I saw the tension in his face, the swift look down. He had someone in mind. I pushed on. “I don’t have enough evidence for a warrant, I can’t prove anything and your gut instinct isn’t admissible. But this shit has to stop.”
“So what you gonna do?”
“Nothing. This one’s on you, Hector.”
“Me?”
“You’re going to be team captain next year, Carrie tells me.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So show some leadership. I don’t want to ruin some poor kid’s life for an idiotic mistake and no wants to hear a lecture from the Police Chief. But he’ll listen to you. He’ll expect an ass-kicking. Give him a warning instead. Get him back on the straight and narrow. Do a little good—for the kid, for the team, for the school. Think you can handle that?” Hector looked up, met my eyes, nodded. “Good.”
“So I’m your deputy now?”
“Something like that.” And I thought—you, Boiko, and Dimo, what a group!
Did he sense what I was thinking? I got the flash of a smile, like the sun glittering on the underside of maple leaves in a sudden gust of wind. “You are one weird-ass police officer, Chief Kennis.”
I smiled back. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
My reward was waiting for me at home. Jane had left for a walk, the kids were still AWOL, but I found the Tarrant sisters sitting in my kitchen, straight and stiff as the ladderback chairs, as if I were the visitor. They had even made themselves a pot of tea.
Edith, the smaller one, squat and compact in a white blouse, long blue skirt, and running shoes, said, “Would you like a cup of this very nice Darjeeling, Chief Kennis? You seem to be out of sugar, unfortunately. And there’s nothing but that awful two percent milk in the icebox.”
“The tea may be a little bit strong by now,” Paula added. She wore a plaid shirt, faded blue jeans, and well-worn hiking boots. I guessed she was the walker and Edith was the recluse. “We’ve been waiting quite a while!”
I almost apologized. This was home invasion, Nantucket-style. Two bossy old ladies whose ancestors stole the place from the Wampanoags amble into your unlocked house, take over your kitchen, and scold you gently for the sorry state of your pantry. At least they approved my choice of tea.
I took one of the remaining chairs. “What can I do for you, ladies?”
Paula took a sip and set her cup down carefully in the saucer. “It’s so nice to see people living in the Fraker house again.”
“Jane always loved this place,” Edith added. “Poor thing—she’s been doing the Nantucket shuffle since the divorce.”
“Summer rental, winter rental, moving twice a year. Ghastly. I don’t know how anyone manages. I could hardly stand moving into the guest bedroom when Aunt Gladys came to visit.”
“Which is why I usually wound up there,” Edith said.
The two sisters glared at each other for a second, and clearly decided not to “wash the dirty linen in public.” Their ancient family squabbles were none of my business—just like Hector Cruz’ religious beliefs, Kelly Ramos’ sexual orientation, or half the other stuff I found out in the course of my working week.
Paula huffed and sat up straighter in the ladder back chair. “We’ve actually come to talk about Jane.”
“Well, about the two of you.”
I cringed—what nightmarish item of gossip had migrated to their little house in the moors? Had someone seen Jane’s car parked at Joe’s house and assumed they were getting back together? Maybe someone had seen her eating alone at the Rose & Crown and assumed we were breaking up.
But it was nothing like that.
Paula removed the item from her purse, with the delicate awe and respect of a child picking up a ladybug. She set it on the table. “This has come back to us. But we have no use for it. And you do.”
I was stunned. “How did you—?”
“Carl Bender was at the auction, Chief Kennis. So were quite a few other people. Word gets around.”
“On Nantucket, a secret is something you don’t know everyone else knows you know. That’s what my father used to say.”
I thought of that great old John Prine song—“There’s Nowhere to Hide, in a Town This Size.” So true.
“Jane has always been like a daughter to us.”
“When her parents were transferred overseas, we took her in for the last two years of high school, so she wouldn’t have to leave the island.”
“She took care of our horses for years. Back in the old days.”
“We had a little barn out by Eel Point Road.”
“She loved those horses.”
“So this seems right. We’re the end of the line for the Tarrant family and something ought to be passed along to the next generation.”
I reached over and picked up their gift. “Are you sure?”
Edith smiled. “If you are.”
I slipped it into my pocket. Then I helped them stand, gave them each a hug, and walked them to the door.
Edith took my arm in a surprisingly strong grip before she stepped outside. “Live up to it, boy!”
I met her stern gaze. “Yes, ma’am.”
She smiled, turned away, and hurried to catch up with her sister.
Watching them bustle up Darling Street in the dappled shade of the old maple trees, I felt like I’d finally arrived on Nantucket. Their small gift had conferred some profound affiliation and so did the familial exigence of that parting demand. I belonged here. I was no longer just a washashore from around the point.
I know now that Edith would have been amused by that idea. “You?” she would have answered gently. “No, sorry, Chief. Your children, maybe. If they don’t run off away to America and leave us all behind.”
Oh, well—one step at a time. I was good at taking things slowly. I was even starting to enjoy it that summer—the languid pace of petty crimes and half days at the beach, in the lingering glow of my big case closed and nothing on the horizon but the Fourth of July fireworks.
Then I got the phone call from Joe Stiles.
What he had to show me caused a drastic shift, not in my situation, but in my perception of it. I thought of driving to Providence a few years before, coming off the Bourne Bridge, missing the turnoff for Route 25 that would have taken me to 195, then 95 and eventually into Rhode Island. Instead, chatting away about some case, or arguing about some political nonsense, I wound up on Route 3, heading north toward Boston. I recall laughing about the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the other side of the highway as we sailed along on the open road.
Then I noticed a sign for Plymouth.
Plymouth?
I’d taken the kids to Plimouth Plantation a couple of times. I suddenly knew exactly where we were—on the wrong road, thirty miles in the wrong direction and about to lock ourselves into the giant traffic jam we’d been laughing about five minutes before.
What do you do in that situation? Grit your teeth and turn yourself around. That was exactly what I had to do now. My case had flipped one hundred-eighty degrees. I had to find my way back and get going in the right direction and do it fast, even if it meant driving in the breakdown lane. Because if I wasted more time, more people would die, and it would be my fault. A moment of distraction was all it took. Chuck Obremski would have dropped one of his patented weary frowns and repeated his most basic advice to young detectives: Pay attention.
And when you think your case is solved?
Pay attention more.
Chapter Eighteen
The Killing Bottle
“Can you come over to the house?” Joe Stiles’ voice sounded pinched and squeaky, but it could have been the connection. “I found something you need to see, and we can’t talk about it on the phone.”
“Hey, we’re just making dinner, and—”
“Turn the stove off, Chief. This
can’t wait.”
“Listen, Joe—”
But he was gone.
Jane turned from the Instant Pot on the counter, where she was searing a pair of veal chops. “My Joe?”
“I thought you’d donated him to charity.”
She shook her head, flipped the chops. “Naaah, not worth it. No tax deduction for ex-husbands.”
“He sounded scared.”
“That’s odd. But he has been browsing the Dark Web lately.”
“He was using a burner phone. I didn’t recognize the number. He wants to see me right now.”
She tonged the browned chops out of the pot and set them on a folded paper towel. “This can wait.”
“You sure?”
“Joe never sounds scared. You should go, Henry. I’ll have another glass of wine and watch the news.”
My kids were with Miranda, and Sam had a sleep-over with a friend. It was a rare night to ourselves and I couldn’t help the petty thought that Joe was happy to wreck it for us. But Jane’s serious stare banished my suspicions.
I gave her a hug and kissed her cheek. “Be back soon.”
Joe was waiting for me in his study. I noticed that he had stuck a piece of electrician’s tape on his Chrome Book’s camera lens.
“Thanks for coming, Chief.” He tipped his head toward the little laptop. “I use that for the Dark Web and nothing else. Keeps me safe. There are some bad actors out there.”
“What did you find, Joe?”
“I have some keywords flagged on the TOR network. I’m always checking the sites and blogs. You never know what’s going to turn up. I flagged ‘Nantucket,’ ‘Kennis,’ and ‘Refn’ a while ago. And today I hit the trifecta.” He handed me a printout. “Whoever wrote this had to be pretty certain no one who mattered would ever be able to access it. Criminals like to brag on the Dark Web. They think they’re safe. But you’d need a much more sophisticated encryption to be safe from me. Just saying.”
I read the post—around twelve hundred words. A few of them jumped up like crickets on a bedspread:
This—
I heard Nantucket Police Chief Kennis in an interview on the local radio station confessing that he never knows how a poem will end, and that it always feels like a minor miracle when the last verse comes to him. He pointed out crime-solving works the same way.
So does committing a crime, that’s what he fails to realize. We have something in common after all—we’re mirror images! But which one is reversed, and which one is real?
Glad to meet you, Police Chief Kennis. I’m your evil twin.
And this—
Another person had to be tricked into the investigator’s killing bottle: the empty vessel of time, the precise duration of the murder, in which they would have no way to explain their whereabouts. But who? Propinquity figured into the equation—the hapless individual would need to be “on-site” as it were, and available to participate. But they also needed to have a motivation. That was the essential qualification.
Indeed, the individual I selected had to want Horst Refn dead just as much as I did.
And finally…this—
I had known all along that the process of getting away with murder would be absorbing and heuristic, I hoped it would be gratifying.
But I never for a moment imagined it would be this much fun.
I handed the pages back to Joe. “Is this real?”
“Real as roadkill, Chief. It’s just a screengrab. The post was deleted an hour after I found it. Someone knew I was there. But they can’t ID me any more than I can ID them. Luckily. ”
“Jesus Christ.”
A bleak little smile. “I doubt he’d approve.”
I sat, half fell, into the cat-scratched corduroy armchair by the door. “Hollister…”
“Framed. By an expert. Unless he posted this himself for us to find.”
“From jail?”
Joe bit his lip. “Right, yeah. Good point. I’m not thinking.”
“You’re doing great, Joe, Thank you for this. Now it’s time for my leg of the relay race.”
“What are you going to do?”
I stood. “I’m going to play pick-up sticks.”
Another tight little smile. “Just like Maddie Clark.”
“Yeah.”
He still read his ex-wife’s books. I admired that. Miranda hadn’t read a poem of mine in years, and that required a lot less commitment. On the other hand, Jane’s books were fun, and her advice was sound.
I started the second round of the game the same way as the first, poking at the edges of Hollister’s alibi…assuming the Dark Web poster’s plan had worked and Hollister actually was innocent. I didn’t want to re-interview anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. Word would get back to my quarry and I didn’t want to give myself away.
The key to Chris Felleman’s story: he was at the airport ATM getting cash when Hollister claimed they were driving to Cisco. I went to the bank, pulled the surveillance tape again, and printed out the best frames as still photographs. Then I had Joe Stiles perform a simple hack into Felleman’s Facebook account and send me a couple of dozen photographs. I printed them out and laid them on my office floor next to the ATM video captures.
Same guy?
Same hat, same shirt, same wristwatch, but the face was conveniently obscured. No rings, no tattoos, no scars on the hands in both sets of pictures. But I was still suspicious. Maybe that was why I kept at it. If you think you may have dropped your phone in your car, you’ll rummage for a while and then give up. If you know for certain it’s there, you’ll look until you find it. That’s just human nature. I wasn’t absolutely certain, but the smug arrogant tone of that blog post goaded me. It was an insult and a challenge. The law enforcement community was beneath contempt for this person—a group of officious dimwits to manipulate for fun and profit.
Not if I could help it.
I made myself a cup of coffee and set the Facebook candids and selfies on my desk against the screen grabs from the bank. This time I looked twice at a shadow on the ATM man’s hand. On his thumbnail, to be exact. A true shadow would be a kind of peninsula—connected back to the source that blocked the light.
This was an island. The shadow that connected to the rest of the finger had a different shade and texture, probably thrown by the edge of the ATM machine itself. It had been easy to miss in the bad resolution of the surveillance tape. But I recognized the mark—the bruise from a hammer blow. This guy was a carpenter, and not a very good one. He had been banging nails and missed. I went back through the Facebook images.
No bruise.
It was time to talk to Chris Felleman, and let him take the news of my interrogation back to whoever gave the orders. Fuck it, let the chips fall. It occurred to me that making the blogger nervous might be a useful tactic. If I flushed him out of hiding or forced his hand, I’d be watching, and any unusual behavior among my flock of suspects would constitute another clue.
I dug out Felleman’s card, called his cab for a ride.
I was waiting in the cop shop parking lot when the taxi pulled up. I climbed in the back and Felleman said, “Uh oh.”
“Nice to see you, too, Christopher.”
He hacked out a quick unhappy laugh. “The last person who called me that was Superintendent Bissel, just before he suspended me.”
“Sorry, Chris.”
“Where to?”
“Just drive around.”
He took a left out on to Fairgrounds Road, heading for Surfside. “How did you figure it out?”
No stalling, I liked that. “Your friend had a blood bruise under his thumb.”
“He was probably running his lines in his head. Sometimes when he does something stupid, Pat or Billy’ll say, ‘Got that speech memorized yet?’ or ‘Don’t forget to mention this one in you
r Oscar speech.’
“Pat Folger and Billy Delavane?”
“Yeah. C.J.’s the new kid on the crew. Pat said if he worked a year and paid attention, he’d be able to build his own house. Somehow I doubt it. The trick is the ‘paying attention’ part.”
“So why did he do the withdrawal for you?”
“Hey, I cover for him, he covers for me. He needs a jump I drive out with cables. I need a loan he finds the cash. We’re pals.”
“So you made him an accessory to murder. Some pal.”
“Hey wait, slow down there, Chief. Only thing C.J.’s an accessory to is a little old-fashioned small-town cheating. That was my afternoon delight, that’s all.”
He had managed to surprise me. I kept my face blank in case he glanced in the rearview. “Go on.”
“I have a girlfriend, Hallie Conway? She cleans houses in Madaket. The people are off-island until the Fourth. So I meet her there, daytimes. My wife works at the bank, she’s the fat blond teller who never smiles at anyone. I know she can get a look at the videofeed, she’s having her own little thing with the branch manager. So the withdrawal time-stamps the fact that I couldn’t have been anywhere but halfway across the island from Hallie’s love nest on Starbuck Road. The hat and wristwatch clinch it, in case she checks the footage.”
“And it just so happens that a murder was happening at exactly that moment.”
“Why not? Lots of things were happening at exactly that moment, Chief. Probably some bigger crimes than mine. And a million other things. They could do one of those big picture books: One Hour in the Life of America or something like that.”
I let him drive for a minute or two. He pulled into the Surfside Beach parking lot. Every space was taken and there was big crowd around the new overpriced gourmet concession stand. He followed my look. “Yeah, right? You can’t even get a regular old hot dog at the beach no more.”
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