by Stuart Woods
“So, we’re back where we started?” Stone asked.
“I wish to God we could nail down the twins on Nantucket and confirm the past four days of their alibi. I’m beginning to get the feeling we’re wasting valuable time on those boys.”
“Funny,” Stone said, “I’m getting the feeling that they are less and less of a waste of our time.”
HOLLY JERKED AWAKE, feeling pain. She felt it again; somebody had slapped her sharply across the face. Then she heard an odd, mechanical-sounding voice.
“Listen to me carefully,” it said. “I have decided to accept your offer for your freedom. I’m going to remove the tape over your mouth, and I want you to answer my questions. Say nothing else, just answer. Do you understand me?”
Holly nodded.
“My question is, what do you need to accomplish the transfer of funds?”
The tape was ripped off. Holly panted for a moment.
“Answer me.”
“I need a computer and an Internet connection.”
“That’s it?”
“That and for you to find a way to convince me, beyond any doubt, that the moment I complete the transaction, I will be freed.” She heard the rip of duct tape being torn, and a fresh strip was slapped over her mouth.
“I don’t know if I can convince you of my intentions,” the voice said, “but I will promise you this: If we can’t make this happen quickly, you will be dead in less than twenty-four hours.” She felt the man leave the room.
Holly felt less drugged than usual, and she forced herself to start planning. First, she had to convince the man that she would cooperate with him, to the extent that he would untie at least one hand. She could still feel the weight of the small 9 mm pistol on her belt under her sweatshirt, and if she could get at that, she would not hesitate to shoot anybody who stood in the way of her freedom.
For the first time, she began to feel something like hope.
She took deep breaths, sucking as much air as possible into her lungs, and her brain began to work.
Chapter 54
LIEUTENANT JAKE POTTER stood outside the dockmaster’s office in the Nantucket marina and trained his binoculars on Hotshot. The marina was a hive of activity, as crews readied their yachts for the start of the next leg of the race. Engines started; sails were hauled on deck, shaken out of their bags and bent onto spars and forestays; boats began to leave their berths and motor toward the open harbor.
Hotshot was no different from the others. Jake counted five young men in the cockpit or on deck, each working furiously, and no large blond twins were among them. He had been had. What he would have enjoyed most would have been to remove his Colt Cobra from its holster, empty it into the yacht’s hull just below the waterline and watch it sink.
Instead, he drew his cell phone from its pouch and punched in a number.
“Sergeant Young,” a voice said.
“Sergeant, this is Lieutenant Potter of the Nantucket police department.”
“Good morning, Lieutenant.”
“I wanted to let you know that the yacht Hotshot has just left the marina here for the start of the race, and the Stone twins are not aboard. And I haven’t been able to find them anywhere in the village. I’ve had all our people on the lookout for them, and they are not here.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Young said.
“One more thing: Two young men answering their description left here in a small, private airplane yesterday afternoon. There was no flight plan filed, and I don’t have a tail number, but the airplane departed to the northeast, in the direction of Provincetown. That’s consistent with a flight to the Maine coast.”
“Do you know what kind of airplane?”
“It was a Cessna, nobody could identify the model, but it was not based on Nantucket.”
“Do you know if it refueled at your airport?”
“It did not refuel; otherwise, we’d have five casualties.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
YOUNG CLOSED HIS CELL phone and turned his car in the direction of Dick Stone’s house.
STONE WATCHED AS Ginny came down the stairs, clutching the diary and several sheets of paper.
“I’ve got something,” she said. She spread her papers and the diary out on the coffee table and sat down beside it while everyone gathered around her. “I finally realized that I still hadn’t gone far enough back in the diary,” she said. “Then it occurred to me that Esme had been in London with her parents all winter, not here on the island, so what I was reading was mostly irrelevant, so I went back even further to last Labor Day.”
“And what did you find?” Stone asked.
“The pages were very messy, and the ink had faded or run, but I’ve written out what I could read. This one entry was a page and a half long, which was unusual for ESE; she ordinarily wrote a couple of paragraphs about her day. Here’s what I’ve got.” She picked up a sheet of paper and read:
“”Day started blank.“ Where I couldn’t read a word, I just wrote down ”blank.“ Then there are two or three paragraphs that are completely illegible, then this: ‘X and blank said blank blank”—several words unreadable—then ’blank house, blank blank blank drinks. Z wanted blank blank go, so I said okay.“ Then more unreadable paragraphs down to the last one: ”Z blank crying, me too. Blank blank Y laughing, drunk. Z threw blank, and I got her out blank blank.“ Then the only whole sentence I was able to get: ‘Z swore me to secrecy.”“
Lance spoke up. “I want to send the diary to Langley and see if they can recover more of those pages.”
“I think you should,” Ginny said. “I don’t think I can get any more of this particular incident.”
“Do you have an interpretation of all this, Ginny?” Stone asked.
“It sounds to me that there are four people involved: X, Y, Z and ESE. It sounds as though Z and ESE were persuaded to go to somebody’s house for drinks, then got drunk and Z threw up, and ESE got her out of there.”
“Z could be Janey Harris,” Stone said, “and X and Y could be Eben and Enos Stone.”
“Could be,” Ginny said,“ but there’s nothing here that I can read that identifies X and Y. It could be two other boys on the island or two other girls or even two men. Wouldn’t be the first time grown men tried to lead teenaged girls astray.”
“All right,” Stone said. “Here’s a theory: Labor Day is everybody’s last day on this island. When I spent that summer here, the day after Labor Day, everybody abandoned this place as if it were a sinking ship. By five in the afternoon, the island was practically deserted.”
“What’s your point?” Dino asked.
“Something happened to the girls while they were there— maybe they were raped—but Z, or Janey, swore Esme to secrecy, so she didn’t tell anybody, and the next day they left the island with their parents. Dick and Barbara took Esme back to London, and Janey went home to Boston with her parents.”
“Okay. Say you’re right, then what?” Dino asked.
“X and Y are the twins, and they went back to Yale for the fall semester. Neither of the girls told anyone. Maybe they talked on the phone and reinforced their secret that way. But somehow, Dick Stone learned what had happened. Maybe Esme’s mother read her diary.”
“Mothers will do that,” Ginny said. “Mine did.”
“So Dick is furious. On his way from London to Washington, Dick stops in Boston and confronts Caleb with this information. Maybe Caleb doesn’t believe it or believes it and refuses to do anything about it, so Dick, in a fit of pique, draws a new will disinheriting Caleb and, by extension, the twins, and sends the will to me.”
“Wait a minute,” Dino said. “Are you saying that the twins murdered Dick, Barbara, and Esme because they were disinherited?”
“No. What’s more important is that they didn’t know they were disinherited. They wouldn’t have known, because Caleb didn’t know until I told him.”
“So they killed the whole family thinking they would inheri
t Dick’s wife’s money? That seems like a stretch, Stone.”
“No, no, at least not directly. Esme had talked, or at least her parents had read her diary, so they were at risk for being sent to prison for two rapes.”
“So they killed both the girls, and Dick and Barbara were either collateral damage or killed because they knew about what happened. What about Don Brown?”
“Janey must have told him about the gapes, or at least Eben and Enos thought she did.”
“Well,” Dino said, “your theory covers most of what we know, but what about Caleb?”
“What about him?”
“If his boys raped these girls, then, according to your theory, he knew about it because Dick told him. Do you think he wouldn’t do anything about it?”
“I don’t think he would send his sons to jail for rape,” Stone said.
“How about five murders? Would he take exception to that?”
“It’s hard to imagine he would,” Stone said, “but maybe he didn’t know the boys were connected to the murders or at least was in denial about them.”
“Then there are the other two women or the island who were murdered,” Dino said.
“Right,” Stone said, “and four more in New Haven.”
“Christ,” Ham said suddenly. “That just doesn’t sound possible. If your theory is right, then these boys from a nice Boston family have murdered, what, eleven people?”
“Ham,” Stone said, “when you learn about serial killers on television or in the newspapers, what do people who knew them say after the fact?”
Ham nodded. “That they were nice boys.”
The doorbell rang, and Stone let in Sergeant Young.
“I just had a call from Nantucket,” he said. “The Stone twins didn’t sail on the yacht when it left this morning, but two young men answering their description left Nantucket airport yesterday afternoon in a light airplane, some sort of Cessna.”
“You’d better take a seat, Tom,” Stone said. “We have some things to tell you.”
Chapter 55
CALEB STONE GOT INTO the big Boston Whaler tied up at his dock, started the engine and motored slowly out to open water, then he increased power and headed for the southern end of the island. Once clear of the island he turned for Camden and increased his speed to thirty. It was a sparkling clear day, and the water was flat.
In Camden he tied up at the local marina and walked a couple of blocks into the business district. He went into a Radio Shack and bought a throwaway cell phone and a kit for hooking the phone to a computer, asking the sales clerk for instructions on how to use it to connect to the Internet.
He then returned to the marina and headed back to Islesboro. He made it before sunset, having been gone less than two hours. Then, instead of returning to his own dock, he motored past it for another half a mile and, with the engine at idle, turned into an overgrown creek, dodging low branches as he went. Within half a minute his boat was invisible to any passing boat. He continued slowly up the creek until he came to the boathouse.
The boathouse had originally been an adjunct to a large, shingled summer “cottage” that had been destroyed by fire many years before. The owners still had the land but had not rebuilt and had not put the property up for sale.
He cut the engine and let the boat coast into the boathouse, tied it up, gathered his purchases and the other items he had brought from his house and walked quietly up the stairs, so as not to wake the woman, who was tied to the bed, until he was ready. He checked to be sure she was still asleep, then he took a small table and chair from one side of the upstairs room and set it into a corner, facing the wall.
He opened his computer case and set up his laptop, which was fully charged, and a small printer. He connected the cell phone to the laptop and installed the Internet software as the salesclerk had instructed. Everything worked perfectly, and he was soon on the Internet.
He donned the electronic device that changed his voice, something his sons had bought when they were in high school, then he went to the bed, gently untied the woman’s feet and duct-taped them firmly together. He bent over her and slapped her sharply across the face. “Time to wake up,” he said, his voice sounding mechanical and expressionless.
She came to, and he spoke loudly, to get past her earplugs. “Listen to me carefully,” he said. “For the next few minutes, your life is going to be in great danger if you do not do exactly as I say. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Your feet are bound together. I am going to untie your hands, and if you make any attempt to fight me or remove any tape, I will hurt you badly. Do you understand?”
She nodded again.
“And don’t try to use the gun on your belt; I unloaded it and your two spare magazines a long time ago.”
She nodded.
He untied her left hand first, then her right. “Sit up on the edge of the bed,” he said. When she did, he took her by the right wrist and elbow, holding her at a distance, and said, “Now hop straight ahead; I’m going to put you in a chair.” She did so, and he taped her torso to the chair to restrict her movement but left her hands free.
“Now, close your eyes and keep them closed until I tell you to open them. If you attempt to look at me at any time, I will end your life immediately. Look only straight ahead. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
He pulled off the tape, then took the glasses from his computer case and put them on her. “There is a gun pointed at the back of your neck. Now open your eyes.”
Holly opened her eyes and blinked rapidly. Tears streamed down her cheeks. It was the first time since she had been taken that she had been able to see, but she could only see straight ahead and down. She recognized the glasses immediately: They were “goggles,” which are used by student pilots in instrument training. They allow the student to see only the instruments in front of him and not out the windshield or to either side.
“The computer in front of you is already connected to the Internet,” the mechanical voice said. “I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth, and you will speak only to answer my questions. Clear?”
Holly nodded.
He ripped off the tape, and Holly worked her jaw and her lips for a moment.
“Now, we will open a bank account for me,” he said.
“What bank?” she asked.
“How do I choose?”
Holly went to Google and did a search for offshore banks. “Here’s a list,” she said. “You can open an account with any of them online.”
“The Malay Bank of Singapore,” he said, after a moment.
Holly went to the Malay Bank’s Web site and pulled up a form for opening a numbered account. “Who do you want to have access?” She pointed at a list of options.
“Choose ”anyone with the account number and password.“”
Holly clicked on the correct option. “You need to specify a password of six to ten letters or numbers.”
He was silent for a moment. “PE65000,” he said.
She typed in the password, which appeared onscreen as only a series of asterisks, then typed it again for confirmation. The words Please Wait appeared on the screen and after half a minute, the message “Your account is provisionally open. A wire-transferred deposit of at least $10,000 must be received within twenty-four hours for the account to be permanently opened. You may change your password at any time by clicking on the ”password change‘ button and first entering your old password.“ The new account number followed.
“Print that page,” the man said.
She printed the page.
“Now go to your bank account and make the wire transfer,” he said.
Holly went to her offshore bank’s Web site and began the process. She entered the wire-transfer instructions in the amount of $1,200,000 and the number of the destination account. She had more than five million in the account, the contents of a suitcase full of cash she had taken from an enormous stash of money held by
a drug cartel she had broken up during her police days in Florida. She paused when her password was required. A message appeared, saying “After you have entered your password twice, your instructions will be irreversible.” She tapped the screen. “You see this?”
“Yes.”
“Now, before I type in my password, convince me that you’re going to set me free safely.” Immediately, she felt cold steel pressing against the nape of her neck.
“You have my word that one of two things is going to happen: Either you will enter your password and I will set you free, or you will refuse to do so, and I will kill you now. Are you convinced?”