“I thought I made it clear that no drugs—”
“Please,” Mills said, grabbing Paul’s hand. It was warm and hairy and capable of shutting the front door on him. “I’m telling the truth. That belonged to Tommy. I never smoked it. I’ve been clean.” His eyes stung. Five minutes ago he’d been singing “Happy Birthday”; now he was pleading not to be ejected from the house. “I gave you my word, and I’m telling you now I didn’t break it. Tommy asked me to hold on to it because his mother was snooping around.” It was a small lie in service of the truth. “I shouldn’t have agreed, but I did because I liked him. But I didn’t touch it, and I didn’t even remember it was there. You can search my room. I’ll take a drug test. Anything.”
Paul watched him as he fumbled between the lookalike states of innocence and deception. He breathed out of his nose, forty-seven years old today, never married, no children, no one else to buy him a cake and light it with candles and remind him that someone else was around to keep track of his years.
“I don’t do drugs anymore,” Mills swore, almost crying now, Mills, who was nineteen, who wasn’t afraid of years. He shoved his fist against his heart. “Listen to me. Please. I’m innocent.”
In that moment, Mills might have seen what a young man sees in a father, a decision against all evidence to the contrary to trust the kinder possibility. “Okay,” Paul said. “All right. If what you say happened that way.”
“You believe me, right? I want to hear you say that you do.”
But Paul wasn’t staring at him anymore, he was looking past him. Mills turned around. The police detective stood on the front porch, his hand against the glass. Paul leaned over the table and blew out the candles. Then he quickly shoved the Baggie into his coat pocket.
Detective Gilburn rang the doorbell.
“I want you to stay in the kitchen,” Paul said. “I’ll handle this.”
“It’s fine,” Mills replied, still trying to pacify him. “Beth talked to him. There are other suspects now.”
Paul pointed toward the kitchen. Mills grabbed the cake and carried it to the counter. The lighthouse was covered in wax. He heard the detective’s voice over the rumble of the house being torn apart.
“Hi, Paul.” Gilburn’s tone was professional, edged with concern. “We need to talk.”
“Of course, Mike, come in.” They moved into the living room. Mills slipped into the hallway, remaining in the shadows, watching Gilburn fill an armchair.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Gilburn said. Paul nodded. “I’ve known you for what, thirty years?”
“Just about. Since you were a little boy.”
“So let’s cut out the niceties and the hurt feelings. I’m on your side here. But there’s a problem.”
Gilburn opened a briefcase and dealt five photographs across the coffee table. Paul drew one toward him with the tip of his finger.
“What’s that, a gas canister?” Paul asked.
“It was found hidden in the hallway closet of Beth Shepherd’s house. She claims someone besides her and her husband put it there.”
Paul picked up the photo and pinched the rim of his glasses to study it.
“You think it was the canister the arsonist used next door?”
“Could be,” Gilburn replied. “Had trace amounts of gasoline inside. And gasoline was the accelerant used on the Muldoons. It would be quite a coincidence if it weren’t, don’t you think?” He waited for Paul to finish examining the photograph. Paul placed it back on the coffee table. “Do you own, or have you ever owned, a red plastic gas canister matching the one in the picture?”
Paul flinched as he slumped against the back cushion. “Sure. I think I own more than one. I own a lawn mower, as I’m sure everyone in Orient does, and if you own a lawn mower you own a gas can. I own a snowblower too.”
“Do you have all of your gas cans in your possession?”
“Now wait a minute, Mike,” Paul said, leaning forward. “I don’t exactly keep an inventory. I could check my cellar. Come to think of it, Mills and I threw out a red gas canister just like this when we were cleaning out the junk in the back.”
Mills noticed the detective’s ears reddening.
“You threw one away recently?”
“We put it out on the curb on garbage day along with a pile of trash. About two weeks ago, maybe three. I can’t remember.”
“Do you remember if the garbage collectors removed it?”
Paul grunted. “Well, I have no reason to believe they didn’t. I do remember that there was a red canister out there in the garbage. What happened after we put it on the curb, I can’t say.”
Gilburn scratched his cheek.
“We found partial fingerprints on the handle and a complete set on the base.”
Paul shifted. His eyes rotated under his lenses. Then, abruptly, he said, “Are you here to take our fingerprints? Before you ask for our prints, especially Mills’s prints, I’m going to have to call my lawyer.”
“Where is that kid, anyway?”
“He’s in the backyard. Why?” Mills retreated a foot into the darkness and waited a minute in case the detective turned around for corroboration.
“You know, Paul, I had a hunch those prints were going to belong to him. I would have bet my house in Southold on it. But we have Millford Chevern’s prints in the database. He was something of a juvie thief when he was younger. Racked up detention time in Fort Bragg for stealing hubcaps and car radios and pawning them for cash. He was even accused of a domestic break-in, but they couldn’t get the charges to stick. Did you know about his history of petty theft?”
Mills closed his eyes. He resisted ownership of a record that didn’t belong to him. Why couldn’t the real Mills Chevern have been a simple teenage truant? He could disown Mills Chevern’s rap sheet by submitting his fingerprints now and reclaim the sad, clean file of Leonard Thorp. But how would he explain stealing the identity of someone guiltier than himself?
“No, I didn’t know that,” Paul admitted. “How old was he?”
“I’ll give him credit. Seemed to straighten out by the age of fifteen. We don’t have a record of him after that. Not a picture or a crime. Not even a driver’s license. But we still have his prints.”
“And you’re saying they match?” Paul wrung his hands and anchored his chin to his thumbs.
Gilburn straightened his neck. He stopped fondling his beard.
“No, Paul. His prints don’t match. The fingerprints on the canister are yours.”
There was a second of quiet before the information sunk in. In that second the brain submitted to the words, made peace with their syntax, had not yet jumped into the snare trap of their content. To live entirely in that second was to exist sweetly between the tidal wave and the coast. But no one existed in one second.
Paul jolted from his chair, as if raised by a calling. The floorboards rumbled as a heap of house was tossed in the Dumpster.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Paul’s laugh was artificial, his smile spiked by spit, a smile of agony and disbelief. He arranged his legs wider so he could smack the coffee table with his hand. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he screamed. “My fingerprints are on the murder weapon. Is that what you’re telling me? You think I killed the Muldoons?”
“I’m not saying you killed—”
“Well, of course my fingerprints are on that can. If it belonged to me, they’re going to be all over it.”
“We had a set of your prints from your drunk-driving accident last June.”
Mills knew about the accident—the tree that got in his way on Main Road coming off the causeway, the injury that still caused him to limp at night or when it rained, the medication he’d been prescribed to help with the pain. He even knew from Tommy that the police had been called to the scene. But Mills didn’t know that Paul had been drunk. The accident must have happened right after his mother died.
“I hit a tree in a bad swerve after one too many whiskeys. I w
as only a point above the legal limit. That doesn’t make me a criminal. The judge said as much.”
“I’m just telling you the facts of the situation. Have you ever been inside the Shepherd home?”
“No. Not for years. Mike, what reason would I have to kill the Muldoons? They were my neighbors for thirty years.” His voice was no longer fighting for Mills’s innocence. It was fighting more desperately for his own. “Before I say another word, I want to call my lawyer.”
“Easy,” Gilburn said, touching Paul’s knee. “Now, look, I’m in a predicament. I know you didn’t do it. There’s no reason you would have hidden a gas can with your own fingerprints in the house of a neighbor who could stumble upon it at any time.” Paul’s throat made a choking sound, as if he’d just inhaled a small bone. “I realize you could have driven that can to the dump or pitched it in the Sound. But I take this information to my superior, well, it doesn’t look so cut-and-dried. You lived next door. You were seen involved in a dispute with Pam Muldoon on the front lawn days before the fire.”
“I told you what that was about,” he rasped.
“Paul, listen. I’m not arresting you. It hasn’t come to that.”
“Hasn’t come to that,” he repeated. “Anyone could have taken that can from the curb. Someone must have known my prints would be on it. It’s my can!”
Gilburn nodded and collected the photographs on the coffee table. He slowly packed them into his briefcase.
“Mills had been visiting the Shepherd house,” Gilburn said. “He had access. Am I correct in saying he also had access to the gas can?”
“Mike, I told you. Mills had nothing to do with that fire.”
“Does Mills own a pair of gloves?”
Paul fell back on the cushion, flapping his shoulders, a fish trying to survive in an unforgiving element. “Every single person out here has gloves. Mills also owns shoes. You can try to pin this gas can on me, it’s my fingerprints, but I’m not about to let you pin it on an innocent kid.”
Gilburn waved his hands. “Okay, I get it. Anyone could have taken that can. It was on the curb next to the Muldoon house for anyone in Orient to pick up. But when I show this to my boss, he’s going to look at one thing: your fingerprints on a probable murder weapon that originated in this house. I’m going to tell him that’s ridiculous. But if it comes to that, since you and Mills both confirm each other’s alibis, my boss is going to wonder if you two did it together.”
Gilburn was fishing, and Mills prayed that Paul wouldn’t bite. But Paul seemed to have aged during the course of the detective’s visit, worn out from the labor of defending himself. When Paul glanced out the window, Mills saw a man losing his pleasure in the view of Orient, in the house he’d grown up in, in the street he’d known since he was a child. If word got out that his fingerprints had been found on the gas canister, he’d be the most hated man on the North Fork. Paul dipped his head and waited for another load of metal to hit the Dumpster before speaking again.
“Mills was asleep on this sofa. He was out like a light when I went upstairs to bed. If there’s anyone who doesn’t have an alibi, it’s me. I was awake in my room by myself. You can tell your superior that I’m the one whose whereabouts can’t be confirmed. If Beth Shepherd wants to charge me with breaking into her house, she’s welcome to do that. But this is nonsense. You’ve got a murderer on the loose who could have taken that can from my curb at any time, and you’re wasting your time on me.”
“We’ve got other leads,” Gilburn said.
“Great,” Paul whimpered. “So I’m not your only suspect.”
Mills stepped from the shadows, hurrying into the living room. Paul smiled hollowly and the detective turned, closing his briefcase as he watched him advance.
“Paul didn’t do it,” Mills said. The detective stood up, smoothing a nonexistent tie down his chest. He reached out to shake Mills’s hand and, when he was rebuffed, clapped him on the shoulder. “Have you talked to Lisa Muldoon and Adam Pruitt?” he asked. “I saw her out here two weeks before the fire. They’re a couple.”
Paul tried to silence him with a sharp look.
“In fact we’re talking to her about that today,” Gilburn confided. “Paul, you haven’t seen Adam recently, have you? We’ve been trying to locate him. He’s got some explaining to do, and I don’t mean about the Muldoons. You heard about that second creature?”
Still dazed, Paul scarcely bothered to shake his head.
“Seems whoever fabricated the first Orient monster got greedy for a second round of panic. It’s a crime to induce public panic. If you do see him—” Detective Gilburn retreated to the foyer. Paul got to his feet and watched the detective open the door. “Just to be clear, we ask that neither one of you leaves Orient without checking in with us.” He glanced at Mills. “I know you’re only a visitor, but if you decide to run off without warning, it wouldn’t look so good for your friend here.”
Mills nodded. Paul grumbled, ushered Gilburn onto the porch, and shut the door behind him. He set the security alarm, then took a deep breath and rested his forehead on the wall.
“They think we killed them,” Mills said.
“They think I killed them,” Paul replied. “Me. Tell me you didn’t hide that canister at Beth’s house?” His eyes were shut, his wet forehead polishing the wood. “Even if you meant it as a precaution, as a way of trying to protect me, tell me you didn’t do that?”
It was the second time that morning Mills had been asked to swear his innocence. Paul was the man who had offered him a family, and his acceptance tied him to Paul. There was no longer any chance of a clean escape. They stood on the ground floor like two trees that had broken through the foundation, their branches growing and twisting together within the four walls. Mills might have clouded Paul’s reputation by coming here, but he’d ruin him if he left.
“I hit that tree when I was drunk,” Paul confessed, barely intelligible. “It was nothing. Just one drink too many and I was worn-out from how sick my mother had been. It was right after the funeral. The judge gave me a slap on the wrist. I’m careful now. For that to come back with my fingerprints . . .”
“I didn’t put the can in Beth’s house,” Mills promised. “Don’t worry. They’ll catch who did it.”
Orient was his home, more now than Modesto. Maybe, in the end, a home is a place where you have no other choice but to stay.
CHAPTER 30
There were reports that she had gone into custody in handcuffs, that she was crying hysterically and screaming for her boyfriend, “Adam, Adam,” as the officer cupped her head when placing her in the backseat of the cruiser. There were further reports from those who happened to be driving by the Seaview that she spat in the face of the arresting officer, that she dragged her feet on the gravel until the officer was forced to carry her, that she threatened a lawsuit against the township for false arrest. None of these reports was verified, and even those who spread them in the days that followed were half-certain of their falsehood. It was gossip that twisted and mutated as it dispersed, through the telephones of Holly Drake and Helen Floyd, on the bitter-cold corners near Poquatuck, in the abbreviated syntax of text messages.
But neighbors on Beach Lane could confirm that police had raided Adam Pruitt’s bungalow after receiving an anonymous tip about a foul odor, that they dredged his room and confiscated a box of lime green leaflets along with a rifle for which Adam did not have a permit. They checked his answering machine—a total of twenty-seven messages, mostly from increasingly irate Pruitt Securities customers demanding to know why he had missed his scheduled appointments. The police cut the lock on his backyard shed, and the putrid smell of animal carcasses plagued the air, causing one officer to puke in the bushes. Inside the shed they found a blood-soaked table with a handsaw, a scalpel, and absorbable suture thread. In a sealed garbage bin, they uncovered the dissected remains of various mammals, like replacement parts for the herds and swarms that roamed the eastern fields. It all served
as evidence against him. The police questioned Luz and Nathan, the owners of the land where the second creature was found. Yes, Adam Pruitt had visited their house for a consultation; yes, he had cased the property including the beach; yes, Luz had woken a few nights before the creature was discovered to the sound of someone moving in the weeds. Luz giddily texted the details of her police interview to Beth, but Beth didn’t respond. Instead, she spoke to Mills on the phone.
“Adam created the monsters himself and put them on the beach,” she said. “And he relied on that fear to bolster his security business. Make Plum into the ultimate horror, forcing neighbors to pay for a bunch of expensive environmental tests as well as alarms. Fuck, I almost considered having Gail’s soil and water tested.”
“That means he probably killed the Muldoons too,” Mills replied. “He got rid of his only competition, Muldoon Security, so he could have a monopoly on the market out here.” Mills’s voice full of hope, like hands trying to hold tight to a future nearly lost. “Is that what the police are thinking?”
Beth paused. “Maybe—hopefully. I don’t know. I guess they’ll know when they find him.” She glanced out the kitchen window as if expecting to see Adam Pruitt crouching in the reeds, in camouflage fatigues and black face paint. What she saw, instead, was the same pantsuited Pearl Farms agent unlocking Magdalena’s front door. “I’m sorry about the gas can. I never thought they’d find Paul’s fingerprints on it. Who would want to frame Paul?”
“But now they know about Lisa. And if Adam is the one, they won’t look any further. Either of them could have taken the can from the curb on trash day.” Mills sounded so optimistic that Beth wondered if her own doubts were the paranoid mathematics of catastrophe, like a New Year’s Eve guest who compares the countdown to the doomsday clock.
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