by John Moralee
She approached me, taking my hand. Her touch was electric. She craned her neck to give me a light kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best, Mike.”
When my dad returned Abby had gone to bed. In the den, I told him what happened earlier. He frowned and scratched his head.
“Boone’s been hitting her? Are you sure?”
“You ought to see the bruises, Dad. I don’t see how she could have done them herself. But -”
“Say it.”
“Boone was convincing, too. He never admitted that he had hit her.”
“So you think she’s mentally unstable?”
“No more than anyone who has been abused by their husband. It’s confusing, Dad. I want to believe her, but she admits she was in a mental hospital. I think she should stay here for a few days. She needs the safety. Maybe I can convince her to talk to someone professional - like a psychiatrist or social worker. Someone who can figure out what to do.”
“What happens if Boone comes back?”
“He mustn’t take her away.” Another thought struck me then: “Abby said Boone would hurt her parents if she told on him. Do you think I should say something to her father?”
“How would he react?”
“He would probably kill Boone, if Boone didn’t kill him.”
“Then you can’t tell him. Anyway, from what you’ve said, I don’t think Boone wouldn’t dare hurt her father; then he would have no hold over her. At the moment he’s guaranteed her silence by the fear of his revenge. This is all theoretical, of course. It depends on if he hit actually hit her – which he hasn’t admitted.”
“Yes. I know. It’s a rock and a hard place.” I swore. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this, Dad.”
“I’m not blaming you for anything. But I don’t know, son, why does she have to stay here? It seems like a sure way of causing trouble. Why can’t she go to one of the places for battered wives?”
“Dad, that would be great if her husband wasn’t a cop. Unfortunately, he could find her in a heartbeat. The only person I trust to keep her away from him is me. I abandoned her once and I’m not abandoning her twice.”
I asked about Grace and the kids.
“They’re doing as well as can be expected. Grace is finding it very difficult, as can be expected. She blames herself for not realising what Fiona would do.” Grace had just lost her only daughter, and nobody could deal with that. Perhaps because it had been a suicide, it made the loss harder. We stayed up late, talking. I told him about the dark days in Los Angeles. He just listened, like a good therapist, like a good parent. It was a purging, and afterwards, after we’d exchanged our deepest thoughts and dreams, we had an understanding that I’d never felt before. He confessed he had been lonely for a very long time, but had been denying it even to himself. He said he had feelings for Grace, which came as no real surprise, except that he could admit them. He had always bottled up his emotions for the sake of others, but he’d changed, like I had changed. A door had unlocked between us, and it took some getting used to. But it was a good feeling.
Chapter 35
In the morning Abby ate breakfast with us. She was listless and nervous. She apologised for the tiniest thing – such as spilling some sugar on the table, flinching at the sound of the kettle boiling, and even for bursting into tears. She was afraid of going anywhere near the windows in case Boone was watching the house.
At nine, my father went to see Grace and the children, leaving me with Abby. I didn’t want to leave her in the house alone, but I had some ideas that I wanted to investigate. Fortunately, Wayne came over. He had nothing to do now the weather was unsuitable for tourism, so he volunteered to stay with Abby. He patted his waistband, where his .45 was hidden.
I met Sarah off the ferry. We talked about the funeral. “I wonder why Fiona killed herself,” she said. “Why would someone leave their children without a mother?”
The question had been bothering me, but I’d received a call from Fiona that answered it. “You know the baby she was having?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I spoke to Grace this morning. She said the coroner came to see her to tell her personally that Fiona wasn’t pregnant.”
“But you told me she was.”
“She was … but not when she died.”
“She had an abortion?”
“No.” I had to explain. “Grace has read Fiona’s notes. As a writer, she kept detailed notes of her personal life. Fiona had a miscarriage on the day before we launched the Caroline.”
“A miscarriage …”
“She never told anyone. It must have been eating her up. I thought she looked depressed on the boat - but I didn’t know why. That was why. Imagine how she must have been feeling, losing a baby like that. Losing her connection to Scott. Then she got the news that Scott was dead. It must have pushed her too far. According to Grace, Fiona had stopped taking her anti-depressants the day she suspected she was pregnant because she didn’t want to harm the foetus, which was a big mistake when she was feeling so depressed. Jesus – I wish she’d told someone!”
“God! I sort of feel responsible for starting this thing with Van Morgan and causing Taylor’s death. Maybe Fiona would be alive if I hadn’t started this.”
“Only one person is to blame,” I said. “And it certainly isn’t you.”
“I just wish we could get Van Morgan. He’s a slimy toad. And that’s the word of a biologist.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe we can get him.”
“How?”
“I was thinking you’re an expert on the subject of anything to do with the sea, right? Sarah, can you tell me where the car went into the water originally?”
She looked at me, her eyes shining with excitement. “Maybe. But I’d need data. I’d need to study meteorological data of the last month and analyse samples of the sediment found in the car; then maybe I could isolate the location by extrapolation.”
“Sounds painful, but we’d better give it a go.”
I made a call to Doug Clark and asked him if he could find out if an analysis of the car had been completed, specifically the sediment. The reporter said he would get back to me after talking to his source inside the sheriff’s department. Ten minutes later, he called back saying nobody had thought of sampling the sediment, but I could get one since the Mercedes had been delivered to an autowreck yard in Providence.
That was where Sarah and I went next.
The Mercedes was still waiting to be crushed, I was told, by the old man who owned the yard. To reach it, we had to drive through the narrow paths between hundreds of old vehicles, most of which were waiting for crushing, but some people were inspecting the junk for usable parts. Now the rain had stopped, the dead vehicles dripped brown water. Luckily, the Mercedes was under a corrugated iron shed near the compactors. Whatever mud had been in it at the time of its resurfacing looked like it would still be there. Sarah filled a test tube with sediment. “I should at the very least be able to say what part of the coast this came from. The sheer diversity of the sedimentary conditions around Mistral are why it’s so interesting. We can take it to the biology lab of a friend of mine. You know the tall guy with me at the hospital? He’s a teacher at the Rhode Island Marine Institute. He’ll let us use his equipment.”
“He’ll let you use his equipment? I hope that isn’t a euphemism?”
“Jealous?”
“No. Yes.”
“He’s my old professor,” she explained on the way there. By then, the sky was clearing. The Marine Institute was a large brownstone building attached to the university. The corridors had a musty smell, like wet leaves. Sarah knocked on a door at the end of a corridor and the professor emerged. She explained what she needed. He handed Sarah the keys to his laboratory, wishing us luck. Then he went for lunch. While Sarah studied the sample under a microscope, I made myself useful by staying quiet and looking at the charts and diagrams on the walls. There was something otherworldly about the computer images of the oc
ean floor; it looked as alien as the surface of Mars or Venus. Sarah finished with the microscope, then she did something with a centrifuge that separated the mud into different colours, then she studied a map of Mistral Island and the surrounding ocean floor. “The drift currents around the coast move like this.” She moved her finger in a wide arc. “Here’s the beach where the car was swept up. It would have taken weeks for it to move from its original location, so … considering the variables … The origin was somewhere around here.”
I looked closely at the map. “That’s Ocean Avenue. The cliff there hangs over the water just perfectly so it would sink beyond the tide line. Nobody would have discovered it in a thousand years …”
“Only it moved. I guess a pocket of air made the car lighter than the surrounding mud, so it slid along with the current until it ended up on the beach. If the weather conditions had been only slightly different the car would have ended up at the bottom of the ocean.”
We drove up to Ocean Avenue that afternoon. The road went along the coast and up to a cliff, before going down again. The cliff looked like the perfect ramp for sending a car into the water – it jutted out from the coast like the beak of a crow. Teenagers used to park their cars on the cliff for a great view and a romantic place to be alone. I parked across the road from the cliff. We got out and looked for signs that it had been used to launch the Mercedes into the ocean. Naturally, there were no tyre marks after the rain. But we checked the ground for something, anything.
I was beginning to despair when Sarah called me over to the edge.
“I found something,” she said, opening her hand to show what looked like a gold ring. “This was stuck in the dirt here.”
“A ring?”
“No, it’s a button.”
I looked just like the gold button from a yachtsman’s jacket.
“This is it,” I said, as we headed back to the car. “This is the evidence we need.”
“Call me ignorant, but what does it mean?”
“It’s a button off a Cape Mistral Yacht Club jacket.”
“And that is important why?”
“Van Morgan’s a member.”
“So if we can prove this belonged to Van Morgan’s jacket, we can prove he was here?”
“Yes,” I said, grinning. “Would your theory about the drifting of the car hold up in court?”
“Definitely.”
“Then we have him! This button connects Van Morgan to the car. It’s circumstantial evidence, but I’d like to see him explain what he was doing on this cliff apart from killing Scott.”
I felt like kissing the button. If it hadn’t been dirty, I would have. I kissed Sarah instead, the far better option. She tasted sweet and creamy. We parted, both touching our lips where the delicious contact was tingling. “You are brilliant, Sarah. I love you.”
“Just basic science,” she said.
I held the button between thumb and index finger. It caught the light and shone golden on Sarah’s face. “Let’s show this to the cops. They’ll have to do something now, even Tom Boone can’t ignore this.”
Chapter 36
As we headed for Cape Mistral, I heard the wail of a fire truck coming towards us.
I slowed down to let three fire trucks rush past, chased by an ambulance and a police car. The route they were taking led to one place only – Emerald Point.
I looked at Sarah; she nodded. I stopped where the road was wide enough to perform a U-turn, then I followed the emergency vehicles. Something in the air made my eyes sting. It was smoke. It was rising in a thick black plume from the construction site.
I had to stop before I reached the barricade; construction workers were running this way, while behind them flames erupted from bulldozers. It was chaos. Some construction workers were attacking the protesters at the fence, who were defending themselves with placards. I saw Joely, her white hair dirty, pushing away a large guy swinging his fists. The firefighters were struggling to do their job as the police tried to arrest people. They all seemed to be ignoring the spreading fire on the other side of the fence. Dirty faces glowed orange, twisted with rage.
Sarah opened her door. Heat and smoke rushed into the car. “I’ve got to stop this battle. My sister shouldn’t be here.”
“Sarah, you could get hurt, let me go.”
“No!” She ran towards the conflict.
Coughing, I stepped out and tried to follow her, but I could not see her for the smoke, which had changed direction in the wind. The firefighters were setting up their hoses, ordering the people to stay back. But they were volunteers mostly, and they didn’t know what to hose first, because so much was burning. It looked like a petrol fire, the way it seemed to spread along the ground from vehicle to vehicle. I was knocked back by people running away from the fire. I smelled burnt flesh. I was momentarily disorientated by a wave of heat that warped the air around me; then I saw Sarah near the fence with Joely. They were trying to help people who had fallen. A large construction worker was pushing and shoving a protester twice his age. Sarah grabbed the man by the hair and pulled him off. She punched him in the back. He went down, stunned. Another angry man charged at her - she dodged him, bringing her knee up into his groin. Just then six or seven deputies stepped into the fight, breaking it up with batons and handcuffs. Boone had arrived; he was giving orders on his radio. Deputies swarmed towards the fences. A stray baton swing by a deputy struck Sarah from the side.
I shouted out, but nobody heard. She spun around and fell to her knees. Joely ran towards her. Then the smoke rolled over her and I couldn’t see them. I headed into the smoke, holding my breath. It was hot and confusing. I ran into people running the other way and had to squeeze through. The smoke cleared for a few seconds and I could see the fence. No one was there. Joely crashed into me. Her face was streaked with tears and black dirt. “Michael! Sarah’s in trouble! I pulled her, but then I lost contact and now I don’t know where she is. The smoke. It’s in my eyes and I can’t see for blinking.”
“Okay, I’ll get her. You – get back.”
“But Sarah!”
“Go!”
She staggered away. I made my way along the fence. I heard coughing somewhere ahead. The smoke lifted, momentarily, and I saw her on the ground. Sarah was hunched over, coughing. She looked dazed. Blood was in her hair, glistening on her cheeks. I ran to her through the crowd, pushing people out of my way, dodging the deputies. I grabbed Sarah’s hand and pulled her away from the fire as another earth digger exploded, sending glass and metal raining down the hill. A little later and we would have been hit. People screamed. Now people were on fire. Somehow, we staggered down the road to my car. Sarah was wheezing. Joely seemed to be okay. I was scared Sarah had smoke in her lungs. All of the paramedics were busy tending to the seriously wounded. The firefighters looked like they were getting the fire under some control now, though. Boone stepped out of nowhere, grabbing my shoulder.
“What are you doing here?”
“I saw the fire so I came to help.”
“Yeah, right.” He looked at Sarah. “Is this your idea of a peaceful protest, Dr Beck?”
She could not answer - she was coughing too hard.
“You leave my sister alone!” Joely shouted.
Boone’s radio crackled. He answered it. “What? Repeat that, Henderson. You got him? Who? Where? Ten-four. I’m on my way.” He looked at me with pure hate. “Seems we caught the arsonist, Quinn. It’s that hippie-freak uncle of your buddy. Good old Vernon Taylor. Henderson caught him fighting with some Heaven and Earth folk. Seems they were only trying to stop him filling beer bottles with gasoline. He’s going to go away for a long time for this, I guarantee it.”
Chapter 37
When we arrived at the hospital, the ER was busy with patients from the construction site. Sarah didn’t want to waste their time, but Joely and I insisted a doctor checked her even though she said she was feeling fine. Betsy arrived a few minutes later – she had been in Cape Mistral buyi
ng shopping. I was worried Sarah could have a concussion. She was given a CT scan just in case. By then, she had stopped coughing and was feeling okay, so she said. But I thought she was a little woozy. The CT scan confirmed she didn’t have a fracture, but she had a nasty cut and bruise on her head where the baton had hit her. She was treated for it. I wished I knew which deputy had done it, but in the confusion I had just seen the uniform, not the face. We left as soon as she had been prescribed some painkillers.
I turned on the car radio as we drove away. The local station CMWR was covering the fire and subsequent riot. The fire had been extinguished just moments ago, but sixteen people had suffered burns and other injuries requiring medical attention, many of the injuries non-related to the fire. The fire-chief called it “a diabolical act of vandalism.” Heaven and Earth employees described the scene, blaming the protesters. Some accused the protesters of starting the fire. In turn, the protesters blamed everything on them. A spokesperson for Van Morgan claimed over $200,000 of equipment had been destroyed. There was also a report about the capture of the alleged arsonist, though no name was mentioned. The suspect had just gone into the courthouse, while an angry mob gathered on Main Street, jeering and throwing stones. It was unprecedented behaviour in Cape Mistral, as the radio reporter repeated with undisguised glee.
Vernon would need a lawyer, so I stopped at a pay phone and called David Freeman. He said he would go to the courthouse right away. I met him there. There were reporters bustling for information. Doug Clark begged me to tell him what was going on. Sarah told me she would have to set things straight. I agreed. While Sarah spoke to the media about the fire, saying the protesters had been innocent bystanders, I went into the courthouse with Freeman. We learned Vernon had been booked and was now in a cell awaiting arraignment. Freeman talked a deputy into letting us see him. Vernon was locked in a small cell. He was sitting cross-legged on the dirty floor. He looked remarkably calm, but there was also a resignation to his fate.