes as he smears ink on my fingers and rubs them from right to left on the card. When I am done, he hands me a paper towel. The ink smudges on the rough surface, and a shadow of ink lingers on my fingers.

  As we leave the room, Frank Cooper is coming toward us, a frown on his face.

  ‘He’s not there,’ he says.

  ‘Where did he go?’ Steve asks. I cannot speak. It feels as though a cotton ball is stuck in my throat. ‘Did he get the ferry?’

  ‘I don’t know. His things are there, but he isn’t. I’ve got a car out looking for him and one at the docks and another at the airport, just in case he’s just dumping his stuff and leaving it here. But as far as I know right now, he’s still on the island somewhere.’

  ‘He’s probably long gone,’ Steve says, and it makes sense to him. But I am not so sure.

  ‘I’d like to go back to my house,’ I tell Frank. ‘I want to be there when you take your evidence.’

  ‘You can’t get in the way,’ he warns, but with sympathy in his eyes. He knows how violated I feel.

  I agree, and the three of us leave his office. Steve and I drive together in silence, following Frank in his police cruiser. I stare out the window, the familiar landmarks passing but I barely see them. I can’t keep them from doing what they’re going to do. I should have stayed in the house. I should never have gone out. I should have never gotten into the car with Steve, told him anything. I could have kept all this quiet, just cleaned up and pretended it never happened. Waited for him to come back.

  But then I think again about Carmine. How his presence changes everything.

  Steve parks behind Frank, and we climb out of the Explorer. Another police officer has already arrived. Frank waits for me to unlock the door and I let them in, standing back so they can pass through. I feel Steve’s hand at the base of my back.

  ‘You OK?’ he asks.

  I shake my head. Of course I am not OK, but I cannot open my mouth to say the words.

  I hear muffled voices from within as Frank and the other officer, his name is Bob, take in the destruction. Suddenly, Frank’s head pops around the door.

  ‘Is anything missing, Nicole?’

  ‘My bike,’ I whisper. ‘It was outside.’

  ‘Anything else?’ It is as if he knows. As if the spot in the pantry underneath the potatoes has told him that something was there and now it’s gone.

  ‘My laptop computer,’ I say, more loudly this time. ‘It’s new. I just got it.’ I remember that I’m supposed to be in the chat room with Tracker tomorrow morning. How am I going to do that now? It will be like before. I won’t be there, and he will suspect the worst and won’t hear from me for another fifteen years.

  Somehow I have to be there.

  ‘Nicole?’ Frank is talking to me.

  I give him a small, sad smile. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why do you think he would take your computer and bike and nothing else?’ Frank asks.

  ‘Maybe he needed a way around the island?’ I try, ignoring the part about the computer.

  Frank grins. ‘OK, maybe. But what about the computer?’

  I cannot tell Frank that it was a present. That he gave it to me. That would open me up to too many questions I won’t answer. I have also told Steve that I ordered it myself. I have to keep my lies consistent.

  ‘It was new,’ I say again. ‘Who wouldn’t want a new laptop?’

  ‘Was there anything on it? I mean, could he steal your identity or anything with what’s on it?’ Frank is serious, yet his words make me want to laugh out loud.

  I shake my head. ‘No. I barely had time to get it booted up. There’s nothing on there.’

  ‘No passwords saved or anything?’

  Again I remind myself that they have no idea who I am. That wiping out my tracks on a computer is second nature, and no one will be able to see where I’ve been because I am so thorough.

  ‘No,’ I said flatly.

  Frank flashes a relieved grin. ‘Good. That’s good to know. You wouldn’t want anyone to get any of your information. It takes years to clear up identity theft.’

  Again, I resist the urge to laugh.

  It takes an hour. Steve and I sit in the wicker chairs outside my house, not saying anything. He seems to know that I don’t want to talk, and I am grateful for that. Finally, Frank and Bob come out of the house, Bob carrying some sort of kit that I assume has whatever evidence they feel they could collect.

  Frank approaches me as Bob goes to his cruiser. I have never seen so many police on this island as I have today.

  ‘Nicole, I’m sorry about the mess.’

  Steve stands up. ‘I’ll help her clean up, Frank.’

  ‘That’s not the only thing,’ Frank says, and I can see he’s trying to choose his words carefully. ‘Nicole, you shouldn’t stay here. He might come back. You can’t be here alone.’

  ‘He’s probably off the island by now,’ I try.

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘She’s going to stay with me,’ Steve tells Frank. ‘I’ll take care of her.’

  I am no longer in control of my own person, but I cannot argue. ‘That’s right, Frank. I’ll stay with Steve.’

  Frank looks from me to Steve and back to me again. ‘I’ll send a cruiser past every now and then, just to make sure everything’s OK. I’ll send someone by here, too, in case he comes back. I checked with the ferry company, and the last two captains have not seen anyone fitting Zeke Chapman’s description on board. And he wasn’t on either of the flights that went out today. No one’s seen him at the marinas, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, since we can’t keep tabs on all the boats out there and who’s on them. Unless we find out different, though, you should assume he’s still on the island, and you are not safe.’

  I have never been safe. I know that now.

  ‘I’ll be with Steve,’ I say again.

  Frank shakes Steve’s hand, leans in and gives me a little peck on the cheek. ‘You’ll be OK, as long as you’re aware of your surroundings.’

  I will not be OK, but to appease him, I say, ‘Thanks, Frank.’

  We watch him drive away, and then Steve and I step into my house. He has not seen it before, and he gasps loudly. ‘Oh, Nicole, this is awful.’

  I cannot argue, going to the utility closet and pulling out cleaning supplies. No time to waste.

  SIXTEEN

  I would rather go to the Yellow Kittens for a drink, but settle instead for a cognac with Steve at his house. I don’t want to be out in public. He is somewhere on the island, and Carmine is here, too. It wouldn’t take much to find me here at Steve’s. But I don’t quite know how to get out of staying here without telling Steve everything, so I settle into the folds of his big sofa in his den, trying to look relaxed, but I am about as relaxed as a cat perched under a bird feeder. Steve sits across from me, nursing his own glass. When we left my house, it was spotless, the bags of trash outside in the bins for pickup.

  ‘I’ll help you get that couch to the dump on the weekend,’ Steve promises, ‘and then you can find another one.’

>   How can I tell him that there may never be another one? That while picking pieces of glass jars out of my tub, I realized that my time here may be close to over?

  But because I am not completely ready to accept that, I tell Steve that I will look in the local paper to see if anyone is selling furniture. I also have to call my landlord, let him know what’s happened. Why there will be new furniture in the house.

  As I’m talking, I notice his computer on the desk in the corner of the den. Immediately I admonish myself for what I am thinking, what I had thought about earlier: that I can sneak onto his computer when he is asleep and contact Tracker.

  ‘I think you’re not telling me everything, Nicole,’ Steve says softly.

  His words startle me. Not just because I was so engrossed in my own thoughts that I almost thought I was alone, but because he is challenging me. That is not the way our relationship works.

  ‘It’s been a long day, Steve.’ It seems like forever since I was painting on the beach.

  He leans forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, and stares at me. ‘Zeke Chapman isn’t his real name. And he seems to think that your name is Tina. Is your name Tina, Nicole? Is that your real name?’

  The panic bubbles up inside me. I feel it in my throat, which is closing up. I cannot speak.

  ‘I’m sorry I have to ask, but you’ve been acting strangely ever since he came to town.’

  He’s right. But I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him any more than he already knows.

  It’s no longer because of me, though. It’s because of him. Because I can’t put him in danger.

  When I was in the house, I found something. Something that Frank and Bob missed, because why would they pay any attention to a postcard of the North Light? It was stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet.

  If they’d taken it down and turned it over, they would’ve seen it was addressed to Daniel Adler at the federal penitentiary outside Raleigh, North Carolina. There was no note written.

  He hadn’t indicated that he still had the postcard. Or even if he ever did. He had just said he’d seen it.