by Stuart Woods
THAT NIGHT, after dinner, the group enjoyed coffee and brandy before a crackling fire in the living room.
“Lance,” Stone said, “there’s a possibility we haven’t talked about.”
“What’s that?”
“Could these murders have been work related? Dick’s work, I mean.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve thought a lot about it. I’ve reviewed the threats Dick received in London over the years. There were more of them than you might think, but most from nuts or the ineffectual. Generally speaking, terrorist groups don’t tell you they’re going to kill you; they just kill you. Anyway, there was nothing in the file less than a year old. The other thing is that it just doesn’t happen that foreigners murder Agency personnel in the U.S. I can’t think of a single case when that’s happened. Add to that fact that Dick and his family were in, if not an inaccessible place, then one very difficult to access without being noticed.”
Dino spoke up. “We haven’t talked about the possibility of someone arriving in a small boat to do the job. A team, or even an individual, could have pulled a rubber dinghy out of the water less than thirty yards from this house.”
“I grant you that,” Lance said. “A commando-style raid, in the middle of the night, would have been the way to do it, if you wanted to do it, but nobody’s claimed responsibility, and these groups usually do. Nobody at the Agency has been able to detect the slightest sign that a group had or was about to conduct an operation of this sort. I’ve checked the weather that night, and there was thick fog all night and into the morning, and believe me, the fog gets really thick up here.
“Frankly, in my own mind, I’ve ruled out the possibility of an incursion from outside, and my report will so state. I’m more inclined to think that somebody local had it in for Dick.”
“Seth tells me that Dick and his family were very popular locally,” Stone said.
“And Caleb is accounted for,” Dino said. “We’re getting nowhere fast.”
“Well,” Holly said, “I’m going to turn in, I think.” She got up. “Good night all.” She headed for the stairs.
After a few more minutes of chat, the others headed for their rooms, too.
STONE WAS PLEASED to find Holly in his bed, and when he slid in beside her, even more pleased to find her naked. He snuggled up to her back and nestled between her cheeks. Holly reached back between her hands and fondled him, bringing him erect. “I thought you’d never come upstairs,” she said, guiding him into her. She rolled over on her stomach, pulling him with her, and they kept that position until they had both come. Finally, she turned over, slung a wet leg over his and snuggled into his shoulder.
Stone reflected that it was nice to have her sleeping beside him. He didn’t fall asleep for a long time, though, because he was running every possible permutation of the events in the house through his head and getting nowhere. He resolved to get to the bottom of Dick’s and his family’s death. It was the last thing he could do for them.
Chapter 7
AT BREAKFAST the following morning Stone asked Mabel if he should make a ferry reservation for his trip to Belfast.
“Well,” Mabel said, “you won’t need a reservation going over to the mainland, and you won’t get one coming back. Too many folks are arriving today for the summer, and the ferry’s been booked up for weeks.”
“Is there an airport in Belfast?” Stone asked.
“Yup. Bigger than ours, too.”
“Okay, I’ll fly,” he said.
“I’ll come with you,” Dino chipped in. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
Lance spoke up. “Now that I’ve got Dick’s computer up and running, I’m going to check out some things. Holly, I’d like you here with me to see what I’m doing. You’ll find the knowledge useful, eventually.”
“Okay by me,” Holly said, rubbing Stone’s leg with her toe under the table.
Stone looked at his watch. “I’d better get a weather forecast,” he said, getting up from the table.
STONE AND DINO LANDED at the Belfast airport at 9:30 and took a cab to the Waldo County Courthouse. Stone found the probate office, filed Dick’s will and was sworn in as his executor. By 10:30, he had all the necessary documents for disbursing Dick’s estate. He and Dino walked outside and found a bench in the sunshine where they could wait for the inquest to begin.
Shortly, Sergeant Young appeared with an envelope and handed it to Stone. “Morning,” he said to Stone. “Here are the photographs of the scene, the autopsy report, the ballistics report and a copy of my report. Will you have anything to say at the inquest?”
“I’ll take a look at your material and then decide,” Stone said.
“Tell the coroner who you are,” the trooper said. “See you in the small courtroom downstairs.” He walked back into the courthouse.
Stone opened the envelope, and he and Dino began poring over its contents. The ballistics report confirmed that the gun in Dick’s hand had killed all three, and the photographs were competently taken and in color.
Stone picked up an autopsy photograph, a closeup of Dick’s head. He pointed at Dick’s forehead. “Look at that,” he said.
THE CORONER CALLED the inquest to order at five minutes past eleven. There were no more than half a dozen attendees, one of whom, a young woman with a notebook, appeared to be a reporter from the local press. They had passed a television crew in the hallway outside the courtroom.
Sergeant Young was called as the first witness and gave twenty minutes of testimony, using a large television set to display the photographs of the scene. When he was done, the medical examiner gave the autopsy results and agreed with the trooper’s assessment of the events.
“Is there anyone else who has relevant testimony?” the coroner asked.
Stone stood up. “Your Honor, my name is Stone Barrington. I am the attorney for Richard Stone and executor of his estate. I have some questions for the medical examiner, if I may.”
The coroner instructed the M.E. to take the stand again.
“Doctor, I refer to your photograph number four taken at the autopsy. May we have that on the screen, Your Honor?”
A technician brought up the photograph.
“Doctor, as part of your autopsy, did you place a rod or other object in the head wound to determine the trajectory of the gunshot?”
“I did,” the doctor replied. “I inserted a twelve-inch rod into the wound.”
“And what angle did the rod indicate?”
“It indicated that the gunshot came from the left side of the head and from an elevated angle of fifteen degrees.”
“Was the wound a contact wound? That is, was the barrel of the gun held against the head before firing?”
“Yes, it was a contact wound.”
Stone held his left hand, finger pointing, to his head and elevated his elbow. “So, in order to create that trajectory, the gun would have to have been held in this fashion?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Doctor, have you ever conducted another autopsy on a person who killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head?”
“Yes, at least a dozen times. It’s a very common way of committing suicide.”
“In any of those cases, was there a gunshot trajectory similar or identical to the one in this case?”
The doctor thought for a moment. “No, I don’t believe there was.”
“Doctor are you aware that Mr. Stone was right-handed?”
“Yes. It was in the trooper’s preliminary report.”
“But, if Mr. Stone indeed shot himself, he would have done so with his left hand?”
“Yes, that is so.”
“In any of the other cases you mentioned, did the victim use other than his dominant hand to fire the shot?”
The doctor thought again. “I can’t be positive from memory, but I don’t recall such a case.”
“Doctor, the trooper has testified that it is his belief that Mr. Stone laid his head on t
he desk, then fired the fatal shot. On reflection, do you believe that the trajectory of the gunshot is consistent with his theory?”
“Perhaps not,” the doctor said.
“Your Honor, may I use the blackboard?” Stone pointed to the board at one side of the courtroom.
“Go ahead,” the coroner said.
Stone walked to the blackboard and quickly sketched a man’s head lying on a desktop, then he drew a line through the head and into the desktop.
“Doctor, is this approximately the path that the trooper described in his report, with the bullet lodging in the desktop?”
“Yes,” the doctor replied.
Stone drew another line through the head, approximating the trajectory of the bullet described by the doctor. “Doctor, is this the approximate path of the bullet, given the trajectory in your report?”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Do you see that the bullet would have lodged in an entirely different place in the desk, if fired in this manner?”
“Yes, I do.”
“It would then appear that the only way to reconcile the trajectory of the bullet with the place where it struck the desk would be with Mr. Stone sitting in an upright position?”
“It would seem so.”
“With the gun held so?” Stone again assumed the awkward position he had demonstrated earlier.
“Yes.”
“Would this trajectory also be consistent with the gun being fired by a person unknown standing next to and above Mr. Stone’s position?”
The doctor took a deep breath. “Yes, it would be.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Your Honor, I suggest that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that this was murder, not suicide, that it was likely that the shooter first shot Mr. Stone, then went upstairs and shot his wife and daughter.”
“What about the noise of the gunshot?” the coroner asked.
Stone went to the evidence table and picked up the Keltec .380 in its plastic bag. “The pistol was silenced, Your Honor.”
The coroner turned to Trooper Young. “Sergeant, do you have anything further to add?”
“No, sir,” the trooper said.
The coroner faced his small audience again. “The verdict of this court is declared to be open, that the victims could have been killed by either Mr. Stone or by an unknown party, and that the police investigation should continue. This court is adjourned until such time that there is further evidence to hear in this case. The bodies of the victims are released for burial.”
The coroner rapped once with his gavel, then gathered his papers, got up and left the room.
Outside the courtroom Stone was met by the television crew and the young woman from the press, but he declined to speak further, referring them to the testimony in the courtroom.
As they were standing on the street, looking for a cab, Sergeant Young approached them. “You’d have to phone for a taxi,” he said. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
“I need to go to a funeral parlor, then to the airport,” Stone said.
“I’ll drive you.”
They got into the state police car and drove away. “Looks like you’ve made some more work for me,” Young said. “Sorry about that,” Stone said.
“Don’t be. You made a valid point. I’ll come over there tomorrow and go over the whole thing again.” “Thank you,” Stone said.
AT THE FUNERAL PARLOR, Stone made arrangements for the cremation of Dick, Barbara and Esme Stone and instructed that their ashes should be mingled and shipped to him in Dark Harbor. He and Dino were back on Islesboro by two o’clock.
Chapter 8
WHEN STONE AND DINO left the Islesboro airport to drive back to the house, they were amazed at the number of cars on the road and parked outside the Dark Harbor ice cream parlor. Apparently, summer residents were pouring off the ferry.
Back at the house he found Lance and Holly working in Dick’s secret office.
“How’d everything go?” Lance asked.
Stone told him about the autopsy photographs. “At least I managed to get an open verdict, pending further investigation,” he said. He began looking for a secure place to lock up the crime scene, autopsy and ballistic reports, and to his surprise, he opened a cabinet and found a safe inside.
There had been nothing about a safe in Dick’s will or in the accompanying letter. Below the safe’s dial was a keyhole, and Stone went through Dick’s keys until he found one that fit, but it didn’t open the safe.
“Maybe I can help,” Holly said from behind him.
“You a safecracker?” Stone asked.
“I had some training at the Farm,” she said. The Farm was the CIA’s training facility for agents.
“You go right ahead,” Stone said, stepping out of her way.
Three minutes later, Holly stepped back from the safe.
“Now try your key,” she said.
Stone inserted Dick’s key in the lock and opened the door. “That was spectacular,” Stone said.
“Piece of cake,” Holly replied.
Stone removed the contents of the safe—a couple of bundles of documents and envelopes—and placed them on the desk. Holly wrote down the combination to the safe and handed it to Stone. Stone went through the papers and found a deed to the house, a cancelled mortgage, the household insurance policies and some correspondence with the house’s architect. He also found two insurance policies with a face value of a million dollars each: the beneficiary of one was Dick’s parents, and the other, Caleb Stone. They had both been taken out on the same day, some twelve years before, with an agent in Camden. He opened the safe, put all the papers back inside and locked it.
Lance came out of the little office reading a sheet of paper. “Uh, oh,” he said. “Holly and I have business back in New York; Langley is sending an airplane to Rockland for us.”
Stone picked up the phone and paged Seth Hotchkiss, who came into the room a moment later. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Seth, Mr. Cabot and Ms. Barker have to get to Rockland, where an airplane is meeting them this afternoon. Should I fly them over there, or is there another way, given the packed ferries today?”
“Easiest thing is for them to take the ferry, and I’ll call a taxi from Camden to meet them on the other side,” Seth said. “What time’s the plane at Rockland?”
“It’s landing at four o’clock,” Lance said.
“Then we’d better get started. You can make the three-thirty ferry, and you’ll be a few minutes late getting to Rockland.”
“They’ll wait for us,” Lance said. He turned to Holly. “Let’s get packed.”
Dino came into the room. “What’s going on?”
“Holly and I have to go back to New York.”
“Can you take me with you?”
“Sure. Get packed.”
Dino turned to Stone. “I just talked to Mary Ann. She’s hired a lawyer, and he wants a meeting, so I’d better get back down there.”
“I guess you’d better,” Stone agreed. “You’ve got your key to my house and the alarm codes. I’ll tell Joan you’re coming, and the housekeeper will lay in some food for you. You’re going to need a lawyer, and I’m going to be tied up with this, so call Bill Eggers at Woodman & Weld and ask him to recommend somebody. Do not meet with them without your own lawyer present.”
“Gotcha.”
A few minutes later they were standing beside the old Ford station wagon in front of the house.
“So much for a Maine vacation,” Holly said.
“You can come back later in the summer,” Stone said.
“Are you staying all summer?”
“I’m not planning to, but who knows? I’ve got a triple homicide on my hands and no suspects.”
“Good luck,” Holly said. “Call me on my cell if you want to bounce anything off me.”
“Will do.” Stone hugged Holly and shook Lance’s hand.
“I’m still on this,” Lance said, “and I’ll be i
n touch if I come up with anything. Please keep Dick’s little office locked until I can get somebody up here to remove the equipment.” He handed Stone the key.