by Kathi Daley
“You learned all this while you were manning the climbing ropes?” Rick asked.
“I’m a reporter. I’m naturally inquisitive.”
“Okay.” Rick wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Go on.”
“My source happened to be dining in the same restaurant as Billy and Vincent. They appeared to be engaged in a serious conversation. There wasn’t any yelling going on, or anything that screamed disagreement, but the expressions on their faces were very intense. My source wanted to make it clear he wasn’t necessarily accusing Vincent of anything; he just thought it was curious that a man who’d once partnered up with Billy happened to be having dinner with him less than an hour before he died.”
“And how did your source know when Billy died?” Rick asked.
Jack shrugged. “I might have mentioned the approximate time I found Billy’s car in the water.”
Rick popped the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Okay. I know Vincent, so I’ll track him down to see if he has anything to say about his dinner with Billy. Anything else?”
“Not at the present time,” Jack answered.
“How about you?” I asked Rick as he balled up his napkin and tossed it into the trash. “Do you have any news for us?”
Rick picked up his soda cup and shook the ice. “On Billy’s death, no. On the house fires, yes.”
“You know who set them?” I asked.
Rick nodded. “It turns out it was a bunch of teens undergoing initiation for a street gang on the island.”
I frowned. “I’d pretty much guessed it would be kids, but a street gang? I didn’t know we had any here.”
“We don’t. Or at least we didn’t until recently. It seems one of the local boys—who’s a minor, so I won’t give his name—visited his cousin in Chicago over the summer. This cousin belongs to a gang there. The local boy, for reasons only a teen could come up with, decided being part of a gang would be cool—my word, not his; I’m sure kids don’t say cool anymore, but I’m not up on the current lingo. When he returned to the island at the end of summer, he started his own gang. He gathered some other teens to organize, and they decided it was important to pledge their allegiance by committing some illegal act and chose house fires.”
“I assume the parents of these misguided boys are on the hook for damages?” Jack asked.
“Damages and more. What started out as a foolish idea is going to create a whole lot of grief for everyone involved.”
I had to admit I felt sorry for the parents, who might very well have their life savings wiped out. It was at times like this that I patted myself on the back for deciding children wouldn’t be part of my life.
Rick left to do another sweep of the festival, and Jack and I went to get something for our own lunch. I settled on a hamburger, while Jack went for the steak sandwich.
“So what now?” I asked as we sat down to eat.
“We can go look for George,” Jack suggested. “He said he’d be working on decoding the papers Bosley sent to Tom, and it seems as if finding out what Bosley wanted to protect is our best bet at discovering who killed him.”
“I’ll call him after we eat. I’m not sure if he planned to spend the day at his cabin or somewhere else.” I glanced toward the haunted maze that had been set up using hay bales. “It would be fun to participate in a few of the attractions. I’d love to do the maze, and maybe the haunted house, although both would be better after dark.”
“Let’s look for George. Maybe spend some time with Kizzy; take her for a walk along the beach. Then plan to come back after dark for dinner and some good old-fashioned fun.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I grinned.
While the plan sounded good, it never actually came to fruition. Brit waved us down and joined us at our table just as we were finishing up.
“Are you here to volunteer?” I asked.
“I did this morning. It was fun, but I’ve definitely had enough kiddie time for one day. I was going to head home when I saw you sitting here and wanted to share my news.”
“News?” I asked.
“I ran into a friend from my theater group who told me that Bosley rented a boat from her brother the day before he died.”
“Who’s the friend and who’s her brother?” Jack asked.
“Michelle Franklin, and her brother’s name is Logan. He works over at the marina. Anyway, Michelle just happened to be there, trying to get her brother to let her use his Mustang for a date she had that night when Bosley came in to ask about renting a boat. She waited while her brother took care of the paperwork. She didn’t know where Bosley went or why he needed the boat, but she remembered he only rented it for a day.”
“And she was sure it was Bosley? She knew who he was?” I asked.
“Not at the time. But after he died, and everyone was talking about it, she wondered, so she asked her brother if the guy who was found dead on the beach was the same person who’d rented the boat, and he said it was. I asked her if her brother had mentioned the boat rental to the cops, but she said he hadn’t. No one asked him about it, and he wanted to stay out of it.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said. “I’ll let Rick know.”
“I wonder if the boat had GPS,” Jack said. “A lot of rental boats do. It allows the agency to track them in case of theft or accident.”
“Do you think the system might have a record of where Bosley went?” I asked.
“It wouldn’t hurt to head over to the marina to find out.”
I called Rick, who was swamped at the moment with the fallout from a street fight between two groups of out-of-town teens. He suggested Jack and I talk with Logan Franklin. If there seemed to be something there, he’d follow up with him when he was free.
The marina was an insanely busy place during the summer but provided a much more laid-back feel as the days shortened toward winter. It was a Saturday, however, and the weather was simply gorgeous today, so a lot of the slips that usually housed boats were empty. I hoped we’d find Logan in the rental office, and luckily, we did. Jack introduced us both and explained why we’d stopped by, then asked Logan if he could take short break to speak to us.
“I don’t want to get pulled into whatever’s going on,” Logan said, a tone of hesitation evident in his voice.
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” Jack reassured him. “If you can’t take a break, we can ask them right here.”
“You won’t put my name in the paper?”
Jack shook his head. “I won’t mention you by name at all. Right now, writing a story about what happened to Bosley Newman is very much secondary to figuring out what happened to him.”
“He was a friend of a friend,” I added.
Logan still looked uncertain, though he nodded. “Okay. But I don’t know a lot. I was here on Thursday, arguing with my sister, when this old guy came in, wanting to rent a boat for the day. He had a wad of cash and was offering a good tip, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions. He took the boat out at around ten in the morning and brought it back before the marina closed at five.”
“Was he alone?” Jack asked.
“He was alone when he came in to rent the boat, but he mentioned he was picking someone up along the way. He wanted to be sure the boat was outfitted with two life jackets.”
“Was he alone when he returned at the end of the day?”
“As far as I could tell. He was alone when he came in here to drop off the keys.”
“Did he say where he was going?” I asked.
Logan shifted his eyes. “No, he didn’t say.”
“I feel like you know something you aren’t telling us,” I said.
“I spoke to a buddy of mine who was out fishing that day. When it came out that the guy’s body washed up on the beach, I mentioned he rented a boat from me. My buddy said he recognized a boat he saw moored off Skull Island as one of mine. We both suspected it was the old guy out on the island that day.”
“Do your bo
ats have GPS?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, but only in real time; we don’t log a history. The GPS is there just to keep an eye on them in case someone decides to steal one.”
“Okay, thanks.” Jack handed Logan one of his cards. “Call me if you hear or remember anything. We’d really like to figure out what happened to our friend.”
From the marina we drove to the resort to pick up Kizzy at the main house and take her for a walk. I was sure she’d be ready for some exercise. Jack suggested we see if George was around after that. Maybe he’d have news that would move this mystery forward.
******
“I have found something,” George said to us as we took chairs at his kitchen table with cups of hot coffee. “I don’t know for certain that Bosley’s theory led to his death, but if it’s true, it’s disturbing.”
Jack leaned forward, resting his arms on the table in front of him. “Let’s hear what you found, and we can figure out what to do with it after that.”
George took a sip from his cup, then began. “I’m not sure how he found it, but it seems Bosley came across something relating to a man named Oswald Bollinger, a rich man by any standards. He was an heir to old money, but he was also a scientist who studied abnormal psychology during the late nineteenth century, which no one would argue was a dynamic time for the field. I don’t want to bore you with all the details, but I’d like to offer a few points to give you a feel for what I mean by dynamic.”
Jack and I both nodded for him to continue.
George began to read from his computer screen. “In 1883, the first experimental psychology research lab in the United States was opened at Johns Hopkins University. In 1886, the first textbook on psychology was published, the same year Sigmund Freud opened his practice in Austria. By the time the hurricane wiped out most of the population on Skull Island in 1893, psychology had really taken off. There were twenty experimental psychology research laboratories in this country alone.”
George’s voice seemed to rise in volume as he continued to discuss a field he obviously found fascinating.
“In 1896, a paper that basically gave birth to the idea of social behaviorism was published. Briefly, behavior, even deviant or socially inappropriate behavior, is learned, and thus can be modified. Bollinger tried to find his place in the rapidly growing field of behavioral psychology but never quite found his niche.”
I had a feeling I could see where this was going, and it wasn’t going to be good.
“When Bollinger couldn’t find a way to make a name for himself working within the academic structure of the time, he came up with the idea of isolating a group of people who had demonstrated socially undesirable behavior and use his own methods, which he’d been developing for several years, to create change in them. From the notes Bosley found, Bollinger sought out the most highly disturbed: people who heard voices and experienced hallucinations on a regular basis.”
“So, schizophrenics,” Jack said.
“Among others. Bollinger needed a place to do his experiments, so he approached Gull Island’s council members with a proposal that would grant him a large tract of land for a sizable amount of money. The men on the council at that time didn’t want a group of seemingly dangerous men and women brought to Gull Island, but they were tempted by the money, so they worked out a deal with Bollinger to use the existing infrastructure on Skull Island, which was all but deserted by then.”
“So they rounded these people up like cattle?” Jack asked.
“It seems they did. Bollinger looked for individuals who seemed to be on their own in the world, and who suffered from the disturbances he’d targeted. They were taken to Skull Island, where he conducted his experiments. If they were properly documented, it seems Bosley never found the records.”
“This sounds awful, but how could it lead to Bosley’s death?” I asked.
George held up a hand. “Hang on; I’m getting to that.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “Bosley found the same mentions of all the deaths in 1924 Jack did, and he, like you, noticed the designation SIRP. It was Bosley’s theory that the names of the men and women who were relocated to Skull Island were all given that designation, and that date of death. Despite his best efforts, he was never able to confirm that SIRP and Bollinger were related. His notes suggest the experiments went wrong and the project was shut down in 1924.”
“What do you mean by shut down?” Jack asked.
“He thought the participants who remained on the island were exterminated,” I realized.
“That was his theory, one he was trying to prove when he was murdered. It was also his theory that the men on the council at that time knew about everything that went on from the inception of the idea of the experiment to the extermination of the participants. Bosley thought those men were compensated financially in exchange for their silence.”
Holy cow. It seemed Bosley certainly had stirred up a hornets’ nest.
Chapter 7
As we’d planned, Jack and I went back into town for dinner and the festival after sunset. Walking around the crowded streets while adults and children alike lined up for events, munched on the goodies sold on almost every corner, and shopped in the mom-and-pop shops, which had stayed open late, was the best time I’d had in quite some time.
“The line for the haunted maze is really long and I understand there’s a certain amount of running involved, so I think we should start there and then think about dinner,” I suggested.
“Running?” Jack asked.
“From what I heard while I was at the fishing booth this morning, the maze has one correct path and a lot of fakes. If you wander onto a path that’s a dead end, not only have you wasted your time but a ghost or ghoul may jump out from the shadows and chase you back to the correct route.”
Jack laced his fingers through mine. “It sounds like fun. I’m glad you told me what to expect so I won’t have a heart attack at the first wrong turn.”
“The daytime maze is designed for little kids, but once it gets dark, terror is what the event organizers are going for.”
“Why don’t you get in line and I’ll grab the tickets?” Jack suggested. “The line at the ticket booth is almost as long as the one for the maze. Double-teaming will save us time.”
“Okay, but don’t get distracted. I know how you like to gab when you run into people you know.”
“No gabbing, I promise.”
We parted, and Jack headed toward the ticket booth, while I went to the end of the line. If the line at the haunted house was as long as this one, it was going to take us the rest of the evening to check out just these two attractions. Not that I really minded. The kiddie games were pretty tame for adults, and the twirling and spinning rides the teens enjoyed made me nauseated. It was fun just to be here with Jack, enjoying the excitement generated whenever so many people came together with the explicit purpose of having fun.
“Hey, Jill. You here alone?” a woman I knew from the spin class I occasionally attended but whose name escaped me asked.
“No, I’m with Jack. He went to get the tickets. Are you on your own?”
The woman shook her long red ponytail. “I’m with Sissy Gardner, and like Jack, she went for the tickets. These lines are so long. The only way to see everything is to divide and conquer.”
“It does seem there are a lot of people out tonight, which is good for the bottom line.”
“Speaking of the bottom line, did you hear the cashbox for the haunted house was stolen?”
I raised a brow. “Stolen? Really? How did that happen?”
She leaned in just a bit. “I heard some tall guy in a skeleton costume was loitering around the exit of the haunted house, acting sort of mysterious, so the woman who was assigned to the ticket booth stepped away from it for just a minute to ask him to move on. He refused, and it took her longer than she anticipated to deal with him. While she was distracted, someone made off with the cash from the entire afternoon. I understand there were severa
l thousand dollars in the box.”
I remembered the man from the previous evening. I’d be willing to bet he was working with the boys who’d almost gotten away with the cash from last night’s haul.
“Brooke is livid,” the redhead continued. “Not at the volunteer; she was just doing what she thought was best. At the thieves who’d steal money from a school fund-raiser.”
“Did anyone call Deputy Savage?” I asked.
She nodded. “Brooke did. He came to take a statement and will be keeping an eye out for the tall skeleton. In the meantime, Brooke’s going to go around more often to collect the money from the ticket sales. She got busy this afternoon, so the cashbox had a good four hours’ worth of receipts.”
By the time Jack made his way back to me, Sissy had returned to the line as well. The four of us chatted for a few minutes before we turned around to face the front of the line. I filled him in on the theft, and he said the woman who sold him the maze tickets told him that Rick had a suspect in custody. I sure hoped he’d caught whoever had stolen the cash and the money had been recovered.
“I overheard some teenagers talking when I was on my way back to you who said the secret to making it through this thing is to make two rights for every left turn,” Jack whispered.
“Oh, I wish you hadn’t told me. It’s no fun to try to figure it out if you have the trick to it.”
“I understand there are a few surprises even for those who stay on the right path. I’m sure you’ll get your money’s worth of scream-worthy moments before we’re done.”
I hoped Jack was right, although at the rate the line was moving, we’d be doing good if we got to the front of the line before the maze closed for the evening. “Oh, look, there’s Meg.” I waved to her as she walked toward us.
“I’m glad I found you,” she said.
“Is something wrong?” I asked. “George?”
“George is fine, but I do have something to tell you. I hate to ask you to get off the line, but I think my news is best shared in a less-crowded place.”