We stared at the television, at a still photograph of a chubby blond boy holding a basketball, then at scenes of Rockport, Bearskin Neck, and Motif Number One. “The cult leader, Lucas Mikkonen, grew up in Rockport,” Marcia Haight was saying.
I was next to the telephone when it rang, and, automatically, picked it up. I remembered we weren’t supposed to answer it, but, holding the receiver, I said, “Hello. Hello?” Then the caller hung up.
Doug Doherty, now away from the fire, spoke against a backdrop of a motorist tending to his overheated car, a casualty of the massive traffic jam. He said, “All summer long, residents of Truro, Welfleet, and Provincetown have complained about strange things happening in their communities, about hitchhikers, panhandlers, and shoplifters in odd clothing. When confronted these people claimed they were Scandinavian tourists, but it turns out they were just plain trouble.”
“In my shop,” Miriam said, “they’d steal anything that wasn’t bolted down.”
I had to ask her: “Did you ever meet them in Truro, Miriam?”
“Never,” she said emphatically, picking a slice of apple from her curry then eating it.
“We were there,” Roberto said, as the helicopter shot of the compound filled the screen.
“You were what?” Arthur said.
“We were there, just yesterday,” I said.
Miriam and Arthur gave us quizzical looks, as if we were news groupies who were lying or at least exaggerating.
I thought of Jason, who’d saved our lives and of the girl they’d chained to the tree, I thought of Edward. But what about Chloe? Was she really the little girl they’d found in the woods, or was she still alive, under siege, at the compound? Of course, a motive for her kidnapping still eluded me, eluded everyone. If Ian had been killed over a real estate deal, over the St. Harold’s land by Lake Chiccataubett, why was Chloe targeted by the Master? Or Miriam? Surely it wasn’t revenge for catching street kids in her shop, catching them pocketing cheap amethyst beads. Yet the Master’s people were abusing children, and female children fared especially badly.
Doug Doherty was speaking again: “While purporting to be involved in organic farming, the group, police say, was amassing an arsenal of chemicals, for use in agriculture and in an Armageddon they refer to as the Fall.
“Police believe the community was divided by a rigid caste system, and that those at the bottom were sterilized, forced to submit to genetic experimentation and take part in tests involving biological weaponry.”
Marcia Haight took a turn: “Police believe today’s tragedy was triggered by the cult believing authorities were about to link them with the death of a young girl whose body was discovered in the woods of Cape Cod National Seashore early this morning.The young girl’s identity is not being released pending notification of next of kin…”
Arthur spoke up. “You can see the fires from the terrace. Truro is burning.” Miriam and Roberto ran to look.
“This could be a long stalemate,” Marcia Haight was saying, in a voice-over with the helicopter shot of the compound. “Police have cordoned off the property and are asking the Master and his followers to surrender peacefully, but their only response so far has been additional gunfire. A SWAT team is standing by or on its way, so we are told.”
But the stalemate died young. What happened next seemed to take place in slow motion. There was a choreography to it, like an exercise performed by masses of athletes in a stadium in some totalitarian country. Smoke began issuing from points around the compound, spirals of smoke. Then the smoke became flames, gray smoke bursting with sparks like some Fourth of July spectacle gone horridly wrong, until the compound was surrounded by a seething ring of fire. You could see it from the air, from the helicopter, this ring of fire that seemed to burn inward, as if following some pre-arranged route, devouring the woods and raging toward the compound, toward the greenhouses and the pond, which was like an eye gray with cataracts, blinking through the smoke and the heat.
“We’re outta here!” somebody said, apparently one of the helicopter crew.
“What on earth is going on?” Marcia Haight was asking. “What do you hear on the ground? Doug? Doug?”
The helicopter edged away from the conflagration.
“Marcia?” Doug was saying, as flames tore through the woods of Master’s world. “Marcia, we understand that the fire now raging on the compound grounds was started by people from their community. I’m some distance away, on Route 6, but I can see the smoke, there’s a virtual thunderhead of smoke.”
The helicopter view, the gray smoke with sparks and flames rupturing through it, resembled the shroud of ashes Edward’s lost brother Clark had prophesied before his death.
“Perhaps this is the Fall these fanatics have anticipated for so long,” Marcia Haight was saying.
I couldn’t watch any longer, I just couldn’t. I felt dizzy, sickened. Chloe was there, in all that horror, Chloe who’d worried about her sandcastle and doll’s broken arm.
I joined Arthur, Miriam, and Roberto on the terrace. I rubbed my hand against the wood, against the side of the house, to make sure this was real and not a nightmare. Through the big silver maple, across the water, you could see hills of Truro blazing, not the compound, of course, that was too far away, but one of the fires these Dark Age arsonists had ignited.
The sight mesmerized my friends. They kept shaking their heads, muttering to themselves. I thought back to the party on this terrace that inaugurated this summer.
“It’s all burned,” I whispered to Roberto.
“I can see,” he said, staring at the hills, not realizing I meant the Master’s compound. He moved off to join the others.
If Chloe had been unharmed, if Chloe had been being held by those demonic people, there was little chance that she was alive after this. For me, the flowers in Arthur’s garden suddenly had the dead smell of floral arrangements at a funeral.
The television was on, just out of earshot in the house, so the others would learn the news as soon as they returned to the living room. I was lacking the strength to tell them, I didn’t have the courage or heart now that I believed Chloe’s last chance was gone, incinerated, so instead of staying on the terrace or returning to the house to face the television, I decided to check the damage I’d done with my car, scraping against Arthur’s picket fence.
Walking the gravel of the driveway, I found that I was crying. Stale tears, long unshed, stored from earlier losses, were leaking from my eyes. Examining my front bumper, I saw that it was streaked with white paint, and that the post of Arthur’s fence was askew, battered by the impact of my car. I felt similarly battered, exhausted, spent with tension and grief.
I was trying to right the broken post when I saw someone at the edge of my vision. My back stiffened as my system went on alert. The police, after all, the Truro police, had warned us to lie low, to avoid our regular haunts. And those very officers were now dead, killed by the Master’s operatives in a shootout. But I had seen the conflagration in Truro; surely the Master’s followers were dead in their biotech Valhalla, or else in custody of the authorities. Of course their other community, at St. Harold’s, hadn’t been mentioned, but surely the police in Stark had those people under control; something had to be coordinated out there.
“Why Mark, hello!” the familiar voice said. “You’re still in Provincetown, I’m surprised!”
At first, I didn’t recognize the woman greeting me. Dressed in black denim pants and a white cotton blouse with tulips embroidered along its collar, she wore sunglasses obscuring half her face. Her hair was shorn short, like a boy ready for Little League, and a diamond dominated her wide tanned hand. “It’s Sallie, Mark, Sallie Drummond!”
I was happier to see her than I’d ever been in my life, happy to see someone from my Gloucester past. I hugged her, gathered her in my arms; I could tell she’d lost weight. “How are you doing?” I asked—and it was more than just a casual phrase.
“I guess it’s just begi
nning to sink in,” Sallie said, “that my brother is really gone, and that my father is…fading away too.” As she spoke, she began slowly walking toward downtown. “I don’t think my father even knows who I am,” Sallie sighed.
Though still dazed from the news from Truro, from our day with the Master, I felt compelled to walk with Sallie, just for a few minutes, to confirm or deny the bizarre things Barton and the Master had told me about Ian—about the rumors of his dealings with the Truro community, about lymphoma and his spiritual quests. Of course, I had to broach the subject of his murder gently, gradually, so I began with its origins on Cape Ann: “Your father…sometimes went to Rockport, didn’t he?”
Sallie nodded.
We rounded the corner by the old Coast Guard station, with its white buildings and weedy parking lot. I would walk with her just a minute.
“…Did he ever visit a shop called Doll World?”
“Doll World? He visited them all.”
Beyond Provincetown Harbor, an orange glow interrupted the smoke above the Truro hills. I thought of Chloe now as lost, as lost as Royall’s youths, whose ghosts swam through Provincetown Harbor.
“Did he ever mention a Mrs. Mikkonen?”
The chill Sallie returned. “My father has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. His short-term memory has been shot for years. He doesn’t mention much of anything that makes sense.”
We were reaching the part of town where Commercial Street begins living up to its name. The old houses with their gardens and colors varying like salt water taffy were yielding to shops, hair salons, and restaurants. This part of Commercial Street was clogged with traffic. I knew Roberto and the others would be wondering where I’d gone, but I had to question Sallie and thought asking her to stop might irritate her ever-volatile temper. I asked, “Do you remember Ian visiting a shop in Rockport to return a doll your father took by mistake?”
Before Sallie could answer, a giant gold scallop shell, the size of a satellite dish dispensing limitless channels, came rolling onto Commercial Street from the hill below the monument. Spilling from it, among ropes of blue tinsel seaweed, were mermaids with five-o’clock shadows, with fishtails of vivid sea-green sequins. King Neptune, in a conch-shell crown and a loincloth of plaster starfish, was asking, “Are we sure we have enough beads to throw?” and “Are we sure the parade isn’t cancelled because of the fires?” King Neptune was sipping a margarita, blue as automobile windshield fluid, its rim glittering with salt.
“What on earth is that?” Sallie asked.
“It’s a float for Carnival. See? The name of the bar sponsoring it is written on its side.”
Carnival was happening, in spite of Chloe, in spite of Truro. The liquor, the sex, the costumes, it all continued. To some degree grief was always private.
Further down Commercial Street another float was stalled in the traffic, a flatbed truck bearing cages of men in chaps and chains, grinding their hips to a stereo system that kept catching and going silent, making everyone feel embarrassed.
“This is still such a culture shock, but if my brother was happy here…” Sallie hooked her arm into mine.
“Was…Ian in good health this past year?” I asked her.
“My brother was not HIV-positive,” Sallie said.
“He’d built himself up—”
“Through a lot of hard work. He worked hard at everything he did.”
Some Christian Soldiers were watching the parade, standing outside their office. The men wore half-bewildered smiles. One of their female companions had caught a string of beads thrown from one of the floats; she was holding it her hand, unsure what to do with it. I thought of Edward, their former colleague, dead, no doubt, in the Truro inferno…
“Did Ian have lymphoma, or any kind of cancer?”
“Of course not!” Sallie acted furious, but kept her arm hooked in mine.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, he would’ve told his family! My God, Mark, you don’t keep a thing like that secret!” She seemed genuinely stunned. “Where did you hear such nonsense?”
“Just a rumor. Bar talk.”
As we neared the town hall, the crowds became thicker, louder and more agitated. A greater number of people were in costume, mostly men, in finery mocking their masculinity, like the boy in a hoop skirt busy with ruffles and bows, like a flirtatious Confederate spy. Men wore iridescent wings like dragonflies, the miters of Renaissance popes, the tights of pages from the court of Lorenzo de Medici. The twins from Arthur’s party were dressed as sisters, with tanks of Siamese fighting fish secured by wicker daisies to their hats.
Other men favored hyper-masculine attire, promenading as football players and as the police who’d harassed them at rest stops. One man posed as the Czar, in a uniform with epaulets and medals from some production of The King and I.
Anyone here, I realized abruptly, could be a refugee from the Master’s scorched kingdom, if they’d been away at the time of the fire…
“Did Ian even mention a Lucas Mikkonen?” I asked, noting that all the public telephones next to the Unitarian/Universalist meetinghouse were taken, so I couldn’t call the others to tell them I was walking with Sallie. Then again, they weren’t answering the telephone.
“That name is so odd,” Sallie said. “McEwan.”
We were distracted by an argument in the street, between one man dressed as Icarus and another dressed as an angel. Icarus, in a Porsche, had rear-ended the angel’s vintage Cadillac. “I can smell your breath from here, you’re drunk!” the angel was shouting.
“Mikkonen is his name,” I said, knowing I should speak of him in the past tense. “His family is Finnish, from Rockport.”
Sallie brightened. “Lucas from MIT? An engineer? Heavy-set?”
We were almost to MacMillan Wharf. There were public phones there, but none was free. “I’ve got to make a call,” I said. “I’ve got to tell my friends where I am.”
“You can use the phone on our boat,” Sallie said. “Alexander is docked at the wharf.”
Chapter Forty-one
His boat was a fiberglass dream, forty feet long, vivid with chrome and sunlight, like the fin of a fish Thomas Royall might have painted in this very harbor eighty years ago. Sallie’s fiancé shouted from the boat’s bridge, as he saw us. “Heeey!” He elongated the word, scrambling down to pump my hand.
Alexander certainly had the looks to fit his boat. He could’ve been a model in some haughty clothing ad, on the porch of a white-columned plantation, on the lawn of a house in the Hamptons, some place where everyone oozes breeding and ease. Today, his eyes were a blue so dark they could be mistaken for chips of lapis lazuli. He wore a rugby shirt striped red and black, its collar open to display the hair on his chest.
“Hey, bro’!” he said, jabbing my shoulder. “Great to see you!” He had the boundless confidence of a jock so secure he has no need to bully. He seemed at home on a boat; he was, after all, a marine biologist.
“You know,” Sallie remembered, “that Mikkonen came to our house once, in Gloucester. He drove a horrible old van, like something left over from Woodstock. His weight gave him problems, trouble with his back, so he used one of those seat rests made from wooden beads. It looked about as comfortable as a bed of nails…He was very overbearing.”
She’d mentioned the seat rest, the clue that linked Jason and the Enforcer and Mikkonen. I wondered, had she seen the coverage of today’s catastrophe in Truro, the news about the shootings and conflagration? A pall of smoke from the fires in Truro was metastasizing into the sky above Provincetown Harbor, like the warning Mt. Vesuvius gave Pompeii.
“Sallie,” I said, “I’d like to talk more, but I’ve got to find a phone to tell my friends where I am.”
“Look no further,” Alexander said. “Honey, where did you put our cell phone?” He rifled through some things on the deck, a poncho, a jumble of paperbacks, some glass jars that made Sallie scowl.
“You promised you’d dump th
ose specimens overboard!” Sallie complained. To me, she said, “Most people put fish on the grill or in a pan. Alexander puts them in formaldehyde.”
“Honey,” Alexander said, “you’ve got to be a tad more organized. The cell phone must be down in the cabin.”
“In the cabin?” Sallie sounded a little surprised.
“In your cabin,” Alexander said.
“Come on, Mark,” Sallie said, “you can make your call from our boat.”
Climbing aboard, I’d concentrated on acting as comfortable with nautical matters as possible. I’d grown up in Gloucester, but my boating experience was certainly less extensive than the Drummonds’; we’d never owned anything like this. And Sallie—half-sister or not—still made me self-conscious, and she was watching me intently.
“Excuse the turmoil.” Sallie stepped over a Seattle Mariners sweatshirt. “Follow me, Mark.”
She led me into the salon, which was paneled in beige laminated wood that a salesman might describe as “champagne.” Built into the starboard wall were a sink, stove, refrigerator, microwave, and television, and a counter of bright aqua faux stone. To port, were a table topped with the same faux stone, benches, and a couch of fine-grained cream vinyl.
Toward the bow, stairs descended to two cabins and the head. The first cabin Sallie tried was locked. “He said my room, didn’t he?” Sallie said. It was odd, I thought, their having separate cabins. For a large boat, the cabins were cramped; hers was mostly bed. Curtains covered the slits of windows, compounding the sense of claustrophobia.
Sallie rummaged through some books among the chaotic bedding—books about sea vents and plankton and the bleaching of Caribbean coral reefs—but she kept shaking her head in frustration. Inside some sour sweatpants, too big to be hers, she found something that made her say “Eureka!”
She handed me the black cell phone and stood staring in the doorway while I fumbled with the instrument in search of the “on” button. The phone’s surface was sticky with some sort of gruel, and the boat, I thought, was somewhat messy to belong to a scientist, but that was stereotyping.
The Fisher Boy Page 30