The Fisher Boy

by Stephen Anable

  “Chloe!” I hugged her.

  There was no acknowledgement in her eyes, only fright. Her mouth was smeared with that gruel that had stuck to the cell phone.

  She seemed exhausted, stunned. Duncan Drummond stared out from his ruined mind.

  “You’ll be fine,” I told Chloe, almost believing it.

  Chapter Forty-two

  “Ian Drummond was killed by Alexander Nash to inherit the Drummond family fortune. Alexander had the perfect opportunity to commit the murder and be fairly confident it would be pinned on someone else. Given the craziness that was happening here this summer.” So said Sergeant Almeida, at breakfast with Roberto and me, on the back porch of the White Gull. The summer-long drought had at last broken. Dumpling-like clouds monopolized the sky, and a hard rain was drilling down onto the guest house garden, and, beyond, onto the water of Provincetown Harbor, which looked pitted, like metal.

  Almeida would explain what he’d learned from the various investigations, from the West Coast authorities, from the survivors of the Truro inferno—and from Sallie, my pitiful and treacherous half-sister.

  They’d met in a wine bar, Sallie and Alexander, amid the exposed brick and easy-listening music. She claimed she’d gone west to experience the mountains, but the lure of the Cascades hadn’t brought her to Seattle; her family had driven her from the east, that nonstop drive for competition, chasing the blue ribbon, being number one, in sports, in business, in life.

  “She was a vulnerable girl,” Sergeant Almeida said, “beneath the image of the steely equestrienne. Alexander knew an easy mark when he saw one. He wasn’t a marine biologist, by the way. That’s why he brought those props onto that boat, the books on oceanography, the jars of specimens in formaldehyde. He wasn’t in the east doing research at Woods Hole, the story he’d sold Sallie and the Drummonds. The closest he came to being a marine biologist was working one summer in a salmon cannery. In Alaska.

  “That’s where he came from, from a military family. He grew up on the big air base at Caribou Bight. He moved to San Diego, Coronado, when he was ten. He tried junior college for a couple of years, taking courses in economics and political science.”

  “No acting?” I asked.

  “He hardly needed instruction in that. Alexander had joined the Army but got booted out during basic training, for injuring another soldier during a fistfight. That ticked his old man off once and for all. The old man cut Alexander out of his will and told him to get lost, which he certainly did. In more ways than one.

  “That was very traumatic for Alexander. He’d been raised to think of family as very important, with his Mormon roots and so on. The old man was an ancestry nut; he’d traced his family back to Norman lords, or so he told his kids and anyone who’d listen. He made all of his kids carve their coat of arms as soon as they turned twelve as a kind of rite of passage. Alexander was one of nine children in a litter that included an Annapolis graduate and the mayor of San Clemente, so he probably felt like a spare tire at best even before his first real bad screw-ups.

  “After breaking with his family, Alexander bounced from scam to scam, in everything from a chain of steakhouses to a greyhound racetrack. He was a first-class con man, great at pitching an idea, closing the deal, then bailing with the cash just before it all went sour. Not the way to win many friends. By the time he showed up at the Potlatch, the wine bar where he zeroed in on Sallie, he’d burned his bridges throughout the west coast.

  “The image he presented was a house of cards. A house of credit cards, to be precise. He seemed prosperous, even prominent. He had a loft full of Native American art. He knew vintages of wine and hot tips on stocks. He was active in libertarian politics and the right-to-life movement, of all things. But the veneer was beginning to crack. He’d beaten up a couple of girlfriends, fractured a woman’s skull in Portland. His chief attraction to Sallie was, ironically, her family. Her traditional, moneyed family from the east—the exact life Sallie yearned to escape.

  “Alexander was after Sallie’s family’s money. Which was all the more tempting since so few heirs were on hand to inherit it. Sallie and Ian were change-of-life babies, so their brothers, Fulton and George, were much older—and sterile, unable to father children. They’d caught mumps in their late teens at Exeter. Prep schools were bad news for that family.

  “So Alexander, with his outsized ego and big family hang-ups, decides he and Sallie will found their own dynasty. He’ll become an instant Boston Brahmin, to thumb his nose at his old man in Coronado.

  “Alexander moves east with Sallie. And right away, Ian gets on his case. Unlike Fulton or George, he’s local, in Massachusetts. And he’s got an inquiring mind and a combative personality. He’s very curious about his sister’s fiancé.

  “He catches some BS in Alexander’s marine biology and figures his whole story is bogus. He phones the Woods Hole lab where Alexander allegedly works and asks for his title for correspondence. And of course the lab people say he hasn’t ever worked there, not fishing, not cutting bait, nothing. —Sallie admits Ian told her all this, but love is blind, right?”

  I hadn’t seen Sallie since she’d lured me onto that boat, into that cruise to nowhere, and I didn’t want to ever see her again, or any of that sorry, sordid family, whose blood in my veins now felt like some kind of infection.

  “So Ian keeps needling Alexander, who gets madder and madder. Who is this rich lout to sabotage his plans, his pipedream of the good life?

  “Alexander gets obsessed with shutting him up at all costs, and soon. The cult dumps the dead dog on Arthur Hilliard’s doorstep and Alexander, ever the entrepreneur, sees a golden opportunity, pardon the pun. Provincetown is in turmoil—between the Christian Soldiers and the street people’s invasion, so when Alexander kills Ian, everyone assumes it’s a hate crime. All should be well. Another young Drummond heir is dead. Alexander can establish his dynasty in peace, funded, in the long-term, by Sallie’s family.” Then Almeida smiled, savoring the moment like a replay of a Red Sox home run in Fenway Park. “But there was just one catch—the issue of Ian.”

  “But Ian was dead,” Roberto said.

  Almeida cracked his knuckles, pausing. His timing was good, good enough for improv. “Ian was dead, but he hadn’t been sterile. He was the father of a three-year-old daughter, Chloe Hilliard.”

  Roberto and I sat stunned. There was nothing Drummond in Chloe’s features, not the line of her jaw or the color of her hair, not her eyes or her ears or her smile. There was no more Drummond in Chloe than in me; Miriam’s genes had prevailed completely. And Chloe being Ian’s daughter made her my blood relation, my niece, in fact. I had saved my own niece from death in the Atlantic.

  Miriam had confessed to the police. She’d been truthful about her Peruvian tragedy, about the diplomat’s son and the car crash in Lima. And she’d been truthful about Martin, the stranger from the sketching class she’d seduced in hopes of fathering her child. She had indeed gotten pregnant, but miscarried during her first trimester.

  “So she asked an old friend to be a sperm donor, and he was willing and able. He’d been an equal-opportunity Casanova in his youth. Ian Drummond fathered Chloe, and then ruined his relationship with Miriam by scorning the child once she was born. Ian had told Sallie about Chloe just before Sallie moved west. He felt safe confiding in her because she was leaving Boston, less likely to tell the family whom she was hell-bent on avoiding.

  “Now remember, with Alexander we’re dealing with a whacko obsessed on founding his own blueblood dynasty. And he’s almost there, things are humming along. Then you come waltzing into the picture. And call on the happy couple at Ian’s house.”

  “Because Sallie asked me to,” I said, a bit defensive. “She tried to pawn off this junk Ian collected at St. Harold’s.”

  “Right, and that’s all she really wanted at that point,” Almeida said. “But you tried to talk family, you claimed you were Duncan Drummond’s son. Sallie, ironically, didn’t believe you. Dunc
an hadn’t told his kids he was your dad: he’d told his wife and their lawyer, that was it. Sallie thought you were nuts, but she told Alexander. And he believed you, with every paranoid brain cell in his head. And you repeated the story to Alexander in Gloucester, so Sallie claims he told her. You were the last thing Alexander needed—another young Drummond heir—and investigating Ian’s murder to boot.”

  I remembered Sallie, half naked in her bikini bottom and diamond tennis bracelet, the one that came undone on that awful boat. “How could Sallie…how could she stay with that psychopath after she knew he’d butchered her brother?”

  “Her equestrian training may have come in handy. That concentration, that way of focusing. Alexander admitted he’d caused Ian’s death, so she willed herself to believe it was an accident, to believe his story. That Ian was jealous of her relationship with Alexander, so Alexander suggested a private talk. Then they’d gone for a walk on the breakwater after dinner, Ian and Alexander together, and Ian pulled a knife then got stabbed when they’d struggled.

  “It was a risk for Alexander to sell Sallie that story because the wounds to Ian’s throat could have been mentioned by the media. But Alexander was lucky—the throat wounds were known only to us—and to you. We told the funeral home not to mention them to the family, that they were part of the murder investigation.

  “Once Sallie helped Alexander cover all that up, she became a kind of accessory after the fact. As he was helpful enough to remind her, day in and day out. Sallie can, legitimately, claim she feared for her life, feared Alexander’s physical violence. He’d beaten her badly after Ian’s murder.”

  Of course, I remembered her bruised face when I’d met her at Adams Pharmacy. She’d claimed her father, in his dementia, had hit her.

  “Alexander kidnapped Chloe without thinking his plan through. Sallie, meanwhile, was desperate—”

  “But not desperate enough to call the police,” I said. “She lured me onto that boat—”

  “Correct. It was Sallie who’d phoned Arthur’s to be sure you were there, after trying your apartment and the White Gull. Sallie was the hang-up call you got while watching the news, the fire at the Truro compound, the police raid. Sallie knew it might be necessary for you to be silenced, if you got suspicious of Alexander—he’d hinted this might mean roughing you up at most. Then, out at sea, when you blamed Lucas Mikkonen for Ian’s death, that was music to Sallie’s ears. She wanted to drop you back at the wharf, but Alexander wanted something a bit more permanent. He was probably bent on killing you both, you and Chloe, the last Drummond heirs in his way. So when you saw her toy, when you saw Chloe’s mermaid, you played right into his hands, it was perfect. That was just the excuse to pitch both of you overboard.

  “If you hadn’t come along, I think Sallie might’ve snapped. She might’ve fought Alexander over harming the little girl. Chloe was the last link to her brother, after all. Ian had told Sallie—and Sallie alone—that he was the little girl’s father. And she foolishly told Alexander.”

  He would explain Ian’s ties with Lucas Mikkonen, the Master. I’d been right, Ian and Mikkonen had met at the doll shop when Ian’s father, Duncan, in his dementia, took a doll without paying. When Ian returned the doll to Mrs. Mikkonen’s shop, her son was there, visiting Rockport with his entourage to bully a printer about a bill, the printer I’d questioned in my “inquiry,” as Almeida put it.

  “They were kindred spirits, Ian and Mikkonen, both seekers with the need to know what lies beyond. And now, presumably, their questions have been answered.”

  So, amid the blackened buildings and dead Tree of Life, a body had been identified as Lucas Mikkonen’s.

  “Ian was ill with lymphoma,” Almedia said.

  “Ill or dying?” I said.

  “Very ill. Which was probably tied to steroid abuse. Fuelled, of course, by the Drummond family mania in sports.”

  Roberto said, “So if Alexander had just bided his time…”

  “Alexander wasn’t good at biding,” Almeida said. “And he didn’t know Ian was sick because Ian never mentioned his cancer to his family. In the Drummond household, physical weakness was a disgrace. So Ian shared his illness with only two people in the world—the Episcopal priest at the family church in Gloucester and his other spiritual advisor, Lucas Mikkonen.”

  “What will happen to Sallie?”

  “Well, shoving Alexander overboard was perfectly within the realm of self-defense. He was wielding a knife and ready to use it on anyone thwarting his plans.”

  I hesitated, but curiosity got the better of me. “I’d heard the killer left something behind. On the breakwater.” That I’d worried was the broken vodka bottle, covered with my incriminating fingerprints.

  “Oh, that was a false lead,” Almeida said, “a wallet we traced to a tourist from North Carolina.”

  “How did you first suspect Alexander was Ian’s killer?” Roberto said.

  “Mrs. Drummond tipped us off, Ian’s mother. He’d lied to her about playing varsity tennis in college. She could tell he was new to the game, so that got her suspicious.”

  Then he arrived—he blurted his name and title in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but, for me, he would always be Jason. His hair was shorn, but he’d retained his Italian suit and tart manner. “I don’t have much time.” He checked his onyx-faced watch with no numbers. He pulled up a wicker chair, blocking our view of Sergeant Almeida as naturally as the moon eclipses the sun. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “Not at all.” Almeida rose so fast that he almost grazed a hanging pot of fuschia. “I was just going to leave.”

  Jason called the Truro community “a biotech firm turned hit squad.” If a god was involved, it was surely Mars; theirs was a religion based on war. There was little being accomplished involving farming and genetic research. They were successful at growing one crop, tobacco, which they gave to certain children to stunt their appetites, to save on groceries for the lower castes. But the dazzling produce the community hawked, including the jams Jason supplied to Scents of Being, was a mere cover. Jason said, “Their produce was grown through the inordinate use of fertilizers and pesticides, some illegal, actually. But their biological dabbling was even worse. We found outer buildings, not burnt, thank God, with stocks of biological weaponry. Plague, botulism, even some rare tropical pathogens.”

  “What happened to Edward,” I asked. “Edward Babineaux?”

  “Ah, yes, the family Babineaux. Edward survived a few hours at Cape Cod Hospital, before dying of smoke inhalation. But his mother is doing just fine, she’s in custody.”

  I saw the pitiful image of Edward, connected to tubes and blinking machines, in an intensive care unit all bone-white tile. Arthur’s treasure, with his hard body and fragile lungs—of course the smoke had overwhelmed him. Despite his treachery and deception, I felt pity for Edward and guilt for my hitting him that day in my apartment.

  “I accused him of ransacking my apartment,” I said. “Someone had searched it. Moved all my furniture.”

  “Yes, the street children, the panhandlers. Sent to Provincetown to spy on you. Since you’d been asking so many questions. They found a mysterious towel, hidden under your bureau. Covered with a substance resembling blood, so they stole it to be tested in their lab. The substance turned out to be tar, tar from the beach.”

  After all my worry that that stain was Ian’s blood, blood from the horror on the breakwater. “Did any of those children survive? Those children they’d turned into slaves?”

  “There are a small number of survivors, mostly children, ironically, of the lowest caste. They were locked in Royall’s old ice house, in the woods. There are fifteen survivors, out of a total of ninety-four residents of the Truro compound. That figure includes the two arsonists captured in the National Seashore. Twenty-six people were arrested in Stark, at the prep school, St. Harold’s.”

  “Edward Babineaux warned me about the Golden One,” I said. “He warned me I was in
some sort of danger.”

  “At that point, he was probably projecting,” Jason said. “He knew he was in danger himself.”

  “Why did the Enforcer let Edward go? The Enforcer—the man you knocked out to free us—”

  “Emmanuel Costa. He survived. He’s talking now, talking a lot.”

  “Did he really rape Edward, then let him go?”

  “Oh, yes, Edward’s rape story was true. Costa confirmed it. It was a friendly reminder of how Edward should accommodate their target, Arthur Hilliard. Edward had tried to run away from Truro, but Costa caught him, hitchhiking. Edward’s assignment, given after his capture and assault, was to find a moneyed gay man to somehow blackmail. That’s why he showed up on Arthur’s beach; he’d probably gotten wind of his big party. But Arthur had no dark side, no secrets, he was just too respectable to blackmail. And Edward took a liking to life at Arthur’s, so he resisted Costa’s pressure to move on. That’s when Costa dropped Eberhardt on Arthur’s doorstep.”

  “Eberhardt?” I said.

  “The racing driver?” said Roberto.

  “Edward’s dog, named for the racing driver,” Jason said. “Tied with a ribbon—not red, by the way. Costa killed the dog to remind Edward how he could end up. If he didn’t toe the line. Costa was the phantom phone caller, too, calling for Edward to shake down Arthur or come back. Those calls Edward answered nights at Arthur’s.”

  “The cult was so desperate that blackmail became a potential as a source of revenue?” Roberto asked.

  “Sure, the cult was in trouble with the IRS, so the street children’s spare change and other small scams got to become fairly important.” Jason inspected one of the White Gull’s singed muffins, then put it back on the china plate. “Edward was afraid to return to Truro empty-handed, so he fled to the Christian Soldiers. In the end, though, he went back to the fold.”

  “And left us to die at that steam bath,” I said. “If you hadn’t come along—”

  Jason cut short my compliment. “Saving you two blew my cover. I had to leave the compound that very evening. Had to haul my ass out of there because of you.” He picked up the same charred muffin he’d just rejected, then set it down. “Fools rush in.”