GHOSTS: 2014 edition (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 1)

by Noel Hynd

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Brooks drove back to his office and sat at his desk. He pulled out the X-rays that Dr. Youmans had given him earlier. He studied them again. In the injuries to the necks of Mary Beth DiMarco and Bruce Markley, Brooks heard troubling echoes.

  Echoes of the head torn off the dummy.

  Echoes of the eighteen murdered ducks, their necks wrenched.

  An echo even of the malicious vandalism at the home of Thelma Lewis, the knife lodged in the painting of the Last Supper.

  Brooks picked up his telephone and punched in Annette Carlson’s number. She answered on the third ring. He was relieved.

  No, she said, she had had no problems at 17 Cort Street that day. And yes, she said she felt secure enough to pass the night there.

  “But leave your cell phone turned on, Tim,” she said, “in case I change my mind at two A.M.”

  He said he would. He set down the phone. Only a few seconds passed until the moment when Brooks heard a knock at his open door.

  His eyes rose. A woman.

  This time his visitor was Andrea Ward, best known as a regional busybody, which was another way of saying that she was a reporter for the Hyannis Eagle. Actually, not just a reporter. She was probably the best in the region. She had big-city skills and big-time perseverance. And when she was on to something, she knew just how to knock the wind out of an official version of a story.

  “Hello, Detective Timothy Brooks,” she said with mock formality.

  “You’re working late.”

  “Not really,” he said. “Just making a few phone calls.” Whenever someone called him by his full name, an inner alarm went off. It always forewarned trouble.

  “Mind if I sit down?” she asked theatrically.

  “I can’t stop you,” Brooks said. Momentarily, she hesitated, trying to find subtext to his answer. “And wouldn’t if I could,” he said. “Sit,” he offered.

  She did.

  Andrea was an attractive woman in her mid-forties, slim and smooth with dark hair and sexy gray eyes that made many people—usually men—talk to her much too much for their own good. Tim Brooks had known her for a few years. She frequently surfaced on Nantucket, chasing down stories of regional interest, some significant, some not, some pertaining to police activity, some merely human interest.

  She had been a print reporter in New York for many years, working police beats and City Hall for first the New York Post and then the Times. But neither paper had elevated her to the larger, national stories that she craved. At the same time, she despaired of the normal cheek-to-jowl daily living that marked her stay in New York. So she moved to San Francisco and then Boston.

  She finally got the beats that she wanted and realized that big-time stories were filled with the same petty liars and con artists as the small ones. It was only the scope of what they had done that made them different.

  Better, she had decided a few years ago when she had had enough of this, to turn inward. Thereupon, she married a doctor, changed her last name, had a child, chucked her career, moved to Falmouth with her husband, divorced her husband the first time he committed adultery, wrote a trashy novel that never got published, reclaimed her maiden name, gained custody of her child, and picked up her reporting career again with the Hyannis paper.

  All this and more within the years 1997 through 2008. When Andrea Ward moved, she moved quickly. Some would say equally that she knocked over everything in her path. And she also brought a great wild card to her current vocation: she was a stringer for one of the national wire services. So one never knew whether something Andrea Ward was working on would turn up buried on page eight of the Hyannis Eagle or prominently displayed in one hundred seventy-five daily papers around the country.

  “What do you think about all this excitement?” she asked, motioning with her head toward the chambers beyond Brooks’ office.

  “All what?”

  “The murder indictment. Against that boy.”

  “What are you doing, Andrea? Nosing around for an extra quote?”

  “Maybe,” she answered. “Maybe not.”

  She rolled her eyes as if to suggest that even she didn’t know what she was nosing around for: Curiosity, she frequently maintained, was its own reward—sort of an intellectual promiscuity.

  Brooks answered with a shrug. “I can’t tell you much that you don’t already know. It’s not my case,” he said.

  “I know it’s not your case,” Andrea Ward answered. “I asked you what you thought.”

  “I know what you asked me,” he parried. “And you also know what I answered.”

  “In other words, you have your doubts, as well.”

  “Andrea, don’t try to put words in my mouth,” he said. “The officers investigating the case have their reasons for asking for an indictment. Talk to them.”

  “I did.”

  “Then why are you talking to me?”

  Conversations with Andrea tended to resemble a beam of light in the universe, constantly bending back to where they had begun.

  Andrea lounged in her chair. “I didn’t like their answers,” she said.

  She set aside her leather shoulder bag.

  “They probably didn’t like your questions.”

  “They never do,” She smiled. “For that matter, why should they? I don’t ask easy questions. So for nitwits like those two, there are no easy answers.

  Andrea crossed her legs, which, by anyone’s standards, were still the stuff that turned men’s heads on the street. Once, a few years earlier, Tim Brooks had learned that Andrea was interested in having an affair with him. He learned this because she told him. Straight out. “What are you doing tonight, Tim? How about this: Let’s get in bed together at my hotel room,” she had suggested with a casualness that had surprised even him. He had gracefully declined, though he wasn’t even sure why. Perhaps some little internal mechanism had warned him that this was a relationship best left unfulfilled.

  All of this flashed back into his mind as she sat before him and as he answered her subtly venomous questions.

  “Well, those are the only official answers you get,” he said. “Whatever I might think has no bearing on the case.”

  “Sure,” she said thoughtfully. “But, I think of you as one of the more intelligent members of this police force, Tim. I have some doubts about this case. I was wondering if you shared them. Care to talk? Off the record?”

  He leaned back in his own chair. “I’ll listen,” he answered. “Off the record.”

  “Well, when the DiMarco girl was murdered,” she said, “it was a pretty big story on the Cape. I spent some time on it. Talked to the girl’s family. It wasn’t any secret that the Lloyd boy was a suspect. So I spent some time talking to him, too.”

  Brooks said nothing and indicated nothing. All the time, Andrea Ward’s eyes searched him.

  “He’s not a killer, Tim,” she concluded. “Eddie Lloyd said he wandered away from where they were sleeping in the middle of the night. Fell down drunk. Never hurt her. Know what? I got a pretty good B.S. detector from working in New York, Boston and San Franfriskyou all those years. My needle doesn’t move when I talk to Eddie. I believe him. I think your department’s trying to string him up ‘because they don’t know what else to do with the murder.”

  It was remarkable, in Brooks’ opinion, how quickly Andrea Ward could jab to the heart of the matter.

  “Then why don’t you help him prove his case?” Brooks replied.

  “I’m doing what I can.”

  “Good for you,” he said flatly. “How much have you been sniffing around already?”

  “Just starting, Timmy. Are you on my side?”

  “I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m an employee here.”

  She paused. “I know you don’t like those other two detectives,” she said. “I also know that you wouldn’t let an innocent boy get hammered for no reason.”

  “You’re right about that much,” he said.

  �
��Trouble is,” she mused, “a jury is going to want to convict someone. A heavy circumstantial case can be made against him.” She paused and mused further. “Of course, a good defense lawyer would make hamburger out of the state’s case. But that’s not what Eddie Lloyd is going to have. He’s going to have some local yokel from Cape Cod, a hundred-dollar-an-hour mouthpiece who’ll make more mistakes than there are peanuts in a bag. The type of lawyer who’ll want to plead him guilty to second-degree manslaughter even if the kid’s innocent.”

  “Andrea, I sympathize. But what do you want from me?” Inadvertently, he realized he was fingering the manila folder that Dr. Youmans had left with him. When he realized he was doing it, he stopped.

  “Who do you think killed the girl?” Andrea asked.

  Brooks blew out a long breath. “I have no idea,” he said. She held him in her gaze for a full ten seconds. He knew the game. She was waiting for him to speak further. He kept silent. He gave her a forced smile.

  “I can’t offer you another suspect, Andrea,” he said. “Honestly I can’t. And neither can anyone else in this department.”

  “YOU can’t offer me one or you don’t have one to offer?” she inquired. “There’s a slight difference.”

  “I don’t have one to offer,” he said.

  Another ten seconds of searching his eyes. Then she reached for her handbag and rose. “Okay,” she said. “I just thought I’d drop by and chat.”

  “It’s always appreciated,” he said in a tone that suggested that sometimes it wasn’t.

  “I also wanted someone in this department to know that I was still investigating the case. And you never know when I might find something juicy to embarrass the department.” He shrugged again.

  “You do what you feel you have to do, Andrea,” he said. “I can’t control that.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She moved to his door and stopped.

  “What else?” he asked before she turned.

  She had a big conspiratorial smile now.

  “Timmy? Could that be termed a ‘date’ that you were on last night?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been on the island for two days. You know, I may wear glasses, but I could have sworn I saw Detective Timothy Brooks of the Nantucket Police Department—that’s you I believe—out to dinner with Annette Carlson. The aforesaid is of Academy Award fame.”

  “Must have been some highly attractive couple who looked like us.”

  “Nope,” she said. “Try again.”

  Brooks sighed. “Come on, Andrea. Don’t print crap like that.”

  “Why not? Oscar-winning actress dates local cop. That’s good stuff.”

  “I’m asking you as a friend not to print it,” he said. “All right?”

  “Why not?” she teased. Her tone was more than threatening.

  “First, it wasn’t a date. This is off the record, right?”

  She nodded, a trifle too eagerly.

  “I know Annette Carlson through a police-related procedure. We happened to meet after my shift was over. She’s here on vacation and didn’t wish to have dinner alone. She asked me to accompany her. I said I would.”

  “Are you a bodyguard or what?” she laughed.

  “I’m not anything!” he said, finally unnerved. “And let the poor woman vacation on this island without alerting the tourists and the National Star. Okay?”

  “As a favor to you, Tim,” she sang. “Okay.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But that means you owe me one.”

  “A small one.”

  Andrea Ward smiled and left his office. He watched her go. What was it, he wondered, about Andrea that set his teeth on edge?

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Standing outside her home that evening at dusk, Annette looked up to see—for the third time—the little blond girl in the unfashionable dated summer dress. The girl was standing on the edge of Annette’s driveway. Watching her. Very attentively.

  Annette smiled.

  “Hello?” Annette called from a distance of thirty feet. The little girl didn’t answer. She watched Annette with considerable gravity. Annette began to sense something wrong. She walked toward her.

  The little girl stood her ground.

  Annette came to her and stooped down. Despite the sunny weather, despite the sundress, the girl had a pallor. She was pretty, but extremely fair.

  It surged through Annette that there might be something, well, otherworldly, about the child. So Annette placed a hand on her to be sure.

  Solid. Flesh and blood. Cool, but not shimmering. A real person. So it seemed. Thank God for that! Annette was relieved.

  “Can’t you give me a smile?” Annette asked.

  “I’m looking for my parents.”

  Suddenly serious, Annette answered. “Are you lost?”

  “No. I’m looking for my parents. Have you seen them?”

  “What’s their name?”

  “Mommy and Daddy. They were here. I know they were here. Have you seen my parents?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m…!”

  Then, as if in reaction to a voice unheard by any other ear, the girl turned. She bolted backward and started to run away so quickly that she startled Annette.

  “Wait!” Annette called. “I can help you. Come back!” The girl scooted down Cort Street. Annette stepped into the road and watched her. But the girl grew very small as she moved fifty, seventy-five, a hundred feet down the road. Then she turned a comer and disappeared.

  Annette sighed. Pointless to chase. Just one more crazy incident at this location. Just one more thing to wonder about. Annette telephoned the police department and reported a possible lost child. She gave a very concise description of what she had seen.

  Several police cars responded. Every road in the neighborhood was carefully patrolled half a dozen times at minimum. No child was found that evening. But no child on the island was reported missing. So by nightfall at least, despite the strangeness of the incident, the matter appeared settled. Wherever the little girl had run off to, it could be conjectured that she was back where she belonged.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Late on Friday afternoon, Joe Fischer telephoned Annette from New York. Annette took the call in her bedroom minutes after Tim Brooks had stopped by to check on her.

  The bedroom was not the best place in the house to converse. Annette found herself standing for much of the call, positioned between a dresser and the bed and gazing out of a window as she spoke.

  “What’s up, Joe?” she asked after the perfunctory small-talk and greetings.

  Fischer had just flown in from Los Angeles. He asked Annette if she had had the opportunity yet to read Message From Berlin, the script which Fischer had sent by courier three days earlier.

  Annette sighed and admitted that she had not. She also reminded Joe that she didn’t care to do television unless the role was extraordinary.

  “Annie, honey,” Joe Fischer said adamantly. “Would Joe Fischer send this to you if he didn’t think it was extraordinary?”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t, Joe,” she said.

  “Shame on you, Annie,” Fischer chided her. His tone was gentle, but this was clearly a reproachful call. The other tip-off was his reference to himself in the third person. It was always a danger signal, always a sign of Joe’s personal pique.

  “You didn’t even read Joe’s covering letter, did you?” he asked.

  “No. I haven’t.”

  There was a silence on Joe Fischer’ end of the line. Silence meant Joe was midway between irritation and fury, deciding which way to lean.

  “Annie?” Joe asked next. He had a way of making some sentences and some requests stand out from others. “I suppose it’s none of my business, but I will make it my business. Tell Joe: Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Well, you don’t sound okay,” he said. “And I’m not so sure you’re acting okay.” He paused. “Are yo
u alone?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Another pause. “Can anyone hear you talking to me?”

  Annette sighed. “Joe, we can speak freely.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “A man I know.”

  “Oh.” A longer pause. “Anyone I know?”

  “No.”

  “How could it not be?” Fischer insisted. “I know everyone on both coasts.”

  “Joe, it’s a man who lives on the island. It’s a friend, not a romance. Now, why are you calling?”

  “Annie, don’t play games. Joe knows you too well. And he resents it if you don’t tell him the truth.” Fischer paused. “Is your boyfriend still out of earshot?”

  She sighed again, this time a little more intently. To Joe, nothing could ever be innocent.

  Looking downward from the window, Annette happened to see Tim Brooks. He walked on the back lawn, head down as if in deep thought, arms folded behind his back.

  “Yes, he’s out of earshot. Why?”

  There was challenge in her agent’s voice. “I want to know what’s wrong with you. Are you in love? Not in love? Depressed? Sick? On drugs? Off drugs? What is it, Annie? What’s going on?”

  She was looking downward at Timothy as Fischer ranted. Brooks’ attention focused on some small object that he had found in the grass. She watched him kneel down to examine it.

  “I’m sorry, Joe,” she said defensively. “You asked me a question. I gave you an honest answer.”

  “All right. I know that,” Fischer said, cooling all the way from the third person back to the first. “And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You’ve been my client for five years. And never have I known you to not even look at the covering letter to something I’ve sent to you by express courier. That’s what about you!”