Natalie nodded. “It’s not like that for us.”
“No,” he agreed. “I’ve never been able to distance myself,” he admitted. “But I want to now.” His face grew somber. “This thing between us—” he lifted a hand between them, “this awareness. It’s not good.”
“I know.”
“We can’t follow it.”
“No argument here,” she said, but heard the breathless quality of her voice.
“But you feel it.” He lifted a hand and caught a strand of blond hair from the wind. “It’s seductive, the closer I stand to you, the more alive I feel.”
“Yes,” she agreed, because that was it, the word she’d been looking for. As though, through Graham Marquette, Natalie could experience a rebirth. “And I want it. You. But I know we’re not going there.”
And that it wasn’t really life he offered but death.
He nodded and tucked the hair behind her ear, the tips of his fingers learning the curve of that soft shell. It caused Natalie to tremble and the breath to catch in his throat.
“You’re right. We’re not.”
“So stop touching me,” she said.
He took a step back and Natalie regrouped, inhaling deeply and running a hand through the hair he’d just held.
“I was never smart about these things,” he admitted.
“Relationships?”
“Or anything close to it.”
“Maybe it’s part of the survivor’s syndrome.” She’d never had luck with love, either.
“So you’ve done some reading, too.”
“And some therapy. When I was younger.”
“Did it do anything for you?”
“For some of us, it’s hard to choose between life and death.”
He nodded his agreement, but then said, “I have a son.”
“And so that makes it easier?”
“It makes staying grounded the only choice.”
“Maybe I should try that then.” But it wasn’t something she ever really considered. And
wasn’t that unusual, at the age of twenty-four, to never have thought about children of her own?
She returned to the subject of their brothers, their deaths, their pursuit of closure.
“How did Alana know our brothers were on that bluff?”
Graham shifted, but didn’t immediately follow her lead. For a long moment he watched the emotions at play in her expression, confusion and doubt among them. And then he said,
“The police questioned her, back then. Mostly about where she thought the boys could have gone and then, after they were found, about anything suspicious she might have seen.” He shook his head. “She never mentioned it. By now she’s probably forgotten it. It’s easier that way. For her.”
“So we’ll never know?”
But Graham disagreed, “Sometimes talking to Alana is like talking to a small child. She’ll go around the subject, repeat things, but little pieces fall out. And sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes the pieces make sense, when we look at what we already know.”
“Which is?”
He expelled a long breath, but his eyes didn’t waver from her face. “There have been ten victims, Natalie. You know that now?”
She nodded. ”The news programs are pretty thorough.”
“We have a theory,” he said. “But Lance and Steven, they don’t fit into it. Not yet.”
“But they will.”
Graham nodded. “All the others do,” he confirmed.
“But it troubles you,” she said.
“They were kids.”
“And what could they have done?” Natalie agreed. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Violence never does,” he pointed out. “And our brothers, included in this group of people, under this theory, I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.”
“And you’re not going to share that theory?”
“Not yet.”
“I want to know why.”
“Maybe you already do. Maybe it’s up here.” His hand hovered beside her head. The wind picked up and streamers of her hair tangled in his fingers.
Natalie nodded. “I’m trying.”
“That’s why you’re here,” he agreed. He retreated another step, breaking the tension that touch had placed between them, and pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I’ll talk to Alana.”
Natalie pulled the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder. And she would talk to Doss. He was right when he told her she would seek him out. He had answers. She believed that.
“Saul Doss,” she said and watched Graham’s face tighten.
“Do you remember him?” he asked.
“Yes. He came to the house, after our brothers were found. My father wouldn’t let him
in.”
“We investigated him,” Graham admitted. “But there was nothing connecting him. No way he could have been in two places at one time.” But his tone fell short of confidence.
“You don’t trust him,” she said.
Graham shook his head and then changed direction, “Do you remember anything else?”
Natalie felt the urgency behind his words.
“About Doss? No.”
“About anything?” Graham pressed. “You remember now seeing the boys dead—when was the last time you saw them alive? What were they doing? Who were they with?”
Natalie raised a hand between them and took another step back. His words had picked up speed and caused a play of images that were spiraling inside her head.
“Slow down,” she said. She felt the warm, soft tissue of memory behind her and sank into it, wading in a few inches at a time, searching. But memories are slippery and she didn’t surface with much. “They were headed to the beach. They always were,” she admitted. “They had their bikes and swords. It was still morning and they were zigzagging down the street.” She smiled with the memory. “A truck came upon them and stopped. I couldn’t hear them. But the boys stopped too and said something to the driver, they laughed and then pedaled away.”
“What did the truck look like?”
“Two tone, blue and white. Not new.”
“And the driver?”
Natalie shook her head. “Too far away.”
“Male or female?”
She tried to listen again to the voices, drifting just out of reach, but the tones were soft, light.
“Female, but I’m guessing.”
“This is all good.”
“Being on the island is helping.” Her words were slow as she hesitated over the earlier memory of Alana and the man she had stood with in the surf when she should have been watching them.
“What?” Graham asked.
“There is something else,” Natalie said. “But I don’t know if it’s important.”
“Tell me.”
So she did. “I know place,” she said. “What we called Pirate’s Beach. But not time. The boys were alive, though. And it was that summer.”
“And Alana was talking to a man?”
“A young man,” Natalie corrected. “He wasn’t much older than her.”
“You didn’t hear what they were saying?”
Natalie shook her head. “He was talking. Alana was—“ Natalie recalled the image and found Alana’s bowed body standing beside the guy, the waves tumbling ashore behind them, drowning his words. His hand was clamped around her arm, pulling Alana close. “Scared.”
Graham frowned. “You didn’t see his tattoo?”
“Only that he had one.”
“Where?”
“His left shoulder. He was wearing a tank top.”
He nodded slowly, as he absorbed and tried to make sense of the information Natalie gave him.
“Do you think it’s connected?”
“I think we’ll find out.”
She took a step back. “I’ll remember more,” she promised, then turned and followed the path to the street and her rental car.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Monday, 12:50 pm
Natalie wanted to visit the beach rental where they had spent their summers; to drop by Saul Doss’ bait shop; to hike through the sea grass on the bluffs to where she had found the bodies of her brother and Lance Marquette. She hoped to stir memory, to fit together all the little pieces that together would tell the story of Steven’s murder and Natalie’s role in it.
She remembered reading on the card Doss gave her that he ran a bait shop at the horn. She stopped there first. She thought back to the ferry, to the way she’d felt standing next to Doss, like he’d been a block of dried ice. He’d given off a chill so sharp it’d carried a burn with it. She won’t forget that the man lied to her, either. That her remembrance of him from her childhood was dark around the edges. If Saul Doss survived the sinking ferry she would ask him questions and doubt everything he said to her.
A man much younger than Doss but with the same distinctive peak to his hairline and the same colorless eyes stood behind the counter. Natalie waited as he bagged a half dozen Styrofoam cups of live bait and made change. She noticed that he was missing three fingers on his left hand, below the top ridge of knuckles, and that just beyond it he carried a tattoo of a detonated grenade.
He held his hand up. “Self-explanatory.”
Natalie felt her cheeks heat. “You caught me staring. Sorry.”
“No worries. What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Doss.”
“You found him.”
He spread his arms wide and the thin cotton of his t-shirt stretched over his shoulders. He smiled, too, a big wolfy grin.
Natalie frowned.
“You weren’t expecting my old man, were you?”
“I think so. Saul Doss.”
“Yeah, that’s my dad. I’ve heard some ladies really dig an older guy, but I’ll never understand it.”
“It’s not that. I mean, it’s nothing personal,” she stumbled, then felt her skin heat when he laughed. “It’s business,” she stressed. “My father and your father were colleagues. Is he here?”
“Nope.”
“Do you expect him?”
“No again.”
“Did he make it off the ferry?”
“You know he was on it?” He cocked his head to one side. “How well do you know my father?”
“I don’t. I already explained—”
“OK. I’ll cut you a break. I try to exercise my right to a difficult nature, due to my disability—” he waved his hand in the air and laughed again— “but you look ready to flap your wings and squawk.” He wiped his hands on a towel and picked up a small pad and a pen. “My father is recuperating at home today.” He smiled. “I think I took less time after I blew my hand off.”
“How did you do that?” she asked, since he brought it up again.
“Iraq. I was a chaplain with the Marines.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “I lost the faith.”
“No, I mean, you’re Canadian.”
“I’m as Yankee as you are,” he said. “My mother was a San Diego beach bunny. That’s where I was born. I was stationed there most of the time, too.”
He began drawing a map, labeling streets and using arrows to indicate directions.
“My father could use a little company. But don’t say anything that’ll upset him. And no strenuous activity.”
He winked at Natalie and she felt another tide of color sweep into her face.
“Thanks for the directions.” She pushed the paper into the front pocket of her jeans. “Maybe I should wait until tomorrow.”
“No. Go now. He’s waiting for you.”
“What?”
“He said you were a blond, that’s why I didn’t recognize you at first.”
Natalie pushed a strand of hair back from her face and resisted the urge to look at it. She was a blond.
“Wishful thinking,” he said. “I’ve spent my life around the real thing. I know it when I see it.”
Natalie took a step backwards and was turning to go when she said, “I guess even the experts are wrong some of the time.”
Saul Doss lived on the southern end of King’s Ferry, in a cottage that was so close to the water his yard was sand. The paint was fresh and beneath each window was a flower box, empty now. She remembered when it was full of blooms, red and purple geraniums. She remembered the bird houses, tilting lightly in the summer breeze. And she remembered that Saul Doss never locked his doors, but invited risk to enter at any moment.
She walked through the gate and glanced at her hand on the white picket. The hand belonged to a younger Natalie. The fingers were short and the nails were painted a sheer pink; the enamel was scratched from play. She had been at this house when she was eight years old. She had walked through this gate, had held her face to the flowers in the box. She had peered through the front window and watched, through the gauzy curtains, as Saul Doss held her brother Steven and Lance Marquette in a kind of hypnosis.
The image made her heart shudder, but Natalie didn’t look away. She didn’t let the fear building in her blood break her concentration. Steven and Lance were suspended in mid-air, only two or three feet off the floor. Their heads were tipped back. Eyes closed. Their hands dangled at their sides. And Saul Doss watched them, like the boys were a science experiment. He wrote in a notebook, observed them some more, walked around the room and sketched what he saw.
As the young Natalie stood gazing in the window, Robert Doss walked past her. Not the man from the bait shop, but the guy from the beach. Alana’s boyfriend. He wasn’t much more than a kid, but his hair was the right color and peaked in the right place. The wind stirred, lifting the sleeve of his t-shirt, exposing the tattoo: a heart with the word MOM written over it. He paused at the door and glanced at Natalie. “Freak,” he’d said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Monday, 1 pm
Graham waits at the corner for the light to change. Across the street, the diner is at overflow with people standing in tight knots outside the entrance. He lets his eyes move over them, picking apart their features: which one of you is a killer? He believes the KFK is among the citizens of King’s Ferry, more than a visitor to the island, but someone who drifts between life here and elsewhere. Someone who lives the way Alana does. He wants it to be someone unrelated, known but not cared for, not connected to him. But it’s possible he married his brother’s killer; it’s possible his son has a murderer for a mother.
What Natalie Forrester remembered makes sense to him. The pieces slide into place, no coaxing.
But Alana never could have acted alone. She doesn’t have that kind of staying power. Killing of this nature is a mental marathon, with sustained moments of clarity, and Alana isn’t capable of that.
He understands why she never said anything about finding the boys; she did a lot of that when they were married—ignored the unpleasant, dressed up the ugly so that it looked and smelled good. She was a master at convincing herself that some of the things she did never happened. In the early years, she convinced Graham, too. But even when it was out there, a fire-breathing reality, Alana could look it in the eye and deny it.
An accomplice? Maybe she’s that. Maybe she knelt in Iverson’s blood and held her hand. It’s the kind of thing Alana would do. Inflict harm and then feel so bad about it that she cried over the blood she spilled.
Maybe she watched and did nothing to stop the murders from happening.
Maybe she was as much at the mercy of the killer as the dead were.
Maybe showing the victims kindness in the end was all she could do.
The light changes and Graham walks across the street. He studies the line of cars parked along the side of the road and the heavy stream of traffic heading through the main artery of town. A lot of trucks, but none blue and white. By now, of course, the truck, if it still existed, would be twenty years old or more.
He pushes back in his mind, trying to remember such a vehicle from his early days, but comes u
p empty.
He never knew a woman who drove a two-tone truck. No girls he went to school with, not a neighbor. He tries sorting through his memory—did he ever work on a vehicle of that description? For a few years in high school, he changed oil at a fast lube. Still no hits. But he does know for sure that the woman behind that wheel wasn’t Alana. They were married a few years before she even learned how to drive.
He allows the argument to continue in his mind, seeking a way to exonerate the woman he once loved, the mother of his son.
The compression prints at the Iverson scene suggest that a woman was present. If the KFK is actually two people, it’s possible Alana is involved.
But not probable. Alana’s illness is messy. It’s like blood splatter, all over and obvious. The KFK is controlled, even if he’s starting to slip. And the theory of two doesn’t wash for another undeniable reason: it doubled the opportunity for leaving evidence behind. Seven crime scenes and eight bodies were left clean.
But if Alana isn’t involved, how did she know where to find the boys? Hundreds of islanders were out looking for Lance and Steven, in addition to a massive search executed by the RCMP. And Alana found them.
As far as Graham is concerned, coincidence belongs in the same line up as pixie dust.
So Alana knew, but why?
The question picks up the beat of his heart, hammers at his head, produces a white-out where he wants answers.
A clear indication that he’s thinking too much.
He approaches the wait outside the diner and wades through it. A few people greet him, some call out. Everyone wants answers.
“There’s nothing new,” Graham says and watches the faces fall flat. Disappointment and disapproval, he prefers those emotions to the fear he sees stretch some features into excess. “Sorry,” he offers. Maybe tomorrow, but he can’t push the words past his lips. It’s been too long, the waiting too painful, to even suggest there’s hope. But the truth is, Graham does feel like they’re in the home stretch. He feels so close to the answers that his fingertips burn.
He slides through the door and turns so that he’s facing the booths. Carter doesn’t brown bag it. He doesn’t sit at the counter, either, but spreads himself out close to a window and reads between bites. Today it looks like he has a copy of the Maritime News.
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