Not long afterward, his father, a gifted paleontologist, and his brother, a Yale graduate with two years at Johns Hopkins, both left the country while Tomlinson was still at Harvard. Now he wasn’t even sure they were alive.
Standing at my door, he said, “I swore I’d never go back. But everything in its time, man. The dream was bizarre, now it’s like a tractor pulling me home.” He looked over my shoulder into the room. “You mind grabbing an extra jacket? It’s freezing out here.”
I was awake. I had spent two hours cross-referencing new information related to William Chaser’s abduction. E-mails from Barbara’s staff and one from Harrington. Now I was trying to get my mind off the puzzle of the boy’s disappearance by reading an article in National Geographic Adventurer about the puzzle that is the precise magnetic navigation system in sea turtles.
I closed the magazine and tossed it on the desk. “Someone could be living in your old place. Maybe it’s been leased, you don’t know. And it’s late.”
“Tell that to my demons. Last I heard, Dr. Tomlinson was working in Brazil and my brother was growing poppies on the far side of the world. But it doesn’t mean they gave away the family jewels.” He rattled the keys.
Tomlinson’s manic reaction to alcohol mixed with guilt takes many forms, most of them familiar to me by now. This was different. His eyes were wild but not glazed. He was dressed in layers: jeans, shirts and at least two pairs of socks—a scarecrow’s costume for most but for him bedrock proof that he’d given the matter sober consideration.
Fifteen minutes later, I was standing outside a hedged compound, a deserted hulk of a house that Tomlinson said was once his family’s estate. MEL-VILLE PLACE read a weathered sign at the stone entranceway—the author had spent part of a whaling season here. When Tomlinson said the family had money, I’d assumed millions, not hundreds of millions. There was a light on in a staff cottage. He asked me to wait while he went to the door.
I watched the door open. A buxom woman in a housecoat appeared. I heard a hoot of surprise, then watched the woman hug Tomlinson. He lifted her off the floor as if they were dancing.
“It’s okay,” he yelled. “Give me a minute!”
As the door closed, I could hear the woman weeping.
I walked to the back of the property to a dune overlooking the sea. I was there for only a few minutes when I noticed the silhouette of a man approaching. I looked at the house, then at the silhouette.
Physical characteristics in a family vary, but the person coming toward me was Tomlinson’s ectomorphic opposite: broad and squat, not tall and lean—unlikely it was his father or brother. And his movements were mechanical, like a robot tracking unfamiliar ground.
I looked far down the beach. No lights. The nearest estate was two miles away. Even so, I wondered if it might be a neighbor sleepwalking.
No . . . the man was awake. His course didn’t vary. I realized it was because he saw me. As he approached, I expected a signal of acknowledgment, at least a tentative greeting, typical of strangers meeting at night in an isolated place.
Nothing. The closer he got, the faster the man walked. Maybe he expected me to turn and leave—or run.
I didn’t.
“Are you him? The liar that says his name is Thomas?”
When the man spoke, I backed up a step, couldn’t help it. By now he had breached what academics call the alarm perimeter and hadn’t slowed. Friends stop at three feet, acquaintances at four, strangers at nine. He kept coming. It wasn’t until I stepped toward the man that he halted.
“You scared, bub? I’m waiting for an answer.” The man was a local, his accent similar to the horse trainer’s.
I said, “Here’s the way it works: You introduce yourself, then I explain my name’s not Thomas. Afterward, we both go on our merry ways.”
“Didn’t say that. I said you was the liar pretending his name was Thomas.”
The man stepped closer.
Wind blew off the ocean, topping the dunes. I could smell creosote and diesel, odors I associate with commercial fishing. Not a tall man but big. His face was shadowed because the sea was behind him, a pale band of beach where waves boomed, water blacker than the squall-black sky. Age was in his voice and the way he moved, not old but getting there.
I wondered if he could see my face. Realized he couldn’t when he said, “If you don’t remember me, bub, maybe you need glasses.”
My foul-weather jacket wasn’t zipped. I said, “Maybe we both do,” as I took off my glasses and cleaned them on my sweater. “If you’ve got a problem, mister, I can’t help unless I know what it is.”
The mansion behind me was five stories, all the windows dark except for the lights on the porch and in the windows of the cottage. I turned toward the cottage, the mansion to my left, the sea to my right.
After a moment, the man said, surprised, “You’re not him,” but it was also an accusation. He looked at the mansion, took a few steps toward it, then stopped. “You must be the other guy. The one who’s a cop looking for some missing boy. Only strangers come out on this point in winter. Alone anyway.”
I said, “Because it’s private property? Maybe I should be asking the questions.”
The man took another slow step toward the house, his anger draining along with his certainty. “I was sure you were him. Fifteen years, I’ve waited.” He stopped and turned. “Always knew what I was gonna do when we finally come face-to-face.”
I said, “So I see,” because I could make out details now. He had the gaunt eyes, thick forehead, the nose, skin and ears a distant mix of slave islanders and North Sea fishermen. He wore suspenders beneath a heavy coat. In his hand was a gaff, a steel hook lashed to a handle.
“If you’re going to use that, I should at least know your name.”
After a long silence, he said, “Sylvester. Virgil Sylvester,” before repeating, “Fifteen years, I’ve watched this place. In summer, it’s a rental. Billionaires and film stars. But winters, it’s just him who sneaks in.”
I couldn’t bring myself to ask who because I expected him to add a name: Tomlinson.
“Word used to travel fast on the South Fork. Now there ain’t many locals left. Those still here are afraid to tell me who comes ’n’ goes at this place. He killed my Annie—you know that, bub? We never found her body, but it was plain what happened. He raped her, then beat her to death with a golf club. A golf club.”
I had never heard such bitterness attached to these words.
“A rich kid. One of the summer brats. He used my girl like some damn country-club sport before taking the luxury bus back to college. A plaything to screw, then put on a tee.” His chest was heaving. “He’s up there, ain’t he?”
I said, “I have children. What you just described, it’s the worst imaginable. How old was your daughter?”
“Thirteen. Pretty girl. She’d read me little poems and stories sometimes.”
“Something like that sticks. I’m sorry, Virgil.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The man still faced the mansion but his breathing was slowing. “Since that morning, I’ve been a dead man just waiting for the lights to go out.”
I glanced toward the cottage, hoping Tomlinson wouldn’t choose that moment to exit and call my name. I was calculating the possibilities. Virgil Sylvester would either come at me with the gaff, or charge the house, or realize that attacking was pointless and contrive an excuse for doing nothing.
I relaxed a little when he turned and said, “You really a cop?”
“No. Someone asked me to help find the boy. He’s fourteen. Lives in Minnesota, but has an Oklahoma accent.”
“Why tell me?”
“He might still be around.”
The man nodded as if it made sense. “I can’t picture anybody being friend to a child killer.”
“I’m not. I don’t know the person who killed Annie.”
“Looking for a missing child, it’s the only hell I believe in. You think one of the summer people took the
boy?”
“If I was sure, I think I’d ask to borrow that gaff.”
Sylvester faced me, and I could smell his clothing again. “Sounds like you mean it. But you don’t. You’re just trying to talk me out of it.”
“I’d want someone to talk me out of it. Kill a man for revenge and he lives with you the rest of your life.”
“Let the cops handle it, I suppose?”
There wasn’t much I could say to that.
“You don’t know what it’s like out here. The power these summer people have.”
On the drive to this remote peninsula, we had passed estates that were small sovereignties, mansions as ornate as cathedrals, visible only because their twelve-foot hedges were frost-barren.
“A man can’t fight that kind of power. Since Annie died, I’ve visited family in California . . . Texas, too. Rich people everywhere, but it’s spread out. Not like here, the Hamptons. I saw an iceberg once, fishing in Nova Scotia. It comes into my head when I try to tell people. Peaks lit up like fire at sunrise, but the ocean was dark under the surface, a whole mountain of ice down there, and cold. It’s that kind of power they got. Even when they use it, you don’t see it.”
Sylvester looked at the mansion. “Is someone up there? Besides the caretakers, I mean.”
“A friend of mine.”
He said, “One of the Tomlinsons.” It wasn’t a question.
“My friend didn’t kill your daughter. Even if he’d lied to me, I would know.”
Because I had provided a reason to retreat, I wasn’t surprised when Sylvester used me as a target for self-contempt. “If you’re such a fuckin’ genius about who did what, why is that boy still missing?”
I said, “You’ve got a point. I shouldn’t be standing here wasting time.”
The man said, “Hah! Cops”—I was watching the way he held the gaff—“they sell coffee and doughnuts uptown at the 7-Eleven.”
“Probably my next stop—once you’re gone.”
“Uh-huh, now you’re tellin’ me to leave. I’m fifth-generation Bonnacker. My people killed whales on this beach.”
I said, “Virgil, if I ever hear anything about your daughter, I’ll find a way to get in touch. I’ll let you know, okay?”
The man appeared to sag. I had robbed him of his anger. “You cops, you think you know so much. Let me tell you something about them Tomlinsons. They’re evil. Big brains and dried-up hearts. You know how the old man made his fortune?”
I did, but he didn’t expect an answer.
“It’s blood money. Three generations fed on it. Everything crazy all rolled into one family, that’s the Tomlinsons. I should know. I worked for those sonuvabitches. When one of them murdered my Annie, they gave me a month’s bonus and fired me after they was all safe, gone back to Florida for winter.”
17
Tomlinson’s brother, Norvin, had been a member of an elite secret fraternity, Skull and Bones, at Yale. Tomlinson hadn’t volunteered the information, which irritated me. I knew because of things I saw in Norvin’s room.
Tomlinson pretended not to hear me say, “I’ve read that Skull and Bones stole Geronimo’s skull. Pancho Villa’s, too. They have a place off campus, not a typical frat house, called the Tomb. Some say they still have the skulls.”
I was looking at a photograph of fifteen young men standing in front of a grandfather clock. Norvin Tomlinson was near the center. The family resemblance was eerie. Norvin was a little taller, with short pale hair, but the haunted eyes were familiar. The brothers had the same look of sinew, bone and muscle.
Norvin was near the fraternity banner, which I recognized. It was similar to a Masonic symbol I had seen on rings: a primitive skull and crossbones, the lower jaw of the skull missing. The number 322 was prominent.
My uncle had been a Freemason, as was Hooker Montbard. He wore an antique Skull and Bones ring. It was Hooker’s interest in Masonry and the Knights Templar that had fired his conviction that artifacts from the Crusades were somewhere in the jungles of South America.
I stood, looking at the photo, until Tomlinson finally had no choice but to comment.
“That was Norvin’s senior year at Yale. It’s a weird fraternity, but our father was so stoked he bought Norry an MG convertible when he was tapped.”
“Tapped?”
“Chosen. Members of Skull and Bones are considered chosen people. I didn’t realize it’s such a huge deal until later, because Norry’s best friend was tapped the same year.”
Tomlinson pointed to one of the men in the photo. It was Nelson Myles, he said, the man who owned Shelter Point. I now understood the horse trainer’s reaction.
“They were our neighbors practically, that’s why I took it for granted being tapped. It seemed common. But it’s not.”
I turned to him. “You don’t think I’ve heard of Skull and Bones? Why didn’t you tell me your brother was a member?”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
I said, “Hey, old buddy, it’s me.”
His smile was a mix of chagrin and admission. “Sorry. I’ve got a problem with power, you know that. The Bonesmen scare the hell out of me. That fraternity produced how many presidents and vice presidents? A couple of Supreme Court justices and at least two directors of the Central Intelligence Agency. In almost two hundred years, no Bonesman has ever gone public with the fraternity’s secrets. Do you have any idea how much power they have?”
Fifteen minutes earlier, I had heard Virgil Sylvester say something similar about the Hamptons.
“But, hey, I did tell you I’m pretty sure Norvin was recruited by the CIA. It was almost the same as telling you.”
Sort of. Skull and Bones is a favorite of conspiracy kooks. The fraternity’s tradition of secrecy invites wild theories, but so do the few known facts. The OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, was founded by Ivy League graduates. Most, if not all, Bonesmen are offered interviews by the various intelligence agencies. The amount of wealth and power the fraternity wields is remarkably disproportionate to its tiny membership.
Even so, the theories are ridiculous. I don’t believe that secret societies hatch international plots, for the same reason I don’t use comic books as research material. When I meet more than three people who can keep a secret when their lives aren’t on the line, I’ll starting giving conspiracy theories another look.
Tomlinson said, “They recruited us heavy back at Harvard, too, of course, spook agencies. Thank God I couldn’t remember my Social Security number or they might have hired me full-time instead of just cashing in on my special skills. But you know about that.”
“Yes,” I said, “I know.” Tomlinson’s credentials to lecture on clairvoyance were better than most. He had participated in a program called Stargate by its many critics. The Pentagon preferred Asymmetrical Intelligence Gathering Research, and funded the study after discovering the Soviets were recruiting telepathic savants to work as “psychic spies.”
This wasn’t conspiracy theory fantasy, it was documented fact.
My friends in the intelligence community had confirmed that Tomlinson turned in one of the highest scores ever recorded on what must have been a bizarre test used to cull prospects.
We were in Norvin’s room—an apartment, really. One of several in the family’s thirty-room “summer residence.” The place had been built during the days of mustang capitalism, back when the Du Ponts, Rockefellers and Kennedys were making their fortunes.
Tomlinson had introduced me to the family maid, Greta Finnmark, now one of the caretakers. Good-looking older woman, blondish and busty, with Nordic eyes and a Nordic accent, who had to have been a knockout in her day. She slipped her arm through Tomlinson’s, cooing and smiling, saying, “Guards, my dear sweet boy, it is so good to have you home!”
Guards, short for Guardian—her strange pet name for Sighurdhr.
“Because, even as a child, he was always looking after people, trying to raise their spirits if they were sad,” she explain
ed to me. Sincere, too, because she didn’t get it when I replied, “Oh, yeah, he’s a regular Boy Scout. Still raising everything he can.”
Greta led us through the restaurant-sized kitchen, then turned us loose in the first of two great halls. The furniture was covered with tarps, and it was cold as a cave. Greta had confirmed that the main house was rented each summer, then closed in the off-season.
“The rent charged by your family’s trust company is incredible!,” she had said. “For the same money, you could buy a house most places. But they pay. Oh yes, the rich people from New York, they wait in line to pay!”
There was a grand piano near the fireplace. Tomlinson tossed back the cover and played the first plaintive notes of “Clair de Lune” before he noticed that I was staring at a painting over the mantle. It had to be his great-grandfather, the man who’d built the estate. Remove the tux, add a decade of tropic seas, taverns, midnight water, rock ’n’ roll plus salt-bleached hair, and it was Tomlinson.
I wasn’t surprised when my pal stood and motioned me along, saying, “Speak of the devil, huh? Say good-bye to Hank—friendly name for a cold-hearted genius.”
“That was your father’s name, wasn’t it?”
“No, Dad’s name was Hank, as in Hank. The old man’s name was Hank, as in Henry. I told you how he made his dough. Blood money, which is why I’ll never take a cent of it.”
There it was again.
During World War I, the elder Tomlinson had made a fortune off of royalties from a couple of patents. Something to do with a synchronizing device that allowed airplanes to fire machine guns through spinning propellers.
I had read that the invention had changed the course of the war—maybe history—and accounted for huge kill ratios. In that war alone, the invention had facilitated many thousands of deaths.
From the great hall, Tomlinson led me to the west wing, which was sealed by massive doors. He was perturbed they were locked. “It’s the only modern section of the house, if you catch my meaning. There’s a five-car garage, so if anyone’s around . . .” I didn’t hear the rest because he jogged back to the kitchen for the key. But Greta said she didn’t have it.
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